Month: August 2018

I woke up this morning, staggered into the kitchen and sliced a loo roll in half with a bread knife. First of all, in preparation, I got a 6 foot mahogany stand from the corner of my living room and taped my iPad to the top. Then I tethered my iPad to my phone, because the internet is broken in my flat, and downloaded an app called Filmic pro using my phone’s bad data connection. Then I worked out where I would stand, and how. I had to walk into shot with bowed legs in order to reduce my height and get the top of my head in shot. I practiced a bit until I stopped looking like an Oompa Loompa. Then when I was confident it was all lined up I sliced the loo roll in half in one take. It took a bit longer than I expected. I only had one loo roll to waste though, so I wrapped that shot and moved on.

Next thing I had to do was to fry an egg. I would have to flip it and catch it in a plate, so I deliberately broke the yolk. Don’t want yolk all over my lovely clean kitchen! I still hadn’t had my coffee. But time was ticking. I had a day job to get to. I fried the egg. I also laid out an ironing board with a wet shirt on it, just out of shot. Fry egg, hear sizzling, flip egg, catch on plate. Put plate down out of shot, grab shirt, put shirt out of shot other side, pull ironing board with wet shirt into shot hoping it reads as the same shirt, slap down hot pan into wet shirt, hear sizzle, start ironing with pan. Brian emerged from his bedroom and watched bemused in his dressing gown. Second take was cleaner. Done. Coffee.

This is a self-taped audition and it came through last night, when the light was wrong. It had to be with them for noon today. I was working 9-12.30 at Imperial, invigilating an exam for the summer course. As my agent said, the money for this self-tape is not great, but money is still money and it will bankroll Spain if I get it. So it’s worth a bit of weirdness first thing in the morning.

Problem is, now it’s in the can, I still have to send it. And they want a lot. They want 2 photos, and ident, and a form. I have to pay £9.99 for a PDF editor so I can fill in the form. I paid for Filmic a long time ago. I get it all ready, put it in a wetransfer and try to send it while getting 250 students into The Great Hall for an exam. “I thought you said you’d be rehearsing Hamlet for this that tour of America, and we wouldn’t see you,” says Christine. “It fell through,” I reply, sparely, as all the feelings shoot through me again and this is the first week of rehearsals. “You were really excited about that,” she says sympathetically. “Yes. I was. But now I need to send this video of me ironing with a pan.”

Periodically I go and check the status. 0%. It won’t go through the college WiFi. Fuck. It’s now 10.00. The exam is underway and there are plenty of us. “I’m going to check the loo,” I say, and run out of the college onto the road to book an Uber home. I’ve forgotten that my internet is down at home and I am rushing back to try and upload it on my home network. The round trip is about 25 minutes. It doesn’t occur to me that I have no internet at home (broken router) until a phone upload is interrupted by a text from the courier to say that they have just failed to deliver my new router and it’s going back to the depot. Nooooo! I turn the Uber around. I have successfully uploaded and sent an ident now by phone. It’s a start. Over £20 spent and I’ve sent: “Hello my name is Al Barclay.” My agent rings to say she’s got it. “That’s quite a tan you have.” I tan in a blizzard. But yes, it is. It’s the Spaniard in me. Olé.

Eventually the ironing scene goes through to my agent. The loo roll scene is too long. My phone can’t cope. It won’t send. Time is running out. My agent sends it to the Germans with just the iron scene. It’s 11.00. Everything is on fire in the exam room. It’s the summer course. None of the academics have checked their questions. “Where have you been?” Asks Christine.”Checking the toilets.” I say. She looks like she thinks I’ve been crying. “Don’t worry. I’m sure something will come up.”

Bloody self tapes. If it’s not the equipment that’s lacking it’s the software. If it’s not the software it’s the connectivity. If it’s not the connectivity it’s the knowledge. Now we all have to be camera savvy, tech savvy, light savvy, sound savvy and good actors, and that’s before we even get in the room. £10 software, £10 uber, 1 egg, 1 loo roll. Still, if someone in Germany likes my face I could be paid enough to take a month off work and go on some hippy pilgrimage to Spain just for ironing a shirt with a pan. So it’s swings and roundabouts. And with the turnaround it’s probable that there weren’t many people who bothered doing it. Or so I tell myself, as Klaus in Düsseldorf stares down the barrel of 3k emails, throws his hands in the air despairing, and picks a random number. Pick my random number Klaus! Pick me! I wanna go to Spain. It ain’t quite Miami but it’ll do.

