Month: May 2019

I woke up this morning, got in the van, programmed the postcode into “Fiona” – (Google maps) – and drove to Somerstown – to a very odd estate where we once watched someone trying to kill someone else from the top floor window of a pub while one of us rang the cops.

“You have reached your destination,” said Fiona, cheerful as ever at the death-corridor, but I smelt a rat. “I’m not picking up theatre costume from here,” I thought. “It’s meant to be closer to Brent Cross.” There’s beautiful theatre that is made exactly where Fiona took me, but it’s made by brilliant kids from this difficult area, supported by the charity – Scene and Heard – : Donate and see a show – it’s the biggest ticket in town and it always sells out.

No pretending to be a pretzel this morning though. I trusted Fiona but she took me wrong. I thought she was being clever. No. Dammit. Human error. Fi is nothing but obedient. She leaves the discretion to the humans. I’d given her the wrong postcode. NW1. It was supposed to be on the same grid for NW2. Bugger.

25 minutes later and it still makes no sense to me. I’m in the right place, because I’ve been given the name and that name is written on all the huge trucks, plus the trucks are branded telling us they’re for the entertainment industry. The shutters are down, police cars are everywhere because it’s a trading estate, and there’s one dude with gloves on slowly tinkering with electronics on one of the vans.

I’m in my cashmere greatcoat with two scarves and nice shoes. He’s covered in grease and didn’t expect any jumped up strangers interrupting his engineering. He initially makes out like he has no idea why I’m there. Admittedly I’d been expecting to find a little building called “reception” at the front, full of useless well spoken graduates in suits with bullshit smiles and immature prejudices and utterly continuously generationally no fucking clue despite their enviable wage which they think of as nothing.

Thankfully I deal with a skilled human instead. He can fix hydraulics and he doesn’t need me to know who his daddy was. I tell him I’m utterly stuck. I show him the following which is, apart from the company name and address, the entirety of the information I’ve been given for this job:

“…in addition to the costume we are going to need the show laptop so that R can run sound in rehearsals it is in a green box with a black lid near the doors of the truck and is labelled ‘fragile, do not stack’. There is a rucksack inside and that is what we need from that box.”

That’s the full extent of my knowledge for this pick up. I know no truck. I extrapolate from the message that I’m supposed to get costume. I thankfully make friends with this solid engineer. I tell him my truth; “I haven’t a clue what I’m picking up, or where I’m picking it up from. But this is the right company.” Thankfully he likes me. He calls the head office.

Ten minutes later I’m getting stuff out of the back of an articulated lorry. He is helping me. While we do it, another guy comes up and tries to persuade him, in a Slavic dialect that I’m not 100% following, that I should be paying him for his help. My smart clothes are part of his argument. God it’s interesting, dressing in a suit.

My engineer friend ignores the provocation of his friend quite actively and asks for nothing. He even discreetly dresses the guy down for suggesting screwing me over. And he helps me get the clothes rail out of the van…

Then I went to IKEA and got stuff. I did this job for free for friends. It’s part of the borrowing deal with the van. It cost me charges plus petrol and most of the day but it kept me moving. Which probably works out the same cost as parking in visitor’s bays. With a rental letter the van would be manageable on resident parking terms, but since my rental agreement ran out it’s £40 a day and I have to move it every 4 hours and the guys at Chelsea town hall will be obstructive if I come back with another agreement. So I spend most of my life sitting in the cab. It’s virtually impossible. Tomorrow I’ll have to pointlessly burn diesel at half 8 just to move. I wish it was gone back up north, or that I had a new written agreement, but I frankly can’t afford what RBKC think parking the thing is worth if it’s not owned by me. My own van is the only way forward. And there’s no point of that when I’m looking at a big pile of acting work coming up.

 

I thought I had two auditions in two days. “That’s the way of it,” I thought wryly. “Like London buses,” I added to myself. “None for ages and then three show up at once and whichever one you get on stops for half an hour to regulate the service almost immediately, with the heaters blowing full on a hot day, making someone sick all down your front. You try to get out in traffic three foot before an official bus stop to clean up, but the driver literally pretends he is deaf and you don’t exist, and then eventually after half an hour crawling the final three foot he won’t open the door you’re right in front of because it’s an entrance door, so you leak vomit through to the middle of the bus to exit by the middle but he shuts it and guns the engine because you weren’t quick enough and you bing the bell and shout and he shouts back contemptuously in Ancient Greek for not knowing an esoteric piece of knowledge about how buses work whilst three other overheated gangrenous people vomit on your hat and you decide to throw in the towel and collapse finally, defeated and confused as well, since nobody has actually updated the digital next stop information display since it was invented. Which is when the driver randomly opens the middle door in traffic and starts shouting at you that you have to leave or he’ll call British transport police, not because he’s upset with you but because he’s worked out it’ll piss off another passenger, which, outside of moving the bus, is what he’s actually paid his 6 million quid a year to do.

