AlBarclay

It’s a bloody long way back from Oswestry to Brighton. Yeah I like it up there. But … it’s a long long way to drive. With the sun on the right. And no air con. For hours and hours.

We woke with the dawn in our happy little off grid hut. We showered al-fresco and ate a banana. Then drove through the valleys. I like Knighton. Only about 3500 people living there but it is on a hill with running water and feels bright. Oswestry is a bit more happening, but there are pockets. More property there but more roads too. Still I feel like we did some useful groundwork. Lots to think about. But it was interesting, and my agent is on holiday now so I reckon things are gonna slow down now for August. This is why she tried to encourage me to audition for a summer Shakespeare at £450 a week before fees and tax. But I still reckon I’m better off these days staying available for filming or jobs where they can pay me what I’m worth. That stuff is lovely to build the 3 C’s – CV, Contacts and Confident. No actor likes not working but I’m gonna keep rolling the dice for more filming. I’ve got too many mad documentary ideas in the pipeline not to be still trying for a spot of profile. Go on, manifest me that big job so I can walk the length of Africa solo or drive to Sydney in a vintage racing Bentley or one of the many many other bananas plans I would very seriously make real under the right circumstances, or die trying.

We are back in Brighton. It got hot and fractious in the car but only right at the end. That’s the sweet spot for it. Then a shower made it a bit better and now we’re in bed and I feel like all the moisture has been sucked out of me but I reckon I’ll still wake up tomorrow morning somehow. Might even get through the night without having to give libations to the Colossal Prostate, blessed be. Tessy will doubtless have something to say if I’m still asleep at 5.

A lot to think about in terms of what we’ve seen today and what Lou needs. We covered a lot of ground up through Herefordshore and Wales, skipping up the borders, often beautiful on both sides, definitely a place for drivers still.

This flat feels more and more temporary by the day with crap workmen gutting the corridors and homogenising all the empty flats around the two remaining tenants. I’m trying to help her quest for security on her own terms, trying to understand it despite my easy happy London pad.

A long drive to Hereford. Lou is looking at Leominster. We both love it in this part of the world. “Is anything happening here?” I ask John, who could describe himself as “happening in Herefordshire”. “There’s lots,” he assures me. “But it’s not London”.

Lou is done with Brighton which is basically London with wind. I still love London but I also like the world in general and I’m not feeling as stuck in the smoke for work as I used to now that self tapes exist.

So we wandered around Leominster for a few hours. Everyone we spoke to was lovely. We stopped at The Body Clinic, dropped into some textile shops, tried to get a sense of the people Lou would be working alongside if she were to start any one of her many forms of practice here. 250k people in Brighton. 15k in Leominster. If they’re a bunch of twits you’d feel it pretty quickly.

My old friend at D3 is just down the road. There are people I love nearby. It isn’t far to loads of places. There’s work to be found or made. But to move here cheaply would take every penny and more for her, so it can’t be a half arsed plan.

Tonight we are sitting in a Shepherd’s Hut. I made a fire. It will be quiet and dark. We will likely be up with the dawn. I love how things like this are possible at short notice via Airbnb.

Tomorrow, who knows. Something in the area. Gotta be back in Brighton tomorrow night for the cat. Tonight though I’m rushing this blog out as I wanna cuddle up by the fire in the last of the light.

I’ve been earning my keep today down by the sea. Male human with big car do lifting driving. Lou cancelled one big storage unit and booked another one half the size and less than half the price. About fifteen minutes drive between the two. The theory was that we would get pretty much everything from the big unit, where there was a bit of space to think, into the small unit, where there’s none. I have no idea how we got it all in there. It’s like a fucking wardrobe the new one, but Lou had measured it all out and worked it out in her head using maths.

Plenty of lifting, plenty of driving, plenty of depositing and it is mostly done. There’s stuff left in Bergie that’ll likely have to come up to her flat, but that can wait. The big unit is empty. The small unit is packed.

There are so many storage lockers in this world. We all have so much stuff everywhere and either lose rooms in our home or pay people to have potential energy.