In order to counteract some of the weird feelings elicited by the picture of my hopeful mother that now has pride of place in my living room, I decided to wield the drill this morning and stick some more pictures up.

I’ve put up lots of pics on theatre sets, but few in my own home. I’ve drilled into the walls of The Finborough more than my own bedroom, and that’s despite doing nothing there for more than ten years.

I have two portraits of my face. I’ve never really known what to do with them. I remember both of them being painted.

Summer 1980’s, Douglas Isle of Man and I’m eight or nine. I’m playing in the garden. Most likely I’m blowing bubbles and then shooting them with a water pistol. That’s hours of fun right there, and with stories attached “The alien disease is launching, I am mind controlled, I have to help it disseminate. BUT THEY AREN’T COUNTING ON MY SECRET PISTOL WEAPON.” Repeat ad nauseam. (Water pistol always wins.) Mum finds me and makes me come in to talk to an artist. I have to sit in a chair inside on a nice day. He comments that I can’t sit still. Mum behaves like that’s a good thing. The artist catches my mischief. I don’t know his name. I barely remember him. It’s a sweet picture. I can’t believe I was ever that innocent.

Fifteen years later and I’m sitting on a flight of stairs in Fulham. My old school friend Tom is with me. He and I got into trouble for reviving a satirical magazine that had been part of the old school’s history for many years. It’s an entrenched school so even the means of protest are entrenched. We made both friends and enemies in the faculty by doing it, but some of the stuff we created was lovely. God rest JPRM. It was a clear example of the privilege one has at a private boarding school – we could make something that genuinely upset some of the establishment, using establishment facilities. Tom is and was an artist, and did some brilliant accurate witty caricatures whilst I wrote overblown guff. I’ve often wondered how we don’t spend more time together now. We had a generative partnership and a deep friendship. He painted this just after my first drama school audition, for Webber Douglas. It hadn’t gone well and I knew it. He catches that concern and determination.

I’ve stuck both of these pictures up on the wall because why not. Neither of them hurt me to look at. I’m neither of those people now but I remember being both. I’ve put them in the same corner as the papier-maché bust of Scrooge that was made last year for Christmas Carol – the one I use as a hat stand.

Three versions of me, decades apart. It’s nice to put them together. To remember that the distracted happy child, the haunted pressured youth and the odd man I am now – getting on with it and writing about it every day still hoping – we are all the same person, and we’ve all been on a long journey together.

Some of you that read this regularly first met me as that kid. Some as that tricky schoolboy. More know different varieties of the man I’ve been experimenting with since. I feel like I’m forever away from these two versions of me. But that kid and that youth – they’re still in me somewhere. It’s good to remember what made them tick. It’s good for all of us to occasionally connect with what we have been. The sharp uncompromised perception of that child. The deep unfocused ambition of that youth. They are both still there but honed. Honed doesn’t mean blunted. There is still much to do.

I’m not sure how I feel about being back home. I’ve seen nobody today and spoken to virtually nobody as well.

I was supposed to be going to Wales with a friend, but it would’ve been too much of a distraction. I need to keep momentum up on this flat reboot that has been so actively catalysed by Brian and co. There is still much to do, and much attic space in which to put stuff I can’t deal with.

I’ve been making sense of it though. And rationalising my monthly spend. Stopping myself from blowing too much on mobile phones and broadband through habit, getting refunded for a Netflix I don’t use, thinking about what I need vs what I want. Also making sure I don’t have loads of random crap cluttering my gohonzon, and buying a little shelf to raise the thing a few inches so I’m not looking down at it when I chant.

The pieces are in place for me to turn my flat into a palace. Then I can go to crap like silent speed dating and actually stand opposite people I like the look of, rather than studiously avoiding them. I enjoy my own company but I think I can countenance sharing concerns again in the right context, and negotiating the intimacy and compromise that goes with that. It’s weird being alone in this head all day. There’s way too much noise.

Brian put up a portrait of mum as a young woman that I’ve had for years and never hung. It dominates the living room. It’s looking at me. It was painted by a Jersey artist who apparently loved her, and who became a fellow of the Royal Academy, so it’s probably worth a bob or two. There it is, staring down at me as I write.

It’s strange. She’s full of youth and possibility there. She did a lot in a short time, including making Max and me. She was a brilliant friend and a kind mother. But she left us at 55. The picture wakes a lot up in me. It reminds me how fleeting everything is, and how arbitrary our hopes are. It reminds me how hard her death hit me and the things that I broke through my grief that are still a bit broken. And it also reminds me that she was great.

