Read Online The Lubetkin Legacy by Marina Lewycka - Free Book Online
Authors: Marina Lewycka
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said. How PC can you get?
Residences : Clooney lives in a thirty-roomed villa overlooking Lake Como, and he also owns a luxurious 700-square-metre villa
in Los Angeles. Sidebottom lives in a two-bedroom-plus-study council flat in Mad Yurt, Hackney, shared until recently with his elderly mother.
IMDb : We can come back to that later.
At the moment it was the question of residences that dominated my mind – or, to be precise, the questions raised by that nosy Penny woman. Now I’d shamed her by gawping at her naked ankles, would she seek revenge by getting me removed from the flat on the grounds of ‘under-occupancy’, if she discovered that Mother was not living there? Would my wheeze to move Inna Alfandari into the flat succeed in keeping those homeless hard-working families at bay? Was Mrs Penny under orders to sniff out instances of under-occupancy and send the undeserving sub-occupants packing? Did she already suspect me? Frankly, I’d done her a favour by saving her from that too-tight, too-green dress. She could return the favour by leaving me alone.
I got off outside Madeley Court and the bus pulled away with George Clooney, darkly dimpled, smirking his lopsided farewell. I gave him the finger. Let’s face it, I was thinking as I trudged homewards, living with his aged mum would have cramped even Clooney’s sexual style. As for his professional success, it was surely just the fleeting and shallow glamour of celluloid that gave George Clooney an unfair leg-up in his acting career. While I was playing a cool, moody Hamlet in the school production during my A-level year, George Clooney was just an extra in a crowd scene in
Centennial
, which, let’s be frank, was about as crap a TV show as you could get. At Highbury Grove School I’d been the star of the drama society, thanks to my mastery of all those Shakespeare soliloquies that
Mother had drilled into me to conquer my stammer, first with a pencil in my mouth to keep my teeth apart, then a matchstick, then an imaginary matchstick. Daring to stand up and spout in front of an audience was exhilarating. Girls started to notice me. I developed a hunger for attention. My stammer melted away. At university I acted more than I studied, and then went on to drama school, while Clooney was still working his way through the ranks of film extras.
At twenty-one I was on the stage, under the name of Burt Side, in a succession of provincial reps, gradually progressing into leading roles. I didn’t mind the long hours and the grind – I had found my vocation, I worshipped the Immortal Bard, and I had dedicated my life to Art. George Clooney, meanwhile, played a supporting role in
The Return of the Killer Tomatoes
. In the same year that Clooney landed his first big role as Dr Doug Ross in
ER
, I was an acclaimed Antony at the Blackfriars Theatre in Boston (Lincs), recently married to beautiful actress Stephanie Morgan and new father of Meredith Louise, our baby daughter. I auditioned for the RSC and was offered a three-year contract.
Then in 2001 Meredith died, and everything went into free fall. In 2002 I split up with Stephanie and had a breakdown. While George Clooney moved on from
O Brother, Where Art Thou?
to
Ocean’s Eleven
, I underwent my first course of Prozac treatment. Four years later, when George Clooney won an Oscar for
Syriana
, I came out of the Friern Hospital and moved in with my mother on the top floor of Mad Yurt.
The sun peeped out briefly from behind the clouds as I walked across the grove, daffodils nodded all around me and white blossom was drifting from the cherry trees. For a moment my spirits lifted again. It wasn’t paradise, there were rats and graffiti. But even Lake Como must have its downside.
Some white A4 notices were stuck with sticky-tape to the lamp posts. Someone had lost a cat. It happened regularly. The residents of Madeley Court weren’t supposed to keep pets, so unfortunate animals were hidden away indoors, always on the
Residences : Clooney lives in a thirty-roomed villa overlooking Lake Como, and he also owns a luxurious 700-square-metre villa
in Los Angeles. Sidebottom lives in a two-bedroom-plus-study council flat in Mad Yurt, Hackney, shared until recently with his elderly mother.
IMDb : We can come back to that later.
At the moment it was the question of residences that dominated my mind – or, to be precise, the questions raised by that nosy Penny woman. Now I’d shamed her by gawping at her naked ankles, would she seek revenge by getting me removed from the flat on the grounds of ‘under-occupancy’, if she discovered that Mother was not living there? Would my wheeze to move Inna Alfandari into the flat succeed in keeping those homeless hard-working families at bay? Was Mrs Penny under orders to sniff out instances of under-occupancy and send the undeserving sub-occupants packing? Did she already suspect me? Frankly, I’d done her a favour by saving her from that too-tight, too-green dress. She could return the favour by leaving me alone.
I got off outside Madeley Court and the bus pulled away with George Clooney, darkly dimpled, smirking his lopsided farewell. I gave him the finger. Let’s face it, I was thinking as I trudged homewards, living with his aged mum would have cramped even Clooney’s sexual style. As for his professional success, it was surely just the fleeting and shallow glamour of celluloid that gave George Clooney an unfair leg-up in his acting career. While I was playing a cool, moody Hamlet in the school production during my A-level year, George Clooney was just an extra in a crowd scene in
Centennial
, which, let’s be frank, was about as crap a TV show as you could get. At Highbury Grove School I’d been the star of the drama society, thanks to my mastery of all those Shakespeare soliloquies that
Mother had drilled into me to conquer my stammer, first with a pencil in my mouth to keep my teeth apart, then a matchstick, then an imaginary matchstick. Daring to stand up and spout in front of an audience was exhilarating. Girls started to notice me. I developed a hunger for attention. My stammer melted away. At university I acted more than I studied, and then went on to drama school, while Clooney was still working his way through the ranks of film extras.
At twenty-one I was on the stage, under the name of Burt Side, in a succession of provincial reps, gradually progressing into leading roles. I didn’t mind the long hours and the grind – I had found my vocation, I worshipped the Immortal Bard, and I had dedicated my life to Art. George Clooney, meanwhile, played a supporting role in
The Return of the Killer Tomatoes
. In the same year that Clooney landed his first big role as Dr Doug Ross in
ER
, I was an acclaimed Antony at the Blackfriars Theatre in Boston (Lincs), recently married to beautiful actress Stephanie Morgan and new father of Meredith Louise, our baby daughter. I auditioned for the RSC and was offered a three-year contract.
Then in 2001 Meredith died, and everything went into free fall. In 2002 I split up with Stephanie and had a breakdown. While George Clooney moved on from
O Brother, Where Art Thou?
to
Ocean’s Eleven
, I underwent my first course of Prozac treatment. Four years later, when George Clooney won an Oscar for
Syriana
, I came out of the Friern Hospital and moved in with my mother on the top floor of Mad Yurt.
The sun peeped out briefly from behind the clouds as I walked across the grove, daffodils nodded all around me and white blossom was drifting from the cherry trees. For a moment my spirits lifted again. It wasn’t paradise, there were rats and graffiti. But even Lake Como must have its downside.
Some white A4 notices were stuck with sticky-tape to the lamp posts. Someone had lost a cat. It happened regularly. The residents of Madeley Court weren’t supposed to keep pets, so unfortunate animals were hidden away indoors, always on the
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