Another day of cold calling, sitting in my little patch of light coming across the Thames. Tom is staying for a night or two, directing a monologue at Vault. By the time evening was falling I was looking forward to him coming home. Nice to share space a bit in these dark months. He has a signature pasta Arrabiata that he has banged out in the past, and it came out again this evening just as I noticed I was hungry. We just spent the last few hours talking in detail about all the things. The state of the country, the state of the world, the state of the theatre industry. Which leaders in all three spheres are mad or foolish or brilliant or quitting.
Turkey and Syria have had terrible quakes today, reminding those of us who don’t live on a fault line how incredibly fortunate we are. Liz Truss is blaming those Marxists at the Bank of England for her inability to function as a leader. Rishi is having to reshuffle to try and scrabble for any remaining scraps of credibility. They’ve pulled the rug out from under wonderful Hampstead Theatre. Who is gonna take over The Royal Court? We didn’t get onto Putin. Horrible situation over there in The Ukraine. There IS light, but strangely the darkness is more visible right now. At least the sun shone today on me and my notepad as we worked our way through the list.
I’m done with the cold calling. That’s that forever. If I’m asked to do it again I’ll be too busy doing anything else. It’s nice to say yes to things and saying yes has made a very interesting existence for decades but I’m having to forge boundaries now and that work didn’t feed me at all. I dreaded it beforehand, hated it during and needed to decompress from it after. No more. I’m definitely worth more than that.
Tom’s in the bath and I’m moving the piles of unaddressed boxes that have snuck into my bedroom out again and into the spare room. I can’t welcome Lou into clutterbedroom. I don’t see these things – almost a blind spot to the white noise of stuff – but I know that others do and I want Lou to be happy in my space like I am in hers. I’m looking forward to having some company in London, even if we are both gonna be busy busy busy.
Early-ish bed tonight and a hot bath to come just as soon as Tom is out of his one. Wash off the phone calls and the stinkiness. Epsom salts, warmth, expense, candles and Dr. Bronners hilariously packaged castille soap (rose variety).
AlBarclay 