Brief Hiatus

I got back to London and the weather is unutterably terrible. It's August. These things should be banned. I then had some shit happen to me which I am not going to go into here, but which has been a deciding factor in my having no desire to blog anything since I got back. I would just have gone on about equations. If x + y = (ab), then z. If x + (ab) = y squared, then z. If x = y, then z. Always then z.

Anyhow in this murk I have been rushing around auditioning for stuff with various results, as well as working in a PR firm as general dogsbody and doing educational theatre for Islington council. We had to devise a piece about street safety and present it to a room full of hyperactive children. It was me and Kesty and a girl called Vanessa. It turned out to be a lot of fun only because it was completely nuts. But the second half was about nutrition and I think it got a bit out of hand, since there were three actors involved in a discussion about nutrition. If you want someone to teach your children about nutrition and you could choose from any profession in the world, surely the last one that anyone would choose apart from serial killer is actor.

PR is a bizarre business. It sounds terribly legitimate, but at heart it is nothing but bribery. Friendly, charming and well spoken bribery. It makes you realise that there are very specific perks to being a journalist, since there's a whole industry snapping at your heels and trying to give you free things so that you like them more. Of course I am merely the man who fixes the sliding doors and photocopies and stuffs envelopes and arranges boxes, but it's fascinating to see this fluffy steel machine that goes on all around me. And I have to bear in mind that it's not all bribery, even if it seems that way on a brief acquaintance. Why am I fixing these shelves and carrying these boxes? Because all the girls in the office have perfected the "make that man do something for me" voice. I get brainwashed. It sounds like a great idea. It's nice to do a job where I don't have to question, and it makes me realise how easy it must be to lose sight of yourself in repetition. I only did it for one day as well. Chances are I'll be back though. The woman who runs the firm is brilliantly understanding of the protean nature of my work, as well as being brilliantly understanding of the vast hunger-monster that hides in my wardrobe when I'm not working and that I fear will leap out at me one day and make me devour myself.

Just because I can I've put up a photo of me on a swing in Vancouver. To remind us all that we like swings. And that there is such a thing as summer.