That’s auditions. Yep. Just like buses. Just the same. Yep.

Turns out I didn’t have two auditions in two days anyhow. I had one. And a whole fucking week in between. I arrived a week early for an audition. The opposite of what buses do. It’s not the first time I’ve done that sort of thing either. Won’t be the last. I spend hours sitting in random places just around the corner from where I’ll have to be. I’ve been late for two auditions in my life as far as I recall. One because an old agent’s assistant told me one thirty over the phone and emailed me the 12.30 and I didn’t have the means to check email. “Where are you?” “Driving to the beeb” “You should be there?” “Wtf?” Fucked that CD relationship, to this day. I was “stuck in traffic” apparently, is what the angry CD had been informed, and I’d literally been told to learn a Shakespeare sonnet for camera – “The expense of spirit in a waste of shame.” I learnt it but never got to do because the CD expected me to have read a script I’d never seen and to have learnt a scene from it too. I sight read it atrociously with no context, flustered and filled with rage at my agent’s assistant. That was fourteen years ago! I remember it like it was yesterday. Because it was a powerful relationship for me, scuppered.

The other one you couldn’t make up either. It was just for a commercial, and I was clusterfuck late because of a suddenly closed tube station, then a bomb alert at the station I sprinted to, and then an expensive black cab in traffic to finally arrive just ten minutes late to a casting director immediately talking down to me like I was some spoilt infant, leaving me literally lost for words. “You should always leave extra time! You should know that.” Um… After I’d have literally been over an hour early having a chilled out coffee in Soho if it hadn’t been for another perfect storm, where I’d run myself sick and then spent money I actively couldn’t afford to spend. But you remember these things. Especially because you know that people talk, and that’s their experience of you.

Buses. I made up a funny story about buses at the start of this because I use them lot. People whose job it is to put actors into jobs can fall into the same patterns of dehumanising. I’ve seen some foul hashtags over the years about things actors do in auditions. I guess there are a lot of actors doing a lot of things in their desire to work and if your job involves watching lots of us you can occasionally forget we are also subject to chance, despite frequently looking immaculate when we show up.

Anyway anyway anyway, today someone who isn’t a friend of mine offered me a job, based on things I did in a room while they were watching me. I get in those rooms infrequently enough that this is great news. Hooray etc.

Buses. There are more buses queued up too. This is the beginning of a powerful change for the better.  Bring it. Onwards.

 

Our little pussy cat has been living here for two years now. I’ve never lived with one before, but I think we lucked out with her and her pointy ears. She’s tiny. She’ll always be tiny. She expresses her rage through the medium of poo and wee which is occasionally horrible. But mostly it just means we try to keep her happy, and she’s usually pretty chilled these days.

There are some things I’ve received in my understanding of cats that don’t tally with her behaviour. First of all, right now I’m sorting all this Porcelain and glass and stoneware… Every surface in the house has got something breakable right by the edge of it, and something else breakable next to that breakable thing, almost deliberately lined up in some macabre game of dominos.

With one swipe of her paw Pickle could bring my whole porcelain empire to a crashing end. But instead she just … ghosts around everything. Mel pointed out that she’s got neck muscles like a bull now, so she would be more than capable of havoc. But so far, nothing. No lots cancelled because of BAD CAT BAD CAT BAD BAD BAD. She is just instinctively careful. It’s uncanny.

Those neck muscles have come from her daily workout which is to jump on my lap and try to close my laptop / knock my phone out of my hand / make me drop my book. In that sense she’s true cat. “Me me me not the thing look the thing is mine now it smells of me me droppit me me”. But she doesn’t realise that it usually goes both ways, as whilst it’s still cold I get a free hot water bottle while I’m writing, and warm company while I sleep which is really all people are after when they go on Match.com, right?

