Sunsetting Summer

For my one day off this weekend I spent it doing one of my favourite things: popping down to Newbury. Dad was on good form in the kitchen rustling up some roast beef. His recent hand operation means that he needed a bit of help doing bits and pieces so I was happy to oblige. I was even happier though drinking wine and enjoying a Sunday roast, a meal I'd forgotten all about over the Summer months. 

End of August today, with we bid farewell to Summer, at least til next year. All over the UK BBQ's will be rolled back into sheds and jumpers will be dredged out of closets. The sunsetting of Summer is always a bittersweet moment, makes one think about how close we are to the end of the year already. The colder seasons beckons, we are helpless to answer the call.

Mario Kart After Midnight

Work for me started at 15:30 today so I had a good chunk in the morning to do some fun stuff. Rebecca and I watch the Thursday Murder Club film which was fluffy and inoffensive, then I played through one of the best games I've touched all year. Riding on that high I headed to work, though Saturday's are often fraught with very little to do (I remember on an old gig my most important job on a Saturday was to get the Producer a copy of the Guardian). So in-between legs of work we busted out some Mario Kart to play with the chaps on the truck. Made the night work go quick and the bonding time was real.

Bank Holiday Monkey Paw

Repeated yesterday's trick and watched a film before work then never quite got my head fully into my work. Most Fridays have chatterings of 'what are you doing this weekend?' which are usually pleasant to hear about. This week however everyone knew what the answer was: work. In a twisted monkey paw wish come true the unions have introduced an inflated day rate for Bank Holidays (yay) but that means we just make up a five day week by doings the following Saturday with no extra pay (boo). At least it's becoming a shorter day and I'll get to spend the morning at home... Maybe another movie before work?

Banana Splits

I'm doing split shifts at the moment which basically means I get my evening off in the morning. Gotta get your free time in where you can though so I watched a film before work today, but heading in afterwards spun me out a bit. Because the unit are shooting into the dead of night they let me finish the last few hours of my day working from home. I spent a little while rigging a makeshift work space (which was legit enough to make Rebecca jealous). Same again tomorrow, at least I know what I'm in for.

Middle-ing Middleman

With the studio looking like a bit of a ghost town now it was down to me and the team to keep the day to day going. Lots of kit to be returned and collected: radios, power converters, dollies and magliners full of monitors. Every vendor is supported by demand, and somehow the market has evolved to require a middleman like myself to arrange buying and hires but seldom touch the goods. But hey, some satisfaction in fluid logistics I suppose.

Production Understudy

Returned to the office for a day of chasing via email. And when that doesn't work I phone. And when that doesn't work I just give it an hour then do it all over again. What was quite sweet is when one of the Production Assistants came up to me and asked if they could learn about Prod Sec'ing from me. Of course I said yes, but I felt a bit bad as I basically told them the whole job is just copy and pasting, using en masse email software and never leaving your desk in case someone needs something copy and pasted immediately. Not exactly the razzle dazzle and glamour you get into the biz for but it pays the bills.

In other news, I realized I've been misspelling two normal words for far too long.

 Infomation is not Information.

Responce is not response. 

A Muppet is what I am. 

Leisurely Racing

With the long weekend drawing to a close I found myself 'leisurely racing' to get it all done before the end of the day. I finished up the new Indiana Jones game that has taken me all of August to play, Rebecca and I went round Bristol on a Gromit Unleashed tour to spot a few dogs and chickens... I mean penguins. Then I made a batch of brownies for my colleagues (plus a few chef treats for us) and did another 'chick flick': Muriel's Wedding which won Rebecca and me over instantly. A great way to end a long weekend.

Babka

 Had my first babka today from the Sunday market. 'life it pretty good' I remember thinking to myself taking another bite while sipping on an iced Americano from an independent coffee place. Somehow it only got better after I made dinner tonight and it turned out even better than usual. Then Rebecca made an apple crumble with fruit from the garden. Then we watched All That Jazz - a film that I'm kicking myself for not watching sooner because it was dynamite.

Best of all though... No Sunday Scaries because I'm not working the Bank Holiday Monday. One more day to do it all again. 

Mid Life Mega Drive

Returned to the Sega Mega drive first thing this morning. I have a deep nostalgia for the graphic and soundscape of that console and one of the coolest things is actually playing games I've never dusted off before - it's like planning for gold. I'm on a bit of a pre-turning 32 crisis I suppose but returning to my roots always helps ground me. 

