Plate-spinning

Remember plate-spinning? It used to be one of the staple acts of TV variety shows in the 70s. For the benefit of the uninitiated: a man sets a china plate spinning on a stick. Then he does it again with a new plate and a new stick…and he does it again…and again…until there’s a whole row of plates merrily spinning away. But the fun hasn’t even started yet, because now he must keep all the plates spinning. Every time one starts to wobble, and believe me they do, he has to jiggle its stick. When all the plates start wobbling, it gets pretty intense out there. Google it – it might be just the thing to liven up your next party. 

My improvising got very wobbly recently. I hadn’t played or performed for a while. I was starting to lose confidence. What if the audience didn’t laugh or, worse still, didn’t care? What if I walked into a scene with no ideas and stayed that way? 

Now I know the real cause of the problem: my writing. That had been poetry in motion (or prose, if we’re being picky) for weeks, so why would I need anything else creative or inspiring in my life—demanding time and attention, making me lose focus—when I had the equivalent of one perfectly-spinning plate? It was beautiful. I was mesmerised. I lost the plot. The writing started to wobble. How could it do that to me? I’d been giving it all my attention. Spurning all distractions. How could it be so fickle after everything I’d sacrificed? I tried hard. I tried harder. The more I tried, the more it wobbled. 

So, I turned some of my attention to improvising. Just enough to get it going steady again. I started to do some regular exercise - walking and cycling, a bit of swimming. Anything with a natural rhythm. I picked up a book and read it. Picked up another one. And when I went back to the writing, it didn’t seem nearly as wobbly.

And the lesson I’ve learned from all this? It can be great having just one metaphorical plate spinning well for a while, but when that goes – and eventually it will - all you’ll be left with is a row of empty sticks and a lot of broken china.

The 'hooray' game

The ‘hooray’ game is an antidote to grumpiness. When it works, it is a joyful, spine-tingling celebration of all the little things in life that can ruin your day. It almost certainly arises from one of the many valuable lessons learned from improvisation and mindfulness: things will not always go to plan; you can’t change that, but you can influence how you respond.

It started in Denmark after J and I wasted three hours of our precious holiday being ridiculously bad-tempered. The reason? Had the sea washed away our tent? Had the sky fallen in? No. The cause of our ill humour was an unspeakably bad fish and chips lunch in Skagen. It’s true that Skagen, a beautiful town on the northern tip of Jutland, is renowned for its fish restaurants. Only the previous day we had enjoyed a magnificent fish platter at a table bathed in warm sunshine, just two restaurants away. But this day was different. 

First, there was the rain. Heavy. Prolonged. Wet. Then there was the conical-shaped fish—who’d have thought it possible?—the dense batter and the hard, greasy chips. Everything about it was faux British. It even came wrapped in a fake Times newspaper cone. We might be two restaurants down from the fish platter experience, but we might as well have been in a motorway services off the A1 in the 1970s. 

Back at our campsite we stomped along the deserted, white sandy beach in silence, each of us fuming. J fuming about the unfairness of life, me fuming about J fuming. And then one of us—let’s say it was me—grabbed the other’s hands, raised them to the sky and hoorayed. ‘Hooray for lousy fish and chips’, I yelled. ‘Hooray’, we chorused together. ‘Hooray for choosing the only crap fish restaurant in Skagen,’ J shouted. ‘Hooray’.

We grinned at each other and a sense of perspective descended. The fish and chips horror was one bad meal, not the last meal we would ever eat. And—look—the rain stopped ages ago, and—hey—we’re the only people here on a beautiful Danish beach famed for its amazing blue light. Hooray.

If it’s going to work, you have to commit. You need to feel the hooray in your whole body. An empty beach was a good place to start, but with regular practice you can hooray almost anywhere, and any number can play.

Solo hooraying works, too. I’ve hoorayed dropping a whole carton of eggs on the tiled kitchen floor. I’ve hoorayed stepping in my own dog’s poo. I even tried hooraying an eye-watering repair bill for my car, I’ll admit with less success.

So ‘hooray’ away a minor irritation today and you might just stop a perfectly okay mood turning sour.

Do try this at home.

Spontaneity and sprouts

I’ve never been a fan of spontaneity. Friends who turned up at my house unannounced would be greeted with barely concealed hostility, last minute changes to plans were capital offences and as for spur of the moment suggestions…You get the picture. As far as I was concerned, spontaneity was greatly overrated and liable to leave a bitter taste in the mouth. Like Brussels sprouts.

For years I could never see why any right-thinking person stomached them—nasty, flatulence-inducing abominations—but all that changed the day I discovered the indescribable delights of roasted sprouts with shallots (thank you, Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall). As I popped the last perfectly charred orb of loveliness into my mouth, it dawned on me: I’d only been able to recognise the true worth of Brussels sprouts by experiencing them differently.

And that’s what happened with spontaneity and impro. In this new context, spontaneity became a gift (thank you, Clare Kerrison, Hugh FW of the impro scene). Anyone might turn up in a impro scene without warning. That’s its great joy. There are no plans to change—you can go anywhere, do anything—and everything is spur of the moment. How liberating is that? 

So now, spontaneity—like sprouts—makes sense. Most of the time.

There are still occasions when I slip back and my control gene, or whatever it is, stamps its tiny foot (just as, every now and then, a serving of over-cooked sprouts will cause me to question their existence), but there's a new me evolving—more open, more willing to say 'yes'—and life is getting interesting.