AlBarclay

Brighton night. Here by the sea. Tessy just made me groom her loads. And then more. That’s my job, as far as she’s concerned. The fact I occasionally feed her or give her her medication is beside the point as far as she’s concerned. I’m her brush bitch.

She will usually slut drop in front of me immediately. I then have a choice. Either I stroke her and she lets me for about ten seconds and then bites and scratches me enough to cause a scar. Or I get the brush out. In which case the routine of brush, stroke, brush, stroke – with pauses to clear hair – will go on until the heat death of the universe, and after a while she starts to try to help and when I know the tongue is out I can get into her big knots. She’s a ragdoll so she’s a walking dreadlock. And she will still yelp when I break into her dreadlocks, but I know her well enough to know when to dig in and when to jump out FAST. She takes no prisoners. If that tail twitches you get one semi-polite warning and then she will fuck you up with everything in her power. But when she’s in her groove with me she will let me drag her across the carpet. It’s a strange and fragile thing.

It’s nice taking care of a creature that is so completely boundaried. I usually have some sort of damage on my hand from miscalculation. She’s great.

How awful it would be if things did what we wanted them to do. Like parenting… The little fuckers are always gonna piss you off and go their own way, and if they didn’t they would be the most boring and pointless humans in the world. Society evolves like biology. And we move with it if we can.

Christ though the online dialogue at the moment… Even though it’s obvious that in America that guy is building a “ballroom” fortress for himself, nobody there is able to stop him. He’s experienced being correctly voted out once. He tried to stay where he was and he used all the guys who are now ICE agents to try and foment a rebellion in the capitol, and forgave them all to build his current shit militia. There is surely a core of people in the republican party who can see this coming. This ultimate grifter who will bring down everything to save himself.

And all the reactive dumb fuckers over here shouting about muslin cloth everywhere and Shania twain. That Yaxley idiot and so many idiots queued up behind him. Repeating what they’ve been told. And suddenly pretending to be Christians. No, you little tiny people. You aren’t Christians. You don’t even know what it means to be Christian.

This isn’t one nation under god. This is an older, wiser, better place. The Americans were copying our culture for a while. Now, “Britain first”, what do you think you’re achieving by copying them?

This inflated nonsense about immigration? It’s a mess, sure. Put about by idiots, sure. Reactive, sure… But idiots like Musk, with great reach, are propagating this idea that London is “fallen” (because brown people are bad etc). I walk the streets of London every day. It’s the same city it was thirty years ago. And idiots are still gonna be idiots. And that’s ok. It’s the world we live in.

Anyway. Maybe I needed to dump by the sea. I’m gonna plug into this hilarious cat friend I have. And I’m going to go to sleep with peace and care, cos I am trying to look after my fluffy friend who is likely to have her first morning for a long time without someone to care for her.

What a lovely day. This morning I groomed myself and assembled my Elizabethan costume. Then a Lime Bike into town to see Rebecca. We went to a peaceful place we know, then had coffee at Monmouth and then saw Jim Jack. Then to The Globe. I had the costume in a bag of course.

I’ve been running this new sonnet. It’s only a sonnet but the client only asked for it yesterday. I really prefer to have three sleeps on a learn.

It was a dinner for two in The Balcony Room, which is my favourite room for events. A sweet couple had booked the whole place out. She is a huge fan of Shakespeare. He is trying to treat her. We wanted to add to their celebration and we told them two sonnets we would certainly do and gave them the option for a third of their choice. It’s a nice flex where we aren’t too stressed about material, where we can extend our repertoire, and give them a chance to have a favourite. Problem is it came in yesterday afternoon. Number 23. “As an unperfect actor on a stage”.

We enjoyed learning and partitioning it, and had a little joke where the first line goes out and then a cue script needs to be consulted.

This is lovely work, of course. And romantic and satisfying. Working with Ffion is a dream. I’m lucky there were no kisses after the first scene when we did a little kiss. Because Kevin said: “Are you interested to try some of the Ukrainian delicacies?” And there was a plate of rendered pork fat to be eaten with raw garlic cloves and uncooked onion. I can still taste it when I belch. Healthy yum yums though. There was also something beetrooty eggy fishy that I want to take home with me and be friends with. It looks like seagull shit and it tastes like heaven.

