His thesp eyes lazily...

travelled over my stout bod

as if he wondered whether this starlet

is worth bedding in order to

give her one...

a part in his next production...

 that is.

'The walk is over four miles!'

he said pointedly looking in my direction.

I pulled myself up to my full height of

5' 4" and huffily replied in my

best Lady Bracknell tones

'Well, only a couple of weeks ago we did

over 10 miles!'

We set off, me with I'll show him, strop in every step.

The runner bean and I set the pace...

Up the hill we went...

think Sutton Bank in Yorkshire...

a long slow hill that looks a breeze.

It wasn't long before I had to say

'I'll have to take a breather!'

Damn, DAMN, damn!

He didn't need to say a thing.

At the top, my composure returned, my cheeks

returned to normal, my heart settled.

Lindy Lou was back to her strong sturdy self.

This Strolling Players walk was our first

outing with the local Am Drams group.

In the pub we bonded with our fellow

thesps.  Alcohol always irons out differences

in class, intelligence and social skills,

I find... don't you?

We have been to two play readings

and were dropped right in it.

Plaintively I cried

'I only want to be a backroom boy!'

I know my limitations.

Ted who can sing, has a raft of accents

in his quiver, was a natural.

Me... well...

I don't do any accent other than Estuary English,

I don't speak any languages apart from English...

and that not very well.

What I lack in skills I more than make up for in

 confidence.

Over the years I have given literally

hundreds of talks;

the only trouble is they are all about me

and my life.  In a nutshell I can't ACT, or

put another way, I could oh so easily

corner the market in battle-axes.

Our summer production is

'Oh What a Lovely War'

So you can see I'm stuffed on so many fronts.

But wait, there is one role I covert, which I read on

Tuesday night.

Emmeline Pankhurst on a soap box...

I can see it all now.......

me outside the Chilcott enquiry