Tarot Queue

Now we're back at the studio and most of my team are in tech recces I find myself alone in my side of the truck a lot of the time. But once people learnt I could do tarot readings semi-legitimatly I had people queueing to get to me. Practice makes perfect and now I'm not a million miles away from quitting my job and becoming a regional mystic... Maybe not, but it's a lot of fun regardless.

Spent more time with the Script Supers in-between my other duties, watching a scene unfurl and come to life with the addition of about 100 SA's. It's thrilling to see the process and the footage as an on the fly editor. Here's hoping I can sneak down a few more times this week before my team realize I'm missing!

Running Low

Worked through an almost carbon copy day from yesterday. Got giant coffee order, irked locals, drove back, had lunch, shadowed the script supervisors. It was so similar that I actually forgot what day of the week it was. What I do know is that I am tired. My body felt weary when I got back, the kind of exhaustion that settles in towards the end of a job... Good thing we all have holidays coming up next week.

Got a Shadow

Did my usual line of helping at tech recces by honing in on an unwitting coffee shop and demanding 25 bespoke hot drinks from them. I always feel a little bad but it's always good business for them. I stumbled the coffees over and stuck around to do the same for lunch before returning to set for the main event... Shadowing the Script Supervisors! I sat with them for just over three hours learning the ropes and their unique process. It turns out I landed in possibly the deepest end they've ever experienced due to the nature of the day, but I kept up and chimed in where I could to show I was taking it all in. Think I'll go to play with them a few more times this week now too, hopefully picking up some more skills along the way.

First Cookout

 Enjoyed a swift brunch with Louis and Rachel before moving into the main event: BBQ'ing for Rebecca's parents. I'd seen enough YouTube videos on how to grill I thought I knew everything... As it turns out theory can only get you so far. I initially made the mistake I frequently ridicule others for: not using enough charcoal. We had a minor false start as a result which lost us a bit of time. But we lit some more up and then baby, we were REALLY cooking! So in spite of that initial hiccup I think it was a pretty good first cookout. Sausages were a little charred, but we live and learn.

Grill Maestro

 He shorts came out for the first time this year in an effort to combat the weekend heat. I didn't properly clock how hot I was until midday when I noticed I was grouchy and irritable. I put the shorts on and bam! Instant mood uplift. As we're hosting our first ever BBQ event tomorrow I dashed out to get the meat and a few other accessories to help us out in the big day. It's low-key an effort to impress Rebecca's Dad who is their family's grill maestro. One-upmanship isn't my intention, just want to reciprocate the love with a BBQ of our own.

The Bitter End Boys

Talk about a bitty day. Though my demeanor refused to show it, I spent the day paddling upstream, prepping a tech recce pack and the accompanying lunch pre orders. Just as it all settled down I had to do a big run to drop off someone's train tickets... Which fell through at the last minute.

Soon as I clocked off work though I rushed to get to a board game night with Mark and the Producer of The Last Bus. And thus we mixed wines without barcodes with Cadbury's chocolate buttons over many a game of No Thanks and The Crew. Between rule teaches we laughed about old Wildseed shoots and our time together. We'll always be the Bitter End Boys, a moniker I'll always wear with pride.

Double Brain

There's a sudden end of week scramble going on at the moment in our behind the scenes world. We have our next block starting very soon which means tech recces are going to overlap with the shooting days, which for me means being across two very different beasts simultaneously. I'm trying to get a schedule booklet formatted right, ready for printing and binding. It hasn't been since my dissertation that I've spent so long fretting over every tiny detail and page positioning. Doing another callback tonight too so we're all going to be rather tired tomorrow. Thank the Lord it's Friday though!

Carpool King

Donned my chauffeur hat not once, but twice as I took crew to and from work. It was actually quite nice to have some company while driving for a change, it put me in a good mood which I carried with me for the rest of the day. I did catering another favour and bought 20kg of frozen green beans, which coincidentally is almost exactly how many beans I got served up for lunch. As a small thank you they gave me back some tuna steaks to take home, a fraction of that has already been given to our cat, now she can't get enough of it. Good deeds are being reciprocated though and it's always nice to do good favours for good people.

