The American University at Richmond, who knew?

For the show at the American University at Richmond I am not feeling at all well. I am convinced thisn is due to a choking incident three days ago. On Monday night I choked on my antidepressants. When I told her, Em laughed like a drain, pointing out that this was clearly my body's declaration that it wants to live. Funny Em, or would have been had I not been feeling so virusy since it happened.

Anyone who has had an endoscopy will be familiar with this: I did the whole-body-convulstion-choke move. If you've not had an endoscopy, count yourself lucky. An endoscopy taught me that the gag mechanism is not located in the throat/neck area. No, no, no, no, no! It is a total-body manoeuvre, and if we got a farm full of people choking properly we could power the whole of the national grid off them, I swear.

As my body was trying to eject the offending tablet on Monday night, which procedure I was trying to perform quietly enough so's not to wake the lodger, I was reflecting that it would be a great story if I actually knocked my front teeth out on the sink due to doubling up like a prawn against my will. I also had time to consider that if I did knock my teeth out, no matter what strength of antidepressant I was taking, it would surely depress me.

So I spent the wek feeling really rather ill, horrible. Bad throat, out-of-body, tired: off-colour and without energy. I really do not fancy doing a show, to be honest, I'm not sure I can manage it.

What is more, I was not aware there was a Richmond University, but we are having the easiest trip to a show, like, ever – it's just Brixton to High Street Kensington, although it also turns out I have to sit down all the time as we travel. And there really IS a Richmond University, it's an American university.

We have played an American university before, one in Lugano, Switzerland. We had a most enjoyable couple of shows, with a very interesting Q&A after one of the shows. As I recall it ws the first time we had shared a bedroom and what a discovery it was that we can share a room and work together and, now, tour together: makes everything a whole lot cheaper.

Lugano was booked because a member of the university's staff came to the first show we did in Switzerland and hers was the first in the extraordinary line of stories we have been told over the life of the show.

She had been standing in the queue for the Rocky Horror Picture Show in San Franisco in 1979 with a friend. Out of nowhere a guy appeared and stabbed her friend in the back, killing him. She told us how the show made her feel that maybe her reactions at the time, including trying to get her dying friend into her car to take him to hospital, were not deranged but, in fact, within the normal distribution for how one reacts in extreme circumstances. We were... amazed. Amazed that this show could do that but also amazed that somone had carried these feelings of being, well, deeply odd, for 30 years. On the way to our aftershow party of pizza for him and salad for me, I joked that I had done what I'd set out to achieve, and that we could now stop doing the show.

Well, it was a a half-joke: just because we had got away with the show once didn't mean we would the next time. All along I had said that if we made a difference to one person's life then we had done all we needed to do with this show. It seemed like a huge ask of us, of the material... of the universe, that we might change anything for anyone, but here we were, the first preview, and something had radically shifted for a woman we had never met before. Little did we know how this extraordinary experince, this privilege, would repeat itself time after time throughout Switzerland, Edinburgh... and now on into this tour.

So we arrive at Richmond University. We're a bit early and no one is about, so I have a sit on a chair, with my eyes shut: a potential doze. Lovely. And Bartelt, my pet lizard, stands outside sunning himself. This beautiful weather is holding. It's crazy and fantastic. Alex, the lecturer who booked the show, turns up. He can't actually stay for the show but he lets us into the lecture theatre and we shift some tables around.

Then I go for a long lie down in the lecture theatre. Normally my warm-up is hurtling around and singing, but I feel like death. How on earth am I going to be able to do this show? Curse my gag mechanism!

There be dragons

I have breakfast at my table next to the roadworks again. I'm not a creature of habit, but I like a bit of a routine. The rest of the day is sightseeing, really. Oh, first it's lots of admin – the theatre kindly set up some wifi for us in the bar. Three hours of hunched work at low bar tables pass in a flash and Bartelt realises that we need to get out there so he can buy my birthday present: Something From A Charity Shop. We end up doing a really spectacular tour of Leeds, including the more than gorgeous Corn Exchange. I realise this makes me sound very, very British, but the weather is extraordinary. Leeds has obviously had some money put into it for refurbishment, and on a gorgeous day like this it can show itself off wonderfully. But where are the charity shops? We find a vintage shop, where Bartelt buys me two pairs of earrings, and we part company – I've got to go back to the hotel to put on my costume and face for the show. Having scored M&S sale pants yesterday, Bartelt is off to find out what other delights this place has.

