AlBarclay

I used to always have a little tub of Patum Peperium in the fridge until one of my flatmates went to war with it. I’d get home, eventually notice it wasn’t there anymore, replace it, a few weeks later I’d notice it wasn’t there again. At first I assumed he was thinking it must have gone off. Eventually I confronted him on it. “It’s disgusting”. “I like it.” “It stinks the fridge out.”

Had he not been so insistent on purging it, there might have been enough for a few years in the back of my fridge tonight when, as I’m driving down to Brighton, Radio 4 gives me some of the most BBC news it could possibly give me. Patum Peperium is no more.

The era of fish and meat paste is long gone. When I was at school we had spam with our ploughmans. Once a week we had corn beef hash and I used to like it. Mum would fry us up cod roe on a Friday. Every restaurant served paté as a starter. That one has had a resurgence lately. Taramasalata hasn’t though. It’s always chicken liver, never fishy unless it’s mackerel.

Before Twitter died there was lovely parody account purporting to be an enthusiastic intern espousing the delights of Shippam’s #PASTE. I’m pretty sure that the guy who was pretending to be Ben the social media intern chose that particular product because there’s something a little lost, a little esoteric about fish paste these days.

Back to Gentleman’s Relish though, “spicy paste” It’s a very good umami ingredient though, “Patum Peperium”. Strong strong salty anchovy paste. Bit of warm brown toast, butter and a tiny amount of the stuff. You get call it a meal. I often did. But never again.

Sic Transit Gloria Pati

A website called NineLife is already trying to flog a pot for over £200. Other places like Uber Eats haven’t caught on and are offering for cost but will cancel all orders as they’ll be inundated. I’ll be sticking my head into a few posh delis and Waitroses in the hope I can snag a last ever pot. I almost bought one a few weeks ago in Brighton. Might still be there but unlikely. It’s been in the Guardian. “Charlie, quick, get in the Daimler and bring a basket, we’re going to Waitrose!”

The paste is no more. It is an ex paste.

You can just use anchovies to replace it in sauces I guess. It lasts longer but… Some sauces a tiny pinch gave it umami, but nam pla is everywhere nowadays so people can use that instead as it lasts as long. And there are other anchovy pastes, but not with the secret blend of herbs and spices…

I will miss thee, oh weird fishy rusky paste.

But only very occasionally. Which is why it died I guess. One pot lasts five years and more.

There’s something very satisfying about the recycling centre in Wandsworth. My car was full of things. Old appliances, bits of wood, gubbins… I filled up completely yesterday and didn’t put anything in that I didn’t think was absolute bum. Also I knew I would have both John and I checking everything into the car, and then again I knew I would have to handball every single item into the correct receptacle at Wandsworth. It took me well over an hour to empty the car. They have well delineated bins there. I chucked an old metal wine rack into the metal bin and a few minutes later saw it by a woman’s car. “I thought of scrapping it but in the end figured it wouldn’t get much value,” I told her. She looked guilty. You aren’t supposed to take things out. “I… I thought I could put some shelves in there or something…” It made me think of the time I had a fucking great big mirror in my car belonging to my friend and I leant it up against a wall for a moment. I chucked my stuff under it and then… it was gone. I got it in it neck for that as she is someone who attributes high value to items. Suddenly it was the most valuable mirror in the history of mirrors, which begs the question why she left it in my car.

I eventually had it all sorted to my satisfaction. It fills me with hope, that place. There’s a small appliance container where you can believe they will break down all the circuits and plugs etc and get back all the rare metals. There’s an area where you can put “things that are still good”. I didn’t put anything there. The stuff in the lockup has been through two creative thieves, one of which had a prolonged amount of time there. He took out loads of stuff. A fold up bike, tools, boxes of toy cars, some clothes. Hard to know exactly what but they made hay.

There’s still stuff in there worth a quid or two so I’m filling up tomorrow morning and I’m probably gonna do the Brighton Marina Car Boot on Sunday with Lou. It’s the marathon so there’ll be loads of people in town. And anything that doesn’t sell can just go to charity.

Another big whack came out of my bank for Canterbury. I’m mad paying for that where there’s a shot at using Camden, even temporarily. I hadn’t really considered how out of the way it is down there.

