13/08/08
Day off, Reckoning -
Categories: Day off today. Woo. Only not woo and not a day off, because I've been spending it working harder than I have on my days on. With my writer's hat on (I haven't got one, but might get one), I've been working on Not Going Out - one episode gagged up and sent off today, and another started today to send off by Saturday. It's going to be a busy few days. So alas my grand plan of going away for 47 hours didn't really work. The plan was to have my car waiting for me (that sounds so grand, but it really was just going to be my car - no driver or anything), then off I scoot to a hotel in Fife or somewhere, then spend the next day roaming the Highlands, another night in a non-Edinburgh hotel, then back in time for the show on Thursday. I just wanted to see one of the castles from Monty Python & The Holy Grail really. But another year.
Still, this beats my day off from two years ago. I didn't have my car with me then, so went to the station, determined to get on any train to any place that sounded small and villagey, preferably with Glen and Mac and six other syllables in it. But the destination board told a different story: Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle... Well I didn't fancy going to these exotic places. So I tried the bus station instead. No joy there. Nowhere that sounded even the remotest bit remote. Except for one placename: Ocean Terminal. Wow. It sounded exotic. I could see the ships come and go. Maybe have an ice cream as I bid an ocean liner well on its journey onto the seas. And it was the last destination on that bus route, so I thought it was the ideal place.
Little did I know, Ocean Terminal is the name of the shopping centre at the end of Leith. My day off was spent reaching what is basically a large Debenhams. Plus I'd spent so long faffing at both railway and bus stations that it was now late in the afternoon... I got there just in time for the shutters to come down. I couldn't even buy a shirt. I got back on the bus and went home again.
That was then, and this is now, and I've spent my day off stuck in my room. I did venture out briefly, during the time I would normally be on stage, just to try and make it seem different. So I drove to Portobello, cos it's by the sea, and I like the sea, and I like fish and chips, and I really like fish and chips by the sea, so here is a photo I took this evening of just that, as evidence that I did indeed have a day off, and that it wasn't at a closed shopping centre...
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