Today I was the spawn of a Retsab Heklian. And a mechanical cataract remover. And an automated autopsy device. I was almost a demented lift for a couple of scenes, too, but someone else took the part so I sat and listened.

I don’t think I’m a very good actor (any good, actually), but Mark asked me to be in Soldiers of Love (episode 8 or something) so after dropping mum and Andrew off at the airport first thing I went over to the studios in Heybridge to meet up with him, Alison, Jason, Peter, Nicholas Courtney (the Brigadier from Dr Who), Gareth Thomas (Blake from Blakes’ Seven) and a couple of others for the recording.

It was very good fun, although it took much longer than I had bargained for, so I didn’t get to the gym with Paul this evening and he ended up waiting ages to eat, which I eventually couldn’t do with him because I had to get back to let the cat out.

The studio was much smaller and hotter than I had remembered. I think I have been spoilt with the nice big air-conditioned studio at LBC. That is half the fun of it, though. When we were recording a music CD there last summer we used to sit on the roof of it and flick through magazines while we each waited for our turn. Trouble is, it’s in a business centre that they are slowly turning back into a school, so none of the leases are being renewed, and the studio lease expires in February, so Soldiers of Love will be forced to find a new home for the last few episodes of the series.

Much excitement.

Yesterday was a little more ordinary. Paul had wanted to look at lighting for his newly decorated study, so we set out for Ikea and got as far as the end of the road before the traffic stopped us. There was no chance we were going anywhere in the direction we wanted, so we turned around and tried to sneak around the back way, but when we saw the two lanes of static traffic it was obvious the A12 was blocked so we gave up and walked into Chelmsford instead. First stop was Starbucks, followed by Dixons so I could return my answerphone. I was expecting to have to throw a strop because the receipt said they had a ‘repair’ policy if the product was more than 28 days old, but in the end they swapped it on the spot so the strop was neatly stowed away for another time.

We met Paul’s sister and mum and went back to theirs for tea and cake with the family, which made me somewhat edgy about getting home. Trevor and Jon were coming around for the first time in over a year and the flat was a tip. I also had to work out what I would cook, so resorted to my collection of those free recipe cards they give out at Sainsbury’s and picked a herby pasta thing, the only ingredient of which I already had being olive oil.

I gave up on the hoovering half way through and zipped up to Sainsbury’s, but how you’re supposed to be able to find lemon basil and marjoram late on a Saturday evening, I don’t know. In the end I found some dried marjoram and a whole potted bush of lemon basil, so bought them, threw the rest of the ingredients in my trolley and raced home to cook couscous, make salads and finish the hoovering.

I finished about two minutes before everyone arrived, opened the wine, served the food, and spent the evening being comprehensively thrashed at Risk. I was one of those stale-mate endings for Trevor and Jon, who both got close to their goal but ended up with too few armies to win, so we called it quits and settled on a tie between them.

It was 1am, and the idea of leaving the washing up was very tempting, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to face it this morning, and wouldn’t have time to do that and get to mum’s by 11 to take her and Andrew to the airport, so we did it as soon as they left and flopped into bed at half past.

In the event, I did get to mum’s on time, and got her to the airport about an hour early for her flight, in spite of a badly signposted diversion that petered out just when it had got you far enough into the docklands for you never to find you way back to where you wanted to be. Somehow we ended up in the middle of the Isle of Dogs, on completely the wrong side of the river for London City, and spent half an hour zipping up and down anonymous side streets full of broken cars.

We retraced our steps and found it in the end, and they unpacked the car slowly in the drop-off lane while I ran into the terminal to go to the loo before setting out on the considerably easier journey back to their house for a fortnight’s cat sitting.

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 2nd, 2001 at 2:42 pm and is filed under Journal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.