Speedy Sunday

Heatwave out so the perfect day to drawn the curtains and stay indoors. After a big Saturday it was refreshing to lock myself away and potter around. Movies were watched, games were played and dinner was cook, consumed and washed up. Monday frankly has come around too quickly, especially when I had to spend a small chunk of the day packing for an overnight tomorrow - I'm a little out of practice since the last job but thankfully I can just about remember how to pack a pair of underwear. 

Pampering #1

 Without really planning to, today became a bit of a self pamper day. First up was a trip to the barbers, the guy recognized me from last time and he did me a really good cut - really Summer ready now. Up next was a trip to town for some clothes, I'm running low on hot weather wear but I emerged with a new polo top and a more utilitarian shirt. Last up, I've been eyeballing a fountain pen for a little while so walked up to a nearby stationery place to scope some out. All the ones I was interested in were behind a display cabinet so I had to ask to try before I buy. The clerk produced the sanctioned 'test unit' which to everyone's dismay, he couldn't get to work. Then, lightbulb. He remembered he had one in his personal bag. A few moments later he reappeared with the exact pen I was looking to get (clearly we both have great taste). So I played around with it and decided to pull the trigger on a little present to myself. I walked back home with a new haircut, some new clothes and a swanky new pen - a whole new me!

We had a picnic in the park with a few friends and they're very well behaved dog in the evening. Rebecca pulled out all the stops with a main course, side salad and she even packed the plates and cutlery. I just brought beer. 

Rushes Runner Revisited

 Friday vibes almost all day. Early wrap on the cards, Glastonbury in the background, all the grown ups away - it should have been a certified slam dunk easy Friday. After midday everything changed and we were suddenly bombarded with stuff that hit like a ton of bricks. The light at the end of the tunnel was doing the rushes run - something I actually quite like doing. I know that passing a media card over is the final job of the day and there's some nice closeure to passing it to the staff at the edit house. That member of staff ended up chatting with me, small talk at first, then read my name on the signing sheet and recognized me - I gave her one of her first work days in industry. It was just lumping a load of boxes between The Bottleyard but someone had to do it. Funny to think such a flippant exchange at the time can have such ripples and impact on other people's lives. It made a ropey afternoon much brighter knowing that I made a real difference.

Always the Right Call

Bizarrely, I spent the entire day on the Production truck being the most senior member of my department on board. But without an awful lot really going on it was just kinda nice? A colleague had her Birthday today so we decorated the truck, brought a cake and flowers for her - all the usual stuff but it's the first real one of the job so it was fun to do little bits like that. We went to the pub after work too for a small hangout, I had the choice of doing that or going home to play video games by myself (my all time favourite thing to do) but it was the right call to be sociable. In fact, it's always the right call.

Demoralizing Run

After cramming in another batch of important crew members into a minibus for tech recces, I suddenly found myself alone in the office for a couple of hours. Between the night shooting and some other shenanigans, it meant that my hours were the only ones that aligned with the morning shift. Thankfully, I ran everything smoothly, answering questions as they rolled in and putting stars in cars as required. I rewarded myself with a little run after work. Considering I did exactly the same route during a heatwave last week, I oddly found today's run excruciating. That's the classic demoralizing outing though, the one where your gains stop and you question if it was all worth it? Will I ever run a further distance? Is this the end? Will they turn me into glue? But nah, you just have to realize it was a 'bad run', plenty more chances to do it better.

HOD Scraps

Loaded 40 coffees straight into the backseat of my car and sloooooowly drove them out to our recce location. Down  country lanes and one way traffic, and only spilt a single drop. The Location team were super pleased with all the support today and brought us back a couple of leftover bits from their buffet lunch - HOD table scraps often find their way into the communal fridge. The unit are technically on night hours today and I'll be bedding down before they wrap. Always a weird thought that. My phone will still be buzzing through updates but I'm not on the clock to give a damn. Same again tomorrow.

Midnight Dodger

I never am too sure where the time goes when I'm at the office. Likely pootling around on the computer doing small jobs as they trickle in. Our hours are about to get all kinds of crazy but I'll be doing an early morning coffee run for the grown ups for their tech recces tomorrow. Guess that's better than working up until midnight though. Rebecca and I went for a couples run again the evening too, now that the heat wave has passed I'm more inclined to get hot and sweaty again. Did the same route as last time but it gets easier, that the nature of it. Like putting one foot in front of the other it's a slow process but you get better every time you push yourself.

