Guess what?!  This isn’t a TTD!  See?  I haven’t forgotten how to write things outside a numbered list.  Yet.

Unfortunately, though, this is a year-in-review entry.  I know, I know, these are annoying and irrelevent.  But I just looked at my 2008 round-up and I can tell you one thing – this one will be shorter.

2009 was easily one of the most arse-kickingest years of my life, if not THE most arse-kickingest (me rite gud).  And most of this is due to magical strokes of luck, rather than any wisdom or cleverness or deserving on my part.  Which is kind of annoying, in a way – it’s annoying to have tried so hard for so long, only to discover that, sometimes, quitting is the best decision you could ever make.

The one thing I didn’t explicitly say at the end of 2008 was that I had quit.  I quit performing.  I didn’t care if I never got on stage again.  I wasn’t emotional about it anymore, either.  I was just done.  Then I got an email from someone I respect a lot asking me if I wanted to be in a cabaret show.  That was one thing I’d never tried and I still loved singing.  So I said yes.  Little did I know what other huge events I’d end up saying yes to as a result.

Then came the job upheaval.  I had a choice to make there too.  To stay on and do more of the same (in a thinly-disguised ‘different’ package), or to quit and see what happens next.  I quit.  And, lo, it was amazing.

Yes, luck, luck, luck.  There’s been a lot of luck flying around for me in 2009…

I was lucky this year that, by sheer coincidence, I travelled.  A lot.

I was lucky this year to discover that some amazing people believed in me enough to put me on stage without me having to beg or to organise it myself – other people actually said ‘yes’ to my brand of silliness.  And, in the process, to realise how much I still love being ‘up there’.  And to find guidance through a most excellent vocal coach.  Yeah, all this stuff kinda rocked.

I was lucky this year because a global financial crisis meant I was granted a second chance at, well, life.

I was lucky this year that, for one mad month at least, I got a glimpse of what life could be like if my luckiness became more permanent.

I was lucky this year that my long-held theory that I could be a freelancer has come to fruition.  So far, so good.

I was lucky that, once again, my resolution to have “more music in my life” continued to be realised.

I was lucky that, all the learning about fun I did in 2008 paid dividends in 2009.

I was lucky that I’ve not only kept all my delightful friends, but I’ve made some amazing new ones who I hope continue to influence me in wacky and wonderful ways.

And I was lucky this year because I, and the people closest to me, have remained healthy and safe.

(actually, my health track-record for 2009 was impeccable – two minor colds… and that’s it.  BAM!)

Luck, luck, luck.  It was everywhere this year.  I have no idea why.  And I have no idea what lies ahead for 2010 – whether it could possibly be as fortuitous as this year.  Or more so.  Or not.

But for this year I am immensely grateful.

…Close calls

1. I scream.  I was buying a double choc-dip from the ice cream van one afternoon when I was 11.  After our transaction, I had the cone in one hand and 80c worth of change in 10c coins in the other.  I stood in front of the van, about to cross the road, when he started his engine up like he was going to drive through me.  Suitably spooked, I ran out onto the road without looking.  And that’s when another car drove past and sent me flying.  At the top of the road, the driver got out of her hubcap-deficient, tinny, off-white vehicle.  “Are you alright?” she bellowed from the top of the hill.  “Yes,” I replied with a wobble.  And off she drove, leaving me sitting on the road surrounded by 10c coins, with half an empty cone in my hand.  My friend who saw the whole thing from across the street laughed.  “‘S not funny,” I told her.  The ice-cream man beckoned me over and gave me a free replacement double choc-dip – not that I felt like it anymore.  Had I been a moment sooner, I’d have surely gone under this car.  But as it was, my ankle, which bled because of the exposed screws on the shi!ty car that hit me, was the only thing injured.  Well, that and my faith in humanity* - and my taste for soft-serve.

2. Intoxication.  Back in Edinburgh, I did a wee video tour of our apartment.  This included showing “the people watching at home” our refrigerator, which was packed with a metric f’tonne of wine.  My favourite was one marked “ROSE”.  And I say “ROSE” because it was, without exaggeration, labelled in about a 700 point font.  In the process of dragging out the “ROSE” to show “the people watching at home”, I nearly smashed about 15 other bottles, in a cascade of glassy booziness.  Again, all’s well that ends well – no wine was harmed and, best of all, I caught my idiotic slapstick moment on video.

