Month: April 2018

Right. Space to breathe. I feel like I’m coming up from underwater. On this perfect day I’ve been properly putting myself through the wringer. Pickle shat in my wardrobe last night, as I discovered when I went to get my jacket for this evening. It was a distraction from my nerves which were finely sharpened ahead of a nice meeting that definitely wasn’t happening at 3. Once the meeting that didn’t happen and that I’m not talking about had finished I walked to The Globe in the sun and put on my ringmaster’s jacket, faintly worrying that it might smell of catshit. I made a couple of phone calls to decompress and convert the audition nerves. That I didn’t have. Then I looked at the beautiful day and walked down the river.

I’m helping present the Women in Rail awards, as a sort of Shakespearean MC. It’s a bit bespoke, a bit ad-hoc, and super random. Still, someone just openly assumed I’ve been doing this for ages. Nope. Things like it. But this one is new. So far I haven’t insulted anyone or accidentally knocked Rachel Riley off the stage.

Apparently the last award ceremony that many of the same industry guests attended was fraught with disaster. There was a “James Bond swat team” that some people thought were real terrorists, and the comedian was riffing about buttplugs which people didn’t want with their dinner. The organisers are slightly on edge. I’m not. I’m in a strangely zen state about it all. My nerves are all spent. I did about 40 minutes of chanting this morning after I cleaned up the catshit and I’m just supremely peaceful that everything will be well.

It’s interesting to see how people respond to Rachel Riley. She’s off the telly, you see. Countdown. She’s pretty, kind, fiercely intelligent and had Manchester United as her special subject on Mastermind. I find myself getting her a glass of water and then kick myself for it. I’m a sucker for an attractive mathematician you see. She eats with the sponsors out front while I’m round the back in a room called Watkins 2 – a room where I’ve spent many hours with The Factory. It’s me, the son of the organiser, some of the event staff, and a mob of singing waiters practicing their choreography, and a bottle of wine open which I’d be breaking a lifelong rule if I touched. I want it though.

But I’m still working out what’s going to happen next. Redrafting on the fly. I’m also aware that it’s 9.20 already and I’ll be here for another two hours or more. I’m just going to have to introduce a couple more people, then announce the raffle winners and close the ceremony, using only Shakespearean language but I need to be on point for unexpected stuff. They’re running an hour behind with the food so brevity is the soul of wit and I probably have very little work left in the scheme of things. It’s all over but the waiting and an occasional frantic bout of activity.

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The band had skipped the sound check at half five and then acted surprised when nothing worked. I had to fluff in verse for a while and do a bit of Prospero before they got it sorted. It was a chaotic night all said, and everyone in the venue was dying of heat exposure. We got it all out though, in roughly the right shape. And it’s probable that the guests only noticed the heat, which was undeniable. The rest of it was fun fluff.

I ended up in the photobooth with Rachel, who was tirelessly working the crowd while the band howled their covers into the mic.

I tire rather more easily. I’m out. Waiting for a bus as the iron tongue of St. Paul’s tolls twelve. To bed. ’tis almost fairy time!

Pickle shat on my bed though. Thank the gods that Brian and Mel were there and noticed. They sent me before and after photos. About time I changed my sheets. I need to get these comics sorted fast or it’ll keep happening.

What a day. Suddenly we have something that looks like summer. About bloody time too. I went for a haircut. It’s Spring. It’s time for a shearing. I don’t look much different with short hair. If I shave my beard it takes years off. But hair does nothing – I’m bald with it long or short. The only reason I’m not buzzcut is that it messes with my casting.

There’s a whole hell of a lot going on for me this springtime. My everything is filled with change and development. But I’m sitting on the sofa with Brian and I just said; “I honestly don’t know what the fuck to write this one about. The three biggest things going on in my life are X, Y and Z and I don’t feel like I can write about any of them at the moment because they’re all in suspension.” So that’s where I am. I don’t want to spurt enthusiasm for uncertainties, but there’s nothing I hate more than a person who is constantly “almost’. So this talking around it is the best you’ll get. Even if that’s annoying as hell too. Like those endless posts on Facebook “Good news coming but I can’t say what.” (Baby? Marriage? Actually from Krypton? Lottery win? Discovered the cheat code for existence? Started a business? Learnt not to post mysterious stuff because it’s really annoying? Got to level 10? New President of the United States? Did a poo poo?)

