Animatronics

Despite my feeling like absolute crap, we’ve made very good progress in the edit suite today. Louise, the editor, is an incredibly hard worker, and it always feels like we’re on top of things when she’s around. She’s consistently in work before me, and I have to force her to leave at the end of a day. She’s brilliant company and fabulously gullible. I’ve already managed to convince her that our blind cast member, Christine, fell into the Tyne just after filming her sequence on the Shields Ferry, and been rescued by an 80 year-old woman. I’ve also told that the ferret that disco dances at Tyne Mouth station is actually animatronic! I’m not sure where these surreal flights of fancy come from in my head. I once convinced her that a building across the road was 2-dimensional, and that a 20 year-old girl in a film was really an 8 year-old boy who simply liked dressing up in his mother’s clothes. Gullibility issues aside, she’s an immensely talented editor with exceptional judgement. She keeps me in line (both online and offline) and we spend long periods of time literally doubled-over laughing.


Without wishing to sound too much like a stuck record, I feel horrid. At the moment I can feel the cold sitting rather heavily on my chest; a sensation I’m not particularly used to. On top of the heavy lungs, there’s a tickly cough, a sore throat and my voice has dropped an octave. I feel like I’ve been well and truly pinched and punched to celebrate the start of March! I’m hoping another night’s sleep will begin a process of recovery, although I’m certainly not looking forward to my journey into Old Street tomorrow morning.

Commuting in the direction of the City of London is hell on a stick in the early mornings. The tubes are rammed to the rafters with people feeling depressed and edgy. It’s obvious from their faces alone just how many of them hate the jobs they do. Add to all this misery the fact that there doesn’t seem to have been a day of sunshine this year, and it’s little wonder that everyone seems so blinkin’ depressed!

Friday 1st of March, 1661, and Pepys dined on fish. Was it tradition in those days to eat fish on a Friday, or was this simply another attempt to be a good Christian during Lent? After lunch he walked into London and saw Philip Massinger’s The Bondman acted in a theatre somewhere near the Temple. His last thoughts of the day were about the King’s impending coronation. People all over the City were setting up scaffolds to watch the associated parades and Pepys was wondering just how much money he’d have to lay out to join the pomp and ceremony of the society event of a generation. Royal wedding anyone?