I’m home now. Happy from a job well done. Off to a festival tomorrow. Life is good and I’m scattered and chaotic but mostly happy and getting busy again so a moment to stop and reflect is going to be golden. And oh yes, I’d best remember to charge my power banks as well as pack my pants.

The Chelsea Flower Show is taking place next door to me right now. I once went, in the company of Kitcat. We bought tickets from a tout. And didn’t really know why we were there. I think you need to have a big old home like Eyreton but maybe not in the awful Manx soil. Either way I’m living in a flat in London. I’m not gonna have a garden. But they are my landlords for the leasehold I think, still…

It means that right now there’s no easy parking outside my flat, there are loads of vans with tickets and loads of happy looking uniformed people who have chosen to be hideous people for a living, running around sticking tickets on incorrect cars. Many of the cars are correct and I’m ok with it as it is just short term. It’s a small price to pay for the fantastic work opportunities my parking permit makes possible.

This year is the first year since 2013 that Gnomes have been allowed in the show.

It is all so unuterrably alien to me.

For this show to have any sense at all you first need to have a property with a garden and then you need to care about what your garden looks like and then you need to be able to afford to get a ticket and look at things, and then you need to be able to action things you’ve witnessed. It’s a trade show for people who have already been absorbed by the establishment, or ARE the establishment. “Oh but you HAVE to use Piggles for your roses, they are just SO perfect for all your landscaping needs.”

Placement isn’t talent. Twas ever thus though. We do the best we can, and the good practitioner often watches and assists the idiot who is being paid more.

I’m not gonna go this year I think, unless someone has a freebie for me. I’m a long way from a house with a garden right now. Not sure I want to do it anyway.

I’m glad there are gnomes though. Through my whole upbringing, gnomes were considered somehow vulgar. The people who had them were either dull as fuck or rebels. As a child it is so hard to differentiate. As an adult it is easy, but I’ve been on very few gardens.

Right yes. I need to start making sense again then. I also need to talk to my agent.

Hi. I’ve been a bit squiffy recently. Processing some bits. You know how it is.

I’m out of the woods now.l, I think.

I’m at home alone tonight with the two cats. We have been enjoying each other’s company. I put a pie in the oven. A bought pie. We all need to get better at making stuff like that but I’m not there yet, no matter how patient I am.

I’m enjoying the fact that The Chelsea Flower Show is kicking off next door. Princess Anne will be there. She can still do public appearances and be celebrated cos she wasn’t hanging out with the redacted US President and his best mate Jeff.

Traffic is at a standstill outside my block at the moment but it always is at this flower show time of year. Pissed off people in vans are sitting in the bays along the river with their hazards on waiting for someone to force them to move. Back in the day, you could always rely on the last day as a time to get good pot plants, just left on the street. Nowadays the wide boys in vans stop all the traffic, speculating as they drive round in circles looking for stuff to resell. I’m planning on getting there on foot when it’s over. I’m so local I can take a heavy pot by hand and have something lovely. No point having a vehicle anymore even though it is so close. But there are a load of plastic flowers in the bathroom. They confuse me. I didn’t bring them in. But they seem to be the opposite of what they look like and I just can’t compute them.

I’ve been learning so many Shakespeare bits. Before long I’m gonna know the lot, seriously.

But yes. Hi. I’m back. Thanks for bearing with me while I worked through a load of arse. Tomorrow I’m gonna groom myself and click back into the game of existence, and start putting on the faces again as we all have to do. And hi, yeah I’m fine it’s all great! So happy, yeah, so good, isn’t everything brilliant? Yeah!

A heatwave coming this weekend. Good.

Hello.

How delightful.

I’m here in London, we are gonna watch The Wire. I cooked a poussin and deliberately made too many potatoes cos I knew Brian and Maddy would be hungry. Still I could have made more. I figured they’d be fed. I left them as they ordered food at Waterside with their shisha.

In retrospect I should have bought a whole chicken. I had not expected hungry people, I just wanted to make sure there were nommy potatoes because I know how them and gravy can cause heart palpitations with the right audience.

A tiny poussin is a tiny thing. I thought it would just be mine but it ended up going three ways. And I very slightly capped my finger with a potato peeler of all things. My right hand index finger. It’s just a sliver of flesh sheared away. Good Christ I’ve seen all sorts connected to that. We are a remarkable machine. A machine that learns how to heal itself.