But yeah, I’m all done now putting things in the right container. Back home, sea and Lou for a few days coming, all is right with the world.

Sometimes things don’t go according to plan for the best possible reasons. John came round in the morning. I had all sorts of ambitious ideas about getting all the gubbins out of the lockup.

We had coffee and caught up. My rhythm today has been slow from the get go. We walked out into the warm day and drove to Camden. We opened the door and immediately all the old bad instincts kicked in. “I might want this bit of old fabric if we do Christmas Carol again.” “This thing is nice I just haven’t got room for it.” I managed to get over myself enough to fill Bergie with rubbish. But we only did one load. I just can’t be bothered today. It is too lovely. Bright sun, warmth. The lockup is walking distance to Regents Park so I went and lay on my back for a while. No wonder I’m broke. But life is good. And we were far from the only people doing it. Siwan and John both got a beer. I wasn’t in the mood, strangely. Plus driving.

Beer and I have stopped getting on so well since all the acid reflux stuff kicked off. The fizz of lager in my belly and I often want to immediately just expel the stuff. Out as quickly as in. Quicker. I was happy to soak up the rays a little with all of London.

Hottest day of the year so far apparently. Regents Park today was like all the London parks in 2020. Big thumping sound systems and loads of pockets of friends overlapping loud conversations, alone in their bubbles in a crowded place.

I drove home. I’ll empty him tomorrow and then load up again ahead of a probable car boot sale on the weekend. I just want to make room now so I’m not running to stand still on all the wheelie wardrobes in Canterbury. Although I also spoke to a lady with a shipping container near Dargate. One thing at a time. The key is to make space make space make space. I might end up with a load more stuff to sort very soon. The thing to remember is that there’s “work” in the gap in the plan.

1: Collect all sorts of random gubbins

2: …

3: PROFIT

Maddy bought a Gousto box. Brian has been on Planthood. I have long ago cancelled my HelloFresh and my Mindful Chef and my Nonna Tonda.

When we are busy and profligate it is helpful to have people send us food in the correct portion size I suppose. But Maddy says : “I know for certain I could make a better Thai curry than that”. She could. You could. I could. Anyone could. But it saves shopping and it cuts back on waste. I defrosted some bratwurst on Friday and then forgot I did it and now I don’t trust they are going to be safe to eat. Which is a shame really as I bought them somewhere full of hope.

I still have most of a great big Chicken of the Woods in the freezer that is still good. Too much for me to use. It’s all in batches. Anyone passing by my flat who likes it, ping me and I’ll bring you down a little packet. People pass by so often, they send me photos of my flat with the lights on and don’t stop. If you’re in a cab even if you’re in a hurry and you like Chicken of the Woods, slow the fuck down, call in advance and if I’m home I’ll meet you on the street for a trade through the window. We don’t need a long hi there hi there so how are you so how are you what about the thing the thing yes that thing what about it etc etc.

Even if you don’t know me, just give me more than twenty four hours notice and comment on my blog and if you’re going on the other side of the river to the Buddhist pagoda in Battersea, that’s where you’ll get your “chicken” mushroom. I need to get more freezer space.

I might miss the comment though let’s be honest. I’m not gonna give my contact details publicly. But most of the people who read what is essentially my diary, they know me.

Yesterday I guessed six years. Nine… What the fuck?

Lou is back in Brighton waking her workshop before it goes. I’m gonna try and get my shit together tomorrow about the lockup. Slowly steadily. Thing after thing. Sadly Easter is over. It has been absolutely brilliant. And very very lazy.

And so to the end of this extended weekend and having no children it is a lovely excuse to do very little. The world is switched off, all the shops are shut. If you’re active in an acting job then sure you’ll end up being busy cos we play when they work.

Today though I played.

An old friend called me. Can I call him a friend? I think so. He and my mum had a sustained positive romantic interaction when I was a teenager. A lot of the guys she got tangled up with were self important high status silver fox douchebags. They always had one hand on their own dick. This guy was unlike all of them, did an honest job, cared about things, used to get us all out into the countryside for walks. To my eye she was happier with him than all the players. But she kept looking at the players with their shifting skin and their wobbly lipped privilege oozing off them. She ended up with one of them and he only wanted her for a roof.

