AlBarclay

What a treat, to be making things in Freston during carnival. I had to drive through a temporary barrier. Tristan gave up. “Just tell them you’re helping an artist,” I suggested. I can give them my RBKC Council Tax info. He got through with my coaching.

We are up for a spot of fun. Jeeves and Wooster. And Steppings. Tristan asked if I might help him with Bertie and I told him I was up for a stranger part. Obviously I’m Jeeves but maybe they already know their actor for him. I’m happy however. It’s enough to get an audition these days frankly.

I’m gonna edit the tapes later on. There’s enough there to make it clear we know each other and chose each other to help with the audition. Will that help? Who knows. You have to be insane to cast theatre from tape. But we tried to make a good tape anyway.

This evening was very curious. We finished work and went briefly to a local place eaten by Carnival. This is my time of year in London, this has been my manor for ages.

I’m happy to have used my studio. After that there was much noise.

I’m falling asleep. It is glorious to have used the space like I have. I’ve been there so often lately. There’s much to love.

Onwards.

I am curious generally about graffiti, you might know this already about me. It’s an expression, it’s a mischief. People get very exercised about it. It carries meaning beyond its meaning. You can learn huge amounts about the undercurrent of any city you’ve just arrived in by the nature of the tags.

Helch was another of the “anonymous” taggers, like Banksy despite the fact that a few people missed the point of that a few months ago. He wasn’t as acerbic or as clever as Banksy but that’s not what he was setting out to do. Nobody has been able to do commentary and mischief as effectively as Banksy through that medium, which is how he got to shred his own picture at Sotheby’s.

Helch was a different creature in the same world. London’s own, and he was big contentious and colourful. He pissed off loads of people by tagging over “Give Peas a Chance” on the way into London, making it “Give HELCH a Chance”. He apparently pissed off the queen when he tagged something she could see from her window. That’s reach for any artist. I’ve been following his stuff for years – I thought I’d written about it already but I can’t find the blog.

His tags were usually big bright noisy “me” tags. Just his H or his name, often very colourful. And he got them in really tricky places. It requires dedication, work and skill to get these things done, it’s against the law and you’ll piss off the small c conservatives no matter where you do it.

I like it for that reason. Some people got so pissed off about Banksy not chiming with their worldview that they decided to try and “unmask” him and then discovered that nobody really wanted to know. It isn’t a big “gotcha” to publish these people’s real names. Largely the people that think it is are the ones without an artistic bone in their body. We saw it again with Count Binface, and people thinking they had some big scoop when he was always open about it and that wasn’t the art. It doesn’t matter that it’s David Prowse and James Earl Jones, we are happy to say Darth Vader. Binface was performance art and found a perfect moment. He annoyed a lot of people too which is as it should be.

A great joy of art is that it’s subjective. One person might love it, ten others might hate it. That doesn’t make it any more or less art. The art world intersects with the mischief world even more completely than the acting world does now. It hasn’t been coopted by people trying to make everything safe and predictable.

To my sensibilities, HELCH belonged to the art world much more than anyone whose placement, contacts and money got them the leg up they needed to have their stuff accepted by the gatekeepers. The art itself wasn’t the art, it was the timing and the placement and the spirit. Also he clearly wasn’t doing it for the money. There should be grants for that sort of thing, or community whip rounds to buy the paint…

I’m very sad that he’s gone. Whatever you think of the medium, a prolific artist who changed the London landscape and went quite a long way, dead by suicide it seems. A loss. His tags, of course, will remain. Some of them probably for decades.

I don’t know who he was, I just know he was a Londoner. And … he pissed me off when I first became aware of him, so I examined myself. He gave a response. Helped me learn about myself a little bit. That’s art. My mum loved “Give Peas a Chance”. “How dare he trample on that institution,” was my kneejerk. Good work. Good work and thank you.

I’m sad he’s gone cos he brought us some colour and a bright mischief from a dark place. It’s hard to shine in the cracks. He managed it for decades. Fare forward.

A couple of long days in a row, just because even the business of barely rehearsing a Shakespeare play requires logistical thinking and practice, particularly with complicated songs and a jig at the end. I suspect part of my love for Shakespeare started when I was at school here, and actually the OH shows were often inspiring in some way. James Callis came and played Lear’s fool one time just after he left drama school. John D Collins was a regular for some time. Alistair Boag… Richard Curtis did a turn once… These were all important people to me growing up, a connection between my school and this industry I knew I was going to embrace, spikes and all.

