Month: January 2019

Fyre and the van

I’ve just watched the Netflix documentary about Fyre Festival. It’s a hell of a thing. A tribute to epic hubris, centred on a pallid grinning creep who has the right mix of no morals, smart friends and an animal comprehension of what a certain type of person will buy. He sold a dream and delivered a sack of pigshit. But his persistence is notable. In the face of overwhelming criticism and a complete lack of infrastructure he kept a face on and just said “Everything will be fine” until it wasn’t.

I watched it with my nephew Campbell. He’s at art school in Aberdeen and came down today for a few nights on the sofa. £35 and 13 hours on the megabus. A baby was sick by him right at the start of the trip. He didn’t sound like he was having a great time. But he’s here to make some street art. It’s to his taste, and costs no more than the material, time and transport. Who knows what will come of it. It’s in a place somewhere between performance and painting, and inspired by very sharp revolutionary political thinking. I sat with him on the sofa as I was getting started on doing my tax return. Not that I’ve got time for that, I should’ve done it months ago, but I get a fine if I don’t get it in on time and thankfully I have a fucking wonderful friend who is also an accountant – and patient with me too. She gets to see my bank statements. There’s got to be trust in that. Every year when I look at them I wonder what the hell I was thinking, and also how I can justify this absurd unpredictable existence when the Fyre Festival guy was selling $12,000 packages to people half my age, and they could buy.

I’m selling tickets to come play and have something happen and get some stuff in a van in Waterloo for £15. We’ll receive £13.50 of that which will be further split through the team. It’ll take a lot of those tickets to sell before the bare expenses are covered. Things creep up on you. For our show it’s solvable via getting helpful people with skills to do things for mates rates or for favours down the line. By buying things on Amazon. By putting in the hours. Thank the Gods for good friends, as it’s  still working out more expensive than I anticipated. It’s a fine lesson because this van show carries very little risk. It’s the perfect frame for me to break the back of making things again after burying my head fifteen years ago when mum died. Even if hardly anyone shows I’ll enjoy it, and if everyone shows then ace! Plus if it plays well we will roll it out to festivals and have a little lovely thing we can go back to in the gaps. That’s the main reason we are making it.

The Fyre guy was selling something very different though. He was selling supermodels in bikinis stroking hogs on the beach with champagne. And it doesn’t matter how much goodwill you’ve banked, you can’t get a mate to build hundreds of fully plumbed luxury cabanas in a few weeks to sleep a bunch of “influencers” who are wondering where the thing they’ve been promoting actually is. I doubt you can get Amazon to deliver top quality food, drink and fresh water in vast quantities to a tiny island in the Bahamas in one day, even if you’ve got Prime.

So come visit The Pantechnicon and save yourself a terrible trip to the Bahamas. No supermodels will be there – or at least I’d be surprised if they were. They’re welcome of course. There’s definitely no jetskis though, and no champagne unless you bring it, and I’m on Dry January so it’ll make me sad. I’ll almost certainly offer you whisky anyway.

Here’s a view from my van chair today… It’s coming.

20190120_151804

LAST TWO YEARS

Astonishing amounts of rain in LA the day after Trump is inaugurated

Rambo, and flights of fancy

Black Octopus

This dark time of year can get into our hearts. Even if we are up with the light, as I have been, the cold squeezes our bodies and stealthily tires us out. Our muscles are constantly tensed against it. Also we make ourselves smaller to keep ourselves warmer. Our breath shrinks into us and we shrink with it. In this hemisphere we should be cocooned into little warm hideyholes for the whole season, waiting for nature to come back and shake us awake. We shouldn’t fannying around with a freezing cold van on the weekend. But, moan about it all I want, it’s fun. If it wasn’t so bloody damn damn bloody cold I’d be having a whale of a time. As is, just remembering to breathe fully is a full time job.

I’ve had the Black Octopus for the last few days. The weird many legged clever squashy sense that … everything is just slightly off kilter. Dread, and a bit of sadness. It’s hard to shake it once it gets its tentacles into your ventricles. I keep on just stopping, sighing deeply and moving on without really knowing why I’m sad. But that’s the nature of the octopus. It just comes and perches on your head. For its own reasons. Sometimes I find myself thinking of exchanges that took place decades ago forgotten by all involved except for me, pulled out of my ear by one of those sucking appendages. Other times today I’ve gone back on the groove of missed opportunities. What might have been. Then I remember my walk in the autumn and how all of that stuff fell into sharp relief. What does any of that matter? I’ve wrestled that leggy twat long enough that it won’t get its beak into me this time. But it wasted some of my time today camouflaging itself.

