AlBarclay

In the daytime, next door is building an extension. In the night it’s still peaceful.

I had no idea Liz had managed to move into such a property. It’s not deeply furnished, there’s stuff in my lockup I would have brought up here had I known. Throws and so forth, things to stop me grinding a hole in my foot. But I’ve got the measure of this lovely home now. Gwyn sleeps at my feet, the pigs don’t run from me. I still can’t make the shower run colder than burn. But I just keep it extremely short.

Guinea Pigs… Was a guinea a small amount to pay for something that eats all the crap you don’t want and that poos guano? Like gerbils they baffle me. It’s remarkable how hygienic cats are when you compare them to all the other domestic animals. But we know each other now.

The builders start in the morning early and they listen to commercial radio. Westlife. Beyonce. All the stuff we are supposed to be listening to because the money owns the art. These familiar generic manufactured ballads. We all share them. They aren’t great art but we share them for a time and then new ones come and only the cheesiest ones manage to continue to have a life – sometimes in unexpected ways.

I’m watching them break down the job. It’s a lot. Of course it costs. These guys are skilled and they work hard. They were pissed off this morning as it had rained all night and they’re digging trenches for pipes and wires. At noon they I heard an “Is it me or is this really slow work today?” They’re likely lads but also the client is right on top of them offering them tea all the time so they have to be careful. They’re in someone’s home and even as they crash through with hods of rubble and the cement truck parks outside they are under constant scrutiny.

“Shall I make this corner good?” “Nah we’ll do it in one pass at the end of the day.” That’s what it should be. But “Shall I make this corner good?” “Yes of course it’s important we make it all good as we go.” Cos the client is clueless but listening. So time is wasted.

Anyway it’s almost eleven and tomorrow first thing those lads will wake me up with hits of the noughties and drilling. Gwyn eats early. I’m gonna get my head down.

Eccles Pike. One of the local hills. There are plenty round here with names like The Pig’s Back. Every day you see German bikers or people in recently bought gear standing around working out where to go. I’ve even seen paper maps. Remember them? It still isn’t illegal to have an A to Z open on your steering wheel as you try to work out which road connects to which with your bobbly compass badly stuck to the dashboard so you have some idea which way is north and nobody is gonna knock on your window at traffic lights and say “I see you’re consulting your map,” even if your map is taking up most of the windscreen.

Walking. Cycling. All of this is happening. But also “this is a commuter town,” someone said last week. And it makes sense. I hadn’t thought of it. Half an hour to Manchester. Half an hour to Sheffield.

This evening I went to see my cousin outlaw who happens to live in the same town as Liz. And we hoofed it up Eccles Pike. I knew what to expect having done it before with her. She’s a fast walker, surprised if you keep up without complaining. I’m happy to go go go. But I realised immediately that over this week of nothing that I’ve been enjoying, various muscles have atrophied.

It is glorious up there, and we are much like cars – we get worse if we aren’t used much. I was coughing exhaust fumes and leaking oil by the time we got to the top. But this week is about getting back in the world. What a glorious walk.

Gwyn slept on my feet all night last night patiently as I rolled around. She’s used to me now so she tries to lie about her food so she gets fed twice. She reminds me so strongly of Carlos who I looked after in Rye.

The guinea pigs are still an anomaly to me. They are just fluffy conduits. Is it a coincidence that their pellets look like their pellets? Their digestive cycle is so quick and they eat everything. They kinda show us what we are doing by doing it so quickly. Consume voraciously. Shit everywhere. Consume more. Shit more. Wait for someone else to clean up.

A very happy and slightly more active day. I’m gonna start weaning myself off this lifestyle now as London and Canterbury are stacked up for my attention and I really really shouldn’t have said I’d do the OH play.

It is raining! The sky water comes.

The guinea pigs are safely stowed. They know me well enough by now that they let me get them one in each hand. They prefer going out to coming in though, but it would be mad to leave them out overnight. Their run is very far from secure. There don’t seem to be local foxes but I wouldn’t want to tempt fate.

It’s dark outside. Half ten at night. I can hear the rain through the window now I listen for it. The first I knew about it though was Gwyn, who had come up three flights of stairs to jump on me because I’m warm and she’s soaking wet. Suddenly I had a shouting soaking idiot. This long summer even the cats have forgotten to defend themselves against the skywater.