I’ve made friends through the OH Players, and my inability to say no to things. It’s a reminder that some people do acting for fun. Most of them are lawyers. This is their weekend recreation. I’m enjoying their company but I don’t really want to have to get up tomorrow and rehearse from ten till nine. But it’s a discipline. Even just learning lines and paying attention and finding targets and clear intentions and changes, it all keeps the muscles moving. There’s much to do. Choose your battles though. The pronoun highlighting is off the scale. There’s plenty of side slapping and wandering around and pacing and meaningless gesture. Fuck it. I’m not gonna say anything.

On the way up and down I’ve been listening to the news which is never a good idea. The unbelievable destructive power of that wall of water – looking at those videos has been compulsive. Then the usual gallery of aging ninnies trying to cling onto their relevance and doing increasingly ridiculous stuff. Lake Ontario. Threats to nuke England.

Faced with all that on the radio it is easier to contemplate the fact that every waking hour this weekend is going to be with a love story written 425 years ago. The rain it raineth every day, and today it finally did in London. We have been so parched in the south it was welcome. All day it came down, finally petering out at sunset.

Hopefully this rain will help. There was a fire in Neasden that stopped the trains this morning. The glorious long summer has brought a host of problems. The rate of acceleration globally is becoming really apparent. We must be past the tipping point by now, and still they want more. We are such a destructive species. Nice that we can get together sometimes and just make a weird visual story together as a community loosely bound just by random things like where our parents sent us away to as teenagers.

Up in the morning and over to The Ryan Theatre. It was a contentious building when it was built, mostly because it was attached to a private school. It was always going to be a good thing, it is a good thing, and it is so hidden away that only the most maladjusted people could hate it. The campaign against it when I was at school was bitter and used remarkably unpleasant rhetoric. “Say no to the rape of our village”. I don’t think it has caused any negativity, but the idea of something is enough in many cases. Like with the meta glasses.

I’m rehearsing Sir Toby Belch again but this time with the Old Harrovian Players. I think it is important to help people like I was. Privilege is a thing, yes, absolutely. And it is problematic in our industry. But I have to be the devil’s advocate here, because I am from privilege and I am an artist. Artistry is not exclusively from those who haven’t had privilege any more than it is from those who have. If I stick my oar into the OH Players then maybe I help temper some of the unconsidered stuff and maybe these young practitioners with such a boost will have a better grasp on what they got for free. Maybe.

Meantime I’m playing and remembering. I asked for Toby as I don’t know him quite as perfectly as Malvolio, and Toby represents chaos. In this context it isn’t right for me to be Malvolio. In most other contexts it is.

Tristan messaged me today as he has a tape to send for some theatre and, as luck would have it, I do too, for the same project and for a different part. We are gonna meet up on Monday and hack it all together. It won’t be learnt I fear, it is a lot of text. So yeah It won’t be learnt but the two of us can do it well with each other and leave some Easter eggs for the casting department.

Cos I’m back in town. I thought it was late but actually it isn’t, Brian and Maddy went to bed early. Friday night. I’ll be down soon and there’ll be no weekend to speak of but I’m looking forward to making sense of Belch now. There are some actors in the company that I’ve been curious about for a while. And there’s an old friend who made some serious opportunity who might show up in a cameo. Let’s see. I just think it’s nice to support the old alma mater… Posh twat using Latin.

A peaceful evening by the sea once more. The sound of the seagulls in the dusk, something that feels like an ancient sound, but of course there are more of them here now than there would have been before the invention of chips.

I don’t think we would have driven up to Stanmer had we realised that Brighton were playing Ghent tonight, but we did so and went for a late afternoon walk up a hill and into some woods. It was only when we were about to drive out through the university that we saw all the football shirts and turned around just in time to avoid the gridlock outside the stadium.

I’ve enjoyed this peaceful day or so with Lou, more for her company than anything else. And Tessy, who is extremely boundaried but carries peace with her. There are workers in the block and last night they were full of vodka using power tools in the flat below us at ten pm. I can hear them now down there again and it’s coming up to nine. I’m hoping we don’t have to go downstairs and look stern again. They’ll just ignore us anyway. But they’re behind and they’ve got the new landlord on their backs about it. They live in the block for the refurb so their hours are elective. It’s a strange life but they’re handy lads despite the vodka. And the late night power tools.

