claytoncast

I'd forgotten the joy of night shoots. Working while the world sleeps. Several years ago now I did an all nighter for a Channel 4 drama docuementary. Shooting under some railway arches by the Thames. It was all a bit make and do and at 4am they came up with another page of script. I remember standing by the Thames trying to learn it as quickly as possible while an entire film crew waited in the dark to shoot it. At least in Leeds they aren't making up the script as we go along. I'm here for a week shooting a new gangster heist comedy caper set in Yorkshire ( pushing the genre envelope there I feel) and I have drawn the short straw for a week of night shoots. My first day today started early afternoon and will end at 3 am this morning. In theory. We've just done nine takes of a cup of tea being spilt so who knows? The crew have been shooting for five weeks now and I've come to join for the last week. Mercifully I'm a significant enough character in this to me

It's become a tradition over the years that we take our first holiday of the year round about the time of our birthdays. Both of us being Pisceans and with our birthdays three days apart, it provides an excuse for a double celebration. It means our friends don't have to ponder over what to buy as we are very rarely around,  and it means that Richard's middle sister can do what she does best - entirely forget the birthdays are there at all! Early March has seen us visit Bruges, Barcelona, Venice, Dublin and  Reykjavik  but this year all roads led to Rome. The visit was mainly inspired by the fact that I had 58,000 British Airways Avios points sitting quietly in my account and as anyone who has ever tried to exchange airline points for a real-life trip will know it can be virtually impossible. Unless you can fly on the second Wednesday after Pentecost and return on the mid-afternoon flight two full moons hence via Helsinki, you're unlikely to be able to book anything

The thing I always dreaded about when Mum eventually leaves us is that I'll have to go and sort her house out. Now that she's happily settled  in Rotherwood Care home - "  Ooh,  it's  like a five-star hotel in here!"  I've just become engaged in the process of clearing out the house and beginning to sell it.  I went up to Yorkshire for 3 days this week to start just that. Mum's made a list of things that she wanted from the house. Mercifully nothing large, just small mementos and little things that she would like to have around her. I started  opening drawers on Wednesday evening and each drawer proved a journey into the past. While I'd steeled myself for the prospect of having to put a lot of Mums life into bags, I had not prepared myself for just how much of my life was hidden away in those drawers.  School reports (“shows  interest-but not always in music!" “Must resist the temptation to dominate the rest of his form, and occasion