Mr Play It Safe

We're in the market for a new dresser unit of sorts so Rebecca and I walked into our favourite 2nd hand furniture place and had to do a coin flip on a chest of drawers unit. Candidate #1 was a classic pine unit, akin to the one we already had. Candidate #2 was a two tone oak unit with brass handles and a touch of personality. Usually I'm Mr Play It Safe, but we both dipped in for the rouge choice. It'll be arriving later on in the week so I guess we'll see just how well it goes with the room, but we're already jazzed about what we'll use it for... My plethora of winter jumpers will finally have a home! 

On the walk home we managed to walk through a film set and I bumped into an old colleagues. It would have been a beautiful reunion if it hadn't been raining and there wasn't an AD shouting 'get out of shot' to us, but we know the biz so we shuffled to one side. I'm back to it again tomorrow too, up first thing getting sausage baps for our next round of tech recces. If I'm lucky they'll be leftovers at least. 

On Call Drinking

It wasn't until my third coffee of the day that I started to feel like myself again. My Saturday morning headaches are crippling to my energy levels, but I mostly think it's because I'm catching up on sleep. I also spent the entire day on tender hooks to go day drinking with some chums from work, I just had to await the call. So I waited, and waited, and waited. Until finally, after the sun had gone down on the longest day, I got the message to go out with people. Problem was my social battery was a little low and I was already in my pyjamas so I opted for an early night instead. We'll paint the town red next time.

Weekend Cheese

 Our unit base was situated on a working farm with their own cheese making premises so I naturally had to buy a little souvenir to enjoy. I walked a small cut of cheese back to the truck and told my team I couldn't wait to tuck into some 'weekend cheese'. A term which got me on the receiving end for a real roasting. I just meant a little treat to enjoy over Saturday and Sunday - Rebecca and I are humbl folks like that and a small wedge of cheese is something to get legitimately excited about. Haters gonna hate though, I can't wait for some cheese, biscuits and port.

So Long, Lolly Run

In the midst of a heatwave, set demanded the one thing they can always ask Production for: ice cream and cool fizzy pop. For the first time in my life I wasn't the person to physically action that, rather I asked my colleagues to go get 100 ice cream and hand them out - that's one job I certainly don't miss, but it was nice handing them all out to the crew who were genuinely grateful. 

My home feels like the hottest place in Bristol right now, at least our sun facing back bedroom does. The game I'm playing is quite taxing on the old PC and it's gotta jettison it's hot air into an already toasty room. I'm just sweating for my right to play video games. 

Yearning for the Monitors

With a bit of time in my hands after clearing my plate from work, I took a stroll down to set to go sit with the Script Supervisors. They actually invited me down to hang out after they caught wind of me being a scriptie once upon a moon and they were super accommodating to me just being by the monitors. I was summoned back to my day job to copy paste data from spreadsheets after a spell though, but I crept away for just long enough to enjoy myself and to see most of a scene play out. Hopefully I'll be able to pop down again from time to time to keep my brain attuned.

Pen Paradise

I set off for work hilariously early to beat the traffic and instead the traffic beat me. Over an hour of driving later I landed and dove into my work. The big thing at the moment is the amount of birthdays we have coming up for friends and colleagues so we're cooking up plans and gifts for them. Speaking of gifts, I've had my eye on a rather nice pen for a little while now and a saw our base was a stones throw away from a stationery shop. Low and behold, they had my pen, not even behind a cabinet so I could try it out and get a sense of it. Better still, they offered to sell it to me with a blue ink cartridge inside - I was prepared to drop some more money just so I could write in my signature colour. Just in time too, I had plenty of Birthday cards to sign...

On Turning 25

Deary me. I finished up my to do list before lunch time and nothing really emerged to stack on top. I'm not used to lulls in the action as it turns out, but the mind does start to wander when it's not occupied. I honestly think I spent more brain energy being the office DJ, a usually thankless task but when it helps everyone around me lock in then it's all worth it. 

A coworker is lamenting the fact they're turning 25 soon, pondering and getting stuck up on the fact 'they haven't accomplished much with their life'. That kind of thinking bits hard, especially at that age. I remember working at coffee #1 and telling my 30 something colleagues exactly the same thing when I was turning 25. Despondantly they remarked how they'd give anything to be that young again. Well now I'm empathizing pretty hard with that sentiment. Still, I hope we can knock them out of their funk.

Run Rebecca, Run

Rebecca and I went out on another run together, this time we smashed her personal best. First time we went out last month she was wheezing her way towards the finishing line (not a far cry from how I was doing the first time I got back into the swing of things), but today she took it all in her stride. Slowly but surely I'm convincing her that it's a fun hobby.

Our lazy Sunday's have also given way to a new part of our routine: a mid afternoon movie. Often these are mid 2000's chick flicks that Rebecca is enlightening me on and so far we haven't hit a stinker. It's just funny going back through my film history to see well regarded 60's French cinema, Silent era masterworks and cheese ball Rom Coms all lumped in together. 

