An early bed is in order today. I woke up at about ten and drank a litre of water and still felt awful. Frank and I sorted some books and filled some bags with unwanted things. I had three cups of coffee and two cans of lucozade. Sitting on the kitchen table was a script and a pencil. Occasionally I looked at it guiltily before going through another pile of books.
The sorting is beginning to feel therapeutic even though it’s difficult. In this heat and hungover it was particularly hard to do. Still, progress happened. There’s too many books but a smaller amount of too many now. I still find throwing them away hard but practice makes perfect.
The dump is huge and has lots of categories. I took my time there. I really like to try to make sure things are sent back round in some way. I took a big old lamp there that originally came from The Sloane Club. They put it out on the street so it ended up by my bed. I put it in the place where you put things that work. I’m trying to reverse the stuffflow. The stuff … it has gathered around me. Now it must leave and continue to leave. I can streamline more and more, until I become sleek and tight and fit like a racehorse, able to respond at a moment’s notice.
Dump stuff dumped, I felt a little lighter. Time to attend to that script. Oh but the mackerel.
I bought two fresh mackerel on my way out of Brighton five days ago. That’s about as long as you can leave it. Fifteen minutes to whack it up in the oven. Longer to eat than cook. Fresh fish, it’s lavverley. Even five days old.
Work? Work.
Radio. You don’t need to learn it, but it is very helpful to beat it out, think about actions and intentions, work out where you’ll be chinking glass and so forth. I like an annotated script. You don’t get lots of do overs, so you want to be easy. In the hot flat my external sorting subtly changed to thoughtwork as I tried to structure a way through the character I’m playing tomorrow. I also watched a lovely interview with him – he’s a real guy, and absolutely loved textiles from the Caucasus. Listening to him talk about tattoos and dialects and the contents of his very clever head I warmed to him hugely. It’s always pleasant to play good people occasionally. I get to play a lot of dicks.
As darkness fell an old friend came over and gave me some stuff to hold for the shoot next week. It’s only coming in temporarily. By now my hangover is just a memory of sugar. We laughed lots, the warm evening closed in. Now I’m in bed and it isn’t even ten. I’m making sure I sleep long and well tonight. You’ve had two drunkblogs in a row. That’ll do, pig. That’ll do.
AlBarclay 