Nice audition today for some Germans and then just a relaxed afternoon finding out what I can find out about the stuff that I still have to get out out out out out of my house. Brian is off to Namibia soon, as one does, so I’m going to have a short period of time to explode the contents of all the boxes into the living room. Late next week would be a great time to have someone that knows stuff about Porcelain to come round my flat and know stuff about porcelain at me. I also need someone to digitise some celluoid, although I’m working on an angle or two there. This Porcelain period must pass soon, and once it is done I’ll be an amateur expert and able to rinse car boot sales, while turning my weirdly retentive brain to silver hallmarks. Might as well fill it with something while I’m waiting to fill it with more lines. Although there are four jobs pending at the moment, some from a while ago which is always a good sign. I trust the universe to throw me a bone before long, which puts even more pressure on me to put an end to The Antiques Roadshow – Al’s Flat episode, hosted by Pickle. In this week’s good news, I fully emptied the storage. In this week’s bad news, it’s because I threw it all in the van, which goes back to York soon.

“Dear Sotheby’s. I have a huge collection of antique porcelain. Almost all of it is broken. Much of it is smoke damaged as well. Here are some rushed photographs. Can you send someone over to work out if anything is worth selling?”

“No. Go away.”

“Dear Christie’s, hello. I’ve got all this lovely Meissen porcelain. Some bits by other major houses as well. It’s all beautiful although I should mention that it was in a catastrophic fire, and then it was thrown haphazardly and half wrapped into boxes that were then chucked around. It’s often hideously disfigured, some pieces are missing their heads, all are missing something. Many still look almost pleasant despite this. Perhaps you could send someone round to… Hello? …”

“Hi, Bonham’s… So this is the situation…” *click*

Meanwhile eBay sits there in the corner smirking. “I always knew he’d come back to me in the end.”

It seems my mangled collection of Frankenstein’s Meissen is not gaining the traction I’d hoped among the great and the good, mostly because I open the conversation with how fucked it is. And just as I send my last fruitless cry in the dark by email trying to get an expert to show up at my house in Chelsea and just say “that one and that one, the rest is shit,” the speculative “not as fucked as some of the other Meissens” Meissen goes ping in my pocket as someone bids the minimum, which is still a sum of money. It’s only dealers bidding for it right now and I can’t work out why it’s so low on the eBay search list. Apart from the fact I forgot to put the word “figurine” in the title. I put the word “damaged” in the title and even with that there my little trinket seller comes in at number 14 for “damaged meissen” which NOBODY IS EVER GOING TO SEARCH FOR anyway. He is a smug looking bastard, my trinket seller. He clearly knows more about selling trinkets than I do. He’s probably buying himself cheap on eBay so he can fix himself and then walk down the red carpet at Sotheby’s and sell himself and the carpet for five times as much as I get.

It’s all about presentation, of course. I approached all three of the auction places saying “This stuff is fucked.” That’s true. But they’re probably used to people saying “This stuff is great!” cos it was grandma’s pride and joy. It’s a useful reflection though. I often present myself on the same terms, leading with the flaws. Like I put “damaged” in the title and forgot “figurine”. “Hey there, dating site, I’m damaged goods.”

It’ll make someone happy though, and that’s the purpose of this repurposing work. But for a glorious moment I thought I’d be able to afford to get a pony and teach it how to fly like I’ve always wanted. As it is I’ll still get some money for nothing and then as like as not someone in the postal service will chuck weights on top of it and I’ll have to refund it anyway.

Well, there are other ways to get rich, Rodney. Like acting. Ha ha ha ha ha haaaargh. I’m auditioning tomorrow and Thursday for two fun things that will give me more pleasure and pay me more than googling Porcelain marks until my eyes bleed and scrubbing smoke stains until my fingers dissolve.

Here’s the link, in case clicks mean bumps. Or in case one of you collects Meissen. Because talk it down or not I’ve got a stack of it coming up some of it is glorious, and even if some of it is damaged, it’s good entry level stuff, and not my bag.

I’ve been perfectly happy today pottering around my flat, googling makers marks and occasionally stopping to watch something on Netflix. We have scaffolding still up the block so I can’t even watch the world go by. It’s like I’m in a little insulated bubble here, although I still found myself getting cold. To the extent that I put the heating on. Out of season but now I’m toasty.

Tomorrow I’ve got to try to empty the van. It’s going back up north and it’s still full of books and stuff. Records. My uncle’s clothes. Things I haven’t had the headspace or knowledge to sort. Today saw me in the flat again reducing the number of boxes and then getting another one from the van and repeating. Tomorrow will be learning lines and carrying boxes. Life’s rich tapestry.