I went to try and work in the van, realised I’d left the cable runner at Gatsby last night in an almost heroically deliberate unconscious act of self-sabotage. Well done that octopus. No power would’ve meant another freezing day. No. Not three in a row.

But rather than stagnate, a change of plan: Mel went to the warehouse to get the cable, I took the van for a wash. We couldn’t stick things on it and expect them to hold as it was. The whole thing was grimed in crap. I wasn’t washing it myself in this weather. I paid someone even more damn money, and then spent some on a hot coffee and sat there reading my book while they worked. Perfect opportunity to get something done that needed doing. You couldn’t touch it without grease.

20190119_161313

Now I’m at Mel’s. I put myself to bed early because there are covers and it’s warm. We’ve been clarifying ideas and running scenarios. It’s a simple thing we’re making really, and it’s important to remember why we’re making it. Despite a million complicated forms we had to fill in, in the end we are just making a pleasant moment for people. It’s not even acting. It’s just responding. It’s just a thing. I’m just getting chased by my own darkness a little bit. I think I can feel the suckers popping off now though. I’ll make polpetto nero of the bastard like they do in Astorga. Omnomnom.

LAST TWO YEARS

Women’s March vs Trump in Los Angeles

Old School and VR

Running Cables

Today was the last day building outside the warehouse in Borough. The problem with using Gatsby is that we are beholden to them in terms of arrival time. I have to be there at 8am to fend off the trafficbastards, but they don’t really have to be there until 4 and they hold the keys to the inner space. And they weren’t coming in. No money is changing hands, you see. We’re there on sufferance. It’s a favour, and we can’t expect them to change their patterns for us, much as we wished we could today.

I had to reschedule my friend the carpenter when it became clear nobody was going to let us in. Now I’m worried we won’t get stairs made in time for people to get into the van which will mean fun with stepladders. Hopefully it’ll work out. But oh dear God it was a cold morning, until with the artifice of desperation we found a way to get a wire to a plug socket. We ran a cable through a hole in a window cage, then into the building through a gap in the window where the long dead ventilator should be, then through a working loo, up four flights of stairs in a working office building, and boom! Into the socket that the cleaner uses for their Hoover. Just as well I know the code to the outer door and that the loo was unlocked today. I got power to the van just in time for my friend Suzanne to arrive clutching an oil heater to lend us. Bliss. Finally.

The good news is, it takes very little time to heat up. Two hours later we are in a warm van, but complet exhausted from cold, attempting to string sentences together while instead getting fractious because we are both just shattered by shivering. But nobody tripped on the wire and died. That’s a win. And Holly came and got some photos taken of us in weird masks and stuff. So now we have images. And then finally, 8 hours into the day, Gatsby opened their space. We disconsolately shuffled in, returned some stuff, painted a couple of chalk boards, and stopped trying to pretend to be real humans because it was far too much effort. Mel left. I sat in the van and waited for the congestion charge to end, and then drove off too, causing controlled carnage in the back of the van. Barely caring.

The last thing in the world I felt like after that rancid day of ice and disappointment was an ecstatic dance class. I drove the van home full of emotions, mostly sad and weird and unvalued and low and heavy. I shuffled up into my flat, grabbed my tracksuit bottoms, and walked back out before my brain could stop me. I got on the tube, went to Camden, and danced like a maniac for 2 hours despite really really not wanting to do anything of the sort.

It sort of helped, sort of didn’t. I still feel sad but I don’t feel so tense anymore, or so cold. It’s a good workout and I was in excellent company. I think it’ll set me up better for the weekend, which will involve more cold vans but self determined now instead of in somebody else’s space. I’ll probably have to run cable down three floors through a window, but at least I’m expecting that going in.

And when I got home Brian had run me a bath. I’m in it now restoring heat to my bone marrow.

defender-20mtr-cable-extension-reel-230v-13a-e86465-p-3360751-7246161_1

LAST TWO YEARS

Trump is inaugurated and it rains in California

I get annoyed about Health and Safety but Melissa buys pizza

 

Cold build

The van is parked in a loading bay outside Gatsby. It starts being regulated at 8am so I have to make sure I’m there on the dot. I’m leaving it there partly because until the interior is built it’s tricky to move it without collapsing everything inside, and partly because moving it in regulated hours would mean I’d have to pay congestion charge. Gatsby has accessible power. If there’s someone there…

Nobody got into Gatsby until 3pm though, which meant 7 hours in the van with no power and no loo. It’s telling that on a cold day like today I was happier by far sitting in the cab with the blowers on than I was working in the “comfortable” back section. It didn’t matter what it looked like in there, I was looking at my breath when I was in there. It was like working in a walk in fridge.

