Happy eggs.

“When are you next putting a play on?”

That’s a question I must get asked on average at least once a week. It’s not necessarily a question I dread answering but it’s so difficult to form a response in a positive manner. In an ideal world, my answer would be oh, there’s another show this weekend. But this isn’t an ideal world. I work full time. Forty hours a week. I leave the house at eight o’clock in the morning and I’m home every evening at six. All the usual things build up on a weekly basis – doctors appointments, picking up prescriptions, buying birthday presents, wrapping them, visiting the army of children I have somehow acquired over the years – all the normal day to day things that sit in the back of your mind all day and you put them off again and again until you have no choice but to waste your day off trying to sort them out. Before you know it, it’s Monday morning again and although you’ve ticked everything off your mental to-do list, you’ve had absolutely no chill time.

It sucks. But it’s the life I chose. I made a conscious decision three years ago to work full time and do all my creative malarkey on top of that. It’s tiring but this way, I learnt to drive. I bought a car. I have enough money to live quite comfortably. As much as I adored working as a hit and miss actor, it was a bit of a threadbare existence. I loved performing and I loved touring but I didn’t love having next to no money and having to rely on people for lifts everywhere. That was fine for the first year or so after graduating but there’s only so many times you can drag your sorry arse to the job centre in between tours.

I got thinking about it, though. When are you next putting a play on? What normally happens is I’m approached by a theatre company – sometimes I approach them – and they secure the rights to my script for a specific period of time, meaning no other theatre company can perform that particular play until their run is over. It’s done on a profit share basis, which means the more bums on seats there are, the more the actors and the writer get paid. When working as an actor for profit share, the sum of money I would end up with as a wage was pitiful. When working as a writer for profit share, it was even less. And sometimes I didn’t receive any payment at all. Which is fine because, as I say, I work full time. It’s never been a career for those who love money. I remember telling someone I was a writer and he smiled and said, “so are you a waitress as well then?”

It was my mum who first gave me the idea. I was lounging around the living room, sprawled across the sofa, probably still in my pyjamas. I was moaning that I was bored. I hadn’t done a play in months. She was barely even listening to me as she was sewing name tags into my nephews’ school uniforms. “Why don’t you just do it yourself?” she muttered and immediately, I snorted with laughter. Yes. Because I can really produce a script, hold auditions, direct actors, secure a venue, get an audience and actually produce a play, I thought. I dismissed her idea with nothing more than a laugh.

Only it planted a seed in my mind. Without really thinking about it, I began gathering ideas and making mental notes of different plays, possible venues, willing actors. Then I shook some sense into my head. No, Emily. You work five days a week. You don’t have enough time to do all of this. No but if you got some help with it, you’d be fine. This could be something brilliant. Or it could be dreadful and you’ll be a laughing stock. Or it could be everything you’ve wanted for the past twenty five years.

I ran the idea past a few friends and family members, all of whom were massively encouraging and supportive. Before I knew it, I’d spoken to the owners of the Kings Club; a charming little venue which holds 100 people and just so happens to be directly across the road from my house. I threw around a few ideas, enquired about prices and left the conversation feeling daunted. Excited but daunted.

After a few conversations with a fellow drama graduate, we decided to go for it with a script I had written for my university dissertation: A Walk in the Park. I put down the deposit on the venue and secured two nights in November. This was in June. I remember feeling like it was ages away. In fact, I felt quite smug about the fact that I had plenty of time.

A few weeks later, I was advertising for actors. The power of social media came into play and I was inundated with emails from budding young actors wanting to audition for the roles. Some familiar faces cropped up. I’ve said this before but I always remember a face and a name. People I’d worked with on various other productions popped up and it was a pleasure to speak to them again. I paid another deposit to the venue and hired out the building from 9:30am until 5pm one Saturday. My only day off that week. In the back of my mind, I started to doubt myself again. Wouldn’t I be shattered spending my only day off doing audition after audition?

The answer was yes. I was knackered. Particularly because three days before the auditions were held, the other two ladies who had agreed to help with the production decided they didn’t want to be involved anymore. I had a mad panic for about a day – “I can’t do this on my own. I’ve got to pull the auditions. Why did I decide to do this?”  - followed by the voice of reason aka my mum drilling some sense into me. I could do it. I had to do it. I didn’t have a choice. Actors were coming from as far as London to audition. Pulling the auditions made no sense. So, ever the supportive mother, she volunteered to help me audition. She’s a teacher so she’s sat in on more than her fair share of auditions. In fact, she was far more experienced in that sector than I was.

Audition day came and I was wide awake before my alarm went off, my stomach writhing with nerves. It was almost laughable. Actors would have been sat in their kitchens panic muttering their lines and hoping that they came across well and there I was, so nervous that I couldn’t even be coaxed into eating my breakfast.

My first audition of the day was a tiny little female. A whirlwind of pinafore and bobbly tights. She came running into the room, chatting ten to the dozen and making me laugh. She immediately put me at ease. She auditioned for the role of Wendy – a lady in her late 40s/early 50s - which initially took me by surprise as she was so tiny and cute that I thought she was younger than me. Her name was Elizabeth Gorman. I didn’t know it then but she would turn out to be my absolute lifeline in the coming months.

By ten thirty, I’d auditioned five or six people. One of them was Craig Sharkey, a cheeky Scouse lad who I’d had the pleasure of working with at Black Box Theatre Company back in the day. He was auditioning for the role of Hanson – a filthy minded hilarious individual – and as soon as he’d left the room, I looked at my mum and grinned. He was absolutely perfect for the role. The audition after Craig was with an actor I’d never heard of and didn’t know too much about. His name was Conor Burns and he was auditioning for the main role of Jack. He walked in and straight away came over and shook both of our hands. He was polite, courteous and smelt wonderfully clean. I took an instant liking to him. Then he opened his mouth and this fabulous Irish accent came out.

“Is it going to be a problem? My accent?” he asked us and of course, we said no straight away. In fact, I cracked a little joke along the lines of well it would make me a racist if I said yes, wouldn’t it? And although he laughed, I could see how nervous he was. His audition was wonderful. So wonderful that my mind flitted to the script. How could I change it to explain why Jack had an Irish accent and why – presumably – the rest of the cast wouldn’t? Could I get him to change the accent? Would it be believable? He didn’t have as much previous acting experience as most of the other auditionees and the role of Jack is such a huge part. Was that a bad thing? Or did it mean he would take it more seriously than say, someone who had just done a six month stint on the West End?

He walked out after his audition and I struggled to speak. What I wanted to say was let’s stop auditioning for Jacks now. I’ve found my Jack. But that would be horrendously unfair. There was always the possibility that someone else would be better than him. Except I knew in my heart of hearts that they wouldn’t.

It’s safe to say the most popular character people were auditioning for was for the role of Kate. There were just over thirty auditions for Kate. Some of the girls auditioning were fantastic. There was one very memorable actor who, during a scene about a miscarriage, burst out laughing, rolling her eyes and went wah-wah-wah impersonating a very fake sob. It didn’t sit well with me for obvious reasons and she immediately got a strike across her name. One girl came in quite confidently and introduced herself as “My name’s Eva, it’s pronounced Ava but it’s actually Katy”. I absolutely roared with laughter. What an introduction! And what a memorable audition. She was without a doubt the best audition overall in terms of learning the script. Her name was Eva McKenna and she didn’t know it then but she was my Kate.

The day went on and I barely had enough time to go for a wee or have anything to eat. During the afternoon, I got to meet the lovely Sheila Jones, who was auditioning for Wendy and gave a memorable cracking performance. I also got to meet Phil Champagne, who had auditioned for the role of Dave. By the time we finished up, we’d had a tiring but wonderful day and I was fairly certain that I had my cast.