The show is a rather lovely experience tonight. Well, it always is, but there are representatives from such disparate parts of my life, as well as total strangers, that I have the delightful experience of knowing some of the audience but not being able to even start about how to 'tailor' my performance for them, so I just do my best and have no space to worry about doing the right thing. Afterwards we are in long, intense, laughter-filled conversations with Simon (knew Kate nearly all her life, son of my godparents), his wife and children, Nick (a police colleague of mine), his wife, uncle and aunt, Mark (another police colleague) and his teenage daughter. Tom (a classmate from a stand-up course I've just completed) and the five he brings along (note to self: I owe Tom a pint) have to shoot off asap, but he later leaves... an amazing and extensive note about the show on facebook.

Walking back to the Ibis, we say again to one another, that this show is bigger than both of us.

It's time to pack on the Saturday morning and for me to head off to meet my friend Dey and his three-year-old son. I have known Dey since we were twelve and his family have recently moved from London to Sheffield. They have brought me a birthday bun with a candle... but not matches. I forgive them – back home is Dey's wife and their new baby daughter – I'm surprised they're dressed and sentient.

When I started at university I became depressed. I'd been pretty depressed quite a lot before that, but I moved into purgatorial shared flats, and what with this being academia, separated from my then boyfriend and wonderful school friends, and making virtually no friends, I stopped coping and got very low indeed, so low that one of the two friends I had made - Angie - couldn't persuade me to open my curtains most of the time. It's a far longer an duller story than I will go into now, but by phoning the accommodation office every day (pretty impressive – this is pre-mobiles and with no phone in my building let alone my flat) I wore them down and got a place in Wyddrington Hall. At the end of my first term, then, I had to move out of the Purgatorial Flats at the end of the winter term ready to move into the hall at the beginning of the spring term. This meant training it home and borrowing Mum's car to come back to clear out my room. I don't remember how it came about, but Dey came with me. He helped me clear my room and accompanied me on the journey. Real generosity. And the wonderful phrase, uttered as we entered The Purgatorial Flats, “I'D be depressed if I had to live here, Becca.” It didn't make me feel normal, but it made me feel slightly less of a failure.

Yesterday, Bartelt and I had found the covered market, where there are lots of cast-iron Dragons above your head. Dey's boy happens to ask if there are dragons in Leeds, to which I am able to answer yes, and off we trot to see them and take a shot of both of them with the dragons.

All too soon we are heading south on a train. Bartelt is able to present me with a lovely necklace he has found for my birthday. We feel like we've been here a while and Bartelt has a difficult decision on his hands: whether he wants to move to Bolton or Leeds.

Small but perfectly formed

In Bolton the usher had loved the show – the first time she's cried in years, which I take as a compliment. Here, the usher is already talking about making sure he can work on this show rather than the main house because he wants to see this again. Ushers. They see everything, meet everyone: don't tell the paying audience, but the usher likes the show I'm happy.

We also have a small but perfectly formed audience for our first night at the Carriageworks, and afterwards we head to the bar with some members of it and the mother of a friend of ours, and talk and talk, and not just me. At the end of the show I had been handed some flowers from Natalie, saying “Now, go and talk about death.” She intended for me to get them before the show, but as I hardly every stop talking about death, the timing is immaterial. They are lovely. I remember Kate and Mum sending me flowers for the last show Kate saw me in. I confess, I'm still waiting for Kate's flowers to arrive for this show. I am bought a birthday glass of sparkling water, which is, strangely, just what I want.

