The theatres are starting to open a bit, bringing small clumps of bruised and suspicious humans through their impressive hallways and into their pokey rehearsal rooms once again, with buzzers if they get too close to one another. The smell of tea and feet. Table work for weeks and then missing the table work for weeks. A stage manager whose whole job is to shout “Covid” at all your ideas. Possibilities bandied and crystallised and guided towards and amplified and cut. It’s likely going to be a decent summer as the chances of work start to improve at long last. Not the best time to consider upping sticks and fucking off to Jersey. But it’s time. Past time. And the border opens on the 26th. I’m going to blow every penny of my next SEISS payment trying to finally slice through the Gordian knot I’ve inherited. I’m inches away from booking it now but travel – even on a car ferry – is hard. I’m just going to the Channel Islands and it’s like I’m visiting a prison from a leper colony. I have to pay for travel insurance. Money in the pocket of the insurance company. I have to pay for 3 PCR tests at whatever price they decide to set for them in Jersey. That’ll probably be a couple of hundred quid to whichever of Boris’s cronies got the contract. Day 0 test. Apparently they’ll accept one done over here. Day 3 test. Presumably it’ll have to be sent to me wherever I manage to quarantine myself. Ditto day 10 then wait for result. I won’t get out of jail for ten days after a £300 ferry ticket. I’m hoping I’ll be able to go to jail somewhere nice but money… All the stuff I’ve been able to find online involves indoor space and if I don’t have access to something outdoors for 10 days it’ll kill me. I’m hoping family over there can help. It’s all so up in the air right now. But I have to go, while things are still slow, or I’ll lose out on work down the line when it really starts to move again – and it will. The ice caps are melting.
Lou is gonna take Mao which works brilliantly as she frequently catsits two pedigree ragdolls one of which demands goat’s cheese at 3am every night. Mao just wants evening cuddles and to be asleep where he can hear you. And something to mangle.
The fish have an automatic feeder and light. The snake? Within a week I need to find somebody that likes reptiles and doesn’t mind puppeting a dead mouse every once in a while. I’ll drop him round with food and show you how it’s done. Any takers?
I’m likely to book it tomorrow or the next day at the latest for price, and leave before the end of the month for a full calendar month out there. Boom.
AlBarclay 