Month: January 2018

Someone emailed me yesterday asking me to work for free. This happens more frequently than you would credit in my industry. Sometimes I dismiss it immediately – usually when it’s evident that loads of money is being spent on production and they’ve just gone “ahh we can save by not paying the actors.” This time I haven’t said yes yet, but I haven’t said no yet either. It’s a very short time commitment. I might enjoy myself. All those treacherous little thoughts are swimming through my head.

I like my work. It’s a craft I’ve spent a lot of time and money honing, and for which I have made some quite significant sacrifices and life-choices. But there are plumbers out there that could likely say the same thing. Dean who fixed my boiler was learning on the job. He was enjoying his work, despite running into difficulty. He got shot with adrenaline when he overcame the problem, and he drove home smiling and probably about £700 richer. If I’d put an ad up saying I couldn’t pay but it would be a great opportunity to fix an interesting boiler, with as much coffee as you want and a friendly cat… well, at best I’d still be cold and at worst some idiot would’ve blown my flat up. Just because I like my work, it doesn’t follow that I am therefore happy to do it for nothing – (or in these circumstances, technically I’d be paying to work, factoring in tube fares etc.)

And yet, I haven’t said “no” yet. What’s that about?

Let’s look at my history here. I did an unpaid gig in a pub theatre. I didn’t even like the script and I still did it. The journalists didn’t like the script either. More harm than good. But then I frequently volunteer for Scene and Heard. I help kids grow in confidence and I make good friends, and have fun being moles and bacteria and travel-cups. More good than harm. I accept an unpaid film and die ridiculously in a council block fire escape, killed by a terrible werewolf. I get soaked and ruin a shirt I love. The footage is never edited and the director vanishes. One day maybe it’ll show up on a clip show. “Do you remember doing THIS?” *facepalm* But then I do a short for a quid and it leads to good exposure and good friendships, and money down the line…

I’m going to sleep on it. And then I think I’m going to say “no”. She’s a young director, she’s not profiting, I’d like to help her out. It won’t be a huge amount of time. But there’s no point working if you’re not 100% sold, as my reputation stands on every choice I make. And now I take the time to write about it I realise that I’m not sold on the script either. It’s a single joke stretched into ten minutes, and it’s very much on the nose.

All that aside, I told myself I wouldn’t work for free outside of Scene and Heard and, circumstantially, The Factory, who have often been able to pay me and have always paid in challenge, love and friendship.

And yet still I’ll sleep on it. And then tomorrow like a sucker I’ll wake up all optimistic and say “Yes yes I’ll do it! I’m helpful Al! Hooray for helpful Al.”.

Punch me if I do.

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Time passage

(I hung out with Ivo as per the photo.) I said no. But it was hard. Everything seemed predicated against me writing  tonight. All my WordPress apps crashed repeatedly. Done now. Sleep…

Back when I worked on the boats, at this time of year there would be a huge number of Christmas trees floating in the river. I’d have to keep an eye out as they could foul the engines. Hilarious to throw them in the river if you’re a drunk idiot, bothersome as hell to navigate around them if you’ve got a twin engined RIB.

This time of year was my best time of work on those boats, because it’s bloody freezing. I’d get home sometimes and lie in a hot bath for hours, topping up all the time yet still shivering if I got out. Most of the guides were mysteriously unavailable in the cold months so weirdly I got more hours than in sunny times. I didn’t care. I was happy to enthusiastically freeze for money. I wanted to earn. Plus I loved working that river. There’s plenty to see. The skies are amazing. The tides are so huge that there’s always something sucked into the mix. I saw all sorts floating in there. Dead rats. Doors. Balloons. Footballs. Chemical toilets. Empty fuel cans. Stuffed toys. Inflatable sheep. Huge planks. Scum. Loads of buoys… I used to haul buoys out all the time. Thankfully no dead bodies although many of my colleagues had seen them. There’s a community among Thames workers. I still think about how I loved that job. But… Personalities…

The way in which Christmas trees are dumped is a good illustration of how many people are encouraged to go blithely from festival to festival and lose the periods in between to thankless repetitive work. They cost a load of money. They feel like an important thing to have. Then as soon as the season is over we have to throw them away because of Twelfth Night.

