Menial Labour 1

Hurray! I'm back, after a long short period of not actually being arsed to write anything down. And just as it looked like my blog was abandoned and empty as a McCann's hotel room, I'm back to give my statement to the portugese police of the web.

These past few weeks I have been industriously making money anyway I can, as a can of beans was starting to feel almost as unaffordable as dinner at Claridges. Firstly, then, I did the mail out of the autumn production season at RADA. Oh lord, how much I took for granted in my cosseted existence as an actorpillar in the RADA cocoon. (Incidentally, my new favourite website is: http://www.whatsthiscaterpillar.co.uk/ - "If you have found a caterpillar but can't identify it, this is your first port of call!". It's quite literally an utter waste of lepidopteric time.) You see, every time a new brochure comes out, it isn't automatically teleported to the desk of people who should know, as you might expect. Oh no. The following things have to happen:

1. Lists of people must be printed out on sticky label sheets. Just under 2000 should be a laugh.
2. Aforementioned sticky labels must be stuck manually onto appropriately sized envelopes.
3. Correct booking forms must be photocopied on satan's own photocopier.
4. Correct booking forms must be folded and inserted into appropriate appropriately sized envelopes.
5. Brochures must turn up from printers (allow fucking ages after they should be there).
6. Brochures must be put in envelopes.
7. Envelopes must be sealed.

And if you've given up reading and decided that classifying butterfly larvae might not be so dull after all, then quite frankly I don't blame you. This took the best part of five days over a week and a half, by which time i was worried that my mental agility would never recover, like Jack Nicholson in one flew over the cuckoo's nest. In fact, I did most of it sat in the RADA bar where they were playing classical music, and knowing about the Beethoven Effect, I was acutely aware that I was literally being made more stupid and more clever at the same time.

By the fourth day I was in a state of near mania. I could now fill and seal envelopes without looking at my hands; I had become truly automated. If anyone attempted to shake hands with me they would leave with a sleeve full of brochures. I became oddly detached from the task my hands were performing, and, my scarcely repressed giggling attracting odd looks, I had a revelation.

"HANDS. ARE. BRILLIANT. I mean, look at them. They're AMAZING! So deftly each pole moves separate from but coordinated with all the others! OPPOSABLE FUCKING THUMBS! Just genius! Full marks evolution! I should like to see a cow attempt what we consider a menial task. Cloven hooves are fucking rubbish, you bovine plums! But here! Here! See these dexterous hands move like fleshy spiders over the clean white envelopes!" I thought. I was clearly mentally ill. Balanced on the razor's edge between sanity and fuckybumbooboo.

I'm better now. I occasionally have flashbacks, and dreams of spiders of flesh sealing me in a prison in which caterpillars play Beethoven. At least I was paid.