There's little tricycles under there...

The agency calls and asks if I can get to Pinewood, on the other side of London, the day before filming to have a hair and make-up session, which will only take half an hour or so. I explain that this would involve a two hour drive each way, and although I don't want to be awkward could we not do the hair and make-up on the actual day, and I'd be quite happy to get there half an hour early. The agent says she's sure that'll be fine, and then tells me what time the call is for filming.

I need to be in Richmond, the other side of London, at 4.00am Friday. In the morning. She says there is a coach going from central London at 2.45am, and I tell her it's ok, I'll be driving. Then it occurs to me that I'm not going to get much sleep the night before, so I might as well get the last train into London, find somewhere to drink coffee and read my book for a couple of hours and take advantage of the coach. Then I wouldn't be driving back from Richmond, after little or no sleep and a full day's filming, on a Friday evening. It will also be cheaper than paying for the petrol. Sorted.

I have a bit of a nap on the Thursday afternoon, Mrs Wendell drops me off at the station (for a change) at 10.30pm and by midnight I'm walking through Soho towards Bar Italia. There's no danger of boredom here - it seems to be the busiest place on earth! After 20 minutes of standing I finally spot a stool by the wall and lunge for it. I daren't move for the next couple of hours in case I lose my comfy place, and I read, drink coffee and watch the people. It's mostly full of painfully trendy people - you know, carefully distressed jeans, tight shirts, nicely trimmed stubble and expensively messed-up hair. And that's just the women - boom, and indeed, boom. I'm pleased to be here, and wish that my hometown would be able to support a late night coffee house like this, but sadly the majority of my fellow hometowners are more interested in cheap lager and having a fight than drinking coffee and having a conversation. Rant over, back to the plot.

At 2.15 I wander down to Charring Cross to meet the coach, and get on the second one. Most people are quite sleepy, but my caffeine intake means that I can't nap during the 25 minute drive to Richmond, and I look out of the window as West London goes by. We get dropped off at the Adult Education Centre in the middle of town and join the queue for breakfast. At 3.30am.

I've just finished my scrambled eggs and more coffee when one of the ADs calls my name and I have to go and have my haircut. According to his list, I'm a priority because I couldn't make it the previous day. The hair department is upstairs, and after trying two others we find the right staircase. Johnny is my hairdresser, and we chat as he expertly clips away at the back of my head while referencing some notes in front of him - presumably written by the woman I met at the costume fitting 6 weeks previous. I joke about leaving a tip, and he tells me that normally he charges upwards of £100 for a haircut. But he isn't joking. I ask for a bit more off the back to get the production company's money's worth, and then head off to the costume department downstairs.

After getting changed (I'm sure the trousers are different to the ones I fitted in North London - these ones are much tighter round the waist...) it's upstairs again to make up, where Mandy colours my newly grown side-burns a bit darker, and makes my hands look grubby with a dark liquid that looks like fake tan. Turns out that it is. I look at Mandy's notes and read that I don't get to have a fake beard. Again! All around me the other extras are getting outrageous facial hair applied to their faces, but they are all part of the crowd in this theatre scene set in 1865, and I am a stagehand. Stagehands wouldn't have had fancy beards, disappointingly.

Once I'm done I go downstairs and sit down in one of the classrooms that for now are acting as holding areas for us extras. It's still only 5.30 in the morning. I chat with others, read a bit more and try not to sleep. With my contact lenses in, sleeping would be a very bad thing. There are a few guys appearing who seem to be dressed in similar gear to me, and we naturally gravitate towards each other. One of the crew comes in and explains that she will be taking us stagehands over to the set at about 9.00am - and apologizes for the early call. Still, we all get an allowance in our wages for that, so we settle down to chat. It appears that there are six stagehands for this shoot; myself, an actor who has been in 'We Will Rock You', a prog-rocker nurse, a student film maker, a second-hand book dealer, and an agriculturalist. We discuss our various day jobs, our outfits, and how difficult it is to wash your hands after visiting the toilet when you have make-up all over them.