I think back over the times I’ve worried about my health. Most of those times, my body has coped. I recently went to the doctor and cut a skin tag off myself after clarifying with them that it wasn’t going to make me go septic. Fucker needed to go. I used a consultation spot to ask about my blepharitis. I once before had it bad. Had erithromycin for my bad tooth. At the same time I munched a boat load of MDMA. It was Latitude. I was working through some… stuff. I still remember meeting some heavyweights in the industry and observing how remarkable air feels on skin, basically being clueless and exposed. Either the antibiotic or the mdma cleared my eyes. I looked human in front of human employish peoples.

That’s kind of ok. That’s how I’ve processed it. A good actor is … clueless and exposed, like I was. I’m largely going to avoid drugs going forward. Nice to think my blepharitis might have been solved with my Ecstasy. It was at the same time as the antibiotics so who knows, eh?

Bed bed bed. Why do I have to to attempt to be coherent?

Here let me dance for you. If this blog was in any way monetised I would lean into this. Maybe that’s something for me to work on.

Na na na

Boo boo boo

Wang kang bing

Poo poo poo

*again*

Na naa ngah

Buoo boo bim

Wak kack funk

BLUE BLUE BLUE

I’m fine. I’m fine. It’s all fine. I’m fine. Why would I not be fine? Fine, that’s me. Mister Finey Face, that’s what they call me, yeah? Yeah. Yeah! Yeah? Great.

Paragraph about something different.

Witty finish.

Yeaaaah.. Ha.

I’M SAD.

I went to the cinema. The Everyman Chelsea. Screen Two for the twelve o’clock matinee.

The thing for me to remember is, I did the work. The work was good.

This business of being an actor is ridiculous sometimes. I was #6 in the billing on that. The #7 actor is swiftly moving towards being a household name. And yet still, the axe fell on both of us and many many more.

It’s not my first rodeo being cut, by any means. Back in 2002 the director apologised personally before the screening of my first big movie. My storyline had had some interesting queer overtones with *household name* which were excised to placate the Americans. My second big movie, I was flown out to Thailand and worked with *household name x2* and they had dots on their faces to CGI them younger. The whole CGI flashback sequence got the heave ho for budget. Besson had the good grace to credit me bless him.

This one I’ve been on set, done the job, got the call sheets, proud of the work.

I got the loveliest letter from the director, because it was narrative reasons that brought about the death of this particular hope. It was cut to streamline it into a chamber piece.

If I was conspiracy minded and I thought that there was a cabal working against me, this would be the clearest indication I was right. I’m not a pattern matcher though. This is another expression of Eris. I hate it. I’m sad about it. I wish it could have been other. But it is what it is. And it is comforting that the actor I was playing opposite is very well known and the same happened to her. I can never take this personally.

The cut actors are not credited. We are not even thanked. I videoed the credits. Essentially we are forgotten.

So I drove home from the cinema. I am writing this at 5pm. And I think I’m just gonna have a hot bath and a bottle of wine and get lost tonight and then work out how to proceed tomorrow.

Monday I’ll talk to my agent and … see: Can I credit it on IMDB? The problem with that is, anyone who has seen the movie will ask: “who is that actor?” I’m not in it anymore. So if I put it on my CV it looks like I’m one of those fucking extras that pretend they were in the movie. Sorry. Momentary diversion:

There are plenty of atrocious actors putting major directors on their CV who were actually just extras. They try and make out like they were in it, which muddies the water for those of us who were actually in these movies, doing something with craft. It’s why I have never and will never work as an extra no matter how desperate I get for money. It isn’t my world.

I remember some cunt on the other side in an audition thirty years ago when I told them I had just played Jimmy Vanbrugh, Lord Monocle in Bright Young Things : “Oh yeah of course you were, cos you wore a monocle.” Back then I wanted the job they were gatekeeping – too much to “risk” correcting him, saying no, cunt, I went through multiple rounds and played a fucking part in it.

We can tell people when they’re being a cunt but they don’t usually internalise it. We live and and sometimes learn. He wouldn’t have known how to internalise it anyway. Like Duncan – mister idiot location manager who thought I’d made myself up and then went deep into confirmation bias about who he needed me to be. I remember one time he didn’t believe I lived where I lived when we drove past my flat.

“I could stop now and take you up and show you photos of my dad racing and documents proving everything you seem to think I’m making up is actually true.” “Go on then, we’ve got time.” “No. I’m not going to. Because I don’t like you and I’ve got nothing to prove, and yep I’d actually prefer to leave you wondering.”

