Tea Room The 24th - San Francisco Painted Lady!

[Tee2072]

Welcome to the 24th incarnation of the One-Child Tea Room. Not that you only have to have one! Just so long as you enjoy chat, tea, coffee, cake!!

The usual rules apply - no bunfighting. If you like that sort of thing, go elsewhere.
Other rules: bring . Or .

Our ongoing voyage take us to one of San Francisco's Painted Ladies!

We've brought the Aga over, it's in the back in the cosy kitchen overlooking the back garden. The chintz sofa is in the front room, under the bow window! All of the pillows and duvets have come along as well!

What's that? The Priest Hole? It's just over there --> behind the bookcase!

Mellors is upstairs, preparing the bedrooms for naps and such.

The aspidistras are thriving as they overlook Nob Hill! The horses have found themselves stabled in the Garden, which is much larger than these places usually are in this city!

So come in and have a seat!

::tea hurries off to Powell Street to catch the Cable Car to Ghirardelli Square::

am possibly just the tiniest bit prone to being a bit long-winded myself, Maud! Just in case you hadn't noticed! How nice to know there is another mind in synchrony with mine on this anyway! And yes indeed about those, erm, procedures... hmm! Makes you wonder.

I suppose I am a "proper trained thesp" in that I did train and I did work professionally (in moderation!) and I was a member of Equity etc, but it does feel totally past tense. It was a dream I had for a while, but as I got older I realised there were other dreams that were much more important to me, ie wanting to meet a nice, decent, normal man - not the kind of egocentric "artistic" type I'd always thought I wanted - and have a family. Didn't have much time to make it happen by then, especially as I'd come to acting quite late already, but got there by the skin of my teeth!

Most of my (infrequent) work was actually very small parts in very big TV shows, so I was perpetually the tiny fish in a giant pond, and always broke! It is awful what actors will do in the hope that someone might see you, or you might just make that invaluable contact - living on hopes of maybe rather than what's really going on. Of course the rewards are great if you do make it, but I thank my lucky stars I didn't now! Wouldn't mind a bit more voiceover work though, that's a great set up - really good pay for really minimal time input, and no travelling or auditioning or hanging around for hours between takes.

Now, what was I saying about being long-winded...?

Nah, it's interesting. I am impressed and deeply envious as I never got beyond spear-carrying in school plays. I have a friend who works as an actor and was talking to her the other day about commercials. I had heard that commercials were very lucrative because of the repeat payments, but she tells me that these days one usually gets one payment and repeat fees are a thing of the past. Perhaps the answer is to follow Martin Jarvis' example and set up one's own company to produce hundreds of talking books? I'd ask you about what shows you've been in, but that would be getting dangerously close to outing oneself, I guess.

Would you like some virtual ?

Yes, repeats on commercials used to be big money - I knew someone who made enough for the deposit on her first house from one - but I can well imagine it's all changed now. I only ever did one, and it was extremely well paid for what it was - a morning's work - but then I did go to umpteen castings for other commercials which I didn't get, so if you balance it all that then the returns aren't quite so great!

Probably wouldn't really out myself by listing my CV, as no one would really remember any of the parts I played, but will keep it vague anyway - a soap, a fair few popular drama/comedy drama series including one set in a hospital, one film (ie proper film, not student one!) and a few pieces of theatre of varying degrees of awfulness. It's not much for a few years' work, but at the same time, it wasn't bad, relative to what a lot of actors get to do. At least I had an agent, hee hee. Thank you for being impressed it's nice to feel impressive for a change in these days of endless washing!

Ooh yes, virtual accepted gladly, esp as I've been watching One Born Every Minute, can't get through it without blubbing, ever. Sniff.

Setting up one's own company, btw, sounds like it requires levels of enterprise that I, sadly, lack. Ah well, more . I get my kicks doing super-duper readings of SBoy's books and acting out his favourite TV progs with all the different voices. And we love singing theme songs together. The muse lives on!

Cin Cin!

I have a cold and sore throat and am feeling sorry for myself, so having an early night. See you all tomorrow!

