Which, after yesterday's 103-in-the-shade (no joke), felt positively balmy.
Mishmash, in bullet points:
Mishmash, in bullet points:
- Long but beautiful drive north - armed with some great audio (how wonderfully easy it is with mp3 players!), I took the long way around both to avoid traffic and to enjoy a more scenic route, which I most certainly did - clinging to the interstates or the main routes with their endless vistas of strip malls and fast food it's easy to forget how beautiful the US landscape can be, and the semi-rural route I travelled was definitely the right choice. Settled in, got the internet up and running, and now getting down to business...
- Costume fitting: Neither purely in period, nor purely not, but a wonderful pan-national-pan-period-couture style that immediately adds ideas for character. It's great to have seen the costumes so early on, too (I don't start staging until tomorrow) because it means I can factor that in as we start to rehearse.
- I finally tracked down a bicycle today - I've wanted one for ages, but the terrain here is ideal for cycling, and it made sense to take the plunge. Finances dictated compromises - my goodness but bikes have changed in design and price since I bought my last one while at Cambridge! - but I think this will do just fine for my limited needs. Can't wait to pick it up tomorrow when the temperatures may even dip enough to make it possible to go for a ride. Looking forward to riding the local trails with the camera and getting better acquainted with the area. When it isn't 100 degrees....
- Since our schedule is mornings and afternoons but I'm too tired to do much at the end of the day, I'm using my evenings to continue our retrograde jaunt through the BBC's Life on Mars (I brought the disks with me). While it has nothing at all to do with the show I'm working on, I do find watching these great performances beyond inspiring, and it makes me think about how I can do my own job better. I still find it amazing that we didn't connect with this series on first viewing, but am delighted to be gobbling it up now we've thrown ourselves into the Gene Genieverse with abandon. I have to confess that - despite the extraordinary performance of John Simm and the harder-edged writing - so far I still have a sneaking preference for Ashes to Ashes, but perhaps it's not even really fair to compare them: despite the overlap of characters, they're entirely different shows, in many ways. Both are sheer genius and a wonderful watching experience, that's for certain. In addition to the exceptional strength of these characters within a really inventive large plot arc - and quite strong individual stories within each episode - several years of living in Manchester makes the turn of phrase, plot points, and character details particularly resonant and entirely familiar; it's rather a Proustian experience, really.
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