It's not too late when we head back to the hotel and my birthday really gets started. We are sharing a twin room. Little do we know at this stage that by Oxford we'll be sharing not only a bed but a duvet as well. The flowers look great in my room with my cards. It's still Seculent so I have chai tea, Martin has some water and we want to take a picture of this after-show birthday party - the hummus! The banana!. Martin suggests we get someone from downstairs to come up and take it. No, say I: too weird. We manage to get the timer working on my camera and document the moment.

Bartelt is very, very excited about the razor. He wants to use it straight away but the manual is barely comprehensible. It's designed to be clear for all language speakers, using the international language of drawings. Internationally unclear, oblique, imprecise drawings. I am trying to persuade Bartelt of two things: he is meant to charge it for 24 hours before using it and he is meant to wash it under the tap. He is very sceptical indeed about both of these suggestions, but then he looks down on those who read instructions and does not like to be told what to do with his own razor. My last action on my birthday is to reach out of my single bed to take a picture of Bartelt with his nose in the instruction manual, lying in his single bed. His being a linguist and his fluency in four languages is holding him back with the manual, that's for sure. The only words he can find are that the razor company will not be held responsible for any scalding incident which might occur when washing the razor: he has a whale of a time reading this out in several languages as I drift off to sleep.

The special day

It's certainly a rule of the universe that I will wake up before Bartelt and want to get up before Bartelt and may well end up waking him later to tell him it's an hour and a half to the tech/train/doctor's appointment. Our first show day in Leeds turns out to be a very special day. The night before we have had a conversation about Bartelt's electric razor. It's not the first time we've had this conversation, and I feel I've could see where it was going from day one, really, but it's been a tough time for him. He an his electric razor have been together twenty years, through thick and thin – and I don't just mean his hair. We have agreed that today we are going to buy a new razor, and I suspect he's hiding in bed so's not to face the shopping trip. But we are Going To Buy A New One.

The other thing about today is that it's my birthday, so I go down to breakfast, sit in the sunlight of the window and watch the road works which are taking place outside. Comfortable, constant change to remind me that we are all ageing and all in need of a little remedial work every now and then. I treat myself to a pretty nasty coffee out of the machine: it may be SecuLent, but it is my birthday, and I open my cards and a present from my Mum. When Bartelt arrives I get him to take some pictures to commemorate this moment. He's not a fan of the coffee either, but then he is a conoisseur of coffee, able to distinguish between 'sharp' and 'bitter' in his espresso.

For a long time all the time and at the moment in the mornings he has no sense of taste, (presumably why he can bear touring with me) yet he can feel the quality of the coffee in his mouth, and knows how he likes the coffee. Can tell if it's sweet enough, that sort of thing. I have a terrible sense of taste and have none of these skills – I can tell if it's coffee. Or Not. That's it. And when we were first spending time together I didn't really believe he had this skill, but he really can do it.

Delightfully it's a beautiful day in Leeds for our shopping trip, sunny and unseasonably warm. There are lots of shops. Really we are looking for the charity shops. Charity shops are a bit of a compulsion with me. But all we can find is the first-hand shops, and lots of them. Neither of us is into shopping, but if we were we'd be very well catered for here. We find a large branch of Boots. We find the shavers. He wants the one which is the descendant of his present one. Well, actually, he want his old one... Even though we have made this show about grief, the loss of the shaver... I... I really don't know how to comfort him.

Then excellences strikes. The best, young shop assistant ever turns up. Luckily it's a bloke, which means he and Bartelt can talk about shaving. I am very, very ignorant about shaving. All I can do is listen as they discuss their necks. I confess I wandered off a bit, mostly metaphorically, but I join in and we start making the lovely shop assistant laugh. The more he laughs, the sillier we get, to the point where he's more doubled-up than anything else, unable to answer our several shaving questions. It's so much fun making people laugh when they're trying to work, one of my favourite kinds of fun.

We invest in the razor. It's exciting. Basically Bartelt wants to go back to the hotel to see if his new razor will make him look like his just escaped from near death by strangulation, which is the look he and the old razor have been developing for a while now. But we have to work. We spend some time and money failing to find much wifi, me getting tenser and tenser about producery-type things. And then it's time to go and tech at the Carriageworks.

