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Move Back to Brighton 13

I remember Sarah Walton saying when she was still not sure her broken foot had completely healed the Royal Ballet management management made her get up and rehearse Little Red Riding Hood. 'And there was Big Dave as the wolf giving it huge, gangloid jumps and bowling about and I thought, "Fuck this idiot if he knocks me over". And I kept doing the relevés away from him, and they're shouting at me to do them nearer. At one point I yelled back, "I am not getting nearer to all his big lummoxy palaver". And I just sat down at the end and I could tell he was offended.'

Oddly, I feel like that with Flixy. I'm vulnerable, unsettled, uncertain - have been ill - and her being what Anna Hulagan calls, 'The laziest and also must arrogant burlesquer' is draining. The grotty condition of the unready room takes me aback whenever it confronts me; as does Flixy's constant and repetitive chat about where each of her next gigs is, exactly how she will travel to the venue (from walking to the station, through buying her ticket and what she'll eat/drink/read on the train, to taking a bus/train/walk at the other end) and how much the crowd will love her. 

As a non-dancer wiggling her bum and bosoms a bit, she credits herself with triumphs galore. 

But then, when she sticks together her nipple-tassles from a kit to sell at Lola's in Brighton she makes herself sound like Coco Chanel personally going through the quilting process: faff-faff-faffily hand-stitching the lining to the outer fabric in exactly matching grids for a Boucle jacket. Making a lumpen stage entrance in a Working Man's Club in Weston-Super-Mare, Flixy is Renata Tebaldi acknowledging the five minute welcome back ovation at the Met in New York. Doing her half a step-ball-change (if the crowd is lucky) she's Lopatkina in Balanchine's Diamonds. Singing "Close to You" almost vaguely in tune she's Maria Callas singing Norma's "Casta Diva" in Norma, Rome 1955...

Anna says this obviously comes from the severest lack of esteem, but still it would be extremely off-fucking to live with. 

She is so right.


I overhear a drunk tell a pregnant looking man wearing a mix and match of two football kits he has a free pass for pier deckchairs and the highest score on a pinball machine.


I won't tell Flixy. She'll own the whole pier.


#memoir #diary #biography #autobiography #brighton #lgbtqia #depression #uncertainty 



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