Notes from the Boneyard: Living large

by Mark McCausland

Life doesn’t stop getting any weirder.The call came last week to jump a flight to London.

They told me they needed someone to play a masked killer in a movie starring Katie Price and Patsy Kensit… and that masked killer needed to be me!

“But you know I can’t act,” I told them.

“That’s okay, the stunt man does the hard work. All you have to do is play dead,” they insisted.

“Hmm,” I pondered. “I’m good at that”.

It was too bizarre to refuse, yet I was still hesitant, after making an agreement with myself to say ‘no’ to everything for a year. But this was sounding like too much fun.

It was clearly a thinly-veiled ploy for us to hang out together again on another adventure, after we had all became bonded for life while overcoming an assault course set out before us while working on another film a couple of years ago.

Bridges were built. Connections and friendships were made. Good people like to work with good people again.

Every so often a lot of us still get together and invite each other on new ventures, like old war buddies.

It was an extra bonus when they informed me that my scene would be alongside Kimberly of The Pussycat Dolls, who was also on that other film with us.

This was turning into yet another one of those reunions and an excuse to be with friends again. My mind was made up.

“Okay, you’ve twisted my arm. I’m in. See you in a few days.”

At the airport, the first thing I encountered was a girl snoring at the bar, wearing a puke stained t-shirt that read ‘I love Irish boys’.

She was surrounded by hordes of her drunken pals, who looked like they were on the tail end of a weekend of hard partying.

It looked like a scene from Jabba’s Palace. I searched for the furthest corner of the airport and eventually found a deserted quiet area all to myself. Nobody around.

Very relaxing. I began to read. Then all of a sudden a load of the loud party people come and plonked themselves right next to me.

Then a couple of bickering parents with a screaming brat sat on my other side. Within 30 seconds I was in the midst of all this mayhem.

Why do people do this?

There were a million other seats they could have sat.