I’ve been planning a pilgrimage for some time now, to clear these ghosts. The most logical month is mid September to mid October, so I’ve been trying to clear the diary. She collected a vial of holy water at Lourdes around the time that picture was painted. I also found her brother’s rosary in Jersey recently. It’ll be an expensive thing to do but I want to walk from Lourdes to Santiago di Compostela. It takes about a month. It’s hard to book that sort of time off work and I might regret it fiscally. But if I get my flat clear then I can probably Airbnb my room to help with budget. I think it’s the right gesture, to blow out the cobwebs, honour their memory, mark the passage of time, speed them through purgatory, get a bit fitter, and put some miles between me and this old sadness. There’s too much to do. I need to put the past in the past, gently and with honour, so I can look at that picture and think of my own future, not her truncated past, and get on with it.

After driving back from Wilderness I had 30 minutes turnaround before essentially going to another Festival – in the form of Secret Cinema’s Romeo and Juliet. It’s a screening of the remarkable Baz Luhrmann film with Di Caprio and Clare Danes. It still holds up. There are some moments of visual genius. The postman helplessly watching Romeo drive away clutching the letter that would save him. Juliet waking fully in time to watch the poison being drunk. Heartbreaking, well shot and sexy film-making. Getting thousands of people to enjoy, understand and care about Shakespeare’s well spun thoughts.

Secret Cinema employ actors to create a living immersive world around the screening, so you have a party in the story world with all the actors before the show. Walking into the secret space I honestly flashed back to Wilderness. I’m so tired now, and being in a field with thumping beats in the distance and actors earnestly doing lovely things for not much money – my body believed I was back at the festival and went into survival mode. I could feel my stomach turning over and my legs rebelling at the prospect of another dance until dawn. But this time I got to watch a movie sitting down, resting my tired legs, surrounded by lovely people. Ridiculously lovely people, as it turns out. They had been working while I was away… Here are some of them on the extremely festival tube after the screening.

I got home to find Brian and Holly leaving the flat hurriedly. They seemed slightly furtive, but I assumed they were in a hurry. I was too. I’d have time for a hot bath before R&J if I rushed it.

Brian clocked me briefly, took me aside, and said “When you get into the flat, remember that a lot of people love you.” Then he marched off into the sunset. I assumed he just knew I’d be pretty low for a day or so post party, and I hauled my stuff up into my flat, unaware of what he had been doing.

A group of friends had been working on my flat the whole time while I had been dancing in a field. Brian Mel Aisleen Phil Alex and someone called Fern who I’ve never even met. Armed with the traditional gear of a theatre get-in and a hell of a lot of good will, they have got in to my flat and in a few short days turned it from a very weird place with a fridge in the living room, junk scattered around the gohonzon, detritus everywhere, pictures propped against walls and no drinking glasses, into a spacious haven with pictures up, glasses in the cupboards and a great paint job, even down to the radiators. Alex split his foot horribly getting the fridge out, which I’m upset about but I remember the guys who brought it in, staring at me like they’d been in a war. “Never change your fridge,” they said. Clearly they were right. Sorry Alex, that should’ve been MY foot.

It’s beautiful, and I’m shocked. I’ve been understanding and processing old patterns while at Wilderness. It’s been perfect to work at such a gentle healing festival. And while I’ve been away sticking myself together, these friends have been blessing my home.

I didn’t have time for a bath because I spent too long walking from room to room looking at things and blubbing. They did so much in five days. Even the fucking lights work! They’ve been useless for years now. And I’m back from Secret Cinema, writing this as the bath runs. It’s almost 1am. Early by my recent standards. But I’m going to stop writing, get into the hot water in my lovely bathroom, and try not to fall asleep until I’m back in my comfy warm bed where the sun won’t cook me awake after two hours of fitful shuteye.

Today has been a day of recovery. I’ve been gently reinserting myself into the world, and sending my thoughts back to the last few days in that field. What were my highlights? It’s hard because I didn’t have a programme so I don’t know the names of the acts, and I was mostly following my nose. There’s always something to stumble on and I stumbled on plenty. There was a remarkable woman who did one of the most committed and honest comedy sets I’ve ever seen while Justice were playing on main stage. She was an inspiration but I don’t even know her name. She was particularly great as she followed a self-important tirade of witty but alienating vitriol from the previous act. She gave one of the most powerful yet vulnerable angry clear mad sets I’ve ever seen. In fact I have to look her up as it is wrong not to credit her. She opened her set being dragged on, screaming in panic, not wanting to do it anymore. Beneath the character she was committing wholeheartedly. It was proper dark clown stuff. There was no clever demonstration. I love people who don’t count the cost. She asked us a lot of questions about our expectations, our prejudices and our assumptions. It was nasty brilliant sharp comedy. Lucy Mccormick. We had a 22 year old American girl in our group who is now determined to be a comedian.