I don’t think it’s the end of the heat yet, but it’s where we’re going. There’s still grass on the lawn here so I’m sure it’s been managing to rain here on and off for awhile.

Meanwhile in the inky world of online social media, there’s been a campaign recently to stigmatise my lovely Meta Ray Bans. This long summer they’ve really come into their own. I’m surprised it didn’t happen sooner, the backlash, but it is happening hard at the moment, and weirdly seems to be driven by bots. Because it is an American piece of tech that has had a huge pick up. The bot farms are very much not based in America. They’re pushing the phrase “Pervert Glasses”.

GoPro was founded in 2002. If you want to secretly film people that’s the monkey surely? I’ve seen people with them on their backpack straps, and I’ve only become aware cos they’ve been pushing their shoulder towards me. There’s that atrocious Mikey man cycling around London with one on his helmet. Also mobile phones have cameras these days, you know? People can film you on them and there isn’t a big light. My glasses, if I’m filming they are on my face where you will look, and there’s a great big obvious light. Phones don’t do that. Nor do go-pros. I think it’s the market trying to stigmatise the tech after so many sales. I made a comment on Facebook and got bundled. I looked into the nature of the bundle and it was pretty much entirely bots. I was about to post that well used phrase: “every accusation is a confession”. Anyone calling them pervert glasses is just telling us what they would want to do with them. But it largely wasn’t closet perverts telling me I was a pervert – it was bots with their own closed circle of likes. Someone is paying the botfarms for bad PR on them. Likely a tech rival not in the US.

They’re fucking brilliant in so many ways, I adore them and have written in the past about how I’m surprised they haven’t already had this campaign of stigma.

I’ve had them for years now. I constantly find myself having to laboriously explain how they work, what it looks like when they’re recording, how I’m never going to be doing it when I haven’t told them etc etc. I’ve just done it out of courtesy, surprised that they aren’t stigmatised and happy to share a great piece of kit. They are my sunglasses and they do so much. I’m itching to wear them abroad now they’ve sorted the live translation. There’s audio and phone as well as hands free filming.

People film shit on their phones all the time. I announce every fucking time I push the button, because I know how people can be. Most of my friends are very sensitive to such things. I’m an actor for fuck’s sake. It annoys me that one of the genuinely revolutionary pieces of wearable tech of recent years has started to pick up a manufactured backlash. It’s August so there’s nothing else for the botfarms to do so they’re doing climate change denial, flerf and Meta Ray Bans…

Well, when the rainy season comes I won’t use them so much. Although I’ve been considering getting a lensed pair.

Well. I needed this week. Haven’t had such a week for a long time.

Sure I sent some invoices and drew up a very shiny pitch, but mostly I sat in the garden in my blacks talking to the animals.

I don’t know how long it is since I last saw Liz and Luke. It’s kinda weird that I’m living in their house having not seen them. She was in London a couple of weeks ago doing her show at The Finborough and I was busy busy busy too busy. I bought a ticket but ended up not being able to use it. I thought I’d get up on Sunday night but actually it made more sense to get up Monday. So I’m here with their guinea pigs and their friendly cat. She’s only little.

And they’ve got this family house with a massive garden for me to kick around in. I have been putting my feet up. Literally. Letting my heel recover so I can walk next week. I’ve been driving to get my morning coffee and it is just up the road.

Next weekend I’ll have to leave before they get back.

Liz was doing The Odyssey back when we did it in Oxford. That was 2013. I haven’t actually seen a great deal of her since then which is frightening to contemplate.

I don’t think she has any idea how much I needed this break. I can feel myself coming back together in isolation. I spent a formative time in my early twenties kicking around Eyreton. I’d sit in various rooms, maybe go out on a mackerel boat, make fish pie, light a fire, knock about the snooker table… Again now I’m alone in a house that’s too big for me, and it feels strangely normal.

It’s great they trusted me. They sent a few videos. “Here’s how to keep the dishwasher open”. “These are the bins and the days you put them out” – (I missed that so I’m having to be clever with my own rubbish).

Next week I’ll be a bit more active. I couldn’t be much less. But this week was for what I’ve done. Absolute stopping. Achieved. And such a glorious place to do it. And my foot is fine. Bodies are incredible things.

So I’ve been relaxed again today. He’s been relaxed again. That fellow in that house, he’s been relaxed again. I saw him through t’window in t’mornin. Relaxed again ‘e were. I dunno. Being relaxed? ‘es not from round ‘ere.

