Waking up after a night like last night isn’t one of my specialist skills. I won’t be putting it on my Spotlight. But I did it.
I arrived at the party last night with a Magnum of fizz. I booked the job I wrote about a while ago where there was a confusion about the times. I was in the mood to celebrate. I had a costume fitting in suburbia for it though, the afternoon after the party – this afternoon. Everything is shutting down for Christmas so they rushed me in. Late enough in the day for it to be perfectly reasonable for me to get across London in time. Early enough that I had to haul myself stinking and unwashed out of the house to get there in time. I’m running a bath now I’m home, but I’ve already promised myself that the money for this job goes first and foremost towards a goddamn shower. I’m used to waiting 45 minutes for the bath to fill. But it makes it hard to put the place on Airbnb. And most normal human beings get to wash quickly when they need to.
I arrived in a warehouse full of clothes.
I tried on a selection of suits. My character seems to think of himself as reasonably stylish, so I’ll be looking sharp. The wheels of this big machine are turning now, and I remember how many people are involved on a set. I’ve been sending my photograph to hair and make-up, who have been asking me to make sure I don’t have a haircut. Of course. They booked me based on my tapes. I’m not now going to go on a mini-break to Lanzarote and get a tan, or shave my head. My tape was my proposal for the part, aided by an extremely positive and helpful casting director. They accepted it. All I need to do now is make sure I look like the guy in the tape, know my lines backwards, show the fuck up and put no specifics or pointers on social media. It’s not rocket science. But you’d be surprised how often people don’t do it. No public guessing please. And if I’m not gonna fuck this up for myself if I can help it.
I’m home post show waiting for a bath to run and a chicken Kiev to cook. I’m not sure which will happen first but I suspect it’ll be the chicken. Perhaps I’ll sit in the bath eating it. Time is of the essence. I’ve got 4 shows in two days coming up, with Christmas looming close upon us and not a single bauble on my wall at home. So much to be done. Oh so very much to be done. And tomorrow morning two delivery people are going to show up with an oven and swear about the internal flight of stairs before making it as difficult as possible to remove my old oven. They might come in time for me to get to the show with comfortable time to spare. They might faff around and make it squeaky-bum time for the matinee tomorrow. 1pm. It’s too early for humbuggery. But Maddy will be in da house. So I’m just gonna do the show for her. Friends make it all better.
AlBarclay 