Anyway, today’s weather was bloody glorious. And yes I’m changing the subject. Go fish.

I went to Camden to get a haircut. No point going anywhere near my address. They charge three times the value. Even Peckham have priced themselves out. Isn’t it about time that hairdressers allowed a “balding discount?” Then you’d pay in pride but lose in money. I wish the back of my head wasn’t located on the back of my head. “I just haven’t got the mirrors, darling, that’s the problem. If I just had the mirrors I could cut my bald head however I chose and nobody could think it’s acceptable to charge 45 quid for that tiny amount of tuft.” Still, my guy in Camden did it for 15.

I’m shorn now, and I do like that barber. He knows I’m easy and gets me in quick. He once told me a story about how he made friends over many years with an old couple who eventually unprompted signed him over some central London property, but the lawyer reverted it to the next of kin after they died. It was a strange story, and my loyalties were torn because you never know the details, but he told it with such detail, but resignation and lack of acquisitiveness that it stuck with me.

Anyway, big day tomorrow, he says vaguely. Nothing important happening at 3pm. Not doing anything unfamiliar and difficult in the evening. Just another normal happy Thursday. Yep. Nothing to see here. Move along. I have to go to sleep so I’m refreshed and ready for all the things that aren’t happening tomorrow that aren’t going to affect my sleep at all.

 

Oh Pickle.

I’ve been working threefold today, as I will be tomorrow. I’m sorting the comics whilst mumbling to myself. I’m learning lines for a meeting on Thursday and simultaneously brushing up my Shakespeare MC for the evening on the same day.

Pickle really doesn’t like the comics being sorted. I spread them all into piles of like on the living room floor. Then I add them all to the online catalogue, keeping an eye on their value as I do so. Then I put them into boxes, trying to keep them together. The main bulk of this stuff will be sold as a job lot so the easier I make it for the dealers, the better the price will be.

But Pickle doesn’t like it. All these weird things on her floor. She hates walking on the plastic covers. She scratched me properly for the first time today, completely unprovoked apart from by comics. I’m keeping an eye on her now in case it’s something deeper but I genuinely think it’s the fact I’m busy all day and am moving around too much for her to get settled. Even cats get discombobulated when people don’t behave as they “should”. I reckon if I realise any money from these comics I’ll put some of it into a scratching post to thank her for her forbearance. After all, this is her flat. She’ll likely ignore a scratching post though. Like me she chooses hard. She’s not swayed by “cats love this.”

Anyway this evening I’m hitting my blog later than usual. I have a friend staying. I walked into my bedroom at midnight to start writing and immediately knew there was a special poo present. But where? Thank God not on the bed. She’d just protested in the corner.  Steve spotted it as I was looking in all the most horrible possible places. It was just in the corner. She was merciful. Retrospectively I wish I’d taken a photo. But the SMELL.

Steve is on the sofa tonight. I wanted to hang out with him because he’s a brilliant actor who is mostly writing these days. Even though I’m always going to be an actor who writes, I am starting to think about how to make a bit of money from the writing side of the seesaw. I figured his face would eject useful bits. It did.

Now I’m on my bed writing into my phone. Pickle is at my feet as if she hasn’t been carving me to pieces and shitting in my bedroom. All is right with the world. Although Steve is allergic to cats.

Thankfully she’s currently behaving as if it’s just another ordinary day. She’s chilling at my feet. Hopefully the comic protest is short lived. I really don’t want midnight poo in my bedroom every night. It’s not fun.

Still, I’ve taken myself off fun until after Thursday. Thursday is a double whammy of learning. That’s my focus. So anyone that expects to see me socially between now and then, you won’t. You’ll barely raise me. Too much to learn and process. And that involves going to bed now, angry cat or no. Goodnight. Meow.

I’m back in London already and feeling much lighter and clearer. A bit of sea air. A bit of physical labour.

