O mein GOTT, ich bin so KLEIN!!!  (Oh my god, I'm so LITTLE!!).  My astonished cry at seeing the attached snapshot is still making my colleagues laugh.  Really, it just goes to show how warped our sense of our own appearance can be...

We're playing here three - well, bitches, not to put too fine a point on it.  We finish each other's sentences, fight over a tenor's bleeding entrails (don't ask), and strut around the stage in a line, taking the same steps (well, that's the idea, anyway, occasionally foxed by circumstance).  We have the same costumes (we are all entranced by the leopard-print corsets; many of our male colleagues appeared more fascinated by points further north...).  Exactly the same boots, and we had a couple of costume fittings to make sure that our skirts were the same distance from the floor to the millimetre. 

But there was me thinking that, height-wise, we were much of a muchness.  I knew in my head that my dear friend Trish was taller than me, but hadn't realised at ALL just how much taller - and then there was the photographic evidence to prove that in cold hard fact, in this particular trio I am the unchallenged midget!  (That's me in the middle there:  I know it's not obvious, mind, given the wigs and make-up.)

I'm simply so used to thinking of myself as taller than average that it had not occurred to me that, paired with a couple of tall, slim, beauties, I would be the little one.  Weird.  Not bad at all, just... weird.  I can't get over how many inches I was mentally adding to my height!  (Mind you, I know who I got it from; my father has a lot of people convinced he's six feet tall, whereas in reality he has to cheat a bit to get to five foot ten...)

I fudged the outside of the photo (a) to protect the... well, innocent is maybe not quite the word, given what we're asked to get up to in this production, but at least unwary (OK, the camera angle was not flattering for one of my colleagues, and am not inclined to post a less-than-gorgeous photo of her) and (b) because costume and make-up have yet to be finalised for the production, and I wouldn't wish either to let any cats out of bags or to raise false hopes.  It's Monday now; the curtain rises on the premiere on Saturday night.  Plenty of time for all sorts of changes.  Throughout all of which I shall remain five foot seven and rather surprised...