The Blind casting The Blind

At last the snows of Kilimansydenham seem to have been washed away and its got warm enough to go outside with having to look like a bag lady.

So yesterday suited and booted I set off for a Fiat ad casting. It was nice to have an excuse to dress up for a change as work hasn't ben falling off the trees this year so far.

Of course it's the law of castings that if you live in South east London a short commercial Casting will be held in North west London. This one was in Ladbroke Grove. Some building called The Old Dairy. I always want to know what dairy it was. Just a dairy or the dairy to some large house that didn't survive. ...and how old? In twenty years time will young holograms be making their way there and looking for The Old Casting Studio.

As someone who likes to speak his mind and not hold back, I should be aware of how this process happens in reverse. Having been sent two scripts to work on, I went in around 2.30pm and seemed to be one of the last people they were seeing. this meant that the Director had had to explain the ad loads of times already and he barely managed to maintain his interest in the project while he explained it to me. Coupled with the fact that I couldn't see him as I wasn't wearing my contact lenses, it was a masterful exercise in communication.

I then sat on a hard wooden school chair to replicate a large cushy chairmans office chair and delivered a suitably wooden script to camera.

"Thanks that's great thank you thank you" means "Yes fine Not you. " One assumed that by this stage in the casting they'd found someone they liked and the fact that they had overrun by half an hour was irritating the director to the point of "I don't need to see any more actors today and it's getting harder to feign interest thank you"

Worth the travel card.

I wasn't wearing my lenses as my poor eyesight which I had put down to being a remnant of the Bells Palsy has ben diagnosed this week as cataracts in both eyes. Now begins the process of being referred to the hospital, persuading some NHS consultant that the need to see clearly is imperative to my work and hopefully avoiding having to go privately, and the whole drawn out process that anything with the NHS is these days. All this coupled with the need to replace some tiling in the bathroom after only three years has me jumping for joy at the start of 2010. Apparently Jupiter has just entered Pisces for the first time in ten years. About bloody time!