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Reflecting back, something of a new moment today regarding my mechanical prowess or lack thereof. There’s something weird going on with the push button ignition in Lou’s car. It has been since she’s owned it. I don’t like these arrogant electronics, like the fact you can’t lower the windows manually in modern vehicles so you’re fucked if you drive into a lake. All these YouTube videos telling us how to break the windows? Or a handle you can turn.

Lou’s vehicle is lovely but it’s trying to do it all for you. And it all goes wrong sometimes. I had to force the back window down in Wales once when the key ran out of battery and wouldn’t open the door. We pushed the ignition and the engine tried but wouldn’t catch. It’s a common problem. Apparently all you have to do, Lou tells me, is get your hands in that bit and fiddle with those wires.

Reader, I fiddled with the wires and lo and behold the car was fixed.

I once had a plumber teach me how to reignite the pilot light on the boiler using a match. Never blew myself up or poisoned anyone, saved us thousands on callouts as I did it about fifteen times before finally replacing the thing. Lou had an AA guy point those wires out. Good on him. I’m always up for fixing things. We don’t do enough of it these days cos the market doesn’t want us to, and that’s another contributing factor to the world turning on us. I’m sure those idiots are already saying the Nepal thing is just an isolated incident and not pointing out any trend, just as they did with the heatwave, just as they still will play that fucking fiddle as we sink.

It’s the middle of the working week but I’ll be busy over the bank holiday so I’ll take my downtime with Lou right now. Although she’s in the middle of a big order of silk camisoles for some American woman on Etsy. This morning I watched her sew and had coffee, and a self tape came in. Slow August but it’s like my agent can read my mind. A bit of theatre? Oh what a delight, the prospect of employment that lasts more than a week? I had almost forgotten the smell of it. A tape for theatre, hopefully a recall in person, hopefully a little jobbyjob.

It’s not due until Tuesday so I’ll work it out later. I just looked at the script today, that’s all. Fun parts to play and inside my casting. The sort of stuff I’ve been good at forever but rarely had a shot at. Comedy.

So we drove to Alfriston. Lunch at The Sussex Ox which is a great pleasure of mine. Didn’t go and see my favourite tree which is nearby, but did stop in the Ox, where much of The Goon Show was written. Something in my body was having unusual cravings, so I had chicken liver and ox heart. Organs. Protein. By the end of the meal I was in a fug of endorphins. It’s good quality there, they source it all locally and the kitchen is great. A lady had her horses in the pub garden.

Then a stroll. A constitutional. Alfriston is a crafty little town, busy with traffic, lots of pleasant little flint buildings. We struck out across fields to Berwick church following The Cuckmere Way which is dressed up in the pageantry of pilgrimage – scallop shells and crucifixes, stamps in the church. Only a couple of miles and no stern Spaniards judging you at the end of the journey to determine if you warrant a proper Compostela or just a credencial.

Through the fields and into the lovely little church painted up by the Bloomsbury group. Then an early evening stroll down by the Ouse. Sparrows and herons. The river is still crawling its way through the rushes, and the heat of summer has stressed the berries into early ripening. The bushes are lively. We are shifting from the ripening to the rottening. Beautiful but you can see the edge of summer. The storm is coming. But not today.

Today was glorious. Was birds and sky. Still and heat. Lovely Alfriston. No wonder property costs so much down this way.

A good day in the palais des costumes. I think it might be called The Free and Independent Republic of Frestonia Wardrobe Department. There’s enough here to do what we need to do. I’m pretty happy we’ve got them in clothes. Now its just about making sure they know the words they’ll be speaking, and speaking them with enough of a degree of confidence that it lands well and lifts the evening into an entertainment rather than just something a bit flat. They’re a nice pair of actors, new in The Factory and that generally means that I’ll trust them to pull it off. But it needs to be something. We can’t just phone it in. One thing at a time though.

Once we all had clothes that fitted us properly, I grabbed a bowl of microwaved pasta from the Eastern European greasy spoon and burnt off most of the inside of my mouth. Then I drove home and fell asleep for a power hour, washed the grime off and jumped into Bergie. Time for some relaxing seaside and fluffy cats, here in Lou’s sky cottage overlooking a bright moon over a calm sea in Brighton.

