I need a holiday.
I did have a wee holiday recently – four days in Tenerife, and it was utterly blissful and much needed after spending the first three months of this year doing my best blue-a**** fly impression.
This was all my own fault, of course. I’m a terrible freelancer. Through panic and/or FOMO I tend to overcommit and make it nearly impossible to take any time off.
So, that four-day holiday, bang in the middle of a busy period, felt like an exquisite teaser for the fortnight’s holiday I’m dreaming of now.
Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love all the work I do. I’m not digging roads or working long hours in front line services. I essentially play for a living and feel very fortunate and privileged to do so.
But, like anyone else, I do sometimes feel cream-crackered and gripped by the urge to go offline and get away.
Right now, as my new play, an adaptation of Anna Karenina, enters its last leg of rehearsals, I find myself simultaneously thrilled at the prospect of the show I’ve been working on for four and a half years finally reaching an audience, and somewhat overwhelmed too.
It’s a bit like running the last mile of a marathon (which I did a few times, some faster, fitter years ago), when you’re now so close to the finishing line after a long haul, and running on almost empty, that a desire to just stop and lie down can take hold.
My work as writer is now more or less done. The whole company are doing an amazing job bringing the script to life, led by my brilliant friend and director, Polina Kalinina, and it’s been thrilling to watch.
I should leave them to it, right?
Full weeks or fortnights are a pipe dream
As you can probably tell, I’m using this column to talk myself into booking another wee break before the show opens. Whether I can justify it financially is not the point.
I’ve had this unfinished holiday feeling since Tenerife. I’m nervous, I’m exhausted. I’ve a craving pina coladas by the pool.
A few more days in the sunshine would revive, restore, and chill me out ahead of press night, right? I need this, don’t I?
The thing about the Jet 2 website, which I’m clearly now on, is that it first assumes you want a seven, ten or fourteen-day holiday. Which, of course, I do want.
But I would never manage my time well enough to clear more than a few days without my diary imploding.
And even if I could, sod’s law ensures that most freelance opportunities arrive when you’ve booked a holiday that directly clashes with them, and your fourteen-day Costa Adeje sabbatical gets abandoned three days in to film an episode of Casualty.
Let me stress, I’m not complaining about never being able to take a fortnight’s holiday. I consider myself blessed to be able to take a holiday at all, and even though I’m terrible at it, being a freelance arty odd-job woman makes me very happy.
That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t kill right now for two weeks in the sunshine, preferably lying down with a pina colada in hand.
Or even just three more days to make up a week – surely that’s reasonable?
‘Click’… Look what you made me do!
Lesley Hart is an award-winning playwright and actress from Stonehaven, known for playing cop Lou Caplan in River City.
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