Travel and Accommodation Intern

Been in travel and accommodation for two days now and my head already feels hot with information loading. Massive respect going out to my boss and all the others who get people from A to B. I'm just hoping I'm doing my part enough to support those guys. I'm still booking trains, writing movement orders and filling up logs. It's like I'm on an intensive training course though and I'm trying to make it count.

Cardiff Calls

Ah yes. The early get up. The hour long drive to work. The ten hours without a break. Then driving home for another hour. Welcome to the glamour of working in TV.

In all seriousness, it's actually been quite nice to be back inside a production office again. I slowly remembered all the steps and got into the swing of things. I'm only doing cover work so I don't need to be mega onboarded with all the job's various ins and outs, which is a little refreshing. The drive to and from Cardiff is a bit of a bore though, I blazed through the one podcast I was excited to listen to, now I need something else... 

Gourmand Cat

We felt a bit guilty once we got home only to find the cat's automatic feeder didn't go round for her while we were away for 24 hours. We opened up the case and just let her go mental and gorge herself on a buffet of wet and dry meaty bits. Otherwise I did the routine packing of my work bag before starting on another few days of work. I'll be up in Cardiff next week doing some days in a Production Office, hopefully it all goes well. I've had the Sunday scaries for most of the week now, I've been off the wagon for a while now and I just want to do a good job.

Stasis til Curry

Back on a London bound coach to meet up with Rebecca and her family. I managed to finish up the last few chapters of my book club read on the journey and while enjoying some quiet time in the living room. Mostly I was in stasis til the main event if the evening: a curry with some family friends. When the meal was all done they came back round to the house to watch the football game, and the post match commentary. I can't say I was especially excited by the footie but it was a fun evening.

La Dolce Vita

There's an evolving answer to 'best film I've never seen'. Until today I suppose I would have said La Dolce Vita (I guess I'm doing pretty well if I'm scraping the barrel with Italian Neorealist works). I'm working again next week so I thought I'd sieze the day and give the film a shot. I've always heard it's either a self indulgent mess or a masterpiece, and thankfully I lent rather favourably to it. 

I rode that high for most of the day til the evening. A few jobs in Bristol were preparing to wrap up this week and by proxy I got invited to drinks. Somehow I ended up at a wrap party for a job I didn't even work on, I couldn't help spending the whole time giggling to myself about how the hell I got to free karaoke, but I didn't question. It sure is a sweet life I'm living.

De-hermitting

With Rebecca out of town I found myself home along (minus the cat). While I always manage to find ways to busy myself, I must confess that I felt like I've become a mite reclusive this week and needed some human interaction. I was delighted then when Lucy said she'd be in my neck of the woods this afternoon and wanted to grab coffee. We're both going through small patches of unemployment, but as chance would have it we also both just caught wind of some very promising opportunities. I expected us to commiserate over coffee, but we actually did some early celebrating which was lovely. As a double whammy, I played with a group of 12 other people online to do some social deduction. There were a bunch of new people tonight but I got stuck in and chatted away with everyone (when we weren't trying to murder eachother). 

Consider myself de-hermitted.

England VS Argentina 2026

There was electricity in the air all day leading up to the big semifinals. Just moments before kickoff I waved Rebecca goodbye, she's heading up to London before me so I'm staying home with the cat for a couple of days. The first half hour I spent figuring out which device had the most 'live' version of the match. Eventually I settled on the iPad because I remembered that I live in a neighborhood where everyone cheers loudly at their TV's. If anyone started shrieking, that was my cue to turn my head and watch the next time-delayed 30 seconds to see what all the fuss was about. Our goal caused a ruckus, our defeat caused groans, then silence. England's dream died once again at the semifinals. 

Baby Steps

Jamie is currently staying over at ours for a few days and we've both been enraptured by a game I picked up called Baby Steps, in which you control a blubbering man-child up a treacherous mountain. Catch is, the controls and the obstacles are designed to test your patience. You operate each of his legs individually while also influencing his centre of gravity. This means that every step is an ordeal, and every fall while going uphill is a potential catastrophe. In spite of it being intentionally infuriating, it's compelling in a bizarre way. We filled all of our spare time playing it today it felt like. Laughing when we made a slip, undoing several minutes of progress.

Operation Bookshelf, Continues

Operation Bookshelf continues at full force. I went to collect the wall brackets from a nearby Screwfix, I already knew they were too long to take in the car so I had to go by foot, all the while carrying home a pair of 2m white rails. Thankfully it's cooling down a lot around here so it wasn't too nasty a trek. All that's left to do is mark and drill some holes, all the while I'll remember that age old maxim: measure twice, drill once.

I have a week of quite intense sounding work coming up next week so I'll take this opportunity to be kind to myself prior to pulling my hair out. Got some movies to watch, games to play and bits to write - all of my favourite things. 

Ever Expanding Social Circles

Left Newbury with our usual gaggle of four in the car and pootled back to Bristol. The remainder of the Sunday was the definition of lazy in all the right ways. Rebecca and I had depleted a lot of our social batteries recently so this afternoon was a chance to recharge fully. Right before going over to a friend's house for board games! We're slowly making friends with a couple who live up the hill from us who we met at the board game meetup we go to each week, it's been really swell hanging out with them from time to time. They say making friends past your 30's is tricky, but my social circle has literally exploded in the last year or so it feels. Guess we're just lucky people.