Padel 2

Keep getting Saturday headaches. Probably a combination of catching up on sleep and not having caffeine in my system at the appointed time of pre-6am. I push through it every weekend though, I suppose by the time it goes away symbolizes how rested I am. It didn't effect my performance during some sports though. Mark and Lucy invited Rebecca and me to go play some Padel together. It had been a hot minute since I last had a stab but racquet sports do come back to me pretty quick. Padel is an odd one though because you need to unwire your brain a bit from classic tennis rules as there's always more options to keep the ball in play - the most common being smashing the ball against the wall for a bounce back. Literally every one of us that played got offer that opportunity in a game, ran over to strike the ball, then had a physical hiccup as our brain and our arms didn't communicate properly. That made it all the more fun though - we're all at a similar level so the match was dead close but always a hoot.

11 Years

Although today was meant to be a bit shorter for everyone, I still found myself running around trying to facilitate everyone. I got the Friday feeling though, around lunchtime I started to twinckle knowing that two whole days of rest were incoming. But that feeling was slightly stolen away as the post work requests came flooding in. 'Hey there, sorry it's after hours but...' is the prefix from hell, especially on a Friday. But I got away smooth and managed to enjoy a date night out with Rebecca to it's fullest. 

Not just any date night though! It was our 11th anniversary of getting together tonight so we hit the town, visiting a swanky wine and pasta place which was stunning. We're talking crab, clams and the silkiest panna cotta I've ever had. We crashed back down to earth by  sauntering into a kooky board game bar smack bang in the middle of Friday Night Clubbing Central. It was a little slice of us and a little quieter than most places so it was Ideal for us. The whole time we spent playing games I couldn't believe 11 years had passed me by - I'm so very lucky to have Rebecca in my life.

Plied with Pancakes

My colleagues noted my thousand yard stare on occasion today. I was running out in the rain a lot, juggling multiple requests on emails and WhatsApp which managing several expectations. It can be quite draining that but I didn't want to make a thing of it. Yet to make me feel better I was plied with pancakes from catering, which I would have enjoyed more if I wasn't constantly getting up to sort out more problems. That said, I wore my many hats well and showed a lot of people I wasn't just a Prod bod. Even the director made a remark as he saw me loading a camera truck.

A busy day requires some fun in the evening though. I nipped out for a quick run before Louis and Rachel popped round to try the new Mario Kart game. Louis likes the new cow character and shouting cow puns when he does something hype as it turns out. 

Tray 9

Attended another round of teeth shaving with my dentist. I asked him if it was as ropey for him as it was me and he just smiled while giving a tired look. Another set of my trays went in too, markings my 17th week with these things in my gob and I'm still not halfway yet. The results are starting to be a bit more pronounced though, just have to let that carry me for now.

My one hour at the dentist unexpectedly put me in the backdoor for the rest of my work day. I played catch-up til about 4pm, then coasted for a couple of minutes, then got hit with a bombshell that I had to untangle a bit too late in the day. I think it's all sorted but I certainly earned my money today. 

Cleared To Do

Something miraculous happened this afternoon. I cleared my to do list. Every single thing has a strike through it, not one job left to do for the day, even my daily duties were all done and dusted. While there's always something to be getting on with, I'm in a position to do those extra jobs in a more leisurely capacity which is a lovely prospect. This even came off the back of a chunky curveball I swiftly battered away when one of our hire vans broke down on the motorway. Everything was tidied up and sorted swiftly though without fuss. I felt so good after the day I went for a short run to, once again, try getting back into the swing of things. I gotta try keeping that up a bit more, I can feel my muscles being to atrophy behind my desk.

Lukewarm Monday

Back to it this Monday and the day went by slow. We're kinda over the big hurdle now, all our time, energy and stress has been poured into a single area and now that sequence is over we're just kinda laughing. I was in the office today and most of the day was just quietly spent tapping away on keyboards and emails, enjoying a lukewarm Monday to get us ready for the week. Even still I found myself as the first one unlocking the office and closing it up at the end of the day. I gotta learn to leave in good time really, there's so much more to life than work.

Power Washer

Prepped Sunday Scramble for Rebecca and her family. Her Mum and Dad are out in Spain for most of June, but before they went they offered to power wash our back garden. I couldn't possibly say no to that could I? It actually looks better than new out there now - the cat will barely recognize our garden!

I stayed at home while Rebecca went out to a gig in Bristol. Those few hours alone was all I needed to recharge my batteries before the next work week. I think we've broken through the hump of the block and gotten into a really firm swing of things. Just have to maintain energy and get through the marathon job and that starts with an earlyish night to catch up after yesterday's madness.