Two days later, I rang Conor and offered him the role of Jack. I could hear him bouncing around the room on the other end of the phone and he kept saying thank you over and over like he couldn’t believe his luck. I remember telling him we’d find a way to make the Irish accent work. I didn’t want to take it out of the performance as I felt it added an element of natural charm to the character. Before I let him accept the offer, I had to tell him the twist in the story. I won’t go into detail here (you should’ve come to see the play if you didn’t!) but I wasn’t sure if he would accept the role as it is so challenging. I needn’t have worried however, as Conor was still running around saying thank you and promising me he’d work hard.

After six phone calls, I had myself a cast and a very enthusiastic director in the form of Elizabeth. After a brief holiday to Sharm el Sheikh, I was back and ready to rock and roll. For the first time, I felt a thrill of excitement. Could we really do this? We had ten weeks to rehearse and our rehearsals consisted of three hour blocks in the Kings Club. At £15 per rehearsal out of my own money, it wasn’t cheap but I didn’t want to take the money out of the profit when we hadn’t even sold a single ticket.

All the while, I kept thinking about my experience of previous profit share productions. What worked well? What didn’t? Well, for starters, public transport was so expensive that ferrying myself back and forth to rehearsals two or three times a week meant a serious dint in my purse. Bearing that in mind, I decided to provide food for the actors where possible. If we were having an afternoon rehearsal, I’d buy their lunch. If we were rehearsing for six hours, my lovely mum would rustle us up a buffet. Little things to boost morale and keep the actors happy. I remember someone I worked with years ago talking about employers doing little things which make people gratefully want to work harder. Happy chickens lay happy eggs. That’s what she said and it’s stayed with me for years.

The months turned into weeks, the weeks flittered into days and before I knew what was happening, we were performing our amazing play. Unbelievably, we sold out both nights. In fact, on the Friday night performance, we were over capacity with people stood in the aisles and crammed into every little nook and cranny with a small stampede for the bar during the interval. The play went down a storm. There were moments and jokes throughout the performance which we had completely overlooked due to the amount of times we’d rehearsed it. Certain parts had become words which simply came to life when the audience were laughing.

The actors were unbelievably brilliant. I know that sounds a bit twee and cliché but it’s also the truth. There were certain moments during their performances when I would genuinely think what did I do to deserve these guys?

Sadly, one of the actors dropped out after the first night’s performance which shook our confidence, however we were saved by a very brave actor called Tim Paley who stepped in to save the day. What had consisted of a broken night’s sleep, zero food and my brain working overtime had ended up with a terrific performance from a very gifted actor. For someone to meet a cast, get given a script and perform in a piece of professional theatre within twenty four hours is incredibly brave. As I say, I never forget a name or a face and I know if the opportunity ever arose in the future, I would jump at the chance of hiring Tim again. What a guy.

So, at the beginning of this blog I talked about working full time and struggling to find the balance between work and theatre. I lost count of the amount of times I got in from work and went without food so I could put together programmes and trek to the library in the rain to print them off or the sheer amount of tickets I had to sit and cut out and post to people or the amount of times I’ve ran to the Co-op in the rain to withdraw money to pay the venue for a rehearsal.

On top of all of this, I actually got a new job at work – still working for the same company, just in the other office which is slightly further away and much harder work. At times, I would get in from work, my head buzzing from all the new information I had absorbed and I would think of how much I needed to do for the play before I could go to bed. I would lie on the sofa sobbing from exhaustion. Most of my days were fuelled by caffeine and chocolate. Of course I began to panic that I would balloon – I’ve had no time to exercise. In fact, I got an email from the gym last week saying Don’t forget about us, Emily! – but I needn’t have worried. It turns out stress is the best method of weight loss.

Was it hard? Yes.

Was it tiring? Definitely.

Would I do it again?

                                                                   Without a shadow of a doubt.

An open letter to Walter Palmer

I got into a fight on the internet a few weeks ago. It sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? I can’t stand all these keyboard warriors you read about – teenage bullies name calling and threatening each other on Facebook with not so much as a sideways glance at each other in the corridor the following day. It’s not really my cup of tea. Apart from the fact I’ve been brought up believing if you have nothing nice to say, then don’t say anything at all, the last twelve months alone have taught me that silence can be just as powerful as words.

It all started with me scrolling through my Facebook newsfeed and seeing that a friend of mine had commented on a photo. The photo was of a beautiful zebra. My stomach lurched when I saw that the zebra was dead. It lurched even more when I saw that the stunningly pretty blonde girl with a smile to rival the Cheshire Cat’s was proudly propping up the zebra, as a trophy of her handiwork.

Call me old fashioned but it’s not something one likes to unexpectedly stumble across. Particularly not during my lunch break at work. In fact, it turned my stomach so much that I binned the majority of my tomato soup and felt strangely flu-like all afternoon. Perhaps I was getting ill. Or perhaps I was realising, yet again, how much I have come to despise the human race.

I could have left it there. I get very poor internet signal in work, you see. I couldn’t have commented anything on the photo from where I was. But I couldn’t shake this image from my mind. I thought about it all afternoon.

Was it the fact that it was a photo of a beautiful animal, cut down in its prime that had shaken me? Yes, but I’m no stranger to seeing unexpectedly vile images on social media. It’s a daily occurrence to come across a video someone has shared or an article someone has commented on automatically splashed across your newsfeed. I’ve seen a lot of things I wish I hadn’t, from people’s racist views on different cultures to a video of someone’s zit being popped to an image of a child black and blue from the hands of an adult.

Was it the fact that the animal in question was a zebra – an exotic, beautiful and innocent creature? Yes, although it wouldn’t have made me feel any easier if it had been a mouse, a badger or a cat, for example.

So, what was it that made me feel so shaken?

It was the girl. She was pretty, skinny, tanned and well dressed. She had nice hair, good teeth and a cracking pair of legs. She was young. She was the sort of girl I stare at wistfully on Instagram and fantasise about her life in California with sunshine and an all year round tan. Yet she wasn’t lying on a sun lounger or posing in a bikini or driving a convertible like my Instagram crushes. She was holding a dead animal which she had killed. And she was proud of it. It didn’t sit well with me.

I got home from work and immediately went back to the photograph. I saw a link to the original page the photo had been shared from and, hesitating slightly, clicked on it. Photo after photo emerged of the same girl – whose name I learned was Kendall Jones – smiling away next to various animals she had killed. Look her up. I bet she's right up your street.

It was spookily fascinating. Not the dead animals, I’ll point out. But the fact that this girl, with a life not a million miles away from my own, could be so different to me.

At this point, you’ve probably made a few assumptions about me. I was upset by a picture of a dead animal, I’ve spoken about various aspects of social media and the flavour of soup I mentioned I was eating was tomato. You think I’m a vegetarian. You think I’m an organic fruit and vegetable eating, environmentally friendly, allotment owning vegetarian who, let’s face it, is probably a lesbian to boot.

No. I’m not. I eat meat. I enjoy eating meat. I know where it comes from. I know how the meat is produced. Oh and for the record, I’m straight.

I’m the first to admit that I sigh and roll my eyes when I hear a vegetarian preaching about how their Linda McCartney sausages and soy bean stew taste just as nice as a Big Mac Meal. Credit where credit's due, I think vegetarians are marvellous. It’s just not something I could do. I’m not a huge meat eater but I think I would find it a struggle to enjoy a meal in a restaurant when my only choices are macaroni and cheese or nachos.

The point I’m trying to make is although I’m very much an animal person, I’m not someone who thinks you’re a monster because you choose a bacon butty to remedy your hangover.

It’s strange. My mother is a vegetarian and my father is a big meat eater. They are two very different people, in many ways, but particularly with their attitudes towards animals. My mum is an animal person. In fact, she’s just this second walked through the door and said “I’ve just helped a woman reunite a lost dog with its owner” and this is perfectly normal behaviour for her.