I remember my first serious girlfriend being utterly contemptuous of her father in Wales for losing two rooms in his house to boxes of crap and then trying to justify it by saying to us “look, you see, I’ve got a pasta maker. Let’s make pasta”. “Two rooms,” she sneered all the way home. “For a pasta maker once in a decade.”

I didn’t learn the lesson then, I’m getting better at learning it now. For instance I currently have two perfectly good tents to put up in my attic. I only actually need one of them. Will I keep the other one “just in case I go to a festival and someone needs a tent”? We shall see.

I know why Lou is keeping all that stuff. She used to have it in her workshop. It is muchly “just in case” stuff for work. Materials and tools. I get why she’s been paying but with all these things you need to make the pasta more often than once a decade.

Joanna dressed up in an Elizabeth costume the other day. I’ll have a ruff on next week. That alone doesn’t justify me dropping £750 a month for a great big unit in Canterbury full of costumes. So that’s the thing I absolutely have to promise myself I’m fixing this month. Enough is enough and there’s gonna be some time. Lou is an inspiration here. She’s saved herself a lot per month in exchange for a day of hard work. Time to look at my diary.

The next few days though, a relax.

—

Starting with attending one of Lou’s Yin Yoga and Singing Bowl classes. That was absolutely glorious. I got to roll around and stretch and then vibrate, all with a gorgeous Lou running the room. I helped her put it all back after. Now I’m in bed.

The sun is going down as I stand at the entrance to Palace Pier waiting for Lou. She’s having a treatment. I’m just arrived from London.

I’m glad it’s not quite so hot. This morning I put a suit on and then jumped on a Lime Bike. Low budget filming so they ain’t sending a driver. I arrived at a lovely wee flat in Holborn. It’s a new learn but only a short film. Someone couldn’t do it and the old game of being “LAST MINUTE ACTOR GUY” seems to be coming back into my life after a brief period of absence. I enjoy the discipline of it, the rigour of the cramming, the human bit of integrating with a group of strangers who have been working together a while, the craft bit of reading quickly how the others need or like to work so I can click in with them quickly. Some actors really want the cue the same every time or they can’t hold their thought. Others need a shifting flow. Others are just focused on their own noise and you can do anything to balance it.

I think it was a good shoot. These things can be disproportionate. You can spend one day doing something, forget everything about it, and much later suddenly start to have people remind you of it for years. There’s a great bit in Stephen Fry’s autobiography where he talks about someone shouting “Flanders pigeon murderer” at him and panicking because it was a moment of his life, but there are some people who have watched that Blackadder episode hundreds of times.

I’m happy its done now though. Suddenly rather than having multiple projects in my head, I’m under much less pressure. Awaken, the Meisner show, is still bubbling. Halloween walkies is under planning. Some interesting auditions in the can and waiting for the YES. But there’s time.

So here I am in Brighton, waiting for Lou, looking forward to a few calm days where I don’t need to remember lines or plumb up nasty emotions from nowhere or stand on a mark. I WILL have to carry around a load of stuff and drive loads but that’s to be expected really.

When I bought Bergie his clutch was fucked. It fell out on the M40 somewhere near Oxford. Mister Clutch overcharged us courtesy of the RAC. I reckon the first owner thought he was 4wd and ended up trying to pull something far too heavy. I haven’t pulled anything since.

Today I went and looked at a little caravan.

“Go inside and bang around,” Jake was told. “Hopefully the rats will get scared out.”

This is London. Someone has thrown paint on it. Someone else has jemmied the door.

Jake isn’t dead. He’s doing things with cable ties. We didn’t see any rats running away. I didn’t want to check.

So we rolled it out on those shoddy tyres. I drove Bergs in and we tried to work out how to clip him on securely. And when I say “we” I mean Jake. Caroline and I were both worrying about fingers. Jake was working out the mechanism. It was sheer chance that the final click took place when I was fiddling around. Suddenly I had a caravan attached to Bergie. Still no rats.