Last week I did a warehouse clearance. This week I grabbed everything off the washing line from last week. Which means without thinking about it I’m basically in my crew blacks every day with no real choice about it. I look like I’m in camo.

We are high up here, so there’s still a chance at being cool. The guinea pigs are running on green every day somehow. With this ongoing drought it is remarkable. But I move the run every day and there’s always green to put it on. It helps that the kids aren’t here, it means I can put it near their swing and so forth, which Liz and Luke can’t do. That’s where the best grass is.

People have started to know my business now, already. It is inevitable even if I’ve been a hermit largely. I was REMEMBERED at the local café. I have been hoping to sneak by under the radar. But I got rumbled.

I have been too curious about the coffee. Here, in Chinley, right by the train station, they could sell us all atrocious coffee and we would expect it. There’s an LED in the café telling us about train times. And I had to know about the coffee. It’s roasted in Buxton. Very local, and sourced very carefully and manually by a woman who runs a Thai Restaurant nearby. It’s genuinely remarkable.

Everyone comments on it. And I know why. I buy coffee out all the time. I bring big bags of it into the flat. Coffee is a lovely thing and doesn’t need to be done perfectly. People can waste their time getting crazy about detail. But in the end, if the beans are good, it tastes better. Church Street, all the beans are made of dead fish. Kemptown Bakery, they usually use good beans but had a period recently where they started using ground up rats. Chinley, The Green Lane Social? Great beans and then they aren’t nuking them with hypercooked milk. I’m very very happy to have them so close to me and the creatures.

Cos really is just me, a cat and the guinea pigs. Here’s Bingo and I gearing up for the WEEKEND!

Scary though to think, I’ve been here less than a week in my crew shirts and already: “You would have met Martin when you sat in that seat on Thursday,” the manager told me, when I asked if he was Martin. I’m sure people have made up all sorts of stories about what I’m up to. After a week.

I am turning in early this Friday summer night. The guinea pigs are safely in their hutch. The cat is fed and in the garden. It is just past 7pm and I’m gonna call an early stop to this week.

I just had a wildfire alert sent to my phone. I expect a lot of us did. Even if your phone is on silent it will make a noise. I wonder how many shows at Edinburgh just got interrupted so we could all be told not to light fires when all the grass is straw. It makes sense, but idiots are gonna idiot no matter what. There are plenty of people who stared at the eclipse on purpose because they’d been told not to. They’ll likely be okay but they’re idiots. Had it been total it would’ve been worse, but there was always brightness so their eye would have protected itself. But… this is the world we live in. “They don’t want us to stare at the eclipse.” “They don’t want us to have fires.” Plenty of contrarians gonna spark up the barbeque drunk this Friday night cos the warning message reminded them its an option. They’ll make videos about it with lumbering narrations and pay to have them pushed to the front of my algorithm. Lads cooking British sausages from English Britain, people with cosmic names ceremoniously cosmac parging energy flarms ya, other shades of idiot literally playing with fire. Our water supply must be dangerously low by now. We need a sustained period of rain, something I hate, but something the world wants up here. But I hope we don’t lose more woodland to wildfire cos of a smoker or an idiot or, worst of all, some arsonist inspired by some absurd notion.

The threat of fire aside, it is beautiful here. I’m in a gentle rhythm this week. Wake up, feed cat, snooze, put out guinea pigs, lounge around, go for coffee, ablute, snooze, lounge around, feed cat, lounge around, take in guinea pigs, put out bird seed, lounge around, sleep, repeat.

The local coffee shop makes excellent coffee. I am a fussy boy when it comes to that stuff. They do it marvelously. I usually end up buying two. It’s the simple things.

Bed and sleep though, I’m feeling the call. Friday night in Chinley? This young fellow won’t be hitting the town, that’s sure. I’ve got one eye open as the sky starts to go to grey and the birds pick up their chorus. Enough being awake for now. I can do more of it tomorrow.

I went slow today cus that’s my mandate.

I live in a large house at the moment, without carpets – as my foot found out. I just washed the blood off my gucci slide… Normally there are four people and a dog here, but as with Bella’s place in the woods, I get to encounter it solo which is a treat. I was hoping Lou would be free somehow for country things. But she can’t.

So it is me and a talkative cat. And two lovely rodents.

