Month: March 2021

Yesterday I cleaned out my car. I took a picture out of a sooty frame outside so I could dump the glass easily. The weather was so perfect that I put the print on the tarmac to photograph it in the sunlight. It came out quite well with the road lending an urban feel to an urban artwork.

It’s an etching done in the nineties of the treasury building in Brisbane. The artist – John Hockings – is still exhibiting but over in Australia. I emailed him and we’ve agreed to try to list it for £250. I’m gonna give him a third as it came to me for free. I said it might not be the market for it here, but there’s only one way to find out. I’ll put it up on Sunday if it’s maximum £1 listing day. See how it goes.

I’m sharing this because, looking out the window, I have absolutely no idea how it was ever possible to calmly lay a £250 artwork on the asphalt and snap it like I did just yesterday. There was no wind. No rain. Perfect peace.

The windows are shaking with wet wind from over the water as I write. It’s one of those nights when I don’t feel safe in the good ship Al’s Flat. It feels like I might sink. It doesn’t seem possible that everything changed so quickly. Just yesterday I cleared out my car, humming happily to myself in the sunshine wearing just a T-shirt. I folded up the bivouacs and blankets and bagged up the rubbish and made it ready for the next set of adventures, whatever they might be.

I’m writing all this so I don’t get drawn into all this noise with the famous couple that we’re supposed to care about so much. Every time I read “an actress in an Oscar worthy performance” it makes me want to post custard to the idiot that wrote it. But I’m not gonna bite any further. There’s a lot of world out there to think about.

I got the damn picture up in the spare room. It’s almost straight too. There. Howdja like them apples? I’ve also put one of the tables that have been in the corridor for a decade into the room. It’s supporting an attractive light that matches the paint. It looks like it’s been thought about. It HAS been, only I already had the light. Wow.

It’s an improvement. I really want to get the bed in there now but that’s a two person thing and Max has a job and kids so it’s hard to pin him down for a hand. Insects don’t stop for the pandemic and nor do children sadly.

So – I’m writing this, listening to the wind and gearing up for an early bed before a ten hour non stop drive in a Luton van tomorrow, with loading and unloading to think about too. I think it’s time, you’d be surprised to hear, for a cup of chamomile and a bath. Night night.

If we were plugged into The Matrix they’d make it better than this. I have never been on holiday for as long as this pandemic has kept us indoors. This feels like a holiday gone very wrong.

For many, it’s “The Pensioner Experience!” A brand new style of theme park! Delve deep into the world of being old! Go from room to room and forget why you did it! Live off handouts! Feel confused and trapped all the time! Drink too much and watch too much TV! Slowly forget how to do basic things! Be completely cut off from your usual social circle! Worry about your health! Fall out of the coping structure you built over years! Realise how everything is built on shaky assumptions! Start to distrust everything! Eat bad food because it’s cheap!

For all of us, we are gonna have to work hard to do the things we did easily. Social interaction will be rusty as hell. We’ll probably all just shout at each other for a while. At some point we will all stagger blinking into the sun, likely buoyed by some jaunty saccharine slogan: “Go Out to grow Out!” Loads of people will probably get run over crossing roads. Pubs will start to fill, while others will watch from their windows predicting doom. People will keep dropping pints. Passive aggression will be scattergunned by the self appointed adjudicators both of going out and of staying in. It’s gonna be weird and there’ll be lots of judgement. Because this situation has been politicised, like everything these days. While we’ve been home, the internet has become a closer friend than before to most of us. All the biggest hairiest trolls have shiny little sock puppets and lots of us are listening to them talk without seeing what the puppet is attached to, or noticing the tentacles sliding towards our sphincters as we listen. It’s an army of little Murdochs from all sides of the political spectrum, they’re all shitting in our brains for profit.

Why is it that everybody tangles up politics and morality? They are two separate things. But it often feels that everything is bundled together. You vote one way, and therefore you have to believe many things that notionally come in the same package. People seem to just buy the package and homogenise their views on everything and there’s nothing I hate more than fundamentalism and blind conformity. I don’t care what you think, just so long as you’ve arrived there yourself through reasoning and that you never lose sight of the fact that you might have got it wrong. If you’re just following some spokesperson or movement, and if you won’t entertain that you might not have everything bang on, then I’m bored of you. It’s so easy to kneejerk and oversimplify in order to belong. It’s as easy to be manipulated as it is to manipulate, but right now people are wide open, and it takes a certain personality type to seek to manipulate. Most of us just absorb.

