claytoncast

This week has been another hot and sultry week in the capital. Not a week for wearing suits and trying to look corporate. That’s what I’ve been doing. I long now for the start of August and three weeks of rehearsal clothes and spending the time in Battersea Park with five hundred members of the Youth Theatre. I am sure that when I am in the midst of it my thoughts might be different, but stay glued reader and find out. I’ve found work difficult this year. Not the getting of it although there has been less of it about as my accounts which have just reached year end show, but the performing of it. The number of jobs I have had which I have actively enjoyed can be counted on the fingers of a Gary Neville gesture - (Impressed by the footballing reference there I hope). “Doctors” was fun, but that’s as far as it goes really. Some of my corporate stuff usually brings me joy, but this year it’s consisted of underpaid jobs for the public sector where even the tea and biscuits are below par...

After a couple of days corporate role -play this week , Friday saw me taking a trip up to Doncaster to spend a day with Mum. South Yorkshire is my past. It’s my childhood, it is deeply ingrained in me and yet these days it seems a very foreign and strange place. The centre of Doncaster has a new state of the art shopping mall, the Frenchgate Centre which links directly to the station and the bus station. It’s ideal for days out with Mum as she can get a bus from outside her house into Doncaster, I can get off at the station and we can meet within yards of where we have both arrived and get the lift straight up into Debenhams. Emerging in perfumery. How nice! The other great thing about the Frenchgate centre is that from it you can’t see Doncaster. You could be anywhere, except of course for the people. This was the accent of my childhood, but now hearing it spoken loudly in Superdrug, or bellowed across the malls , it bears little recognition to the middle class faux northern cam...

I'm a TV sport widow today. Rich has spent the last three hours hooked to the British Grand Prix and we now have a small window of life before the World Cup Final tonight. It's not his fault. In fact he gets a great deal of joy out of it, and seeing ones partner and the person you love happy is a great thing. I only wish it was something we could share, but try as I might I cannot muster any enthusiasm for televisual sport. I once got very excited when Torvill and Dean were in line for a gold medal at the Ice Dance championships in Sarajevo, probably more at the thought of Christopher's gargantuan thighs pounding the ice and flinging Jane around like a rag doll than anything else. As a child I remember having to be quiet during the 1966 World Cup final. I watched it at friends, and our Saturday afternoon play was stopped as we were told to sit quietly on the sofa and watch the television. The news that the scratchy black and white pictures were to continue for half an hours...

The joy of having this blog is that it gives one a chance at the end of the week to sit down and think through the past events. Not to let things slide by into a distant fog of time. I used to keep a diary. Think it started around 17 or so years of age and went on till I was in my first year working as an actor. It’s in various volumes left stacked at my Mothers and I occasionally flick through it on visits home. Many days end with – “good day today” or “went out, had pizza, bath and bed” which also seems like a good day. It’s not a document of vast psychological insight and yet reading through it, it does take me back to how I felt at the time. Rich also keeps a blog ( www.richardhowle.co.uk ) and at some point each Sunday we will ask each other that question – ‘What are you putting in your blog?” Some weeks, such as following our recent return from holiday the answer is obvious, but on other weeks it takes time to contemplate the week past before one comes up with a subject...