AlBarclay

Hayfever is runny but not blocked up today so I’m just occasionally having to blow my nose discreetly and hope that nobody thinks I’ve got COVID.

I’ve just crushed three bags of ice so that would make me a superspreader if I did.

This is a great big annual conference. There’s always something to do. Earlier I was on “You can’t park there” duty. Then “Where m/

…

4 hours. Dunno where that sentence was going. Back then I wasn’t even plugged into the borg, but now there’s this thing in my ear that tells me what to do. Being part of the network of walkie talkies mostly means I get to listen to other people talking about bins, but I also occasionally get to find the bell and bring it to Mark.

Lots of suppliers here and I’ve made friends with some of them which will mean a free tote bag and some interesting mixers and even the occasional bottle of something. One guy had a leaky crate of beer. One punctured can meant we got to keep the ones it sprayed. All of us will go home with what we can carry I expect.

I won’t be able to carry much though. The Club is very green and they were mowing the lawns when I got in this morning at 6, and I’ll still be blowing my nose at 2am, before coming back for 6.30. Everything has to be out of here by 8am and right now there are 300 people giving each other awards in the room next door, and it’s the time I went to bed yesterday. I’m gonna be walking wounded by tomorrow morning at 8am but I don’t have any work until Friday afternoon so I’ll have time to recover. I’ll let you know if I end up with buckets of swag.

I’m a lot better at crushing ice today than I was yesterday.

Oh God. The party has started. Two and a half hours of breaking down tables and picking up glasses. Hopefully some delegates will leave their goodie bags.

Purple Palace again. The Premier Inn on my side of Putney Bridge. It’s only an hour’s walk home from here, twelve minutes by car. But I’m staying here as the team is staying here and tomorrow we all leave at 5:45 to build this event then tear it down.

My hayfever chose today to go nuclear. I’ve been sitting in a meeting that involved food and booze, and I can’t breathe through my nose. I know it well enough just to be perplexed at the timing. I haven’t seen some of these people since the documentary in Aberdeen that sent me slightly bananas.

Now it’s twenty past nine and I’m taking advantage of the facilities. Once again I’m in the end room with an extra bed and a bath, just as I was in Jersey.

I’m sitting in the bath as it fills, hoping that an early bed will be the thing to fix the snot. I haven’t got an antihistamine but I’ve got Actifed. Steam will help too. It’s already helping. It was a year ago last time I did this job and I think I’d just got back from Uruguay. I have just been reminded that I had to record myself singing into my mobile at 4am after the main night, for an audition for Oliver! “One Boooooy, Booy for saaaale!” They recalled me. Might have got that job. Sliding door if I had. Not every job you want is the one you need.

This job is gonna be full on but surrounded by lovely people. Hopefully by the end of it the fractures between Fi and I will be filled in, cos neither of us liked the way the other one deals with stress. I think it’ll be a tonic.

Bath is run. Nose is already clearer. Only half nine and I reckon I’ll be out like a light in half an hour, ready for the morrow which will be lifting building cleaning fixing responding laughing solving breathing. The event is at The Hurlingham Club, where we had dad’s memorial dinner.

If there are leftover untapped barrels, I’m buying a pump ahead of a short term madness I have planned this summer. I’ve got two barrels that need drinking by July. Two more and sales should cover the pump.

Ahhh I feel so much better for the steam. I didn’t think my nose would ever stop being so bunged up.

On my way down to Brighton this time I didn’t think it through. There was no time to go home after pretending to be a goose. I was already in Beaconsfield so it just made so much more sense to go straight to Brighton on a Friday night. But I had no bag packed. In my car was a hat, a black velvet jacket and a jumper with more holes in it than the plot of a cheap romance novel. I stopped at my old staple, TK Maxx. Socks, pants and a couple of T-shirts. Thanks to a dozy assistant the pants weren’t rung through so I am now the proud owner of a box of extremely brief Calvin Kleins. I rather like them. I feel like Dolph Lungdren.

