Half and Full Cock

Six hours spent in the upstairs room at the Lion pub in Stoke Newington yesterday, dashing out every couple of hours to move Patsy The Car and feed another parking machine. £13 for the privilege of spending five minutes driving to and from rehearsal rather than thirty minutes in the bus carrying the various parts of my costume. And all for the sake of 20 minutes rehearsal.

As I've written before, sitting around doing nothing is an integral part of acting. The fact that my part is small, taking up no more than the first ten minutes of the play, means that Kellie The Director quite naturally spends most of her time giving notes and going over lines with the other actors. Still, the free time let me read the copy of The Daily Telegraph which I had bought as a prop (my character has to read a newspaper) and, inspired by the rave, five-star review given by Charles Spencer to King Charles III at the Almeida, I spent quarter of an hour on the telephone waiting to get through to the theatre to book tickets for late in May.

Kellie was too polite to say so, but I wasn't impressed by my first run-through. "Half-cock" I said, referring to my relatively listless reciting of my lines. Second-time was much better. I had energy and movement and my character came truly alive. "Full-cock" was my judgement on myself and the others agreed. Perhaps the next one will be "orgasm", said Paul-who-plays-the-guru. Promises, promises, I replied.

Are you wondering about the picture? It represents my character in the play. It's a Magritte, one of several versions of an anonymous clerk. I consider the apple an improvement on my regular appearance.