Long Distance Family Garden Party

Did a fair few miles today, all in the name of making it to my Uncle's 60th birthday party. It's been a long time since I've been to a family garden party, the kind where all generators mingle and kids splinter off to find their own amusement. I mostly stood in the shade, enjoyed some drink and nibbles and made small talk with relatives, pretty dreamy event all told.

Coming home we discussed watching England play in the Quarterfinals. I couldn't bring myself to acrew the sleep debt required to watch the whole game so I slunk off at halftime to bed. I'll wake up and learn if we went through or not. 

Bye Bye Boat

Enjoyed our final breakfast on the boat before packing our bags and returning to dry land for good. For the rest of the day we felt the phantom pain of motion, even when standing deadly still the urge to rock gently from side to side was powerful.

Rebecca and I drove back to Bristol to check in on the cat (and to cut our cat-sitting bills right down). The rest of the day was spent doing the classic 'recovering from our holiday' - a chance to recompress and return to the world of land lubbing. 

Hardships: Endured

We all set our alarms for an early rise in a bid to beat the sun. Sure enough though, it found us. We somehow managed to endure every hardship we could on this holiday. A heatwave, running around, getting stuck on the wrong side of the boat, shearing off our TV antenna. But we all did it as a unit, emerging stronger, but just a little more battered each time. 

It's our last night on the boat, all the while temperatures continue to soar. I'm still shattered from all the work of the day so hopefully the rocking of the water will lull me off to my slumber.

 

Working on the Waterway

You know in old American movies they show chain gangs all bashing rocks together on the highway. That was us today, in the unkind heat as we laboured through more locks than we would have liked. We also clocked onto the fact the boats topside is basically sheet metal, the perfect conductor for the heatwave so sitting inside was akin to bring in a greenhouse. We muscled through it though, in spite of swing bridges and no shade. Once we finally moored up we somehow stumbled into a really remarkable curry place that threw a big reversal in our once dour mood. Same again tomorrow, at least we know what's coming though.

Lazy Accusations

Rebecca heckled me virtually first thing this morning for not leaping out of bed the literal second she did. Called me lazy, so I spent the rest of the day proving her wrong. Today I:

- Made her porridge (I didn't have any so it really was made specially for her).

- Finished reading the second half of my book.

- Did 30 locks back to back, in the full blast of the Summer heat.

- Undertook a pilgrimage to a supermarket to help carry some groceries back to the boat (Rebecca napped while we did this).

Spite, as it turns out, is a powerful motivator. 

Summertime Hibernation

Exhaustion gripped me throughout yesterday, even as I tried my best to style it out. It was the first day of our family holiday out on the canal boat, the first step was a drive out to meet Mum, Dad and Louis who already had a couple of days out on the water. I just slept the whole car ride and once we arrived I made a bee-line to the nearest coffee shop. That made me feel slightly more human, but news that we were about to ascend the biggest flight of locks in Europe (30 back to back) sapped my strength. I put on a brave face though and helped out where I could. Once all was said and done though, I collapsed into bed and never wanted to wake up again.

I end today in a similar stupour, not because I'm tired but because I ate so much fish and chips that my body has entered a hibernation period. Unusual for Summer I know. I'll sleep it off though and we'll be back chugging along the river... Back on the return route now. An encore for the 30 locks. 

Background Check

Alongside an entire cohort of ex-co-workers, I played wingman today. We share a friend who had a potential new romantic partner come over from the States just to spend the 4th of July with her. It was a sweeping, romantic gesture that demanded the call to arms. Or maybe it was just a good excuse to get bladdered on a boat. Either way, I played my part in day drinking and getting friendly with a perfect stranger from the US. We gave a glowing character assessment back to our friend and kept a good thing going by boating all the way into town for more drinks and dancing. Walking home now and I've held hiccups the whole way home.

On the Horizon

Halfway through my day of not working I got a text asking if I could jump in to help out on a project in Wales for a week. I ain't got much else going on so I said yes and now I'm starting to really look forward to it. The only other big job to do before then is sort out Rebecca's bookcase and we"re making even bigger strides now. I sanded down the boards so their ready to use, I got a ScrewFix basket full of all the other bits and bobs ready to collect after our holiday next week.

 Lots to look forward to. A week of work, a boat holiday and some new shelves. 

Superb Shelves

I actually ended up doing one little bit of work for people first thing this morning, but after that I basically took the day off to good off. We're all off on a family holiday in the next couple of days so my attention is being drawn to packing and prepping for that. I also went over to Lucy's brother's place to go pick up some pieces of plywood. A very late Birthday present from me to Rebecca was a set of shelves for her ever growing library of books. What I really struggled with was finding bit of wood that fit the bill that didn't cost the earth and it's moon. As it happens, Lucy's brother has access to a few off cuts and very generously offered to cut it all down to size for us. We're thrilled with how it looks, now it just lies with me and a power drill to make the dream a reality.

Day's Up for Daily

Finished up my last day of temp cover on a shoot. I surrendered my access card and my spot on the production truck, I ate my last crew lunch and waved farewell as I collected the rushes. It wasn't super impactful of course, they're still going on for a little while yet, but it was nice to have joined them for a spell. Back to the yonder of naught for me now.