We’ve always had a houseful of animals. Our own little menagerie. Dogs, cats, hamsters, birds, fish – we’ve had them all. We took in a rescue dog who growled at us every day due to a background of being hit, kicked and having scalding hot water poured over her with her previous owner. We were patient. We gave her space, love and time. She grew to be the most loyal and faithful dog in the world. Our pets are like our family. I can’t understand people who say they have to get rid of their dog because they don’t have time for it anymore. (As far as I’m concerned, you made a commitment to that pet. It’s yours. Make time, you selfish bastard.)

But my dad has no time for animals. Not even our own pets. He’ll stroke the dog and play with her but he has no real understanding of what it is like to love or respect an animal. He has no patience. He can’t fathom why I would want my cat to be sat on my lap while I watch TV. When discussing foxhunting with him, he told me he thought it was a fantastic sport and given the chance, he would love to take part, whereas my mum’s eyes fill with tears when she sees an RSPCA advert and she goes out of her way to feed stray cats.

They are two very different people. Incidentally, they’re in the middle of a divorce.

I decided to leave Kendall Jones a message on her Facebook page, telling her that no matter how good looking she was, she was hideous to me. Within minutes, the abuse began pouring in. Perhaps I was asking for it.

“Says you, you look like Aladdin”

“She’s worth ten of you”

“It’s no wonder you’re defending animals when you look like a whale”

I kid you not.

Kendall herself responded telling me she had millions of YouTube followers and therefore, my point wasn’t relevant. Oh, I’m sorry, having millions of people following you on a website means you automatically must be a good person? You know who else once had millions of followers? Hitler.

Needless to say, the whole experience ruffled my feathers.

Can you imagine my horror yesterday when I stumbled across a link shared from a friend showing a photograph of you and a dead lion, charmingly named Cecil? Yes. You guessed correctly. It sent shivers up my spine.

I spent a good few minutes toying with the idea of clicking on the article to read it or just scrolling past it. Not because I didn’t want to know what had happened. But because I was frightened of what I might read. I’m the sort of person who will perform an emergency stop for a bird – and on one occasion, I slammed on for a leaf which I thought was a bird. I cried watching Marley and Me. I can’t bring myself to kill a spider. So, as I clicked on the link and began reading about what you did, I felt as if my soul was leaving my body.

It wasn’t just that you killed a magnificent animal. It was the way you did it. You lured him away from safety, from his home, with the scent of another dead animal. You did this on purpose in order to get Cecil to step outside the boundaries of his safety zone. To get him into a zone where it is legal to kill him.

In another world, we might call that grooming. Manipulating the innocent to take advantage of them and bring harm to them.

You shot him and then pursued him for forty hours until, thoroughly exhausted, he gave up. You then beheaded him. Did that make you feel good? Did it make you feel like a real man? Is it the same feeling as when you get a hole in one when you play golf or when you get through six sets of traffic lights without a single red light? Did you feel euphoric? Were you proud of yourself? You had a photograph taken with his lifeless body. You look thrilled. Did you smile like that on your wedding day?

I find it absolutely inconceivable that you not only did all of that but also paid the equivalent of £35,000 to do so. That’s more than I earn in a year. In fact, it’s just over double what I earn. Think what you could’ve done with that money, Walter. Given your children a private education. Bought a brand spanking new car. Saved a wildlife conservation park from closing down. Anything. Yet you chose to spend it on persuading some other sick minded individuals like yourself to allow you to kill a beautiful and innocent animal. How cruel.

There was no purpose in killing Cecil. You aren’t a hunter in a famished area, trying desperately to feed his starving family. Cecil was simply involved in your twisted little game. Only he didn’t volunteer to play.

I’m speechless at your small mindedness. For such a well educated man, you are surprisingly stupid. You went through years of medical school to better yourself, created a worthwhile career. I feel saddened for your family. Do your children still think you're their hero? Or have they been taken out of school for fear they will receive the backlash for your cowardly actions?

I hear you’ve gone into hiding. I imagine you’ll resurface again in a few days with a carefully prepared speech about how you deeply regret your actions. Perhaps you’ll disappear off the radar permanently. Maybe that’s not such a bad idea. Bad things happen to bad people, remember.

At the beginning of this letter, I said I felt silence can be just as powerful as words. So, why have I written this? Will you read it? Probably not. Will it stir any emotion within you? Definitely not. But I couldn’t not say anything. And I didn’t think sharing a link on Facebook slagging you off or joining a long list of comments on a forum discussing your behaviour was enough to rid me of this overwhelmingly sad feeling. I wanted to write it all down. To get it off my chest. In this case, silence is not more powerful than words.

After all, as they say, the pen is mightier than the sword.

That's not even a word!

“Unfortunately, you just don’t have the experience we’re looking for. We wish you luck with your future endeavours.”

How many times have you heard those words before? Sitting there refreshing your inbox over and over again, praying that despite their promises of “we’ll let you know either way”, that you will actually hear back from them, even if it just to break the bad news that yet again the forty five minutes you spent filling in the application form has gone to waste? You pray that they’ll ring you, even if it is just to say that although you were great in your interview, someone else just beat you to it?

I’ve been unemployed before. I spent three months on Job Seeker’s Allowance, dreading that God awful moment when I would have to visit a place which was full of people swearing, couples arguing, babies crying, people spitting – actually spitting – on the floor because they were bored. Or angry. Or both.

I was one of the lucky ones and got myself a Christmas temp job at Asda. Terrible hours. Long, long days. Doing the work that no one else wanted to do, sorting through a big bucket of mismatched DVDs to reunite them with their cases. Cleaning the shelves in the stockroom, up to my elbows in cobwebs and dust bunnies, convincing myself I’d caught TB in the process. Trying to find a bucket of steam and a tin of tartan paint. No word of a lie. I was twenty one and it was crap but it was work and I was getting regular money, so I was made up. Until I got laid off on Christmas Eve.

Naturally, I found myself back on Job Seeker’s Allowance for a further three months.

That was even worse. I’d had a taste of what real life was like. I’d had two nice big fat payslips whilst working there and it had given me an inkling of what money could do. I’d booked my first set of driving lessons and paid off some of my ever increasing student overdraft. There was even enough left to buy clothes – things that I didn’t actually need but I wanted. So, yes. It was far worse signing on the second time, knowing I didn’t have enough in my bank to both pay my phone bill and get my dad a birthday present.

Not to mention the crippling self loathing that boils inside you when you sit across the desk from a condescending albeit very polite lady called Karen or Martha or Genevieve and she scans through your little booklet to check that you’ve applied for at least three jobs every seven days just so you can get a measly fifty quid a week.

I won’t even mention how utterly worthless you feel when someone asks you “so, what is it you do?” and you have to admit that you’re the person they’ve just been ranting about – the one who drinks and takes drugs and has baby after baby after baby with any man they can find just so they can sit on their arse all day watching Jeremy Kyle. Despite the fact that you’ve never done anything of the sort. You’re just a twenty something university graduate who’s stuck in a rut. You don’t drink, you don’t smoke, you can’t drive – you just want a job.

I’ve done all that. I’ve been that girl. No, it’s not nice. Yes, it is crap. Nobody wants to be in that position despite what you may have read in online articles or what you may have seen on one sided television shows, dripping in propaganda. Realistically, there’s a very small percentage of people who would choose to receive a measly sum of benefits every fortnight rather than earn proper money, actual money themselves but that’s not what the media will have you believe. The media portrays unemployment as a vicious illness which you only catch if you deserve it.

It’s a horrible shitty cycle and it’s enough to make anyone feel faint with despair. I know. I’ve been there.

But what about when you have a job – a full time, reasonably paid job at that – but you’re desperately trying to find another one?