I barely went to mainstage to see the big acts. I caught Nile Rodgers because he’s a legend and I fell into Bastille and heard them murder Rhythm is a Dancer. I mostly went to the sideshows.

There were some gorgeously articulate magpie puppets that were collecting secrets. A parade on the Saturday of remarkable large scale puppets, that felt like a mini mardi gras with fewer bands and beautifully telling puppetry again. I spent some time watching a very adept trapeze troupe do a narrative act with great skill. I wrote my insecurities to the insecurity guards. I had my face painted by Squiggles and Wiggles. Then, with my frankly terrifying Facepaint I went to silent speed dating and wondered why none of the butterflies woke me up.

There was a new tent this year – the Togetherness Tent – that was about connection. Working in schools occasionally I observe how young people are now being brought up in a touch-isolated manner. It’s a tent filled with the smell of Palo Santo where people are encouraged to connect with strangers in a way that isn’t sexual. Living in London, this crowded city of islands, I can see how important this work is. It fits at a festival like Wilderness, even if there was one guy shouting “This is why I voted leave” during a gong bath. For the same reason I was moved by how readily people welcomed the tarot, I was struck by how desperate people seem to be for uncomplicated human connection – for a chance to drop the front for a while. I hope that tent comes back. I’m going to build on what I was doing this year and pitch for a larger scale thing next year, as I think it’s needed and it’ll feed my heart at the same time.

 

Waking up in this hot tent this morning, I suddenly realised I haven’t preloaded a blog for today. It’s the end of the festival, and all around me people are slowly but busily taking down their tents. There are snatches of song and laughter, the clink of tent pegs, the cries of children, and friends shouting requests to friends. “Does anyone have a beer?” is one of them, and it’s half nine in the morning.

I think it’s 8 consecutive years that I’ve found myself in this field, and for 5 of them I have camped in the exact same spot. Here, on top of the hill. In the morning the sun chases me from my tent and I roll into swimming costume and go leap in the lake to start my day. Somehow, when I’m here, I can party hard all day and then wake up the next morning and start again.

And it’s been a hell of a party. I’m covered in the ruins of glitter and facepaint. My fingernails look like I’ve dug my way out of my own grave. And I feel fantastic, in a tired but rounded way. Here I have been – here I am, with some extremely close friends – people whose influence and light in my existence have woven their way into my whole being. Every year at this time I have felt much the same. Enervated and yet exhausted if I look too deeply. My tent is an explosion of shoes and spiders and beads and hats and clothes and glowsticks and water bottles. Last night, at the end of the night, I reached into my pocket and found my tarot deck, and immediately it seemed imperative that I sat in a corner and read the cards of all the fucked people that were curious. And there was hunger there. People are so in need of a frame to listen to themselves and to untie the knots they have put into their thinking. Hopefully some of them will find help in the revelations these universal symbols awoke in them. For me? Well I’ll have to work out how to take this tent down. Then I suspect I’ll be herding cats into a people carrier and on a mission down to London. There’s nothing I really have to get back for, but I’d like to be back by evening so I can go to Secret Cinema. It might be touch and go though. Years of past experience have taught me that it takes a long time for people in the state we are in to get organised.

I’ll try to break down what was beautiful about this year over the course of the day to come. The festival is exponentially bigger than it was when I first stumbled on it to do “Bugs”, a cue script play in a tent with some of The Factory lovelies.

Anyway. I’m exhausted and happy and I’m going to start working. I doubt I’ll be able to upload a picture with this signal but I’ll try. Sorry it’s been erratic with timing and the autoshare isn’t working. Internet is too crap here.

Hi everyone it’s Jay the intern again! I hope you liked my first blog for Al. I was baking this morning when I got an email from him!!!! “I just wanted to say thanks, you did a great job on your first blog for me.”!!!!  😍🐇🐇 🐱👔 “There is just one thing. I should have been clearer about it. I’m at Wilderness Festival in Oxfordshire, not Wilderness School in Southern Australia.” (Oooops. Ha. Well, if he was PAYING me!!!!!! 🐩) “I also thought perhaps you should read some of my previous blogs just so you have a better handle on my life and writing style.” (🤔🤔 moar wirk OH OK THEN 🐱) “But I’m thrilled you took on this responsibility and when I get back I’ll be sure compensate you for your time and work.” (That sounds weird??!! 😱👑)

So I’m going to read some of his blogs now and Google wilderness festival. Here goes blog number two, in the correct writing style. I hope he’s happier with it.

