FINDING DIGS

Digs

Monday 29th March

Over lunch in the Green Room, I tell the Wildebeest and the Giraffe (my potential “digs-mates”) that I’ve found a place with rooms for three people. It’s a family home, within walking distance, within budget and “no pets” (I’m allergic to pets!).

Great! Or so I thought! Having consumed my packed lunch (still making it myself by the way!) I call the landlady to check that the 3 rooms are still available …

“At the moment?” she questions.
“Umm, yes! There are three of us looking.” I reply, “we need a room each, from April 19th through to the end of September.”
“Aah!” she protests, “My children may still be here - they don’t finish school for a while. Maybe you could share!”
“What the three of us?!” I exclaim
“Or I could put the kids in the same room” she ponders.
“Well, I wouldn’t want to inconvenience you …”
“No, no, we can work something out for you” she says.

The Wildebeest asks me to ask if we can use the kitchen. I ask … “Would we be able to use the kitchen?”
“What all of you?” she questions.
“Well, yes. We would need to eat” I reply.
“Oh … well … no … I don’t think so.” DIGSLESS!!

I politely thank Mrs Jones. Back to the drawing board.

We need to find a “theatrical landlady” who will understand that “starving thespians” cannot afford to eat out every night for five months!

At this point the Wildebeest suggests she drops out ……………… finding digs for two may be easier.

Tuesday 30th March

I’m not called until the read-through, so I have the morning off. I have a new Landlady in mind and decide to go in early so I can sound out the Giraffe.

Oving Road could be the one! Described as “Double en suite with TV … single with desk … Antique chandeliers and rugs … conservatory for relaxation …tidy garden … immaculate throughout …” AND “use of kitchen by arrangement with owner, as tidiness must be maintained” (perhaps more “house proud” than “theatrical” but I’m in to tidy too!) … and only a ten minute walk. It’s perfect! ‘Simply divine’!

Relocation, Relocation

It’s Sunday April 18th and I move to Chichester.

I have spent four weeks rehearsing ‘OOTW’ in the comfort of a studio in London only forty-five minutes from my own bed! On Monday morning I am on stage at the Chichester Festival Theatre! But first I have to move in to my Digs.

I load my little Mini Cooper with my essentials: clothes, script, toothbrush (I travel light!!!). I stop off en route to cram the Giraffe in to the mini. It rains the entire journey - not a good start weather-wise. We arrive around 5:30 pm. What will Oving Road really be like?

I park right outside the house - a sure sign we are out of London. I suggest that the Giraffe goes straight on in to avoid getting too wet. I get drenched carrying our bags from the car. As I introduce myself to the Landlady, I can feel rainwater running down my back. Her features are blurred through my rain-speckled spectacles!

Newly polished spectacles reveal a smartly, but comfortably dressed lady, in the autumn of her years, slight of frame and beautifully spoken. She politely asks us to take off our shoes; “Beige carpets you see, throughout my home” … the Giraffe and I sink in to soft carpet under foot!

“You have quite a lot of things with you” (maybe I don’t travel so light?!?) …

We are shown to our rooms.

“Did you bring a duvet and pillows?”
“Yes. They took up most of the car!” I joke.
“Well you see, I only have natural products”. (I decide not to bore her with my well-documented allergy to “natural products”).

The Giraffe has the “generous size single”, with a large window overlooking the garden.

My “spacious double with en suite” overlooks the main road(!) – here’s hoping the passing traffic won’t disturb by sleep!

Kindly Landlady helps me wrestle my duvet into the cover she has provided!

That done, our company is requested downstairs for tea and biscuits in fifteen minutes.

When the Giraffe and I arrive downstairs we find tea and biscuits (exquisitely presented on a paper doyley). We sip our tea from delicate china cups and nibble our ginger snaps. Conversation leads inevitably to the Festival and our part in it.

Tea and Festival exhausted, we excuse ourselves. I wonder if I should start unpacking, but decide to put it off. It’s bad enough packing, and leaving home comforts behind … unpacking can wait!

We head off in the car to explore Chichester…in the rain. Within minutes we are in the city centre … stuck on the one-way system. Eventually, we find ourselves a ‘pub with grub’. We are both a little shell-shocked … BUT, tomorrow we will be Chichester Theatre…and that’s something we’ve been looking forward to for some time.

Back in London, on the last day of rehearsals, I had suggested to everyone that maybe we all meet up on Sunday night at ‘The Bell Inn’ (the CFT’s local). Directly opposite the theatre, and second home to actors, directors and stage management over the years, “The Bell” will hopefully become a refuge for we home-sick actors too.

And so it is that the Giraffe and I spend our first evening in Chichester in “The Bell”, with Mr D and some of the ‘OOTW’ cast, exchanging stories about our Digs and our Landladies!

We return to our Digs and enter via the back door (as instructed). We remove our shoes and creep upstairs to our rooms.

My bed is very comfortable, and I sleep undisturbed until 6:15, when I wake to the sound of creaking floorboards.

My Landlady is up and about!

And so is the local traffic!

I spend the next couple of hours trying to get back to sleep – I’m not due in the theatre until 10:00 am!

It’s still raining, so the Giraffe and I take the car. I mention the creaking floorboards. The Giraffe was not only party to the creaking floorboards, but situated next door to the bathroom (home to the washing machine), she spent an uncomfortable couple of hours tossing and turning along with the number four spin cycle!!!

We decide to give it a couple of days - the long hours on stage may result in our being able to sleep through anything!

At our ‘OOTW’ rehearsal we share our “first night “ stories.

Mars, happy to be described as ‘the big tall black guy’, tells us … On arrival at his Digs he rang the bell. His Landlady smilingly opened the door and in the same instant, a look of terror on her face, almost slammed it shut again! She had perhaps been expecting the next Kenneth Branagh, but not, as Mars puts it, “a big-tall-black-man”!

It’s not the first time it’s happened to Mars. When he was on tour with the RSC, one Landlady, on first meeting him, said, “Oh, I didn’t realize they were doing Othello”!

There are other stories too, some funny, some just plain sad! I’m beginning to wonder where all those old fashioned, “motherly, but broad-minded” landladies I have heard about have gone to!

Thursday April 22nd and the Giraffe and I have decided we need to find somewhere else to stay.

We were both severely sleep-deprived -courtesy of creaking floorboards and ever-spinning washing machine. To top it all, we now find that the outside of the house is being repainted and at 8:00 each morning the workmens’ ladders are busily tapping against our windowsills!

The CFT are helpful and understanding. They suggest that as Mars, and the Parsee also, are having Digs’ problems, we look for a four-bed house. One telephone call later and we are booked to view a house.

There is nothing old about ‘Old Bakery Gardens’. The house, twenty-minutes walk from the theatre, is a modern three-storey terrace, with garden and garage. Feeling good!

On the ground floor there is a “living room” (which will make a perfect fourth bedroom), and cloakroom. The second floor reveals a large sitting room (with balcony) furnished with two large and comfortable chocolate brown leather sofas (room for all!), and a large eat-in kitchen. The top floor has a single and two double bedrooms (one en suite) and a fully tiled bathroom. Can life get any better? Ooh yes! The pièce de résistance – a 42” flat-screen TV (did I just die and go to bachelor heaven?!).

We are all agreed – Old Bakery Gardens will be our Chichester home. There’s some negotiating to be done with existing Landladies, and some painful financial losses, but all’s fair in love and renting!

It’s Saturday and we have the keys to our new 42” flat screen TV - I mean “home”! …… now all we have to do is decide who has which room!

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