People like that will infantilise actors forever. I tried to personally teach him how everyone is interesting to people outside their own experience. He had kids. That’s a big adventure for many. I don’t think it landed.

It’s a good movie, this movie I’m not in anymore. The leading lady went to Guildhall and I met her with Minnie once years ago and we got on really well and had a good night. The leading man… He’s been around the block so much now. I wonder if it might be pushing his last film. The film is good.

Can I ever say I’ve been involved in it? I don’t know how that all works. I want this film to be well attended, to be well loved, well reviewed. Hey … Maybe enough for a directors cut?!

Ugh ugh ugh this ridiculous industry. And I still love my work. Madman. What the fuck am I continuously putting myself through?

This has been a huge damp squib for me. It’ll take me a while to get over myself. I honestly thought this job might finally help push me up at least into “not having to prove myself to idiots” territory. But no. Onwards. Ever ever onwards. Fuck.

I’m terrible at watching TV. There are so many well known series that I’ve missed out on. I think it was destroyed for me when everyone was watching lies like Made in Chelsea. It was impossible, like worse than bad acting cos it was sold as real.

Sure there’s a lot of low budget stuff outside that. “You don’t know what you mean!” I would often shout as the eyebrows bobbed up and down and the choices were so audible. But these things only have time for one or two takes per shot. This is why you have to learn your lines, kids.

This evening I’ve finally been catching up on a big one. The Wire. “That’s so obviously a costume!” I shouted about one guy who couldn’t wear his clothes. But I’m three episodes in and it’s good TV and the acting is excellent.

I casually opened one of my 1994 mouton cadet bottles assuming it would be sink juice and it defied me by being the first one that was wine. The cork disintegrated into the bottle, I’ve got no decanter. I poured a single glass and then put it into an empty white wine bottle and pumped it sealed with a vacuum. I thought I was just getting through it so I could chuck it away and get the space back so it’s comforting after three ruined bottles to find one that drinks. I just don’t want it tonight. But I had a glass while enjoying two English actors fronting this extraordinary Baltimore series.

There’s still so much to catch up on tellywise but I’m happy to finally get on the boat for The Wire. It is expansive and requires attention. But has been a good way to fill a Friday night that is way too cold. I’ve put my quilt back on. It’s still spring so I’ll forgive it, but I’m tapping the barometer obsessively, hoping for higher pressure…

A little lockup near the Barbican full of Elizabethan costume.

On my way there, I walked through the tunnel that I have walked through so many times. But I stopped this time and went to the bottom of Lauderdale Tower. In a room there in 1999, about 30 young men and women auditioned first round for Guildhall. Two of us got recalled. Myself and Alex Hassell. At the time I wondered if they had lost their paperwork and just recalled both people called Alex to make sure they got him. He was surrounded by all the National Youth Theatre kids. I was in the weird kids group in the corner. “Shall we go for a pint?” he asked. And we made friends.

He went to Central but we stayed in touch and The Factory happened through him and Tim Evans and I eventually got stuck in and I’m still stuck.

It’s a shop now, that room.

So much started for me just there. So many strands of my life. Wendy Allnutt recalled me, and Toby Dantzig my old school rival was in the first year when I auditioned, the second year when I arrived. We had been set up against each other at school but had seen through it at the last moment and written each other very balanced and thoughtful messages of farewell – a step up to maturity for me certainly and maybe for him as well. We were both being bullied in our own ways. We both didn’t fit in our own ways. Neither of us would conform.

I like that area. It is charged with hope and memory.

I dressed up in Jacobean costume and took some photos. Banquo this time. Chalke Festival. No rehearsal. An attempt to be pure about cuescript work. A channeling of the work of the remarkable Patrick Tucker. It might be awful it might be wonderful. So far, so Factory. I like these guys very much though and they’ve asked me to be Banquo which is an act of trust so I’m making sure I rise to it. Now I have two rids of dowel and a well sized printout. I’ll be getting the pritt-stick out like they had in the early 1600’s and I’ll be making damn sure I’ve worked what is actually quite a lot of words, learnt my cues, am ready to listen.

At least this time I’m not having to do a Welsh accent. I can’t do Welsh. I’ve got Scottish. But will that be a thing? Och… Who knows. Might be an interesting obstacle. Would they have done it back then? That’s the question.

