6619/19539
It's so hard being away from home for all this time.
I miss my jigsaw.
Wales unashamedly conforms to its stereotype by insisting on being pelted with rain for the entire week so far. Come on Wales, have some pride. You don't have to be like people say you are. And acting up like this helps no one.
More Covid tests took out the morning, as everyone in the cast and crew had to take the 10-15 minute stick up the nose hole. It wasn't quite as extreme or rough today, but still not exactly pleasant. You could tell that none of us came out positive because filming continued.
Before the test a man also turned up to fix my tyre. Which was a relief. I had noted on the journey here that I had enough fuel to get home, but now I only have about 100 miles worth. So that's a little mystery. It seems unlikely that anyone popped along to syphon my tank (and there was no sign of forced entry). It's not that big a deal, but it will be another job for the ride home and it's just a bit weird. The tyre man suggested it might be just the fact that he had the car up on a jack that gave the false reading, but it was still like that when I drove the car up to the accommodation.
I didn't get to do as much acting today as I anticipated. Overnight the director has changed the central plot and he decided to go back and add more to the stuff we'd done and flesh out bits that he'd imagined might be montages. I got to do a fun short scene with one of the stars of the film, Russell Tovey and my character's bitter warnings about marriage made him corpse, which is fine cos you just go back and do it again. It was cool to get approval from such an established, skilled and funny actor. But also the lines had come from nowhere and it was great that the improvisation aspect was working. The character isn't a huge stretch for me, but he feels very differently about his wife than I do about mine, so I must have channelled him for that part.
There was a lot of giggling today, as hysteria set in on the set. I have got through a good couple of hundred pages of my book, which gives an idea of how much waiting around there has been. But cast spirits remain high. It's sort of unbelievable that we will make a feature film in less than a week and sometimes it's hard to see how it will fit together. But the director and many of the cast have done his loads of times before and I completely trust that they are getting what they want. It's exciting that something like this is possible, even if the conditions are far from the pampering that you'd expect actors to get. And obviously social distancing and strict rules in the bubble (except when we're in character, because Covid thinks you're someone else so doesn't attack you) have slowed things down.
It was the first night that my room wasn't freezing and my first decent sleep. I wonder if the two things might be connected.
