Life in Dulwich

Did some voice work for the BBC on Thursday. Boy, they really don't pay that well. It was for a dramatisation of the Krakatoa disaster playing various Indonesian villagers, Chinese coolies, Dutch plantation owners and so forth. Apparently the Dutch speak in received pronunciation. Actually, it's quite difficult to tell them all apart when you're mainly screaming, wailing and crying. Fun way to spend a morning though. They had someone at the casting who was supposed to be the Malay expert but apart from her actually being Malay, she wasn't much more expert than the rest of us. We were all scuppered when they asked us to say things like 'clear the poopdeck', 'batten down the ropes', 'get up on the wheelhouse' etc. Mostly, it was all 'lari!', 'tolong!', 'ayuh!', 'cepat!' and 'apa terjadi?' from us.

Met a mate from days gone by who had just been for a casting for an Eskimo. Darn, I thought I had the market for Eskimos sewn up. Thought of striding into the casting but as she said she had to snog a perfect stranger, I passed on by.

There was an excellent dramatisation of the downfall of Berlin in Hitler's bunker on telly the other night. It was about 4 hours long and all in German with subtitles. I hope they bring it out on DVD. The actors were excellent - particularly, Hitler, Speer and Goebbels' wife. They were all really completely insane. I learnt the words for 'committed suicide' and 'we will not surrender' in German.

Finally, tried out the restaurant W'Sens last night. Only went for a drink amd a light snack. It's run by the Pourcel brothers who run several Michelin starred establishments in France, although I believe W'Sens has yet to get one despite being open for a while. Might be wrong. Still, the light snack was very good. My selection of amuse bouche was a rare beef teriyaki, squid satay in some kind of a sauce, an artichoke with figs and pesto. All enjoyable and amused my bouche greatly - the beef was particularly tasty and very tender. The others had foie gras, aubergine tempura and the artichoke. Unfortunately, for a Michelin star aspirant (which I guess they must be), they were rather let down by their service - often the case I feel. The staff kept moving furniture around which meant we kept having to get up and shift our chairs which eventually resulted in P knocking his glass of wine over. They also didn't bring us any cutlery or napkins despite the snacks not being finger food, forgot what drinks we had ordered (despite having written them down) and so forth. Ah well. Maybe I'm just harsh.

Labels: acting, food, restaurants, television