Lesson 1: Go It Alone

It all started because I wanted to buy a programme. Well, I tell a lie, it all started many years ago when I spent a whole summer watching re-runs of Cagney and Lacey and hoping I would, one day, be Christine Cagney. Sadly, I took a job at a local leisure centre instead and my hopes of being a savvy New York cop were dashed.

In October 2011, my Mum said “you know that Sharon Gless woman is in a play don’t you?” Wait, Sharon Gless, a star of Cagney and Lacey, is in a play in London. I immediately ask everyone I know if they want to go; my friends, my Mum, even my Nan. They aren’t fussed about my childhood obsession and I need to make a decision; I book ONE ticket. I’m going to theatre alone. Oh God.

So I’m sitting there, waiting for it to start. There are groups of friends coming in and taking their seats, laughing and drinking. I’m sitting there like a loner and wishing I had managed to convince the nice homeless man I met at Hammersmith tube to accompany me. Even he had other plans. Jeez. So I buy a programme and keep my head down, I’m trying not to make eye contact as I’m one of those people that strangers like to talk to.

I clock these two women enter and I immediately know what’s going to happen...and I’m right. There are loads of empty seats and they choose the ones right next to me. Not even a spare seat between us, RIGHT bloody next to me. This was always going to happen, it’s just my luck. I don’t look up, I pretend to read the Sharon Gless biography page for the third time. And then it happens...

“I’ll have to get my own programme because I keep looking over this lady’s shoulder.” She means me. Great. And now I’ll have to say something, I’ll have to lend her my programme AND make conversation. This isn’t how I wanted this night to turn out. I hand it over.

“So why have you come to see the show?” she asks.

“Cagney and Lacey.” It’s an honest answer, but I sound like a tit. I’m the youngest person in the theatre and I’ve come to watch a play on my own because of some 1980’s cop drama that I obsessed over when I was nine. What an utter moron.

She laughs. “That’s a great reason actually. I’m Rebecca.” This strange woman next to me isn’t taking the mick, she’s being nice. And I now don’t feel like a complete loser. We talk some more and the play begins.

Sharon Gless is fab, obviously. Though there was a part of the show where she has an orgasm onstage (it was scripted, not improvised) and that wierded me out. Cagney would never do that. I have my fingers crossed the whole play for an impromptu onstage arrest and some New York banter, but it didn’t happen.

So it turns out that Rebecca is an actress and is in a one-woman show and hands me a flyer. I promise I’ll go, though at the time I was sceptical. Did I really want to go to theatre on my own? Again? This could be a bad habit in the making. But, despite being in the company of strangers and far from home, I’ve had a good time. And a couple of months later, I go and see Rebecca’s show and that was good too and we have a drink afterwards and that’s pretty much how my adventure of exploring places started.

All I did was buy a programme and I made a friend. In the past few months I've done so many things I would never have done before, most of them on my own too. I guess you’ve just got to not be scared to do things on your own once in a while. Just because your friends don’t share all your interests doesn’t mean you have stop having a passion for those subjects. Rule number one is sometimes go it alone, it just means your having an adventure and, based on my experience so far, I’d say it’s a risk worth taking.