And immediately the big supermarkets start hammering out Easter eggs in special deals. “Forget the periods in between, serf. Just work. Easter is coming! Buy chocolate and dream of your Easter bank holiday. Earn money! Swallow your pride! Buy chocolate things or whatever else we say you want, I dunno a pet rabbit? Rabbits are Easter! Buy stuff! Buy! Plus don’t forget Valentine’s Day! Make sure you can afford a big meal or some jewellery or something – anything – as long as it’s a little bit out of your budget otherwise you don’t love the person you say you love. Singles? We’ve got you covered! Horrible uncomfortable first date experiences!! Have a big mouth coming at you after a dull conversation! Just let it happen! Everyone else compromises! Compromise! Compromise!!”

I’ve got my nephew staying. He got a megabus from Aberdeen and then skateboarded from the coach station and arrived before I was awake, at about 6.50am. He’s 21. He went immediately this morning to the iconic skate park on the south bank, snapped his board, made some friends, replaced his snapped board cheaply, and got back to it. He came all the way down here in order to see the first ever large scale Jean-Michel Basquiat exhibition in the UK.

It’s brilliant to spend time with someone from my own family who prioritises things that other people don’t. Yes, come to London to see an art exhibition, and then spend all your money immediately on a new skateboard! Both of those things are a better long-term investment than a Christmas tree.

Maybe this is what growing up means. Spending one thousand pounds on fixing a boiler, instead of buying an Oculus Rift. God. A thousand quid. Now I’m sitting in my flat and the ambient temperature is pleasant. Pickle is happily roving rather than finding a soft bit near a heater and camping out. I have nothing flashy to show for my money but Brian, Mel, Pickle and I will be warm, and maybe this will help me to deal with this worrying cough that I’ve started developing.

It has been a long time coming, this fix. Almost a year. Now my flat is not an apology-zone. Although my bedroom still needs some work. But everyone works better when they aren’t freezing. It’s time to turn my room into a sanctuary for Al, where I can collapse into something that makes me smile. That’s the next step. Homemaking.

Dean the plumber came round in the morning. Brian and Mel let him in as I was out early, day-jobbing for peanuts. Dean had been working for about 4 hours by the time I got in at lunchtime, and he was looking very low status. I like Dean the plumber, and I trust his integrity, but he was ducking and diving physically when I got home, making brief eye contact, evasive. He had been running into multiple obstacles. It was a bigger job than he’d anticipated. He was worried he wouldn’t get it working.

He asked me almost immediately: “Did the heating ever work in this flat?” “Yes, mate. It worked for years. I had Australians living here. They used to turn it into a sauna.” Brian helped me remember that, having paid Dean Christmas, I needed to get my money’s worth. This job needed to be finished. He wasn’t going to have to work half as hard as I did in December, but being compassionate to his lack of understanding was not going to help get the job finished. He’d been paid handsomely to do it. I needed to see it done. As the man said, “A grand don’t come for free.”

Two tense hours later, he had it. I was trying to pretend not to notice him worrying, whilst batting off all his attempts to tell me it was an impossible job. He had gone into Brian’s room to make a surreptitious panic call to a friend as far from me as he could, and I pretended not to notice but listened. He then unjammed the diverter valve. And from that, it all started working again. Phew. Down the line I might need a new diverter valve. But A: I know that now. £350. And B: I had a hot bath, and emerged from it into a warm flat. God it’s making such a difference. In all honesty, I’m expecting it to blow up in my face. But maybe it won’t. Maybe it won’t.

Back into the fray now. Time see if the universe can find a way to solve the boiler expense. I have no doubt that it will, if I keep myself open to possibilities and continue to work hard to make chances. Meanwhile I’m going to have a warm night’s sleep.

Walking tonight from my friend’s to Finsbury Park tube, 5 people stopped and asked me for change. It’s a cold night in London. The wind is up, and cutting through whatever we might have to wear. I don’t envy anyone sleeping outside in this. Despite the climate, we have little portable shanties popping up after hours, and people taking possession of small sheltered areas of street as night closes in. They must be freezing anyway, despite their enforced creativity. There are little houses made of sheets and duvets and cardboard and whatever else. There’s a self-regulating community. “Lou asked me not to let anyone else sit on her bed.” “It’s cold.” “I’ll take your chocolate if you don’t get off.”