We went round Limehouse, over Tower Bridge. Nobody told us not to. I suspect I’ll get no rude letters. Mission accomplished. Nobody died.. Still no rats. Jake is gonna power wash it now. There’s been theatre in that caravan. Actors. Rats. Actors. Rats. For many people it is much of a muchness.

So I went off to Haggerston, picked up Joanna and we both drove to the Docklands to look at Shakespeare bits for The Globe next week – Ffion is on holiday and it is good for each of us to have potential replacements for when we end up far too busy and sought after to be able to meet our corporate obligations.

Joanna fits Ffions costume which saves a trip to Canterbury but I’ve really got to get that shit out this month and find a better solution where it is actually useful and not forever away. One thing at a time.

Bed now. Need to look at my lines for tomorrow before sleep and again on waking.

Home home home home home. Just for a moment. Bath and cats, sheets and beds. It’s half ten. I’m cooking sausages and beans cos the sausages are “use by 26th June” so need cooking now or they’ll go to waste. Misty and Boo are being absurdly cute. They’ve been on their own so they met me on the stairs. Stroking and play. I’ve replaced their water and topped up their food, causing much excitement.

I’ve got a few loads of laundry to get through before bed but I’ll have the place to myself tonight so I get to spread out as well which is glorious. I’ve done a basic level of tidiness which is a plateau not to drop below and my intention is to keep gradually pulling the level up and getting more and more stuff out of the house while I do it. Starting with the stuff at the top of the stairs.

Yeah it’s still hot here. Brian’s mum stayed while I was away though so I’ve got fresh sheets. Also we’ve established a cat gauze system which means the windows can be opened without fear of boo accidentally divebombing while hunting pigeons. So there’s a breeze.

I’m very excited about your prospect of going to sleep in a bed that doesn’t deflate.

—

We packed up our tents in the morning and then fight call and into costume. 3.15 show, last thing at the festival. Having done it once now cuescripted the game changes slightly as we can remember some bits. It becomes about making sure you don’t do the same thing again just because you did it last time, while also making sure you serve each other and what you can understand of the story. I did some funky stuff as Banquo’s ghost on Wednesday that just didn’t seem appropriate this time round. It was an odd little run and perhaps a bit more stuttered than I expected, but Wednesday we were surviving, it was so fucking hot I was on the edge of shutdown throughout. No headspace for thinking or remembering choices, my brain was mostly cooling my body leaving a tiny portion for remembering lines and cues.

After the show we had a burger and some free cake from the closing coffee stand. Then we loaded the van and said goodbyes and that’s another lovely company broken forever. I wonder how many now, of these flashes of merriment.

I drove John home, then dropped the other two at Charing Cross.

I’m so happy to be home at last. I’m gonna half fill the bath with cold water and just lie in it. Then sleep sleep sleep.

I’m glad that tonight is my last night in a tent on a mattress that deflates gradually beneath me. I’m using a rolled up death cloak as a pillow. My neck feels like wood and I am over the whole experience of waking up at dawn and having to walk across a field to have a pee. There are kids next door so I can’t go al fresco.

My Vango Icarus 500 tent has been a wonderful home again, I would always want one of them as a festival tent. I needed to buy a load of heavy duty tent pegs because it is a barrel vault so it is basically just held up by the ropes, and the ones you get aren’t great. At Wilderness one year there was a guy who kept deliberately tripping over one of the crucial ropes, and that causes collapse, but so long as you can stake out a region around it and hammer in big pegs it’s a mansion. Trippy Wilderness guy was a grade A tool: “You shouldn’t have it coming so far out !” “It’s how the tent works you goitre!”

I walked away from one talk today cos he was blithering on. Watched a brilliant and inspiring talk by Lucy Shepherd about going to wild places. Listened to a very clever thing about Pompeii. Welcomed a load of people as Marc Antony. Threw an axe. Got bored of a chariot burial cos I couldn’t see it. Got hot. Got cold. Had a non alcoholic beer in the beer tent. Ate a currywurst. Walked a lot.