Rebecca was smitten by a local taproom after visiting there a few months ago so we swung by for a burger and a bevvie. Was really cute to just go as the two of us, one of the last outings before we wave Summer goodbye for another year.

The Big Haul

I had a hunch I wouldn't be too busy today and that turned out to be largely true. Good for me because I got plenty of time to hit up the crew for the long awaited return of Fiver Friday. It turns out people were KEEN, we went round all the houses and everyone was so excited to play, we ended up with a single handedly the biggest pot I have ever run: £470! We got a member of cast to draw and announce the winner and I got to pass someone a 'life changing amount of money'. 

Moreso than a quick gamble, Fiver Friday gives me a chance to walk amongst all members of crew and talk to them. It's nice to drum up some enthusiasm and give a spark of fun to them, especially going into a long weekend. We really do have an A-team with us this time round. Everyone is good at their job and good people - it's rare to get that combination sometimes, even moreso when there's almost 200 people on your crew. I felt lucky to be a part of something, all I did was put names in a hat today, but that was much more gratifying than even I expected.

Dusting off the Lucky Hat

The whole gang is back at the studio and with that comes a sudden wave of crew requests. I was wrangling hire cars, post and an industrial sized scale at one point, all in aid of the mighty machine of film making. I felt like the time was right to finally resurrect Fiver Friday too, everyone has found their feet and the game wouldn't serve as an interruption. With any luck, someone tomorrow will win a 'Life changing' sum of money.

Materialists

A shorter day meant less time to cram everything in, which was especially tricky with back to back meetings to set up for. My co worker were slightly distracted though by the hottest social event of the show - a work Summer party. Alas, I didn't get the invite so Cinderella didn't get to go to the ball. Instead I tided up, sent my last few emails then bid the office farewell. I had other plans this evening anyways - a date night with Rebecca to the cinema. The film: Materialists, the second feature from the director of Past Lives. I was mentally prepared for this movie to not be the Second Coming, review scores braced me for that, but I also feel like they're doing the film a disservice. What we have here is a smart and considered piece which felt classy and mature in all the ways that matter. Anyone going in expecting a rom com will be disappointed - there's very little com, and the rom side of things is intentionally cold and distanced. Very glad we have this one in the universe.

Treacle Day

Back in the office today for a day that just went on and on and on. Again, we've kinda hit a sort of coasting velocity now, so now is at least a good time to start looking ahead to make our future a bit easier. But I live for the deadline, and without a sense of urgency it's tough to muster up the drive to properly crack on with something. Because the nature of the job is so ever changing, its often harder to unpick something you've worked hard on so you might as well wait til later to do most of the bigger jobs anyway. I'm loosing myself in the sustainability side of things now which is all just logging and reporting anyway. Anything to make the day go faster.

Swing By Set

Wifi woes hit first thing today - it's been a hot minute since I had to deal with that. It's also been a while since I've been down to set for a visit but since my plate was a little clean I decided to swing by. Everyone is always chuffed to see me, even the important people are glad I popped down. I should make more of a habit of it really, I'm going to intentionally finish up my workload quickly so I have more opportunities to call on them.

An Hour Before Sunrise

The duvet was stolen off me in the middle of the night. I went to retrieve the blanket from Rebecca (the self-admitting duvet hog) and my actions were admonished by a barely cognisant Rebecca who pulled it back over her. So I laid half awake, needing to crack on with something I started looking into old games to play so I drew up a little list. Louis is playing some retro games now too so I'm looking forward to comparing notes. When the house was awake we all got ready to head into central London for Rebecca's Mum's Birthday. We did a walk along Southbank and headed into a cafe followed by Cote Brasserie. The birthday girl was happy but we were sad the weekend was over. Back to it tomorrow in full force.

Dan The Man

En route to another trip up to London we arranged to call on Daniel who's staying in Newbury at the moment. I was desperately trying to piece together when the last time I went into Daniel's house, likely we'll over a decade ago now but the smell of his home was so nostalgic. We played a few board games with him as he talked about his latest plans to possibly move to Bristol. I didn't want to put pressure on him at all and over hype him but I was low key very excited at the prospect of him coming to live in B-town. Hopefully it becomes a reality.

