arsenal 3 February 2009
okay OKAY I was wrong, arsenal got their Arshavin lad. Look, even I have my moments. Of course, the Husband, who made me put that in as an honours blog item and ASSURED me there was no way the F.A. would allow an extension of the transfer window because of a shower of snow, is now saying he’s delighted for Arsenal and always knew they’d get their player – MEN!!!!
Today was a little more rubbish than yesterday in Dublin because of the weather – it was snowyISH but really it was just rainy and everyone used it as an excuse to be slow and awful. Now it’s windy again so who knows what more bad behaviour that will encourage.
Speaking of which, we did 2 runs of the play today – hmmm – I have discovered I need better adhesive for my teeth as they tend to wander round my mouth and make even ordinary, easy verbs mush and unintelligible. As for the force of running headlong into every little railroad hoarding you knew about but hoped to avoid? well, let’s say I am bruised. More tomorrow. And only 3 sleeps till a paying audience sees it on Friday…scary!
I also had a packet of Cheesy Wotsits from the local supermarket (I had avoided THEM all along, as opposed to all of the other obstacles, but no more) and quite a few Percy Pigs and a far too many Werther’s Toffees so I am FILLED with self loathing on those counts too…
Mutley 3 February 2009
This is Nicola’s cat MUTLEY who is enjoying the latest novel.
wimps 2 February 2009
Honest to goodness we are softies in these isles. When myself and The Husband travel over the New Year it’s to actually cold and snowy places. Minsk, this year, was at it’s warmest when a balmy minus 4 degrees so all the squealing about a bit of snow over here now is leaving me, erm, cold. It’s a mere sprinkling of the stuff. I can’t understand why everything is SO compromised when it occurs – it’s not like we’ve NEVER experienced snow or ‘cold’ conditions (and I still refuse to call this truly cold). We were in St Petersbourg once and it was between minus 25 and minus 30 (depending on the windchill factor) THAT, my friends was COLD – so cold you could have snapped your nose off and not noticed, so cold you had to go indoors to thaw out after every hundred steps, so cold the breath that you exhaled through your scarf froze and became ice immediately – COLD COLD COLD. And you know what? the buses still ran, businesses opened, life went on.
Mind you, extension or no extension “cos of this ‘cold’ weather” won’t get Arsenal that Russian they’re after – the Russians scoff at this ‘cold spell’ they don’t need to use it as a transfer window extension – extend all you like – let it snow let it snow let it snow – he’s NOT COMING…
i'll huff and i'll puff 1 February 2009
Sounds like thar’s a storm a-blowin out there. I always liked that when I was a kid and tucked up safe and sound in bed. I think, as we go on, that’s a lot of what we are trying to achieve again, that sense of safety. Having said that, I am living in a house still being attacked on a daily basis by builders and just praying that they have reattached the roof correctly – seems fine so far, fingers crossed. Wish they’d actually finish a few rooms now, or any room at all…
Did a few things to make myself feel better today including starting a VAT return, on the grounds that I might be owed money but I can’t find my calculator (builders in da house, nuff said) for the finnicky 13.5% calculation on Irish gas and electricity and cannot find that symbol on my phone calculator – it has probably been outlawed as obsolete – I am left with the feeling that I should not have ever ditched my abacus…
Learned more lines – or rather I frightened myself by realising how loosely I had committed a lot of the play to memory (a rambling journey around the words) and am now trying to do the playwright justice by learning her version (infinitely better than mine). have crossed my toes on this one to go with the fingers re the roof and have now run out of digits so will move onto limbs…
mistake.... 31 January 2009
sorry Sorry SORRY – looks like NEXT week is the episode of DEMONS that I’m in. For what it’s worth, I’ll miss it as when it begins I will be quaking backstage waiting to do the 2nd preview of OCTOBER. There is a chance that myself and the Hub will figure out how to work the taping thingy on the Sky box by the…or maybe not…For those who tuned in tonight, I hope you liked the show and will give it another go next week – SORRY, again.
The rest of the day has passed in a blur of trying my BEST to sleep in (not v successful), washing clothes, meeting 2 men about a job, and going back to Dublin’s ‘top’ department store to get them to remove the effin security tag on the shirt I bought myself last Saturday – most annoying. As it was, after I left there (Brown Thomas) last week I beeped everywhere I went but assumed it was a bottle of vitamins I’d got earlier which had a security strip on it. I apologise to those vitamins as they were innocent (like those of you who now feel DUPED into watching ‘Demons’ this evening).
