I've now been lucky enough to spend two days at ID audio in Queen's Park, recording an audiobook for Penguin/Random House. I have two more to go at the end of this week. The book is called Victoire and is a non-fiction tale about a French agent for the resistance in World War Two. Every page is peppered with French, German and Polish names and place names. My French is quite good (although those places in the vicinity of Brittany sure are spelt weird...), my German is basic, and my Polish is non-existent. Even having looked everything up as far as possible, it's very tricky to switch one's brain from French to Polish and back again to German (in amongst quite a complicated English text) within the space of a sentence. The number of times I've said 'Fronss', when all I needed to say was 'France' is laughable.
Still, I'm luxuriating in the opportunity to go and feel like an actor for a few days, and am looking forward to recording some dialogue for a documentary-drama on Saturday. I absolutely adore Accent Coaching, and I feel like I've won the lottery, having finally found the side-hustle that keeps me fulfilled as well as paying the bills; but acting is my first love, and it's lovely to be chosen for these trickier jobs because of my unique skillset of being able to copy other people's accents...
Tomorrow and the next day I'll be back in front of my laptop, meeting a couple of new students and carrying on with the studies of a few more. I've said it before and I'll say it again - variety is the spice of this pandemic.