Today I went back to the electric sanding machine. I piled everything into the middle of the room and covered it all in a dust cover, and then I attacked the ceiling woodwork paint with the sander. It’s all cracked with damp and flaking. You can’t paint on top of it until it’s been sanded down as it’ll come off again, but the plastering is so damaged I keep knocking out chunks of it and making the job bigger for myself. This is going to be harder than it looks. It’s why normal grown-ups with normal jobs go on holiday to Crete and hide the valuables while those nice young men come in and work like slaves for three days sanding and painting and sweating oh my! I’m very tempted to get somebody in myself. My knowledge is lacking and it’s miserable doing this on your own. I keep getting paint flakes in my eyes, and the dandruff of it all was in my hair until just now.
Halfway through the job my agent rang to tell me I’m recalling for one of the self tapes I did last week. It’s on Zoom tomorrow afternoon. So now I suddenly have to stop the job again and turn the room back into an office so I can be unruffled in it tomorrow. A good excuse to pause the works again and set back. It’s a weird life, but if this job lands I hereby swear that I’m going to pay people to finish the bloody room. I’ll leave the valuables out and go to wherever I’m allowed for a few days before coming back to a lovely finished room and a bit less dollar, and I’ll feel like it’s a stepping stone in the game of life.
I won’t envy whoever does it. Even with a gyroscope in it, the sanding machine is very effective but believe me it’s heavy work using it upside down. You have to push this oddly moving vibrating weight into the ceiling above your head while chunks of old paint rain down on you and fill your ears and eyes and collar. I was wearing my grandfather’s Rockall vintage red denim chore jacket – fashionably and effectively dressed darling – and it’s just as well because after twenty minutes it was covered in crap. Twenty minutes is about the limit of my endurance for it right now so I threw the thing off and made tea. My head was spinning from vibration and my arms both hurt from working above my head and I was headrushing from lack of oxygen in a mask that’s actually getting its proper use for a change. I’m not as fit as I thought I was.
The room is a little bit closer to done after a few shifts. A little little bit closer That’s it for now though. I’m going to rebuild the studio tomorrow morning for my zoom meeting. I have a suspicion this is just a sanity check and maybe a chemistry test with the other actors. I’ll get to meet the director and he makes really nice clean stuff so I reckon it’ll be a pleasure. He gets good performances out of people. I’ll just need to look sharp and not be a twit I reckon. Both things I’m capable of, believe it or not – even in auditions.
Right now, bed is calling louder than usual…
AlBarclay 