Beautiful big skies tonight over the campsite and it is getting a little cold now so I’ll probably scrub myself off in the showers and go to my unreliable bed. Late night showers are always the key at festivals. If you go in the morning you’ll be queueing for hours.

I’m feeling like I’ve got my festival done now. Tomorrow morning I’ll pack up my tent before we do the show so we can get the hell out ASAP once we’ve packed everything down.

An interesting festival. I think I missed more than I caught this year of the stuff that is a curiosity to me. There’s a bit too much war. History is culture as well. I like the prehistoric area, and the bits where someone in a smock is chopping something for half an hour while talking in monotone.

Tomorrow we will do a lovely Macbeth, cue-scripted once more but with the advantage of having done it once as a company. That’ll be a joy, as I really like this hastily cobbled together band of rogues and vagabonds. Hopefully it’ll come over well. The people that get it get it – immediacy is invigorating, particularly combined with craft.

Time to get my head down so I remember what I’m supposed to be saying tomorrow.

Still in the geeky embrace of Chalke. They’ve made more use of us this year, queue busting as well as the two shows, which makes it harder to just enjoy the talks. I missed the only one I wanted to see today – about Hannibal and Carthage. But many of the ones I didn’t think I would be interested in gave me some joy. I caught one about Bog bodies. Inevitably went to one about Shakespeare where various members of the company were interjecting with corrections of various points of history. We are a bunch of lovely nerds.

My favourite surprise hit talk so far was Doctor Crippen yesterday just as I hadn’t ever thought that story could be interesting. The speaker made it very alive. She’s just written a book about it and her frame on it and passion for it was contagious.

There’s a big old Waterstones tent here because everyone here is flogging their latest book and there are signings after many of the talks. I’m walking around with my kindle most of the day when I’m not listening to people talk. In between little bits of acting there’s time to wind down when it isn’t boiling. And last night there was a great big lightning storm so it isn’t quite as sweltering now. Last year I bought a book after a talk knowing Lou would like it. This year nothing has hit me so much but I’ve been working more so less able to sink into thinking.

I just got called boring cos I’ve gone to my tent. Affectionately but I still heard it and imwardly smiled. I don’t need to be hammering myself and I don’t feel much social pressure to do so now its been a good month off the old forgettyjuice. And a nice read and a good sleep makes me happier than watching people drink in the dark. I was going to bed early at Soul Revolution too. I’m tucked up in my sleeping bag again as the summer chafers slam into my tent. And the air in the tent is almost cold for a change. I think I’ll sleep better.

It’s crowded now. Must have been a couple of thousand people here at peak but only a few are camping. I’ve been here long enough and it’s been sweaty enough that I even washed some shirts for myself which will probably airdry before I wake up. I’m starting to miss things like Lou and bed and mobile phone reception and cats. I’m hoping this will post. I’ll just hit schedule and let the wheel spin…

It’s half nine at night. I’m in my tent. I just had a shower and I’m already sweating again. If I leave the tent open for a breeze it’ll be full of summer cockchafers (amphimallon solstitiale) in no time. (Glad I’m here, some people thought they were bees and were freaking out). The next two hours are theirs. I can already hear the people in the tents next to me swearing about them. They land on your face, in your hair, in your food. Totally harmless, but big and loud. Their dance of sex and death is short but intense and they are well named as they’ll be gone soon but for now I can hear them crashing into my tent all around me. Smaller than the Maybugs, but very much the same deal. Low level buzzing. Humans are interesting warm moving trees on which a flash of life might be possible before this inevitable ruin. Thousands of them.

Down in the festival, much the same. People mill about, stopping and starting, making strange buzzing noises. Some are working very very hard. A friend of my brother Max walks tall and slow, dressed in a fur headdress with teeth dangling over her face, a replica of a 6000 year old burial. She greets everyone. She works so hard in this sweltering heat simply because she cares about her subject. Calm and measured. She must be absolutely boiling. She was here last year as well.