I really want people to feel comfortable in the van. We’ll need more than lights. We’ll need more heaters and more cushions, and more time, to warm the thing up before we start if the weather stays like this. If we can make it a haven then we can catch walk-ups. If it’s a cold metal case then we could be PT Barnum in there and it’d go for nothing.

The magic of Facebook though. I’m asking for a lot on there at the moment. I’m very aware that I am. I guess it’s an inevitability when you’re making something and the budget is zero. Whatever the hell I make next is going to have a budget. But this doesn’t, so I’m having to borrow a great deal of stuff – and people keep coming up trumps. An old friend is dropping round an oil radiator tomorrow on the way to the gym. We have staple guns and ladders in the van that don’t belong to us, as well as miles of material, some large items of furniture, some pictures, some shelves, an urn, a lectern and a weird old book. At heart it’s a truck where you get a proper tarot reading. But we are running interference. We are throwing lots of other things at it. Come if you like random. Don’t come expecting a scripted monologue. If that’s your groove you’ve doubtless got hundreds to choose from, right next door. But I’m confident we will find our groove, and with it the find the right people. And if I can solve the heating thing it’ll be a cosy little den and that’s super important. I want “oooh” and not “brrrr”.

But that’s been my day. Man vs cold. Mel had to teach a workshop so it was me muttering to myself and badly sticking pins into things, dragging things up and down stairs, banging my head on metal corners, going back into the cab to warm up periodically, wishing I could make a fire in the middle of the van and have done with it.

I’m excited and scared to get the experience/thingthing/show/truck on the literal road. Obligatory ticket link this sentence.

I’ve written this whole thing in the bath. Warming up before bed…

20190117_230017Biscuits.

LAST TWO YEARS

Headshots and getting over myself

A day of get-outs and break-ups

Pantechnic on sale

It is now inevitable. I’m doing a show at Vault. It’s in a van outside the door in Leake Street. Always on the fringes. Both involved and separate. A comfortable area for me.

I have no objection to sitting on my own in a van with my friend Mel, but I think It’ll be far more pleasant if there are people who have bought tickets and are sitting in the van with us. Then we can go some way towards making back some of the cash we’ve blown so far building it, while giving people a little mad slice of the inside of our heads. I’m on the look out for records of classical music laid down over fifty years ago, so we can have a bit of music as we go, because if not it’ll be generic copyright free music, plus whatever I can persuade friends to play live when they have a moment. We are under contract, tickets are live, and what’s that noise I can hear faintly at the edge of hearing…? The creak of the treadmill in the poorhouse. The crack of the orcish whips…

The fabulous Pantechnicon will be parked out front Wednesday to Sunday. Doors open at 7 and close at 10. We take up to 4 people every half an hour. Stuff will happen. Maybe you’ll save the world. Maybe you’ll save yourself. Book now. Book now. Now book. I’m good at marketing. Buy buy buy buy buy. Money money money. Spend yes spend yes click click click. That’s how it’s done, eh?

Here’s the TICKET LINK

img_20190116_203500

One thing I’ve noticed today: My friends are great. The unofficial union of friendly theatre types. I was trying to rent some stairs for the back of the van, so audience people can get in without skinning their shins. I went to the first hit on Google. They saw me coming. “Yeah mate you need an 8 foot steel deck under them for stability (like where do we keep that overnight?) and then a handrail and the stairs – will you be building yourself?” “Yes” “Well the decking is £27 times four weeks and then there’s the…” etc etc. I hung up when it was clear he was going to come in at £200 and then add VAT. Go boil your head, sir.

I put one of those posts up on Facebook – the speculative posts you see from time to time. “Anyone got stairs?” It’s not such a long shot despite how it looks to people outside the industry. I know so many theatre geeks and some of them even have garages.

Turns out that all I needed to do was go to the loo. I’ve been building outside the Gatsby space so I can say to the stage manager “Golfo, can I borrow your staple-gun / wazzer / gaffer tape / practical brain / finger?” My mate Ethan is a chippy and he was building some stuff for Gatsby. He said “Hey, Al, I saw on Facebook you need stairs. I’ll knock some up for you for cheap if you have any wood.” Next thing I know, I have someone else offering me the timber we need. By Friday, thanks to two friends and the time I’ve spent in the industry getting stuck in and not being an egomaniac, I have some stairs being custom built for a fraction of what it would take to rent them. And we can keep them against future shows. Or try to rent them for ‘undreds of pahnds to unsuspecting theatremakers. (I wouldn’t. You can borrow them for free. Just put a question up on Facebook.)

