same old 18 June 2009
I haven’t mentioned this for a while and I am sure some of you will be shocked when you hear this (I know I am…) so here goes – the builders have not yet finished the 5 month job they moved in over a year ago to do.
There, I’ve said it.
It’s getting me down so badly now that I nearly slipped into total denial today but that might only encourage them to ignore me more so I am about to become the Client From Hell.
I guess the thing I really don’t get is that I owe lotsa money still on the job and can only pay on completion so WHY THE HELL WON’T THE FECKERS FINISH?!?
On top of all else the attic water tank is leaking constantly and the waste of precious water is so unconscionable I’m thinking of just finding my own plumber to fix it – what is the point of putting in all of that eco-insulation and solar panels and so on if we are wasting hundreds of gallons of water with a stupid leak????
I am officially going mad/mental…
And the planet may finally be wrecked because of the well-intentioned work I had done on this (previously oKAY) house…sorry, world, I meant no harm by it…
platform 17 June 2009
Remembered today what I wanted to tell you about train travel yesterday. NOT, as it happens, that I saw a train with the romantic title Transpennine Express (and it does sound good, doesn’t it?) but every time we came into a station on the service between Manchester and London it warned us that the doors would not be functional till the train was at rest at a platform. Well, I should certainly hope so!
Puts me in mind of a story that my Mam won’t thank me for telling, which is about the time Herself and my late, great Dad was alive and attending such a thing as The Motor Show in the main exhibition space in Dublin – recession was a distant and dirty word then – and they got ROYALLY drunk and on the way home she stuck her head out the train window and had a good breather and vomit out, and SURELY back onto any kid who was hanging out the other end?! They don’t let you stick your head out anymore, far as I know, THOUGH that’s not entirely cos of my mother, necessarily, I hasten to add….
kit 16 June 2009
It occurred to me today as I was involved in a sex scene for me new job that I haven’t been asked to do that much (ever)…thing is, although sometimes I have been the ‘main attraction’ in a piece (only from time to time, mind) I have never been asked to prove any of that sex or bedwise. And I have often played older than I am/have been. I suppose you might say I have been a Character Actor a lot of the time – it’s a term I don’t like to use as the snobbery dictates that if you are Character you are not quite Leading material. Well, I have weathered that in as much as I’ve got a few old ladies out of my and others’ systems and now am playing my own age or thereabouts…and with that comes, weirdly(?) sex. So, how did you enjoy the show, Mrs Lincoln? Fine, actually. Better than that. And much better. I am surrounded by the best right now and, as a result, feel it’s all quite plausible. You will all be the judges of that in January. And for the record I’d do it all over again right now, tired as I am (filming take it out of you, no matter what), it was that much of a pleasurably respected and accommodated thing – well, who-da thunk it?!
Incidentally, last sex scene I did was my husband, played by the wonderful Paul McGann, pretty much raping me in the movie GYPO – if you haven’t seen that film do yourself a favour and rent it – it’s GOOD.
well 15 June 2009
Well now – the novel adventures continue – am reading a lot about cholera (SO don’t want it) and will use much of that for a major section (bleddy better, otherwise I know all about this disease and neither have it – see before – nor want the knowledge) . Also read a great novel over the last 2 days which I found really inspiring and which triggered a lot for me – usually poetry does this but I am VEH VEH happy it was a novel this time as it shows how poetic and downright meaningful prose can be too. And am haunted by my National Gallery trip on Sunday in that I want to see all of the paintings in the entire collection now and will make every effort to while in London’s town from now on – a free national treasure (if I was in wicked mood I’d do the old ‘I’ve ‘ad a few of those in me time’ thing but the truth is that I don’t think I have, actually, and the lie would serve no purpose…PROBably…)
Saw a Transpennine Express go by as I was training it to Manchester tonight – romantic name, eh?
bridge 14 June 2009
The decision to stay in London rather than spend so much time travelling this weekend has paid off, I feel. I had my great hour long walk by the Thames early this morning and was delighted all over again by Vauxhall Bridge (which is where I turn around and head back home to Soho). It’s a lovely piece of work and you gotta love a bridge, eh? But what I particularly noticed today was that by the still used slipway just before it there is a series of granite lion heads ‘guarding’ the way to the river, night and day; stolid and hard working and never drawing attention to themselves. Great altogether. And I bet most people don’t even notice them or appreciate their important work!
Other than that I became very properly engaged with Novel Number 8 today and that alone justifies the staying put. I can feel a fire in my belly starting for it. Phew, on one level, as I have a shorter time to complete it than I’d like and I have been ignoring it somewhat. But it’s in train now and I am delighted. I think it’s abut loneliness, really, and the nature of how we humans do or do not care for one another (not necessarily 2 notions or concepts that might or need to go together, but we’ll see).
mirror 13 June 2009
Here’s a thing some of you might know the answer to – cat lovers/watchers that is. Had lovely evening with my sis in law rebecca and she was telling me that one of their cats – Bridie, a little pretty rinkytinky black and white beauty – ignores herself at all times in the mirror but will meow at a human’s refection in it. So, is there some vampire like quality to kits and their reflections? or are they calm in the knowledge that they are gorgeous and don;t need to stare at themselves to score proof of that?
she also told me of a friends cat who once woke his human minder up by using one single claw to raise the man’s sleeping eyelid! Precise work, to be sure, and not a moment to jerk in alarm at what was happening I’ll warrant.
