Nearly a century

Nearly a century

It has indeed been a while since I have written. Apologies to all who kept track of me via this route. I have been busy developing as a person. I will not revisit the details of how that has come about, for the same reason that those who served in both World Wars tend not to go into what their experiences were. I only have to listen briefly to that lovely, bespectacled, ginger-haired chap in the jacket on the Antique’s Road show with his shoulders up by his ears, as he describes the endeavours of those brave young men before my face is covered in tears.

Suffice to say that since August of last year, a family health emergency befell our beloved father, it became a major crisis and now, like phoenixes, we have all emerged miraculously from the flames with our brains and bodies wounded, but in tact. I shall not revisit this event any more than that, because my therapist (Yes, I went to see one because of it all) told me that retelling it would only traumatise me further. And so, I leave it there, older, wiser and much, much thinner. In fact, if anyone wants to lose weight fast, I have the money-making answer: Crisis, plus one gin and tonic every night for four months instead of supper. 10 kilos. Guaranteed. You heard it here first.

In the meantime, the Captain produced his film, in which I was given the snazzy role of Associate Producer, dontcha know? (Observe surreptitious puffs of cigar while she mutters “I’ll make you a star, baby”). The Captain screened it very successfully at the oldest cinema in London, the Regent Street Cinema. It was much appreciated and having got a few agents on board, he plans to take it on to the U.S. of A., Baby, via the Berlin Festival, dontcha know? (Shall I stop the dontcha know bit? I’m beginning to irritate myself, let alone you.)

The Captain will also be filming another project this month, (not one he produced) and something big on TV comes out later this year which he filmed last year. No. I cannot be more specific. I, too, filmed an interesting telly drama last year which comes out end of March this year, but I cannot mention it until it has. Boy, nothing like an NDA to bugger up the boasting.

I go to a recall audition for a new piece for stage next week which I am just delighted about, partly due to having a good reason to leave the house and meet new people and interact with them. Something we all took for granted before Covid has become nothing short of a luxury now. It’s an exciting joy if creatives all click together, so it will be fun to see if that happens.

Our chance to go away for our pilgrimage to Italy was not possible last year, because of the aforementioned crisis, but we did get a chance to get our breath back on a little trip away just before Christmas, to Dubai. The contacts we made there have helped us crystallise a plan for a big birthday, to visit the golden triangle in India. Additionally, on the leisure front, I am hoping it might be possible to bring our seven years of practising the Italian language every friday night into full swing by perhaps going away for a last minute long weekend to Palermo or something cheeky like that, we’re not sure, but here’s hoping.

Meanwhile, the weather.. yes I am going to talk about it….we all feel we have had it with winter, so this early spring definitely feels like it’s toying with us, doesn’t it? Can we rely on those daffodils staying out for us? Can we chuck all furry covers from the bed in crazed abandon, screaming “the hell is over” ? Can we fling coats up into the attic shouting “Fuck you, you cumbersome bastards”? Can we wear T-shirts and loose slacks and stand in the garden pruning and waving maniacally at neighbours or passers-by. (Don’t mock, it’s what you do in Chiswick). Not so sure, folks. I think there may be a few cold crappies ahead. Not that I want to be the bringer of doom. But, if the shoe fits?

What about my writing, I hear you ask? Well that’s been on hold, but it’s going to get back into action, just as soon as I can teach myself to concentrate again. I’ve begun by trying to meditate every morning. I manage,so far, to do about five minutes. I know it’s not much, but it’s a start. I also walk along my beloved Thames. Looking at the life around me, the water, the birds, the boats, the people, the trees and the blossoms. Soon, I will want to create that film script. It’s on twenty pages so far. The second novel is still waiting for me, a quarter complete. The painting will begin in earnest soon, the minute I can step outside and sit for a while. So, life begins again. Renaissance.

Which brings me to the fact that my mother, whose German name, Renate, means Rebirth. Next week, ninety-two years ago, she was born in Spandau, Berlin, lucky enough to be born in a hospital. She was paraded around the ward as a beautiful baby, the perfect model of one. Although she is no longer a baby, she is a glorious mother, and at 92 continues her emails, shopping, stroking the dogs waiting outside the shop, preparing any number of vegetables for lunch and still has the spirit to find something funny. Happy Birthday to my wonderful Mummy.