Lou doesn’t like the jacket which is fair enough – I last wore it at a funeral. The jumper though… I thought it was on its last legs. Cashmere but so worn and worn in with washing that the front had four holes in it. “Let me darn that,” she said, and two people I’ve run into since then have said “You look smart!” She’s a miracle worker. It only took her a few minutes and the thing has a new lease of life.

We drove to her workshop briefly, loaded up with picnic, and then on to Carmen at Glyndebourne. I think his might be my eighth different show there in two years. It’s the final dress rehearsal most of the time but I wouldn’t have it any other way. Those gorgeous gardens wake up in the summer, and the whole place is steeped in the bright energy that can only come when so many creative people come together in one place and channel the thing they channel through their bodies and voices. On stage eighty odd dancers and singers working together to tell a strange tale.

A less traditional take on Carmen, and even if I miss the joy of the huge flamenco flounce and the real period twinkles, by bringing it into a slightly seedier and more grounded world it made the interplay between characters ring out in a way it might have have done had I been distracted by petticoats. Manipulative Carmen surrounded by people worse than she is. Beautiful familiar tunes. English people pretending to be French people pretending to be Spanish people. My mum loved this opera. I remember her once telling me the story of it. It was huge and romantic in her memory. This telling of it doesn’t lose the epic sense of a big world, but reminds us that the things that feel vast to us personally don’t transfer very far from the inside of our heads. Not a huge romance of an ending. An unnecessary idiocy played out in a big world. Powerful storytelling and world building. I drove home happy.

Back to the grind now until the end of the week. I’m picking out dinner jackets to wear for an MC gig on Friday. Got to send options to the client. Man in dinner jacket is just that, no? Heigh ho.

A day free of obligation. I have been using it to try and organise my household service providers better. But there are plenty of distractions.

I took Lou into work at Glyndebourne and then drove to Lewes to buy a picnic ahead of Monday’s open dress rehearsal there. The perfect early summer weekend weather, and perhaps the right time to go to Lewes. It was The Battle of Lewes. Scores and scores of hairy men about my age in armour banging drums and wearing scavenged chainmail. One of them even brought his duck.

They ambled through the streets of Lewes for our pleasure, occasionally becoming excited about something or announcing something else. Lewes is a town for this sort of thing. There’s a pub where they do Dwile Flonking, which involves throwing a cloth at people while dancing. Nobody really understands it but they still do it. It reeks of a joke that got out of hand, perhaps people trying to confuse Americans by pretending they all knew the game as they made it up.

Today everyone got the weird stuff out of the garage again and ran around all morning shouting. By now they’ll all be Morris dancing or sozzled on real ale or maybe they’ll even be flonking that dwile. I enjoyed the battle for the spectacle but I couldn’t help feel that they were having more fun than we were. That’s kinda the point with reenactment though I think – much like a lot of amateur dramatics. It’s for the participants more than the audience, but that’s why the audience pay so little.

I moved from bench to bench in the sun, settling and making calls until something moved me. I thought I’d found a lovely bench looking at the river but a very jolly and catastrophically awful busker set up next to me. Now I’m at The Juggs – a fifteenth century inn outside town. They’ve made me a pint of shandy and I’m trying to get the right balance of sun and shade for maximum summer and minimum sleepy. Still a few hours before I pick Lou up from work and I don’t want to be tired or tipsy.

I thought I’d write this now so I can focus on doing very little for the rest of the day but for staying awake. A couple of events coming up next week. This weekend I fully intend to charge up properly. A deck chair would just be the ticket right now…

Trying to keep myself asleep for my 4am wee backfired on me spectacularly when I actually fell asleep on my feet and woke up in the bath.

Early morning saw me haring up through the side streets of Chelsea, through Flower Show crowds determined to get squished. I parked at South Kensington. Queue at Pret. Queue at Starbucks. No queue at the little Italian Illy place that does far and away the best coffee of the three.