LAST TWO YEARS

Running around LA dodging the bus fare

Feeling unfit in January

Building into the fantabulous Pantechnicon!

Up to Harrow in the morning to unload the van. Then straight back into town and to Gatsby in order to start building the van show. Empty at last.

If I park outside Gatsby I can run a cable into the van and get some light to work by. That’s not possible at home where I live on the top floor. And the daylight goes so early. But it’s £11.50 daily for congestion charge.

This work reminds me of the Christmas Carol get in, but with fewer tools. Today I’ve been attaching fabric to the wooden frame in the van. That’s the prime advantage of borrowing a van that’s already been used for a show. There’s a wooden frame. Golfo made it. It’s a Godsend. We can tack material to the van interior and we can change the atmosphere. We’re hoping that we can get some reasonable lighting in there too but I’m no expert on that. I’m either going to have to wing it or get some help. And help might be wise because I’d forgotten some important potential concerns.

I just looked over last year’s blog, to discover that I was building into the same festival last year as well. Admittedly it was a much bigger space and for a much bigger audience. Nevertheless I’m remembering what an absolute donut all the health and safety was for the get-in. There’s a guy whose job it is to be as obstructive as he can be. “You can’t close the willow tunnel at the top, it’ll make people claustrophobic.” “You have to drill into the floor to support this supported banister more in case seven people simultaneously fall onto it.” I have no doubt he’ll be all over everything in our van. I’d forgotten about him until just now. Biscuit! Still, we’ll do what we can. We’ll probably end up having to ditch the van and do the show on a picnic blanket that’s been drilled two miles into the ground for stability and is weighted down as a further precaution, is hypo-allergenic with an expensive certificate to prove it, and is sprayed every five minutes with flameproofing by a qualified fireman who has slept more than 7 hours the night before.

In a break today I fell into a conversation with an old friend who runs a theatre space. “We’ve had to spend all our spare time filling in pointless forms and signing on the dotted line. The one thing we haven’t had time to do is work on the show. It’s more important to work out how likely it is for someone to bang their head on a scale of one to ten and write it down. It’s crazy.” “Yeah. Why can’t we just make theatre. Until somebody dies…”

But It means that the admin brains are the ones getting most of the work finished, especially as they are likely to be able to successfully comprehend grant applications, which form another arcane and terrible language understood by few, mastered by fewer. I’m curious to learn. Mel, my creative partner, has done the bulk of the work after I keep looking at the first question on some of these egregious forms and just hearing white noise. But this is at least a start for me. Maybe in a year I’ll think them less egregious. Maybe in two years I’ll do them without thought.

It’ll be worth it when it’s made. Joy will abound. Fun for all! I’m looking forward to getting stuck in now… Tickets might go on sale tomorrow. Imagine! A whole week before we open! Aaargh. Biscuit.

custard_cream_biscuit

 

LAST TWO YEARS

January 2017 – Arriving in Venice LA, still wondering how I got there.

January 2018 – Where I was building in a show for the Vaults Festival!

Pantechnicon

Off in the morning and over to Upton Park, driving the fabulous pantechnicon. We’re making a show in it, but it cost £80 up front to get me on the insurance so I’m not about to turn down a shot at filling it with furniture and using it for the purpose to which it was born – if it covers the insurance cost.

I can see why these guys are moving out. There’s a man that walks up and down all day outside their house with crazy tourettes. He’s evidently suffering. He’s wearing headphones, probably trying to drown it out, but his tic is a dark one. It’s pretty unsettling to hear him coming up and down shouting what he’s shouting. He came by a lot in the time we were loading. Jess Thom has become the acceptable voice of tourettes after somehow managing to commute everything into the word “biscuit” which she can utter up to 16,000 times a day. I’ve heard her on BBC Radio 4, live. They couldn’t put this dude out live. People affected by tourettes usually go to the darkest words they can find. This guy was combining concepts. One of them was usually “child”. The other definitely was never “biscuit”.