Freakier Friday

Caught the bus to work, enjoying the opportunity to get lost in my book along the way. What followed was a pretty standard day, arranging biscuits for meetings and derigging radios, plus the occasional email. I was really just counting down the minutes til the evening though so we could join Louis and Rachel at the Cinema to watch Freakier Friday. While the original was a pleasant surprise, this was just a sequel. Nice to see all the familiar faces return though and there were some laughs but it didn't change the world. 

Our Chum Albert

With the team still split across night hours, I found my workload has evaporated somewhat, so I had the chance to dive into an area I previously put on the backburner: Albert. I started building and inputting a bunch of data into our sustainability trackers. My pride and joy being my lunchtime log which keeps tabs on every meal we've eaten, how many people were fed on set each day and how many meat, fish and vegan options that chunks down into. It's a layer of diligence that you can only truly muster enthusiasm for when it's your baby. You always hear that creating TV is one of the most environmentally destructive fields of work (outside of literal fracking). Indeed, filing all of our eating habits, waste-by-weight, fuel deliveries and transportation it's quickly becomes  apparent that things could be better. Still, the Albert initiative is less preventative than it is awareness building... But the deeper you go the more you start to be a bit more militant about sustainability. I'm just a logger though in this war though, so I can create a report full of lies, damn lies and statistics.

Heatwave Part Deux

Dressed for the heatwave part 2, but like many sequels it was a disappointment. So I sat in my shorts in the office during the day, covering the office hours as the rest of the crew are still sleeping in and resting up for their night shoot. I'm a little de-synched from it all now as a result but that means I can crack on without getting too many people messaging me.

Onto the next leg of dentistry, my appointment today was literally just 'open your mouth... Very good.' it was the quickest appointment ever, more an appraisal to see if the retainers were doing their job. I was passed on the next round of trays and the cycle begins again. On my 13th one now, so we'll over the halfway point and still feeling good about the results so far. 

Waving Hello to the Heatwave

Was holding on by my fingernails but I just about got through the 2nd Unit day. The heatwave sure didn't help things, driving around in a car with no AC does wear on the soul. Long old day for little old me too but I should be cruising for the rest of the week... At least I hope so.

2nd Unit Lucky Charm

Its only Monday and I feel totally zonked already. Think it's because we're walking into another chucky second unit day at that always ratchets up the work load. I'll be down there with them tomorrow, the 2nd Unit Lucky charm in a manner is speaking. In fact I've supposedly got a small nod to do some very light continuity work for the day - we'll see if that manifests, but in the meantime I just want to sleep.

Static, Single Sunday

While Louis ran 30K this morning, I made a sausage sandwich and bummed around on the sofa. I gotta get my rest while I can though and while Rebecca was out I watched movies, chilled with the cat and played some games. I did find a pocket of motivation to go sit at my writing desk though, mostly to tinker and to play around with some ideas in my brain - there's few things I love more than a good mind map. 

Back to work tomorrow and it'll be an odd week. There's night shooting going on but I'll just be doing office hours and going home when the others are halfway through their shift. It's a blessing though as that frees up my evenings so I can be social.

Best Man

Took it very slow this morning, we didn't have a lot going on and I had a worse-than-usual Saturday morning headache that comes with sleeping in after a long week of early starts. Our only real objective was prepping for a BBQ at our tonight - a trip to the butchers and supermarket basically and pressing burgers.

Mark and Lucy showed up just as I was tipping the hot coals onto the grill. I was trying to play it cool but I was low key a little flustered as I hadn't fully mentally broken down the order in which I was cooking each element. I was styling it out pretty well, until Mark pulled out a very nice looking bottle of sake and asked me to be his Best Man. I said yes immediately! I felt so honored and happy for him in the moment, all I could do was give him a hug.

Now I just have a few months to plan a speech... 

I'm a Hermit Crab

I started the day channelling the energy of a hermit crab. I didn't want to see anyone or spend time with large groups of people. My heart thawed as the day went on and my tasks melted away, giving way to that fabled Friday feeling. 

You know it's August too when the balloons start flying over Bristol. Rebecca and I have made a small tradition of heading to the nearby park to hop to see the balloons fly over for the festival, more often than not the launch is called off due to adverse weather, and that exactly what happened again tonight. Still we got to drink a tin of booze in a park during a golden sunset - not bad for a Friday night. 

What Is a PO?

