Skip to main content

Freelance Woes

  'But Iestyn, you're freelance. You can be at your desk that any time. We're coming down to Aldeburgh.  You must be wanting to see us. But we can only fit in taking you for tea at four on Friday, so if you can please be standing on your balcony when we give you the heads up to watch for us coming round the Meare, then you can run downstairs and be by the roadside ready. Can you also ring down to Choppings Hill in advance and make sure they have a table? And you won't mind walking back under your own steam, will you? Three miles along the disused railway track, you're always saying you love that walk. Oh, a bit of sleet won't hurt you.  What about your new wellies? Now, don't say any more about needing to get to your desk, please; makes us feel unwanted.'
  Because I'm freelance I have to get to my desk whenever I can, thanks. My fridge gets emptier than Joan Collins's botox syringes. Not to mention that my agent thinks that the right person to ask for advice on publishing my book about entertaining Marines on the frontline out in Afghanistan would be Lionel Blair. Or a producer on the variety circuit owes me such a backlog of fees I'm putting him down on my HMRC return as a tax-deductible dependant. And that a lovely and timely corporate at Cafe de Paris for a second batch of Norwegians may fall by the wayside because though the first batch of Norwegians in October last year gave me a rave testimonial, they were a Trondheim hairdressing convention and this second batch will be Bergen plumbers. 
  'We simply have failure to see how you may think the vibes described from that "peppery" event could be directly transferring to this "salty" one!'  
  So I need to get on with my work.
  But still I will ring Choppings Hill in advance, stand on my balcony, smile and wave as the car rounds the Meare.
  I should do a Jessie Matthews. When was starring in a revue some time in the late sixties Will Simms, who I knew from teaching, was in the chorus. 
  'Miss Matthews.'  Will nervously approached her before a Saturday matinee. 
  'Yes, dear?' Miss Matthews smiled benignly at him. 
  'My nan's Gertie Bell.  You were in - '
  'Gertie Bell?  Gertie?  Oh!  London's Calling at the Duke of York's. Oh, Gertie, never! We were in digs together on tour before that as well. Great mucker of mine. She isn't?...oh!'
  'No, she's in this afternoon watching the show.'
  'Oh, how lovely, dear. Gertie, well now!'
  'And she's going to come round afterward, Miss Matthews, so I can bring her to see you.'
  The smile stayed benign as Miss Matthews said, 'Oh, no thank you, dear. I don't want to see her.' 

   
  
  

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

My Mate Jamie-Ray Hartshorne

     I've been noticing that alongside photos of Jamie-Ray being a lead in Altar Boys , creating Change My Body UK TM , working the door at Freedom - and clearly asking people passing by wherever that rockpool may be to snap a double-bicep - this sort of thing is cropping up on his social media:   We're in The Diner, Jamestown Road, Camden.  He's between tour dates of  The Bodyguard,  and meetings to discuss sportswear and creatine endorsements.  The latter, he says, being all about making his product better.   Between sips of his peanut butter milkshake (he's allowing himself dairy today in my honour - I don't quite know how to take that) he says in his soft Brum, 'I've signed up for a major Muay Thai event in Thailand next February.  I'm going up against one of the Thai fighters.  That's the only real way to gain any respect in the fighting world.  That's why you've been noticing the combat photos.  I...
1 comment
Read more

The Marine Says I Must Re-queer...

                                                                 Being camp in Camp Basra... Stacks, ex-Royal Marines Commando, recently watched my Tutu Went AWOL! show on Zoom. He had notes. I was shifting from foot to foot, he said, and gesturing too much. 'And you must put back the stuff about the Brigadier and your fellow comedian being homophobic...' The Brigadier had been sneering about my act, saying it would be more suited to Butlins. But, more importantly, he believed I was an 'inappropriate influence on 42 Commando'.  Stacks, deadpan, commented, 'Sir, before Iestyn started hanging out with us, sir, it had never occurred to him to play Tiddlywinks with anything other than his thumb, sir.'  My fellow comedian, who I'll call Mark, because that's his name, asked Reg, Garrison Sergeant Major, in front of ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Me Featuring in The Sunday Times, Nicely...

  This happened. The editor thinks it's a book of dog sitter stories waiting to happen. I am scribbling away at same...  I first house-sat by accident. I was originally at Haven House, Lembton, as a live-in safety net for Lady Olive Simmonds, a seventy-nine year-old Bostonian with a lilac afro, a Temazepam habit and leg ulcers. Haven House was by the sea. Eighteenth century, elegant, comfortable.  But there was Olive... Always in pain; either drunk, hungover or both; barely educated. She had married a man who was knighted, and believed this gave her a licence to be a twat. According to Olive, her fellow Lembtonians were all dull academics - this group having reading ages older than hers, which was thirteen - or failed schizophrenics. She had serious monophobia, with staff working (unnecessarily) every day apart from weekends. At weekends, first thing, anxious, she would ring round the Lembtonians that were still speaking to her - six in number - inviting them for coffee, ...
Post a Comment
Read more