My friends moved to Margate and bought themselves a beautiful property that was in total disrepair. They’ve been there since December and every day they’re working to improve the place. It’s a gigantic job. Great big property, used to have ten people living there. Every room has work to do. They don’t seem fazed. All you have to do with big problems is break them up into lots of little ones and then apply yourself. I’d do well to remember that. I’ve been meaning to go visit for a while, and finally had to for work reasons. Last night we did some dramaturgy. That was the draw. Then this morning we laboured. It was satisfying. I feel great for it.

There used to be a horrible plastic conservatory out back. Now there’s a concrete verandah and a huge pile of plastic where they tore it down. The job today was mostly carrying rubbish into the car until it was full, driving the full car to the dump, throwing everything into the compactor, going back to the house. Cup of tea. Repeat.

The Margate dump was thronged with cars today. I guess we’re in spring cleaning time. Everyone feels a bit of sun on their face and decides it’s time to go out with the old and in with the new. I was doing a bit of that internally.

I’d forgotten the extent to which good hard extended physical work helps you sort out the contents of your head. All the unexamined crap was coming out as I worked. “Oh that’s your name, pain. What am I doing hanging onto you still?” I chucked a lot of stuff into that compactor.

A proper rubbish compactor is a remarkable and somehow inevitable machine. Slow but certain. I watched it eat somebody’s bed in one relentless loud crunchy mouthful. We fed it full today. Tea never tasted so good. I was already feeling internally lighter as I made my way to the station to get back home, walking down the seafront. I was born and raised by the sea and need water in my life. My grandmother used to tell me that the sea is in our bones. It was good to reconnect, and to throw some residual bad energy out into the waves. I think I’ll be back before long. London can make you heavy after a while.

Feeling better, clearer and fresher I got in the train and unlike the horror of the day before it ran smooth. As inside, so outside. I even got a call from my agent the like of which I haven’t had for years. Nothing concrete but opportunity knocks.

Now I’m home, surprisingly tired for ten pm. Pickle and I are going to turn in and sleep like the dead. Spring. The sun is coming. Ceres is happy again. New opportunities. Good things. You heard it here first folks. Time to take the trash out.

They don’t make it easy to get out of London. I left home at 10am. It’s 2pm and I’m still trying to get to Margate. It was fine as far as Sittingbourne but then I was decanted into a rail replacement bus full of very talkative racists with no teeth. In the course of a picturesque drive from Sittingbourne to Herne Bay via Whitstable, I heard a lot of opinions and also found out way too much about “that Ben Gibbins” who appears to be an object of contempt and fascination. He’s “snorting and snorting and smoking everything he can get but he’s a grass as well.” By the time we limped into Herne Bay I was longing for some peace. But the train hadn’t waited and it was 50 minutes until the next one.

I walked into town rather than remain on the platform finding out more about Ben and his habits, and how people who don’t look like them drive. I wandered through the Herne Bay memorial gardens. It’s that precious week when the magnolia is in bloom. I wandered smiling past the generic home counties graffiti. “Ban the burka”, shouted one wall. “No Sharia law in the UK”, observed another. There was heat in the air. “A bit of sun and we all come out,” said the geezer leaning on his Harley with an ice cream. He wasn’t wrong. There were loads of bikes. People thinking they should tick it over using the half decent weather to head to the beach. The seafront was packed with pasty skinned families with their skin out but looking like they’d just emerged from a cave. I tried two places for a coffee but they both stank of meat had huge queues and wanted £2.95 for a latte.

On my way back to the station I stumbled on an Alice in Wonderland themed tea room, which was sufficiently mad to take my fancy and charged a bit less than the seaside fat palaces.

It was packed with families gorging themselves on immaculately presented teas. I had a coffee and got on this train.

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The train finally took me to Margate. It probably shouldn’t have taken 4 and a half hours on a Sunday. “Hey kids let’s go to Dreamland… Ok we’re here. Now let’s go home immediately!!” But it means that now I get to sleep on an improvised bed in front of the fireplace. I’m glad to be out of London for a night.