I went for lunch with this guy over a year ago. I paid. It was a feast time. Now it’s famine again and I’ve been on staples. He rang me, out of the blue. Does he read this? I don’t think so. But maybe he sensed it. The universe is funny like that. I haven’t been looking after myself and suddenly he took me out for a pub lunch, and told me in advance it would be his treat this time. So I had fish and chips and a big glass of douro. He can’t drink these days so like my brother Rupert he does it vicariously.

Many of my mum’s boyfriends used to offer me advice about the acting, with their visible lips and their self importance.  It is rare for us to get good advice from people outside the industry, but it never stops people trying. I am happy to take it, and I got some today from a more welcome source than those grey eminences she would let into the flat from time to time. “You really need to sort out your internet presence.”

I guess if you Google me, it is an encyclopedia of my daily life. Whereas maybe I should bump up shit like IMDB. CAN SOMEBODY MAKE ME A TINY WIKIPEDIA? My friend James tried, but he did multiple paragraphs and it got kicked back. Just a sentence or two, with links. Once it exists it can be expanded, but the gatekeepers are very vigilant about people putting their mates up when they haven’t done anything of note. Have I done anything of note? Some think I have. Surely there’s enough online for a stubby.

Interesting to take his advice to heart. He’s not wrong, my focus has been elsewhere. It’s useful to internalise the perspective of older generations. I think that stuff is less relevant these days, but all mum’s great I-ams who had probably been up Epstein’s island – that form of Nigel Dempster fame holds very little weight with the generations jumping up the tree.

What am I selling? I hope I’m selling something honest. But something honest that looks and sounds like me. Would it be an integrity break to do the whole “hey world ermagerd I’m tho amathing ya?!” I think it would. Is that the only way to bigger jobs? No. My way has worked in that I’m still here. Many aren’t. But maybe I need to dress my shop up. Even if I kinda like that if you Google me you get this uncontrollable mess of six years and more of daily opinion noise. Christ, I wonder what would come if I fed it all exclusively into an AI and got it to write on a particular subject.

Relaxing without spending money. It makes me realise the extent to which relaxation – and everything else I guess – has been monetised.

Take a bit of time down. Go for a nice meal. Or travel to a place in a powered vehicle. Maybe overnight in a rented room. Eat food cooked by others. Or if you’re at home, purchase more expensive food than usual, you deserve it. Buy chocolate or something nice but not essential. Crank up the heating, buy a streaming channel for a trial month and forget to cancel. Go to the theatre HI EVERYONE. Go watch sport. Purchase alcohol. Not drugs, drugs are bad and also a cash economy so uncontrollable so better alcohol, yes yes?

Easter!

It is the time when Jesus emerged fully grown from the egg that was thrown into the Euphrates, momentarily putting himself together after being torn into 14 pieces, missing just the eye that gave him wisdom as he was bound to the crossed tree. Now he is back from Utah where he ate the pomegranate seeds, light can return to the world once more.

We celebrate his return to his lover Ishtar, and the time when the disciples rolled the stone away to find just the single shoe and the knowledge that while he hid in death from Toltec he gathered the bones that made the first humans, and brought them fire while the eagle ate his liver.

It is very important we get this myth right.

I put cheap egg in face. I bought cheap meat. I put meat in face. I bought reduced asparagus. All in face. Now I am done with my celebration of the chocolate resurrection and I’m gonna go to sleep and dream of happy rabbits with a mild headache from too much sugar. One entire reduced milky bar egg and all the trimmings.

Bedtime.

No work. No workshops. No Brian. No Maddy.

Just me and the cats. And my laptop came back from the repair shop a few days ago. So I plugged it in. And I downloaded Crusader Kings III which someone gifted me ages ago. I spent most of the day playing various medieval kings of Ireland.

You play a dynasty over time. The tutorial starts you in Ireland but there are many options to start characters elsewhere that even pop up as a result of the things you do.

It is essentially a story engine. I lost a fair few hours to it. Making sure I have enough heirs, then dying and becoming one of them only to have to murder the others or burn them at the stake for heresy, all the while managing the ego of various ambitious vassals. I deliberately killed one king by botching a boar hunt, just so I could get into controlling his heir while he was still young, thinking I might be able to work my way towards holding both Ireland and Alba through careful breeding, but a revolution took all my attention and by the time things settled the people I needed for my plan had died of smallpox so now I’ll have to raise an army.