We were seeing how much it’s possible to get into the van. Turns out that’s a lot. These lads have one of the most robust board game collections I’ve ever seen, not to mention all the Lego. They also have a good solid pile of large comfortable furniture. As I was loading in I found myself wondering how the hell I’d be able to move out with all the stuff I’ve accumulated. They had boxes and boxes of stuff and yet I think my stuff would need about three van loads. We just about got it all in. Mirrors and lamps and tables and glassware and computers and multiple monitors and a full drum kit and multiple guitars and shelves and chests and… So much stuff. The accumulation of only a few years. We all accumulate so much stuff. And most of it just sits there, most of the time. Until we die and someone either throws it in a skip or leaves it in an attic or pays for expensive storage for decades before they die too and their kids have to foot the bill. No wonder some people clock out and wander around with earphones in, shouting bad things. It’s a tough gig, living in a culture that tells us that stuff makes us happy when actually it just makes us broke and fucks the world up in the process.

Since I got back from Camino I still haven’t worked out where I put my clothes before I left. But I’ve not really missed them. I’ve got the basics, plus all of my suits. Yet I’m still surrounded by junk. Unused things, many of which never belonged to me anyway.

Time is about to be my most precious commodity. I’ve got no time for all this stuff. The van opens in a week. We need to sell a lot of tickets to even come close to recouping our costs. I think they might finally go live tomorrow. Biscuit.

20190114_220641

LAST TWO YEARS

Blog: 14 January 2017 – Bumbling cluelessly around Los Angeles

Blog: 14 January 2018 – An anniversary retrospective

Making things concrete

In just over a week we’re opening a show and the tickets aren’t on sale yet. They need proof of the PLI insurance that we get through our union but the person we need to speak to at Equity is on annual leave, probably so she can dodge all the inquiries that must come at this time of year. This whole business of putting on a show is swamped in red tape. We’re almost there though. I still resent losing my budget to better guttering on the outside of my block. It makes everything matter a whole lot more when you’ve got something to lose though. It’s both galvanising and restricting.

Today I parked a van in Borough and then tried out a load of random furniture in various configurations inside it. There’s no designer and we can’t buy anything, but thankfully we have generous friends and random stuff we can borrow for a month or so. We are gradually throwing things together. The two of us who are making it are getting stressed with each other. We work very well together, and have made delightful things on a shoestring, but there are still so many unknowns on this one. We are going in cycles where one of us is okay with that and the other one is freaking out with the “what if” crap. The major one at the moment is “What if nobody buys a ticket,” which seems likely with 0 time of ticket sales online or anywhere else, 0 marketing and 0 social media. We are gonna have to be the word-of-mouth show of the century. Or I’m going to have to be outside huxtering.

It’s going to be fun once we’ve got the groundwork finished, but this is the stage in the process where the endless possibilities become concrete realities that are different to how we imagined them, and because it’s just the two of us there’s nobody we can proxy blame to when the dream changes shape. It’s like when you watch the movie of your favourite book and that whining prettyboy has no correlation with the great hero in your mind.

In the early stages of creation ANYTHING is possible, and nothing is off limits, but the problem is that reality is never quite like ImaginationLand, and there’s always going to be some degree of compromise, dictated by things like budget, gravity and the fact that magic is hard. The next few days we have to go from blue sky thinking to the realities of a load of bits of wood and fabric inside a big dark cold metal monster on wheels. We have to think about how we will move it on site every night before six when I’m in rehearsal until six in the centre of town. Fun things like that. It’ll all make sense somehow. Probably.

I’m off to bed. Got to move the van in the morning as I still haven’t sorted out parking. Also there’s the spectre of tax return looming over me. Much to be done. No time to do it. Thank God I’m not drinking.

Vampire dancing

Bloodbath. The opening scene of Blade. It’s a celebrity party and I’m part of the atmosphere. I’m in a white boiler suit and a skintight string vest. My home is a perspex box with a shower head. I have excellent fangs stuck on. I’m absolutely covered in blood. As the guests come in I’m showered in more lukewarm blood. It trickles down my back and eventually puddles in my shoes. The only solution is to dance harder. It’s a cold night. The boilersuit is cotton. It’s a two hour gig. I like dancing. I tell myself it’s perfectly justifiable to go mental to keep myself warm, as people take selfies with me for Instagram or whatever. One man comes and stands in front of me for a while, looking. I hiss at him, and at the time they’re playing drum and bass so I’m dancing hard in my little box. “He’s fucking crazy,” is his considered review to my friend. Yep, to be honest I probably am a little. But it’s fun, huh? I can think of worse ways than this to earn a living while I wait for the real jobs. Despite exposure it’s actually relatively anonymous. They’re looking at the costume and the blood. The character. The mask. Not the actor. So I felt at liberty to go mental, and I did. A good dance really gets the endorphins flowing. Two hours flew by. Now I’m in an uber home, covered in fake blood and starving. But happy from dancing. Stupid work is still work.