It goes really smoothly, the second great technical person of the tour: Ben. His lighting of the seats for the entrance of the audience is the thing which catches Bartelt's eye. And their studio is a great space, ideal for our purposes – as if we have purposes! - and I can feel some excitement rattling around somewhere inside me.

Off to Leeds!

The last time I was in Leeds it was at least autumn, if not winter, and I was looking at prospective universities. I was going to apply for French and Business Studies. I stll think I'd've enjoyed the Business Studies bit, economics, psycology, filing, right up my street. But I actually didn't want to go to university at all, so it was academic where I looked, that is, they all looked academic to me and, therefore, not that inspiring. It was a colourless, chilly, damp day. And that's all I remember from my first trip to Leeds, and a kind of fear of the city, not Leeds in particular, but cities in general. So, not Leeds's fault at all.

There having not been the money in her family in the 1960s to send her to university, mother was de-ter-MINED that her children would get a degree. Each. Yes, I was bright, but it was only at university that I discovered just how un-academic I am. Staggeringly so, it turned out. Yes, I'm bright with logistics, plenty of EQ, can handle my finances. I can put up a two-metre, cast-iron curtain pole on my own, and the requisite baton, but I'm a terrible reader and to be an academic of any mark at all you need to be able to read, and read and blinking READ endlesss stuff. More stuff than you could if you stayed awake the whole time reading, getting someone to eat your meals for you so you could read a bit more.

There were undoubtedly intimations of this during my last year at school, yet I trotted to great northern educational establishments: UMIST, Keele, Nottingham, to have a look, a rising sense of... panic, I guess, about the whole pursuit. But both my brother and sister were at great northern educational establshments. I think it didn't even occur to me that there was any other way out. My brother is the genuinely academic one amongst us, like mother, and Kate and I were always in awe of his abilities... to read. And to write, actually, phenomenal, clear, exciting writing, both in content and style.

My second jaunt to Leeds is entirely different: early afternoon of an unseasonably fine day in spring. We take our possessions to our hotel and then we go exploring, finding the Carriageworks where we are due to do the show pretty quickly. The centre of Leeds is lovely, it turns out. Someone's been doing some renovations since I was last here. All very shiny and lovely. And the Carriageworks looks great too. And everyone's so friendly. But, of course, the best thing is that Bartelt and I have spotted two, yes, TWO Thai restaurants, which means that he's happy.... as happy as he gets, that is.


Over dinner I get onto Twitter. Yes, there I am, not talking to Bartelt, but looking at it flash past on my tiny phone, and I notice that The Paper Birds are at the Carraigeworks runnning a discussion about whither feminism within theatre, right now. Obviously, we've already ordered supper and we'd be very late even if we went straight there now, but I can watch the feed and tweet a few things. The long-and-the-short of it is that we meet them later in the pub and talk about feminism, the cuts in theatre, their next show, our current tour. I am only human and can be heard to curse Twitter, but I've been on it quite a lot for the show and it really is a pretty amazing way of findinig out, well, all sorts of things. And you might also get to meet interesting people who you otherwise might not, because of it.

We leave early-ish as tomorrow is a special day....

Kate's mates

We were lucky to have several friends – and their friends and family - coming to the Bolton show and afterwards we all sat round a big table and talked about Things That Matter. Hoorah! Being bullied because of your sexuality, so much so that you have to leave the police force, someone's sister who died at 39 of breast cancer, the effects of Down's Syndrome, both now and in the 1960s, spinal injuries..... it was just lovely! One of the unforeseen effects of this show is that conversation misses out the nice-weather-which-motorway-did-you-come-on-I-think-I-might-paint-the-bathroom-this-colour-do-you-think-they-still-make-it chat at the door. And we laughed, including at each other, the various misfortunes or unexpected turns of our lives, the stories bouncing along like running gags.

