AlBarclay

My brain is absolutely fried.

Over the last month or so I must have received some thirty emails with information regarding things like how DNS works and bits and bobs about artificial intelligence and the nuts and bolts of tech we mostly take for granted as consumers. All this stuff has a structure to it, of course it does. It’s easy to take it for granted or think weirdly about it. We do that with everything. There are things we have no hand in that we try to understand – sunset, climate, tide, wind, clouds, albedo, space. People still believe all sorts of fanciful nonsense about them despite thousands of years and generations of people building on previous generations of painstaking scientific understanding. But… when it comes down to it, we don’t really understand anything very much. Even if we’ve made it ourselves.

How do the taps make drinking water? How does the battery work? How does the fridge cool? How does the pen write? How does an engine actually fit together? Each one of us, if we were locked in a garage with everything we needed to make a working car and given a month? Not many of us would have a working car at the end of that month. Or fridge or oven. Maybe a pen. But… we are a clever lot when we put our minds to it. And we’ve made technology the likes of which were dreams when I was a kid.

These emails have been full of information breaking these things down. Slide decks putting these things across.

I have to teach people something I only started to understand at about 3pm today to a load of sixteen year olds. Tomorrow morning.

It’ll be fine, of course it will be. But I’m feeling a bit fried now.

On a side note, someone interesting tried to flog me a course on enhancing my offering in a workshop context, and improving the marketing side of it. He did it on zoom this morning. It’s the usual pitch: Pay me loads and it’ll pay you back down the line. I know from friends of mine that sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn’t and the payback is determined by the work you put into getting the payback. Some of these motivational people are connected to communities. Sometimes it’s just someone like me trying to make a crust. I don’t need anyone to pat me on the head so I’ve got to determine if shelling out for this guy will make me enough money down the line, and crucially – do I have the time to make it work?

Well, tomorrow and the next day I’ll be making money from workshops anyway. I’ve done a lot of that over the years. In science as well as Shakespeare. I’ve got a skillset, that’s certain.

But I want to be acting God dammit all to hell and back. Not telling people how routers work.

It’s all part of the tapestry. Today would have been my first day on set for the most recent audition that I was hopeful about.

I enjoy the whole process of the Halloween Walk. Getting together with friends on days like this. Now I’m better at not drinking I can enjoy being on the heath and in the pubs without either overspending on those pretty gakky tasting non alcoholic alternatives to beer, or feeling strangely anxious.

We met at The Freemasons Arms on Downshire Road. That’s where we’ll start this year. Siwan has nailed the route down and it’s a figure of eight taking in some lovely places we don’t normally get to. It’s a good walk of an evening even without the spooky actors. It’s so good that now there’s some rip off merchant using our name and paying for internet presence to get hits above us. I’ve had the misfortune to get stuck behind them last year, they were going the same way as us, their group stood there looking bored and occasionally glancing up the hill to our group where people were enjoying themselves. You can know everything in the world but if you can only project your voice in a throat constricted monotone you’ll lose people.

Siwan brought me a bag of non alcoholic Heineken. She lives near Emirates stadium so she has been known to flog cool beer out of her front door on Arsenal match days. We’re an enterprising lot. She realised the non alcoholic stuff doesn’t sell in anything like the quantity she thought it would. Very kindly she donated some of the overspill to the Al Barclay sugar craving society.

We walked around for 2 hours. It was a good two hours. We covered a lot of ground and I certainly have a better idea about what to build now. Although I’ll have to get a replacement for some of it as the lovely Meisner lot are going to bring that piece back in October and I want to be available for them if at all possible.

It’s always good to have to juggle things even if they’re things we made for ourselves to keep ticking over. I’ve been asked “So what’s next?” so many times in the last few weeks. They should train people at birth not to do that to actors. “If it was good, you’d probably already know about it.”

Although I’ve got a Factory show on Thursday. That’ll be a delight as ever. Second crack at Caius Lucius so now I will be less in survival mode and more in forward motion.