3. Dodge.  I was at the circus fairground dodge-’em cars once when I was 8 years old or so.  To this day I love dodge-’ems.  I hate spinning, I hate being upside down, I’m not a massive fan of heights.  But I can definitely get on board with a need for speed.  And if a few crazy collisions are involved, all the better.  I held my breath watching as the cars zoomed round and round when I saw it.  The purple one.  In that blurry, song-filled moment, I knew – I had to have the shiny, deep-purple metallic dodge-’em.  I watched it like a starving bounty hunter in the wilderness watches a wild boar – or an episode of Jamie Oliver via portable TV (an essential item for any adventurer).  Round and round it went until, finally, all the cars started to slow.  Determined to get my purple racer, I ran out onto the track.  Except they didn’t stop.  The cars all sped up again, and my beloved purple car came tearing towards me.  It hit me, I bounced onto the ‘hood’, and the guy driving it grabbed my arm and held onto me.  There I was, flailing about on the front of this little car, with a guy steering with one hand – and saving my limbs** with the other.  It was a close call, but fortunately it worked.  I got the purple car.  Oh and, like, I didn’t die (Darwin Awards, anyone?).

*Okay, it’s not THAT bleak.  But what a moll – am I right?
**People like him cancel out people like Mollface McMoll in the first story.  But, you know, that’s also a close call.

I didn’t want to write this post because I felt in danger of being all like ”and then THIS happened, and then THAT happened” – aka, the blog equivalent of making someone sift through 18,000 of your unfiltered holiday snaps.

But I do have to write something, otherwise I’ll be leaving a gaping hole in this vague chronicle of my life.  Plus, I need to move on with what’s on my mind now – or, rather, what should be on my mind now – which I fear I won’t be able to do until I tell this story.

So, in recounting the month that has just flown by, I’ll do my best to avoid the aforementioned pitfall of boring…

Let me preface this by saying that I’ve never done the full month of a festival before.  Most I’ve ever done is two weeks.  I’ve certainly never performed for 27 consecutive days before, as per our schedule for our Edinburgh Fringe debut.

So, based on my limited previous festival experience, I had the following expectations.

Cuisine a la Fringe

Expectation
I’ll get to cook healthy food in the apartment, thereby saving money and ensuring health simultaneously.

Reality

• Breakfast: Fruit and toast at the apartment (not the porridge I’d aimed for and quickly forgot about, but so far, so good)
• Lunch: Toasties from Baguette Express, paninis from Baguette Express, the occasional baguette from Cafe Lucano – all accompanied by these two phrases from me: “If I eat one more sandwich, I will turn into one” and “baguette-me-not”.  And once or twice there was the gleaming beacon of lunchtime deliciousness that is M&S food court – thanks Suz!
• Dinner: something ready-to-go from the supermarket, pizza slice from the van outside the Gilded Balloon (have chilli oil stain on jeans to prove it… mmm, chilli oil), Susie’s Wholefood Diner vegetarian deliciousness (ah, my people…), carrot sticks and hommous (giving my people a bad name), or a French martini (What?  There’s fruit in it…)

The apartment

Expectation
31 days in an apartment with 7 other girls.  I’ll probably hate them all after this.  And they’ll hate me.  I’ll probably spend a lot of spare time in cafes with free wi-fi, blogging my gripes.

Reality
We are the Sisterhood of the Travelling Leggings-As-Pants.  I heart each and every one of them (but not the leggings).  Hopefully I was at least bearable in return (even if I used the phrase ”baguette-me-not” on a daily basis).

Also, we stole free wi-fi in the comfort of our own apartment for the entire month.  Bam.

27 shows in a row

Expectation
Overkill and insanity

Reality
Had a freaking ball, night after night after night…

Special mention must go to closing night, when we all decided to go a bit bollocking crazy – the pronouncement of a ’sexy eunuch’ before the madrigal, the utterance of “toots” after Belle’s butt-slap (this had been in the works for the full month), my own alterations involving the stepmother’s hand-mirror and an angry moonwalk from Aladdin, but most hilarious of all: Bella insisting Edward grab her boob in the Twilight sketch.  Corpse-o-rama.

Houses

Expectation
Ooh, I dunno, it’s our first year… they say the average house at the Fringe is 6.  Hopefully we won’t sink below 8.  Every night I fear that we’ll turn around in the opening number and be taunted by that ironical icon, the tumbleweed.

Reality
Average house?  78!!!  That means 2111 people came to our show!!!  Ahhhhaaaaaa!!!

Will people like us in the ‘burgh?

Expectation
I suspect so, but you never know till you go.

Reality
Just for the sake of handy reference (yeah, right):
***** – The Edinburgh Guide
**** – Hairline
**** – The Scotsman (praise aside, this was a beautifully-written review – and so totally got us)
***** – one4review
***** and other cool stuff from Edinburgh Festival Insider 
And a nice write-up from The Groggy Squirrel 

Best of all, though, our audiences clapped and laughed and cheered and talked to us afterwards and came back again.

