Hey Everyone,
Happy Thursday,
How are you all? Fat and hung over from a successful festive period? Hope so! I had a really great time with my family. I'm writing this on the train back to London as I am heading to Prague tomorrow with 11 friends to celebrate the New Year weekend and I arrive back in London on my birthday which is Monday 2nd January. Good weekend ahead I hope!
I have only really realised this morning that two weeks tomorrow is my opening night as Sam in Ghost. We did three weeks rehearsals before Christmas and I was ok about it all because Siobhan (Molly) and I were always saying "we've got the Christmas period to let things digest in our heads" - well that christmas period is nearly over, we've just had our schedules for the next two weeks rehearsals and it's suddenly all a little more real! Yikes. Don't get me wrong though I can't flaming' wait! If I could, I'd say 'shoot me now and let's crack on with it!'
So it's been a busy week - however I'm not gonna bore you with a lot of what we do as a family over Christmas because let's be honest a lot of what we all do is pretty much the same, we wake, we see if Santa has been, we eat turkey, open presents, watch new DVD's whilst eating Quality Streets and tangerines, have a nap, eat turkey sandwiches and then play family games before bed! Am I right?
So I got back to Wales on the Wednesday of last week and had a catch up with my folks before heading to bed. I woke on Thursday morning to do a series of press interviews that my manager had arranged for 'when I have a bit more time' (3 days before Christmas!) and then worked on my guitar before heading to do a big food shop with my Mum and popping to the cemetery to visit my Nanna!
This was the first Christmas without any grandparents so it was a little sad and difficult at times but we're lucky we have a big family to support each other.
Friday I spent the whole day with my friend Aimee at her house. We only ever see each other if she comes to London, or pops to see me at my folks farm or if we are working together on West End In Wales stuff so we decided instead of making proper plans, I would go to her house and we would lay on the sofa all day and eat as much as we can possibly fit in our faces and stomachs and watch films! It was perfect!
Christmas eve I left Aimee's house to meet another mate of mine who came back to the farm and we went for a long walk around the hills which was great as I felt I was walking off a large amount of the carbs consumed the day before!
The night of Christmas Eve I went to sing at 11.15pm at our local chapel's midnight carol service which was lovely. It made me feel very festive and it was great to see lots of the locals from our village. I couldn't help but laugh though, our minister was reading out the first verse of the last hymn of the evening and all of a sudden he announced "and I've just realised I've forgotten to print out the lyrics to the chorus for this song, but I'm sure we all know the words" - It was Hark The Herald Angels Sing, in Welsh. It was funny because I could tell that everyone was thinking the same thing 'i'm sure the words will come to me when we get to the chorus' - well sure as hell they didn't! Picture a congregation of passionate Welsh folk singing at the top of their voices through the verses and then getting to the chorus and it was just one massive combined mumble of vowels with the odd consonant thrown in for good measure from the few folk who tried to make it sound as if we were at least singing words even if they weren't the right ones. I suddenly felt my shoulders starting to shrug with laughter and I left that service in such a good mood because I'd had the hardest internal laugh I'd had for a while! Very funny evening!
I woke Christmas morning and was straight on the bucks fizz with mum, she thought it was orange juice and was happily sipping away, not realising there was alcohol in it! ha.
The christmas day panned out as I described above albeit with me having a bit of a hangover by 8pm due to morning drinking!
Boxing day, Mum and I hit the sales because I wanted some running gear so I could work off some of the week's indulgences. We shopped for quite a while and then I headed home and went jogging for a few miles before hitting my sisters' gym! Felt much better afterwards and less fatigued and lethargic and enjoyed a chilled out evening. That evening was one of the best in a long time. I decided to sort through all my old CD's and music collection from when I was a teenager! I laughed so much at some of my dreadful purchases and also reminisced over really good times whilst playing some of the CD's loudly and belting my (aching from the gym) tits off! I kept all the discs (hundreds of them) and have recycled all the cases and album sleeves to make a little more storage space at my mums!
I went to bed that night thinking a lot about what life was like when I lived at home 10 years ago! Then I remembered about my TV documentary which is funnily enough being shown on TV for the first time tonight! If you are a regular follower/reader of my blog you will know that for the whole of this year I have had a TV crew follow me around at some of the biggest events and occasions I have had, including opening night & backstage at Wicked, my album recording, my album launch, West End In Wales summer school and at home on my parents farm! And it's all been put into an hour's TV special for S4C at 8.25pm tonight! S4C is available to watch live online if you visit my Facebook page it has all the info on it if you click the little 'S' at the bottom it will give you subtitles so you can understand the welsh.
http://www.facebook.com/MarkEvansPage
The channel is also available on SKY! It contains the only footage ever to be filmed officially of our cast including my Dancing Through Life with the company and As Long As Your Mine with the one and only Nikki Davies-Jones! I'm gonna be watching from behind a cushion remembering some of the year I'd forgotten! (It even briefly includes me meeting Ben Stott who played Boq for the first time ever!)
If you watch it please let me know what you think on twitter or my Facebook page!
And on that note, i'm about to arrive London Euston. I need to head home so I can pack for Prague, or as the natives call it Praha! The last time I was there was over 3 years ago with Ashleigh Gray (duet on my album) & Caroline Keiff! I was working with them both on Wicked at the time! It was great! Can't wait to whack on my long johns and get back to one of the coldest yet beautiful places I've ever been!
Have an amazing new year folks! Hope to see you all in 2012 at some point. How about we all agree right now to make this next year a bloody cracking one!
Love your lives and love your selves!
Big Sh-boom!!!
Mark