It’s the anniversary of The Hindenburg Disaster. A transatlantic airship up in flames. It brought an end to public confidence in that form of transport. I wonder what the world would be like if it hadn’t happened – if we’d have loads of blimps in the sky. Transport plus advertising, plus they’re quiet. Problem is once you’ve seen those photos you don’t want to go near one.

I love a balloon. My dad crossed the Alps in a hot air balloon and I drew a picture of it in art class aged like ten so I must’ve been inspired by him. Maybe we should bring back airships. I guess they’re slow, and vulnerable. But they feel like magic. And they’re probably pretty fuel efficient.

So yeah, you’re wind dependent. Usually you’d need to budget about 100 hours of flight time to go to Frankfurt to New Jersey. But one time they smashed it home in 43 hours, which might have annoyed all the passengers if the bed and board was part of a set price, as it was pretty luxurious up there until it caught fire. Such a shame. And helium is heavier than hydrogen. Something like that but not with a flammable gas would be huge and so very vulnerable to wind.

Yep. That’s my day. Thoughthole about zeppelins, oh look a Meissen with no arms, episode of Bojack, cup of tea, another random thoughthole. I ran myself out of bleach spray. I’ll be off to the hardware store tomorrow for more. I’m still finding lovely things, but I can feel time edging away in this work. It’s rewarding to me though. Taking something covered in smokey gunk and making it look halfway normal again is quite satisfying, if time consuming. But I’m never going to be stuck for something to do again, God help me.

Anyway all that aside I’m putting this down and putting on the latest episode of Game of Thrones. I probably won’t blog after as I know how you all hate spoilers…

Tristan came round last night after work. I needed some help with the plates and offered him an hourly rate to lend a hand. We were supposed to be starting in the morning but we stayed up too late and I woke with a shock at 11. I’ve got a better handle on what’s there though. Service for Carol will be eccentric, but that’s fine. It’s an eccentric show. It’s unusual having a friend round the flat on the clock. But he works hard, and it was good to have him – I could do the internet work of identifying and ebaying things, while he did the practical stuff of reducing the number of boxes in the flat. There are still so many plates and nowhere to put them. Once I’ve got service for Carol I’ll have to think about storage.

Once Tristan was off to work in the evening I just settled to read a script, and breathed out a bit. I’m meeting for some telly on Wednesday, so wanted to sit with it now for a while to start to let the words sink in. Only one scene to learn but it’s a nice part and would fill a gap, plus get the summer off to a decent start. I enjoy reading, and it was a sweet love story which I wouldn’t normally read. It’s made me feel quite whimsical. Would be nice to be involved, and telly auditions have been few and far between over the years so a pleasant bit of work to have to do anyway, to learn towards one of them.

This long weekend is a boon. I’ve felt no pressure to leave the house today. I stumbled up to Tesco in my tracksuit to get a bit of food, but with everything still shut tomorrow as well, I can allow a day of nothing but reading and sorting. The work of sorting and cleaning porcelain is still feeling Sisiphean especially with acting work starting to pick up, but I’m getting through it. And bleach buckets sort of work with busts, but they strain the brightness out of colored porcelain a bit. God. If you’d told me a year ago I’d know this much about ceramics I’d laugh at you. I remember my dad teaching me a year ago about the value of some bits of China. He had some figurines and the least showy one had the most value. He asked me which of them was the best and I guessed correctly because I knew how his mind worked, so the interaction stuck in my memory.

Just a workaday blog today. Getting it written so I can go back to the important business of chilling out. I’ll try to do something more interesting tomorrow… We shall see if I manage.

Right now just me and the cat, Sunday night, chilling. Gonna read another book. Rock and roll, baby.

“Yeah, I used to read your blog. But there are so many of them.” I’m sitting with my nephew in a pub. I chose it. Sam Smith’s. Cheap.

He’s bought the round anyway. My card got declined. I first met Sasha something over fifteen years ago when he was far too young to be playing Grand Theft Auto in my bedroom but he’d sneak in and do it anyway when I was out. Adopted nephew if you’re being technical. But nephew. Although now, after a Science degree at Oxford, he’s working in money. He tries to tell me about his work. It’s predicting schlumflam blurmers with the hurmburm flism. He’s glad of the weekend. I tell him I frequently don’t notice when it’s a weekend. I just work when I’m working and not when I’m not.

Today I was pretending to be a mini-golf pro in Clerkenwell once again. Only a couple of hours work, and then seeing friends and family. There was a hailstorm just before I started, and another one just as I finished. Miraculously for the two hours I was exposed with nowhere to hide it held off. I packed up in a rush as the clouds got ready to open and made it to within two minutes of the pub before the Gods dumped ice on me.