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The world is turning swifter, sharper, twistier. I’m in a hat. It’s filled with stars. Or is it my tent? And Gershon remarks “How does it spin so fast?” He’s homeless. We’ve made friends for today because he wanted an Opal Fruit. Everyone likes Opal Fruits. Particularly Gershon. Or are they Starburst now? I forget.

Today has been about auditions in a field. I didn’t get any parts but I’ll use long words to mitigate the pain. I’m contemplating feet. How they walk. How they dance. How they play. We all have them, these feet. Some of us forget them, but there they are attached to our legs, dangling, looking at us. Mine are covered in calluses. Still they dance though. Still they dance into forever.

Wilderness Festival is happening all around me. David Cameron eats quinoa with an electric giraffe. Yotam Ottolenghi dances in a lake to the sound of an orchestra. Everyone stumbles around from place to place. I stumble with them, connected but separate, some weird observer type twat building a barrier between himself and society and wondering why there’s a barrier.

I saw a tree earlier that looked like a fish. Or something. I had a profound insight about the nature of whatever. Then I switch my tense once more – you couldn’t keep up, I will confuse you utterly in time, and failing that with sesquipadalian excesses. I am a tree!

Wilderness Festival is a bunch of rich hippies in a field in Oxfordshire pretending they’re anarchists before they go back to being bankers. It’s hedge fund managers in a hedge. I’m one of them but I’m not because that’s how I look at everything, difficult bastard that I am. I don’t even pay my intern to write on my behalf. I just send emails and make them read my witterings and mimic them so – what? What am I actually doing in that field in Oxfordshire? I’m probably drunk. Maybe I think I’m in love and someone is going to cook my heart again. It’s hot. Am I in a tent to sleep? Cheapskate, I am. Not even getting a bell tent am I? That’s 500 words. I’m not even getting paid for this. #twatbarclay #wilderness

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Hope you liked my blog. I’m baking. Mum says I write well. What do you think? Should Al Barclay pay me for the work I do writing his blog? Is “valuable experience” really that valuable? I don’t even think he’s as famous as he said. On Google it’s like he’s hiding. Dick.

Hello everyone. My name is Jay and I answered the ad. I haven’t heard of “famous actor Al Barclay” before but they said it is fine, I can still provide blog cover while he is “relaxing at Wilderness.” I often don’t know when someone is famous because I mostly spend my days baking, but mum said getting a job will be good for me even if it’s just an unpaid intern. She hasn’t heard of this actor either but she’s out of touch. She still likes Justin Bieber ha ha! The job website said he is important and his PA seemed nice although his socks don’t match. I’ve done some google on Wilderness though and I think I’m ready and I can do a good job. Hopefully when he sees how hard I’ve worked he will give me some money. Here’s today’s blog:

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The flight to Adelaide was very long so I entertained everyone by singing showtunes. They threw flowers as we landed and I danced out of the plane into a wave of heat. The ambassador was there on the runway to meet me. “It’s supposed to be winter in Australia,” I quipped, pretending to wipe my brow and flashing my famous smile. Oh how they all laughed.

As we were driving to Medindie a crocodile blocked the car. “Leave this to me,” I said, and confronted the beast. I lay on my stomach before its huge head and began to cry. I used my acting skills to make my body like a crocodile, and because it could see that I could cry at nothing it fell in love with me. I asked it to leave, in crocodialect, and it did so, gracefully. We got back in the car. The ambassador praised me for my acting, gave me a bravery award and threw a flower at me. “Oh it was nothing,” I said. It wasn’t true, but I acted, so she believed that I thought it.

Then we arrived at Wilderness. There are kangaroos everywhere.

Wilderness was established in 1884 by Miss Margaret Hamilton Brown, when she educated her delicate sister Mamie from home. Now it has moved to a larger campus, and even though Margaret passed away in 1954 her legacy lives on. It’s a non denominational Christian school and takes girls up to the age of 12. Their motto is “Semper Verus” which means always true. That’s why I was there, to teach truth because it’s what acting is or something because like if I’m playing a part then I have to say stuff that’s lying but make it true. Anyway, Australia is upside down which is why term is happening now but everyone is on holiday everywhere else in the whole world.