When we finally get called, the six of us are joined by another guy who is to be the stage manager. The seven of us are shown into the building, where the crew have built an approximation of the Ford Theatre, Washington DC, 1865. We're here to recreate the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, which will be a flashback at the start of this movie, and, as these things often are in the movie world, this is the very last day of shooting. There are hundreds of people rushing around, all seemingly doing something, and the overall impression is one of a very well oiled machine. I recognise a few of the people from previous shoots, but there are an awful lot of American accents peppered about. The 1st Assistant Director comes over to say hello, and he reminds me of a much tidier and slightly slimmer Michael Moore. He tells us that we will need to be a little patient today, as they have a lot of re-sets (moving things around) and we'll be needed soon. We're moved over to the seats at the edge of the room.

An hour later, following a briefing from the fire officer and a visit from the costume designer, the rest of the 200+ extras begin filing into the theatre and sitting in the main block of seats. As this is happening, another AD takes all seven of us backstage and shows us where we will be standing and what we will be doing. Having been told that the set guys aren't ready for us yet, he takes us outside through the backstage door and a few of us take this chance to have a quick smoke.

When, 45 minutes later, he comes and gets us, everything has changed. We are all stood in different places and given different tasks, the actor playing the assassin is wandering around watching his stand-in go through his marks (where he stands at given times). These marks are important. The cameras are focused to these points, and if the actor isn't on his mark at the right time, he'll be out of focus.

My job is to be chatting with another stagehand, notice the assassin walk past, comment on it to my colleague and carry on chatting. We have a couple of rehearsals, the 1st AD comes over and says we are doing a great job, and they do four takes before we are sent back to sit down. We mainly talk about what we think we would be talking about if this was 1865. We agree that stagehands on 1865 would have been discussing what time lunch was due, who to go for in the Kentucky Derby and probably not about Big Brother.

For the next three hours we watch as they shoot more stuff with the huge crowd, and eventually find ourselves siting outside the theatre, smiling at the passers-by and wondering when we'll get some lunch - bearing in mind that we had breakfast at 3.30am, and it was now aproaching 12.30pm. At 1.30pm we are sent back to the base to have lunch, and we stagehands are sent off first. Just as we get to the lunch van a crew guy stops us and says that the 1stAD wants some of the crowd back quickly, so they must eat first. We wait. Eventually we get to eat (penne arabiatta with brocolli) and in no time are back at the theatre, wondering if they actually need us any more.

During the walk back up the road, we watch some of the ladies, whose costumes are fantastically detailed ball gowns, and make them look a little like those dolls your auntie used to have to put over those unsightly spare toilet rolls. We decide that it would be cool if each of the ladies had a little tricycle under their dress.

More crowd stuff is shot, as we swap between sitting outside in the sun and inside watching the filming. Lincoln gets shot at least 15 times during the afternoon, there's a cool stunt involving a bloke jumping down from the balcony, and the crew slots together like so many cogs. While we've been sitting around I've been chatting with the Agiculturalist, who, when I ask him how he got involved in doing this kind of thing, tells me that he is a transvestite, and along with a bunch of his fellow TVs, appeared in a british movie called Kinky Boots. I forget to ask him whether he tells the farmers that he visits.

Eventually, the crowd are sent off. I find out it's 6.15pm, and our AD comes over and asks us stagehands to stay. He comes back ten minutes later and gets the stage manager, taking him backstage and we hear "rolling" "background" "action" and "cut" a few times before they return. He takes me and two others back and we are positioned and given our actions. The assassin is wandering around the labyrinth of corridors backstage, and we do 5 or 6 takes with different camera positions. Then we are released, with the 1st AD anouncing "That's a wrap, everyone!". It's 7.15pm.

We race back and change into civvies. Getting my lenses out is a blessed relief, and three of us head off to the train station for the 30 minute ride back into London, and by the time the train gets to Waterloo I am on my own again. I race to get the tube back to Liverpool Street, and get on the 8.30, but I miss it by 3 minutes, and must wait for an hour before the next train. I buy a large Vanilla Latte and, for the umpteenth time today, head out of the station for a smoke and a wait.

A beard? In four weeks? Are you crazy?

Being an extra, as I think I've mentioned before, means having patience, having the ability to follow simple directions and being able to be on time. Those that know me will be able to confirm that these are not traits that lend themselves to me easily.

