Acting is the noblest profession.

Acting is the noblest profession (Although, I admire those ladies who work for the animal cruelty charities and have to investigate claims of mistreatment to Chihuahuas. That’s quite noble). I could never demean myself by working in an office. Still, Reader, I respect those bastards who do.

I am a sensitive soul and my mind is (and will always be) devoted to more weighty problems than the stationery order, or what Pete did to Trish’s brother in the taxi back from Inferno’s (teabagging).

No.... THE UNIVERSAL ... this is what matters. Not Saturn, Mars, Uranus ... Nor any of the celestial bodies stuck, as if with very strong glue, in the darkly black firmament ... no, not them ... but ... love, death, jealously, THE MEANING OF LIFE. And Acting, my friend, is the alchemistical medium through which these profundities can be understood. Take my hand. I will lead.

This said, today’s rehearsal was fucking tedious. We continued to read through the play. Macbeth was still an annoying shit, and Malcolm, my character, still didn’t have enough lines. Occasionally the director would suggest certain movements (even though we sat still around the fucking table) and the sycophantic sods would nod their heads and note every word upon their pristine scripts. Malcolm will move across the stage in a regal fashion, she tells me. A regal fashion? How innovative! And what exactly is a ‘regal fashion’?

I took the time to ask the director. Macbeth laughed, turned to Lady Macbeth, and muttered something to her ear. She laughed.

“What’s a regal fashion, then, Jules?” I asked, finger-pointing at his stupid face.

I called him Jules as he had begun the morning session by asking everyone to refer to him as ‘Macbeth’.

He threw me a soppy grin.

“Restraint and grace, Malcolm. Two qualities I suspect you will be hard-pushed to find,” said he.

There were titters of laughter. I told Macbeth to fuck off. That wiped the smug smile from his face. Nobody dared laugh then. In fact, nobody spoke for a while.

The day had begun poorly when I woke at five o’ clock murmuring 'ants'. My sleep had been tempestuous, as no remnant of the He-Man duvet remained. Where did it go, you ask? The floor. The floor. The floor.

Reader, I woke with a sniffle. This was, no doubt, the love-child of the unforgiving suburban trek from Outer Blackheath to London Bridge that rehearsal demanded. I should be paid danger money, such is the train temperature and awfulness of my fellow commuters. Top Gear fans to a man.

On waking: my head pounded as if a thousand angry (but tiny) builders were constructing a discotheque (tiny) in't. A sea of snot ran, unashamed, from my delicate, sculptured nostrils.

My malaise hadn't crippled me yet, though, Reader! After telling Macbeth to fuck off, I took the train to Lee and visited the Dark Shop in the Arcade.

For, in the night, the ants had broken through the great chip barrier. On departing for morning rehearsal, I’d left a tempest of swirling insect bodies in the kitchen. My visit to the Dark Shop was now more urgent than ever. The anty bastards had even swarmed upon my Jammy Dodgers. An almighty retribution would be mine.

On occasions of taking the train to Lee, I would stow my notebook in my trousers TO MAKE NOTES. Who knew if, in some near future, I would be called upon to play a tall, black, whiny woman on her way to Lewisham 'to get dat Becky's fonecard'? My notes upon such a woman would then prove invaluable.

There was one woman on the train whose beauty defied note taking. Flaxen-haired, she was. And eating an apple.

Eve? If you, traingirl, offered me a taste of your fruit, I would bite alright. Even with the knowledge that I would be cast out of Eden (the 1632 to Dartford).

Pure beauty. Fine bone structure. Doing her nails. Wearing a tracksuit. Not two metres away. I swapped seats, sat next to her. Her eyes. Slightly crossed. Met mine. A connection. A knowledge. Different people, we were. BUT AT THAT MOMENT THE SAME. Two battered dinghies on the park-pond of life. I missed my stop and she smiled.

I was overcome. I spoke. I suggested. She shouted. She left.

Perhaps she was right to use such language, to throw such accusations. The tall, whiny lady told me she thought so.

And so ... after a forty-minute walk (due to the missed stop), I found The Dark Shop did have ant-killing material. Ridiculously expensive it was, but the shopkeeper ‘swore down’ that the ants would die, ‘innit’. A swift jog home (no money left for bus and I was fit), and I was ready for some antocide.

The ant killing substance was a powder and it came in striking packaging. A black tube with only one word written upon it:

KILL! (the exclamation mark is my own)

The stuff itself looked similar to cocaine. I dabbed a small amount of ANT KILLER on my tongue, to be sure. It wasn't cocaine. It forced me violently sick over the sofa. Vomit over and sofa cleaned, I covered the writhing mass of ants on the kitchen floor (it looked like a crazy carpet) in the substance. Leaving the ants to die, I moved to my bedroom for a lie-down, briefly stopping at the bathroom to throw up a little more.