If any of you are within elbowing distance of Sam West, give him a little nudge for me, and tell him Beaumont owes him a pint.
In May 2012 I packed my bags, and everything else, and left London by mistake. The flatmate was headed to the seaside and I thought I might stick my stuff in storage, gan hyem for a few weeks, and then head back to the smoke for Round 3.
My stuff is still in storage.
Albeit a different storage unit in a different city, but there are still pairs of shoes I haven't seen since before the London Olympics, and to be honest, I haven't really missed them.
Thing is, a couple of days after I got home for my unintentional-life-change-that-I-thought-was-just-a-holiday, Sam West re-tweeted 140 characters that would
*cue swell of bathetic music* get me a job, in the first instance. (Life change is gradual, stop getting ahead of yourselves).
Some lad from Middlesbrough who seemed to have a bit of a thing for milk, wanted to meet artists with links to the North East for a show he was making about demonstration.
'I've got links to the North East' I thought, 'I can be an artist when I concentrate. Climate change? I'm against it, in the main...' I mused, as I clicked on the link...
Nearly two years later, the show we started making that summer got me through the door of three regional theatres, up to Edinburgh, and back out on tour: we open in Norwich tonight. (It's called How to Occupy an Oil Rig, it's for anyone who ever wanted to change anything and you get to play with plasticine).
In between times I've got in the habit of playing Geordie lasses; so convincingly, that I think I might have become one.
And thanks to that particular Edinburgh community and one very particular regional theatre I think I might be on my way to being a proper artist as well.
My first solo show will preview this July (almost exactly 3 years after that fateful retweet). And as I step out to say what I want to say to an audience, in my own distinctive mash up of northern vowels and expatriate consonants, I'll have finally come home.
Yeah. Sorry, I know this is really twee, but when you spent your whole childhood thinking home was more of an idea that an actual place, the possibility of having an artistic home (I'm looking at you ARC) is pretty fucking special, and I'll have all the John Williams orchestral interludes I like, thank you very much.
*cue Cello solo*
And I am looking for an actual home too. In Gateshead, as it happens. I'm putting down roots on the same bus route as me Nanna and Granda's auld hoose. Turns out that dreaded old question 'where are you from?' is just as much about where you are going.
Speaking of which, here are our tour dates http://www.danielbye.co.uk/how-to-occupy-an-oil-rig.html, come along if you want to know how to change everything.
Change gets a bad press, but I strongly recommend it.
