All I had to do just now was stand on a stage and speak through a radio mic about Shakespeare with Ffion for a little bit. And still, coming off stage, I’m flushed with adrenaline. It’s weird. I must be addicted to the stuff. It would make sense. Dad was. He based his existence on it too, making risky trades and going as fast as possible in all sorts of different vehicles.
Now I’ll sit here for a bit. Then I’ll go and insult Ffion for a while, and then sit here again. Then I’ll play a sort of Hamlet drinking game with 300 submarine engineers. And then I’ll eat food and drink wine. It’s not rocket science. Although it’s a bugger to learn, and I haven’t done this one for ages. Standing there with Ffion just now it felt a bit like we were speaking a foreign language. Now I’m surfing adrenaline and getting some words in the can so I can be better company when we’re finished. I haven’t seen Ffion for a while.
You have to be resourceful about making money in this game, for the periods between jobs. The fees have mostly been going down in the years I’ve done this business. Commercials, which are the jobbing actor’s big bonus – they’re often paying about half what they used to do ten years ago. I turned my nose up to a corporate job the other day where the fee was too low for the nature of the work. This was lovely but it’s been a while. There have been periods where we did this work three times a week. Now it’s been months and months. It felt like another country.
I’m home now finally. Time jump. I’m still dressed in my armor. It was fine, performing to a load of submariners. They were not the most willing. But they enjoyed it despite being hammered for the third piece of the night.
I was talking to a (drunk) friend of mine on the phone just now – on my mobile on the bus – when he got punched by a (drunk) woman mid sentence. I got it all live. The bouncer told him “If that’d been the other way round I’d be holding you down right now and asking her if she wanted to press charges. Still. Do you want to?”
Saturday night, vicariously. They’d had a (drunk) row about bullshit and mutual friends. He’d held his ground and phoned me for corroboration about some spurious crap she was slinging around. I said “Put her onto me,” but she punched him instead of talking to me.
Everyone in this city is hammered right now. London is a seething entitled shitstorm of opinions and alcohol slosh. I’m glad I’m home, warm, with the cat. Brian and Mel are about the only people in London sleeping and they left half a bottle of white wine in the living room. I might have to do some catching up on my own with Pickle. I could neck it and punch someone about nothing. Although I guess I’d have to punch myself as I’m not punching Pickle and Brian and Mel are in bed and I don’t want to punch them either. Perhaps I should go to bed too.
Pickle and I gonna work it out.
Year one – Theatre in a shopfront
AlBarclay 