Category: Thomas Willshire

We may not be completely unlocked but I certainly consider myself unblocked. I’ll let you think up your own constipation jokes. The large gap between my last entry and this is indicative of the extent to which lockdown has eased. I’m not working in them yet but I’m certainly visiting pubs. I’m celebrating milestones with family and friends at their houses and in their gardens. I’ve joined a gym for the first time in my life and torture myself there on an almost daily basis. I’ve become busy and as a result lockdown blog ideas have been in short supply. I’m making plenty of concessions, of course. I’m doing a lot of ‘household-counting’. A good look at the guidelines doesn’t Read More

In early August 2019 I was up in Edinburgh for the Fringe Festival sticking posters for two shows on anything that didn’t move. Both the posters prominently featured my face and were therefore very eye catching and sexy. One of them advertised ‘The Big (Bite-Size Plays) Breakfast’ which was a collection of short plays performed in the morning with breakfast for the audience thrown in. I was turning out for ‘Bite-Size’ for the third year in a row and was thoroughly looking forward to playing to the big audiences that production always seemed to attract. The other poster was for a play called ‘Before Thirty’; a one man show (my first one man show) written by my wonderful friend Thomas Read More

Upon hearing the news that it is to become mandatory to wear masks in shops and other public spaces I felt quite smug. I have a mask, you see. A soft, unobtrusive covering which Polly made for me on her sewing machine. Sadly, the machine broke while she was making herself one which is unfortunate but, I’m sure you’ll agree, ultimately her problem. She’s making do by holding Fergal to her face which is as adorable as it is impractical. I’ve had a couple of negative mask experiences so far. After playing tennis recently I foolishly opted to catch the bus home and sat in considerable discomfort for an hour and twenty minutes. The mask became so saturated with my Read More

One of the many crushing doubts I had about starting this blog was the timing. If I was going to write some pieces peering through the lens of lockdown I should have started the bloody thing at the end of March. Back then fulsome and oppressive quarantine measures were the order of the day. I could have written of isolation and cabin fever and given the whole thing a dystopian feel. Instead I only managed to motivate myself towards the end of May by which point we could all venture out as much as we wished and trips to the supermarket didn’t have to be essential. Let’s face it, I began writing this blog just at the point my clever Read More

Every now and then (but nowhere near as often as I’d like) an acting job falls out of the sky. That said I certainly didn’t expect the heavens to provide during lockdown. I’d written off the opportunity for acting work until next year to be brutally honest. However, with the government’s blessing film production can resume and on Wednesday Polly and I got to do a little screen acting! As with most work Pol and I get, this was offered to us by someone we’ve both worked with before and who we now consider a friend. He’s a student at the National Film & Television School and we provided the solution to a casting problem as we belong to the Read More

My first theatrical experiences took place at St Laurence Junior School during assembly. As the name suggests, St Laurence was a Church School that every morning put on a little production, so to speak. Mr Andrew, the Headmaster, took top billing, of course. He was supported by Mrs Bowden on the piano, who would play a selection of hymns from Jesus’s ‘Holy Banger Playlist’. As memory serves, the one about being cold and naked never failed to bring the house down. There was also the occasional special guest appearance from Father Robert Warren. Now I think back he was an erratic performer at best but back then I was far from a critic. Most of the time he gave us Read More

Eating one’s feelings is not recommended but what if that feeling is boredom? Is boredom a feeling or a state of mind? Is there a difference? Should I deep fry my boredom or roast it? The answer to that last one, obviously, is deep fry. Always deep fry. In my most recent post I focused on my mental health but the truth is my morale represents an inevitable through-line for this blog so today I thought I’d discuss one of my crutches. Fortunately, it’s not the consumption of food that makes me feel good, it’s the preparation. If I enjoyed eating food as much as I enjoy making it, I’d resemble a dugong by now (fat shaming sea mammals is Read More