claytoncast

 For the last couple of weeks I have been lucky enough to be viable. Creating a virtual conference for a major global brand which will eventually go live this Thursday. It’s been a long, but engaging process with many ups and downs, but I’m very grateful for its part in my life. Otherwise, like so many of my peers, I would have no contact whatsoever with the world in which I work. I’ve been out and about filming and spending days in the studio, and if one tends to ignore the sight of people’s face-masks, and the Covid Marshall vigilantly keeping an eye on our distancing, it would seem to have been work as usual. Yet every day there has been a feeling in the pit of my stomach that I should be at home. I am 63 years of age and the government would term me to be mildly obese. Lockdown hasn’t helped and a hitherto subdued passion for chocolate digestives has risen to the fore. Having the time to cook decent meals hasn’t helped either, and both lunch and dinner have often featured a des...

Since March, our home has been more than our home. It’s been our life. Our sanctuary. We are very lucky. We have lots of space, so have been able to work from home in separate rooms, coming together for meals and lockdown telly.  We have outside space in the form of a rather beautiful balcony level with the treetops where we can sit and have lunch or a drink in the evening, or fall asleep on a sun bed with a book on a hot afternoon.  Spending so much time in our home has meant that one has started to want to change things. We haven’t got to the point of approaching the estate agents, but we’ve had new windows put in, installed a dishwasher at long last and treated ourselves to little luxuries like new bedding, and new wine racks. I’ve got my eye on redecorating the second bedroom, the facias on the kitchen cupboards could do with a revamp, and I am wondering if we could fit a plunge pool underneath the plastic ivory trellis on the balcony.  After our wonderful five days b...

There's been an awful lot going on for all of us in the last six months, and we still aren’t out of the woods yet as they say. I think the one thing I have still to come to terms with is a sense of loss. Loss of my way of life. We all threw ourselves into lockdown with the blitz spirit. I remember when it was announced that I might have to spend twelve weeks in such a state, I thought it an impossibility. Yet twenty weeks later and my life is still not in any way back to the shape it was, and I’m carrying on. I don’t go out for meetings. As a freelancer my meetings used to take place in other peoples offices and many of them have not reopened those offices. My day would be a journey to the meeting, a meeting, lunch with a mate and then back home for a nap, or dinner with my better half and an evening in front of the box. We have had no shortage of the latter. Saturday night movie night. Monday to Friday — TV and Netflix night. We’ve seen some fabulous stuff, _Succession, The End Of...

So we got all the money everybody was screaming for. Probably more than we asked for, and then with an irony that can't have escaped many of us, we were told "off you go, but no shows."  At the time of writing it increasingly looks like the government has cancelled Christmas. Now we are witnessing the unedifying spectacle of Johnson absolutely shitting himself himself about the mistakes he's made.  Only a few weeks ago it was "it'll be all over by Christmas." I think we've all heard that somewhere before. Now it seems like the government are coming to the recognition of the fact that our own particular Battle of the Somme is yet to come. and if that is the case, then there is no place for people gathering for entertainment. The worrying thing about the large sum of money that the government granted the arts, is that most of it seems to be being spent on buildings rather than people. Sadly one hears every day of people who are leaving the industry. Gr...

We have found ourselves in a situation which no one could have imagined. I’m not talking about a global pandemic. Evidently governments have done dry runs of such a possibility and failed miserably. I’m talking about a world in which a 99 year old man has to walk around his garden on a walking frame in order to fund the NHS. I’m talking about a world where a footballer has to point out to the Prime Minister that children will starve during the summer holidays if meal vouchers are taken away. Both Major Tom and Marcus Rashford did amazing work and are to be applauded and thanked. We in the theatre world however seem to be still looking for someone to lead us in our action against the pandemic.  Or should that be against the government? Loosening the lockdown on Tuesday, the government’s very own Tintin, Boris the Bumbler, said “I’d like to go to the theatre again.” The scientists stood by looking like a shifty version of the Thompson Twins. Reluctant to wholeheartedly back Tinti...

All of us have had a lot of up and downs as a result of the self-imposed imprisonment that we have been suffering from for the last 12 weeks.  I remember the government announcing the fact it would be 12 weeks for most people to have to stay indoors and thinking what an incomparably long amount of time that was. Yet in many ways it seems to have flown by and become our accepted way of life. It has brought many changes and made many things harder for many of us. I find the hardest point of any day is the moment my head lifts from the pillow and I slowly gain full consciousness of the world I am about to enter. I want to stay out of it all. Getting up in the morning has not been this hard since the fourth form. I've had a few blowouts of the "I'm just not going to take it any more" variety, more often than not provoked by having to watch the imbecilic behaviour of various politicians on the 5 o'clock government comedy show. I fully understand that nobody has found t...

I haven’t blogged for ages. It's all been a bit of a shakeup. I hurled myself into lockdown thinking, ‘Okay here we go. Let's find things to do.’ I enrolled on a criminal psychology course which I'm still working hard at and doing quite well, I’m 32.5k words into my second novel, but getting frustrated by having to do all my research on locations on Google Earth. The foremost thing was that the charity of which I'm a proud patron, Grimm and Co was in danger of losing an open day at the fabulous new premises we have bought in my hometown of Rotherham. May 2nd should have seen us throwing open the doors to what was the Talbot Road Methodist Church and let the public in to see and hear examples of the children's work. Many of the children who the brilliant staff at Grimm and Co deal with in writing clubs, are on the autistic spectrum or suffer from problems such as ADHD and for them lockdown has been difficult. So the chance of being able to zoom in on writing clas...