I rarely have change these days. Considering we voted so firmly against identity cards in the nineties, it’s odd how we have all subsequently made ourselves entirely trackable with contactless payment via phone and card. But this convenient trend for paying for everything online is probably playing havoc with the chances of homeless people getting shelter for cash if there’s a transaction involved for them to get it. We can all say “no” so much easier these days and be honest. “Sorry, got no cash.” And our worldweary prejudice and received opinion leads us to worry that if we do have cash and we give it to homeless people direct it just goes on nebulous criminal things like drugs. Having never been homeless I’m not sure. As ever I want to believe the best of people. But that’s a preoccupation that has burnt me a few times in the past so now I question my optimism too.

People can be ace though. I don’t know the exact figure, but we raised over 3,300 for Centre Point last month after Carol. Just via audience donation on the way out. I’m thrilled about that, because I wouldn’t want to have to sleep out in this crap, no matter what my history, and no matter what I was addicted to. Literally as I wrote that sentence I walked onto a reasonably empty tube and saw this dude.

Someone went up to him (the retreating guy in the red hat) as I got on the carriage. “Hey hey wakey wakey – are you ok?” … … (eventually something inaudible along the lines of : “Leave me alone, I’m fine.”)

Good shout that homeless dude, finding a warm sleep at a quiet time on the tube. There were only about 4 people in the carriage at Victoria which is the epicentre. For one fare he can go back and forth. District line to Richmond is a long run, you’ll get a reasonable warm nap if some clown doesn’t misread the situation and literally use the words “wakey wakey” when you’re halfway there. He should make a sign that says “I’m fine. Just sleeping.”

Tomorrow, in theory, I’ll have a working boiler. I’m paranoid that, even after all the spending, it’s going to be some deeper problem and I’ll just be buggered. But hell, I’ve got a roof over my head. And a nice one too.

My washing machine doesn’t heat the water itself. The element blew. So I plumbed it into the hot water, and you run the temperature by adjusting the water temperature on the boiler. It’s one of the many workarounds that I’ve become an expert in over the years that my income has been … unpredictable. It’s been like that for ages, and it’s fine as long as you don’t try to tumble-dry anything in which case it just rolls your clothes around a cold barrel for hours. But it’s a workable system. Until your hot water conks out. Like it has.

We haven’t been able to get the stain of Pickle’s dirty protest out of the duvet. We both have a backlog of washing. With no dryer you have to hang it around the flat, and with no heat in the flat it takes days to dry fully. It was getting unmanageable. Jack came round the other night and commented that there was a clothes mountain on my bedroom floor. He tasked me with sorting it out. That’s something I can do while I’m sick. Sort clothes.

Brian and I splashed out and got an app to do our laundry. Someone will come round with a van. We will give him loads of bags. It will all come back washed. It’s like expensive magic. You can even send dry cleaning. And first time users get 25% off which would be amazing if it wasn’t aimed at City workers – “workwear deal – 10 suits and 10 collared shirts”… Still, with 25% off, it’s about right. I sent my 3 piece and my restaurant suit and bags of laundry meticulously weighed by luggage scale. It’s exactly the sort of thing I shouldn’t be doing when Dean the plumber is about to prance off with a grand. But I’ve got an important meeting coming up a week on Tuesday and I want to come at it looking and feeling good. My 3 piece will help. Socks and pants that I’ve only worn once will augment. Trousers and shirts without toothpaste stains will seal the deal. This way I get all the clothes out of my bedroom mountain, and then while the magic people do the washing I can make sure my room is ready to receive them. Then I can get them all back, smash all the meetings, sleep in lovely sheets and generally win at clothes. Rather than wear exactly the same shirt and jumper combo for over a week, like I did in the final week of Carol, knowing that even if anyone noticed they wouldn’t comment.

I’ve picked up this hacking cough from somewhere. Probably being cold all the time and wearing filthy shirts. Rather than go out and do expensive things in the cold I’m staying home, eating well and keeping as warm as I can. So as I write I’m making peppermint tea while a dry-January version of Tristan shoots Stormtroopers in the living room. This weekend is pointedly quiet and cheap. That might be the shape of things for the next few weeks. Although damn I’d still like to get to LA even just for a couple of weeks in February to build on last year. And get some sun. But first let’s see what the universe brings once the boiler is fixed.

