Improving the meh-ness of February

A mish mash of thoughts and nice things

It’s been a funny week. Couldn’t quite seem to get anything going. I always forget this about February. Perhaps that’s why it was made the shortest month, so we could get through it quicker? January has a curiously appealing ascetic after the indulgence of Christmas, and March is full of the hopeful signs of the coming Spring. February is slightly longer days and soggy gardens. (Though I shouldn’t neglect to mention the budding shoots of narcissi and tulips – I’m very excited by my pots, first time ever.)

It all reminded me suddenly of a time when my mother and her actor friends were gripped by Simon Callow’s book Being An Actor. (For the younger amongst us, Callow was – is – a self-knowing Actor, and played this to perfection as the character who died in ‘Four Weddings & A Funeral.’) Being actors, they read bits out to each other at dinner parties for weeks – oh my god, they had such fun parties, while I eavesdropped from the stairs – and fell about howling with laughter, as if they were on the stage. The book is very funny, and wise about the skill itself. If you’re thinking about acting, live with an actor or know a lot of them, read it – it’s so good that almost half a century later, it’s still in print. (David Nicholls of One Day fame’s early novel The Understudy is also brilliantly hilarious on the profession – he started out as an actor.)

Specifically, I remember Mum and her actor friends laughing at the chapter on unemployment. It is, after all, the part of Being An Actor that generally occupies about 90% of any actor’s career. This idea formed the basis of my special project for Drama GCSE. While everyone else did things like set design or The Method, I interviewed my mother’s friends about how they wore their dressing-gowns and never left the house for days on end, terrified of missing the call from their agent that would send them to the audition – the one that was going turn them into a star. This was in the archaic days of the late 1980s when there weren’t even answering machines, or 1471, let alone mobile phones.

ANYWAY – sorry, this is all a bit long-winded – the point about the unemployment chapter was that Callow wrote very amusingly about how when one was employed, one seemed to have the energy to do a thousand things in a day: a breakfast meeting with a producer; record a voiceover; do an interview and a photoshoot; write some scenes of script; perform the play in the evening; go out for a wild dinner at Joe Allen’s with 15 friends; get up and do it all again the next day. And when you are unemployed, just trying to get to the post office to buy a stamp feels like too much.

That’s February for me. It’s not that I’m unemployed. There’s work I’ve got to do, projects to gear up etc. But none of it feels very rich or purposeful as yet, and the looming interruption in the day of, say, a loss adjustor coming to the house, seems to make everything else warped and tricky. Like when you book a flight on the last day of the holiday for 5pm, so that you can have one last day, but you never do. The departure hangs over everything so that lunch isn’t a bottle of rosé or two at the charming bistro you’ve favoured, but a sandwich from the petrol station because it always feels that there isn’t quite enough time to do something proper.

So! Let’s distract ourselves with some nice things, try to have the equivalent of the bistro lunch and not the curling-edges sandwich, until March arrives.

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Licorice Chocolate

Do you like licorice? Do you like chocolate? Then you’ll love this Swedish Licorice Chocolate. (You have to say this in the voice of Paul Whitehouse doing Cheesy Peaz on the Fast Show.) I know it sounds MAD. But it is amazingly delicious and unusual, I think because it hits that sweet/salt umami thing. Perfect after dinner treat if you have people over. (Can you face doing that yet?)

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Popcorn

I’m trying to wean myself off a crisp habit that developed in the second half of last year – glass of wine and bowl of fancy crisps at my side as I cook supper, with something playing on the iPad that no-one else in the household wants to watch. But if I can’t have crisps, I still want a treat when it’s meh. I’ve turned to Proper popcorn, relatively un-naughty, no palm oil, much less saturated fat than crisps but still satisfyingly crunchy and savoury. And yes I know you can make it from the kernels yourself but this is 2 mins in the microwave. Just for Feb. I’ll do the real stuff next month, promise.

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Mia Reay wallpaper

We are currently living in a house with two industrial dehumidifiers permanently on, after both a leaking roof and a burst pipe on the ground floor, so I’m indulging in redecorating fantasies. I sat next to Mia Reay at a supper this week and was utterly charmed by her – very funny and energetic, complete lack of Feb-vibes. She designs this wallpaper – lots of it very pretty, English country house style, but I covet the Ainu, based on textiles from northern Japan.

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All the world’s a stage…

A kind friend of mine was very quick and nabbed tickets to A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams. Only a three-week run – I fear sold out – but sometimes when a show does well enough they bring it back to a bigger theatre. It’s such a well-known play (if you don’t, then watch the superlative Marlon Brando in the 1951 film version) but this felt very fresh, great staging and the three leads are all the hot stars of the moment and very good: Paul Mescal (the one who wears very short shorts and got his big break in Normal People), Patsy Ferran (Jane Austen in the recent BBC mini-series Miss Austen, which I liked a lot, but mainly because I have a huge girl crush on Keeley Hawes) and Anjana Vasan (award-winning theatre actor). Our tickets were in the gods but only £26 each. I’ve complained a lot about how expensive theatre tickets are but if you don’t have vertigo, this is a way to do it.

Also brilliant and cheap – NT Live, showing the best of the National Theatre productions in cinemas all around the country.

Some good telly – because there’s still quite a few dark evenings to get through

Now TV

Hacks: Third series is out – hurrah! – and I hear there’s a fourth coming later this year. An older, successful female comedian’s career is suddenly revived, very much like Jean Smart’s own career. But I chiefly love it for the very clever portrayal of the current argument that seems to be going on between the Millennial and Boomer generations of women.

The White Lotus: New third series. OK, not seen this yet but I. Can. Not. Wait.

Netflix

Apple Cider Vinegar: About an Australian wellness scammer, based on a true story. A little one-note but entertaining and a close-to-the-knuckle portrayal of our times. Funny, too. The scammer meets a crisis management guy and says, hand on heart, tears brimming: ‘I am an empath. I FEEL everything.’ And he says: ‘Wow, that must be exhausting.’

Apple TV

Shrinking: Harrison Ford plays a grumpy psychotherapist. Funny and sad, the sort of series where you get more and more fond of the characters.

Bad Sisters: Sharon Horgan wrote this, and she’s in it. Five Irish sisters, dark comedy. Bono’s daughter (Eva Birthistle) is in it and she’s always so good. This was on a while ago but I don’t know enough people who watched it.

BBC

The Split: I was very late to this so forgive me because you’ve probably seen it. I started it yonks ago, didn’t love it, switched it off. And then suddenly it worked for me, and I binged the entire lot. Sobbing mess at the end. And it’s the sort of show that’s great for discussing with mates. Abi Morgan wrote it and she’s kind of a genius, I think.