When you Wish...Visualisation and the Art of Drag

I would visualise and visualise Madame Galina on tour to London's West End and to Blackpool: wearing a fur, dragging a trunk, staying in old-school theatrical digs, being partnered by either Michael Nunn or William Trevitt: both Royal Ballet Principal Dancers...

About to move to London from Aldeburgh, I was walking past the Sue Ryder shop when volunteer Janet banged on the window. Can you imagine Bette Midler, but mouselike? That was Janet. She dragged a blue trunk out of the stockroom. 'Don't open it till you get home. Inside's for you to wear as Madame Galina. Brilliant you've got yourself that London residency.' At Murray's Cabaret Club. 'My aunt forbade us girls ever to go on to Murray's in the sixties, you know. "Filth goes in there! The Krays, that Keeler monstrosity. Filth!".'

Oh.

At home I opened the trunk. Inside was a rabbit skin fur.

For cheapness' sake on tour, I would book myself into the class of B and B that thought it was too posh for hot chocolate sachets, stank of Zoflora; and had patterned settees, walls and carpets together to turn your sight kaleidoscopic.

One Blackpool landlady, in butterscotch velour, led me across the road to listen at the open window of a rival's establishment.  'Hear that hoover going, chick? Notice there's no fluctuation in the tone. She's just left it on under the table, window open, trying to kid on that she runs a clean establishment. But then, she injects her eggs with tartrazine to make the yolks look more like the chickens that lay them have room to manoeuvre. Nor would she do you the courtesy I will, before you go off to your theatrics in the Tower Ballroom - checking your room's tidy.'

And my dancing idols MIchael Nunn and William Trevitt, having left the Royal Ballet and started George Piper Dances, asked me to be in their Channel 4 series The Rough Guide to Choreography. Michael was Prince Siegfried to my Odette.

So, visualise!

Except you may not wish for that longed-for Prince to comment, during an argument about the exact wording of the Swan Queen's mime sequence, 'Galina, you have ballet Asperger's.'

#positivethinking #wishlist #thesecret #visualisations #positivevisualisations #rulesofattraction #manifestingabundance #manifestation

Comments

Some Favourite Books - But Please don't Lesbify Dame Agatha's Denouements

I'm too tired to read anything new so have been round the libraries taking out my default-setting books to read over Christmas. These include: The Pursuit of Love , Nancy Mitford. The blood-stained entrenching tool displayed above the fireplace, child-hunting over Shenley Common, Jassy traumatising the local children telling them the facts of life. The scene at the Gare du Nord where Linda sits on her luggage to cry and meets Fabrice always takes me back to the first reading of the novel, sitting wrapped in my Welsh Tweed shawl, in a tiny bedroom on the eighteenth floor of a high-rise in Kennington. The Pursuit of Love is romantic, hilarious and bleakly eccentric. Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady , Florence King. When I entertained troops on the American base in Kandahar, four South Carolina army captains made me an Honorary Southern Belle. Madame Galina, they said, in all her unreasonable, high-blooded, simpering flounce reminded them of the girls

My Mate Jamie-Ray Hartshorne

I've been noticing that alongside photos of Jamie-Ray being a lead in Altar Boys , creating Change My Body UK TM , working the door at Freedom - and clearly asking people passing by wherever that rockpool may be to snap a double-bicep - this sort of thing is cropping up on his social media: We're in The Diner, Jamestown Road, Camden. He's between tour dates of The Bodyguard, and meetings to discuss sportswear and creatine endorsements. The latter, he says, being all about making his product better. Between sips of his peanut butter milkshake (he's allowing himself dairy today in my honour - I don't quite know how to take that) he says in his soft Brum, 'I've signed up for a major Muay Thai event in Thailand next February. I'm going up against one of the Thai fighters. That's the only real way to gain any respect in the fighting world. That's why you've been noticing the combat photos. I've been going for tr

Where do Babies Come From? How we Learn about Sex...Book Just Launched on Amazon Kindle

Click to buy the book 'My spoken material is about the facts of life,' I was explaining to the Mother Superior. 'I've been asking people what they were told, how they were told it and did they ask questions. Terribly funny...' During my Where do Babies Come From? talk at the Metrodeco Café, Brighton, a superfluity of nuns stopped at the window to listen. In the street later that week one of them glided up and said how much they had enjoyed hearing me sing. ' And we wonder, might you please sing something for our charity evening?' I said, of course, sister. The nun nodded. 'That's very good to hear. But just to correct you: not sister - but Mother Superior.' She then asked about the spoken material in the show, in case some might be included on the night? I explained that I had been reading from my forthcoming book. While on tour I had asked people how they had

Iestyn Edwards Wonders...is it Lumpy or Runny?

Search This Blog