It’s a game where massively messing up is part of the story, and so long as your dynasty isn’t wiped out for good, then you just keep popping up in someone else. One of my granddaughters was installed as a puppet after a crusade somewhere and I got the option to swap to her. I chose not to as I’m kinda happy to stay in Ireland for now. My first conquest ambition was The Isle of Man, and it took me two generations to get it.

Anyway, it’s a game. It’s just a game. I played too much of it today though. Now I’ve got to play with the cats and go to sleep, where I’ll almost certainly have weird dreams about succession.

Lovely to have a day like this once in a blue moon. I genuinely don’t think I’ve had such a long gaming session since I was about fifteen and I had chicken pox.

Playtime for the cats now.

I’m here in London at the heart of the new Islamic Republic of Shania Twain, according to some of the grade A eejits on my social meedja. One of them had the good grace to block me after I told them that maybe they were being an idiot. At least I don’t have to listen to that one shouting anymore. But I keep the others around, I won’t block them, because if we aren’t exposed to this shit it takes us more by surprise when someone tries it in a debate. Because it’s a sharing of nonsense for a sense of belonging. You can get blindsided if you aren’t slightly conversant with the latest shared fallacy. Because much of the stuff that these people repeat to everyone wide eyed, superior and nodding is objectively absolutely fucking bananas.

My finger has hovered over block for one particular guy daily. God he’s awful. Not only does the algorithm push his stuff to the front but also it is true self satisfied self indulgent self regarding polemic. “People like me: good. People not like me: bad.” He doesn’t like kind people and he thinks he is the protector of the human race. “Suicidal empathy,” he uses instead of “kindness”. He is English but calls himself a Christian in the American cherry picking way where God wasn’t brown and it is about club membership not morality. And he is pushing hard to a narrative where “they” want to breed “us” out.

Today he is sad because the king isn’t doing an Easter message, but spoke about Ramadan once in a video. Apparently the British monarchy is fallen now. He’s a bit confused about the middle east cos he hates the Jews too. But he is happy to be very angry about Charles saying Ramadan and then not saying Easter. Easter? … Easter??? Like… Easter???

His mum did one Easter message in her entire reign and that was because of lockdown. It isn’t a thing. But now according to mister shouty sharey scaredyboy it’s another sign that we must be fomenting a violent revolution.

If it wasn’t awful it would be funny. Poor dumb sad little twits.

This guy was at university with me, and years later we did an alpha course. I like the Christians when they aren’t crusading. I thought they had left all that behind a few hundred years ago. But … holy war is a means to an end I guess. The crusades were about alliances and money and consolidation of papal power. The more you can define the enemy as outside yourself the fewer people look at the enemy within.

There are other people following the likes of him. Old family friends who have had a hard run and want a scapegoat, festival friends who didn’t reach their potential and want an external thing to blame instead of their addictions, actors who had to quit and leave town and hate to see what might be diversity hires in roles they might have played.

There’s a movement that is tempting for anyone who felt they deserved the thing but the thing didn’t come. “Blame it on the outsider”. Tale as old as time. Song as old as rhyme. In the ladybird book I had of Beauty and the Beast, the Beast was a very clear racial portrait who then went back to being skinny white dude. Most of these idiots are varying degrees of skinny white dude, and largely the skinny bit is a result of a longstanding unusual relationship with their nostrils.

The thing isn’t a thing… It’s hard to really make sense of that. But everyone is on a trajectory of some sort and everyone has to work hard to maintain whatever they’ve built cos the world is huge and indifferent and it isn’t about these notional targeted campaigns, maybe you just missed a moment, dropped the ball, put it up your nose… Maybe it just passed you by entirely. It ain’t personal. “I think I’m on a blacklist,” said one old friend. You aren’t. It is even worse than that, more impersonal and inevitable and implacable. It’ll grind you up like Sisyphus’ rock, and then you can decide if you’re gonna start pushing again knowing what will happen.

