A Day In The Life Of My iPhone

It’s 5.30 a.m. and the alarm on my iPhone has just gone off!  I press snooze…

and again…

Eventually I managed to pull myself out  from between the duvet and my slumber and head toward the train station to start an eleven hour round trip. There I grab an (extremely large) coffee and grab a copy of Metro, the free newspaper.

Reading the newspaper I spot an advert for a film. I’ve not heard of it but it sounds good and I wouldn’t mind seeing it. I quickly fire up Evernote and take a photo of the advert so as to remind me later.

A short time later the paper is read and discarded and my coffee has gone and Im still hours away from even my first change of trains. Looking for something o read I log into Newstand and read a few articles from the Guardian blogs and from Lifehacker.

Time passes but the train refuses to move, and has been like that for the last ten minutes. Worried whether I will now make my next connection I load up my rail enquiries app and find that  I am indeed going to miss my connection. A quick look around and the app tells me I can get another train and rejoin my origional train further down the line.

Onto the next train and on the wall is a poster advertising a book I’d like to read… I like the authour but hadn’t realized it was out yet…  I log into Safari and check if it’s available on Audible yet. It is, so I add it to my wish list for download later. While I have the phone out I check my emails.

After the next change of trains I’m, once again, a bit bored. I check Facebook and update my status and get in a quick game of Flight Control. Then, looking for something more to read, I check out some articles I’d saved to Instapaper.

I’ve another hour till I get there so I switch the phone to Ipod mode and listen to ‘Buzz Out Loud’. By  now It’s coming up on 9.00 a.m. so I give my mum a call to see how she is.

The last change of trains and the rail enquires  app tells me I’ve got 30 minutes until my next connection. I need a coffee. I fire up the iPhone and locate the nearest Starbucks…. One vanilla Latte and a rocky road biscuit later I’m back at the station.

Not long until I get there so I fire up the iPhone again. I’ve copied the presentation and spreadsheets into Filemagnet so I’m able to check over them and refresh before the meeting.

I check my emails and I’ve been sent the address of one of the places I’m to visit when I arrive. I plug the postcode into Google maps and get directions for later. It looks easy enough so I don’t think I’ll need the sat nav. So I take a photo of the screen (hold the power and the home button at the same time) and throw it into Evernote.

Whilst I’m dong this the people in the front of me say something really funny which I like. I tend to collect little snippets like this for ideas for dialogue in my plays. When they go I record it as a voice note in the Evernote app. It gives me an idea for a play so I open up iBluesky and spend about five minutes mindmapping it out. I don’t think it’s got legs for anything but I may use it somewhere else.

I switch to Remember The Milk and go through my lists… I’m trying to learn to use GTD… and I add a few more items to my to do list.

Later in the day and I’m back at the station for my return journey, but first its time for food. I don’t know this town so I use Vicinity to find out where the nearest decent food place is.

Pretty soon I’m sated and back on the train for the long journey home.

I fire up Remember The Milk  again and add some actions from the meeting. To take my mind off the journey I have a couple of minutes of Tetris and decide I’m really not that good at it. After such an early start I could do with a sleep so I start a program called Ambience which plays relaxing music and I doze. When I awake I decide as the phone is out I will watch an episode of Battlestar Galactica.

Watching the program I suddenly realize just go much I’ve used the iPhone today. I’m tech savvy but I’m no businessman or power user by any means yet I’m amazed how much I use this device. So much so I decide to document it. Hence this posting. I fire up Writeroom and churn this out. I then email it to myself and when I get home I post it to WordPress. I know what your thinking and I do indeed have the WordPress app on the iPhone and I could have posted it straight from there. It was simply that I’d fired up Writeroom and started to type before I’d realized. I have to say though I’m looking at buying the Quickoffice suite…. Cut and paste… can’t be a bad thing!!!

Reading this post back I realise it reads like a bit of advert for Apple and the iPhone and it’s really not meant to be. So that’s why I decided not to add any links in to any of the apps I spoke about, whether free or paid for.

I simply was so surprised at just how powerful my device had become and how much I rely on it on a day to day business… and, ironically, I only actually made one telephone call on it.

If you want check out the apps I use then simply search for them on the Itunes App Store or use your own favs…

Either way I’ll not be giving up my iPhone soon.

It’s Now Or Never…

I’m glad to say that we have now started work on the next production. The play, called ‘It’s Now Or Never’, will open in June at the Little Theatre in Southport’. It’s a farce is the best sense of the word and very, very funny. I can’t wait to get started properly on it. The story follows what happens when two men find Elvis Presley alive and well hiding in Spain and decide to kidnap him. It’s like a cross between ‘Fawlty Towers’ and that old Frank Spencer sitcom ‘Some Mothers Do Ave Em’.

Rehearsals have started and the set is being sorted so just need to design the program, design the poster, sort costumes, sort props, learn the lines and lose a bit of weight.