Twitter

Expectation
Cute and fun idea of Brydie’s that the characters should have their own Twitter accounts.  Might glean us a bit more attention.

Reality
Our supreme Twitter presence (at one point, we were the most Tweeted show at the Fringe) got us on the front cover of Scotland on Sunday’s ‘Fringe Review’ lift-out – in full-colour, full-page glory!!!  Ahhhhaaaaaa!!!

Flyering on The Royal Mile

Expectation
I’ll probably hate all humanity after this.

Reality
The first week, the sun was shining, punters were excited, performers were excited, everyone felt generous, and it was fun.  But by week three, there’d been enough rain and enough refusals that it was hard not to be at least a teensy bit bitter when somebody blanked you or was needlessly smarmy at you – or handed you a flyer they’d just been given by someone else!  If you don’t want to be flyered, don’t walk down the Mile at Fringe time!

Breathe, Daley, breathe…

Surprisingly, though, the most offensive people in the end weren’t punters, but other flyerers.  You’d expect a camaraderie, no?  And with the more civilised of us, there was.  But scores of others would get in the way, or even interrupt our conversations with punters, in order to accost them with their own shows.  So rude!

Anyone in a crawling tableaux wearing a lycra unitard (‘multi-tards’) is just asking to have their flyers lodged so far up their wahzoos they’d require intricate surgical removal.  Heed this warning for future years.

However.  Just when you thought you couldn’t take anymore, that you really just wanted to go back to Starbucks for a second nanna nap till showtime, someone would tell you that they’d seen the show and loved it.  And with that, you could put your spruiking smile back on again with ease.

Edinburgh ghost tour

Expectation
It’ll be a bit creepier than the last time I did it because this one’s at night.

Reality
Someone threw up and fainted.  It was like The Exorcist.  I don’t want to talk about it.

The Chippendales

Expectation
Greasy, fake-tanned, steroid-infused stripping that we’ll all have to be quite drunk for, but a bonding exercise for us all to go see it together (plus it’s in our venue and, hence, free).

Reality
Firstly, my expectations were fulfilled, except that we were relatively sober – but I’m grateful for this because, whether intentional or not (suspect not), this show was a work of comic genius.

The slow-motion, deeply unco strip to Enrique Iglesias’ I Can Be Your Hero (which we determined – from the military garb, the Statue of Liberty lit up on the backdrop, and the oh-so-subtle American flag boxers - was a tribute to the heroes of 9-11) may be the funniest thing I will ever witness in my life.  The mere thought of it still brings tears to my eyes.  The rest of us should retire.

The Red Hot Chili Peppers concert

Expectation
It’s right in the middle of town, it wasn’t too hard to get tickets, and they were only £18 or so for general admission – amazing!  Most of us are going, we’re all really excited, and having seen them years ago, I know they’ll do a great live show (even if singing is not Anthony Kiedis’ best talent).  I can see us all singing along and moshing and having a great time – one of the highlights of the month.   This will be awesome!

Reality
Turns out we didn’t have The Red Hot Chili Peppers tickets.

We had The Red Hot Chili PIPERS tickets.

Yes, that’s right – PIPERS.  As in, BAGPIPES.  As in, cheesy rock music featuring BAGPIPES.  I write BAGPIPES in caps because a loud, obnoxious ‘instrument’ (a word I use in the least musical sense possible) calls for a loud, obnoxious font.

Do you know what I hate more than BAGPIPES?

Nothing.

So yeah.

French martini anyone?

“This is a surreal moment, isn’t it?” I say to the people carrying novelty boobs made from pilates balls, en route to the Royal Mile.

“Yep,” they reply, nodding at my pink princess gown.  Again.

Having spent the better part of 13 days on cobblestones, dressed as Princess Aurora (aka Sleeping Beauty), procuring Princess Cabaret to strangers from all over the world, surrounded by scores of shouters, stilt-walkers and unitard-wearers (or ‘multi-tards’, if you will) who are also procuring themselves, amid a festival which prides itself on living up to its name, The Fringe – on the edge, out there, sometimes a bit frayed - I have a question burning inside (or that could just be this crappy wine I’ve resorted to).

What drives us to partake in all this madness?

Did we not get enough attention as children and, hence, are now doomed to spend the rest of our lives making up for it?  Or did we get too much attention and were so over-indulged that we can’t help but continue to seek out our fix of the limelight, with our threshold ever-increasing?

While a sensible person would fear an overdose of attention, my greatest fear – and primary motivator, like any addict - is not getting enough.  If I approach someone to tell them about our show and they shun me, I am simply outraged.