Oh boy. I just cooked myself a huge dinner and now I’m replete and dozy. Today has been a good day. Lots of opportunities. Two interesting future projects kicking off. And a quote for the boiler the burnt my eyebrows off. I’ve said yes. On Monday someone will come round the flat, do lots of things with chemicals and circuit boards, and leave with Christmas. It comes and it goes. insha’Allah.

I’m relaxing now. It doesn’t help that the meeting I had earlier involved a bottle of wine at 3pm. But it was worth it as there’ll be lovely work in a few weeks as a result of the meeting. The wine was optional, but felt like the right thing at the time.

I want a bath. I feel stinky. The dude downstairs in my block keeps asking if I’m alright. I don’t want anyone to get too close to me in case I gas them. And I’ve just come off an intensive job. There’ll always be a slump. I’m telling him I’m fine, because I am. But I’m also, inevitably, not fine. I’ve chosen a strange existence. Feast and famine. Bouts of frantic activity, followed by the opposite. Regular money coming in, followed by the plumber dancing out the window with it all just when the final tranche lands.

The problem with ending a job is that your immune system allows itself to collapse, after working hand over fist to get the show on. I’ve been snotty Scrooge for the last two weeks, but now I understand that my body was fighting bronchial Scrooge, knowing full well that if I spent all night coughing I wouldn’t be able to talk. Now I’m coughing constantly, which always scares me as I had double pneumonia and my lungs collapsed when I was a kid. But I’ll be fine as long as I look after myself. Two more days of living in a cold flat and then I can put the heating on and have a bath and I’ll just have to give my firstborn to the electricity company in recompense.

Brian just got home and asked if I was okay too. It’s been such a positive day. It really isn’t every day you get two lovely jobs thrown in your direction, particularly in this game. Neither came for free. One involved a recorded pitch when I was vocally exhausted and cat-sitting miles away from my home studio. I recorded it at midnight, shattered and over it, but somehow – against the odds – it did the trick. The other involved two consecutive days in prosthetic make-up and a neck brace connecting with the part of me that might have grown up to wrap a sports car around a tree. 5 years later and the director wants to collaborate on a lovely poetic short.

In fact, the time since I came off this job has been almost unremittingly positive. I’m just tired and grouchy, sick again, plus a bit cold. And I had half a bottle of wine before 6pm which is lethal.

Today was spent partly sorting shit out and partly writing. I got up early to make sure all the bin bags were out. The kitchen was turning into a bin city after Christmas and New Year. Brian and I mutely carried bags in the early morning. Then I woke up with coffee and looked for work until about 3 when Jack came over.

Jack was Marley to my Scrooge. We have a duty to the show to record the working version. We might end up running it in New York while another company plays London. The working script has been forged in the fire of many audiences. But the only existing formal script has very little correlation to the words we speak. It was written by a good friend, for two actors in the back of a pub, two years before I joined. (Btw sorry if you thought we were done with Carol blogs. Nope. Another Christmas Carol blog… The last one for at least 10 months.) But the show works. We’d like to be able to pass it on.

So yeah. That immersive dining show started 7 years ago in York. Tom Bellerby who directed it had just finished working with Jack and I at Ripley. We did As You Like It in the grounds of Ripley Castle for the glorious Sprite Productions, directed by Alex Hassell with the combination of fixed and flowing that can make theatre particularly special. Tim Carroll, the guardian angel of The Factory, used to insist that great theatre is a combination of the fixed and the flowing. If it’s all fixed, it’s mummified. If it’s all flowing it’s unfocused. We try to balance the two in Carol. Jack’s taste moves towards order. Mine towards chaos. Both are necessary in a live experience.

Nowadays, dining theatre is actually a thing – we got shouted out by You and Yours on Radio 4 in opposition to a badly thought out experience with a lot more money behind it, and something at The National. We came over very well, especially considering we were the cheapest ticket. Everyone likes to think they’re doing something new. Because everyone wants to feel ownership of universal ideas. This shit has been around for centuries. But yes I’ll stroke your head and sing to you if it’s important that you think you were here first. I’ve encountered a bit of snippiness in the industry. I only joined this show four years ago myself. Tom and Alex were way ahead of the curve at the time. They couldn’t get Jack and I from London to York because there was no budget. You don’t get Jack and I for free. But when the opportunity arose we were lucky enough to join a complete show that was ahead of its time. Now it’s of its time and it’s great to have had a month of full houses.

