The wonder show of mirth and melody from traveller, writer and girl about town Rosie Clarke

In clearing out old boxes recently, I was surprised to find a school report I’d written at the age of 17 after doing a year of work experience at a small local theatre. I only went in on Thursday afternoons, but I remember this as a very happy time when a lovely team of people welcomed a somewhat naïve student whose endless attempts to be helpful must have been something of a tribulation.

Theatre photo courtesy of alancleaver_2000, shared under a Creative Commons licence on Flickr

In my self-evaluation I frankly admit, “There have been low points, such as the many times I have efficiently answered the telephone only to forget an obvious word like ‘postcode’, floundering for 5 minutes describing ‘the thing with the letters and numbers in it’, or accidentally crashing the computer twice in as many weeks by doing exactly the same thing.”

“I felt truly stupid when I dialled the same phone number three times because I was so intrigued by the odd dialling tone. After about 5 minutes of saying ‘Hello … hello … is anyone there?’ I attempted to describe the bizarre electronic music and was informed I had been communicating with a fax machine. This,” I concluded portentously, “is a mistake I will not make again.” Still, come on – everybody’s done this once, right? Right?

Every lunchtime was a forum for discussion: the staff would all sit together and I’d soak up everything I considered worthy of comment, e. g. “Table dancers wanted in the small ads of The Stage are paid over £600 a night.”

My tasks included customising posters and displaying them in hard-to-open weatherproof display cases (“My technique is to punch them while wiggling a table knife down the sides”). I came up with children’s colouring competitions and set up creative in-house displays: “My use of bright colours and long paper beanstalks interested both small children and taller adults”.

Clearly I wasn’t immune to status anxiety, recording “I often make tea and coffee (not as a menial chore but to make visitors feel welcome).”

The strangest things were exciting novelties: in an appendix to my report, I include, carefully sealed into a plastic bag, an arson-damaged letter I received at the theatre, disintegrating into blackened flakes. I also recorded thrilling breaks to the usual routine: an evacuation! Buying an iron! Using the official franking machine in the Town Hall! Salvaging things from a closing down Santa’s Grotto!

I also noted, “It has been very useful hearing the way theatre professionals analyse contemporary productions, compared to what we are taught to notice in Theatre Studies.” I wonder how much this early grounding informs my reviewing style now?

Some things haven’t changed: “The pay is unanimously described as not good – apparently this is true throughout [the whole leisure company of which the theatre was a part], and explains why all their employees are so young. The only way to make progress and advance your career is to go and work somewhere else, where your experience will be rewarded with a higher position and hopefully higher wages.”

It’s fascinating that I conclude that I’d find full-time admin work boring, that design and publicity are things I’m definitely interested in, and that I would rather have a job like the Festival Coordinator “who does a lot of planning, liaising with other people, designing and research but at the end sees a large-scale result involving a whole community.” This pretty much describes what I do professionally these days.

I end my report with a page of thanks to everyone who supported me … including a gracious acknowledgement to a taciturn technical assistant for being “silently fanciable”.

So I was talking to my friend, the tennis-playin’ surf-ridin’ world explorer Ms Nia Wyn Owen, about our hopes and dreams for the year ahead. I may have mentioned how much I’d love to read a blog about her Australian travels … and she promptly bounced my request back at me.

We both have these blogs, and neither of us have done much with them… and on our own, we are terrible procrastinators. So Nia and I have challenged each other to publish some posts – and whoever has the most interesting blog by the New Year will be declared the winner. Bragging rights are at stake – that’s right, this thing just got serious.

Why not check out her blog now? It’s at http://niawynowen.blogspot.com/

What should I write about? I’m just back from our office Christmas meal. We can be quite a noisy group, particularly during the infamous annual Christmas Quiz, so we reserved the upstairs room at the Ginger Fox near Hurstpierpoint. It’s a cosy little pub in the middle of the countryside with a thatched mansard roof, reminiscent of Milly-Molly-Mandy’s cottage. The food was delicious.

Modesty forbids me from revealing whose team won the quiz (although the aspirational team name, Mr C and the Edge of Glory, may have goaded us on to excel).

As always, though, my pop-culture uncoolness proved faintly embarrassing. In the Never Mind the Buzzcocks-style ‘Next Lines’ round, our quizmistress read out “Funk to funky…”

Of course, the following line should be, “We know Major Tom’s a junkie” from David Bowie’s Ashes to Ashes.

However, my cheesetastic mind went straight to Samantha Mumba’s 90s classic Body to Body, with its very similar line “Body to body, funk to funky, we know how to rock your party.”

To music connoisseur and art blogger extraordinaire Mark, this schoolgirl error resulted in 5 minutes of hysterical spluttering. Just you wait, Monsieur Sheerin. Just you wait until you’re called upon to identify a mid-90s cheesy pop B-side. Then you will rue the day!

So hey, Nia, if you’re seeing this in your RSS reader, your mouth open in disbelief that I’ve actually written something … consider the GAUNTLET THROWN DOWN.

Dun – dun – DUNNNNN!

Weathered wooden handrail and steps leading down to Brighton Beach

1) The 140 characters allowed by Twitter aren’t long enough to say everything I want to say.

2) I want to share new ideas, concepts and links with anyone who might be interested, and talk about them openly rather than in the closed circle of Facebook.

3) I need to become more technical and “webby” as quickly as I can. While I often found my old Blogger blog a bit limiting, I hope to be able to experiment a lot more with this new WordPress space – I may even end up transferring tales from the old travel blog across to here.

4) Writing out my impressions and questions gives me a chance to reflect on what I’m learning in this new, challenging situation I find myself in. I don’t have all the answers, and I hope to connect with other people who are also building their careers and networks.

5) Writing is a grounding action, and letting my fleeting ideas wander and unfurl can lead to surprising conclusions, even epiphanies. I want to look back and remind myself of the opportunities open to me, everything I have to be grateful for, and build up snapshots of my life, in this exciting city, in this time of amazingly rapid changes.