Month: November 2017

The clothes of mine that are not scattered all over my bedroom floor are either on the sofa in the living room, or on me. Everything is liberally dusted with cat hair be it clean or dirty. This is the reality when I’m busy daytimes and evenings too. If I were to meet someone tonight and sparks were to fly, I wouldn’t want her to come back here. I won’t meet anyone, thankfully, because time is not an abundant resource this week, plus I’m never looking. Hopefully I won’t get called on to dress smartly for an audition until after the weekend either. Although an audition is always nice.

I get home, throw food on while running a bath and writing this blog. 

Then I wash, put a hot water bottle in my bed, set my alarm and crash. But that’s day to day existence for a large chunk of the working population in this country, barring the ever present threat of dropping everything for an audition, the bath that takes 45 minutes to run, and the daily blog. I should get a cleaning lady but I’m kind to strangers. Plus I’m not exactly raking it in despite the hours.

I’m going to employ camomile tea as my sleepjuice tonight. It makes for a better sleep than twenty barrels of grog, and a better wake as well. I’m sure I could murder a firkin of ale, a Nebuchadnezzar of krug or even just a glass of plonk, but a cup of camomile tea with two bags (indulgence!) will help me survive the mindnumbing tedium of tomorrow’s day job.

Tomorrow I’m back invigilating exams. Students taking exams are marginally more interesting than drying paint, although there were times that I hankered for a good roller of Dulux Lunar Falls and a shaft of light. I forgot to bring in something to learn, which was a waste of six uneventful silent hours. Four 1.5 hour exams plus set up and turnaround. I’m a machine at it now.  It’ll never make me rich, but it makes the day money positive rather than money negative. I need as many days like that as I can to offset my social habits and bills and to keep me in camomile tea until Carol starts. Tomorrow will be long silent hours again but I’ll bring in Macbeth and arbitrarily learn one of the smaller characters, and one of the speeches I don’t know yet. That ought to at least keep me happy and let the time go by without me having to drop my eyes too much. I just have to remember not to say stuff out loud.

The beasties are pretty well squished despite the darkness. I just needed to bring them out in the open so I could see how stupid they look.

Now I want to sort my clothes out and make my flat what it can be. I want to instigate a thing whereby I try to make sure I make everything at home a little bit nicer by the end of the day than it is at the beginning. Otherwise it’s too easy to slip, and fall asleep, as I am about to, in a sea of hairy shirts.

 

 

I’m in my top hat, heading home from the press launch of Christmas Carol. It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas. Certainly in Broadgate, where they’ve built a Winter Forest out of Christmas trees and lights and bars and wood and those Christmas-yurts that we remember so well from our childhood. No reindeer though. In keeping with the times, they inform us with notes in the trees that for every tree used they are planting two. They also tell us how they’re using the woodchips once the the season is out – (they’re off to Whipsnade apparently). It’s very sustainably Christmassy. Although it all still feels a little early, to be honest.

I was on duty/not on duty this evening, essentially with no brief but the need to be present – be Scrooge at the press launch. The show is a two hander and Jack’s in Malaga. I solved it by giving out flyers in the guise of a concerned Ebenezer who has discovered that some dreadful vaudevillian is pantomiming him nearby, and that they need to burn out this charlatan- (pictured but not named) – and set the dogs on him. It mostly involved messing around in loose character based on who I was talking to, looking for ways to make them laugh, humbugging, freezing my tits off and wishing I was in Malaga. I had already established that I wouldn’t be prancing around in my nightie in this cold, but also that moment when I’m running around in my smalls is earned. I always run the risk of getting knifed or arrested, and without the context of a show it didn’t feel right. So it was unreformed Scrooge prancing around tonight, humbugging for warmth but still freezing.

The Winter Forest is at the back of Liverpool Street station, just by Broadgate Circus. It’s right in the heart of the City and it’s lovely. When I was at Guildhall we would walk around that area and it was a ghost town on the weekends. All these vast buildings with the lights on and nobody home. Empty desk after empty desk and then – just occasionally – one human in an empty office in some minor bank that you could spot through a window, lost amongst the desks, desperately trying to solve whatever problem they’d built before the endless microtasks and work-proofing kicks off again in the week.