That was a lovely trip to Oxford. 30 years of Creation Theatre.

Lucy and Charlie from Creation were extraordinary champions of mine for years. I was Cyclops in the improvised Odyssey they did co-pro with The Factory years ago. It was a glory. They wanted me back.

Lucy used to call me in for auditions regularly. The Welsh Centre near Kings Cross. Nearly always CC running the audition who wanted two contrasting monologues and never offered redirection during the audition. I applaud Lucy and Charlie for persisting. I think I auditioned 5 times for CC with nary a recall at the end of it and not even a moment of redirection or a note to play.

I diligently prepared different monologues for each of the auditions and until the final one I held it in that I felt she wasn’t even considering me. She used to assist TC and he has a very specific verse requirement. “Do you need me to do TC verse?” I asked her in my first meeting. “I think verse is important,” she gnomically replied. So I did TC verse. We had the same exchange time two and time three with the same result. I will gladly play the house rules but I need to know what they are.

Final audition with her I remember greeting her familiarly and saying right at the start: “Is there any real point in my being here? After all we’ve been here before. Many times.” I do that sort of thing more often than I should. It’s the legacy of growing up with Max. Clarify everything. At the time there was an uncomfortable moment and then her mouth said the words “Absolutely. Of course. Of course.”

So… I remember my first speech was “This is the excellent foppery of the world,” because it isn’t my casting but it is my voice. No redirection. No notes. As forever. No conversation. It isn’t an audition in my opinion if you don’t establish if you can work with someone. Perhaps she just … knows exactly what and who she wants and it isn’t me… But I digress. I’m not here to pick holes in someone who was a gatekeeper in my early career and I’m sure is lovely and loved. It’s always funny when you know someone doesn’t like you and there’s nothing you can do about it. I’m obfuscating the name. This industry…

I went to Oxford today and saw a wonderful Midsummer Night’s Dream. Lucy and Charlie and co aren’t running Creation now, it’s Helen. Lovely Helen, who I’ve known through many friends. Claire and Jon and Simon principally.

Despite annoying auditions I’ve been up to Creation a fair amount over the years, with Wind in the Willows, with The Tempest. Zoe Seaton totally understood me, and that was courtesy of Lucy and Charlie. If I hadn’t done The Tempest, I wouldn’t have done it again in lockdown on zoom with a tinfoil hat and a snake, and I wouldn’t have encountered Lou who is the single best thing to have happened to me this decade.

Midsummer Nights Dream was wonderful tonight. They are doing it in rep with Twelfth Night and they’re a good focussed clever passionate and talented company.

I bought myself a tea towel and a programme. I’m not made of money. If you are, go on their website (above). They need money to survive. They are doing great things. I had a wonderful evening with important and loved old friends.

It took me far too long to work out why I kept on getting up and walking into the kitchen. I would open the fridge and look in it, then close it wondering what I was looking for, then open again a few minutes later, then close it. It’s odd because last night I squatted in a bin for half an hour and then ordered a non-alcoholic Guinness and then went home on a broken Lime Scooter that nearly killed me before making me drop it off in Scotland and then walk home. At no point last night did I question my desire not to have any booze through all that. And then this evening, starting about 5pm, I took ages to realise that my fridge trips were that bit of my brain that wants it all to go away, looking for a wee drop of forgetting. As soon as I flushed it out into the open I could trap it in a mug of chamomile tea. And I did. And it was yummy. The chamomile flowers survived the kitchen purge. There’s loads of booze in the house, but I gave the white wine to Max when he came round so it ain’t there in the fridge rolling around on a hot night looking refreshing.

I’ve been having a bit of a wobble, but I took care of myself through it and acted on all the things I felt I needed to act on. Grown up response to mental health fuckery. We all need to take care of ourselves sometimes. I cancelled my work plans as they were just me working for me. I went and sat in Chelsea Physic Garden until I felt better about the world. That’s what it’s for, that garden, and it’s on my doorstep and I pay annually for it.