We jumped in and did a snippet of Brutus and Antony’s funeral oration to a very loud crowd before a speech about Schtrumpf. Demagoguery before demagogue. Although Antony, in my feeling, genuinely loved and respected Caesar whereas some modern demagogues wouldn’t know how to do either. It’s always a pleasure to speak those words, but I snipped it right down as my voice would have run ragged in there unmiked. I think some people thought it was some kind of protest and deliberately raised their volume. I wasn’t about to howl, means I can keep my powder dry for some of the more detailed work until there’s a room where detail will land. It was still well appreciated, but in this heat in Elizabethan costume, just no to pages and pages of text.

I’m tired now though. My mattress slowly deflates overnight. Takes a few hours. By the time I’m on the ground my tent is an oven anyway. Hence the early bed. If I’m asleep at half ten I’ll get almost seven hours in.

Hot hot hot. Hurrah. Sweaty but I’m happy to have no possibility of being cold for a while. I made my choice. 🔥

“Banquet” is a little optimistic for the meal I just had. £42 for a duck leg and some sponge cake. I booked it in advance dreaming of gourmandisation. It wasn’t terrible, nor was it worth £42. But sometimes you roll the dice and win. And sometimes you get a bit of dry duck and school potatoes.

Thankfully the company at the table was diverting. Local people, similar age to me, very keen theatregoers. Mum would have been friends with them, but would have randomly chosen one of them to secretly disdain. I reckon I got lucky. They were very good at small talk. My table neighbour has a group that meets regularly and does Shakespeare on zoom. Delightful. They did Maccers recently. “Are you being paid to be here?” “I wouldn’t be here otherwise”. ‘Have you ever worked at Chichester Festival Theatre?” “No, to my chagrin I’ve never auditioned for it. But I went with my mother to see Art there many years ago. I’d love to work there. What have you seen there recently that you’d recommend?”

Gatekeepers, gatekeepers, gatekeepers, everywhere. I don’t actually know who casts for Chichester. Might be worth a letter. You never know what’s round the corner. It feels like, despite my occasional moaning, every day I deepen my connection with my work and my industry, and the things come when they come. I’d love to do some regional theatre. It was delightful being in Stratford. You experience the country from a different perspective.

Once again some lovely jobby meetings are outstanding so it definitely isn’t all doom and gloom. My agent is wonderful still, God Bless her and all who sail in her. And I’m continuing to draw lines across and make friends across this bananas profession I’ve made my home in.

Today I woke up and ran lines from Marc Antony in the yoga tent over a coffee. Then I drove to the parking lot of the local pub and sat there with the air con blasting out in order to zoom a rehearsal to London. This is the Meisner group that I’ve found, that has found me. I feel very held and happy in the group after just a week. It’s hard work but it’s good work. I’m a lucky boy and I need to stop moaning.

So I sat in the cold car in the car park and worked with the Meisner people for most of my working day. I skipped my lunch ahead of that dry duck leg dammit. Loved the rehearsal and zoom is not my friend.

Got back on site at about 5pm and I had forgotten how hot the world is after the air con in my car. I went and threw some Romanesque flashes over my clothes, ate my expensive supper, and went to help out with the guys who were doing the first scene of Julius Caesar to the waiting audience before Mary Beard’s talk. I was mostly flyering for our Macbeth on Sunday. “You liked that Shakespeare? Guys we got more Shakespeares for ya! We got as much Shakespeare as you could want. Ghosts? Blood? Iambs? We got the lot, kid. And great big wooden swords.”

Mary Beard is talking about the ancient world. “They didn’t know what they looked like”. She’s not as well attended as I thought she would be so I came and sat at the back. “Can you imagine what it would be like to be a human being who didn’t recognise themself?”

Having been in a zoom meeting all day I find it strange to contemplate, as zoom tends to like to serve us ourselves. What changed when we all started to know what we look like?

Who knows? But I’m gonna stop writing and plug in closer to what this pleasant and thoughtful lady has to say to us. I’ve had many friends over the years like Mary. Brilliantly clever ladies who give very few fucks. The world needs as many of them as possible.