Midsummer Madness

Six months since I wrote this blog, I am shocked at myself. But I do have some excuses. After we entered the new year, I set myself the task of meeting two new members of my agent’s team. We met for “coffee” at six pm and several wines later, we felt we had more of an inkling of who we all were. So much so, that a week later I was sent two self tapes for two interesting projects and a week after that found out that I had got one of them.

I have to speak in mystical terms about it because I have signed an NDA, but suffice to say I had to fly abroad for a week to play a rather wonderfully unsavoury character. I met other thoroughly interesting performers, and I will obviously let you know when the TV Miniseries comes out.

Previous to that very exciting event, I was asked to be a brilliant role in a new political satire that a good friend has been commissioned to pen, and although it was the first bit of actual acting with others that I had done since lockdown, the writer and director felt it went rather well.

When I returned from filming abroad, (how I enjoyed just writing that), I was invited to be a main role in a short film for a young company of film makers. It was an exceptionally well-written script, a dark subject matter of a mother and daughter having suffered the death of husband/ father, discovering during their grief that they shared a complete inability to connect to each other. Dark and toxic and maybe even funny, it was a massive challenge and we filmed sixteen pages in three days, so I returned home on the third day by 1.00 a.m. in complete exhaustion. It is a wonderful privilege to play someone who is so poisonous, but the best bit is knowing you are not her. Then of course, letting go of her, over the following few days. Which required three massages. Believe me, its true. She was the tensest woman I have ever met/played.

Following that, I had agreed to do a rehearsed reading of a new play, which also went very well, although I must admit to acting on my nerves alone by then. The months of April and May were filled to the brim with a flurry of activity of a self tape kind, both for adverts and for television series, which I threw myself into, with a mad assumption that this was my golden year, and I was obviously going to get all the jobs. I have not heard back from any of them and so June has been extremely quiet. Quelle surprise.

Not to mention that the Captain has successfully produced a feature film. We had the screening for the sales agents, there is much interest and decisions of which direction to take it are imminent, but the Captain insisted on making me Associate Producer since I have occasionally listened and advised on a bit of casting and such-like. The Captain has also been up to several acting projects, one of which is taking up the whole of this summer, so you can imagine how bizarre our household is right now.

I suppose the sudden silence and stoppage over June generated permission to my body to give me quite the nastiest chest infection that I have had in a long time. I should be grateful that it wasn’t during any of those jobs. At this point, I am now yearning for Italy, sun, sea, and long siestas, with peace and quiet around and my mobile tucked away in a safe with the sound off. Looks like I may be waiting a while for that. So while I do, I will get back to my second novel, my first screen play and my next oil painting. Duty calls!

Kung Hei Fat Choy

We are already into 2023, so I thought I would (with the tentative humility of a well-travelled, half German, half British woman of mixed European heritage) appropriate the Chinese New Year greeting instead, as we head into that colourful festival. I challenge anyone to disagree: red lanterns, dancing lion-dragons and hot and sour noodle soups are a fantastic way to face the most miserable couple of months in our calendar.

The other day I passed a house in my neighbourhood with its tree decorated specifically to celebrate this occasion, which put me in an East Asian frame of mind to such an extent that I carried on walking further east (so to speak) to my local Japanese cafe, (who incidentally do not celebrate the lunar year in the Chinese way, but they do acknowledge it), and wolfed down teriyaki salmon, miso soup and pickles with green tea. And somehow, at the tiny price they charged, life had a moment in which it became worth living.

Having survived an Odyssean journey (yes, I am being melodramatic) through Covid, followed by a nastier flu that engulfed my mind, nose, lungs, bones, muscles and soul, leaving in its wake an irritating cough and sinus issues, I must say that it is no surprise that I am glad Christmas is behind us. Not to mention the permanent anxiety I suffer from the constant threat of strikes within our public services. As someone who passed her driving test on a third attempt, but never bought a car, I rely heavily on trains to be able to visit my parents in West Sussex. No can do with train strikes. Oh, well, at least in an emergency, my ancient parents will be alright with the NHS. No can do. Nurses’ , Ambulances’, Paramedics’ strikes. AND I DON’T BLAME THEM.