I overheard a tour guide saying how the garden used to be accessible by boat, and realised that the river would have originally come right up to my doorstep. I pottered about looking at plants. The sun was beautiful. I told you it would be a proper summer. Didn’t quite anticipate HOW proper.

A quiet day really just being slow and taking care. I carried some stuff up to the attic with Brian, sent an invoice , stroked the hot cats, and made a difficult phone call that’s very important to a great big fucking non acting job I’ve been building up to for over a year that’ll happen in early August…

A great deal happened to us all tonight over the course of Cymbeline, but sadly it will always just stay in my memory as “the show where I got in the bin at the end”.

We were at Bold and finally someone had suggested that I make my Frenchman French sounding. It’s not the sort of thing you’re supposed to be doing generally, accents and all that are a bit too acting. But occasionally you get a free pass. 

Someone said tonight: “You’re basically just doing Meisner Shakespeare,” which I thought was interesting in the context of what I’ve already been doing this month. I see where they’re coming from in that we are looking at each other and listening to each other and responding authentically. So I tried to do all that with the obstacle of bad English. Trying to overcome an accent that happens when you aren’t focusing is often the best way of doing an accent. So I did my best attempt at a Frenchman trying to be English. While listening and Shakespeareing. Oh and posing on some sort of pedestal. If I’d been able to find a moustache I’d have gone there folks. This was the sort of night I was having.

Frenchman done it was time to go to Soothsayer. And that led to the bin. That’s not Meisner. That’s Al Barclay. Ugh. Bin. Why?

I had considered and dismissed it a couple of times. Great big fucking wheelie bin. But the moment came and I had people to help me get in and one of the three was mostly empty and had clearly recently been powerwashed. It just had a trolley in it. I think it was a utility bin. I got in, with some help. It was tall. Came crawling out as The Soothsayer in the last scene trying to channel the girl in The Ring. Someone had to? Nah. I had to? Hmm. Yeah. Because I’m a fool? Well… Now you come to mention it…

I got in the bin way too early.

So then I’m listening to all the resolution in the last scene and it’s been a hot day. Evening now but still… Clean in there thank god. No pong, but … boiling. I was keeping it open to a breeze as best I could but the lid was heavy and I was squatting. Good for my core strength. My Soothsayer also had an improvised hot cape from some artificial fiber blanket. So I’m squatted down in this bin so I don’t touch the sides, with a boiling sweatwet cape wrapped round me, sous vide in my own juices. All for an entrance. That’s showbiz folks!

After a while I realised I’d been squatting so long that if I were to pop up and start doing long iambic pentameter speeches I’d get a headrush from all the blood going back into my legs. That happened to me once in Oxford. I thought I was going to pass out then, but knew the part well enough that my robot mouth said something while my entire focus shifted to not blacking out. That was 2013. I’ve learnt now, so I started to ease out one leg and then the other, yoga stretching without touching the sides of the bin, keeping my breath steady and my blood flowing. Friday night Elephant and castle binyoga

Outside my binhome people were speaking great verse, listening to each other, responding. The yoga made me momentarily flatulent.

By the time I was ready to pop out and make my entrance I was sweating like a dog and uncomfortable and angry with myself for getting in the bin in the first place. And you can show that paragraph to your nephew who wants to be an actor and tell him: “This guy is doing quite well in the industry”.

My Soothsayer had already established himself as an outsider though. I had been wandering around in scenes hissing at people. He was an angry dodgy vagrant. Coming out of a bin was in keeping with what I’d made of him, which is why I figured I could make sense of getting in in the first place.

So I came out of the bin screaming. Half horror half relief. Al, you’re an idiot. I crawled out, across the top of the next bin, eyeballed the audience Jono and I finished the play.

That’s my bit for bins and the arts this week. I’ll let the people of Clacton do some now. Bins for the wins.