We had agreed to see Kate's mates the next day in Manchester for a kind of reunion lunch, organised by Laurence. In the past Laurence has also organised other events with friends of his and Kate's to remember her. As a family we'd not been able to join them for any of these.

Meeting up with a few of Kate's mates is a lovely prospect, although there is something in me which feels so inadequate. We all at this lunch – with the possible exception of Bartelt – want to see Kate. It's ridiculous I know, but I still have the feeling that.... I'm in Loco Kate... because I look like her? Because I talk about her? Because I'm doing this show? I really don't know why, it's ridiculous, but I feel like a monumental disappointment because I am not Kate and I don't understand why she died either.

So we meet for lunch in central Manchester. Bartelt had to run around taking pictures and then we join the friends. We talked about Kate, about Radio Manchester, about journalist safety, people's experiences of hearing the news that Kate had died. We had some drinks, we had some lunch. Kate was the dead centre of this lunch, but at least she was alive in our memories. And it was excellent to understand why she had loved her time at Radio Manchester (then called GMR) so much – what great folk and how they loved her. How they still love her, like I do. That's some kind of comforting, I think. Obviously, I'd met lots of them before, and yet another of the odd things that happen when somebody dies is that every relationship shifts, a littlle or syzmically, which is exhausting, disorientating and enlightening. I am no longer Rebecca, the little sister of Kate, I am Rebecca, Kate's surviving sister.

Halfway up the Stairs

Our accommodation in Bolton was very comfy and clean – gotta love clean. And yesterday we had a classic post-show experience without the show. We bumped into the woman who runs the place and we were saying how lovely it was when she told us that she used to run it with her husband and that he had died, three weeks ago. For those who might accuse me of looking for death, destruction and misery wherever I go, I swear she was the first to mention the D word as we were halfway up the stairs, walking away from her.

Her shock and pain were all over her, palpable, as Martin and I stood above her, listening to her story. An amazing, moving, mundane story of incomprehensible loss. She had started as a cleaner in the b&b and her husband had started managing it and, by the time of his death, they were running it together. And now he had gone and left her to get on with all that AND to look after the children, all five of them. There was nothing we could say, of course, but we could listen. It was so touching and we were so privileged to hear about all this, that we didn't even give her a flyer, almost unprecedented.

Later I went to chat to her, literally on the level. She told me about what kind of a man he had been, the work they did, how he had died, who had found him. We had a cry, we had a hug. What more could I offer? I told her what a great job we thought she was doing with the place, she really wanted to carry on the business as he had run it, as he would have wanted. Her son had served us at breakfast, and we now understood his nervous, halting interaction: not only was he new to it – and a teenager - but... his father had just died. The woman kept saying she is a hard-as-nails Bolton lass, but that she finds herself bursting into tears, driving, when a song comes on. Virtually any song. It's strange, that, about music: when you're in love every silly love song makes sense, when you're grieving every silly song can make the bucket of tears you have become overflow. Or maybe that's just me and the hard-as-nails lass from Bolton.

The. Amazing. Bolton. Octagon.

I keep having to explain to Bartelt that the weather in the north of England can be rainy and grey as well as absolutely perfect. Bolton looks gorgeous on 18 March and I leave him fast asleep (he's not an early riser) while I trot round town, my first time here. I fancy I can feel the recession, but what do I know?

It turns out the Octagon is just near the library. It springs itself on me out of the blue, mainly because I can't find my way around whichever trousers I'm wearinig, let alone a new town. I go into The Bolton Octagon. The. Bolton. Octagon. The box office staff recognise me. Of course they do – the poster has my great, big phizog on it, but it's pretty weird all the same. I meet the technical guy... who I already know, which is great, and have a look at the studio. It's a lovely studio. I can't believe my luck – I'm getting to do a one-woman show here tonight.

Surprisingly Bartelt is not hungover after his scrumpy experience but it's too cold for him to sit outside in the sun. We sit inside, in the sun. I have various producery-type things to do. Bartelt has none. After years of touring companies of up to 48 people worldwide he is taking a while to adjust to the idea that all he has to do is check that he has me with him. He keeps saying “That's all I need: you!” and laughing with sheer joy.