Freelance Family

 I don't take it for granted, but I once again developed a new appreciation for my team and crew. I needed to secretly drop off a birthday cake for someone at lunchtime today and it was one of those rare days where we get an hour break - so I made an excuse and headed down to the floor while clutching a Colin Caterpillar. For the whole hour we ate lunch, played ball games and chatted like normal people. I felt so blessed to be amoungst a family of freelancers who were all also enjoying the green, green grass. I remember telling Rebecca that I when I interviewed for this gig that I really wanted it, and I'm so grateful I landed it.

Meds Man

In a completely new change of tact, instead of a food fetcher I became a medicine man. The medic sent me out on a few runs to replenish her stock of stuff, plus some insect repellent as our crew were being eaten alive by mozzies down by a creek. Only thing I didn't buy was air freshener, our latest unit base is in a working farm and the tenants wanted to give us a warm welcome by doing some muck spreading at the exact moment lunch was called. 

Green Thumb Warriors

 Rebecca and I deployed our green thumbs in a last ditch attempt to revitalize our flower box. Cosmos, snapdragons and a few herbs were bought from our favorite garden centre, ready to plum straight into our garden... After re-clearing the weeds that is. With a wing and a prayer we are hoping to end up with a garden we feel proud about while keeping the weeds at bay. For good measure we ever scattered some wild flower seeds all across the far end of the planter too. Really hope they all do ok.

Aside from that, today was a true easy breezy day with plenty of Zelda and TV watching. I just got into the swing of being slopey but now I'm back to work again. The Sunday Blues had a delayed trigger, but now I'm feeling them hard.

YFE Chum

Met up with an old friend from Youth for Europe whom I haven't seen since sometime last decade. He's an Italian chap who just so happened to be in the UK for studying so we reached out to one another and arranged a meetup in Newbury. We chatted about past YFE events, work, life, cats, DIY and COVID. We took him out into Newbury town for ice cream and a beer but before we knew it, the day was drawing to a close. 

Getting older means it gets trickier to maintain friends. It takes a fair amount of upkeep to keep the relationship going, but whenever I make the effort I'm always glad I did.

Ice Cream on the Lawn

I orchestrated Fiver Friday without my usual partner in crime. I went around to every member of the shooting crew to collect a tiny sum of cash for our weekly lottery. All the while I was helping our ice cream trike set up and taking orders for the top dogs. With the sun out and all the crew sitting out on the lawn, it was hard to believe that we were all working today, especially since we wrapped a little early too. All I want to do is sleep tonight though. Long drives and early starts have depleted my energy tank, this weekend is all about restocking.

Task Completer

Rushes through my daily tasks then hit a sea of... Nothingness. Not much else to do as it turns out when everything has been so well planned in advance. I also realize at work I'm the kind of person who likes to resolve things quickly there and then. I see tasks like an unending conveyor belt and the last thing I want to congestion there. We only have one more day at our current location and it's shaping up to be a doozy. At least we'll have an ice cream van serving us all throughout the day, a lovely end of week treat!

Hard Shoulder Treasure

Hit my first bit of industrial roadkill while merging onto the motorway. An IKEA plastic tub rolled towards me and it got lodged under my bumper so I huddled up onto the hard shoulder and yanked it free. On closer inspection the bucket was in decent nick still, my inner Grandad Bob took over and I said to myself 'I'll have that!'. 5 hours later I found myself hiding birthday paraphernalia for cast inside the very same tub as I walked it down to set. I lit the candles and walked in as 15 cast members sung happy birthday to the lucky recipient. All the while I stood there singing along in a room full of famous people wondering how I got there.

The only thing crazier than that is the fact I drove 1280 eggs across the Cotswolds today. But in this instance the mental image is more amusing than the anecdote so I'll tastefully omit the details.

Chill admin(?)

I took it upon myself to do some really mind numbing admin work today. I mentally prepped myself for the spreadsheets to follow and resigned myself to it. But as usual, the universe has other plans. Once again I was called on to help with, you guessed it: food. Lunch for execs tomorrow, breakfast and lunch for our drone team today, an ice cream truck for Friday and a private dinner reservation for cast at an upmarket venue right after we wrapped. Somehow I managed to sort virtually all of this today as it landed on my plate drip by drip. Maybe my team knows I'm a foodie kinda guy so they trust my judgement on these kind of requests? Good to be busy and bat away curve balls, but maybe some chill admin is more the vibe I want sometimes.

