Limerick

I hate it when I have to lie.

And I do have to lie - it's part of my job. Seriously. Sometimes actors are offered auditions or work that they now can't get to - - or simply don't want to, because they don't want to do the job and they think they're just about to be offered something better and want to take a chance on that happening. Perhaps they misread the casting breakdown when they asked to be submitted for the role, and hence simply can't get to the right city in time. Or perhaps they've booked a holiday that clashes with the shoot dates and the job's just not good enough to cancel the holiday for.

But in general, these kind of reasons aren't good enough to please whoever's casting the play or the film. Some agents are happy to go down the route of "blame the actor" - but we don't do that. If an actor is a real problem then we'd deal with it ourselves, even going so far as to ask them to leave the agency. But, more often than not, it simply isn't the actor's fault.

So I have a series of plausible reasons that I use and my reassuring girls'-grammar-school voice always seems to work. I've had to do it twice in the past two days.

Today, halfway through the afternoon I suddenly felt exhausted. As often, I stupidly hadn't had a lunch break, just eaten a sandwich at my desk. So I went in the room that we call, in a rather Sixties way, the "lounge" and fell asleep on the sofa for exactly twenty minutes. It's not unusual for me to dream in short verses - who knows why, a psychologist would have a field day with me!! - and I woke up with this:

I hate things when they're not the truth
Like I thought they would be in my youth
And when some lie to me
And I suddenly see
Then it hurts worse than pulling a tooth

Well, yes, perhaps not the greatest poetry in the world! Of course, to me there's a big difference between a white lie and a cruel lie. If the bride says "How do I look?" then that is not the moment to say "The other dress would have looked far better." Truth is a funny thing.