So Jack and I argued about order versus chaos, faith versus nihilism, capitalism versus communism. And we drew up a script for any poor fucker that follows us in London. Plus a few ideas for our next show, the first proper Fable Feast show. Watch this space. Here I am, slave to the laptop whilst Jack prances around in my ladies summer hat and Pickle offers support in her own complicated laptop obsessed manner.

Some kid in my school traded me his entire Star Wars toy collection for “Buzz Off” from He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, forever ago. Buzz Off was a muscular man who looks like a bee. Black and yellow, he had wings and goggles. At the start of term I brought him in. I traded him for a bin bag full of Star Wars toys. He must’ve been under pressure from his parents because he instigated the trade. There was an AT-AT in that bag. And that was just the start of it. Speeder bikes, AT-ST, loads of figures… all sorts. I still wonder if he regrets it.

Star Wars has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. I went with my dad to the cinema in Douglas to see Return of the Jedi twice. I collected stickers, and had one on my bedroom door, of a Gamorrean Guard, to keep me safe from the ghost.

Ugly pig faced creatures, the guards are, and technically on the wrong side of the conflict plotwise. But I didn’t care as long as Ann didn’t come into my room with her dead face and beckon to me when I was trying to sleep. Green pigmen with hauberks were a welcome break from rotting faced ghost women. 

The other day at Carol we had a kid in. Gabriel. He had a Star Wars jumper. He told me Christmas is about Star Wars. I can be mischievous when we aren’t running to narrative so I quizzed him on it before throwing it to the house: “Which is the “best” of these Christmas Star Wars nonsenses?” Universally I got back “Empire Strikes Back.” Even from Gabriel, who also insisted on “A New Hope.” as second. He was 9. A 36 year old backed him up: “It’s the most mature and complex plot.” insisted Daniel. I place this enduring love of the first trilogy firmly at the feet of Joseph Campbell.

Joseph Campbell was a mythologist and a brilliant post Jungian thinker and perhaps philosopher. I would love to recommend his book “The Hero with 1000 Faces” because it’s an incredible book, but his prose will make you want to spoon your eyes out. If you’re fine with dense prose, his thoughts are extremely important and powerful and worth getting through. If you prefer to listen, there’s plenty on YouTube. I firmly place Campbell’s existence as the reason why the original three films are satisfying, and the second three, long after his death, didn’t land. 

Cambell locked himself in a shed during the great depression and read every book on world myth he could get sent to him. He swallowed universal mythology whole and saw the tropes that individually arose in different forms. He took 5 years just reading and absorbing. He learnt the trends in these stories we tell to make sense of the world and our place in it. He saw through the stories to the basic human needs the stories filled. And he further developed the Jungian story archetypes into a “monomyth”. A New Hope is one example of a film following his structure of a hero’s journey very closely. The Wachowski Brothers used the same frame for The Matrix. This structure works. It chimes with something ancient in us.

Lucas is an amazing world-maker but he needs someone else to chart the journey through the world. Cambell did that for the first three. Then the three nobody likes, with lovely characters ill used – (Darth Maul!!) Now we have these new films with the weight of money and numbers behind them but not the structure of myth. I won’t be sticking any minor characters from these ones to my bedroom door to keep off ghosts. But perhaps that’s because I’m no longer Gabriel’s age. And the ghost of Ann is a long way away. And I probably just made her up anyway. With her dead face. And her beckoning fingers. HELP ME PIGFACE!

But I enjoyed it. It was a Star Wars film…

Before concentrating on me, like I was so optimistically saying I would yesterday, it’s been one more day of Carol related madness. 13 hours straight through, driving, loading, unloading, driving, humping, dismantling, carrying, loading, packing. I had a massive great big Luton. Of course the budget van hire place gave me one with a fucked tail lift. Nothing you can do about that on the job. At one point Tristan, Jack and I had to shove the lift up manually.

That massive great big freezing empty warehouse in Liverpool Street? Remember, where I spent the best part of a week stapling and painting. We made it look like Scrooge’s Parlour. People would walk in and go “ooooh”. We did a month of marvels in there. It was so full of life, so full of laughter, so full of Christmas cheer. Now the season is over, the year is turned, the rain is washing us clean in buckets. Scrooge’s Parlour is a great big empty warehouse once more. And as I was loading out the bags I saw my first evidence of rats. Just in time. As we leave, they come. Little fuckers. Too late. Just. But all the stuff is now loaded willy nilly into the playing space for Gatsby and our job is done for the day.

