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On the bus on the way back from football, Phoebe was in her pram and another kid maybe a year of so older was on the chair next to her. Phoebe wanted to make friends and waved and said Hello, but the kid did not want to be friends and scowled at her and said, “No!” over and over again. But Phoebe, too young to understand that we can’t all be friends persisted and kept on smiling and waving and touching his shoe. He scowled more and more and said, “No” again. He was too cool to be friends with a younger kid, but not so cool that he realised that he looked stupid for taking on a baby. Phoebe thought it was a joke and laughed and carried on and tried to make him laugh back. “You’re not funny” the boy petulantly grumped. He was the childhood equivalent of the 2x £15 from Fareham. She was putting in some great work too and I think I saw him nearly laugh a couple of times. It’s just heartbreaking that the world can not be as friendly as my daughter assumes it to be. Why wouldn’t anyone want to laugh and play with her? How could anyone not find her funny?
I liked the grumpy boy and his refusal to back down though. They both came out of it OK.
We had a reading of the four Relativity scripts this afternoon, with the frankly unbelievable cast we’ve somehow assembled (not sure I’m allowed to say who they are yet, but I am one of them). I had written these pretty quickly and largely under the fug of illness and was worried about the mistakes I would have made. Though aside from calling my character “Rich” at one point and embarrassingly having repeated about three jokes across different scripts (there are some that are meant to be repeated but it was awkward to see the ones that weren’t), they were pretty solid. I mean it genuinely helps to have fantastic actors who totally got it from the start, but as the writing had happened in a bit of a daze, a lot of it was quite a surprise to me too. There’s a bit of rewriting to do and I have some room to add a few more scenes to some of them, but this was an unusually positive and uncringy (or is that unCringy) experience. My confidence has taken some knocks when it comes to writing scripts, but I may not actually be terrible at it.
My “nephews” were going to have a quick drink in the pub after the read through and asked me if I wanted to come along. It was nice of them to ask me along and for them to correctly mark me out as a man who is nearly 50 but still acting as if he is a student. And the character of Uncle Ian would definitely have taken this opportunity, so I had to too (and Uncle Ian is very much a character I play - he’s got a totally different name for a start - that proves it). It’s going to be a lot of fun to be part of an actors’ company again for a few days next week. And even the starrier names seemed down to earth and friendly and I am really looking forward to getting to know them and hearing some of their stories over lunch. There was already a nice family feel about it and hopefully we’ll be as happy to take the piss out of each other as the family we are portraying.
The only downside is that everyone is so good I now feel I have to work double hard on rewrites making sure they’ve all got enough to justify their talents. I am quite excited about it. Luckily I have loads of time with only five tour dates and International Women's Day between now and the recordings. Fucking great to have something substantial being made though. Maybe this will be my year....
