A Day in Dingestow Village Hall

Exhausted. EXHAUUUSTED. Long day, weary, legs aching, feet mashed. Have I overreached myself today? We shall see. 

I was up early, had to do hair and slap on make up (oh, where art thou, Rosemarie?) before leaving at around 7.30am. Arrived, made tea, then piddled about for the next coupe of hours whilst Ian set up the lighting and camera. I know from my film experience that the technical aspect always takes loads of time. There is a lovely village shop next to the hall where I bought up all the available daffs to dress the very plain hall and a newspaper to keep me calm before we could start filming. Dingestow is a small village outside Monmouth that happens to have this very smart hall which was built with lottery money in 2001/02 - and opened by Princess Ann, no less. Pictures of her maj in the lobby. Dingestow is a quiet place, just what we needed.

We started the shoot with some easy warm-ups for us both to set the scene, get the lighting adjusted, change a few things. It was then that I acknowledged that my energy was all over the place.

Today for me was psychologically challenging, the physical challenge crept up on me during the day. The challenge was to keep my demons at bay, to silence all the little monkeys whispering 'you are too old to do this', 'you are not good enough', 'your form has gone down the pan' 'who do you think you are, thinking you can make a T'ai-Chi DVD, especially the way you do it now. Twenty years ago, yes, but not now, not at your age and your physical decrepitude, when there are all those extremely fit blokes out there doing it so well....' (don't think I thought the word 'decrepitude' when willing myself not to say to Ian that this was all a huge mistake, let's stop now and go home and do something sensible like have a cup of tea. But it seems to be the correct word to describe my condition today.) So had another cup of tea anyway and didn't go home then.  During all this negative bombardment I forced myself to focus on the benefits that this planned DVD might offer to those who study with me - and lots of other people who do not have a great athletic ability. I do believe that our efforts today will encourage many who believe they can't do T'ai-Chi  and to think otherwise, to get out of their comfort zones and give it a go. We shall see.

These monkeys clarified why it has taken me so long to be in action around this filming. I am the barrier. And today I did manage to surmount these barriers and just get on with it.

Of course Ian had his demons too! Like me he was doing his best with limited time, limited equipment and an extremely limited budget.  An instructional DVD is not exactly high art, it needs to be clear, concise, easy to use.... So I knew this venture was going to challenge his finely honed artistic sensibility, especially when I squashed some of his imaginative suggestions that might have looked wonderful but would have clouded its purpose. Thank you, Ian for your patience and perserverance today - most of all at the end of the day when we tried to re-shoot the complete short form with better lighting. By then my legs had most definitely had it and I started to fall over and had to keep stopping. So we gave up, packed up and drove our separate ways into the pouring rain.