Sasha and I grabbed Mexican food and beer and I burnt my lip on a jalapeno popper. It’s been way too long since I’ve seen my nephew though. Great to catch up. It’s funny to experience that – people you first met when they were children buying the round when your card gets declined, which of course mine did. Dammit.

Then a rush across town to catch one of my dearest old friends. She had to go to the theatre for work and I arranged to catch her before. She’s teaching at one of the old drama schools and the kids all have to watch a particular show at the Trafalgar Studios for £30 cheapest ticket restricted view. “Do you want to come with me?” “Not for £30.” “I don’t blame you.” We spend a bit of time buying a sticker book and catching up. It’s been ages. Her presence is like a tonic.

Then it’s back home to bleach ceramics. I’ve left an experimental broken bust overnight in a bucket of Domestos. My fingers stink of chlorine, and feel very dry. I’ve bought some rubber gloves now, but I’m feeling pretty weird after a few hours of inhaling the stuff while trying to get smoke out of these figurines and busts. On the plus side it seems mould spray with chlorine and bleach can get pretty nasty smokemess out of some ceramics, but not all. It’s a lottery as to whether the smoke got cooked in under the glaze. All this stuff was in such a fire and much of it got to a very high temperature.

Time and application lets me restore some of the beauty, and just now I had a message on my eBay – “Thank you so much! The ceramic ballet shoes are just like the ones my grandmother had. I missed them.”

I’ll know more tomorrow morning about what can be saved out of the really fucked stuff, and about whether or not bleaching busts mean that they forever stink of chlorine like I think my fingers might. Right now I’m fading towards bed, with Pickle asleep on my leg.

My rock and roll Friday evening was all sorted as far as I was concerned. Having taken a box of Porcelain up to my flat, I was experimenting with cleaning products. Bleach and chlorine spray, in particular. My fingers stink. Half way through my experiment, my phone buzzes. “What time are we meeting?” Oh. Shit. I’ve agreed to go to drinks with Coney. “See you in an hour.”

Back before Immersive was the buzzword, there was Coney. Originally Rabbit, born at BAC, from the same stable and time as the better known Punchdrunk and the better loved Shunt. A playful secret agency, characterised by their lack of desire for publicity. It fitted with my rather unusual early desire to be an actor that nobody was noticing. I wanted so much for the humans to stop cluttering the stories. I found people at BAC who were deliberately ignoring the established power structures and doing weird stuff. Weird AND subversive? Where do I sign? With Tassos, essentially. He was and is brilliant, unusual, funny, bold. We made things together. Some of them worked. Some of them didn’t. We learnt through all of it. Games in the real world. Plays where the actors can see the audience. Continuing the work of remarkable practitioners in this country like Joan Littlewood to break down the barriers. There was no possibility of being “impressive” at Coney. You had a thing to put across and you did it. It was a useful alliance just after Guildhall. It helped me drop a lot of shit. And it gave rise to a wave of interesting work in my industry.

Years later and yeah, I’ve had some great notices out of my wacky work with those guys. My photo unnamed in national papers. Considered and positive angles written about my work. But part of the deal is the anonymity – (we all had codenames back in the day). And I’ve recently started to realise that the work is sometimes less relevant than the ability to prove you’ve done the work. So it serves me less to work hard for a company that forefronts anonymity.

I loved the time I spent with them back in the day, throwing things against the wall and seeing what stuck, and Battersea Arts Centre was a very good place to do that. For this evening it was just reconnecting, play testing some of their coming games, and meeting up with old friends. It’s lovely to see how there is an audience for the work now.

I’m working tomorrow round the corner from Guildhall in a treasure hunt theatre game thing that totally came out of Coney. Often in the past I’ve felt that Tassos has the job of getting there first so that someone better with numbers can nick his idea and make it more financially viable. That’s what I’m doing tomorrow, very close to where we built the incomprehensible “Something Running”.

It was a good night, seeing positive people from my life, all over too briefly.

I only took one photo today that wasn’t of porcelain. It’s me at Alie Street…

I’m tired tonight. A week of dayjobbery, interrupted tomorrow because of my greed. I had a full day booked, but then another job called me last minute. It pays more, so I cancelled my shifts tomorrow as there’s always people hungry for it. But then the other job told me they’d filled the gap so I ended up accidentally giving myself a day off, which in a way is just as well as I can make use of the twilight of the van to get the rest of the weird bits out of storage before it rolls over into another week. There’s not much left and most of it is probably going to a museum of music hall. But I’m very tired. It’s not 9pm yet and I’m feeling like I want to be asleep already.