I’m pretty tired. Ethan and I played “It’s a ball. Throw it I think.” for hours. Then we played “aaargh tickleninjjas” and then “Are you making ‘ubbles or is that the universe? Nevermind. ‘UBBLES.” These games don’t need rules to be fun. Ethan is nearly two. So we totally understand each other being similar mental ages.

But he’s been in bed for a while as has his mum and dad. It’s now approaching midnight. It’s time for me to enjoy this palette I’ve made for myself in front of a dying fire, accompanied by a grunting Siamese cat who I’ve slept alongside before when she was younger and healthier.

Minnie and Brian once laid on a surprise party for me. Minnie was my minder. She wanted to go to The Samuel Pepys pub. It’s a Riverside pub. It’s alright but it’s not all that. But she appeared to artlessly love this slightly generic riverside pub. “It’s so lovely here, let’s stay a bit longer,” she sold me, after multiple “Everyone is late” text messages. I wasn’t sure what was going on with her because she seemed sincere in her love for the pub, even if she kept checking her phone. She kept insisting she wanted to stay for longer in the pub. I thought she was avoiding something and was looking for ways to broach the subject. So I thought I’d roll with her whims even though it was my birthday. Eventually we moved somewhat arbitrarily to Camden. That’s where she suddenly wanted to go. “You remember that pub in Camden you said you loved?” I  didn’t smell the hint of a rat. She’s a consummate actress, of course. I continued to believe she was working through something weird right up until I walked into a room full of my friends. “Surprise!”

This afternoon we were the surprise for Mel. Brian Mel and I spent a reasonably normal morning, although as we got closer to the deadline I got more and more anxious about cleaning. I got started: “I need a clean work surface to list these comics.” I knew I couldn’t hoover without giving the game away. Eventually Mel left with Brian and I got to work properly. Louis, Brian’s business partner, came round with the shopping list and we cooked the fuck out of two chickens and a load of potatoes and veg. We got working. A load of her friends appeared. We had to work out how to hide them. We managed to get Louis hidden under a pile of blankets, and Mickey under the table with random boxes and a towel obscuring her. I then had to awkward improvise crap Al giving her a belated present of a tiny cake and candle. And everyone jumped out with the happy birthday song.

It was delightful. It’s lovely how easily you can make someone happy if you surround them with people they already know and love. Everyone is now a few bottles of wine down, and my duties are over. I was the head chef, and the duty of carving fell to me, using my grandmother’s old horn handle carving set. 11 people is possible here in one sitting. 12 at a push. At Christmas I’ve managed more but that’s with cunning and compromise. Everyone ate. Then I relaxed.

In my relaxed state I ended up organising a competition with polystyrene gliders from Brian’s window. The ex-army dude won hands down. They were throwing into a strong wind. He threw it direct and slightly up. It went for miles. Both of the other teams turned and hit the house.

Now I’ve snuck into my bedroom to write because I know I’ll shortly be incapable of such things. Happy surprise birthday day. Let’s hope we don’t get nuked by Putin while we’re sleeping. Are we really engendering another cold war? Are our leaders so weak that they have to rely on fear of the other to keep us in check, knowing that under scrutiny they are nothing but naked howling children? God.

 

Back in 1961, Joey Nuggenbauer was 17. He was a strange kid. A big kid. Very kind but with terrible acne. He was bullied. Kids used to call him “The Thing.” He didn’t really care, but that November he saw a comic. Fantastic Four #1. It was 10c. But there was a character in it called “The Thing.” Joey bought it.

Elsewhere, Frances Cornblatt already knew she wanted to be a mechanic, but at 17 shes was wondering how she’d be noticed. Everybody kept telling her girls can’t be mechanics. But her mum and dad used to work in the garage all the time with her. She was definitely better at it than most people. But somehow her skill and her work ethic was constantly overlooked in favour of the less competent boys around her. It was like she was The Invisible Girl. She saw the comic, and saw that name on the cover. 10c. She bought it.

Brad Chadbad was quarterback for his college team. He was on fire, burning bright. Winning. HooAh, God is good. 10c is nothing to Brad. He’s gonna be rich. And there’s some dude called The Human Torch on the cover. “That’s me.”