::Goes to bed star-struck and wonders if it's too late to apply to RADA::

::Wonders too if one could buy a ticket for bedtime stories at the SecretHouse::

Nighty night. Will create a special guest list, just for you. If you can come dressed as a lovable stuffed toy to add to the hundreds he already has, he will be quite happy, and you can just blend in and surrender to the magic. Ahem. Must likewise head bedwards. Night all, and yes, get some sleep for your poor beleaguered immune system, young lady!

(Methuselah in-joke)

And you too of course Scout! I look forward to seeing your costume with great anticipation, seeing as I believe you to be of the crafty/creative wizard type, able to do uncanny things with pieces of felt and old bottle tops. Tell me it's true!

grrr, the intraweb ate my message.

Enchanted glass- no havn't read that one, will see if library have it in circulation, thanks for tip off.

Shorts are not too bad today, it WAS 15-16 degrees in teh shade at lunch time ans sunny in teh playground. even now its 8 degrees outside. We had a frost on sunday morning, so our temp is very up n down dependt on cloud cover.

UnSecAg - where did you train as a lovey then?? I too spent part of my former life at theatre school,B0Vts, but training as a techie. Which is still more or less what I do for work when I'm not doing other stuff.

Just once I made an appearance in a long running drama/ soap set in a hospital A&E dept. I got to go and dance about to no music in a nightclub in the morning rather than go and build scenery, was paid for it AND fed a decent breakfast. ALso bumped into a friend form school who was on production team, so didn't even do much dancing but chatted backstage as it were and caught up on school mate gossip. That show would ask my college to send down XX young people every now and then when they wanted lots of young SAs who would do as they were told.

Any one for califonia hot choclate suprise?? it has twiglets !

night all.

Kittenito doesn't seem to have a temperature; in fact he seems to have a relatively mild version of the pox. His terrors seem to derive from seeing shadows move in the bedroom. He's awake and not dreaming; unlike Wiggle, who I misrembered as having similar fears. We already have a nightlight, so other than sleeping with the light on I am at a loss.

Goodness, the thread has gone all lovey! how wonderful!
I have nothing beyond school efforts to offer. I actually preferred working the lights to doing anything else.

Am :( to hear that M.Serpent and M.Beer are of similar cast re. their family - I'd be pretty devastated if DH was pissed off to see me if I turned up without miniThumb. :(

Also :( to hear of illnesses etc. Minithumb had an Interesting Episode of claiming he couldn't breathe on Sunday, running a mild temperature and lots of wailing - but then he went to sleep fine and was breathing perfectly while asleep so I didn't do anything about it. Woke up in the morning - still claiming he couldn't breathe - but went to play football with no problem. No wheezing, no snot, no cough, no pain and no further temperature - so I fear he is following in my footsteps and hyperventilating. FFS! How does one stop a 3yo from hyperventilating?? I have already taught him to blow out steadily when he thinks he can't breathe, but when he's fully panicked he can't do it. If he gets really bad again it'll have to be the paper bag trick - can't see that going down well.

Hey ho - the fun of being a mum!

Its the keyhole op on my knee today...

::hides in priest hole with Mary, since Amber is in for her second set of chemotherapy today and isn't really looking forward to it::

Want to borrow some magazines and a nice bear to hug? It's not a real one.

Many bear hugs for Amber and Mary. They're not real ones.

Good luck with op/treatments, ladies. :) and manly pats on shoulders all round.

Yes, good luck (although that doesn't seem quite the right word) to everyone having treatment and surgery today. By the magic of the tea room, Mellors will accompany each of you and hand out cups of tea, appetising biscuits, lavender pillows, gentle shoulder rubs and back copies of What Cassock on demand.

Secret - I fear that the sight of me dressed up as Looby-Loo may not have quite the desired effect on SecretBoy, but it might be fun travelling on public transport in role! Where (very ish-ish) do you live?

The sun is out!!!! IT IS LOVELY!!!!

Yes it is. , man.

Should mention my hands are cleaner than a surgeon's, given how much I've washed them today between bums and gunky eyes and cooking.

Toddler came over to me on the bed, put his head in my lap and promptly fell asleep. He's never done that before and he hasn't fallen asleep in my arms since he was wee. It made me feel all [warm and fuzzy].

awwwww! sweet. :)