Nurses, carers, paramedics, doctors and firefighters have been undervalued for years. Train drivers too are asking for respect regarding driving vast hordes of people back and forth, re, for instance, the company’s “money saving ” idea of only having one person to drive the train with no assistance. They do not do that in airplanes, why should it be acceptable in trains? They are right to object. I would.

These public service workers are the heroic lubricants of our entire civilisation engine, and if we continue to wrongly ignore them, the machinery will come to a halt. However, we have a government who is rendering everyone, even the sillier members of the royal family, (not that I care) to end up suffering from mental illness, anxiety and depression. Why? Because nobody listens. They are like the Wizard of Oz. They think that the best medicine would be compulsory Maths lessons for all. It is not unlike a doctor suggesting that a person with terminal cancer goes for a brisk walk. That’ll sort it, Rishi.

A better idea might be to use those auditory orifices on either side of the head and allow the messages that are heard to transmit to the brain where a considered answer might be formulated. Perhaps, crazy, I know, a reply to the those who are striking with suggested dates to talk and hear. To actually imagine what it is like to have their roles and their pay and make decisions accordingly. Listening. Hmmmm. There’s a lost art.

So in between dealing with my anger at having no control in this unsatisfactory environment, my own quandary about not having any suitable offerings of acting roles for a woman of my (ahem) particular age range has been equally tricky.

Slightly compounded by works round the back and front of neighbours’ abodes, the writing over the last few months has proven harder. However, recently I read out my latest revisions of my second novel to the Captain the other day and he seemed impressed. I am a quarter way in and have established its “Tipping Point” which nowadays is an essential ingredient to hold the reader, and it may just work. I also spent the last three months before Christmas attending a film script writing class, and the beginning of my latest project has brought back some very positive feedback from my tutor, so I will eventually continue with that. I have entered my first novel into a competition and my play into another competition, so I’ve bought my artistic lottery tickets.

Meanwhile, the Captain has been working in a state of stress and joy to produce his first British feature film, with star names and the like. I have assisted in subtle sorts of ways. The filming is done, which, during the weather freeze and travel strikes, became a challenge, but he got the funding and pulled it off, so now it enters the editing, foley and sound stage, during which festivals and marketing come into play as well.

So Kung Hei Fat Choy, everybody. Wishing you all great joy, wealth and success against the odds in 2023.

Paintings

https://photos.app.goo.gl/ty7wrTcMYV23kmAZ7

Here’s a link to my water & oil colours with some of the photos that inspired them.

Second Oil Painting Class

God of Smells

Today is the first day in a week that I have not had to lie down on the sofa and fall into a brain clogged stupor for four hours just after breakfast. The Captain and I have had COVID. Of the variety that one catches after three vaccinations, so I’m guessing it was in its latest strain. We were COVID virgins and both of us experienced it in very similar ways. We both had one night within the six days of it in which we thought we were in “the eye of the storm”. That experience alone was a test.

I sat upright the entire night in order to manage the mucus in both nose and throat, so that I might be able to continue breathing. My head spun like a washing machine and my dreams were made of dark materials. My throat was so raw that swallowing was a challenge that had to be planned in advance, alongside gargling aspirin and gasps. I would not wish this disease on my worst enemy and this one was the sanitised post vax version. It took me back to childhood illness when the sore throat and temperature felt like a death knell and in moments you would wish just to be struck down so that the hell could end.

Yes, alright, I admit it. I am a hopeless patient. Thank goodness the Captain and I went through it together because we practically crawled around letting out long groans like animals preparing for their own slaughter. It would have been unbearable for any other person to tolerate.

The worst of it was that it completely removed my sense of smell and taste. I had not realised how dependent my entire psychological well-being was on smell, to the point that its temporary disappearance left me in a depression. Smell marks the beginning and end of my day. It begins, when not suffering from COVID, with waking up to a toasty smelling pillow and the sense that the Captain’s warm body, clothed in a soft, musky T-shirt is close by. I get up and open the window, and the air carrying scents of bluebells, daffodils, tulips, primroses, grape hyacinths make themselves known to my nostrils. I go downstairs and put on the kettle. I squeeze the teabag into the boiling water, so that the amber liquid exudes the strong, quality unique to the dried leaves from the Camelia family. I add milk, a comforting sniff of that before it goes in, just to check its freshness.

