Tough and stringy

As my fellow acting friend Will wisely points out, these days actors need to have more than one string to their bows. By which he means other jobs to rely on for sustenance while trying to carve out a career in the world of thespianism. Will uses his not inconsiderable skills as a film maker to fill in the gaps.

Being largely unskilled and generally a bit too lazy to learn anything new I can’t do what these other, talented actors do so I must fall back on my inherent artsy-fartsyness. To this end, I have a few projects on the go. I am writing a novel (it’s going quite well, but I’m not sure what it’s about yet), I am in a couple of bands – one for functions and one as a vehicle for my “poetry” – and I write this blog.

Unfortunately none of these particular strings pays me any money.

Now, I would love to live the romantic ideal of the struggling artist who survives on nothing but his genius, but, alas, I have physical needs. Food for example. And these needs must be paid for.

So, in search of a new back-up career, while I wait for the email from a serious agent, I think I may have stumbled upon my perfect and possibly lucrative bow string. Namely bakery.

Today saw me bake my second awe-inspiring all-in-one Victoria sponge cake of the week (recipe courtesy of Delia), and before the weekend I baked a loaf of (if I do say so myself) delicious wholemeal bread thanks to the McKenzie family recipe.

Now all I need to do is find someone who wants to purchase my wares, and then I can rename the blog diary of a small scale baker. Paid or unpaid, I think perhaps tomorrow I’ll do pizza.

Busy, busy, busy

Well, it's been a week since my last post and I imagine there was a feeling that I had lost interest. Far from it. In fact I was busy. That's right. Busy. In the world of acting (the one I inhabit, rather than the one Sir Ian McKellen inhabits) being busy is GOOD.

How you make yourself busy is only partly important. I've knocked up a list of ways you can be busy. All of them are good, but some are better than others; the closer to the top of the list the better.

1. Paid acting work

2. Audition/casting

3. Voluntary acting (ideally for someone influential or important - or maybe even as a favour for a friend)

4. Any paid work

5. Social engagements with important people - agents, producers, anyone who might employ you for anything at all

6. Social engagements with friends (sorry, I am a mercenary)

7. Romantic time with the other half (she has been awfully overlooked in this list, but I hope she understands I am only doing the earlier things to try to get money to buy her pretty things - or at least to let her spend her hard-earned money on herself, rather than on keeping me alive)

8. DIY/self improvement

9. Other

There is a further list that goes with the paid non-acting work that runs all the way from sweet taster at Willie Wonka's factory all the way down to chugging, but I thought a tiny bit of brevity might be a welcome relief in this post.

So my last week has been spent mainly in the bottom half of the list. Some 7, a couple of nights of 6, a touch of 8, in the form of running an attempting (failing) to do pull ups on the underside of the stairs, and a whole load of 9. But it's all good, busy stuff.

And if that sounds pathetic, I have been moving closer to getting myself some 4. Having signed up to a couple of temp agencies I have been applying for various jobs with limited success.

I came close to getting a temp job as a Post Room Assistant for some unspecified office. Duties include distributing mail, sorting out deliveries, occasional reception work - nothing I imagine is totally out of my range. I should say I'm not being patronising to post room workers, I have worked as an intern in for a PR team and have had some first-hand experience of the post room. Most of the duties listed are things that I was responsible for at the time, my only shortcoming being that I have never operated a franking machine. Difficult I'm sure, but there was going to be a three day training period, during which I hope they would cover it relatively comprehensively.

Anyway, I was contacted by the recruitment agency to ask if I could come and be interviewed by them to assess my suitability. I managed to find a gap in my diary, between some 8 and some 9, put on my best smart-casual outfit (something I would wear to a fancy dinner - grey gabardine slacks, grey shirt, Clarks shoes and a blue cardigan. I looked dead dapper) and headed into central London.

Sat in the reception room, I was greeted by Karen (lovely, homely, South African), who led me to her office, which she shares with her colleague Lynn (bit more glamorous, bit older, Australian). Interview went swimmingly, as I detailed how perfect I would be for the job and in fact for any other jobs they might have. Then Karen handed me over to Lynn for another interview so that she could 'get to know' me.

Lynn opened with a shrewd question: 'If you had this post room job for the next six weeks and then someone offered you a part in a huge Hollywood movie what would you do?' Now I would like to refer the reader to the list near the top of this enormous post. I think you'll find Post Room Assistant comes under 4, and 'part in a huge Hollywood movie' sits at the top end of 1. The real answer is quite obvious, and I hope Lynn knew it before she asked me. I would politely tell the company I was working at that I was leaving, and if they had any complaints they could take them up with Steven Spielberg. My actual answer was 'If I had made a commitment to work as a Post Room Assistant then I would have to stick with it.'