We took an evening constitutional down the seafront to SushiMania where we both ate enough and mostly cold food for £11.11 each. All the hipsters were out and about on the way back home talking nonsense to each other about eclipses. We stopped at Morrisons to get some mouthwash just to help protect my scorched and peeling gums.

Now Lou is singing to the cat instead of sending the email she is trying to send and I’m taking a moment to sketch this day here. Tessy is sniffing my toes. All is well.

In some ways it feels like the beginning of something as it’s the first time I’ve had people I don’t know very well coming into the workshop to try on costumes for a thing we are going to do for money. Having just had an email from Prangsta costing up another job it helps me crystallise quite how much money we aren’t spending because I’ve got this hoard of treasures. They want £350 each plus VAT and a £300 deposit each, for some pretty basic costume. It’s a wild and wacky world, the world of fancy dress, and when the industry leaders charge as much as they do, there might well be room for the free and independent republic of Frestonia Wardrobe Department (catchy ain’t it, I want a wall of text underneath it as well and branding that looks almost soviet. Name and idea subject to change at a moments notice. Look over there!)

So I’m feeling chilled and happy and looking forward to plugging in to the vibe here for a few days. Lines to learn, sure, but it is still August. School doesn’t go back for a while yet. I can climb a few more trees first.

And I’m home. Lying on my mattress.

Up in Chinley I had an attic room and it felt right. I like to be in the eaves. It became my office and my launchpad and my cat petting place and my blogging place. But my back started to feel funny as I’m absolutely spoilt by this mattress. Just through paying attention and having a car that can move such things, both of the mattresses in this flat are the kind of mattress that you pay absolutely absurd amounts of money to own. I’m very glad they both happened to me. Both pretty much unused, both from clean households that just needed them gone. I’ve driven some mattresses to the domestic tip and hoiked them and nobody has batted an eyelid. But these two stayed. I can’t remember which is the best, I think it might actually be the one that fits Brian’s bed. But they are both astonishing. And my body has missed it. I’ve been getting all sorts of aches and pains from lying on a perfectly good mattress up there with Gwyn on my feet. I’ve missed this hard bed. I’ve grown used to it.

The heat is passed for now. Even in the city it feels mild. Storms are coming but here and now it is just pleasant. A good night to break my country idyll.

I drove to Harrow and realised there was no reception at The Ryan Theatre, so I drove up the hill and parked directly outside my old boarding house, Elmfield. There were three windows I could see where I had spent a school year. The closest was where I spent my final year. The perfect room for me back then. Eminently scalable.

“If you can break the rules and get away with it then it doesn’t count.” That’s an official unofficial lesson from these places that you see playing itself out in all walks of life in this country for better or for worse. In that room, I walked back onto the hill when I had no permission to leave and saw my housemaster clock me walk past his window. I saw him leave his office and I remember I ran to the window, climbed up the window corner, wrestled the window from a crack to full open and sat at my desk with a book, trying not to pant as he burst into my room hoping to catch me. “Oh good evening sir,” and we both knew I’d come in through the window but he was an army man and that was the game. “Bit cold to have the window open.” “Yes sir, but I wanted some fresh air ” “You seem out of breath.” “I’m very excited at an idea I’ve just had for English homework.” “Good oh. Carry on.”

Today I sat and did a zoom read through playing a part that could have been me had I gone to the bar as I was advised to. I read the lines looking at that window, I could have been in that room in thirty seconds.

I left a note there in the desk one summer holiday, knowing that people from Dracula – the one with Gary Oldman – would be staying in our rooms. I assumed it would be Keanu Reeves.

I can’t remember but “hi, wow, welcome to my room, I really want to be an actor, my name is Al Barclay, here are my contact details, I’m really excited to go into the arts and be an actor, how wonderful that you are in my room.” I got back at the start of term and Claire Brayne-Nichols our wonderful “matron” had found the reply. “I thought of getting rid of it but I thought I’d leave it as a lesson. Take it with a pinch of salt.” A crew member had left me a diatribe about privilege. It was eloquent but absolutely vile to me as an idea. At the time it really stung, because whoever wrote it had no ability to think into different circumstances and was very angry about public schools. Empathy needs to be honed on both sides, perhaps. But also I needed a check on my assumptions.