To your complete lack of surprise I’m sure, I’ve taken to snide under-the-breath remarks between rejections to get me through the day.

“Yes, please ignore me – that’s why I chose this casual gown today.”

“Clearly, you hate fun”

“Clearly, you have no soul.”

“Clearly, you… don’t speak English?  My bad.”

Then there’s the all-powerful thought that there could be fewer people out there on seats than there are on stage.  That image alone is enough to make you whore your wares with gusto until right before lights up at 5.45pm at the Gilded Balloon every day of the Fringe (I may have said this once or twice in the last fortnight).

I feel blessed that, at the half-way mark, this horrifying image has not materialised for us (yeah, yeah, yeah – *touch wood*).  Mind you, blessings are lovely (just ask the guy Elise and I spruiked today who informed us, without a shred of Blues Brothers-related irony, that he’s on a mission from god), but we’re working our fingers to the arse to that end.

It’s both a blessing and a curse that whatever we’re doing is working.  People are coming to the show because of our charming Mile demeanour.  But on the flipside, we have to keep doing it and, ideally, not develop a permanent hatred of humanity in the process.  Being nice is so much hard work!

A more Edinburgh-centric aspect to all of this is the inevitable issue of weather.  We awake and it’s pissing down.  We decide it’s too wet to wear costumes.  We arrive at the Mile and the sun is strong enough to burn.  We put on our costumes and the rain starts again.  After several hours of this, getting on stage is the least stressful event of the day - at least there it’s climate-controlled (albeit a sauna).

A few days ago, at 11am on the Royal Mile it was raining so hard that Smil and I had little choice but to stand mid-torrent and wait.  Were it any other time of year or in any other place in the world, the image would force you to question your sanity – a green fairy and a pink princess standing on deserted cobblestones, huddled under an umbrella that says “I [heart] Scotland” (FYI: not).  But during the fringe, Edinburgh is, by definition a madcap parade in which no corner is safe. 

Out of necessity, we frequent cafes, sandwich shops, and festival bars in full garb.  Between flyering shifts, we have arvo nanna naps in Starbucks and in the park, buy supplies at Boots drug store, order coffee, and catch buses, all dressed as the iconic fairytale characters.  It’s become so ridiculous, we’ve started a photo gallery on Facebook called “Princesses are people too”.

The most bizarre part, though, is when we do go out in ‘civvies’ (talk about a balmy army) and are suddenly not stared at, not photographed like landmarks, and not accosted by children we have to disappoint with the phrase “It’s a grown-ups’ show”.

So while every day teeters on the fringe of sanity, it’s pretty obvious that normalcy is a crashing bore.  ‘Clearly’, all this madness suits us just fine.

Standing tall on the oceanfront, with surf life savers as our princes and the historic building itself as our castle, we knew that Sydney’s iconic Bondi Pavilion would be the perfect setting for Cinderella, Belle, Jasmine, Snow White, Aurora and (especially) Ariel to perform Princess Cabaret’s Edinburgh fundraiser shows.

Or so it seemed, until an earthquake in New Zealand meant that a tsunami alert was issued for Sydney’s coastline – just before our show time. When both TV and internet tell you to “get away from the sea”, an oceanfront location that’s fit for a princess suddenly seems more like the evil queen’s pool party.

Sure, Tinkerbell was able to fly away, and Ariel was excited about showing everyone her natural habitat up close, but the landlubbers known as our audience were somewhat less safe and enthused. It was time to evacuate.

As The Sydney Morning Herald would have it, we promptly ‘ejected’ our patrons from the beachside venue. We enjoy this image, even if it is less storybook and more Toy Story.

For what it would be worth in the event of megatonnes of water descending on our theatre, we locked up our tech equipment and snack-bar before we scarpered to higher ground. Unfortunately for our fundraising, though, we had to give back quite a bit of money. But on the plus side, we wouldn’t have to stand around feeding a surplus of soggy chips to the seagulls. And we’re, like, alive and stuff.

We piled into cars and zoomed away from the Pacific Ocean, still reeling from performus interruptus – feeling a mix of “What just happened there?” and ultimately relief that, were a disaster to occur, at least we would live to do our show far, far away in Edinburgh (our relief still stands, despite some weather nerd claiming we overreacted).

That said, our hastily abandoned props and costumes would be somewhere deep in Davy Jones’ Locker, with only two weeks to remake them. Sure, it’d take a lot longer to rebuild our beautiful city (less funny), but we’re all about the Fringe right now and we promise we would’ve helped in September.

But happily for Sydney, as our accidental foray into international news points out, the not-quite-tsunami had but one ‘casualty’: the evening’s performance of Princess Cabaret.