AlBarclay

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.

It’s always nice to have smoke blown up your arse. Well… Perhaps not literally, as the nearly drowned might have discovered courtesy of the tobacco lobby in the late 1700’s. There was a moment where we had public kits like defibrillators to blow hot tobacco smoke up people’s bumholes to wake them up. There they were with this new thing they were bringing over and trying to get people hooked on. They had friends in high places. These things got produced and disseminated. Things never change. The eighteenth century equivalent of Michelle Mone toddled of with loads of money, a few people who were nearly drowned had some smoke blown up their arsehole with a tube. None of them survived. The world moved on, but didn’t. It never does. “Greed is good,” said Gordon Gecko in the eighties. It has barely changed in my lifetime. I guess the idealists are less likely to join the conversation as they are all too busy trying to live. So the power still is held by the ones who started with stuff.

I stuck with this workshop dayjob through thick and thin. There was a long period where they paid us in pocket lint, and we ended up sharing a room in a Travelodge with a stranger. “Which of us goes in the single,” might be the first conversation you have with someone. Jide and I met over that conversation. Later on we did a play together at Oval House.

The hardest bit was when we used to get sent out for not enough money to extremely difficult schools with big groups to deliver a workshop that was let down so much by the materials that it didn’t really matter what the leader brought to it, you knew you were gonna lose the room the moment you played the video that formed the whole premise of the day. I would sometimes win it back with honest discussions about the video and the people that made it, and tie it all into why I’m in the school. “You might not think there’s work for you with this company, but you’ve all just fed back about the video we just watched. That actor got paid for THAT. Somebody wrote it. Somebody directed it. If they all got paid for that, who knows what you could get paid for by these guys, but first let’s look at the problem they were trying to set up in the video for us to solve. What do these made-up posh children NEED?”

Still it was hard work and I stuck with it. It has started to bear fruit now. The rate has finally become competitive with my other jobs so I’m much less likely to bin it for something. And the content is being processed through someone who knows how it runs. I’m much less likely to have to deliver twenty consecutive slides with essays written on them to a room full of pissed off urban youth who are skipping PE to be with me.

So yeah, it was nice to have some smoke blown up my arse. Normally we do this in isolation, but we had someone else in the room today who understands the work and who robustly reassured me that it’s something I’m good at. Of course it is. But it’s always nice to be told.

I still got nervous before… It isn’t free yet. I had one of those nights where you get an early bed but then you wake up at 2am and there’s no way sleep will come back. I lay prone for four hours, a different side every twenty minutes, on the edge of dream but never quite ducking under. Then I just threw it in, made instant coffee and looked at the slide deck.

I try not to think about it too much at the moment, but here I am in a Premier Inn in Gillingham and somehow I’m back thinking about that fucking idiot in America. You all know who I mean.

Hard to avoid I guess. I’m trying to avoid it.

I was planning to be asleep by now. It’s half eight. I’m sitting in reception of a Premier Inn waiting for a Pizza Express delivery. I’m so hungry.

There’s a pub with a kitchen next to the Premier Inn. It’s called The Honourable Pilot. It is named after William Adams, born on my birthday in 1564. William Adams was the first Englishman to navigate to Japan. He was on the Liefde with the Dutch, opening trade routes, fucking up and dying. Unlike many of the people of Gillingham, he was interested in the wider world, and integrating. He was made a samurai eventually. He wasn’t fucking around, considering he was 36 when he hit Japan. The Liefde got stranded in Japan but opened the door to trade. Adams ended up as hatamoto, giving advice to the shogun. He wasn’t allowed to leave Japan for ages. When he finally was allowed, he chose to stay. He died at 55 in Nagasaki. But… he made a life out there. Enough of a life, it seems, that he is memorialised in his home town by a fucking atrocious attempt at a pub with food. I’ll have to have breakfast there. But I took one look at it and knew that nobody in their right mind would eat anything that came from that kitchen. It’s a very good example of the British tradition of “we don’t give a fuck but we serve food because we have to.”

My God. I’ve been digging into Will Adams, my fellow naval libran. He’s much more interesting than the shitebox pub alluding to him where I’ll have my breakfast.

I’m doing two workshops tomorrow. Never run one of these before. It’ll be fine though. This is outreach. For science. And I’m done being nervous about it. Back in the day I’d be freaking out about the newness because I wanted to give the best version of it possible and how could I guarantee that if I hadn’t done it before etc etc. We get in the way of ourselves all the time. And really, we could just stop doing it.

Well. I’ve managed to distract myself while writing, from thinking about that hideous idiot I started with.

