Jarkko Lehmus Diary

It's never dull in Hull...?

What can I say? The show works and the audience loves it. I still find it very interesting. After 41 shows I'm just getting inside the head of Herr Drosselmeier. I'm looking forward to exploring him more during the next Christmas Season.

Apart from studying the character I find it very interesting studying my fellow dancers. All the different ways of dealing with things growing from cultural background, personality and training. Some of the younger dancers are feeling the strain a bit and are slowly finding their own ways around it. To be honest the whole company's pretty tired and looking forward to the holiday. We've been hard at it since August and the spring's looking very busy. I'll be piling plenty of massage, swimming, sauna and steamroom on my holiday plate.

A moment of relaxation after a long day. Photo by Lexie ©

On arrival Hull looked grey, dirty and boring. After a week I can tell you it is grey, dirty and boring for 166 hours a week. For the remaining two hours it turns into a raving zoo with police and paramedics galore. That would be around chuck out time on a Saturday night then. The lack of peolple during any other night suddenly makes sense: they all spend their weeks in a jail or a hospital after driving their cars into car park gates, stabbing and glassing each other, getting beaten up by bouncers and, if nobody's there to lend them a hand, filling themselves with cheap booze until the inevitable alcohol poisoning.

Not that I had anything to do with any of that sort of behaviour. I was just observing. Honest. Me and my mates liver and wallet we've had enough of hell raising for a while. In the absence of the usual nocturnal activities I turnes my eyes towards another passion of mine: food. I stumbled across this rather lovely thai restaurant, mainly because it was just about the only interesting looking place in town, and thoroughly enjoyed myself. So much so in fact that I came back the next night and found myself in the kitchen being taught the simple art of thai cooking and ended up cooking my own meal. The result? Chicken green curry fit for gods. Well chuffed and stuffed I was.

Coming up next week: Adventures in Northern Ireland (fuelled by Guinness).

Posted by Jarkko at February 1, 2004 04:55 PM