Patience is a virtue, apparently, and one that I struggle with from time to time. In the case of being on set, patience is needed because most of your time is spent sitting around reading or chatting. That kind of patience I can do. Very well. It's the other kind I struggle with; the stupidity of others, other people being stupid, that sort of thing.

The simple directions problem is not that I struggle to understand them. I just don't like being told what to do. If I'm thinking I might fancy, say, some pasta for tea, and just as I'm about to start someone says "why don't you have some pasta for tea?" my natural reaction would be to have some rice. I'm not saying it's a good thing, or that it's something I wouldn't change if I could, but I it is true.

Now, bad timekeeping. Mostly I get away with it, which is lucky. It's not that I'm purposely being rude, and these days I do make a supreme effort to be on time - especially if it involves some other people and an immovable event (such as a football match or picking up my wife from the station), but my inherent laziness still plays havoc with my time keeping.

And so it proved a couple of weeks ago when I got the standard call from the agency ("Have you had a haircut?" "No" "Great, can you...") and had a costume fitting booked later that week in that London.

Having managed to book cheap train tickets the day before, I knew I had to be at the station for the 10.30am train. I'd already dropped Mrs Wendell at the station at 7.00am that morning, and returned home to do a bit of work. However, what I actually did was sit down with my breakfast in front of the BBC news and fall asleep. I woke at 10.00am, wasted a few seconds wondering where I was and then reality hit. As I showered, dressed and panicked, all seemingly at the same time, I was also muttering about having to spend another £30 quid to buy tickets, as the cheap ones are, of course, non-refundable. It's a good 25 minute walk to the station, and with the time at 10.15, it wasn't looking good. So, instead of running and getting all hot and testy, I walked, reasoning that as I just wasn't going to get the 10.30, there was no need to rush. As I sauntered into the station at 10.38, I looked up at the screen to see the word 'delayed' next to each and every train, and upon reaching the platform, stepped onto the waiting 10.30 - which promptly pulled away about 30 seconds later.

Of course, the fact that the train is leaving late means that it will arrive late. It cuts my time the other end, and I need to find the appointed building in North London by 12.30. I emerge from the tube station onto the Hollaway Road, establish which direction I need to be walking (by, of course, walking the wrong way initially) and having found the building I walk through the door at 12.25.

The lady behind the reception looks up and says "Ah, you must be Stephen. Just go through and see Lee." As an extra you get used to people not knowing your name, which is totally understandable when there are 300 extras on one set, so when someone knows who you are, it's quite nice. I'm ushered through to a dressing room and two guys are there handing me various bits of clothing to try on. Two ladies come through to check the costume. A discussion ensues about whether the corduroy jacket is in keeping with the period, and after a few different jackets are tried the lady with the American accent declares that she is happy and I'm led through to another room to have pictures taken. While this is happening, another person has a good look at my hair, and says it might need to be trimmed a little bit at the back - is that alright? - and can I grow a beard in four weeks? I tell her I haven't managed to grow a beard in 40 years, and she laughs. She takes a cutting of my hair so they can make my beard to match, telling me that I have 10% gray...

After about 45 minutes Lee tells me I'm all done and I can go and get changed. Yet another person gathers together the costumes bits and hangs them all on a couple of hangers, pinning them with a label which has my name written on it. He puts them on a hanger across the room, next to other costumes with similar labels, some of which have names I recognise.

Having signed and countersigned some forms which tell the agency how much to pay me, I'm outside, following a cheery goodbye from the lady at reception, and walking (the wrong way initially) back to the tube station. Just as I get to the station, my phone rings and it's the agency, telling me that there is now an additional day's shooting on this job, four days after the one I already know about. I tell them that's fine, and head down into the tube station and towards my usual destination when I'm at a loose end in London, The Tate Modern.

When I get home, I decide to google the name of the American Lady who seemed to make the final decisions at my fitting. I remember her name because it is unusual, the kind of name that means she either grew up in a commune, or at least wished she had. When her name comes up on the international movie database, I find out that she has three oscars for costume design.

Three days later the initial day's shoot is cancelled, and a different date is added. I decide not to worry about booking tickets just yet...