The Fear is growing with the knowledge that I am 5 days away from facing the public with the show…liquidy feeling all over…and not a good liquidy feeling either…
slops 30 January 2009
For those of you, and there were many, who were horrified by the waste of beer I must reiterate that I would have dipped a glass into the basin with the 6 bottles of castaway Bud in it BUT there were slops from tea and coffee making in there too – I know that my tum takes all of that on board in the course of a day but it’s tough to tuck in when you see the actual mess you are mushing up in there before it gets mushed up…in there…
I am in the final (fantastic) episode of DEMONS on ITV tomorrow night for them of you wot’s been tuned in. Great stuff, I’ve thought, and hopefully there’ll be another series ordered toot sweet.
We did a run of the play today and it was…instructive. I have ceremoniously chewed 3 fingernails as a result. I am now going to ground to learn my lines in a definitive way rather than the Vaguely There And VERY CERTAIN Way I have been employing thus far, which should be, ehm, interesting…
Firstly, though, I shall sleep till tis unfashoinable.
beer 29 January 2009
I hate waste. It happens, I know, and I am responsible for quite a bit more than I’d like and I cannot justify that fully but I TRY, I try. I was leaving rehearsals today and some more props had just arrived, including bottles of beer for the party that is thrown in the course of the action. Before I could yell ‘WTF?!’ our Stage Manager had emptied 6 bottles of Bud into a basin of slops!!! It was the end of a long and complicated day and, if asked, the cast would have been delighted to drink ‘em! It cut me, I can tell you, shattered me. I was in time to save the six-pack of Tiger and shell make short work of those, with help from my comrades tomorrow. Now to see if Stage Management would like me to swap some empty wine bottles (Christmas is still hanging around our building site, I mean house, like a bad fart) for full and real ones…all for Art, you understand…
wrecked 28 January 2009
I am too old to parday now, as we know, but also too old not to have close to me 8 hours sleep. So, 4.30am (yes, the WORNG 4.30) came EARLY this morning and I was barely human by the time the car came to get me to bring me to Heathrow – many thanks to Jo Males of Goose who took me BY THE HAND and led me to a cab at midnight away from the great doo that was the Costa Book Awards (and fair play to COSTA for honouring bukes in this way) – I owe her, Jo, BIG and wonder if she might like to be my wife – we all need one of those! Anyhow, I was pledged to buying a laptop for Colm our Stage Director on OCTOBER from Dixons in Terminal 1 and found myself creating chaos at 5.50am (yup, again the WRONG 5.50) in that branch by asking for a computer that was on display but copies of which were in the storeroom to which no one seemed to know the password and were unsure about the whereabouts of the keys also – I held firm and dare I say ICY while all was sorted and the look on Colm’s face when I came into work with the prize was certainly worth it – I now know how Santa feels and why he does what he does every Christmas…
The tiredness led to hallucinations, practically, all day (and some very interesting journeys around the script) and I kept sneaking off for cat naps (the G has taught me much but surely that is her greatest contribution to my wisdom?). I am now about to get in to bed freakishly early and make no apology for how excited I am about that and SMUG, too, that I can do it. Sometimes it’s good to be SELFISH – this is one such time…
‘nite now!
bukes 28 January 2009
The cheapest form of pleasure to oneself without resorting to a total self love is a buke – surely? For a tenner you can be transported, into the author’s world but also your own take on that – pricelesss. SO we decided a winner for the COSTAS tonight and Sebastian Barry triumphed and that is as it should be – great book. I can tell you that the poetry book THE BROKEN WORD by Adam Foulds was a close 2nd
Oh for goodness sake BUY BOTH – that’s still cheaper than a hardback – it’s a no brainer!!
costa time! 26 January 2009
I am off to London’s town tomorrow to judge Book of the Year for the Costas – it’s the end of a long and interesting journey. I’m really looking forward to being ‘home’ in Soho too (however briefly) though not so much looking forward to the 5am car to Heathrow on Wednesday to get me to the 6.50am flight back to Dublin and straight into rehearsals at 10 (and lunchtime is full of phoner interviews so a little lie down may be out of the question – and yet…).
We have moved to a larger rehearsal space deep into the Docklands in Dubbalin and it is most instructive to see what’s happening there now. The boom led to all sorts of buildings being thrown up for banks and big insurance companies and so on (there’s a Financial Centre there) but now it is just an expanse of buildings, empty and most of them with all the lights on. It’s a ghost town, really, and full of signs advertising flats for sale and retail outlet ‘opportunities’.
I did so much bouncing on the castle today (within the aforementioned wasteland) that I think I have made my right side ache – it feels like the same thing I get when I wake up after a mighty night out and have what feels like bruising, having (perhaps, we can sometimes never hope to know) bumped into lots of things and walls and hedges and so on. Actually, recently, after not too bad a time on the beer at all at all, I found my lovely cashmere knitty coat had quite a few sprigs from the bush by the door on it – a simple brush by, I decided and not an actual immersion in the bleddy thing….