Showering follows, in which hot water is combined with a range of gels containing jasmine, rose, lavender, rosemary and geranium foaming all over my body and once again its perfumes float up my nostrils. This set of rituals gives me the firm indication that the beginning of the day has taken place. Without it, I do not know where I am, if I am awake or indeed the walking dead. Imagine, once the mucus has cleared, breathing in through the nose and no sensation enters your brain. It makes you feel like a ghost, a shadow in your own life.

The next smells are of the breakfast type, which might entail coffee or toast, all of which produce a party of smells to enjoy. They also, in turn, message my body to feel hunger and the need to satisfy itself, as my system goes into full preparation for eating. Need I go on? Can you see what I am saying? Having no sense of smell removes all of this experience, and that’s just in the morning. A complete lack of sense of time and life pervades me when deprived of my sense of smell. So you can imagine how overjoyed I was yesterday when it came back. So, Gods of Smells, I worship you, I praise you, Oooooo you are so good, Amen. Please never leave my body again.

In other news, my second novel continues, while I restructure it from an old novella and rethink its narrative. I’ve entered a few competitions with my one act play I wrote a while back, but it always seems to be other people who manage to get the literary agent or a deal at a theatre or a role in a film.

My acting “career”, if I dare still call it that, continues with self-tapes and the odd audition, in fact I have to complete an advert self tape by lunchtime tomorrow, but sometimes the experience, metaphorically, of writing a message which you put into a bottle, placing a cork in it and throwing it out to sea can become very, very, very unsatisfying. Especially when you notice other people’s bottles being picked up by enthusiastic agents and publishers and directors and plastering their messages all over Twitter, as if entirely to annoy me. It does make one feel like one is living on an island, understood only by the plants.

I embark on an oil painting course in June and for some reason I am scared. About the amount of materials I need and about how crap I will actually be. But, some might say that I am lucky to have the chance. That I am lucky to not be a refugee. That I am lucky to have a loving family and to have love in my life from husband and friends. That I am lucky to have access to my talents and to be able to mark the minutes of the fast flowing days by using them. And they’d be right.

But right now, like the weather, my heart is raining. And until it stops, I will be miserable. But it will stop. Eventually. And when my heart sees its own sun again. I will agree with some, that indeed, I am lucky.

Leuca

Just thought I would share the latest endeavour. Painting this watercolour has sustained me through this month and reminded me of our time in Italy. I plan to enrol on an oils course soon.

It has been dry January for the Captain and myself. We have lost weight, and in addition perhaps some of the great joy in life. It ends tomorrow, since we began on 28th December. I’ll drink to that.

Italy, Cats, Crises & Lessons

I find it hard to believe that it has been that long since I last wrote for my blog. When life opened up, I got over the endless lack of stimulus and ran head first into it. We finally had our holiday in Italy. It was in Puglia again, but I am not going to say exactly where, as it is a secret. Suffice to say, if Italy is the boot, we were down the middle of the heel and later on we were at the bottom of the heel.

The first week, our villa was amongst olive groves, which sounds idyllic, and indeed it was, but there are a few facts that I need to explain. The disease that was introduced to Italy a decade ago has penetrated many olive groves and it has become a crisis. As a result, the olive grove surrounding our villa was dead. It was extremely peaceful, but a little eerie as a result, as no other life was able to exist in the surroundings. No crickets or glow worms, no sounds at all. However, there was a positive strand to the tale.

