I just made my first ever pie with pastry. I’m telling you about it because it’s the only thing I did all day other than walk around reading from a play and mumbling to myself. For those periods where I am studying, I expect there are some people who look out of windows all day who have come to think of me as “mumbly book man”. One of my mumbly walks brought me to the Tesco near my house. They have a reduced section where things go down to 17p. Brian and I have taken to calling it “The Gods”. “The Gods” frequently tell us what we are going to be eating. Sometimes the Gods are bountiful, sometimes confused, sometimes angry. When they are angry, they bring nothing, when they are confused they offer nothing but inedible microwave squalor. The first time Brian and I went there, they were bountiful. It’s what started the whole thing off. There was a huge selection of fish – we got about 6 fillets for £1.20. We turned it into a fish curry and ate for two days. Today the bountiful Gods called for pie. There were two punnets of mushrooms, 2 bunches of spring onions, double cream, puff pastry and a packet of organic chicken breasts. I got the lot for under 3 quid. Then used a bit of old wine and turned them into a pie. Turns out it’s easier than I thought. And tastier than I expected. Although it looked shite and I burnt my tongue from wolfing it. That’s annoying as I have to speak unbelievably eloquently tomorrow.
Just as the pie came out of the oven, Phil the boiler magician came over to pick up some stuff. Turns out he didn’t pay a plumber to fix the boiler after all. He just poked it a bit and it turned on. Which is disconcerting, as I poked it for ages and got nothing. Clearly Phil is better at poking than I am.
Now I am waiting for my friend Anne-May to arrive and replace Phil as our regular sofa-tenant. It really is a revolving door at the moment. Which is joyful. But that’s the problem with London. This city is absurdly expensive – although LA is worse. Most of my closest friends are broke artists of various kinds. I’m constantly at war with myself about quality of life versus cashflow, in that I know I could be much smarter about how I use this place. But I love having people over when they’re broke, and I rarely feel that they’re taking the piss. And the things they bring to my flat are never unwelcome. Phil poked my boiler happy, and got me a bag of supplies. Anne-May might not know it yet, but she’s going to help me by running the scenes for tomorrow’s meeting in the morning. There’s no substitute for speaking the lines out loud with someone. I wander around outside mumbling to myself because it ensures that I don’t fall into patterns. I usually disguise the script, so it doesn’t look like I’m hoping everyone notices I’m reading from a script dahling. I’d much sooner they thought I was insane than knew I was an actor.
AlBarclay 