Happy Birthday Dan 2025

In between games of Mario Kart we got the house ready for Rebecca's visiting parents. We took the into Bristol town where I eventually splitered off from them so I could hang out with Dan plus a few other friends from my secondary school days. We did pizza, pints, shots of ameraetto, fun hypothetical questions and arcade games after dark. Rebecca and I queued to get into the sweatiest booth in Bristol to play some Guitar Hero together. I think Dan has a good day out in the city - he's the Birthday boy as of the stroke of midnight so I hope he had a good one!

 

Mario Kart World

Friday on the truck was a fun place to be. A bunch of the grown ups toddled off home just after lunch so we started raising hell. We admittedly got a bit overexcited by it all but we were laughing, working hard and laughing some more, a jolly good way to spend the day. Better still, Rebecca and I had a Friday night in. We opened a bottle of wine and settled in to drink and drive with the new Mario Kart - this time finish up all the levels, earmarking our favourites and learning to the best routes to destroy each other with later. It's been over a decade since the last Mario Kart so I think we're allowed some excitement.

Switch 2

While driving around town doing various drop offs for work I got the guy punch email. 'Your copy of Mario Kart isn't getting delivered... So sorry'. Potential day ruiner that, luckily I managed to hop into Argos and pick up a copy like usual - now I just needed to cross my fingers and my toes for my Switch 2 console to arrive.

No dramas there though - it landed super effectively with Rebecca at home. Now came the agonizing clock watching at work. I put my copy of Mario Kart on my desk as if it was a photo of my child - 'do it for them' style. That kept me going and before I knew it I was unwrapping the console and playing games with Rebecca all evening long. 

Nothing beats the excitement of a new console. Perhaps this one was a little downplayed because it's a little too similar to my old Switch. That and I'm 31 now, my emotions are much more in check. But I'd be lying if there wasn't a tiny part of my that felt like a little kid again opening up that box. 

T'was the Night Before Switchmas 2

Rocked up to a unit base I'm pretty sure was visable from space. With a huge number of cast and SA's in there was a lot to wrangle from all the departments, but everyone looked at ease. They had the right help, good team members and all the resources they needed to do their job well while keeping a sense of humour. That's frankly the best possible environment in our business and it was a pleasure to go into work today.

Tonight is also the evening before the launch of the Nintendo Switch 2. I always get a little sentimental saying goodbye to and old console though, I remember what the original Switch represented, I recall where I was physically and emotionally when I got it and I can't help but smile thinking of all the good times it's resulted in. I went Interrailing with that thing, it's been a constant partner for family holidays and Su Beer competitions. To think that device will now be put in storage after tomorrow is actually madness. But that cycle is all part of the game. New tech comes in, rendering older consoles obsolete, but their impact is irreplaceable.

Copy+Paste

I don't think I did anything at work besides move information from one spreadsheet into another. I'm not even joking. Names for distro lists? Lemme copy+paste those off a Google sheet onto a dedicated emailing platform. PO'ing taxis? Lemme copy+paste from the invoice into a logging spreadsheet so I can copy+paste it all again into our PO software. Work like this is a bit fabricated at times, do humans need to justify their time doing busywork or are we just here to suffer? At least I get pennies for my pasting, then numbers in my bank account go up.  

Switch 2 Dispatched

Got to work just after the crack of dawn to set up our satellite wifi, (We're saving money by using me instead of a dedicated engineer to set it up). My boss invited me down to set to see it all setting up and getting ready for the big sequence we're doing. I had a small hand in organizing bits and bobs and it was nice to see them arrive and get put in situ. Otherwise I just kept to myself, put my head down and got in with my work. I'm actually getting ahead of the game once again, I have breathing room and I'm feeling good about the next few weeks. But it was a long old day for me, I've not fully got back into the swing of being back in Production during shoot days. I'm in the office tomorrow though so I should be able to recover a bit. 

The one thing that's keeping me going is the dispatch email I got saying the Switch 2 is on its way to my doorstep. Just a few more days to go... 

We can be Vampires

In the true spirit of enjoying my one day off and thus not wanting to see sunlight, I spent the majority of the day playing games and watching films about Vampires. Ok, I did actually do the North Street shuffle as it only felt right to do something productive with my day beyond being with creatures of the night. But if we really want to talk about bloodsucking, then we can go no further than Grease 2 - a cult classic to some or an absolute tire fire in my eyes. At least it was fun to watch something quite terrible with Rebecca, we had a hoot laughing AT the movie tonight, the ultimate brain off Sunday watch.