A starving female cat came to the door looking quite desperate. The Captain and I agreed that it was not comfortable to sit and eat whilst a creature who was fur and bone watched in agony. So, true to character despite his general dislike of cats, the Captain went out and brought back sack loads of cat food. We placed the dish at a distance, because rabies still exists in Italy, but we watched as she enjoyed her food. About a couple of hours later, she brought a kitten to be fed. We fished out another dish, and two dishes were placed at a distance for them. The next day, she returned with the first kitten and a second one, and we repeated our behaviour. This pattern continued until we had reached five kittens. By the day before we left, they were able to have milk from their mother and she was able to teach them how to hunt. The next morning they never returned, and my hope is that it was because they could sense that we were leaving and found other houses to visit. We left the food in the back kitchen in the hope that future guests would take the hint. Usually, in villas of this sort, there will be visiting cats. They should be treated with a welcome, because the bucolic surroundings also possess rats and mice which cats are brilliant at keeping away. My guess is that with the dead olives, there was not enough nourishment for the smaller animals that cats chase, hence their hunger. Any way, that’s my David Attenborough moment over.

The next villa was so beautiful, that I spent each day in a different section of it. The owners had managed to create something wonderful to look at or experience where ever you stopped. Even on the odd evening when a cloud or two came into the sky, the moon would create patterns through the trees, throwing shadows on to the walls of the house, so that I would lie outside watching the shapes for entertainment. We went to the rocky beaches on some mornings and to the sandy beaches on other mornings and swam in the crystalline waters as if our life depended on it, culminating in eating lobster on the last day in a cafe by the waterside. Our Italian was almost intelligible this time, which felt as if we had made progress. We agreed that next year we should go for a longer time, if at all possible.

Covid, Brexit and Petrol crises aside, it has become a strange business, living in London. I still love it and I particularly love seeing friends, going to exhibitions, trying on clothes, visiting charity shops, walking up and down the Thames, swimming at the Oasis and in the Serpentine, going to the theatre and many other things. But it is easy to feel how difficult everyone is finding it to adjust to the current way of being. No one knows if they should or should not wear a mask. No one knows if there will or will not be any acting work in the future. No one believes that Christmas will take place this year. It is a world of great uncertainty, in which money is scarce, which is eventually going to affect the economy and the working world in a way that we are all dreading.

It has been a testing year because my mother had a stroke, which meant that getting her to be seen by experts entailed waiting over a period of two days in the emergency ward of Worthing Hospital. My father also had a health crisis involving his circulation and also his knee. My brother and I managed to help them over this period as well as guide them when it became apparent that all future prescriptions had to be done via a verified account on the NHS APP. I may one day write a play about it, because looking back on trying to organise this, it was actually funny. If anyone actually sees the footage of the videos that my parents underwent to verify their accounts, the viewer would see a middle aged woman in a bra and shorts (because she was that hot and bothered) trying not to shout instructions at her parents. In addition to these trials, my brother had an accident in London on his bicycle in which he broke several bones. Grateful as we are that these can mend, life has been threatening enough with Covid. These were issues that we all could have done without. But I am happy to say we are all here to tell the tale, and so life goes on.

I had a #metoo experience with a male hairdresser whom I had visited for four years without any knowledge that he was going to do what he did. I managed to get away, but I worry for young women in the same situation as I had been. I would advise them to always go to a hairdressers where there are numerous practitioners, which should prevent them from being the subject of sexual misconduct, since there would be witnesses. I will never attend a sole practice hairdresser again.

I have rewritten my play, Cleo and Tone, bringing it into the 21st Century, addressing issues of love and sexual politics, rethinking gender assumptions and addressing what love really is in that context. I have entered it in for a competition so cross your fingers for me. My second novel continues apace, although I am looking forward to hooking up with my writing buddy, as it is likely that I have written a lot of crap. Or that is how it feels at the moment. I am also contemplating adapting my sitcom about my office job into a play, perhaps even a radio play.

As for acting, I have had few self tapes for TV dramas and some self tapes for adverts, and I am grateful for the opportunity I get in all of them. I do hope, very much, however, possibly unrealistically, that meetings will come back into fashion. I think it is only fair that the interview goes both ways, for the director and the actor. Meeting each other is the only nuanced way of discovering if you can work with that person. I think it would be to a casting director’s benefit to promote this idea, since if self-tapes continue to be the sole source of casting, it soon will become evident that this can be done between the agent and the actor, without using a casting director’s experienced insights. Only time will tell.

Now, back to that novel. Hmmmmm. Must try and fill that empty page…….

All Work and No Play Makes Kate a Dull Soul, All Play and No Work Makes Kate a Sad Mole