And Ethan Fudge. Top of the class. Won the spelling bee. Well on the way to president. Absolutely no social skills. Ethan knows he’s “Mister Fantastic” because that’s what the imaginary women call him in his guilty bedroom escapades when mum’s out. He sees the comic. He purchases it in front of other kids, “not because I want it per-se but after all, I am Mister Fantastic. Ah-ha-ha.”

Time passes. Joey Nuggenbauer swaps his copy for a toad that Brent Goober found in his grandma’s yard. Brent Goober hides it in a hedge in a shoebox. Then he forgets about it. Seasons worth of rain destroy.

Frances keeps it in her bedroom until she leaves home. She doesn’t particularly care about it. The older and more confident she gets the more visible she feels. And she needs all her energy in order to be taken seriously in her field. Her aging grandmother is moved into the room when she moves downstate. All her things are thrown away by mum and dad, including the comic. Landfill.

Brad’s parents burn his copy. They make a bonfire. “Comic books are from the devil. You don’t want to go to hell now, do you? I want to put all those nasty ungodly comic books on the lovely fire your uncle made and we can all praise the lord and sing songs.” Brad is obedient. He will continue to be.

Ethan keeps his comic carefully, but only because he keeps everything carefully. But in 1965 at 21 he lands a big job in London. He packs all his necessaries. The comic goes into a box marked “Childhood books.” He thinks nothing of it and it ends up in a thrift store.

Sergio Cona, 30, buys a joblot of comics from that thrift store in 1966, including Ethan’s pristine issue. They let him take the box. He reads them all once. Then he carefully puts them back in the box they came from and puts it in the cupboard. His kids will like them when he finally has kids, he thinks. He never has kids.

Not much changes for twenty years. But the comic slowly creeps up in value as collectors get more and more engaged. In 1986 Sergio sells his copy to a specialist for thousands of dollars. People start noticing the numbers and raiding their collections. Joey, Frances, Brad and Ethan all realise it is lost. They tell their kids. “I had that number one comic and I lost it.” Number one comics therefore have value. Over time the comic companies catch on that an issue 1 will sell well. They start to mass produce issue 1. They print multiple covers and collectors buy them all. Kids buying the same thing, many times. The kids of our four original friends blow all their spare change, and as they start to earn more they spend more. As the eighties go into the nineties the kids have told their friends how they could’ve had a super valuable comic. Brent’s son dries the contents of the shoebox with a hairdryer and even in that state makes over a grand. Kids worldwide are buying comic after comic blazoned with “Collectors edition” “Special edition” “Alternate cover” almost as if nothing ever changes from the past. The print runs are running to millions.

Cut to 2018 and Al is sorting through comics that trumpeted their own value loudly and yet have depreciated. Much of it has been someone else’s collection that passed to me. But it’s not worth the hourly rate right now and nobody will buy bulk without a catalogue, which is what’s taking my time. Many of the shops say they won’t touch “Image” comics apart from “The Walking Dead” which, it appears, is literally the only Image comic my friend didn’t have. No wonder he didn’t seem to care about the collection.

Maybe there’s the equivalent of Fantastic Four #1 in the mix. Ethan’s would be worth hundreds of thousands now. But I’ve discovered that selling valuable comics is ridiculously involved. They are graded on a 98 point scale of condition, from 0.1 to 9.9. If I find anything worth over 100 bucks it’s probably worth sending it to America where you pay $20 bucks or so per issue for someone to seal it in a sleeve with a mark out of 100, and cranks up the value by about 30%.

It’s so involved. I’m just bulk listing and then I’ll take it to a dealer.

You never know though. I might suddenly hit on one… I doubt it.

Thirty six is far too young to die. What a disaster. The lovely man and actor Alex Beckett, who was working at The Donmar Warehouse, has gone. Suddenly.

Aged 10 I had one of those books you give children where you fill in the blanks “I live in ____.” There was an “ask your parents” section. I diligently got them to answer them all. The last two questions were: “Life is _____. Death is _____.” I found it today and spent a few moments communing with innocent Al, before the fall. My mother had been cautious. “Life is good. Death is not so good.” My dad had put “Life is an adventure. Death is inevitable.” Yep.

