claytoncast

It's been a really good week. Probably the busiest week I've had so far this year. Work wise. Monday took me north to Sheffield to spend the afternoon with Mum before spending the night lodging at the Premiere inn Sheffield prior to a days work on Tuesday. This hotel proved what I have said (and said and said, unfortunately) more than once in my blogging. As long as the basic level of facilities is provided, and the room is clean, then in a hotel it is all down to the service. The Premiere Inn Sheffield on Monday evening cost £46 for a large double bedded room which had a very nice chaise longue from which to watch the television. Yet what made it were the staff. From Julie the receptionist who checked me in and dealt with a problem with the booking with a smile and an efficiency that was absolutely brilliant, to the unnamed woman in the lift who said hello and welcome to Sheffield, to the student who was working part-time in the restaurant in the evening and chatted to me ...

So what is the difference between an amateur and professional? Simple   I hear you cry.   The professional gets paid for doing the job, while the amateur   does it   for fun. And yet it’s not always that simple. This week I went to see an amateur theatre production. A friend of mine I have not seen for too many years was appearing in it in Bromley. It seemed a heaven sent opportunity to catch up. This friend I met when he was a young aspiring actor. He was good and had a certain presence about him. He went on from the National youth Theatre to drama school and completed three years training. Yet despite an awful lot of energy and some good performances on the London fringe it didn’t happen for him. He wasn’t the type of person to sit around revelling in unemployment, and whenever theatre had nothing to offer him he would be off doing telesales, being a waiter, or selling insurance which is what he eventually did as a full-time job. He now has a very high-power...

Sometimes in any good relationship you have to learn to speak with one voice.   Not to add to or embellish what your partner has said, not to undermine it with additional comments, but to just let their words speak for themselves. It’s part of working as a team. That’s exactly what I’ve decided to do this week in telling you about our recent holiday in Iceland. Richard has written about it so well on his blog that I’m simply going to post a link to it here. It sums up the week brilliantly, and he’s also added some fantastic photographs of the many he took while we were over there. Click on this link and then come back. http://www.richardhowle.co.uk/Richard_Howles_Website/Home/Entries/2011/3/12_Iceland.html In times like these when all of us freelancers are finding work that little bit harder to come by, and money that little bit tighter to manage, it’s important to have things to aspire to. Ambitions, aims, desires and dreams. One of the things I’m always aiming for is the nex...

There’s nothing worse than when you can boot up the computer on a Monday morning, open the calendar and see five empty days stretching ahead of you. That’s what it’s been like this week. Not too many little pink shaded bits associated with work to worry about. So the task becomes finding things that hopefully will be fulfilling, fun, and just plain time filling. You can get into the habit of taking a bath in the morning, or in a less environmentally friendly sort of way but much more fun, take a shower in the morning and have a soak in the bath in the early evening. 90 minutes gone As the week  progressed I become very familiar with “Heir hunters” on BBC1. This is a fascinating early-morning daytime television programme where teams of bald men in Ford Montego’s try to chase estates that have been left without a will. I do have an addictive personality,  and basically two viewings of this early in the week and it’s become unmissable. Wednesday saw lunch with my lovely friend...

We spent a brilliant weekend in Sussex with our friends Jamie and Gina, and their two gorgeous girls Lily and Gracie. I first met Jamie over 16 years ago when he came into audition for the role of the Sgt major in my production of “Privates on Parade" which was starring Tony Slattery and was going to play the Christmas period at Greenwich Theatre. We were looking for somebody to play a character who was mean, sadistic, unfeeling and pretty vicious. From where we were sitting in our seats Jamie seemed to fulfil all of the above qualities and after he had gone out of the room Tony turned to me and said “well he scares the shift out of me".  He did me too, but with my theatre directors hat on that was single reason enough to hire him. All of the above could not be further from the truth. Jamie is the sweetest most sensitive man with a heart of gold and which his swaggering south London exterior often belies. In “Privates" he was killed just before the interval and on mati...

  As in all times of recession and necessary economy there seems to be a general atmosphere of making do pervading our everyday life. People doing what is necessary to continue in their everyday existence.   So a big thumbs up to the   charming receptionist at the KPMG corporate offices in Canary Wharf this week who realise that no matter what cutbacks are being made, a smile costs nothing. Being greeted by him, being issued passes, and being told to wait   for our contact   was something akin to being checked into a five-star hotel, although not the one I recently stayed in in France - more of which later. As a result of this charming young man’s manners, smile   and general bonhomie, my colleagues Jack,   and Marianne and myself arrived for our seminar on the 14 th floor feeling very special. A thumbs up to the bus driver on our local 197 bus who on Thursday afternoon decided not to let four youths push their way onto the bus without showing pass...

The positive side about doing this blog is that even when  one has had a week as dull and work free as I have, one has to sit down on a Sunday afternoon and sum it up in terms of something interesting to other people. So let's start in simple terms as to what I have actually been up to this week. Monday saw a meeting inTthe Century club in town to plan a puppet-based entertainment for a charity dinner at the end of March.  As with all corporate events a great deal of planning goes into something before you actually have the final yes from the client. With this one I think we are 75% of the way there and it could be quite fun. But there are still several opportunities where the client may decide “oh no it's not all little bit too avant-garde and brave for us and we'd better have a a silks act!" Tuesday evening saw me attend the second of my Tai Chi classes. This was part of my New Years resolution to do things for myself. I went on the Internet and found a class whi...