You don’t have The Fear, for a start. The Fear is something Chandler Bing describes one episode in Friends as the reason why Rachel should quit her job at Central Perk. He also explains it’s the reason he can’t quit his job in – erm, what was Chandler Bing’s job?

Ultimately, The Fear is a bit like a big kick up the backside when it comes to finding new work. You can usually only get The Fear if you’ve impulsively quit your job and have no alternative employment. The Fear kicks in and you dedicate seven or eight hours a day to applying for jobs over and over and over until Google Chrome can fill an application form in without any help from you. Whereas if you’re comfortable in a job – you may not love it, you may not necessarily like it, but you’re comfortable because the shifts are nice, the money’s not bad, the people are great – you’re less likely to apply for a new job.

It’s no secret that I did a drama degree. It’s no secret that I love writing, enjoy acting, thrive off seeing people enjoying my work. You’re reading my blog right now so of course it isn’t a secret. I’m the first to admit that my career path isn’t on track right now. And it kills me. Don’t get me wrong, I like the job I’m in at the moment. It’s nice, it’s easy, my colleagues are little rays of sunshine. But it isn’t what I want to do for the rest of my life.

After a big wake up call in March of this year, I started applying for new jobs. Writing jobs. Acting jobs. Anything which is remotely linked to the field I want to work in. Unlike applying for admin jobs, call centre jobs or retail jobs, it isn’t as simple as uploading your CV with a cover letter. Often, there were two or three page application forms I needed to fill in along with a 3,000 word sample of my work or a link to an online source of my work with a 1,000 word explanation for the content. It was tricky but I dedicated whole weekends to it. I didn’t exactly feel positive but I was confident that I’d done the best I could.

Weeks later, the rejections began pouring in. Now I can handle rejections. I’ve had rejections before. I’m the queen of plastering a smile on my face and pretending I’m fine when my world is crumbling apart. I’m the bees knees at it. But there’s something disconcerting, something a little uncomfortable, alarming even when every day you get told that you aren’t good enough for something. Especially when that something just so happens to be the reason you feel you were placed on the Earth. The sad thing is how little they care when they tell you.

Look at this:

The name of the company has been hidden and it’s worth pointing out that the company in question is very respectable, well known and very good at what they do. Except perhaps responding to unsuccessful job applications. “Unfortunately, we feel you do not have skills or experience”. What? In anything? In life itself? Did they somehow know about my lack of cooking abilities? Had they seen me trying to parallel park? Or did they just mean with writing? I laughed and thought nothing of it. Until the following day, when I got a similar rejection email from a different company. Again, the reason I hadn’t been offered an interview was because I didn’t have enough experience.

Okay. Fair enough. After six or seven more knock backs, I was finally offered an interview for a very well respected TV production company. I’d submitted my work about two months beforehand and it had been a blank canvas submission. This basically means you submit two documents: one containing your work and one containing a cover sheet with your personal details on it, such as your name, age and experience. The two documents are kept separate from each other and initially, the only document which the employers look at is your work.

Then when the employers have made a decision on which samples of work they like, they match up the two documents to find the applicant’s personal details and contact them for an interview. It’s fair. It’s reasonable. It’s how all employers should work. And in this case, I’d submitted the first three scenes of a play I wrote a few months ago and thankfully, was offered an interview.

The strange thing is, I wasn’t actually that nervous in the morning and was more excited. It turned out the interview would be a group workshop followed by individual assessments. There were five other applicants there and aside from one young whipper snapper, I was the youngest by at least fifteen years. Interestingly, the final six of us were all female.

The day began with a buffet lunch. Now, if I was organising this workshop, I would’ve made it very clear that lunch was provided. The workshop started at twelve o’clock but in the emails we’d received, there’d been no mention of food so without knowing what time I would be finished, I’d anticipated that I would be starving, so I’d stuffed my face before I went in – as had the other applicants. Then they announced we had a buffet lunch. Great. The awkwardness of eating strange sandwiches (seriously, who offers lemon chicken and cucumber sandwiches to people they’ve never met before? It seemed a tad adventurous to me. What’s wrong with good old fashioned cheese?) around people while trying to introduce yourself is damn near impossible.

“Tell us a bit about yourself, Emily.”

Now, I’ve done enough drama workshops and theatre auditions to know the answer to this question off by heart. Any actors reading this will agree. You know just the right sort of information to provide which highlights your good points but without sounding like you’re showing off and you know when to stop speaking. If you’re really good, you’ll know how to make them laugh. I’ve been playing this game for years so my answer to this little ice breaker is always more than adequate and I usually end it on a funny little true story (which I’m not going to share here in case someone less imaginative steals it.)

Does that sound daft? Probably. Does it work? Yes. I’m not sure about other types of jobs. I’m trying to think back to interviews I’ve had for retail, admin, call centre type jobs. Usually, it’s competency based questions, for example, “tell us about a time you’ve handled an unhappy customer”. I suppose it’s the equivalent of always being asked things like that. After a few years, you generally tend to know what you’re going to say.

At the workshop, one woman began to crumble. “Tell us a bit about yourself, Linda.” (Just for the record, her name wasn’t Linda) “What? Me? Oh, I don’t know. There’s not much to say. I’m fifty six. I’m married with a grown up daughter and a grandson. Erm. I don’t really know what else to say.” Poor Linda. She turned out to be a really lovely lady and the weeks that followed the interview, we emailed back and forth to see if either of us had heard back from the company.

At least her answer was a damn sight better than Wendy’s. (Yeah, that’s not her real name either.) Wendy had the slowest speaking voice I’ve ever heard. Whereas it takes the average person two seconds to say “What’s your name?”, it took Wendy a good five minutes. 

“Tell us a bit about yourself, Wendy.” 

“Where do I start? Okay, so, I got into writing two years ago when my ex husband remarried a woman who was a writer. I’m not sure it’s something I’m a natural at but I’m willing to work hard. I haven’t worked since before I was married unless you count the time I was a Zumba instructor twice a week.”

And it went on and on and on and on – for the love of God, Wendy, we don’t care! She just didn’t stop speaking and because she spoke so slowly, it went on even longer. We all began to shift uncomfortably in our seats. I started to panic, wondering whether I should have spoken about my first holiday abroad the way Wendy had, when one of the interviewers put a hand up and asked her to stop. She looked so taken aback at being interrupted that she actually sat back in her seat and sulked. A forty something woman sulking because a potential employer had interrupted her babble about Dotty the dalmation.

The rest of the day went by like a dream. It was thoroughly enjoyable and I really got into what we were doing, not being frightened of asking when I didn’t understand something and volunteering ideas willy nilly. The day came to an end and we’d been set another task to complete more work to submit before a decision was made. Aside from the phone call I got from my mum on the way home saying my nephew was in A&E, it had been a brilliant day. I got this little fizzle in my stomach when I realised Yes, this is what I want to do.

It was the only thing keeping me going. No news is good news as they say. So you can imagine how disappointed I was when I got a rejection email two weeks later: “Your written work was excellent, however, you just don’t have the experience we’re looking for.”

Ah, there we go again. That bloody experience. Fanbloodytastic. I felt utterly dejected. How on earth did I gain the necessary experience when no one would give me that chance in the first place? It was a horrible case of Catch 22. I moped about for days, thinking about the entire saga.

Like many people, I sound great on paper. Sixteen GCSEs, two years of A Levels, three years of a drama degree, twelve months working for a theatre company, two years at drama school, three books, four plays and a blog.

Is it do with my degree? Is it because people smirk and sneer when I say, rather proudly, "I did a drama degree", then continue to ask, "Oh. They actually let you do that at university?" Is this what the careers people were talking about in college when they said I wouldn't be able to make a career out of drama? ("I know you think acting is a lot of fun but have you thought about pursuing a more serious career?") Is this why I feel overwhelmingly sad when people I trained with slowly but surely abandon all hopes of acting, writing, directing, producing, casting, anything linked to their degree? Perhaps I'm my own worst enemy, I thought. I've done this to myself. Created a monster with a useless degree.