Exam started at ten. Went on until shortly before one. A very organised extra time student maximising her rest breaks. Back to Pret for a Crayfish and Rocket and then I’m on the go again up to Beaconsfield.

Some young makers have written a script about Scottish geese. Four actors who have never met before. We were in a very warm soundproof booth. They played some honking and then by God we all honked. Happy honking, sexy honking, scared honking, triumphant honking. My throat feels strange.

Glass of water and then all sorts of words. Everything out of order, playfulness where possible, doing that thing that actors do at work where everyone is dropping anecdotes and bits of gossip. It all helps us stay healthy. We got it all in the can but with no time for Jammy Dodgers. I drank about three small bottles of water to combat the honking in heat. I look forward to hearing how that all hangs together. I only heard one person say “We’ll fix that in post”.

In years to come I’ll run into one of those actors again. Maybe an audition, who knows. “We’ve done something together, I’m sure of it.” That’s what we will say. We probably won’t track it all back to one strange hot afternoon pretending to be migrating Scottish geese. But who knows, maybe the shared hilarity of today’s work will get us both the job we are meeting for. If they ever start doing in person auditions again, that is.

We finished the geese and I hauled ass to Brighton. A bit more time with Lou. I’ve been looking forward to the catch up but we are both so busy. This is a window, even though she’s working all day tomorrow. We’ve got Sunday and Monday. Honk.

Beautiful weather. Shame about the noisy party somewhere nearby. But I’m so tired I’ll probably sleep through it.

I’m used to writing this in the morning from Japan. This whole time shift back to the old standard of doing it just before sleep? No thanks. Once again I’m buggered. They fed me, bless them. They fed us both. But was the client happy? Surely yes. I’m almost past caring but for the fact that this work has been crucial in the past. When the boats fucked me over I would have starved but for this. So it is precious work. Add to that the fact I’m extremely good at it now.

I’ve been on the South Bank again. I’ll happily play the game when it is my ability to pay the bills on the line. It’s been hard recently as the work has fallen off post COVID. Apart from the few months when I had to rebuild post boats, the boat thing taught me never to rely on anything dayjobby. I thought I was a valued member of the team with the boat company. They fucked me with no warning and notice, even though one blessed fool tried to pass off something I had genuinely taken to be neurotic raving as a “warning”. He came up to me in a corridor, so nervous he could barely speak, babbling something about nothing. Apparently that was my “warning”, where my concern was so strong for him I genuinely asked him if he was OK.

It still hurts, being randomly taken off that job. “It’s his first decision as head guide. We have to stand by it.” He was a tamagotchi-human. Totally dependent on the big people pushing the buttons. He’s absented himself from any responsibility for his life. “Head” guide = “most obedient guide”. Let’s make up job titles based on how useful you’ll be to us!!

I loved it too much, when it was just me and the passengers and the river. I was extremely good at it. Like properly excellent. I loved it and built a whole journey. I worked so hard to have facts and stories beyond the standard ones. It would have become my only focus if it hadn’t become poison. Everything in context, losing that job was a good thing for me. But it is so hard to properly understand that until you have the benefit of hindsight. I loved it. I’d still be doing it. Thank fuck.

On the way to work tonight I watched a few of their venomous boats plying their trade. The skippers can do what they like. The guides? Someone in that horrible office will turn on them.

I found myself with the usual conflicting emotions. In the end though, thank the lord I don’t have to work with people who aren’t honest with their employees. I wrote an angry blog after they took me off roster, which is like using a swear word in an argument as they found it and actuated it. That’ll be the moral high ground for them until we all die. Hurrah, fuckers. And it’s a fucking massive shame, as they don’t have that moral high ground in reality and they fuck people over from time to time. They were utterly awful to me and I have no doubt it was the same for others I know and don’t know. We could form a club. It’s a pattern. Mostly based on the fact they only have a few skippers and there was one super poison skipper.