It came through Lyndon, who was in LA with me coming up two years ago for a glorious couple of weeks. He’s building parties now when he isn’t acting, and providing work for actor friends that he trusts as he goes about it. It’s interesting to be part of the entertainment side, when more often in that context recently I’ve been the one wearing the smart suit checking the performers are on site when they’re supposed to be, and making sure nothing goes wrong. When I came off at the end of the gig and was thanked by a complete stranger in a black suit I had a momentary world shift when I saw myself as her and her as me. She’ll still be there at 4 supervising the get-out and probably taking down lights in her suit if she’s anything like me. I get to go home. Covered in blood. The only shower in this venue that we can access is the one that pissed lukewarm food colouring into my shoes.

I’m home now. I got an uber whilst horridly tricked with total gules. The driver took it in his stride and dropped me off. I got the fangs off my teeth successfully – (I’m always worried they’ll take my teeth off) – and I stuck myself into the shower, but the problem with food dye is that it dyes the skin. I’m going to look like I have a tan for a few days before it wears off. Still. Weird but fun way to earn a crust.

img-20190113-wa0008

Dance and dance

I’m in a club that costs something like two grand a year. It’s called an Arts Club, but I see precious little evidence of artists apart from the pictures on the walls. I see a lot of tired hardworking nine to fivers winding down in their smart clothes. Women in tall heels. Men in universally dark suits and white shirts. All of the men have product in their hair. The women adjust their makeup in mirrors around the dance floor. The band is essentially an extremely good karaoke. They’re singing pitch perfect versions of radio one singles from the last ten years, to a track. I think they’re occasionally miming.

The last conversation I had in this Arts Club was about different computer programming languages. The relative merits of Python vs MatLab. That’s likely as close to art as we’re going to get here. Nobody in The Arts Club seems to work in the arts.

We came here from Ecstatic Dance in a gym in Camden. Two hours of hard crazy wild dancing. I’m still wearing a tracksuit and trainers. So is my friend. We are both wet with sweat, with tired legs. The dancing that’s going on here in this self conscious club is about as far from ecstatic as you can get. Coketastic dance is perhaps the right moniker. It mostly involves moving your arms like a penguin and gurning. That’s probably why all the men are wearing penguin costumes. Women in crippling heels occasionally look my friend up and down and scowl. “You’re the coolest person here,” I tell her, and I mean it, tracksuit and all.

In the middle of the dance floor a couple doggedly tries to inhale one another, faces and bodies ground together amidst the writhing flock of penguins. Nobody bats an eyelid. I go to the bar. That’s my first mistake. A glass of prosecco and an alcohol free Becks. £22.70. No wonder there are no artists in evidence. Perhaps Damien Hirst should show up and get a round in. I doubt I’ll ever come here again though so may as well get the full experience, including the horror of seeing the bill.

I’m parked round the corner on a single yellow. I’m hoping I won’t get a ticket after that round. The advantages of not drinking are supposed to be that you save money. But at least I can drive home. I won’t have to wait at a freezing cold bus stop. Because somehow, 2am happened. Time to go.

I remember when I stayed sober for exactly a year and I was always driving people home. I quite liked it. And this evening I didn’t miss alcohol, even though I did have a placeebeer.

The atmosphere in the two dancing rooms today couldn’t have been more different. My first time at an Ecstatic Dance class and I was slightly dreading it would be a bit like organised fun, but it was very well run. Like a sober rave. People were ‘aving it. Nobody was self conscious. Drum and Bass, psytrance and a spot of garage mixed up with tribal dance and with brilliant projected visuals. Everyone was joyful at the end of it – beaming. We gathered round a table to sweatily eat fruit after the class and it tasted so good. We had all done accidental exercise, and lots of it. Dancing to keep fit. Joy.

Then the penguins, looking each other up and down and locking their jaws as the young musicians on stage earned their tutorial fees with their amped up karaoke hit parade. Identikit lonely hearts boosted by booze and fine tuned by cocaine, trying to focus on the room through the fug whilst automatically moving parts of their bodies in a staccato imitation of the thing formerly known as dance. Everyone with a drink in their hand, and the drinks so expensive. London. Oh London. Tomorrow there’ll be more dancing. And all I want to do is lie in a bubble bath and read my book on my new bamboo bath tray…

20190111_170018