TO LONDON

(This is from a handwritten journal September 15, 2016.)

THURSDAY

8-something U.K. time - landing London Heathrow.

Surprisingly, I'm not braindead.

Yesterday: Banana, 1/2 waffle, tangerine, grapes, grapes (not a typo -I'd written it twice) apple, cheese stick, granola.  Lots water. 10:30 meal plane - pasta/cheese, fruit, roll, salad and breakfast 2:30/7:30, yogurt, water, fruiT.

Laxative, vitamins, aspirin (2 muscle relaxers yesterday) oh, and glass wine.

Slept not great. Curled on seats. Uncomfortable on joints.

Charlotte Rampling genius 45 YEARS.

AFTERNOON

Menopause and London during a heatwave go together about as well as peanut butter and thumbtacks.

FRIDAY

(Pre-notes on getting around before leaving flat.)

Tower Pier (overhead Shoreditch to DLR Shadweel to Tower Hill to Tower Pier. Ferry to Westminster and Big Ben, Parliament, Victoria Embankment, cross Bridge Street (left to) entrance on Abdington Street, cross to Westminster Abbey.

12:30 Mass.

Walking tour from Big Ben/Parliament to Trafalgar Square:

Start Westminster Bridge - End Trafalgar Square:

National Galleries
National Portrait Gallery
Tea at National Gallery
Embankment Pier ferry back or Leicester Square Station
Cranborn and Charing, cross road at Leicester Square, north from National Gallery up Charing Cross Road OR Embankment Pier from Trafalgar square, Northumberland to Thames River and Victoria Embankment, turn left (pass tube station and walk east.)

Stumbled upon Horse Guard Inspection at Buckingham Palace. Swans and geese at St. James Park.  Lovely couple from Connecticut at Churchill War Rooms. 13 year-old brown labrador named Ben along White Hall. Cheerful guards posing with tourists at #10 Downing. DJ spinning at Trafalgar Square before tea at National Gallery. Good and damp day.

LATER

Churchill was a redhead. Passionate and a performer. A painter and writer. A romantic ("Clemmie") and lover of dogs. Bull dog - my fave. I think if he were born a woman he'd have gone into acting, like me. The war rooms were excellent.

SATURDAY
Only other notes for rest of week are more transportation notes and the following:

SUNDAY
Tour w/ Jenni (my step-daughter, whom I was staying with in a Shoreditch flat while she was on business.)

Golden Tours UK (use Viator going forward - guess I wasn't impressed.)

Bath, Jane Austen, Stonehenge.

tcl
8/28/18 early evening

How I Got my SAG Card

How I got my SAG card - Teri Clark Linden, Member since 1993

Well, I was working my rent-job, hostessing at Ed Debevic’s in Chicago - the 1950’s family style diner with sassy wise-cracking servers - when a Bud Light commercial was shot in the back of the restaurant during my shift.  One of the waitresses was a talented actress named Ilene Getz, who television audiences would later come to enjoy as Jane Curtain’s monotone, expressionless assistant on the TV comedy Third Rock From the Sun.  Ilene knew one the of the production assistants, who was helping to cast the spot using Ed’s staff and customers, and with Ilene’s encouragement I got picked.  I ended up getting seen on two commercial spots edited from that one very fun session which became my first SAG job.  Flash forward about a year and Chicago casting director Dick Kordos got me cast on the Nick Nolte/Julia Roberts film I Love Trouble.  My role was an airline ticket reservation agent and I had one line with Nick Nolte.  I was in “must-join” status now, having worked that first SAG job on the Bud Light commercial, and needed my SAG card before getting to set.  Despite my having been promoted from hostess to waitress at Ed Debevic’s I was still a struggling actress and borrowed the money from my parents for the initiation fees.  Getting my SAG card was the professional bar for me I set back in college and I was proud to have achieved it just 4 years after graduation.  I joined AFTRA and Equity (with my own money) soon after, and I am just as proud now as I was then to be a member of these professional performer’s unions.  (By the way, my airline agent role was cut before I even got to the I Love Trouble set, but my parents didn’t make me pay them back and, of course, I got to keep my SAG card!)