I’m in an attic room which confuses her as it is usually empty. But we’ve made sense of one another. The first day or so I was worried because they’re doing big building works next door. Didn’t want to lose her. I’m not worried anymore. She comes in at night. She doesn’t sleep with me yet, but actually we had a powernap simultaneously yesterday.

I think my mangled heel isn’t septic. It still hurts.

Everyone wants a conversation. It’s the North. I ate out for the first time with a double breakfast “are you sure you don’t want a triple”. There’s a lovely (queer?) manager who gave me plenty of recommendations. “What do you like?” he asked me. “Old things,” I managed. Then encouraged to elaborate I did with “Like stone circles and hill forts.” He gave me a list.

What a drought it has been. Everything in nature is stressed now. Rain would be amazing. And it is actually pretty green up here compared to Kent. My aunt tells me that in Jersey the grass is crunchy.

I’m gonna keep moving slowly. Food happens for the cat twice a day and she really prefers to be stroked as she eats. The guinea pigs haven’t got a clue what’s going on but they need to be fed. It’s a delightful existence for them but not intellectually challenging. I know from this experience that I’ll never keep one. Unless children suddenly happen in which case they’re almost as good as a hamster to teach kids about death. Really good to get them attached to something that will live a full life and still definitely be dead before they’re ten so you can have the funeral and the conversation and the ritual and it isn’t quite so awful when you inevitably fuck off yourself to Valhalla or back round or wherever you think you’re off to.

You’re gonna leave them at some point. If I was a parent I’d definitely get creatures involved. I love creatures. I don’t seek my own creatures cos they staple you to their name. It’s already hard enough to be truly unfettered. And we all keep making choices that lock us in. Cats I can understand, they aren’t idiots. I’ll never have a dog. I love a shepherd, many of the smart breeds. I’d have a border collie or an alsatian or a runner like a saluki. But my life is way too unpredictable. If I was used to it I could probably come with my dog as part of the package, fingernails, unkempt “this is Seyton”. But I’m easier without.

Meanwhile as I write the votes are being counted. Horrid Nigel resigned in his certain seat and tried to make out like it was him vs the establishment for a by election he triggered, really in order to try and avoid official scrutiny over his vast corruption. “It’s me against the establishment,” he attempted, looking so much like the establishment. He’s surrounded by jokes. “Binface isn’t funny,” I’ve seen as a headline, and yep, that’s the terrible thing. He’s actually a serious candidate. He will never win. But maybe some of the people who can’t see beyond the fear our nige is peddling will start to comprehend how absurd and self serving and pointless he is. Binface or Farage, it won’t affect a thing. Nor will the revolution Farage secretly wants with all the “reform” garbage. It’s just a power grab. To avoid devolving we have to acknowledge the effort and dismiss the angry little child.

The carpets have been taken up here. Spiky things are across the doorways. Last night, barefoot, I spun 180 degrees on my heel with my full bodyweight on one of the spiky bits and it chewed a hole in my hoof all the way to the red. That’s quite an achievement too, my feet are horny, like the cloven hoofs of deer. I wouldn’t have thought it would be possible to get to the red without a multitool so I’m impressed with myself and the chewing capacity of that fucking carpet catcher.

I unstuck my foot from the bloody sock and sat in the shower and cleaned it thoroughly. Didn’t find antiseptic but it’s not bad, it is mostly dead skin there anyway, and it only just got to the red, but just as my toe starts to settle the heel on the same foot mangles and I’m thinking the universe doesn’t want me to be going fell walking this week as was my hope. I’m not walking far at all on this as it is, inevitably, exactly where I put my weight. There’s a lot of hoof around it though so I’m just walking off balance or putting my toe down first. I’ll be fine. This is just bad luck and maybe we register these things more as we get old.

I hucked out the guinea pigs. There’s a neighbour who brings her mother’s Daily Mail newspapers and drops them off in an opaque bag at the door. From thence they go to the shed. And their next destination is under the straw. To my mind it is something of an exalted destination for such objects, to be drowned with the piss and shit of rodents. The filth of small animals going onto the filth of small animals.

—

I stopped writing because the sun started changing. There’s a sunset chair in the garden. The cat and I were sitting there. There’s something about these astral events that connect us all. We are so small. It helps us remember perhaps that we really have to cling to the things we can reach because we are a spot in infinity.