I’ve eaten nothing but 2 weetabix at half 8am. It’s gone 11pm. I feel fine but perhaps I should shove something down my throat before I fall asleep. It didn’t help that for most of the driving portion of the day it was windy and pouring with rain. I feel I’ve completed one of those appetite suppressing computer game marathons I used to be capable of in my late teens. Also I probably stink and there’s no hot water. 

Feed angry cat, feed self, boil kettle, sponge bath, curse loudly, hot water bottle, bed. That’s the order of service. That and oil my beard. It’s itching like hell. I’d like to shave the thing but I’ve got two self tapes pending that I had to record with this dead dog on my face. If both of them come to nothing I’ll celebrate by liberating my chin and triggering all the “oh you look so young” flattery.

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I was writing the above in an uber. At this point Mamriz the driver gesticulated at the road. They’re all flooded and there’s a gale blowing. It’s horrible. “What the hell is this?” he asks rhetorically. I put down my blog. “Tell me about it. I was in a Luton through this crap earlier. I saw two people between here and West Sussex that had lost their back end. One of them hit the central reservation. They were getting loaded into an ambulance. It’s worse now. I’m glad you’re driving not me. I’ve had enough of this shit.”

“I can’t wait for summer.” He mourns. We both sigh, as if we’ve been friends for years. Then we start naming summer things. “The light.” “The long days.” “You can wear your T-shirt.” Mamriz and I become companionable – nostalgic, like two old friends remembering the good old days. Like two lifers remembering the outside.

It’s a long way until Spring and we both know it. A gust of wind blows solid bits from a tree into his car, disrupting our reverie. He curses. “What time are you working ’til?” I ask. “Normally I work until two,” he says  “but I’m going home after this trip. I’m not driving in this.” I don’t blame him.

 

Staggering around Chelsea this evening I stopped to contemplate the moon. It’s full tonight, and at its perigee – the closest to the earth it will come this month. It’s big, bright and stark. I like that it falls tonight, on the first day of the year. A wolf moon is a good moon, and on the right day.

It’s an opportunity to look for positive change, a New Year. And tonight’s wolf moon speaks of good things to come. I’ve got a lot to sort out this month, but I feel the augurs are in place. Change doesn’t happen by mistake, but I’m in a good place to drive it in my life. That’s what I’ve earmarked this month for. January is for sorting my shit out. There’s a lot shit to sort and it’s been left a long time. Plus I’m already a day down as, outside of a little walk in the dark I’ve achieved very little today. 

I’m coming up to a year of this blog every day no matter what. It’s pissed me off from time to time, especially when I’ve been exhausted or smashed. It has interrupted social occasions, but my friends are extremely understanding now. “Sorry guys, gotta get it written, I’ll stay here but I’m out of the conversation for a bit.” On balance it’s been very positive. There are some people in my life who are a little cagey about spending time with me in case I write about them, which is weird. But mostly I’ve felt more connected to people because of it, although in this digital age there’s no substitute for spending actual time in the company of friends. I’d like to do a bit more of that in the year to come.

Right now everyone is playing Game of Thrones Risk in my flat. I’m sitting behind them on the sofa, under the cat and a blanket, writing this and thinking about positive change. I’d love to tell you that my New Year’s Day was spent rising at dawn and swimming in the sea before going for a jog to the market to load up on healthy vegan food for Veganuary and then kissing a puppy. New Year, new you? We’ll – this new me staggers home at 6.40am and passes out until noon, gets up for painkillers, manages to keep down half a bacon sandwich and a can of coke, sleeps for another 3 hours and then goes for a walk to look at the moon instead of watching Star Wars. Then he wraps up warm with beer and friends and puts the Braveheart soundtrack on Spotify.

I’m probably allowed to have a rest today. Yesterday was the last show of Carol, followed by the crazy party. Tomorrow we’ll be dismantling all the stuff we built for Carol, driving a Luton all over town, tearing down the wallpaper, and likely moving a fucked Suzuki from one motorcycle shop to… somewhere it can be until we decide what to do with it.