So, that's 2020 done and dusted. Let's just hope that 2021 is better. Well, it certainly can't be any worse than in 2020. Around nine months of being isolated, not being able to meet those we love and cherish. No theatre, going to Camphill and working on various things with the guys there. Can't say I'm sorry that 2020 is over and done with.
(Sunday) Another mild morning. I thought it was going to be frosty, but it wasn't.
I've been watching too much television. From 'The Crown' on Netflix, to 'His Dark Materials' on BBC1 and on Talking Pictures' TV. I had never heard of this channel until they did an item about it on BBC Breakfast one morning. Their ratings had gone through the roof during the pandemic, so I found it on Freeview and had a look at their schedule. They show almost all programmes from the 1950s through to the 1980s, including things such as Catweazel, Upstairs and Downstairs, Rumpole of The Bailey, and much more. 'Rumpole' was one of my favourite drama series from the 1970s. It was written by John Mortimer. I have a connection to it. I worked as an A.S.M. at Greenwich Theatre in the early 1970s and we did a play written by John Mortimer called 'A Voyage Round My Father. It had started life I believe on Radio Four and then it was adapted for BBC Television and eventually as a stage play, which was directed by Claude Watham, who had directed the BBC television version. It was later remade by Thames Television with Laurence Oliver in the part of the Father. There are some similarities with 'Rumpole' in that it began as a Play For Today on BBC1 and later developed as a series by Thames Television.
A further connection I have, if somewhat vaguely, is when I was again working at Century Theatre in Keswick in, I think it would have been 1973, as D.S.M. There was a film crew working around the area, most notably the lake, Derwentwater. They were making a film of the Arthur Ransome book 'Swallows and Amazons.' When we were scouring the town for props (beg, steal or borrow) for the plays we were producing, we often got asked if we were connected with the unit, which of course we weren't. The director of that film was Claude Watham and the screenplay was written by David Wood who was the Son in 'A Voyage Round My Father.'
(Monday) It sounds as though we might be going back into a national lockdown. It would appear that the virus is spreading and with the new variant, a mutant version of the coronavirus, is more dangerous and likely to be a risk to younger people. All I can say is that I hope we don't go into another lockdown because being isolated as I have been since March, it's effecting my mental health and I imagine I won't be the only person to be so effected.
BBC Breakfast this morning reporting from the Churchill Hospital in Oxford, where the roll-out of the Astra-Zeneca vaccine has begun. I'm wondering when I will be given the vaccine. As I'm over 65, presumably I fall into the 'vulnerable' category.
I have ordered a professional-standard microphone from Amazon so I can do some recording, possibly voice-over work, record a podcast or whatever. It should work with my MacBook air and then I should be able to upload to Soundcloud and other sites. It was ordered on Saturday and should be delivered today before 8p.m.
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