AlBarclay

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.

I’m making sense of the me that does office things. I am so easily distracted. But today was a day for it. It took me two days to build myself up to it.

All I had to do was edit some Shakespeare, make it look nice and send it to the client. They are being demanding, which is fair as we are charging what we are worth. But I need them to confirm. They’re a media company so they’re masters at wasting time and charging extra. I know and the venue knows that I can provide what they’re looking for better than anyone they could possibly ever find at the price. This is a thing I know so well now, playing into my two big areas of professional geekiness: Shakespeare and rigorous but flowing performance. But they want spreadsheets and measurable proofs. I even made sure I found two Factory actors for my Romeo and Juliet just so we have the media footprint. Our event company is very new and I need to work out how to make Ffion a partner.

AI is in the conversation at the moment, inevitably. Two of my potential clients want AI Shakespeare stuff. What a world we live in where these aggregators are called creators.

I can write this blog without brain freeze, every day, without fail. But that’s because I’ve given myself permission to do it without structure and to barely check my work. As soon as there’s the idea of assessment in it I freeze.

I found myself using Copilot. Not for text, but for donkey work. The copypaste Shakespeare texts always have line numbers that end up just in your script35. Placed in a way that seems quite random36 until you figure out it’s counting lines37 based on the way they’re spaced out in the text38

What I would have just ignored and sent to the actors, as too much work to get it out, I did with a prompt. “Can you take all the extraneous line numbers out please?” Blurpblurpblurp done. And then you have to read it to make sure it hasn’t randomly made something up to replace the numbers.

We can hate it but it’s here. So how do we get it to do the bullshit work so we can be creative. That’s what happened today. I had an enthusiastic dumb office intern who is brilliant at tech and thick as shit. “Can you format this better and make it look like a script please? Oh and change the font to Times New Roman without messing up the formatting.”

I currently say please so that it likes me more. Maybe I’ll end up being a better breed of cattle if that’s the way the singularity goes. With the hideous narcissists in power in so many major companies, this is the world AI is training on. My client would have got the same idea today without it but it wouldn’t have looked as shiny. But I had to have clear opinions and guide it. I didn’t like the font or formatting it first proposed. As I say, like an enthusiastic intern… Perhaps this is why some people who prompt art start to think they are making art. They aren’t. They can’t. But this is a curious tool for taking crap labour out.

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.