claytoncast

For the first time in many months, I’m getting onto a train at King’s Cross heading north. Three hours to Newcastle and tomorrow a chance to speak to some young drama students about the world and its opportunities. This train journey holds a mix of emotions for me. The familiar route up north, once a regular part of my routine to visit my mum, now carries a sense of nostalgia tinged with sadness since her passing in 2019. It’s a bittersweet experience to revisit these memories after such a significant loss. Although I haven't made the journey as frequently since my mum's passing,I still make occasional visits to Grimm and Co, the wonderful children's charity I support in my home town of Rotherham. These visits provide me with a sense of purpose and connection to the community that raised me offering a bright spot amid the more sombre memories of this journey. Making my way through King's Cross, perhaps the bustling station feels different now, quieter and less famili

There have been many times in my life when whole days have passed without a conversation with another human being. Days reduced to a quick thank you or enquiry in a shop or a passing hello in the foyer of a block of flats. These days, with messaging apps and email, we don’t need to have conversations. One thing I noticed during my first few months alone on my boat was that I had no chats. Just What’s App exchanges. Today, the sun is trying to poke through rain clouds, which are producing an almost biblical downpour here in East London. And it would be the perfect morning where in the past I would have picked up the telephone and had chats with friends. Now that’s reduced to a few quick text messages to plan or to check that people are OK. The good thing is that my partner works from home three days a week and although his conversations often are into headphones with people in other parts of the world, the sound of another voice on the boat is both comforting. Today he’s in the o

I couldn't have wished for a better festive season.We had happy and full days on the boat. Nice meals, nice food, nice company. Wonderful presents and all shared with the most wonderful person. A visit to see "Sunset Boulevard"-a fantastically rewarding reinterpretation with an absolutely off the scale, star performance from Nicole Scherzinger. A fabulous evening in the theatre on Broadway to see the penultimate night of "Some like It Hot”. Followed by a beautiful four-day weekend in New York with lots of walking, plenty of visiting galleries and museums, iceskating in Central Park and shopping. No sooner had we got off the plane on the 2nd of January than I hit the ground running. Staging a conference for a major client which took up all my time and meant that January, and its associated depressive blues, crept up on me unaware. Or rather, they manifested themselves in a series of domestic appliances that decided to give up the ghost and not join in with 2024.