How is this the world? Men like that are normally in care or prison or both. If they have a platform it is just for their own health so they don’t collapse into knowing how irrelevant they are. This absurd horrible man. It will be looked back on as the final burnout of the boomers. He should never have been able to make the calls he’s making, but … that’s his generation, what they’ve always had available. Change the constitution, you say? Make it possible for a president to have a third term so long as it isn’t consecutive you say? That’s the latest from how his lackeys are trying to destroy America. If that’s what they’re gonna do, I’m going for Trump vs Barack Obama 2028. I’d suggest Michelle but we all know that America is a dumb young nation. Voting for a woman is beyond too many of them still.

I’ll get the popcorn.

My laptop had to be sent off for a repair. It was still under warranty so all good. Still, it’s an expensive piece of kit so I was worried to do it. First I phoned the vendor, then ended up in a one on one discussion with some guy in Swindon. He arranged for DPD to pick it up, and they did so and packaged it carefully in front of me and cable tied it all and made it look shipshape. I still felt a bit odd sending it off that way. Then it sat for weeks with them. Apparently they needed a part.

I was waiting in all day for it to be delivered, and went out for a moment to go to the shop leaving Brian and Maddy in the flat just in case. And it was on the fucking doorstep. I rang the bell in case it was broken, and it was answered. I get that DPD are on a tight turnaround. But they were one button away from not leaving a very expensive piece of kit outside near a main road. Chelsea is pretty safe, there’s not much footfall where I am. But there’s plenty of traffic. It would have been a lucky opportunist, but it might have gone. “Just tell them it was nicked,” I’m told. “You’re not gonna bring down DPD for the cost of a laptop.” I was tempted. But I suspect for something of that value CCTV might get checked etc. On principle I think it would be a good fucking lesson to DPD and a shot in the arm for me financially at a time it is needed. But it’s too trackable, and I don’t really fancy being caught in a lie like that.

Laptop is back and working anyway. Just in time for workshop season, which is bloody marvellous. I need to make some money as you know. These ones for Grain LNG are great – much much better than that one I had to run for years with the terrible video about all the posh kids stuck in a forest.

I spent part of the evening opening the contents of a Magic the Gathering : Final Fantasy Booster Box that I bought in less lean times with the intention of selling the contents. I have a good history with selling individual magic cards online, and really it is a form of gambling. There are some extremely rare cards that can command prices in the thousands. I was hoping to open one. Some numbered golden chocobo go for 70k or more. Christ, The unique One Ring sold for 2 million bucks to Post Malone. I wasn’t so lucky. But with a bit of eBay time it’ll be money I didn’t spend on fun, coming back in a fallow time. And right at the end of the opening spree, when I really thought I’d lost money, Cloud showed up – a playable commander “mythic” card in a rare borderless version. Not a big one, but an easy £25, maybe more.

This geek is going for a bath. Right now I even smell like people who know a lot about trading card games.

There we are, you see? A man can go to Walthamstow of a Saturday and not end up having to pay loads of money to traffic enforcement. All he needs to do is book it in advance.

The early internet, made famous by Lastminute.com, realised that things were cheaper if they weren’t sold just before they took place. It was a couple of years for the market to respond but there was a period where people would deliberately not book until just before they travelled, because it would be cheaper. Then the airlines and trains etc caught on. The model only works when information is not easily shared. Now and for a long time it has got more and more expensive the closer you are to travelling. Booking my little parking spot last night worked out much better than showing up on market day and trying to get a pay and display.

Lots of lovely actors came into a room and worked with cue scripts. It’s fascinating and revealing work. I can see why Callum and Emma run these workshops and I’m happy to know about them. It gave a focus to the day. This weekend is mercifully peaceful. Lots of workshops next week so I need the chance to retract, although driving is getting more and more expensive by the day as people panic buy at petrol pumps and, inevitably, the likes of Shell profiteer from the mood of uncertainty brought about by that fucking idiot and his latest vicious international Epstein smokescreen.

My electricity tariff comes off fixed next week and I bet they gouge me for every penny they can. Not a good time for all this, but I guess it never is.

So I’m gonna just enjoy my weekend. I might buy some turnips tomorrow morning on Animal Crossing, maybe this evening I’ll boot up the Steam Deck and zone out. Brian and Maddy are gaming in the living room so it feels right to join them tonight.

I stopped at the cheap Korean butcher in Golders Green to get myself some cheap meat while I was passing. Brokeish or not I’m still gonna try and have nice things until I actually run out.

Another relatively slow day today. I’ve been feeling a bit under the weather, compounded by the fact that the temperature done dropped again. Spring and its false promises. I cooked up one of those Old El Paso Fajita kits just now. They were one of the things we used to do, Max and I, when we were kids living with mum after the divorce. We had tins of ravioli, tins of pie and packets of processed ham, cheese and a toasty machine. And eggs. I still miss the toasty machine to be honest, you can shove all sorts of things between bread and close that thing for a while, and as long as there’s cheese in there it tastes aight.