I’m off to a wedding reception by the river at Tower Bridge on this glorious London Saturday, having decided to stay put for the weekend rather than doing the 4 hour door to door tube/plane/taxi schlep to Dublin and back again. Feels good, if a little guilt-ridden…I’ll administer a little punishment by way of novel-writing later to make up for this sloth – yes, my dears, it’s that time again…the ‘EEEK I Have A Deadline Looming Later in the Year and Eff All Done’ time…
blog 12 June 2009
Well, I had SOME slight hope this morning that I might have done a wonderful blog while my brain was switched off last night (beer after a spell of being on the dry) – but no. We know that I have sometimes been pleased to see how well, and almost grammatically correct, some of my musings have been, even under the considerable influence of too good a time – last night, however, was not one of those times… I sort of thought that might happen writing-wise too when I first started on the adventure of making novels. I was amazed at times at the things characters said to one another and the replies given and indeed the rows had. I’d often just type in what these people were saying to one another in my head and it would feel like I was a mere conduit to the world. Sadly, I never returned to the laptop after time off to discover they had penned a chapter for me…and so it was also with the blog last night. So, for your information, I was at a place called Crazy Wendy’s with some of the Shameless cast and crew and there was fine thai food had, fine thai beer (hmmm, I see what I did wrong there) and some Karaoke. Of course, turns out some of the aforementioned types can really sing (I cannot, barring an on-key version of Happy Birthday To You and did not foist any ugliness on the proceedings as a result of that fact) and I was reminded all over again that I would just LOVE to be able to belt out a number. When I started writing books first and got royally slagged off in the Irish Times for the first novel the ‘reviewer’ (who seemed furious that I had stepped out of acting mode and particularly Mrs Doyle mode) wondered if we could look forward to a singing career from me too = eh, rest easy, I don’t think it’s on the cards ALTHOUGH I hear there is such a thing as an auto tuner in studios now that can make anyone sing in key and sound vaguely plausible…hmmm…
geese 10 June 2009
Saw a report in the paper about the plane that ditched in the Hudson – you know when all of the people made it out and stood on the wings and it was just so great (so sad to compare it with the Air France crash recently – we can only hope those poor souls knew nothing of what happened). Well, it was the result of a bird strike and apparently Canada Geese at that. So, again, a case of Blame Canada? It reminds me of one of the top things to say in Ireland about the rivalry between Dublin, the actual capital and Cork, the next biggest city and The Real Capital (according to its inhabitants). Basically Corkonians are famous for singing their own (may I say not inconsiderable) praises and the joke against the Dubs is the phoney but much touted newspaper headline ‘Cork man killed by Dublin Train’.
The Husband is gone off to South Africa to make a guerilla programme for the web to be broadcast from soooooon each evening about the Lions’ Tour. Look up chasethelions.com for all details. Promises to be really good fun and some decent rugby punditry too, might I add!
I had my first day on SHAMELESS today – the cast and crew could not have been nicer or kinder to me, and David Threlfall is a god. Just so you know.
slumber 9 June 2009
Ah, at last – vindication for my love of sleeping! Seems scientists have found that people think more laterally and quickly after a snooze – great news. But even better is that incubating a problem by getting such a sleep that you get into REM phase (Rapid Eye Movement) can lead to a solution of that problem. Huzzah! Of course, letting the problem stew while you’re awake can help too BUT surely it’s better to ‘sleep on it’? Yes, I heartily recommend that. The Californians who ran the study say that creative problems you’ve been working on can be enhanced by the aforementioned stewing time (my phrase, not theirs) but for new problems REM sleep enhances creativity. SO! what have I taken from this, you ask, with bated breath – well, it seems to me that if I complete the research I need to for my next novel then sleep for a month it’ll have figured itself out and all I have to do is act a a conduit for the words to the world – all book remits filled while indulging in my favourite pastime, sleeping = a total success. Sorted. BRING IT ON!
clouds 8 June 2009
I had one of those flights tonight where the sky was overcast from the ground but when the plane flew above the clouds they were like soft cotton balls below us – they looked like you could step out and bounce on them like some big, fluffy trampoline. Of course, there’s been a new cloud ‘discovered’ called an asperatus – that’s probably quite technical and if I knew anything about clouds the name alone would explain what kind of cloud it is but I can’t help feeling meterologists have missed a chance to call something a magnificus or a slendidus or suchlike.
Tried a cup of Orange Pekoe tea just now and it wasn’t what I expected – I actually did think it would taste of orange (like, perhaps an orange oil might have been added or whatever) but it is in fact a lovely black (?) tea. Seemed delicious but the caffeine might keep me awake and I am trying to get into regular early sleeping habits again as I start filming in Manchester on Wednesday and want to be rested, so spending an hour in bed waiting for the buzz to wear off is not on. Am now on fennel tea instead, which is one of the herbals that I think does actually deliver genuine taste and enjoyment (some of them are a waste of boiling a kettle)