Summer has brought the offspring of horny moths that got into some rice. Without my thinking about it we were storing dry food above the plates in a nice hot dark cupboard. Unfortunately Maddy is a bit sick and she pulled a plate out to eat some “chips” and then realised there was extra protein. We are talking 5 of them and they are about 3 millimeters at largest. It isn’t The Creature from the Black Lagoon here, but it’s still something that needs to be dealt with. My head was full of facts though, preparing for my evening job. I wasn’t the most helpful. I’ve always been in the habit of putting mugs in the cupboard upside down so you don’t get dead spiders in your tea. That never happens in this flat, we are too elevated and towny. But at this time of year it’s no surprise to see nature happening. You just don’t want it happening on your plate.

I went out for lunch, let some Italians cook for me at a little café I really like on Battersea Park Road. There’s 2 hour free parking next to it and it does good pasta. Battersea Brothers. I had lunch with an old friend, we used to share an agent.

I’ve been trying to fob off a massage table on everyone I meet at the moment. It’s a bit fucked but serviceable still and if you’re handy and can be bothered you can fix it up nicely. It folds down and is currently sitting in Bergman but I’m not gonna take it up to the attic: it’s friend or bin. I’ve got to move well on reducing my bollocks footprint, because I’m about to end up with a whole lot more. So yeah, you want a massage table in London or Brighton I’ll drive it to you.

Meantime this evening I got myself into The Globe again, upstairs in The Balcony Room. I love it there and told them as much. It was a lot of people connected to Barclays Bank. “They put a worldwide shout out for actors with genuine  Shakespeare chops and the surname Barclay, and I’m the best they could do. My name is Al Barclay, and I’m here to tell you a little bit about how this incredible theatre came to be here.” It’s cheap but it got a laugh. The delivery, of course, of course.

They were a nice lot, but behind me stood one of those robots that mimic people with camerafaces. That’s for the tech demo and I was concerned that it was scraping me. I think I’ll be dead before stage actors start losing their jobs to robots but they’ve already come for the voiceover artists. I didn’t like it.

But I’m home now. Tomorrow we will set fire to everything in the kitchen and then bury the ashes in lime thousands of feet below the earth in a warzone. That’ll hopefully deal with those moth larvae once and for all.

My friend had an idea this morning and she took me along for the ride.

She’s gone down a rabbit hole of User Generated Content. This is the logical next step from all the empty-headed fuckwits calling themselves “influencers”. Businesses have started to cotton onto the fact that influencers are pretty much universally atrocious human beings. Morally bankrupt attention sucking vacuous mincing ego machines. “Give me free stuff, I’m a disgusting person and I want to show my drone army your thing.”

But… Online user generated adverts are how businesses thrive these days. If you’re an asshole running a business pretty soon everyone knows you’re an asshole. The same if you’ve got something great. Word of mouth travels online. You have to hide being an asshole and pretend to be nice to people or you’ll be hounded in user reviews. But the people saying you’re an asshole aren’t going to be ShinyStarxxx with their million followers. They’ll only attack you if you don’t let them have all the free stuff. The people doing the real reviews – they’re us, the users. (And occasionally politically mobilised mobs, like with the London pub that chucked out Hatey Slopkins.)

So … the next wave is perhaps businesses reaching out to people who are in their target demographic and getting them to make videos about their thing. Or, in most cases, people reaching out to businesses: “Can I stay in your hotel? Here’s a load of lovely videos I’ve taken of other people’s hotels.”

It’s a quest for authenticity. It might find some authenticity for a short while along the road to eventual inevitable total corruption.

If it’s a bubble, sure it’s gonna burst, but maybe for a while people like my friend can have a nice quality of life taking photos and videos of nice places and then recommending them to other people. After all, if you don’t know it’s there and it’s great, you don’t want to go there cos you don’t know it’s there. These user videos show you IT’S THERE! AND I THINK IT’S GREAT. People who are curious might click on them. “Here’s a person doing the thing!” I’ve got a picture on Google of a bucket of crayfish in Arkansas that’s been seen almost 50 thousand times. They keep emailing me about it. It took me half an hour to work my way through that bucket of crayfish, but… it keeps on giving. Hey maybe I could try to get a free bucket of crayfish from a rival restaurant!

