email 28 November 2010
I am about to dare myself to have christmas delivered to where it is that the people involved, in the related pressies, are – most gifts being Irish – I intend to try to make that start to happen tomorrow and though i am rubbish at net stuff, have only one (ok-ISH) bank card that could help I am still GONNA GIVE IT GO!…fingers crossed…time is liimited and I hope I don’t get too above meself either and think I can buy the world and every black hole still unfound…I’m scared…
catsuit 27 November 2010
I got to wear an amazing black sequinned catsuit for a photoshoot yesterday and felt all Barbarella, really. Wonder why it’s called a catsuit when no one looks anything like a cat wearing one…? Anyhow, it was great to be ‘styled’ by professionals and I left the lovely big hair and make-up dos on and took to the town with my brother and sister in law. One of the by-products still with me is that I have false nails on and I find I NEED to gesture a lot as a result – like when you buy a new lipstick and you just HAVE to smile a lot…
ladder 26 November 2010
All hail the young ladies who live next door. I felt I needed the reward of Kettle Crisps last night after a day mostly not filming a promo for the new series of SHAMELESS (as in, I was ready and raring to go from 10.30am but waited to be used for 8 hours, this after the director called me Hazel first thing in the morning and more or less refused to acknowledge he’d scored a BIG FAIL). On my exit, I did find it strange that the chubb lock refused to let itself be, well, locked and of course the reason became apparent when I tried to get back in through the front gate and realised I was all keyed up for Dublin, but not actually in Dublin. But hurrah for the neighbours in no. 3 who showed me where no. 1 keeps his 3 part ladder, then held it for me as I (basically) broke in through the front window of my first floor flat. I felt very intrepid (if a little bit of an eejit). And I was saved eating the entire 6 pack of ready salted that I’d bought as I split it 3 ways and therefore was only exposed to 2 × 145 calories of delicious oily carby fat. Result all round (and I am getting round – the crisp habit will HAVE to go…)
keisho 24 November 2010
I watched a programme about London Zoo last night as I had written about it in THE TIME IS NOW. The tv show featured some gorillas and when the adult male died the keepers went in search of a new leader for the 3 females left behind. They found him in neighbouring Dublin Zoo and a fine handsome lad he was, called Keisho. Even I could tell he was good-looking and in great nick. He had a lovely temperament too. And all of it brought home why I will never watch King Kong, older or newer version because what happens to Kong is SO unfair – taken from his homeland and held up to ridicule by humans for their amusement and then killed (horribly) because he falls in love. The first and only time I saw this movie – the black and white – I was quite young but even then I remember being upset beyond the film itself, for Kong. And ultimately these days I mourn that we continue to destroy the habitats of so many intelligent, beautiful, civilised animals and drive them to extinction. Zoos do valuable conservation work, but in an ideal world surely they wouldn’t need to…
bailout 21 November 2010
My experience at the Haydock races yesterday might well be a good example of how the Irish got into the financial mess we’re in at present. I spent £42 on bets and didn’t have any winners but, rather than feeling that I had lost £42, I calculated that I hadn’t won £688. And it seems to me that what the Irish banks did was to spend the ‘£688’ they didn’t have in lieu of winning it and therefore lost that rather than just the original £42.
The bailout the government have applied for means that every worker in the country will effectively owe c1million euro each and let’s not make any mistake the IMF is coming in to protect the loans already out by Irish banks, ie protecting/bailing out the money/loans, not us citizens…
GRIM
whacked 19 November 2010
Ah, the night shoot in the rain. Sets everything nicely out of kilter for the weekend. For yes, that is what has happened on the show just now – 2 in a row, actually. Not a word could have been wrestled from me when I got home last night and it has taken till now, along with several pints of sugary coffee, to feel vaguely human again (and it’s only vague) – along with the suspicion that I might actually have been run over by a truck while asleep. Hmm, ‘Baywatch’ it ain’t.