I wonder how the Winter Forest will do on the weekends. We’ll bring some footfall. But not enough to fully fill that place with life. Maybe it’ll be just that one dissolutioned weekend worker who came in on a Saturday, commiserating with themself after rogue-trading another business into the dust, trying to decide if it’s worth popping down to the nearest bridge. Maybe the Christmas Carol audience will descend and be full of life and joy – as how can they be not? Maybe the trader will get swept up in their Christmas cheer and forget the fact that they contributed to ruining the economy by failing to understand the difference between a game and reality. Maybe. Or something. I don’t know. The power of stories etc. I keep doing this nonsense hoping people will be a little nicer in my wake.

I’ll be able to share a ticket link soon, to encourage my friends to come and play. I was going to do it now but they’re still getting all the stuff up and finalising their copy. Currently there’s still nothing online that mentions either Jack or I by name, so it’s pointless sharing. I’ll link you once that’s all fixed and we’re credited, so you can be secure it’s the right show, and I can be secure the reviewers actually know how to find out the cast.

It’s only when I stop for a little while that I remember why I drink in the first place. Humaning is painful stuff. I’ve been feeling the old sadness well up. The darkness falls. There’s less to see. The day is done. Outside it’s raining, inside it’s cold. All the little snickering beasties come crawling out of the cracks and point at me. “You can’t get the boiler fixed.” “Didn’t get that advert, did you?” “How’s your love-life?” “Wanna go skiing this year?” “Had any theatre auditions recently?”

The thing is, if I hadn’t been hammering myself and my bank account, these problems would be different. But there’d still be problems. The little pointing beasties would just have different shit to say. Because that’s the human condition. We can be restless souls. And we’re reared on stories, but we live in the actual world where stories don’t work. So some of us look for ways to take the edge off, or narrow the parameters. Things are simpler when you’re dumb. Magical dumb juice, magical dickhead powder, magical crazy pills, magical sleepy powder… There’s a roaring trade in this city for things that stop you being fully present. And I’ve been helping prop up the sales of that dumb-juice something chronic.

When I lose my voice, I never use anaesthetic drops or sprays – if you numb the pain you can start to tear your vocal folds and give yourself nodules. You have to work inside the parameters of your damage until you’re better. There’s always a voice to be found. I haven’t been numbing my voice, but the dumbing has been numbing my being. And likely damaging it acutely along the way.

It’s bloody hard to shut my head up though. I’m going to have to obsess about something or I’ll just go bananas. Yoga might be a good option, especially hot yoga at this time of year, as it involves using my body.

I’ll be busy for the next few months. The day-jobs are ticking over, and I’ve got two shows to think about so I’m not going to have much time to vanish up my own bum. But that also means I won’t have much time for the yoga. I’ll have to make time, and rinse a month’s cheap trial somewhere nearby, so that when I get to bed I’m exhausted. Right now I’ve got no sleep in me. I’m chewing my own arms off and drinking gallons of herbal tea despite knowing it won’t magically turn into a hot toddy. I’m fully aware that my alarm is set for six.

Thankfully this isn’t my first rodeo. I put the bath on when I started writing. I reckon that’ll do the trick. It’s ready now.

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Beautiful crisp winter day today. I spent the morning with great hearts and good friends thinking about ambition and witches. First run of Macbeth since broken ribbed Banquo staggered about in Wales. It feels really exciting. Lots of new players, lovely to find a new perspective on the play. Great to see so many new friends and old stepping into the unknown and flying.

Rather than numb myself with stupid-juice, all I really need to do is show the beasties the stuff they can’t see from their little cracks. There’s so much in my life that’s fantastic. Remarkable fulfilling deep friendships, exciting challenging work, beautiful things to look at, comfortable place to sleep.

Stupid narrow minded little beasties. *squish squish squish*

 

 

It’s quiet time for a few weeks. There’s been a bit too much party, and with Christmas Carol kicking off soon and December coming there’s a whole lot of party on the way. So the plan is to give my poor liver a break, eat well and get some exercise so I’m ready for a high energy show and post show every night without collapsing.

