On the Importance of Accounting for Oneself

When I left the Soviet Socialist Republic of South Yorkshire at eighteen — tender, earnest and armed with a suitcase full of ambition and socks — I went to Manchester to study drama. Three years of Chekhov, Gorky, tragedy, comedy, and the occasional play that wasn’t an act of national endurance. I thought I was embarking on a life of art. I didn’t realise I was also embarking on a life of accounts. Yet here I am, decades later, still keeping ledgers. Not metaphorical ones — actual, black-and-red, hard-backed ledgers. Bought annually, with all the quiet ceremony of a religious observance, from the sort of stationer that also sells brown string and those pens you have to lick. We had a marvellous tutor at drama school called John McGregor — an actor who’d once played Cornwall in Lear and had the receipts to prove it. He taught us on Friday mornings, not about Ibsen or inner truth, but about the tax-deductible nature of fake beards. It was John who first explained that keeping track of your expenses was as important as tracking your emotional through-line. One paid better. So I began. With envelopes. One for travel, one for tickets, one for accommodation, and so on — a sort of filing system for a modest life. Every Sunday, without fail, whether in my flat in Manchester or in digs above a fishmonger’s in Woking, I would sit down after lunch (a tin of Heinz tomato soup followed by a whole Battenberg — I was nothing if not nutritionally chaotic) and I’d do my accounts. On the lucky weeks, there’d be payslips to staple in. I’d write in longhand the sums I’d earned and solemnly note my outgoings on the dis-staff side, which I assumed to be the left-hand page and not some obscure reference to unmarried women. It was a habit picked up at home. Saturday nights in Rotherham were spent watching my parents do the shop’s books, calling out numbers at each other like a married bingo hall. Decimalisation was almost the end of them. I had to explain to my father that one new penny equalled 2.4 old ones. He responded as though I’d just told him the dog was Catholic. Despite this early trauma, I stuck with it. And even now, - with cloud-based software and apps that beep at you if you buy too many croissants — I still like a paper copy. My bookkeeping year ends on July 31st. It always has. August 1st, 1978: the day I started working professionally. That ledger means something. It’s not just receipts. It’s proof. Of life, of work, of movement. Of surviving. Because accounting for oneself is what we do, isn’t it? Some do it in diaries. Some in selfies. My partner — who is much younger and blessed with the kind of cheekbones that automatically adjust a phone’s lighting — never takes a single photo when twenty will do. But he’s a proper photographer too, so I forgive him. Besides, thanks to him, I have a wonderful visual record of the last two years. Our two years. And when the photo frame flashes up some random sunlit afternoon in Manhattan or a windswept walk in Margate, I can say, “Yes, I was there. That was me. That was us.” Actors account for themselves in photographs too. We have to. It’s how people decide whether they like the look of us before we’ve had a chance to disappoint them in person. I’ve never been comfortable in front of a stills camera. My teeth, when caught mid-sentence, create a void in my mouth like the event horizon of a small galaxy. Decent dental work has made little difference. The result is a lopsided grin that has been described as “distinctive”, “characterful”, and once by a reviewer in The Stage as “unexpected.” And yet, photographs matter. They must resemble you — recognisably and hopefully flatteringly — but crucially not in a way that causes confusion. I remember directing a play in the ’90s where the lead actor, a television name, spent the entire day comparing actors’ photos to their faces as they walked in. He spent most of the day visibly crestfallen. Which is why, this week, I took myself to Frome in Somerset — already a sentence that suggests either early retirement or escape — to spend the afternoon with a photographer called Chris Bailey. Chris had done his homework. He knew who I was, what I’d played, how I grinned. We drank tea in his garden studio while he took pictures of me that I can only describe as “the George Clooney of Rotherham” — a comparison I insist upon even though no one else has. And I’m pleased with them. They’re me. Slightly flattering, yes, but not so much that I’d be arrested for impersonation. They’ll go in the magazine, on the theatre wall, on the casting director’s desk. And when I walk through the door, I’ll look enough like my photograph that no one feels the need to ring security. So now I have my new photographs and my new ledger. One on the wall, one on the shelf. Both of them ready to help me account for myself — not just financially but personally. It’s how I know where I am. And where I’ve been. And, more importantly — ledger willing — where I’m going. P.S. My afternoon in Frome produced the best set of photographs I’ve had in years. If you’re after a new headshot that looks like you — only better lit and slightly better rested — check out Chris Bailey Headshots. Book the day return. Pack a sandwich. You won’t regret it.