“Never go into the office and you’ll be ok” one of the skippers warned me, and that’s the truth. It’s lions led by donkeys. But the donkeys think they’re lions. And they really aren’t.

Thank God I’ve got a good acting job coming. I spend too much time thinking about this validation nonsense and the pain of the past. I’m still bruised by that loss of a dayjob. Because I loved it and was excellent at it. The reasons for me being taken off it had no logic. Essentially it was just office politics via boats. Thank fuck. Thank the dear lord. Thank you universe. Through nonsense they lost an excellent worker. At the time, I felt I needed it. Had they understood me they would have absorbed me. It all went wrong. I still get to be this one.

Despite the fact that jetlag is playing havoc with my sleep patterns, I’m managing to cope with a full diary. The next two weeks I’ve been trying say “yes” to as much as possible in order to try and get back to black after a delightfully profligate time in Japan. It’s just as well that the yen is suffering at the moment, as despite the fact the money worked in my favour, I’ve put myself out of pocket. Time to get my head down. Thankfully there are some things in the pipeline, and joyful ones too. No more lazy pricey food. No more coffee out. I’ve even left my aeropress in Brighton so I can make lovely brew without blowing money at the Kemptown Bakery where I usually end up getting unnecessary cake as well as the pricey but excellent coffee. It’s got so it’s often over four quid now for a coffee over the counter, and that’s too much to frame as a cheap luxury.

It does mean I have to be more organised. This morning, for instance, invigilating early after a terrible sleep, I had to stop pushing snooze and stagger into the kitchen to bubble up. It all fits with the “planning” drive. I’m not used to being organised.

But I’m feeling very heady, back in London. I think the plane trees might be dropping. I’m all blocked up and had a headache this morning. Might have been the wake. Some of us sat in Chelsea and got mildly sozzled in his favourite pub. It’s just a few minutes walk from my flat. Wakes are an odd party, everyone there for the one person who isn’t. It was good to catch up with family and friends though, even under sad circumstances. I fill up my diary and then socialise with the people who happen to be nearby, and so it goes in London. An ever shifting vortex of people coming in and out of the centre of town. When Keith died I realised how long it had been since I went and saw him. There are hugely important friends of mine that I haven’t seen for months and months. With my new organisation drive I think I’m gonna experiment with putting visits into the diary as well. Gone are the days when I could just show up and say “let’s go for a walk”. Everyone has kids.

I was meant to see a friend this evening but the ever present jetlag wall jumped me early. It’s all I can do to write this and I’ll be asleep the moment I finish this sentence.

London again and giving thanks to the people I love. Brian, despite his absurdly busy life, made time to come to the church and stay with me after. Lou watched it live-streamed and took screenshots.

I was stressing out, trying to make sure that my mum’s final boyfriend, a man who achieved so much, had a send-off worthy of his contentious charming brilliant human life. Stephanie, a strong Christian with time on her hands, had worked hard having made herself next of kin to give him a good last few years, and as a result she was calling the shots. Max and I were there to try to honour the man we knew, knowing we had known him deeper and longer. She took the burden of arranging things though. And did it beautifully. She was perhaps a bit too controlling about the readings. I fought for some Blake, knowing that Blake was huge for Keith, and had to butcher it to make it short, but then she wanted “If”, Kiplings piece that is in every bathroom in the home counties.

Keith gave me some Blake Tarot cards, long before tarot became part of my expression, just when I was a curious young wannabe mystic. I used to use them until I lost a card. I might try them again going forward, lost card be damned. He was always a mischief, and he helped augment my father’s drive towards mischief. Two male role models in formative years, both pushing me towards examination of external stimulus. Dad: “Work out what the herd is doing. Do the opposite.” Keith, later: “If you’re going counterflow, which you are, look after the people who haven’t thought as deeply as you and be kind.”