Speaking of weight. I’ve put a pile of it on recently and really really need to lose some. If you have any ideas… Things that worked for you… let me know. I guess I need to start a diet… It’s Now Or Never!

A Great Photo

Over the Valentine’s weekend Helen and I travelled to York. The place is amazing and I will write a full blog soon however I just wanted to share this photo which Helen took as it’s simply brilliant… And taken on a mobile too!

Third Time Lucky

The play we have decided to do for the next production (Alan Ayckbourn’s TIME OF MY LIFE) has had to be shelved.

We have unfortunately lost a major cast member this week. With six weeks to go the actor playing the major role has left the company. We had a bit of a crisis meeting and decided it would be too difficult to stage this play with a replacement actor at this stage. However we were keen not to miss the space at the theatre and to get something, anything on.

So after much script reading we managed to find a play that has both a minimal set and is something we hope to be able to learn in the short space of time. Ladies and Gents the next Too Friendly play is to be the Mike Harding play ‘Not With A Bang’ – It’s a very funny story about a group of women who go on a sex strike in order to teach their TA husband’s a lesson.

Saving Grace…. Another review

Matchbox Theatre Company performed my play Saving Grace and here is the review:

This is an award winning play featuring Laura Cassidy as Grace, a wife and mother trapped in an unhappy marriage to her possessive and abusive husband Charles, played by Neil Butler. Seeking some measure of independence and respite Grace enrols on an art course at her local adult education centre where she meets the caring tutor David, played by Brendan Gallagher with whom, after much soul searching, she makes a future for herself and her daughter.
The characters in both plays were given realistic performances by the cast and the sets were simple but most effective with good lighting plots.

(David Parkes)

Snow White Review

NODA review.

Snow White All Souls Dramatic Club

This pantomime was a delight to watch with excellent dancers and choreography and the music, although modern, fitted the mood and storyline. The set and costumes were of a very high standard. Fairy, played by June Weights, had good diction, and so did the leading lady, Snow White, played by Joanne Stafford. She also had good delivery and a pleasant voice. The Dame was played by Peter Roney, who was a hit with the children. Kate Watkinson played Ramsbottom and was just a little o.t.t. but she was consistent. The role of the Prince was played by Jean Pierre Meyer, and the role of the Spirit of the Mirror by the talented Sue Thomas, who was spot on. Finally the part of the evil Queen was played by Stefi Verite who was extremely good and deserved the amount of reaction from the audience. Cliff Gillies also was in tune with the children and parents alike. Well done to you both and to the director for a smashing show.

At The NODA Awards

Last night we were at NODA drama awards. We were up for best supporting actress, best actor, best actress, best staging and best play; all for our production of Les Miserables.

We were also up for Best Pantomime and Best Mortal in a pantomime for the production of Cinderella some of us were in with All Soul’s.

Well we didn’t get anything for Les Miserables but SUE THOMAS won Best Mortal and Cinderella won BEST PANTOMIME!

Well do to Sue and all at All Souls.

Nice to see Karen getting up to collect an award so many times too!

First Sight… Third Draft

My latest play “First Sight” is complete. This play started as a rough one man show a while ago and then become a three hander about a year later. I performed it a theatre festival that year and it went down well. However, such is life, it went into a drawer and stayed there for (lets just say) a long time. I recently pulled it out and read it again and I really liked my ending (even if I do say so myself). So I decide to go back to it and do a rewrite. It wasn’t an extensive rewrite: One of the characters changed and the female role got a lot bigger… then smaller… then bigger again. But I changed it around, polished it up (thanks to WLP)and finally finished it. It’s a three hander (1F, 2M) one act play and it’s a love story… a unashamed, sloppy, romantic love story. I will be performing this during the PREMIERE festival next year and it will be published shortly. If you would like to read it with a view to performing it then send me an email.

A New Play (again)

After a lot of reading we have selected the script for next production by the Too Friendly Theatre. We are to perform Alan Ayckbourn’s “Time Of My Life” It’s a touching and clever look at the fragility of the family tree. “Gerry Stanton, family patriarch, gets together with his boys at their favorite restaurant to celebrate their mother’s 54th birthday. Everything on the surface seems alright; but after a bit of a mess at dinner things take a unique turn for each couple.”

It’s to be performed from Oct 30th 2008.

Check out their website at www.toofriendlytheatre.com

A Change Of Plan And Miserable Faces

I wrote a little while ago that we were hoping to do “All My Sons” as our next play. However when we wrote off for the performing rights for the play we were told that the rights we not currently available. Fair enough you might think… and I would normally agree with you. However I must say I’m a little annoyed.

If a theatre company contacts a play agent and orders from it a pile of scripts to select for performance… and makes it clear that that is what it is for… and asks it for it’s recommendations… the very least you would expect is that the plays they recommend and allow the theatre company to pay for would be ones that have their rights available!

Anyway suffice to say its back to the drawing board!