TC would murder me though, if I did it.

Met up with a friend who is having agent woes and remembered how lucky I am to be happy in my relationship with Esta. It still feels like a partnership. I really needed that after so long with well meaning people who were submitting me against type. I used to often find myself reading for one part and knowing that the other part suited me better. As we careen through this life it is nice to sometimes believe we have control of things even for a moment. We don’t, none of us do, Eris runs the show, but we can dare to dream can we dare to dream we can can we?

I missed some potent years in the wilderness. But it feels like I’m Miss Jean Brodie now, In My Prime. There are years I lost to grief, sure, and years I lost to confusion. I’m sure if I sat down and worked it out I could piece together what happened in my thirties, but to my memory it’s a dead zone filled with London. I think about it and get various faces – Nathan, Tassos, Mel… Various places – Shunt Vaults, Chandos, Pit Bar. I was mostly trying to work out where the next food was coming from. I got good with rice and sauces but the bulk of my nutrition came from booze and toast. I still see Mel often, we might be able to remember together, mostly we just push forward into the space in front of us and dream. I really am gonna have to go to New Orleans in February for her. She’s fucking queen of her Mardi Gras crew. She wants me there and I can still remember how to forget. If I start saving now I’ll maybe get lost for a fortnight on the fringes of that swamp and come back wider and stranger and skinnier. “Book early to avoid disappointment”.

Lots of little jobs, that’s the shape of it right now. Skipping like a stone from idea to idea, happy to attach my full attention when it becomes possible, one by one by one. I like it like that, so long as there’s time for line learning. I never want to be searching for lines, there’s no excuse for searching for lines. Today was a quiet day though and I didn’t hit the words, but I’ve been processing something, some strange old trauma that is bubbling at the moment. Two more days and a thing is released and my heart still hurts but I’m also joyful as this thing I loved that I was once a part of is being well thought of by the reviewers, and so it should be.

Life is strange. All will be well.

Brian and Maddy are back. I spent a bit of time this morning making sure things were alright in the flat. Gotta try and be a good flatmate especially when there are loads of boxes of wine in the living room.

I bought a fuckload of old bottles at auction for cheap. Nobody bid on them because the chances are they’re vinegar. I’m not gonna drink all of them, but the bulk of them aren’t good enough to sell individually, and are probably vinegar. There will be one or two bottles that are a true delight. I already had a decent hit with a 1995 Versant Royal. Most of them though are corked. I’m moving slowly with them as once I get a hit I don’t open any more for a few days, but … I have now poured about 8 bottles down the sink, giving up on them entirely, some corked to retching, others borderline but still horrible to drink even after lots of aeration.

Every bottle I’ve opened so far has looked bad on the outside. I’m getting through the crap first. Low level, mold, bad labels. The Versant Royal looked like death. It hadn’t aged very well but it was wine not TCA taint. I’m growing very familiar with the smell and taste of that taint now. It is an interesting way of rolling the dice and I’m learning what to look for now.

I watched some frenchman on Instagram telling us he had drunk a bottle from 1789. Such things can happen. But without knowing how it was stored I’m starting to think that anything before 1996 is suspect. I’ve got some 2006 bottles that I’ve got high hopes for. Eight of them, a Grand Batailley Pauillac. I’m scared to open one in case it is fucked. My 1994 Mouton Cadet I’ve cracked 3 bad bottles in a row out of twelve, but it isn’t a big wine either way.

So yeah I’m gonna set up a wine rack and for the next few years you’d be clever to invite yourself to dinner, but give me a month or so more working slowly with my cellar tracker to establish what is vinegar to sell because of pedigree, vinegar to open check and either lucky glug or chuck, and wine. A Coravin system would help but the fuckers want over £300 so I’ve established a system with an aerator and a sieve and a load of different jugs, to get enough air into it without making bad washing up. It’s depressing though, when you know it is bad, it smells bad, and your aerate it just in case but it just remains bad. These once high quality things are worthless.

At Chateau Coutet they had found a bottle under the floorboards sealed with a glass ball from 1750. The bottle and the seal decorated with a heart had been made to go together and close hermetically. It is a priceless bottle. Open it and it might be good wine still, but hopefully nobody will ever know. Better it remains unknown and present, a challenge to the ease of these corks which eventually kill their bottle. I wish these guys were sealed with glass.