Not a dry eye in the church?

Today I took my first ever part as a supporting artist in a short film. I schlepped over to Stoke Newington for 9am, dressed head to toe in black and carting several alternative outfits to accommodate, I hoped, the rather vague brief I received just yesterday.

We were filming a funeral scene in an old church. I expected this to be a student film, but no – on arrival I immediately recognised a couple of the actors (female – can’t call them actresses these days I think). Imagine my excitement when a further, even more famous, male actor’s name was bandied about.  Sadly, although he is in the film, he was not in the scene we were filming today. (Whisper – it was that Mr Whishaw, who had spookily been moonlighting as my day-trip guide in Slovenia – see https://onecryingeye.com/walking-trousers-in-a-world-of-tiny-shorts)

I was assigned to a waiting area in a box pew, where I managed to finish my latest Kindle book, and chat to several of my fellow ‘extras’ (not supposed to call them that, either) before we finally got going at 11ish.

At last, we were all standing at the front of the church to be picked one by one for the seats in the congregation. It was like being back at school and waiting to be chosen for the netball team. This time it seemed to be an advantage to be of average/small height – I bagged a front row seat!  I think that makes me on a par with the other side of the aisle front row which was all the ‘names’. I’m expecting a re-call to do some more – haha.

The congregation included several rather stunning drag queens. I had serious thigh-boot envy of one whom I later followed up the aisle behind the coffin…

Despite the ridiculous amount of waiting around – which, in fairness, I was completely expecting, hence the Kindle – it was great fun to see how it all worked. The young female director regaled us with an endless stream of ‘wonderful’, ‘fantastic’, ‘excellent’, ‘thank you, thank you everyone’ and – her apparent favourite – ‘beautiful, lovely, beautiful’.  I wish I had counted them all. I also lost count of the number of times we carried the coffin up the aisle, but it was perhaps fortunate that I didn’t have those thigh-boots on after all. ‘Still rolling, go again!’  Again? And one more time…

Sadly, after all the weeping my stupid eyes normally do, the best I could muster for this funeral was a saddish frown.