No. I was being ridiculous. It wasn't a useless degree at all. I learnt so much from it: confidence building skills, how to work independently, how to work as part of a team, learning huge chunks of information word for word, how to speak clearly, how to think fast on the spot, how to sell myself, how to cry on demand (lol) and more importantly, I met some of my best friends in the world there - look, look how pretty they all are!

- and I learnt a hell of a lot about myself. So, no. It's not because of my degree. Besides, working for a production company - what other degree would you need? Accountancy? Geography? French?

So, it was down to my experience. What more experience did I need? I’d sort of understand if I didn’t have any clue about the working world – I’ve seen some people get a job straight out school and because they’re still very much in the I-just-want-to-go-out-all-the-time stage, they never seem to last long. Fair enough. They’re young. They’ll learn.

But I’m not young. Well, not really. And I have learnt. Believe me. I’ve worked for minimum wage. I’ve worked until midnight, spending half my shift’s wages on a taxi home. I’ve started work in Liverpool at seven in the morning, getting the five thirty train every day. I’ve paid my dues. I’ve worked hard. Okay, maybe not all the time but definitely in the last two or three years.

(It's not even about the money. Honestly, money doesn't motivate me. I suppose I'm quite strange like that. For some people, the first thing they ask at the end of an interview is "how much will I get paid?" For me, I just want to do a job that I love and I'd happily settle for minimum wage. Getting up every morning and feeling excited about going to work to do a job that you love has got to feel like heaven on Earth, surely? It wouldn't even feel like work. That's how it felt working for Black Box Theatre Company: what, you want me to learn these lines and perform in this play and then... you're going to give me money for doing it? That.)

What more can I do to gain this seemingly compulsive experience? There’s always the option of volunteering somewhere I want to work and hoping and praying that they offer me a job. But how do you fit volunteer work around a full time job? Volunteering is a wonderful thing to do, don’t get me wrong, but it doesn’t pay the bills and at twenty five, watching my car being repossessed wouldn’t be the best thing to happen.

It reminded me of being sixteen and applying for my first full time job. Every single shop, bar, café, restaurant, everywhere I was applying would inevitably get back to me and say I just wasn’t experienced enough. It was sort of true – I hadn’t ever worked before, aside from one measly little paper round which my poor mum ended up doing when it was raining. Which was all the time.

But what if that was the rule? You can’t get a job unless you have experience. Well, you just wouldn’t ever work, would you? And that would mean we would exist as a country with thousands of job vacancies and millions of unemployed people. Exactly. Ridiculous and not likely to happen. Why is it not happening now? Because someone somewhere took a chance on you.

Think back to your first ever job. Maybe a glass collector, a shelf stacker, a cleaner, bar staff, working on a till, dog walking, office work – whatever it was. How did you get that job? You’d never worked before so it couldn’t have been a glowing reference from your previous employer. No. It was down to some kind soul in HR who met you and thought you looked decent and hardworking. Or maybe they were absolutely crying out for staff, I don’t know. But someone took a chance on you.

Thanks to that first job, you got your second job. Maybe you stayed there a bit longer. Worked your way up a bit. Thanks to that job, you maybe got the job you’re in now. Or maybe there’s been thirty jobs in between. But none of that would have happened if someone hadn’t taken that chance on you when you were young and inexperienced.

How very sad that it’s not always the case years later.

Edit: I'd originally planned to leave the blog entry on this note but when I sent it a trusted friend to proof read, we agreed it sounded like my soul had left my body. 

Instead, I'll just say, after weeks of moping about feeling sorry for myself, I received a lovely message from an old friend from college and after a few hours of chatting, we've decided to work on a little project over the coming months. 

I won't say any more right now because a) I don't want to jinx it, b) it's still very early days and c) I don't want to ruin the surprise. But you know what? It's made those niggling little doubts in the back of my mind disappear for the time being. 

Everything happens for a reason. 

Especially when you can't see why at first. 

Wakey wakey, Sharm El Sheikhy.

“Do you remember booking a holiday last night?”

Those were the words that greeted me one Saturday morning as I crawled down the stairs, squinting in the daylight and on a desperate search for coffee. Yes, I was hungover. What had gone from a simple “Fancy the pub after work?” had ended up with me drinking my own weight in wine, staggering home and booking an all inclusive holiday to Egypt.

Not only that but I’d announced it online without telling anyone first. (If I could use emojis here, I would use the little monkey with his hands in front of his eyes.)

Intoxicated online shopping should be illegal. I remember reading something online about an app being designed to stop drunk people from sending any embarrassing texts. Well, there should be one to stop you from ordering things online after a few glasses of wine, too. Annoyingly, my spontaneous holiday booking isn’t the only time I’ve indulged in wine-induced-purchasing.

In my second year of university, I woke up to find my laptop half open and discarded on my bedroom floor. The sight that greeted me was my eBay homepage. I didn’t remember going on eBay before I went out last night? I’d thought. Then it hit me. I’d gone on eBay as I came home from the night out and later found myself the proud owner of some very extortionately priced solar powered fairy lights. In the shape of daisies. Very nice, very twee, but did I remember buying them? No. I also didn’t remember forking out thirty quid for them either. (I was a student. Thirty quid was the difference between eating well or spaghetti hoops on toast twice a day for the rest of the month.)

To be fair, they actually looked quite cool when they arrived but I lived in Ormskirk, for crying out loud. Ormskirk didn’t experience enough sunshine for these lights to ever work. They stayed with me for about a year and when I moved back to Warrington, they got binbagged.

There was also a memorable time when I turned twenty one and was overjoyed to be sent tickets to see Wicked in the West End. Until I saw my online bank statement and realised they were a present from drunk me to sober me. So generous. Still, it was a great night.

Back to my hungover Saturday. I lay on the sofa, wrapped myself in a blanket and began to piece the evening together. We hadn’t even been out out. It had just been the pub after work with some of the work gang. As it was, it was the time between my old car being written off and my new car being bought, meaning I wasn’t one of the designated drivers. I had taken this as the perfect excuse to get roaring drunk – as well as it being payday and the payday where we got paid our Christmas bonuses - and the rest, as they say, is history. I was eight hundred pounds lighter and was apparently going to Sharm El Sheikh just four months later.

“Have you even booked the time off work?” This was my mother speaking. The Voice Of Reason. Always one to keep my feet on the ground.

Ah. No. I hadn’t. Clearly, I hadn’t thought about anything other than the sunshine when I clicked confirm and pay. What if work couldn’t give me the time off?

Thankfully, I arrived in work on the Monday, rather sheepishly I’ll admit, and submitted a holiday request which came back hours later saying all was fine. Breathing a sigh of relief, I allowed myself to feel a little bit excited. I hadn’t been abroad since October 2013 so this was definitely a welcome break.

My next hurdle was one that I hadn’t given a huge amount of thought to until other people started to question me on it. You see, I’d booked the holiday for me and my mum. It hadn’t felt strange to me at all. I live with my mum. It’s just the two of us and we get on like a house on fire, thanks mostly to her fine cooking and her ability to drown out most of my moaning. In fact, she reckons the three things I say the most are:

1) "I'm so cold"

2) "I'm so tired"

3) (My mum’s personal favourite) “I can’t cope”. I must say this at least five times a day. If my computers running a bit slow, it starts raining, Coronation Street isn’t on, I’m aching from top to toe from a work out or we don’t have any biscuits in are all valid excuses for saying that you can’t cope.

I’d booked the holiday for my mum because she’d been a bit down after my dad had left and one of the things that had upset her the most was that she wouldn’t go on holidays abroad anymore (lol) so factor in the world’s crappiest six months that I’d had, it seemed like a logical solution. To other people, it was their idea of hell. “What will you do on holiday with your mum there?”, “If that was me and my mum, we’d have fallen out on the plane on the way there” and “What if you want to pull?” were some of the genuine questions people asked me.