Whether the economy of it works or not in the long run, or even the short run, we went for a free swim today and it was brilliant to try and frame it as “work”. That way we can’t feel too guilty for this work of a Tuesday.

We just walked confidently past everyone, quietly got into the lift and grabbed some towels. Had anyone stopped us my friend was going to try the “I’m making content, here’s my site” routine.

I didn’t hold up much hope that “I’m making content” would hold water, but we didn’t need to try it. We got in. It was glorious. And we got some lovely videos of it which we can now put on various socials. And then we can say to other businesses with rooftop pools : “Hi, I take nice videos of rooftop pools and I’ve got loads of followers. Can I have a free swim please?” Which only works if you’ve got loads of followers. But you can probably buy 10000 obvious bots for less than the price of a swim these days.

It was perfect today. Absolutely perfect. It really wasn’t very crowded, at one point it was just me in the water and not because I’d been farting. We would have stayed a few hours longer if there had been drinking water available. To have access to all that flowing swimming water, not chlorinated, much more classy than that – probably Baquacil: it couldn’t have been better.

An infinity pool, walking distance from my flat. With some incredible views. I’m not naming it because this isn’t what this blog is for, but there it sits overlooking the nipples of that dead cow by Gilbert-Scott. I might edit together a nice video of me swimming around and stick it on my insta with some soulcrushingly predictable music choice underscoring it. The Rayban Metas got a proper workout – hell of a way to take a camera swimming. I’ve now got enough phone memory to support them so I might actually end up doing more stuff like this. If it works out, it’s peak lifestyle blag and fits with the way the world actually works. “I have already done the nice thing. This means you are more likely to let me do the nice thing. Because only if one hath done the thing is one allowéd to do the thing without obstruction, lo for it hath been decreed.”

Most of the videos I took, I was unable to resist narrating them in an exaggerated Valley accent “ermagerd that’s like where they kept all the power for London^ for like hundreds^ of years^” type stuff. But it means the sound is basically no good cos I can’t keep my mouth shut. It amused me at the time. I might edit some of that together too. A PROJECT, A PROJECT! And a lovely lovely swim on a hot day.

Happy Al, back at home in my hot room, two cats scrambling for attention.

I think the dishwasher has packed up but that’s a thing for tomorrow. The sink is full of plates. I didn’t eat at home tonight though.

Sometimes when we do these events at The UnderGlobe they put the clients in the same room as we are. Usually they stay until just before dinner and then go and sit in the main space in enough time for the two of us to drop our pants, run lines and make plans for gags based on the theme. Just occasionally they set up shop in there with us, which limits what we can do. They did it this evening. Thankfully they weren’t the highly strung versions. They were lovely.

It was hot as hell in costume but by the time we got to performance, Joanna and I were comfortable enough with the clients that we were sitting there with our costumes undone in the breaks trying to get the air onto our underwear. Mic or no mic it is hard work playing a space like that even when it isn’t roasting.

Joanna did sterling work for her first time. She was getting all sorts of “advice” from me. “Because you’re on mic, they can’t necessarily locate you as a speaker so find reasons to make broader gestures than you might normally, to draw the eye,” “Keep moving constantly while you’re talking – you’re always going to have your back to someone.” She dealt with a difficult learn and an unhelpful performance space admirably. Also it was much later than usual owing to things outside our control. She rolled with it. Fair enough… I’ve been working that space on and off for 24 years now. I still haven’t had a sniff of the one above it, and were I to ever audition for it I wouldn’t mention this work. But we keep our integrity.