This evening I went home, refused all offers that involved going anywhere, cooked a two course meal for myself and lay on the sofa under a duvet with a cat on top for added warmth. I switched on iPlayer. Who needs a boiler? Cat heat is free. Time for Attenborough. Blue Planet 2.

David Attenborough is 91 years old now. Like the Queen, he has just … always been there. Unlike the Queen, he’s teaching us beautiful things and paying his taxes. I’m thrilled we still have him narrating these incredible documentaries. He must be thrilled to see how far technology has come since he first started making content like this in the 1950’s. His tones are all about wonder. It’s as if he’s just constantly astonished by life on earth, which I suspect is the case. It’s got him out of bed every morning for decades now, bringing images and thoughts about the diversity of nature right into our living rooms. You have to be made out of bricks not to be astonished by much of his content, and this latest show is a masterpiece. And I’m sure that his fully developed wide eyed sense of wonder is the thing that has kept him looking so alive and able to still talk to us from the prow of a boat.

War drives technology, yes. But profit drives technology too, and these shows sell, so they get a big budget to play with. They use it brilliantly, pushing the boundaries of submersible exploration and camera technology, boldly going where no-one has gone before, and bringing back videos.

In the course of two episodes I must have had my mind blown about 8 times. Bird-eating fish, transparent headed fish, fish at the bottom of the Mariana trench, surfing dolphins, walrus-fights, volcanic life generating stack things… It’s remarkable watching. Particularly if you just want to zone out and let that familiar voice carry you through endless wonders. Yes there’s also an environmental message, but as you’d expect from Attenborough it’s done gently. He just shows you things and tells you we’ve done it, and plays a bit of inauspicious sounding music.

He likes his comparisons. “Energy of ten thousand nuclear bombs”, “pressure equivalent of 50 jumbo jets.” But he’s 91. It’s better he’s making these eccentric comparisons than getting handsy with the intern.

What a remarkable life he must have led. After that double dose of wonder, I’m going to make a hot water bottle and curl up ahead of a ten a.m run through of Macbeth tomorrow. I expect I’ll dream of traveling round the world with Attenborough. Screw being The Queen. David Attenborough has the best job in the world.

Last night there was a big fireworks display in Battersea Park. It’s always beautiful, and my flat is a warm place from which to enjoy the light show. Usually. Right now it isn’t a warm place because the boiler’s fucked. But you still get a good view. I was looking forward to it until I got a call asking me to work a last minute shift. And since I can’t say no, I ended up working with a hangover, while the fireworks happened for other people in my flat. They even sent me photographs.

This evening I was determined – fireworks or bust. Turns out Flavia is going to be shooting things off her roof at six. Perfect. I can satisfy my pyromaniac tendencies and hang out with a good friend at the same time. So all I need is something to bring to the party…

NOWHERE IN CHELSEA SELLS ROCKETS.

Everywhere else in the country there are spots that are temporarily shut, and a shop pops up selling fireworks, befitting the landlord and the concession. There are lots of shut shops in Chelsea, mostly from businesses that can’t carry on because of the rent these arseholes think is appropriate. The landlords on the King’s Road, the same greedy bastards that destroyed the whole idea of the King’s Road by driving up prices until it’s only tenable if you’re a characterless chain store… there’s no way they’re letting a fireworks shop pop up. They even killed The Chelsea Kitchen. Fuckwits. They’ve neutered Chelsea. Idiots in suits murdered this borough 20 years ago. It won’t be cool again in my lifetime, despite the fact that I live here. It’ll take that long for the idiots to die. And all I want is a rocket…

As it turns out though, my neighbour is going to Harrods. He’s brilliant, successful, young and optimistic. But he’s labouring under a misapprehension. Harrods sells everything, surely? That’s why it’s Harrods. He certainly trusts it. What I wouldn’t give to be so uncomplicated.