I just laughed. It wouldn’t feel strange at all, surely, I’d thought. I mean, we live together after all. And we get on like two sisters. Whenever people come and stay, they always comment on our relationship. I remember once someone’s jaw dropping as they whispered, “I can’t believe you just said cunt in front of your mum!” Me and my mum looked at each other and roared with laughter. It’s always been like that. Perhaps it’s Youngest Child Syndrome. She’s been there and done that with my two older sisters so nothing I can say or do really shocks her. Or maybe she just gave up on me years ago and she’s just humoured me ever since.

Considering the fact that I grew up in such a loud busy house with an even louder busier family, I did wonder if it would feel weird being just the two of us but we love it. She likes house renovation programmes like Sixty Minute Makeover and Location, Location, Location and I’m a self confessed soap addict and can’t go a day without Corrie or Hollyoaks but we meet in the middle with original British dramas. A kidnap, a murder mystery, a family drama – we bloody love it. Not in real life, obviously. Just on TV. All in all, I felt pretty confident that everything would be fine.

Of course, in the lead up to a holiday, every woman starts to panic about her size. The mirrors in store changing rooms are unkind, making your bum look ten times bigger than it really is. As it turned out, the day before we flew, I was competing in the Great Manchester Run so I decided to focus on my training in the hope that this would also let me lose a few pounds. Only that was easier said than done.

Time started ticking much quicker than I would have liked. Before we knew it, it was February. Then March. Then April. April is such a hard month for me to diet as it’s my birthday month but this year, it was also Easter as well. Four days off work for the Easter bank holiday weekend eating nothing but chocolate eggs means you’re a little wobblier than you might like. Then a week of birthday celebrations: cake, wine, cake, wine, more wine, more cake, glass of wine anyone? My old insecurities came back and I started panicking.

The Voice Of Reason tried to make me see logically. The last time I’d been abroad, swanning around in a bikini, I was almost four stone heavier and my bikini was a size sixteen. Yes, but I’m still fat. Your BMI is fine. You’re a healthy weight for your size. My arse is the size of Japan. Don’t be ridiculous. You’re wearing size ten jeans. Pack it in. But but but – I could’ve gone on and on and on.

The strange thing is I’m actually really enjoying exercising. Yes. You read that correctly. If you flick back to 2013’s blogs, I’m fairly certain you’ll stumble across an entry which boldly declares how you’ll never find me in the gym. Ah, bless.

Compulsory exercise aside, I’ve never been one for working out before. In fact, I still don’t love it. Sometimes I really have to drag myself out of bed or off the couch and practically force myself to work out. Sometimes I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror and I leap into action, knowing I’ve gained a few pounds and wanting to do something about it. And sometimes I spend all day in work typing away thinking of that night’s aerobics or yoga class and I instantly perk up.

It’s at this point I should probably explain my Four Pound Slide theory. My weight fluctuates easily. That’s not a theory. It’s a fact. If I spend two weeks lounging around the house in my scruffs, steadily eating my way through a large pile of Easter eggs and drinking wine every single night, then I gain weight at the drop of a hat. It’s more obvious to me, of course, seeing as I see myself naked every day and maybe to some people, they’re either too polite or too unobservant to realise – but I know. And it’s always four pounds that I gain. Even if it’s just one long lazy weekend of no exercise and a few meals out, I gain four pounds.

Thankfully, it also goes the other way. If I need to lose weight for an occasion – a wedding, a night out, a party – I only have to spend a short time eating healthily and exercising. Within days, and I mean days, I’ve dropped four pounds. Never more. Never less. My ideal weight is ten stone. I feel happiest and healthiest at ten stone. The reality is I’m usually ten stone four. Have been for months. When the Four Pound Slide occurs, I either drop to my ideal weight or I balloon to over half a stone more than my ideal weight. It’s a pickle. But I’ve learnt to live with it. 

By the time it got to the night before the holiday, however, I couldn’t have cared less. After the Great Manchester Run, I treated me and my sister who had also competed in the run to a McDonalds. We got the train back to Warrington, nipped into the shop and bought two chocolate bars each. I got home, my mum made me a massive tea and I fell asleep at eight o’clock from sheer exhaustion and an adrenaline crash. I woke up the following morning, weighed myself and discovered I was ten stone six. Ah well.

The hotel we stayed at was called the Xperience St George Homestay and it was perfect. This was my third stay in Egypt and I’d stayed in lovely hotels before but this was something else. Until you stay somewhere like Sharm, you don’t always realise how dependent you are on your hotel. Unlike holidays to Spain or Greece, you are literally in the middle of nowhere and if you have a crappy hotel, you’ll likely have a crappy holiday. Don’t get me wrong, you can get a short taxi ride out to restaurants or shops but they are few and far between. It’s quite sad really when you see the real Sharm El Sheikh without any of the tourism. It’s just a lot of burnt out buildings and desert.

We loved it and it was a Brucey Bonus for us when our flight home was delayed and eventually cancelled, meaning we got an extra night and two extra days in the sunshine. Our hotel staff couldn’t have been more helpful, letting us stay on without a second’s thought and not taking a penny from us, even when they gave us another all inclusive wristband for as much food and drinks as we wanted for free. Bless them.

And for everyone who’s asked me what it was like being on holiday with my mum when I’m a fully grown adult, what can I say? It was brilliant. The first morning there, my alarm went off and I chivvied my mum out of bed with a desperate plea of “It’s nearly half past eight. All the sun loungers have gone!” Only it wasn’t and they hadn’t. There’d been some confusion regarding the time as Egypt had cancelled their summertime, meaning the clocks didn’t go forward at the end of April as they normally did. But we were still an hour ahead of England. My phone went forward two hours, only I didn’t realise, so I changed it by an hour ahead. Meaning on our first day in Egypt, we got up and sat by the pool at five thirty in the morning. Glorious sunshine. Breakfast wasn’t open. We were shattered and completely baffled by what was happening. Needless to say, the words "I'm so tired" and "I can't cope" were muttered more than once that day.

We had a lovely time with as many cocktails as we could manage (cue my mum cringing with, “Do I really have to ask the waiter for a Sex on the Beach?”) and a full body massage each in the spa, which caused hours of laughter as we were smeared with what felt like porridge oats on our sunburnt skin but what was actually dried cocoa. It’s good for exfoliating. Apparently. We were then left in a dark room wrapped tightly in towels with a face mask each on. We were there for a long time. So long that my mum, hysterically laughing, stage whispered "Do you think they've forgotten about us? Should we call for help?"

We kept getting disapproving looks from the salon workers as we were howling with laughter for so many reasons: a) the porridge oats were everywhere and I mean everywhere, meaning we were dying to scratch but our arms were strapped down by the towels, b) we’d been in the Jacuzzi and my mum couldn’t sit still but kept floating off because of the overpowering bubbles ("Sit still, relax, feel the water working your body", "I can't, I can't sit still!") and c) during my massage, the woman kept hitting me. Literally pummelling my skin like I’d insulted her upbringing. I’d suspected this might happen as I’d had a full body massage the last time I was in Egypt and I felt I’d been abused then as well.

Another particularly memorable moment was my mum encouraging me to swim in the pool so she could take some photos of me. I got out, lay down on the sun lounger and she was very pleased with herself as she announced, smugly: “I’ve taken some really good photos of you there. You looked great, really tanned.” Yes. The photos were great. But they weren’t of me. Oh no. I had thirty photos of my mum’s chin. Old people and iPhones…

The whole holiday was just one giggle after another, especially when an airport security man was chatting to my mum and asking all about her. She was firing back her answers like she was giving evidence.

“What’s your name then?”