Just biding my time now till we hear how many billions the Irish nation will be taking to lose sovereignty over spending etc. Mind you, we’ve proved we’re not great with money (though we gave it a good old shot) so perhaps we’ll do better with the cheese we’ll all be eating in vast quantities for Christmas – and we should all be getting it as we’re all in double-debt now and ‘needy’…One of the economists at the recent Kilkenomics Festival had a tee-shirt made up that said CHEESE AID – I want one!
old gold 17 November 2010
I attended evensong at Manchester Cathedral yesterday. The music is always just beautiful and I love the sounds and smells of older churches and the solace is also most welcome. A sign of the interesting times we live in was the clergyman calling us to pray for financial institutions throughout the world, but particularly Europe in this rocky time.
And on it goes in money land today with billions of euros in the mix of a rescue package for the Irish alone. However, there is still wonder of another sort to be enjoyed – for example, 168 bottles of (now vintage) champagne were recently taken from a wreck on the sea bed near the Aland Islands, between Sweden and Finland and most of them have been declared entirely quaffable after 200 years below the waves. Indeed one taster detected hints of chanterelles and linden blossom, no less.
Another said he got ‘a toasted, zesty nose with hints of coffee, and a very agreeable taste with accents of flowers and lime-tree.’ And yes, for those of you who want in, some of the stash will be sold at an auction, where a bottle might set you back as much as €50,000. I know what I’ll be doing with some of my bail-out money from Europe…hic!
brolly 16 November 2010
I find that umbrellas, like biros, are an item that you often acquire but don’t necessarily buy regularly for yourself. I did, however, have occasion to purchase the gift of an elegant, frilled umbrella for a dear friend recently. I wanted to see it unfolded and was in that dilemma of remembering that it was supposed to be bad luck to do so indoors and feeling that I’m not a superstitious person so that shouldn’t matter. Facts are that I’d say not opening an umbrella indoors is all to do with not accidentally wrecking wherever you are and naff all to do with ‘bad luck’ added to which I was in a department store and if I’d left with said brolly to open it outdoors it would have technically been theft so I’d‘ve been in some or other doodoo. Also, I reasoned this year has been shit and some more piled on really won’t make all that much difference. I opened the thing, it was beautiful, I bought it and left into a shower of rain which I had to let wet me as I couldn’t be using a gift before handing it over to the giftee. If that’s all the bad luck I encounter I’m willing to take more chances between now and the end of December…
easing 14 November 2010
The Kilkenomics Festival this weekend in Kilkenny has been fantastic. Economists are the new cool…and some of them are very easy indeed on the eye. I sort of know what quantative easing is now and will misuse the phrase regularly for laughs from here on out. Also it’s clear that we’re totally fecked as a nation. Actually there is quite a palpable anger out and about as people wonder how has it come to this. We owe so much money and own some banks and will be paying back for it for many many many years and we didn’t really have any choice in all of this. The country has been badly managed and us ordinary mortals are carrying the can now. I think we have it within our grasp to effect real change, including ditching our civil war politics system finally, and that this may be a defining moment, but I also fear we’ll fudge it. People Power, however, really could work…
silence 12 November 2010
We observed the 2 minute silence for Remembrance Day at work on the set of SHAMELESS – many thanks to our First Assistant Director, Simon Turner, for calling it. There was a time in Ireland when it was very unpopular to wear the poppy at all let alone with the pride it deserves and it’s only truly recently that it has become quite rightly accepted as a very legitimate thing to do. Both sides of my family came out of a garrison town in the North West of Ireland and men on my mother’s side fought and died in the British Army. It is humbling and important to remember them. We live as we do because of their bravery.
I’m off to Kilkenny now for the Kilkenomics Festival – get there if you can as it will be a cracking weekend of comedy and economics. I’m doing a public interview with Dearbhail McDonald in Cleere’s tomorrow night at 9 and it’s going to be a corker. See you there!