Now it turned out Lynn knew this was a good question because she 'has a friend' in the business. She then enquired as to my private life. I told her my wife supports me using her nurse's salary. This then led on to a discussion on the topic of the NHS. Now I don't want to get all political on your asses, but I like the NHS. Free healthcare is one of the things that make me feel patriotic. It may not be amazingly run, there may be issues with it and the tabloids may attack it, often with some justification, but that is part of the democratic process of perfecting the service. We can't expect something on that scale to be right all the time, and we need to keep our eye on it to make sure standards remain high.

Lynn, it turns out, has a different opinion on the subject. She thinks the NHS is: first, negligent; second, poorly conceived; third, terrifying. Again she 'has a friend' who saw an invalid man go unfed. I don't believe she offered to feed the man, or even mentioned it to a nurse, though she did tell the person who delivered the food, whose job is not to see the food is eaten. Effectively she stood by and watched a sick man fail to eat, but at least she told her friend Lynn, so they could agree that the system was effed.

Lynn then basically went on to launch a diatribe against the NHS, citing foreign nurses as a problem, finishing up by claiming (actual word-for-word quotation) 'I would rather die in a car crash than go to hospital.'

Please don't judge me. 

My response was basically to take a big breath, affect a worried smile and say something along the lines of 'Wow. Err, yeah, I suppose. God, yeah. Um.'

In my defence, I was trying to impress these people, and prove that I could fit in quickly and well in any environment, even an ill-informed, racist, reactionary one. What if it was the EDL who wanted a Post Room Assistant? They probably wouldn't want a lefty liberal franking their post. I needed to appear available to work for whoever, even people I don't respect or like.

And there it is, I'm afraid. The list is just the first step on the way to a total disintegration of your scruples. Before I was an actor I believed that I would draw the line at working for people whose politics I strongly disagree with, but apparently now I will change my own beliefs in order to make the idiots who may want to employ me feel more comfortable.

Thankfully I didn't get the job. Apparently they went with someone with more post room experience. And I have taken that as a sign that next time around I will stick to my guns. If I'm going to get rejected anyway I think I will at least tell the idiots what I think of them.

And, by the way, don't think Karen is a saint either. On the way out she told me next time I had to wear 'something smart - a dark suit and white shirt'. I take this as a personal slight on my outfit, and see it as a sign that this agency and I are not suited. I will go back to the bottom of the list for now and stay busy with scruples.

The remit

Right then. Welcome to my blog.

This is my first attempt at a personal blog - partly because I hadn't worked out what I wanted to write about, partly because I was (and still am) unsure why anyone would want to read my ramblings, but mostly because I know myself to be lazy and irresponsible. In all likelihood I will lose interest in this blog after about four posts, and forget to ever update it.

But fear not, brave reader (I hope there is at least one). I am resolute. I've put my doubts to one side and am determined to make this a fairly regular do. I will be pouring out my rantings and ravings as often as they pop into my head. Good news, right?

But what's it about? Everyone needs a niche, and all the best blogs have quirky angles to them. All the famous ones are topic specific: music, fashion, food, travel. I am interested in some of these things, but am in no way an expert on any of them. The existing blogs in these areas are plenty good enough, any attempt I make to rival them would be unnecessary and bad.

So what about photos of things you've seen while out and about? There is the often brilliant "blog" of "unnecessary" quotation marks, and one I always liked the look of by a guy I used to work with, based on the wide range of unusual things he found in Kilburn Grange Park. Both instances of inspired ideas put down in a neat and easy to browse manner. But I don't often leave the house, and when I do I don't take a camera with me, so my options are severely limited. Anything I take a picture of will have to be in or visible from my house, and that will probably make for some very dry reading indeed.

So instead, I have decided to focus on my employment. I am almost entirely employed by a small theatre company called Barbershopera. They are successful enough to keep me off the streets, but not yet at the stage where I can get too comfortable there. Having fallen into the world of acting thanks to a coincidence and a favour from some old friends, I now remember it was something I always wanted to do when I was a child. Effectively it's a dream come true. However, now I have my dream in my hands, I realise it is rather different to how I had imagined it - not quite as glamorous. And I have a feeling everyone shares this misconception.

So the purpose of this blog is to blow the lid off the world of acting, the job that now occupies about five percent of my time - and nearly 100 percent of my working life. I doubt it is a proper niche as I imagine someone who acts already does a blog, but I don't care about their blog, this is my one. I need to document my life and - as an performer - need an audience's approval. I plan to do something like the Joe Orton diaries, only without the shady encounters in public toilets, or like Samuel Pepys's, only without the plague and fire, or like Anne Frank's. Actually no, not at all like Anne Frank's. My blog will be flippant and silly and not have any major impact on anything. I plan to do the opposite of Anne Frank's diary. Although I do harbour hopes that one day there will be a museum to me in Amsterdam.

So strap yourselves in for this whirlwind adventure. Prepare to be amazed at the glamour of rural tour, be dazzled by the endless Travelodge breakfasts, be underwhelmed by the size of the tour van and be astounded at how I can senselessly pass weeks without really achieving anything. Welcome to the world of a barely employed actor.