Drawbacks to being a Drag Ballerina living in the Country

Two and a half hours of travel to London via a bus and two trains meant it was too far to go back for forgotten bits of costume and my backing tracks. I had a pair of stage manager Zoe Hunn's leggings wrapped around my head like a turban and danced my opening ballet solo to a dubstep remix of Cilla Black singing Step Inside, Love.
As I made a careful study thirty years ago of how a swan lands on water, folds its wings and preens its feathers, and muscle memory has kept these movements in my body, I can't guilt-freely just sit for hours watching the swans on Thorpeness Meare and tell myself it's for research.
I had to hide my tutu bodice in a pillowcase when I took it down to the laundry room in case I bumped into the German gay couple holidaying in number five and we got all sisterhoody over the beading and frou-frou. That could only end - as it always does, right? - in them inviting me for drinks, telling me about getting so carried away they dance on tables in Mobel Olfe. Hans will share that he was disowned by his mother when he came out and was only allowed to stand in the street and watch her funeral cortege pass by. And when he is crying in the kitchen, Klaus will tell me about being blackmailed by a Brazilian escort living in Colchester who makes his own guava paste, is learning decoupage at evening classes and hits him.
The village shop doesn't stock Tracker Bars.

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