I’m off to bed, happy and tired. Have been communicating with lovely old friends this evening including Luisa from my Camino, just to check in after the quake and the idiot getting elected.

Next door the lads have started digging. That’s an organised neighbour. Liz and Luke are away for a fortnight so they brought in the digger and a skip. Who knows what they’re up to but they’re up to it now.

I sat in the window and openly watched them work over a cup of tea. The driver clocked me. I mimed pulling a ring pull and he smiled recognition. The neighbour’s kids were watching him work too. It’s interesting watching a man work a digger and he worked it with skill in a confined space.

It was cold enough at night that I’m putting on a duvet. That’s unfamiliar after the summer we have had.

So yeah. This is what I’m doing now. Looking after creatures and a home and winding down as I go.

Nothing is open in town on a Tuesday, but I drove into ALDI. “Oh here we go, look,” says an old white guy to his wife as I walk by. He ends up behind me in the queue and he is making small talk which I’m not great at but I’m trying and my accent likely pacifies him as it is similar to his but he still can’t help asking “you’re not from round here are you?” There’s no malice in it. I’ve got a big bushy beard again, I’m in the look where a renowned agent literally said to me: “Go and live in Afghanistan or you know somewhere and learn Arabic and you’ll never stop working”. I’m a benign middle class male creative currently looking after fluffy creatures in The Peak District but apparently I look like Osama bin Laden.

I have done some scouting of the local area but largely I’ve stayed put. I want the cat and the neighbours to trust my presence beard or no beard. The neighbours are right on top of us. Their kids go play on the trampoline in the evening. An old guy is growing tomatoes in the greenhouse, this is shared space , brilliantly and as it should be. And there’s no physical divide between the properties at the moment at all because of the works.

The first time I met my neighbour Jo, I kid you not, I sat down in what I thought was a private chair overlooking the garden and put my hands down the front of my trousers to adjust my bollocks – nobody wants to pull them down – and suddenly she was there looking and smiling at me as I extracted my hand from my trousers.

That’ll be all over the village by now. She pretended she hadn’t noticed.

It’s lovely being here but it is also nothing. I have learnt to be close to the job. That’s why I still persist with London. It’s so easy to be forgotten. I like it here but the machine is elsewhere.

Right now though the machine is in Edinburgh and so is my agent so… fuck it, this is a shot at stillness. I wouldn’t want to be doing Shakespeare in a garden for acorns right now anyway. I’m happy to just breathe. I needed this. I’m very happy that Liz needed someone to watch the fluff.

Four hour’s drive up here to Chinley, with the last hour mostly beautiful.

On the way up I drove past a huge great big retail complex. I was getting head-droppy and figured there’d be coffee. I also stopped into Markyparky for a fish pie. “What town am I in?” I asked the lady at the counter. “Chesterfield.”

My toe hurts less. My jaw hurts less. I’m here now and it is still and peaceful, with occasional small trains.

There’s a dependent cat. She reminds me of Carlos. She was on my lap earlier. She likely will sleep on my bed. She likes human company so if I’m not here she’ll probably go sleep with a neighbour.

There are two guinea pigs. I have very limited experience of the creatures. Charles had some in the garden at Avranches growing up, but a fox took them and we learnt never to speak of such things going forwards. I picked these ones up and moved them to their hutch. One of them squeaked at me the whole way, the other one just enjoyed the ride. I’ve given them celery and hay. I think they just eat and sleep and poo. I think that’s their jam. That’s all folks. Eat sleep poo repeat.

They’re safely stowed for the night and tomorrow I’ll put them back in their run in the morning. I just chopped up some apple for them. Their appetite seems to be boundless so they’ll be the bulk of my work, they love that lettuce. Likely we’ll get to know each other, these fluffy things and I. They’re just like big hamsters. I had a hamster once as a child and it definitely wasn’t killed by a rat, it escaped by pulling a hole into the cage through the bars, mum told me.

There’s still grass here on the lawns and it’s mostly green. That’s the advantage of being high up and further north perhaps. Most of this country is so arid this summer of drought. Lucky guinea pigs here – that they can still run on green grass.

It’s 8pm. I’ve had a fish pie. Feels like that’s all that’s left on the list for today. My bed is at the top of the house. It’s much cooler than London so I’ll be happy there, surrounded by big posters of my friend performing.

Likely I’ll just stop and rest now. It’s what I need, what my body is shouting about.