He knew he wasn’t my dad. He was never dumb enough to try to say he would be. He was mum’s boyfriend and he understood my conflict about him. He found the edges where he could be my friend. He gave me creative freedom on my first ever dayjob, in my summer holiday from school, to typeset and arrange the annual report for his charity. We won an award for reports on the scale of charity he ran. That was his eye and his guidance, but at 17 I had an experience of my creativity being recognised. He introduced me to David Monroe, a young film maker who took the headshots that got me my first agent, became my friend, taught me about rioja, made me feel like my idea of being an actor wasn’t the mistake my parents had worried it might be, and promptly died.

Now I look at the figures who were older and influential in my twenties, as I was making sense of this job I do, Michael McCallion, David, Dad and Keith… the first three died so suddenly… Keith stayed solid, but I started to fear being friends with older men. Michael went too suddenly, just as we were getting started. He gave me Christopher Logue and Alexander Technique and was a brilliant friend when I was auditioning for drama school, always with a helpful creative prompt. He wrote “The Voice Book” and at the time my focus and interest was on voice. A gorgeous man. He was actively instrumental in getting me into Guildhall just by being truthful when I practiced my Trigorin speech with him. David made work feel possible for me. Dad tried to discourage me but I saw his playfulness. All three died in the space of a year.

Keith…? He lived and he took time to challenge me. He wasn’t ingratiating himself with me. My trust was shot so it was hard for me to love him in case my love killed. He was happy to help me realise that success in my industry comes with work if you’re not a classic beauty. He put me in front of his friend John Schlesinger, who told me I needed to train, perhaps because I wasn’t his type. Keith never told me I couldn’t, but he taught me I had to get on with it working out how to make it work for myself, and gave me the courage that took me to Guildhall and thence to a functioning career.

Bless his heart. God rest his soul.

His was the dead body I sat with a month ago. I don’t think I ever really appreciated the extent to which he woke ambition in me until I started getting involved in his funeral and reflecting on what he was silently doing when his focus was on me. He accepted my goal – to be a regularly working actor – and was helping me to think about “how”, rather than just discouraging me as my parents were.

He was ninety when he died, after a heavy “More Menthol” cigarette habit. He lived hard and well despite suffering things nobody should suffer. He never let it dim his fire. I thought he’d be forever. If nobody else will write his life, maybe I should.

Fare forward old bean. It was lovely to meet so many of those that loved him today.

Lou just laid me down and smothered me with oil.

Both of us impulsebought a trip we couldn’t really afford for similar reasons. Mine you’ve heard all about. Walking off some of the things that don’t help. Burning out some eels. Clearing the pathways. Lou was upskilling herself. Working really hard over weeks in the sun learning about oily things and digestion and deepening her spiritual practice with a physical and practical Ayervedic Massage Training.

She got back to Brighton and before she assembles her client base she very generously told me that it might be helpful for her to work on a man as there were only two men on her course so she was better with women’s bodies.

She chose a particular oil for me involving sesame and strange herbs. Warmed up gently in a special metal gong type bowl, and then two hours of absolute bliss. As is often the case with me, it was man vs head. Itches and cramps and twitches and mumbles. I had to mostly stay still for two hours. As I write, my right foot is twitching. I struggle to stay still for ten seconds even when I’m sleeping. So this is another expression of how brilliant the relationship I have with her is. I paid her with a driving lesson and lunch and she helped shut my brain.

She’s gonna pass her test, but she needs to get the sense memory back, so I could sit in Bergman and let her move him around a car park in Stanmer. We did lots of the old stopping and starting, which really is the entire nuts and bolts of it. We learn road sense as a cyclist, or a passenger. Once we can operate the car without thinking, we just have to pay attention and not be too cautious or too reckless.

Lunch was fish and chips. I got back from Japan actually craving chips and ketchup. I love umami, strange tastes, heat. But there’s such a thing as too much of a good thing. Good old fish and chips. In a pub. With a pint at lunchtime.

And then an oily massage and I can feel the wall approaching like a bullet train so I’m writing this early.