Death is indeed inevitable but not at 36 for God’s sake. That’s when you’re having an adventure. I can’t quite think beyond Alex’s death today and I barely knew him. He was part of my community though. There will be many people far harder hit. It’s desperate. There’s an outpouring on my Facebook just because he was such a lovely man.

These deaths smash our happy shelter. How would it be to really truly deeply know death? Like these old white men whose voting preferences some of us excoriate, yet who watched their friends die on French beaches in their youth and now have seen too many of their buddies vanish into the protected ether of a hospital ward and come out on a gurney. To know death like the nurses on those same wards, one of whom I lived with for some time. “I’ve had a shit day. Three people died and one of them was 19 and I thought we could save him.”

Our struggles and squabbles fade into insignificance when faced with that inevitable end. We are all going to die. Some sooner, some later. On a planetary scale human life is but a whisper. As the man himself wrote “a walking shadow. A poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more”. He wrote that six or seven lifetimes ago. And he’s been dead for most of the intervening time. And we still don’t easily accept our mortality.

But he’s right. We’re dead a long time. We need to look at our “now” and make the adventure lovely – for ourselves and equally for those around us. Yes there’s the spectre of immediate sudden death. That’s why we cling on to joy. That’s why we must.

A tendency of mine with bad energy in the past has been – sometimes – to pass it on or to pass it back. Sorry if I’ve done that. I’m going to really try hard not going forward. It’s hard enough as it is. Life’s too short to pass round bitterness year after year – to hold onto things until we twist and darken. We all think we do things for the right reason, because the reasons are ours. Sometimes we forget that other people are people too.

I write this blog every day. No matter what mood I’m in. And then it’s out, concrete, but the work of an hour and a mood. It then exists for much longer than the moment it took to write. What I write is not the extent of what I feel. It’s a moment. I can’t put it down and wait until I’m less sad, less happy, less angry, less hippy. So today I’m thinking about mortality and I’m sad. I’m mourning the loss of a brilliant heart. And I’m asking you collectively to try to let go of past tangles and see how the world looks without them in your face.

And fare forward Alex. If life is an adventure then death, inevitable or not, might be one too. Your kindness, your humour and your energy will be deeply missed.

I’ve been experimenting with a new app called Airtasker. It suits me well in these weeks where everything is very part time. It’s a platform where people that need odd jobs can post them along with a price. If you like the look of the price then you can pitch for the work.

It’s going to make someone very rich, although it won’t be any of the “taskers”. It already has made someone very rich. Probably a sociopath. It’s been successful in Australia. Now it’s in London and it complements the gig economy of this city. I took and completed my first little job on it today.

Michael X in Pimlico needed 9 boxes carried downstairs. He was willing to pay 40 quid to save his damaged back. He lives 15 minutes walk from me and I had nothing in the diary, so why the hell not. I didn’t present it in those terms but he accepted the offer I made him. The first two people asked for the weight of the boxes. I just (correctly) trusted that he wasn’t an idiot.

I trudged through the fog to Pimlico and rang on his doorbell at 9am. He was a little nervous as was I. It was both of our first time on the app. I could have brought in a hammer. He could have shut me in his porn dungeon. His surname of “X” was never going to fill me with confidence. But it transpires he’s Chinese. Xi. He’s been studying here. He’s back to Beijing soon, and shipping his stuff in advance. Off he goes back home with good English and a degree in Accounting and Finance Management from Imperial. It was mostly clothes that he was sending back. Because London is so fashionable, aye. I did well to dress as I did, in workman costume with big boots. He trusted me based on appearance, because I was essentially in costume.

He’s a thoughtful guy. The boxes were not heavy. He had put the books in half boxes. He’d packed it well and he even gave me a bottle of water. He liked me and I liked him.

The job took about 15 minutes, and it reminded me of getting those comics out but sans dust. Then we shook hands and I walked home. Job done.