This evening, El Paso, with Brian and Maddy. Flat meal, at the table no less.

Some things keep being available in Tesco generation to generation. Those kits are one of the things. Something like seven quid now and what do you get? Some spices, some tortillas and a shonky salsa. And inspiration. They cost too much but they take the thinking out. And that’s the headspace I was in. Chopchop cookcook eateat writewrite sleepsleep.

I’m now in my room, just switched the blanket on. I’ve got a glass of ginger ale from the event the other night. I threw in the tiniest sniff of whisky. The plan is to get an early bed. Tomorrow I’m going back to Walthamstow, to support my friend and his Shakespeare workshop. This time I’ve learnt my lesson, I went on just park and booked an all day space for just over £8.00. That’ll save me on fines.

Driving in London is just so much more reasonable if you know how you’re gonna park. But our esteemed mayor looks likely to put taxes on SUVs. It’s already hard enough to move stuff around affordably in this city. If we get an SUV tax I’ll likely have to look into getting a trailer on a normal car which will be much more awkward.

That’s not for now though. For now I’m gonna get an early bed again. I’ll need to make some time tomorrow evening to do all my laundry as well, I’m backed up terribly and Lou comes back soon. I want to meet her at the airport looking chipper. She’s been on a work adventure in Mumbai. I kinda wish I had been with her when it’s cold and damp like this. But the hour changes soon, the light the light the light. It comes.

I just came within millimeters of flooding the flat below me. Put on a bath and totally forgot I had put on a bath. I’ve been opening a box of Magic the Gathering cards I bought in a wealthier time, knowing that at some point I’ll want to open it and flog the contents. It’s a gamble these days. You pay a lot for the box, you need be lucky to get the value back. But there are usually some big wins if you know what you’re looking for. I enjoy the quiet contemplative sorting aspect of it all. There’s precious little in my life where I behave like that.

I have had superb luck in the past with these cards so I’m okay when things are a bit more muted. With the ones I opened tonight I’ll have to work hard to make back what I spent but I can do it. Worth it, perhaps, to have rolled the dice. But there’s a lot of work and time on eBay between me and recouping the money. That said, I know damn well how Al with money bought those cards as a time delay present for broke-Al. It’ll take work and time for broke-Al to release the money from the cards. That’s work and time that flush-Al would never spend. But it means that flush-Al didn’t spend it all on expensive hamburgers. It’ll come back.

So I’m being harassed by Misty, relaxing at home after trying to do admin with varying degrees of success all day. As I write, Misty is attempting to burrow through my arm, all the while purring like a rocket to try and make me believe that her plan is innocent and doesn’t involve my destruction.

I’ll get to work flogging the magic cards tomorrow. Also need to find a way to do my company tax return. Apparently we need software now for such things. Everything is ranked against idiots like me who are ambitiously running companies at a loss.

Which reminds me – I badly need to get a quote in for a clearance job. I’ve been distracted recently. There are many ways out of the moneyhole. Even if my company isn’t making big profits yet, I’m paying myself and my friends properly. Maybe that’s enough.

And that’s the end of the R&D for now. Although it will continue to have a life. I’m hoping to remain attached. Creatively it is very fulfilling. I’ve loved working with good new writing forever. I’m aware that someone else was in the frame for these first few days. Have I done enough? Are they too busy or too sick? Watch this space kids…

I did a last minute replacement test reading for a film awhile ago where the me guy pulled out at short notice. He was already cast, and known to some of the actors – this was just a reading to tweak the script before filming. They’d done a short, got funding and extended it. He jumped ship quite suddenly, and a friend of a friend got muggins here in as happy temporary replacement.

One of the actresses expressed great affection and relief at the reading, performatively expressing how good I was in that part. It was clear she hoped I would be doing it henceforward. I get the sense the OG guy was tricky to work with… Too many men my age are, frankly. Even with As You Like It, it took a while before some members of the company could entirely trust that I wasn’t gonna start telling them how they are wrong about all the things. We are all very different from each other, but until we are massively known we are replaceable. Particularly when there are people like me with fast memories.

The film, they went back to OG, but I got good feedback from the casting director, which might count for something down the line. Casting directors have been my blind spot for too long. I hope the guy showed up and wasn’t a douche.

This script today and yesterday? Who knows what the life of it will be, I’m attached to it now in myself, but I’m realistic. I’ve sat in theatres with friends of mine many times before and they’ve said: “I was in the first R&D for that role,” as we’ve watched someone celebby remembering their way through it chunk by laborious chunk.