Time to go and wash my hair, put on too much make-up, prepare for the show in general. On my mind are my sister's friends who are coming to the show.

Although Kate's first experience of working in radio was at Radio Suffolk, her first post-Darlington-training-course jobs were at GMR (now Radio Manchester) and Radio Merseyside. She gained her Civil Enginerring degree (don't ask) in Manchester, she loved the city so much, that freeancing there was, at first, a real pleasure for her. I think she couldn't quite believe that she had made this work, got the career started that she wanted, was back in Manchester loving life.

And she made great friends there... some of them are coming tonight. And other friends of mine and Martin's, but I am very focused on these mates of Kate's: how will they cope with this show? The show is so many things to so many people, but it's something... complicated, sometimes painful, certainly poignant for people who knew and loved Kate. I don't know how it is for them, but I know that Bartelt and I will be there at the end to share a drink with them, or even to buy them one of their own.

From the sublime Exchange to the ridiculous scrumpy attack

I took Bartelt to the Royal Exchange in Manchester, once we'd had one of China Town's finest late lunches. Of course, being human, he was blown away by the place. And of course, being Bartelt, he wanted to take pictures of everything, including the pictures in the season's brochure. Yes, he was being even more Mr Beanish than usual. We just sat and had a drink and planned our conquest, through the medium of excellent theatre, of the building. Easy.

We then travelled first class to Bolton, found our lovely accommodation, and went to a twelfth century pub. In our rock 'n' roll way we sat and read our books, mine about the fiscal past, present and future of the USA, his about dragon riders, elves and dwarves.... in the present, I guess. Halfway through his pint, he revealed he was feeling quite drunk and that his cider was a bit odd. It was cloudy. I gave it a sniff: it wasn't cider, it was scrumpy. Dammit, but that barman, who had used a southern accent to talk to Martin The Foreigner, who had seemed so kind, had sold my lightweight director his first pint of scrumpy.

It was pretty urgent that I got him home. He was starting to talk about a further pint of scrumpy. We had to avoid the various bars with offers of exotic shots and the pumping Euro-tunes, the temptations were several for Captain Scrumpied on St Paddy's Day. I took his arm. We were going to get home. And then he stared barking, growling and sometimes whimpering, he started lifting his leg at every opportunity. He wasn't just becoming a dog, he was becoming a drunken dog, a dog of feeble mind.

17 March 2011: off to Bolton!

For SecuLent I am off tea and coffee. As a secular Christian I like to mark the Lenten period in some way, and I have chosen well with excluding tea and coffee. It is clear to me now, just over a week in, that I was becoming pretty obsessed with having a kettle to hand and a little hottie on the go all the time. Of course there are lots of alternatives these days, even out of the home, but I had forgotten how much sugar there is in chai tea latte. No more of that. And it occurs to me now, as I write, that maybe a chai TEA latte has got tea in it....

So here I am, next to Bartelt, on the train to Bolton, utterly wired on a chai-tea-latte-sugar-high. The landscape thundering past seems to be going at the right speed, I feel slightly weepy at this being the first train journey of 25 or so which will comprise the tour and I have the clear desire to get up and dance. Luckily for everyone Bartelt (due to his claustrophobia) is sitting by the aisle so I can't get out.

We stopped for Bartelt's breakfast at one of the cafes in Euston. Of course we got talking to the people next to us (AKA we started talking to some poor innocents). They are off to see friends they met on holiday who live in the Wirral. We agreed that it's great to visit new places in the UK and it's true, I'm really excited about all the new places I'll be seeing, and all the famous theatres.

I am grateful to be touring this show, grateful to everyone who has contributed to getting us on the road and in awe of all the journalists who are bringing me news from all over the world, from Japan to Libya, the bloggers, the fixers.... so that I can read glorious newspapers and my sugar-high twitter feed, as I sit in cafes on tour, supping on.... hot water.