Balls

I sat at a table. It was sunny and we were outdoors. The turf was bright and healthy. Sprinklers were running funded in part by the £6.00 I gave the man in order for him to let me hit a bunch of golf balls.

Before I sat at that table, I spent a while remembering why my dear deceased dad despaired of me as a young man. He sent me to Murray the golf pro. He really wanted me to be good at golf. Back then I didn’t understand my body at all. Murray couldn’t stop me chopping the thing haphazardly all over the place when driving. My putting is excellent, precise and accurate. Put a driver in my hand and I’m like the axe murderer in a cheap slasher movie. The ball goes somewhere, but it’s not in the air and it’s not where I want it to go.

“You might get a last minute job on set tomorrow – is that ok?” This from my agent’s assistant. She’s worried I might be driving or somesuch and I have to explain the scale of priority in my existence. 1: Acting Work. 2: Breathing. 3: Everything Else apart from 4: Whatever random stuff I’m doing to earn money while I wait for #1 to come in. This is why I select things that can be done in my own time. You never need to check if I want the work before you pitch me for it. I want the work. Especially right now when it feels like most of the people I know are on set. “That’s confirmation bias,” says Kaffe on the phone and he’s right of course. But it feels like it.

So I went and hit a ball and then I sat at a table. What a lovely life. The summer approaches and the light is holding on until after eight o’clock now. Oh the glorious days of summer, bring them to me, let me clutch them.

I had coffee at the table. Tristan had a Heineken 0%. Neither of us have drunk since last summer. The need has left me now and I reckon I could get back to occasional wine without immediately turning into a wild eyed maniac junkie once more. I’m not going to though.

People around us were also sitting at tables. I’d forgotten about that, how people talk loudly and you hear their shitty conversations. Tristan had to quieten me down as the guys hitting balls around us were getting the contents of my head on how Astrazeneca had to involve the UK government in order to resist being acquired by Pfizer a few years ago and all sorts of other gubbins about my frustrated need to ply my craft and how easy it is to blow a car tyre on the streets of London – I had to swap mine out for the spare again this morning. I’m not used to being in company or in public. None of us are. But there we are. I went to a place. To Duke’s Meadows.

Oh the things, the things. They are coming back, the things. All of them. I find it exhausting at the moment, venturing out into the world. Bed. I shall go to bed. Tomorrow is another day. You’re in it. I shall be too.