I was winding down when Brian remembered it’s local election day. I threw some clothes back on and the pair of us struck out into the surprisingly cold night in order to exercise our democratic right. We got to one polling station, and nothing. Round the corner to another, but the lights were off. Two security guards at the gate of the Royal Hospital. I asked them where the polling station was tonight but they looked at me blankly. No local election today in our borough. Well. At least we tried. We stopped by the shop on the way home and arrived home glad of the effort. We both had been talking on the way up about how we had somehow missed all the info about the candidates and we were going to have to spend time reading at the station. But thankfully we hadn’t heard because there wasn’t a damn election…

Now I’m in my bedroom again, supine. There’s a glass of reasonable Argentinian Malbec on the windowsill behind me, which I intend to be the only one tonight. I occasionally sit up for it. Like now. Mmm. Once this and the dogs l glass is finished, I’ll wind into sleep and treat myself by letting the builders be my alarm in the morning rather than that annoying little jingle that usually claws me from my slumber. No work means less money and yesterday’s booboo could run to thousands so I’m going to have to be careful until I know the bill. But a day off on a Friday before a bank holiday is legit and will help me get the next big eBay push lined up, sharpened and ready to go on Sunday.

I’ve stopped selling my uncle’s clothes. I sold one shirt. It took them two weeks, but they got back yesterday with a horribly worded message about the condition. I had inspected it and seen none of the things they mentioned. But it turns out they just wanted a refund. They got their refund and immediately gave nice feedback despite their long message. I’d have been fine with “We don’t like the shirt, can we have our money back”. But I guess people have to go in fighting in case they’re dealing with an asshole.

Onwards. Good things are coming, not least among them being a good night’s sleep…

There’s been a hole in my life lately. Two people – my two best friends – both had a baby girl within a month of each other. These were my 2am friends. “Help. I’m sad.” “I’m in bed. But I’m not working until 1 tomorrow. I can get up.” “Get dressed and get a cab here.” Not booty calls. Just reconstruction. We would often talk for hours on the phone, literally. I’d put the phone down hot handed and click back into a world that wasn’t speaking in my ear, almost confused.

Nowadays I have to put it in the diary if I want to see them. Even phone calls are interrupted and pointedly more practical. They’ve got shit to do. “Oh hang on, she’s crying, I’ll call you back.” I totally get that. There are small humans who demand a high level of general attention, and they depend on my friends for their actual literal survival. I was lucky to have one of those friends on hand tonight, though, while we left Rhys quite literally holding the baby. It could’ve been messy without. I think we both benefitted from winding down with each other. But I arrived in the interaction in a total state and she helped me find perspective.

I fucked up today, big time. A family thing, mixed with a family work thing. Something so screwy that I’m not yet over it enough to be able to blog it. And something that will almost certainly be the most expensive mistake I’ve ever made, plus will vindicate suspicions my close family have had about me for years. I feel very black-sheepish. I’m beginning to secure interesting friendships with my brother’s kids, but I think I’ll always exist as a message. I need to hit some good jobs soon so that message shows that these decisions can bear visible fruit. Because otherwise I’ll be remembered for fuckups like today, which will definitely be a good story once the dust has settled but right now feels raw because it affects my bro.

My family is also my friends of course, who will remember me for more specific kinder things and who miraculously put up with the results of my self-sabotage. That’s been for decades, and they know it, those few lucky/unlucky maniacs who persist.

I was late because of having to firefight the nonspecific (sorry) shitstorm I created. But with nothing more to go on than my monosyllabic “help fuck sorry late need hug” type messages, I explained my situation in full and got the most restorative evening I could’ve asked for from my friend considering I was a jittering hunk of stress when I arrived, and how much of a plum I’m feeling still. I remember my mum as a source of unconditional love when I got a parking fine. This is similar. It’s basically a thing that is 100% my fault that impacts me negatively.

You’ll get the blow by blow in time. Probably when I get the bill. Right now I don’t want to look at it. It just triggers more self recrimination and I’m supposed to be out of that spiral by now. Avoiding writing about it has made me smile about it for the first time all night though… Everything looks better from a distance… God the world… Hilariously nuts. Sorry to be evasive. Gah. Fuck. Idiot. Ugh.

I’m just home, to my flat, with Pickle. Going to wind down.