Raising Purchase Orders is a practice that still a bit of a mystery to me. Like, we get an invoice and then we just promise to give them the money? Cash really is just numbers on a spreadsheet after a certain point... Speaking of spreadsheets and PO's, that's all I did today. I have a seemingly endless amount of logs to update and people to promise money to. In fact, I'm desperately trying to plough through all this so I can get into doing something stimulating but my eyes start glazing over after a certain point. I really do have to force myself to do the work sometimes. Copy pasting is so irrationally time consuming though - I barely have enough time in the day for some reason. Especially when our PO software crashes, undoing almost an hour of work.

Pit of Doom and Despair

Despite have a to do list of extremely non-urgent and simple tasks, I could never shake the feeling of impending doom and stress. That sounds like a Millennial worry, but oddly enough I blame my lunch. Something in what I ate today gave me a stomach 'thing' that I can only describe as a pit of dread feeling. My gut was literally telling me to panic when I knew, deep down, everything was fine. It felt like when you can't get to sleep some nights because your brain keeps telling you that you forgot to revise for you final exams. School was over half my lifetime ago, you silently protest, but that nasty feeling can't be shaken. It'll fade by the morning though, I'm too tired these days to really give much of a hoot. All I crave is the weekend.

Easing Up a Touch

Relative calmness passed over me at work. Nothing pressing, nothing urgent, just me and my spreadsheets, copy and pasting for hours and hours. I think we're stepping into a less logistical phase now so we can loosely afford to take our foot off the gas as we return to do our due diligence. If there's one thing commissioners love more than profit it's paperwork. 

Reality Whiplash

The best and worst thing about everyone coming back after a week off is that we are all united by the same sentiment. Non of us really want to be here. Some flew back from their sunny Spanish holidays only less than 10 hours before work and the tonal whiplash was visably crushing for them. At least we're all in the same boat on this one. There was some expected 'back after a week' stuff to crack in with, all of it came at a good pace and thankfully the day was over before we knew it. I even got off a little early so I got to do a wholesome thing and meet Rebecca at the supermarket to take her home.

Reality crept in. Now its taken its shoes off, helped itself to our teabags and don't want to get off our sofa.

Heading round the Mountain

The final day of my time off was spent doing a lot of low-key special things. Rebecca and I did a walk around Hengistbury Head and popped into a local tea room for luncheon. Bournmouth Pier always looks so far away from up there, I suppose it mimiced how in felt by leaving that place behind. The car ride home was admittedly just something we had to white knuckle our way through, being in a hot car for three hours is rarely my idea of a good time but we made it work. We were rushing back for a video game session with Mark and Dan, we've finished Baldur's Gate now so we're on the hunt for some new hangouts and by gumbo we struck gold. R.E.P.O. is yet another 'dudes in a dark room' game which is ripe for scares, but this one leans further into comedy than it's contemporaries which gave it an edge. Then to cool the tension we hopped into Peak, a mountain climbing game where rationing coconuts and giving each other a helping hand is the only way to guarantee success. Mark was giggling a lot towards the end and that energy was infectious. We ended the night on a disastrously hilarious hail Mary attempt and a vow to return to the mountain.

Weird thinking this morning I had so much to look forward to in the day. Now in bed my thoughts turn to Monday and returning to work. I haven't got the Sunday Scaries, it's more like resignation to another leg of work until the next stint of free time. 

Asian Carbonara

Made it down to the beach. Pity the Sun didn't quite get there too but we made do. Rebecca and I read on the sand til the sunshine just about poked out so we took that opportunity to dash into the sea. Well, we didn't so much dash as timidly wade in while making chimpanzee noises as the cold water hit new spots on our skin. We got over it and had a good paddle though - might be my first and only time in the ocean this year.

Picking up from yesterday on the topic of Bournemouth traditions, a new one I'm in the process of making is 'Theo goes to the Korean Supermarket, buys a bunch of stuff and tries to make a meal out of it.' It always yields fun results. I wanted to make a noodle broth bowl tonight so I did my usual steps while adding a Pho stock cube to the noodle water. Said cube must have had some mighty thickener in it though because when it came to serving up it all kinda emulsified to the noodles, like an Asian Carbonara. It wasn't the vision, but it still tastes jolly good. 

Back again to Bournemouth

Made it down to Bournmouth for the final leg of my week off. Staying down there is still steeped in Summer holiday traditions for me, day one is always a Winton High street day. Popping into G&T's, Lidl and more recently the Korean Supermarket. We did take a trip out to Wimbourne as a afternoon activity, just for coffee and a mooch though, plus a cheeky half pint at an independent looking public house. But then we got KFC once back in the gaff and everything was right again in the world.