We worked through it with care and thought. Every single actor in that room was bringing something positive but different to the table. It felt a very zingy room. The writer was present and flexible throughout. The director was precise and measured and really knew his shit. I could happily spend weeks in that room safely, and the work would come out great across the board.

Still we take what we take. If this is it, this is it. If there’s more, there’s more. Good to be working. Good to be able to bring my decades of solving things to a lovely clever friendly room like that. I stopped worrying if I’m good at this shit long ago. I just do it when I can, but I know now that I need to get myself seen. If a tree falls in the forest etc. There’s not much imagination at the gates. If you’ve done it you’re allowed to do it more. Knock knock.

Even for a couple of days suddenly it is lovely to be back in what feels like a traditional rehearsal room. The writer and director present. A director! My lord the luxury of it! And we are doing table work on a new script. Examining the shape of it, digging into the purpose of the interactions, the rhythms. Haven’t had a director on the last job, and the last time I did some new writing I remember saying on day one: “I expect L will be looking at that bit before we hit performance,” to get “oh no, she’s already signed off on it now.”

I was actually a little nervous this morning. Messaged Lou going in. Just two days, but essentially a room full of strangers.

I mean … I met the director once some twenty years ago, at The Arcola. Can’t even remember why. I just remember who I was with at the time, and that it was my birthday and we got absolutely cunted and ended up underground at some kebab shop in Dalston with some geezer who was running an illicit dive bar. Obviously that’s not why I was there today.

The producer got me in at short notice on recommendation after they lost someone. They needed someone a bit like me so I can see why I passed muster. I showed up in a jacket with a Rolex and Gucci shoes just to help tease them towards the idea I’m good casting for this part. Because … this is just an R&D at this stage. A little bit of money changing hands but mostly just the opportunity to do our creative thing. But if we can make ourselves fit the part hopefully we can gain traction. Work breeds work etc… And fucking hell I’ve been doing this long enough that I really really wish it was easier to get in the room. But twas ever thus and I’m not by any means the only person wishing it.

For today and tomorrow I’m in the room. I can do the thing. And it is enervating and fun. One woman close to my age and carrying her long CV behind her, whatever that might be. I get the feeling she’s *done* things. Me. A young woman who is surely much better than I ever was at that age, and a sparky young Russian actor. It’s a four hander about many things – people and football and supermarkets and… Well, we are finding that out. It’s a lovely piece of writing. And it’s a powerful thing at this stage to examine it in the way we are. The director really knows this process. He’s so good at it, we can just lean into our craft and hit the ride.

Happy me. And tomorrow we don’t even start at 9 which was my only gripe as my first alarm went off at 5 this morning and I went to bed at ten last night. I won’t be much later to bed tonight frankly, but 6 feels much more like morning, and I can maybe even push it to half past considering I won’t need to shave again and I’m not due in Woolwich until 10. Plus there’s a car park there for a tenner the whole day, which makes it entirely commutable and infinitely preferable to fucking with the tube, Elizabeth line or no.

Today I drove down to the Isle of Grain. There’s a huge site there, vast, and filled with gas containers. Through this site, the bulk of the natural gas that we use in this country comes. They bring it in tankers from the gulf so I imagine things are about to be disrupted, but right now it is business as usual. I sign in and show my passport and go through induction. It is a bright morning.

When they take me across to the little room, they tell me about the nature on site. There are snakes and lizards. “Do you get big mushrooms on these lawns?” “Yes, sometimes.”

Just six adults and I’ve got them for two hours. Probably a bit too much talking here. Death by PowerPoint. These adults are volunteering for Grain, and often their contribution, while welcome, is not particularly helpful when we go with these workshops into classrooms. There’s nothing like an expert to kill the energy in a room full of children. So I was running a workshop for them just to slightly upskill their public speaking, to raise their confidence a bit. It’s pleasant work. The PowerPoint was a bit wordier than I would prefer. When I was on tour I was doing this work with a line of Shakespeare. You can find out a lot about someone by chucking a ball around with them and then getting them to breathe and speak in front of you. I kinda prefer to take the PowerPoint out entirely when dealing with adults. It’s a crutch.

I’ve been learning about gas from them. We still need it as we push towards net zero. These people care about the environment as best they can doing this work. They’re engineers pushing for solutions. I wonder if we’ve globally fucked it too badly now, but… we’ve gotta believe. Haven’t we? Warmest decade on record. Polar ice is going going going. Seas are cooking. Too much co2. None of the big players are behaving like they even slightly care.

Och well. I just had a hot bath with my combi boiler which I drained after soaking so Brian could run one of his own.  We’ve all got plenty of ways we could improve. One thing at a time. For now, workshops on and around net zero. Wouldn’t it be brilliant if we could make that happen. It takes infrastructural change and deeper understanding. I can help with the latter part I guess.