I kept the letter, it was a cruel thing to do but Claire was right to leave it as a lesson. I had no reason to suspect until then that people would hate me for what I represent to them rather than what I am. I’ve lost it now in the mix of time, it’s probably somewhere. But yeah it was a hard lesson. I would read back over it sometimes, wishing me failure, promising to blacken my name. An angry voice but maybe one I needed to hear back then. I was an awkward fucker and needed a shift. I’m still an awkward fucker but I’m better at knowing.

Up in the morning, feed the cat, back to bed for a bit. Then up again, relocate the guinea pigs. I move their run to better grass every day. Then out for a coffee. Then back to clean up. Wiping surfaces, putting things away, cleaning the loos. I want to be asked to do this again because it’s a glory. So I’m making sure they come home to a home.

Sure guinea pigs are lots of work for squeaks and cuddles. They do know who you are though, that’s a lesson. They used to run away but now they know I’m a provider of lettuce and cuddles, and I take them to their grassy safari in the morning. Jesus they can eat.

I’ve tried not to spread out much in this big home. I’ve been living out of my small Wasserman rucksack from Paris. My rubbish has gone into Aldi bags and I’m driving them away and finding bins after missing the collection on the first Wednesday night. I don’t make much but for cooking. Hob is clean now. Everything is put away. It’s feels alright here.

Tomorrow I’ll be up earlier than I have been in order to change the tabloids for the rodent effluent collection. I’ll have to accidentally read all the nonsense that they’re shouting as I put them down. This is the right place for The Daily Mail, soaking up the micturation of rodents. It pleases me very much to use them this way but still I remember people in my life who I’ve loved who mistook that garbage for the news. I’m absolutely certain that the suspicious negative worldview they are peddling was a major contributing factor to mum’s untimely demise. I’ll feed those guinea pigs lettuce galore. SHIT ON THAT RAG MY DARLINGS! DRINK MORE WATER! WASH IT IN YOUR FILTH!

I’ll huck them out while the sheets wash. Hang everything up and then one bomb drive to Harrow. I’ve filled the car up with petrol that is cheap for now but still horrible thanks to that idiot. I’ll get to rehearsal just in time for lunch to be over and do some Shakespeare.

We went up Edale just as sun was setting. Just a fifteen minute drive and you’re there with the big sky and the hills. Gorgeous in sunset. I love it up here. Wonderful that my cuz lives here, she knows all the best places. I don’t like putting up pictures of people without permission so here’s a friendly creature instead. See those long shadows! This was just before we lost the light.

I’m coming to the end of this two week sojourn here in the big house up north. I’ll miss it. Sunday afternoon I’ll be back down south and immediately rehearsing and then looking at costumes and putting the “madness” light back on in the shop window. “I’m open for all the ridiculous things”. I’m looking forward to that as well, sure. It’s gonna be back to being very varied. But there won’t be much lying around on sunny lawns.

Meantime I’m still chilling with the animals and writing endless emails about Shakespearean entertainments. Jon gave up in the end and I kinda see why – it’s okay for me when I’m not employing other people, but as soon as there are actors involved who aren’t me and Ffion then my desire to be professional and not mess people around kicks in.

Gwyn likes to sleep on my feet still, but she’s merciful about waking me up. She doesn’t drag me down to biscuits until about 8am by which time I’d likely be awake anyway. And the guinea pigs know who I am enough to not object when I pick them up.

Two more nights in this attic room. Tomorrow I’m gonna try and be a domestic god. Liz left the place clean as a whistle. I am pretty self contained when I’m not in my own space so I haven’t spread out much, my mess is happening in the car. So it shouldn’t be too much work to make things shiny again for her and the family when they arrive. I’ll huck out the guinea pigs before I go on Sunday.

Apparently it’ll get hot again before we lose it. I’m not gonna complain. It seems someone bought the “Seasons Plus” package on weather so everything is amped up. Summer has been extra hot. So we might need Michael Fish in October to tell us everything is gonna be fine.

We ate out. First time I’ve done that since leaving home. A high street Indian in Chapel le Frith. A lovely old Norman town up here, and where most of the big shops are. Me and my cousin outlaw shared well, and it was gorgeous.