I did a drama game where everyone had to tell lies like they were true and afterwards I told them all how well they’d done but that was a lie. They thought it was true because I did acting. I flashed my flashing eyes. They all threw flowers at me and all the teachers fell in love with me.

Then I went into Adelaide to be famous for the evening. That’s 500 words. He said it’s all I have to write. See you tomorrow, fans. If you like what you see subscribe. #actor #actorslife #blessed

“It’s ten pounds to charge a phone,” says the woman walking behind me. Here I am again at Wilderness Festival, my eighth year running. Middle class hippies in Oxfordshire. A friendly festival where you can spend £85 on a meal in a tent. I have always found a way to work here. For 8 years I’ve been walking through these meadows for Just a few days in August. I find them to be quite magical, but perhaps that is also to do with the fact I’ve sewn so much happiness into these trees. It’s a relaxing place for me now. A few days of no responsibility. A chance to jump in the lake every morning. And I have my festival friends now. A little crowd of lovely humans. Some of us barely see one another in the intervening months and then we all wind down in a field.

It feels like the weather will be amazing. I bought an army surplus bivouac so I can camp out under the stars if it’s warm. I’ll try it tonight but I might get eaten alive. I have a wee tent for contingencies as well.

I’ve spent most of the day sorting shit out for other people. I think I’m about to do a bit more carrying but I’m kind of fine with that. Once everyone is in and safely happily camping together then I’m going to start allowing myself to chill out.

I wonder that I find it relaxing, sleeping in a noisy campsite, with no hot food on a gently deflating mattress for four nights. I like being able to jump into a lake first thing in the morning. But I could just go on holiday for that.

Some unpleasant and slightly patronising tout is cruising around the parking area trying to buy spare tickets. One of my friends has one but his energy is so dark we don’t want him on the site. This festival gets bigger every year. One year it might get too big but I’ll keep coming until then.

My friends have SO MUCH STUFF. It’s amazing for three nights. I’ll be glad of a lot of their goodies when the sun is shining, but right now I want to get into the festival, see if I can find something to eat, and start relaxing. I’ve been helping people and now it’s almost 11pm and it’s time for a bit of me. No more blog… I’ve sorted the next few days of this but thought I’d do this in the field. Stupid really, because the last thing I want to do right now is make coherent sentences…

 

Brian and Mel went to a city farm today and took the perfect photo of a piglet, it’s beautiful. I can’t use it as a blog photo because Mel loves it so much she reckons (she says)that she can get it in posters so that when people google for a picture of a pig that picture comes up. It’s a shame as I took no photos today as usual. You get one of my cat looking louche.

Someone I know who has been vegetarian for years ate a sausage roll that she had bought thinking it was a vegetarian sausage roll. She found out after eating it that it was pork after hearing a conversation, and was deeply upset. She hasn’t eaten meat for years for ethical reasons. It came as a shock.

I had pork tonight. Before these photos of pigs came back. It’s what Tom brought in for dinner, and I ate it.

They are all watching videos of the pigs now and talking about how much they love them. I was talking just the other day about a lamb I once made friends with for a show. I was Silvius. Nigel and I loved that lamb. But we were up in Yorkshire, and we were constantly being reminded that the lamb was not a “good” lamb. I think it went to slaughter after the show. I was fed a leg of lamb a few months later and told it was her leg. Tutu. I ate that leg. I could have stopped eating meat there and then, but I didn’t. It was cooked and in front of me already and I had already had a bite when the idea was put in front of me. Part of me thought it was a wind up, part of me believed it and part of me flashed back to my father at the dinner table. He was vegetarian and used to make the noises of the animals we were eating as we ate them. If anything is designed to steel a young man into being a carnivore it’s someone rebuking you for a choice that you don’t really understand yet.

But I feel like I am on the verge of a big decision point. I do understand it now. My spiritual side is at war with my worldly side. I’ve seen the damage we do to ourselves by serving the worldly side. Not to mention the damage we do to the world. As with every belief system or form of practice, it’s personal, but I think I might propel myself into considerably more mindfulness going forward, partly to make myself less unwell, partly to try to fix my energy and partly because the people I have been drawn to lately have all got that about them in some way. Something of the ascetic, or the medicinal. It’s part of my calling too and I shouldn’t keep running and obliterating myself.

i bought a bivvy bag from army surplus so I can sleep under the stars. And a smaller tent than usual in case I get eaten alive… Wilderness tomorrow. Wahoo.