We have a friendship now, me and this guy that thinks Harrods is a legitimate retail outlet. He’s going anyway to get cheeses so I join him in his black cab. A long time since I’ve taken a black cab. I like him. I want to find a rocket with him and both of us to feel like we’ve won.

We arrive at Harrods – the everything store. I’m there for fireworks. I know already that it’ll be absurdly expensive, but I ask the guard where the fireworks are. I just want a rocket. “We don’t have any fireworks.” Says the guard. Then he adds “Try Sainsbury’s.” and he manages to do it with the curve that implies somehow that Harrods wins the moral high ground by not having fireworks.

Harrods doesn’t stock fireworks??!! What is the point of marketing yourself as the everything store, charging 17 times the value for everything, making yourself a tourist destination, and not stocking bloody fireworks on the fifth of November in London??! Grrrrrr. A little more faith slips away… (The Sainsbury’s recommended by the dude didn’t have them either, but Harrods? Is the fantasy not that you can get anything?)

 I went to Flavia’s place empty of gunpowder. I had myself. That’s enough bang for anybody. We fired off some lovely things, we drank much wine, all was well. If I’d found a rocket, then we’d have had a rocket. But as it is we had companionship. And that was enough.

Seriously people, don’t drink three pints of beer and then a whole bottle of red wine. If you do, for God’s sake don’t chase it with multiple strong gin and tonics. I have it on good authority that someone who did that on a Friday night would likely spend most of Saturday lying in different places making noises like a zombie, and openly wishing he was dead.

Things haven’t quite been working out today in terms of successfully being human. Brian cooked me the frozen pizza that’s been there for months because I just … I just couldn’t. It was rancid. I couldn’t eat it. I fed myself haribo instead because I needed sugar. That was my lunch. Then I put on my three piece. It’s really tight on me suddenly. Too much gin and haribo, not enough yoga. Concrete proof I need to get back to exercise or Christmas Carol is going to kill me. Depressing.

Popping buttons I dragged my vast corpulent frame down the stairs, pausing to wipe the sweat from my brow with a drenched handkerchief, panting like a dog. Vases rattled on the shelves at my footsteps. Gargling frogs I poured myself into my car and piloted the damn thing to Elephant and Castle. No amount of extra weight, no terrible zombie hangover, no lack of desire to do anything whatsoever – nothing was going to stop me meeting Mel, Shama and CJ to discuss what we want to make.

We are applying for a grant to make experimental theatre. It’s a strong group but we are all either busy or hungover or both which makes thinking a little harder. But I think we might have something cooking. I’m not sure what it is yet but it’ll probably involve sex, time, death and technology. There’ll be a story involved somewhere. It’ll be fun and mad.

While I waited for them to arrive, a man walked into the foyer wearing a t-shirt for The Odyssey that we did with The Factory five years ago at Blackwell’s Bookshop in Oxford. Considering we were brainstorming experimental theatre I consider that to be hugely auspicious. It was an experiment in chutzpah. Mostly improvised but with short scenes that could be used as anchors, a physical language of tableaus, beautiful percussive and harmonic songs, simple storytelling complicated by having interference run on it in the form of tasks to make it a joyful nightmare to perform. Some moments of unrepeatable beauty and convergence. Some moments of jazzing a wrong note into a right note. Some flat out horrorshow moments. It’ll always be significant in my memory as the show that put all other pre-show nerve states into perspective. The utter unpredictability was terrifying but also like adrenaline-crack.

“Did you see it?” I asked him, thrilled. “Hell yeah, I fucking loved it. It’s why I bought the shirt. Did you?” “I was in it mate.” A moment. We take it where we can get it. I got his photo.

I didn’t get his permission. I probably should have. Hopefully he’ll be okay. Notice the obligatory hatstand. We were in Southwark Playhouse. Hatstands congregate in theatres.

If we can get this rushed first round application filled in and sent off by Monday I reckon the four of us between us have so much experience of joyful random nonsense over the years that – who knows, maybe in 5 years there’ll be another guy in another t-shirt from whatever show we end up making…

Meanwhile I have to sleep. Oh my head. God bless us, every one.