Up in Brighton but sadly just for the waking. I had things to do. I jumped in the car and drove to Strood. Led Zeppelin IV on the car stereo cranked up to eleven and there’s something so complete and hypnotic about their sound that I was there in no time, but desperate for the loo. I parked up in some retail outlet, went into KFC, pretended to order at the screen, and let myself into a very disappointing bathroom with the lock broken off that nevertheless was undisturbed at that time of the morning and did the trick. KFC is not high on anyone’s list for brunch. It was just last 11am.

I didn’t get to indulge in the delights of Strood, whatever those delights may be. We all just launched into a workshop. This one I was just supporting, not leading. They didn’t have enough volunteers and the workshop has stations, so each station needs to be attended.

Still a good outreach opportunity, I like this company and this material so much more than many of the ones I’ve had to run in the past. That makes a tremendous amount of difference to how I feel before and after, and how quickly the time goes. With Ben running it, I could just enjoy his mojo. We do it different but we do it the same. He’s great and he’s fast and he’s honest. There’s a lot to be said for that.

Other more unusual things have started to bubble in so it looks like I’m about to enter a quiet week before a very busy time. I’m gonna try to use the quiet to catch up on the “me” things I’ve been overlooking, and to help Lou as much as I can. Some goitre of an ex public schoolboy estate agent has taken over the running of the workshops she uses, and he’s such a failed attempt at a human that she is taking all her stuff out of there in the next month. He reminds me of people I had just stopped knowing at his age, this agent. Clueless at anything other than his small frame of reference, which he somehow thinks it’s universal. Some of them gain life experience, deepen and improve. Others entrench in their estimation of how things should be for everyone and become so small you can barely see them for the thing they’ve built on top of themselves.

It’s cold and so I’ve got the blanket on which means I’m gonna have cats all over me. It’s late too. I’m happy to be home, staying here to feed the fluffy ones the next few days. Life is good.

Sleep has not been forthcoming the last few days. My appetite is low as well. And I am having bouts of that mysterious “in sooth I know not why I am so sad” affliction.

Work has been active again recently which keeps me driving around and thinking about logistics. It’s not as if I’ve got too much time on my hands. It’s largely the time of year, I reckon. Both of my parents went at this time of year and I still carry that somewhere. The daffodils and the change of season. Now I think about it, its pretty clear.

My listening project is still moving forward at a glacial pace. I finally cracked the top 50 of the Rolling Stone top 500 albums and I have a feeling the quality is going to rise now, as we are getting out of the “oh but X artist HAS to be in the top fifty because Y cultural reason”. Now we are getting to albums that everyone just agrees are a good listen. Chuck Berry, Bowie, Hendrix and James Brown have been keeping me company. My next one is Pink Floyd though and in this mood I’m not sure I can handle Dark Side of the Moon. I used to listen to it as a pretentious teenager, so it will key me back to the lost times as well as just generally be an album about sadness. Everyone on the internet thinks they’re the only person that knows about Clare Torry being paid £30 for her grief vocals on Great Gig in the Sky, thanks to endless AI clickbait articles. I can’t read that crap but it’s everywhere. It’s always too long, too pat, too crafted. And those manicured pictures and videos that somehow show more and more mundane things. Bad parking, aggressive notes in the kitchen. So many people have such tiny lives that they prompt this sort of thing rather than closing the door behind them. This truly is the decadence phase of our decline and fall. We might as well all get eaten by a superintelligent alien race that harvests worlds for food, as one of the AI articles attests. (Even if I don’t read them, I’ll snapshot the text in my eye.)

Right now I’m stopped at a coffee place overlooking the sea. A spot of workshopping and now a moment to relax and change my head before Pink Floyd and I drive up to Heathrow to pick up Lou. That’s something to look forward to at least. She’s back from Mumbai at last. I won’t have a great deal of time to see her until the end of term as Grain LNG is putting me to work on outreach and I’ve got to feed the cats between now and Sunday, but that work is a pleasure as are the cats so I’m okay with the fact I’m too busy to relax right now. I’ll catch it when I can. But… it would be nice to have a good night’s sleep. And stop feeling so mysteriously sad.

There have at least been some diverting April Fools Day pranks in the media. But right now people put out so much nonsense it’s harder to tell if they believe it or not. Trump could be reported to have said literally anything and I’d believe it.