“Angela Chriscoli, sir. C-H-R-I-S-C-O-L-I”

“Where have you been staying?”

“Sharm El Sheikh, sir.”

“Did you have a nice time?”

“Sir, yes, sir.”

It was only when I was crying laughing and managed to choke out “you do realise he was flirting with you?” that we howled at what he must’ve thought. She thought she was being targeted for questions as a threat to the airport and he looked increasingly amused as she barked her answers out to him whilst flashing her passport in his face.

I won’t bore you to tears with all the photos I’ve taken – apologies to anyone who has me on Instagram! I know it was bordering on ridiculous! – but I’ll put up a couple so anyone who is thinking of going away can have a good mooch at the hotel we stayed at because it really was lovely and I have every intention of returning there, maybe with the compensation we’re getting for the flight delay!

So, there we are. I’ve come back a little browner, a lot happier and needless to say, four pounds heavier than when I went. Ah well.

P.S.

While we were away, we couldn’t help but stare at the people who were taking full advantage of the all inclusive food and drinks. From the red faced Scottish man who demanded rum and coke at nine o’clock in the morning to the entire family who went back and got three or four plates of chips every day for their lunch, it just opened our eyes to typical Brits abroad behaviour.

Whilst we were more than content with salad, humus and pitta breads and of course, experimenting with unknown food, some people just couldn’t wander out of their comfort zones.

Before we’d gone away, we’d decided to do the £5 challenge where you live on £1 a day for food for five days to raise awareness about the ever increasing need for local food banks. After eating like kings for nine days, we're more determined than ever to do it. As a family who regularly donate to Warrington’s food banks (there’s a collection point at Tesco on Winwick Road. Just pop a box of cereal and a loaf of bread in there next time you’re in) we’re going to go for it and I’ll stick it up on here so keep your eyes peeled.

Until next time xx

Four doctors, two lawyers and a fireman.

Twenty four is a funny old age. You’re not quite grown up but you’re certainly not in your teenage years either. Half of your friends are succumbing to a comfortable lifestyle with their fella. The other half are still living for the weekend: spending their days in a meaningless albeit pretty well paid job (which has absolutely nothing to do with their university degree) and whiling away their free time lying on the sofa in their mum’s house fighting a monstrous hangover. You can’t log into your Facebook account without seeing scan pictures or photos of a couple grinning away at the camera whilst holding out her left hand, proudly displaying an engagement ring. Every time you go to a family function, you have to grin and bare your great auntie’s questions about life: “Where do you think you’ll be in ten years time?” “Whatever happened to that lad you were seeing in the summer?” and “In my day, we were all married by your age. Why is it you're still single?”

Great. Fan-fucking-tastic. Part of you is secretly glad that you aren’t one of the young married couples – facing the huge responsibility of a mortgage, a baby and a husband is sometimes too much to stomach when you still can’t quite believe that despite you brushing it off with “yeah, I only graduated a couple of years ago”, the truth is, it was actually four years ago and you’ve been in the same dead end job since (despite bitterly protesting that it was only for six months; you were only going to stay until Christmas; you’ll wait to see if you get promoted; you can’t bring yourself to leave).

But then the other part of you, the part which classes watching eight hours of Netflix in one go as a day well spent, is starting to panic. What if this is all it’s meant to be? What if I’m always the single one? The one people come to for a good night out, some fashion advice and a whinge about their fella? What if I never get married/have a baby/buy a house/get a proper job/create a grown up life? Does it really matter? Just because society expects you to do all of the above before the age of thirty two, does that mean you have to? What if you’re happy spending your days going through the McDonalds drive-thru in your Primark pyjamas and spending a small fortune on shoes and false lashes? Do you really have to give all of that up?

Well, the short answer is no. You don’t. You can do all of the fun stuff whilst spending your life with someone and the nicest part is, if you’re with the right person, all the other stuff – the scary conversations in the bank, the birth plan, the saving for your honeymoon – that will all be as equally fun. But what if the people you keep dating/meeting/sleeping with are all absolute losers? If I'm being completely honest, I have a very low opinion of men at the minute. This isn't in a modern day feminist sort of way, either. It's just what I've discovered over the last few years. You know the little part of your brain which pipes up as you're helping yourself to a rather large piece of chocolate when you're supposed to be on a diet? Yeah, I'm not sure if men have that.

The first thing you need to look at is where you keep meeting your potential love quests. For me personally, I tend to go for people I work with. Always have done. Rookie error. Don’t do it. Avoid at all costs. That isn’t to say that people who work together and live together aren’t happy - it just means that if things go wrong, work can become a very hostile environment. Which nobody needs if they’re going through a break up. If you want to wear the same dress twice in one week and you opt for the extra half an hour in bed and to dry shampoo your hair into a scruffy bun, you should bloody well get to do so in comfort without getting funny looks from across the office or any sarcastic remarks at the water fountain.

So, where else can you meet a potential love quest? Personally, I adore cute unexpected love stories. Let me tell you one I heard at the hairdressers. My hairdresser’s friend was going through a really rough time. She’d been made redundant, she was on antidepressants and things really weren’t going her way. She was filling her car up at the petrol station and without really concentrating, she’d used diesel instead of petrol. (Schoolboy error. We’ve all nearly done it at one point in our driving lives.) Hysterical, she rang the RAC and within an hour, there was a nice chappie rectifying the error. They got talking, they swapped numbers and they’re now happily married with a baby.

Let me tell you about my two sisters. My oldest sister was involved in a drunken piggyback ride on her twenty first birthday and it resulted in her breaking her jaw. She was helped by a male friend she’d known for years, who quite literally held her jaw in place whilst in A and E, and now they’ve been married for six years and have produced three wonderful boys. My other sister met her husband in Year Seven at school but, being from a Spanish family, he moved to Spain before the year was out. When he came back to Warrington, he went to a different school. They got speaking on Facebook ten years later and despite my brother in law fighting in Afghanistan at the time, hey presto, they’re married with two cherubs.

They’re the kinds of stories I love. Although each love story is unique and special to the couple it involves, I just think that sounds much nicer and much more meant to be than “I poked your mum on Facebook and met up with her in Showbar” or “We met on Tinder.”

I’ve never been one for internet dating. I’ve nothing against it – I just don’t think it’s right for me. It’s not that I think it would be awkward, I just think meeting up with someone you don’t know is a little odd. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying everyone you speak to on the internet is planning to lure you to their secret chamber and behead you – although it is a possibility! – the chances are, they’re just normal people like yourself who also don’t know how to successfully date. But there's something about purposely seeking someone for romance which strikes me as a little sad. Whatever happened to good old fashioned romance? Falling in love instead of choosing to love?

Now, I’ve never had Tinder or been on Plenty of Fish, which to my knowledge are both free to download and use. A few of my friends have. A couple have had a few dates out of it. One of them is very happily in love with her lovely boyfriend who she met on Tinder. Which is great and I couldn’t be happier for both of them. But this just doesn’t sit well with me. It’s not something I could ever see myself doing, which is ironic considering online dating pretty much relies on your written communication skills. Something I feel very confident with.

Okay. Internet dating is out of the question for me. I refuse to be involved with anyone from work. I’m no longer at university, which was the easiest place in the world to meet the opposite sex. I haven’t had my petrol station/broken chin/Afghanistan love story, so where does that leave me? I had this conversation very recently with a fellow single friend of mine. She mentioned speed dating. I howled into my glass of wine.

Me? Speed dating? The image just didn’t correlate at all. Somehow, I couldn’t quite picture myself going from table to table in some dingy little pub, shaking lots of sweaty hands and answering questions from a forty something bearded accountant such as, “Do you come here often?” Even thinking about it makes me cringe. Seriously, I thought, what are the chances of a Channing Tatum lookalike coming to a speed dating event?