Snack Shopper

Was delighted to be gifted an envelope full of hard cash first thing this morning. The member of crew who won Fiver Friday split the pot up amoungst the runners and trainees, ie, The lowest paid members of the team, and redistributed the wealth. That put a spring in my step which never left me this Monday. I was mostly on snack buying duty this afternoon, I popped into a local supermarket and filled a deep trolley with an unruly amount of treats for our cast members, plus sun screen should we need it moving forward. I keep saying all I do is food and that feeling sinks in more and more each day.

The Malago Delivers

Brunch on North Street, is there a better way to start a Sunday? We took our weekend guests out to The Malago for some exquisite chic breakfasts, we then chased that up with a trip to the Sunday market and a mooch up and down the shops nearby. I left with armfuls of stuff for my work colleagues, and Rebecca and I found a new local artist who does extremely characterful prints that were inspired by Studio Ghibli. Once our guests set off the reality of the weekend ending started to set in. They just go by too fast these days.

Eurovision 2023

 The centrepiece of the day was Eurovision. But before we were beholdant to it's glory we had a whole Saturday to enjoy. I was up nice and early to slow cook a shoulder of pork, ready for shredding for carnitas later on. We took one of our weekend guests around the Harbourside for a street food lunch and an outdoor pint. Once the evening rolled in Eurovision started, though the hype was real for the UK to host, overall this year was a little ho-hum. Boilerplate acts and a predictable winner meant there was little to be get jazzed about. At least the company was ace, Mark and Lucy popped in which is always a treat, their commentary always makes me chuckle whole heartedly and that's what a Eurovision party is all about.

Tears of the Kingdom

 As mandated by my boss, my only objective today was to buy Zelda for the team. A few members of the crew gave me some money to go out and buy the latest Zelda game, luckily I had a horse in that race so I took it all very seriously. We wrapped early tonight too so I dash home to play it like a schoolboy. I didn't do much else this evening minus welcome our weekend guests. We're watching Eurovision together tomorrow so we're planning for a wild weekend.

Cutest Culprit

 Another quietish day for me at work. The hardest part was getting our team on board with a place to go drinking in the evening. It's been about 5 months since we did a social and after multiple plans fell through we finally agreed on drinks tonight on North Street. It was really nice too, just warm enough to enjoy my first beer garden of the year. Felt warm and fuzzy coming home but tired too after a long day so I listened to some slow songs on the walk back. 

Fully lulled into a weary stupor, I went to brush my teeth hoping to hop into bed with the cat and Rebecca to chill. Just as I rinse my gums I hear Rebecca worriedly calling my name followed by another sentence, I could only hear her properly once I re-entered the bedroom 'The Cat has caught a mouse!' For a second's fraction I marveled at the whimsey of the statement, once I saw the rodent running rampant reality set in. What ensued was a 45 minute effort from all three of us, cat, Rebecca and me cornered the cute fella and eventually caught it in a big box. I ran into the park, let it go and realized I was no longer chill. On the contrary, my adrenaline levels had spiked. Hope I can get to sleep ok. At least I got a mugshot of the cutest culprit.

Cast Times

I hope it doesn't say too much about my memory, but I can't actually remember what I did at work today. I was busy, but not too flustered, I made coffees, but not an excessive amount. It was just another day in the life I suppose. I do remember being fake-tasked with mapping out cast call times for next week. The Base Runner and I compared notes on when to put cast members into hair and makeup in the morning, aiming to give them all as long as possible in bed while working to bespoke briefs. Turned out to be a big, Su Doku style puzzle that I slowly started to enjoy... Hope I don't get called up to do that properly though because that's way above my pay grade, but it was a hoot doing it in a safe space.

Pizza Man (For Real)

After an unceramonious trip to and from Cardiff to swap a few cables out, I spent the remainder of the day on standby, waiting to dish out 30 pizzas. The joke is that all I do is food, but at least I got to experience a little first-hand gratitude from the crew for arranging the hot food drop. Morale spiked when I turned up and I kept getting upnods while we finished up our night time establishers. Back to my normal duties tomorrow, but I always enjoy toddling down to set when I can.

Skeleton Pizza

 My big job today was once again food related. We were due to shoot some nighttime establishes with a skeleton crew after our main unit had all finished up for the day. I struck up deals with a nearby Dominos pizza for some quick and easy hot food, I visited the branch, paid for it in full and established rapport with the poor intern who took my big order. I was effectively on standby to pick up that pizza order for the rest of the day. The weather had other plans for us though, and our night shoot was pushed back on account of the rain. So we changed the date of the pizzas and I headed down to set to help a mighty pack down in the downpour. We'll try again tomorrow basically, at least I got more time in bed because of it.

