...filling you in (on the week just gone)

After my weekly meeting with Dr Cohen, I've learnt to judge the start of the week as 11am on Fridays.

So, in my mind, I've just completely missed blogging for a near whole week. And it's not like there's been anything to write about.

Hang on, start again, the grammar and sentence structure of the above was shocking. Plus, it's also a lie. Didn't I review the Wall of Death less than seven days ago?

Hmm. Anyway, it's been one of those weeks....

For a start, S L Bartlett has gone pack to work on placements, this time, on ward something at the RAHospital in Paisley. So the evenings for me are as househusband, running a bath, cooking dinner, loading the dishie and preparing the breakfast for the next day. I've been quite inventive with dinner. I say inventive, I mean inventive for me, as I'm no cook if truth be told. The menu for the last week read: Korma, rice and naans on Monday.Tuesday was breaded haddock, sweetcorn, peas, carrots, runner beans and oven chips. Then breaded chicken breasts, beans, lots of with chips again. On S L's day off, she did the honours with a roast dinner, similar to what I once wrote about, posts ago. Then last night, I made err, a err, what did I make? Of course, Spag-bol served with garlic bread and cheese to flavour. How did I forget that?

Moving away from the kitchen, I also had my second acting lesson. These lessons are only an hour and a half but I do think they're meant to work as snap-shots for the week.
On the first week, I was nervous and somehow managed to be in the right frame of mind. I'll write about this lesson in full later. The second lesson, apart from the group warm up, was reading from a script, in this case, scenes two and three from the Glass Menagerie.
Oh, reading out loud. This is the one thing that could scupper my future as an actor. I never read books as a child, just car magazines, and even then, between paragraphs, I'd look at the glossy images, so it was never sustained reading. More like short bursts and only in my head. Post internet though, reading is second nature. If I can't read to myself now, after more than 10 years of surfing the thingy-sphere, then I don't know. So, reading. Out load can't be that different to quietly; to yourself, right?
No, it's a completely different beast. Two beasts in fact. The added process of voicing the words whilst reading ahead becomes a duo-core process. Luckily, I somehow, without training past the age of eight or nine, can do it. Yes it's not faultless, in truth it's often a complete farce, but in places, I can do it well enough to add the third process in reading as an actor; to live the lines. What cheese I know, but it's a needed level of working. So, yeah, good. I do think I give the impression of an illiterate bumpkin but by the end of the second lesson; after less than three hours, I was acting with a script. A little bit Joey Tribbiani in posture and Grant Mitchell levels of woodenness maybe, but I am holding a script in one hand (and being a tea-pot with the other). There are two things of note however, one good, one bad. Good, in scene three, it is between Tom and his mother (err, Laura, or is that his sister's name), Paul Fortuna, the teach, told us to read in male/female pairs and read the opposite parts first, as in, I read as Mother and the female read Tom. Then swap. It really, really helped me. Hearing what I was meant to say minutes before I was going to read and say it. Like linguaphone for actors. If only I could have done it well for my partner for the lesson. God, I wasn't brilliant help but luckily, she was straight out of school and a Drama Higher. I'm guessing this as we didn't have time to greet before the read-thru. Second, bad, was the more into it I became, the more I couldn't see the script for my shouting. I seem to shake, but hey, I'm getting into it and since when has projecting your voice been a bad thing for actors?

Anyway. I'm proud of myself for going in the first place!
I, on Monday, grew a bloody great big coldsore on my face. On my lip, not as before, coming out of my nose like a perma-bogey. I would have missed it for this alone. Then, with an hour before the lesson, I was really tired, like exhausted. It had been building all week and by Wednesday evening I could barely get up off the sofa. Again, this would have been enough to put me off. Thirdly, traffic was shocking and with S L at work, I was driving myself. Hitting the M8 at a near standstill, I thought, I getting off and going back home. I then thought, sod it, I'll drive as far as I can to the UKTS until 6 and see if I'll be too late to creep in. Fourthly, I had local anaesthetic for a filling and as I had a snack before I left, my face became more dead, more anaesthetised. Gosh, How I'm I going do anything with a stroke-like smile? But in the end, I got there with 10 minutes to spare, even after finding a space to park around the corner, and although I had half eaten my bottom lip, which was a bloody mess and my coldsore looked like a entity in it's own right, I was getting out of my slumber. Maybe it was my driving in rush-hour or maybe it was my drive to get there in the first place. Beyond my usual self-induced panicky reluctance, the want to become more than I am at the moment; go beyond where I am now; to be better!

More maybe I just really want to. You know, be an actor and stuff or summink or nuffing.

It is also of note, I was early for all appointments, lessons and things that week. Getting there early ain't that bad after all!