45 minutes start to finish including transport (walking). The platform sucks out 25% for “commission, tax and insurance.” So in three working days, once their rat has built up enough power on the treadmill to fire up the antiquated payment system, my bank account will ping in £30. Which is fine for under an hour despite the annoying delay. I reckon 6 quid of it will go direct to the (maybe) sociopathic Australian millennial who built the platform. Right now he’s probably sporting his Ray-Bans and a Rolex on each arm physically uptight and mawkish and vocally downflecting or monologuing in  Belize whilst trying to work out why he can’t just buy people through the window of his Ferrari, all the while blocking the existential crisis and asking reddit if anything matters or if he’s just a bunch of atoms and has none of the value he’s trumped up for himself and what that might mean.

But hey, I’m grateful to that (possibly) jumped up twot. He’s made me thirty quid, despite his probable lack of social perspective. But let’s not rule out the possibility that he is a lovely human being, here. I’m just playing. He’s made me money. Or she. Or it.

My evening job was acting for beer. Road testing a sitcom by reading it out loud with lovely people. Lots of excellent humans, all about my age, and some of whom were new to me despite us having jiggled about in the same crucible forever. We tested out a new sitcom and it was funny. To me, anyway. Lovely to meet people who I’ve probably sat next to in auditions and get to know them better for next time.

Should’ve taken a photo of the boxes or the reading. But I didn’t. Even booting up the camera on this phone is a rigmarole. It’s probably why I haven’t called you lately. Perfect excuse. Watertight.

Here’s a work in progress comic book sorting photo. Maybe I should list this one on Airtasker. Sell all this crap. Get a percentage…

Minnie’s baby is now way too big to comfortably fit inside her belly. I guess there’s no putting those things back. Once they’re out, they’re out. We all went for breakfast in Catford, and did a spot of bouncing. I tried to project forward imaginatively to when I’m old and she’s in the struggle, but I couldn’t really make sense of the shape of the future. She’ll be in it for sure, so long as I still am. Even if I’ve retired to Raratonga with my millions from that movie. But for now, the simple pleasures of bouncing, mixed with a chance to catch up with a dear old friend who has a lot of her time accounted for these days… Golden.

Once she’s a bit older I’ll be able to babysit. But for her purposes right now my little nipples just don’t cut the mustard for her needs. She wants her mum.

When we did Macbeth on Sunday, two of the actors were pregnant. Before the show there was a “no grabbing Lady Macduff around the stomach when you’re murdering” note. I guess that’s the age I’m at now. Babies. Better than the times that are coming.

Babies. It’s noticeable how completely dependent we are for so long in our early life. Some people never quite get away from that dependence, even if the nature of it changes. If all technology stopped working immediately and unexpectedly, more than half the population of London would be dead within a week, probably myself included. Dehydration, rioting, gangs. But mostly people would starve waiting for their online shopping.

I’m broke still but with plenty of money pending. Cashflow again. Thankfully my friends are awesome. I look forward to paying it forward. Minnie, Rhys, Zeph and I had breakfast together and Rhys showed me the Osho Zen Tarot which he has just ordered from Oregon. It’s a very wise deck and beautifully drawn. He doesn’t know it yet, or the tarot, but we took some cards and played around before it got too busy, and it was great and insightful.

Then I got lunch with Brian and checked in with him. I’m so lucky to live with such a glorious human being. It’s important to hang out without being in the context of work or home from time to time when you have a friendship that exists in all three worlds. We ate noodles which is normally a Minnie and Al tradition. It seems noodles are my go to friendship food.

This evening I was planning on a quiet one and an early bed, but I got fished out of solitude and hauled off to Brixton in an Uber for a few hours of street food on this fine Spring evening. My friend’s control-freak girlfriend was in a plane. Normally she watches him on a tracker but it needs the internet to work, and it’s his birthday on Thursday so he wanted to celebrate this momentary freedom from parole. To his credit he’s about 60 days sober so this was a dry night, but we went for street burger and then a damn good cheeseboard. Here I am – regretfully leaving the cheeseywine place sober.

We have everything at our fingertips here in this city. Yes it’s expensive. But if I wanted a Yak’s Hoof in aspic delivered to me tomorrow evening by four singing transvestite nuns in a pink Bentley I could probably make that happen. While it works, this city is remarkable. And I can’t wait for summer. Bring the sun. Not the zombie apocalypse though. Just the sun please. Thanks.