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My very slow but triumphant return to TV stardom continues. I was filming for a top secret project today. That must be the second lot of filming I’ve done this year. Take that Jimmy Carr. Getting nervous?
Weirdly both TV jobs that this year have been filmed at big houses in the country. I like to think I am doing OK financially, but then you get glimpses of the lives that some people live and it’s genuinely breathtaking. But then I think of the heating bills and I feel a bit sorry for them.
As always there was lots of waiting around and as we were all given a bedroom to relax in I thought about going to sleep, but there was always the possibility of being called any minute. It was the first day of work on a new show so inevitably there were delays as everyone worked out how things were going to operate, but it was a cheery crew and things remained relaxed on the surface at least. We just about got everything done by the appointed end time.
Basically though I spent the day either waiting around or messing around and being paid very well for it, so it is, undeniably, a crazy way to make a living. I think I managed to be fairly amusing too, but you never know how these things will come out in the edit. But like eating in a posh restaurant days like this are a rare treat for me, rather than the norm.
The lady who owned the house was milling around and I wondered how she felt having her place taken over by a film crew. She will probably not know what went on in one of her bathrooms until the show goes out, but I can’t imagine it will delight her! I am not going to start feeling too sorry for her, but the costs of maintaining a vast estate no doubt mean that such intrusions are necessary to pay the bills. It sounds like fun to have a film crew in your house, but it really isn’t.
At one point I looked out of the bedroom window to see this lady walking around outside. She went over to a low wall where there was something that looked like a bit of tissue on the floor. She picked it up and held it to her nose. It seemed very much like she had blown her nose on the tissue. She then threw it into the flowerbed behind the wall. It was such eccentric behaviour that I couldn’t quite believe what I had seen. Not only the double use of the tissue (was it even hers?) but the disregard for her own garden. At least put it in a bin. Or would a servant appear to spirit it away?
When we were outside I went to look for the tissue, just to confirm I hadn’t dreamed this weird episode. But the tissue was nowhere to be seen. What had happened to it? Slowly I realised that in reality what had almost certainly happened was that what looked like a tissue was in fact a petal from a large white flower. The lady had picked it up, sniffed it to enjoy its perfume and then thrown it down into the borders to rot away. Which was not weird and eccentric at all. And yet had I not checked out the scene of the crime I would have left convinced I had witnessed something bizarre.
We are all unreliable witnesses.