Weeks later, another single friend suggested we go to a speed dating event in Manchester. I was umming and aahing about it for a few days. Would it be awkward? Uncomfortable? Boring? Would I want the ground to swallow me up? What if I ended up sat with someone who I just really didn’t click with and I had no option but to leg it to the toilet and escape through the window?

No, I scolded myself. You’re being ridiculous. A room full of nice single men from Manchester (not Warrington – thank Christ. There’s nothing worse than going on a date with someone and realising you’ve got his ex girlfriend on Facebook or that you work with his mum) sounds like an unexpectedly nice evening. I mean, what else was I going to do on a random midweek evening other than sit and watch The Chase in my pyjamas with my mum, uploading inspirational quotes to Instagram and eating my way through the kitchen? Plus, I’d promised myself that this year, I was going to try new things and speed dating was definitely new. Toughen up, kid, I thought. You’re going.

And I did.

We arrived a little bit late. The email had said the event would start at eight o’clock but we needed to be there by twenty past seven to register and mingle. Yes. You read that correctly. We were expected to mingle with the very same men we would be awkwardly chatting to half an hour later. Due to the traffic, we arrived at gone half past seven. It was taking place in La Tasca on Deansgate. A very nice little restaurant with an underground bar. We were in the bar and the whole room had been hired out for us to use.

As soon as we walked in, I got butterflies. Not because I’d found love at first sight but purely down to nerves. Why was I nervous? I honestly don’t know. I literally never get nervous – once you’ve done a fourteen minute monologue in professional theatre in nothing but your underwear, there’s not really much that phases you – so why was I suddenly feeling quiet, awkward and – dare I say it – shy? The words Emily Chriscoli and shy do not go together.

Initially, I’d been torn whether to have a drink or not but after this, I decided to get a double. Unfortunately, there was only one girl behind the bar and she didn’t speak a word of English. In fact, when we were running late, I’d phoned ahead to the bar and spoken to this girl and explained we were on our way but were bumper to bumper. She kept asking me if I wanted to book a table. She was obviously very new and was struggling to recognise the twenty pound note I handed her. I wasn’t filled with much hope for our drinks as she came back and asked me twice what my order was. She promptly forgot to bring the Diet Coke I’d ordered for my friend and knowing there was no point explaining it for a third time, I abandoned all hopes for the Diet Coke. I didn’t want to trouble her with a refund. The poor girl looked terrified at the sight of forty thirsty nervous speed daters.

Anyway, the event didn’t start at eight as promised. It started at half seven. Because of the slow moving bar experience, people didn’t take their seats until quarter to. Horrified, I realised my first date was already sat at my designated table (the girls stay seated, the boys go from table to table) and he was looking around to see where his invisible date was. The bar girl dropped the glass of vodka and coke I was buying for my other friend. She moved slower than a dying slug as she got on her hands and knees to clean it up. I was desperate. I was now the only person at the bar. We only had four minutes with each date and I’d spent well over half of that trying to get a drink.

With only twenty seconds to spare, I ran to my table, flustered and thirsty but no longer nervous. Luckily, it made a very good ice breaker as I launched into the explanation for my absence. He laughed. I laughed. We chatted (very briefly) and the hostess rang the bell, signalling the men to swap over. Wow. Was that it? Had I successfully completed my first ‘date’?

Over the course of the next twenty minutes, I met a selection of very nice men. The age range for the event was twenty four to forty. Being twenty four, I was the youngest person there which made it a little uncomfortable when I was chatting to men from the other end of the scale. Don’t get me wrong, I love an older man but the oldest I’ve been with is mid thirties and that was at a push. There’s not a huge amount of things I have in common with older men. What do you talk to them about? Motorbikes? Bald spots? Midlife crisis’?

They were all more than pleasant to speak to, except for one man whose name I will change, just in case there’s the very slim chance that he reads this. Let’s call him Barry. Barry was actually forty four. Four years older than the specified age range. Barry spent a good three minutes telling me about his problems with his ex wife (without even asking me where I’m from, what I do for a living – in fact, he didn’t ask me anything about myself at all. I sat there in silence with the occasional verbal nod as input) and how he has abandoned twenty years of working as a chef to start his own cavity wall and loft insulation business which isn’t doing very well. Great. Oh wait, his ex wife is trying to ruin his business? She’s a money grabbing leech? Nice. Barry, here’s a tip for any future dates you may go on – speedy or otherwise – don’t talk about your ex. It’s uncomfortable for all involved. Besides, you can’t move on if you’re still living in the past, son.

There was the odd person who I just didn’t click with. They were perfectly lovely, just not for me, including one bloke who was probably one of the youngest men there and he literally just said "Can I add you on Facebook?" before saying anything else. I was so taken aback, I didn't really know what to say and mumbled something about hating Facebook but he could follow me on Twitter. By the time we were on our way home, my phone lit up and low and behold, he had found me on Facebook.

Two men were foreign and one spoke such little English that I felt as if I was in a bad comedy sketch. “You are no cinema, yes?” Sorry, Baklav mate, it's never going to work. One man came over to me in the interval (yes, you get a break after every ten dates or so for a toilet break or God forbid another drinks order) and demanded to know why he hadn’t seen me yet. Maybe because you haven’t got round to my table yet?! He then proceeded to fire questions at me whilst I was trying to move over to my friend’s table to have a quick mid-date catch up. And they were the oddest questions someone can ask another person in an attempt to get to know them: "What's your favourite colour?" "Are you a Sagittarius?" and my personal favourite, "How much do you earn?" I am not kidding.

What did surprise me was how many doctors there were there. I’m not sure what I was expecting but I certainly didn’t think there’d be that many doctors. There were lots of other careers including lawyers, firemen, teachers, DJs and one guy who was a ranger. And he bloody loved his job. He had an in depth discussion with my friend about how he could kill an animal with his bare hands. Bravo, my friend. But going back to the doctors, most of them explained that due to a hectic schedule, they never have any time to meet someone. Interestingly, they were the most pleasant to speak to and unlike some of the other men, they didn’t automatically demand to know your job title. They would happily speak about anything else and only when prompted did they reveal that they were a doctor, whereas if that was me, I would be shouting it from the rooftops.

There was one doctor who works in Warrington who was particularly good looking and he had a lovely smell. (That’s always important. There was more than one person at speed dating who were in desperate need of a Tic Tac.) In the car on the way home, we all agreed that he was lovely and the following day, when you put your yes’s into the website, it came up with a match which means he’d put a yes for me too. (You also get to see who else put you down as a ‘yes’)This means that we get each other’s number and can arrange a date. I’m not sure yet whether I’ll go – it feels a little bit like meeting someone off the internet, despite having met him in the flesh, but it’s nice to know the option’s there.

Strangely enough, the whole evening was fantastic. We spent the whole night laughing – sometimes with the person across the table and the rest in the car on the way home. It was a total success and I’m glad I went, as are the other girls I went with. It was nice getting dressed up, having a few drinks and meeting new people in a new place, plus everyone went out for drinks in Manchester afterwards. Understandably, speed dating nights or singles nights have a bit of a stigma attached to them. I understand this. I had this same opinion until I went myself. The best way to describe a speed dating night is by comparing it to the evening do at a wedding. You've had a few drinks, you're in a merry mood, you're sat at a table with people you've only just met and yet it isn't awkward, it's fun. You'll never meet anyone new if you just socialise with the same group of people. You'll end up going back to old habits and trust me, still being messed about by boys who work in a call centre gets very old after a while.

There’s another speed dating night coming up in Stockton Heath and another one in Liverpool, especially for military men. If any single ladies fancy it, let me know and you’re more than welcome to come along. A few cocktails down your neck and you’ll have a laugh if nothing else. Besides, you never know, you might be telling your grandkids in fifty years time that the love of your life was date number eleven on an otherwise rainy night in February.