We were fed too. Aubergine and melon thing. Chicken. Rhubarb fool. I managed not to drop any of it on my ruff. Doing this new material with another actor helped me realise how tight it all is. It works. Likely we will add another one before long but this one is a good one, built out of necessity when a client asked for “As You Like It and Sonnets”. Now we have it in our back pockets. And another lovely night’s work. Medical professionals, I’m told. I’ll be back there on Wednesday.

I finally bit the bullet and got myself a reconstituted phone. The old one was held together with hope. Nothing worked anymore but the final straw was not the low battery life or the fucked camera. The charging port. Planned redundancy, effectively. It just started pushing out all chargers and refusing to take charge from all but the best.

So today I’ve spent ages downloading everything and transferring everything across. Most recently I’ve had to set up my Google keyboard, but it doesn’t remember me so well now. What used to be a very swift writing experience is slightly more stuttered now as I have to teach it words like “stuttered” and encourage it to understand that I’m much more likely to be swearing than talking about ducks, much more likely to be intentionally ungrammatical than to be point perfect.

The heat is oppressive. I’m enjoying it but haven’t been inspired to take advantage of it in the outside place. I’ve been doing tech. Brian and Maddy are watching The Wire and they’re way ahead of me. Maddy has mostly slept today after a mangly Pride. I’m proud of her, she still has all her makeup on. Apparently she was singing to Brian in the small hours. She was fast asleep when Simon came over looking for costume. I found him a good quality gown for his preacher. I have no idea where the surplice ended up. I might find it. Got a bit of time and tomorrow morning I’m gonna start the ball rolling that ends up with Armadillo Canterbury no longer coming for my life blood once a month just try keep hold of a load of weird clothes. The unit must be empty and closed next week next week next week.

Oh the joy.

For tonight I’ll likely have a cold shower and then mess around with setting up this new phone with all the apps I didn’t have space for on the old one. I’m tempted to try one of those AI home makeover tools so I can think about what kind of carpet I get but honestly there’s no substitute for just doing it and AI is bollocks, let’s face it. It is being absolutely rammed down our throats now and sure its a useful tool but the era of AI first, AI everything… It’s a flash in the pan. And we are blistering the world for that flash.

A case arrives tomorrow. This phone has a stylus. I will never use it. But the camera works. I zoomed in on Buddha over the river…

Enough. I’m home. Things have quietly been stacking up in my absence. I have an ungodly amount of emails to work through about a dayjob that I might have to cancel at last minute as it clashes with some potential filming. Still I’ll have to do all the prep and proceed as if it doesn’t go my way. Also some of my usual shenanigans coming up in the next few days. Ffion is on holiday so Joanna and I are doing The Globe on Monday. My head is full and I’m gonna need Sunday to take everything out, organise it, and put it back in again. Factory show next week too and a talk. Nothing too stressful though.

For tonight though I’m not putting any pressure on myself to do anything other than eat. I’ve put chicken kyiv and a jacket potato into the oven. This evening it’ll be the nineteen eighties. I’ve just downloaded some absolute dross by Raymond Feist onto my kindle and I’m gonna get lost in a pair of worlds I haven’t encountered this millennium. I last read this book so long ago I can remember nothing about it but the names of some of the characters.

The drive back from Brighton was mercifully quick which is excellent as I’m done with driving for a bit. A job just came up for tomorrow picking up in Devon and going towards Bristol but I sacked it off because it is time not to do that for at least a few days now. Bergie can have a rest.

Before this month is out though I’m gonna need to get that fucking unit empty. I’m gonna give two weeks notice on Monday and then just work to that. It is taking the skin off my back.. There has to be a better way of having nice costumes. I will find it.

Right, time to get my face full of hot garlicky chicken and my head full of bold deeds of magic and daring from Mara and Pug and co courtesy of mister Feist. I believe he is in his eighties now and just published a new one. Good on him. From memory they are big books that roll along extremely quickly and require very little concentration. Exactly what the doctor ordered on these hot evenings.