Bed Slats

 I've never hoovered between my bed slats before, and the evidence of that was plain to see. To think we've been sleeping underneath a whole family of dust bunnies, but not I just think about what a successful deep clean we did of our bedroom as the atmosphere itself feels much better. The remainder of the Sunday was spent at one of Rebecca's friends house playing games and eating jelly. Basically a Famous Five story on a rainy day... Except there wasn't a cloud in the sky.

Coronation Day

We tuned in briefly to watch the new king be crowned. The heart of the ceremony was actually quite interesting, seeing all the relics being passed around and learning a bit about the order of business, the history behind a lot of it is a lot more sacred than I was expecting.

But as soon as the crown was on my interest waned, I turned to my computer and hopped into a good, classic game session with Mark and Dan whom I haven't been together with in a little while now. Always nice to catch up with them and hear how they're getting on. I learnt that I'm rubbish at virtual golf and that Dan is still a master of geometry. As far as I'm concerned, the only real kings are my chums.

Return of Fiver Friday

 Earlier on in the week I had very little to be getting on with, today though I was properly strapped for time as the work kept piling on. Most importantly was my Fiver Friday duties of course, we took it up a notch this time round as I figured out a way for the crew to scan a QR code to do some bank transfers. Our prize draw was significantly bigger as a result and the winner was chuffed as chips. It's a fair amount of effort on my part arranging it all each week (we even printed out a giant novelty check for the winner) but it really is a ton of fun. Shortly afterwards I was back to script amends and logistics. I did an unprecedented amount of printing at the end of the day to set up my co-worker who I'm briefly handing over to for Monday. I sayed back a little later which made me a little late for my regular board game night. Rebecca tagged along and I ended up playing brand new games and drinking homemade rums - a few of which were on the house. As Fridays go, this was a jolly good one.

Kricked Neck

 Left work yesterday with a noticable twinge in my neck. I powered through the evening, telling myself it'll all be better in the morning. Well 5:20am arrived and my neck was the opposite of 'better'. Driving in I learnt that the human nervous system is a sophisticated and connected superhighway, at least that's what I told myself everytime I changed gear to suffer another nasty twinge. I walked into my truck with my neck on a slant. The Associate Producer laughed saying I looked like something out of The Adams Family. At that point I knew I needed to see our on site medic. They took a look over me and massaged some balm into my neck, but mentioned that time was the greatest healer. I just didn't want to have a kricked neck for our work drinks tonight. It was someone's leaving drinks and I wanted to make sure Production was representing well. Maybe a little too well as our camera team plyed me with drinks and held me hostage until way past my bedtime. Still lovely to see our crew as human being and not solely as work drones.

Base Street Party

Our Unit Base is a lively place. In preparation for the upcoming Coronation the costume and makeup team wrapped bunting and put flags up all over the trucks. Then for lunch our AD team put a banquet table up for them to eat lunch at, good thing the sun was out in full force because our mealtime ended up as a bit of a street party. For my hour long break I actually walked away from my desk and sat down with my team on the grass. Really civilized and all round pleasant. I keep thinking what a lovely crew we have and moments like that only cement my sentiments.

Japanese Iced Coffee

I discovered a flask I own is incredibly good to retaining near zero degree temperatures - perfect for bringing ice into work basically! I headed out to our nearby bakery to be their first customer of the day (literally, they hadn't quite finished setting up when I got there), bought some fancy coffee beans and used them to make a Japanese style iced coffee. Safe to say I made some friends with that one. Otherwise I was mostly on my side of the truck by myself, tackling my to-do list without interruption. More productive day, but it did feel a bit socially bland.

Back in Front of Camera

Deep down, everytime I get into work I low-key want to be in a scene we shoot. Well my prayers were answered as a scene get rejigged and a whole fake camera crew were required to populate a scene. So I went through costume and makeup and emerged reborn and ready to step in front of camera. My boss also got roped in but he was somehow persuaded to shave off all his facial hair minus his moustache... I bet he had some explaining to do to his partner after work. It was a lot of fun though, the crew love it too which is a double whammy. In fact, everyone was in a tremendously good mood today, I'll chalk it up to the unseasonably warm weather that gave us a sample of the Summer that's just around the corner.