As a result, lots of us have somebody’s hand up our arse right now. Those hands are moving our mouths for us…

I’ve got friends who seem to be constantly shouting other people’s words. I don’t like it. Shout, yes – by all means. But work out what your own words are and shout them. Your words are the best ones, even if they’re confused and contradictory and passionate and ultimately meaningless like this blog.

Anyway. Yeah I’m not sure where I’m going with all that. Just asking you to be aware when you jump on bandwagons. If you know you’re doing it and you know why then go for it. Just keep an eye on the edges. The flock can be guided from within. But you need to know yourself first or the noise will overwhelm you, and that naughty hand will gently slide up your bum when you’re distracted.

This room isn’t sacred yet, but it’s getting there.

I’m sitting back in the newly painted spare room. I’m right in the middle of a brand new carpet enjoying the relative lack of clutter as I write. A dump trip tomorrow will make it better still. I can get rid of some of the rubbish that’s crept in here. Broken and calcified fish tank lights, a cat-mauled swivel chair, an unwanted damaged IKEA bedside table… I’m sitting on the swivel chair. It’s comfy and even if I’ve used it a fair amount over the years I’ve decided it takes up more space than the usage warrants, and the mauling makes an already cheap item undesirable. I absolutely must start being more efficient and more ruthless and if I regret ditching it down the line then so be it. Part of me thinks I should put it on eBay for a fiver collection only, but if I’m going to say that to myself then I have to do it tomorrow or never.

I bought a clip frame online that was the right size to fit my Mucha prints and I really wanted to get them up today. It’s a frame by some company that specialises in those display stands that crop up with graphs inside for fictional board meetings. It actually looks good reconstituted as an art frame for a piece in those colours, but I’ve only just realised that they didn’t incorporate any means of attaching the thing to a wall. I measured it all up and marked it beautifully with LX tape before I realised they provide no means of hanging the damn thing. It’s meant to be propped up in boardrooms saying “Productivity Graph” or “The word of the week is EXCELLENCE”. It’s meant to be on display in one of those many rooms where love used to go to die before people had to learn to start making that happen in their front room instead. “We are a HAPPY workforce!!”

I’ve put semi-naked ladies from the 1920’s into it. I call them artworks. I’m hoping my guests will as well.

Going on the website it seems they were supposed to include fittings, so hopefully it’s nothing that a phone call can’t fix. Then just get the bed in here along with a very carefully curated quantity of organised things. A room of one’s own. Oh what a delight it shall be. Free from the strange cornucopia of antique weirdness that fills all the other rooms in the house. Oh glory.

I’ve learnt that the floorboards would actually look pretty nice if I exposed them in the living room and just chucked rugs around. I’ve even got some antique rugs in a corner of the living room. There ain’t cheap carpet big enough for the living room, so I reckon that’s the long term plan in there. None of this has been as quick as it was in my desires, but at least today I can again feel like I’ve seen some progress.

So yeah. Today it feels like there has been movement. I just have to make sure that’s how I feel every day. I’ve been a bit slower than I wanted. No more.

Knowing I was going to be sleeping in London tonight, we went to find more green today. Stanmer is much more accessible than Chanctonbury, and we were feeling lazy Sundayish. With beanie hat and impractical coat despite the optimistic sunshine we struck out.

Stanmer Park was once a private garden, now thrown open to the public. It’s busy. Everybody either had a dog or a child. I had Lou and she had me. We strolled through the remains of the landscaped gardens, drinking it in. I’ve needed to get some green into my eyes. It’s much harder to be glum when you remember how nature just gets on with it.

The house at Stanmer stands empty but not derelict or overgrown. There are people whose job it is to look after it. In the past perhaps it’s been event space, and catered for evening revelry and mealtimes. In this quiet time it is being refurbished ready for a world where parties are allowed again. We leaned up against the glass and peered intol the window at the paneling and paintwork, the curtains and chandeliers. Another huge empty home. Round the back, in what would have been part of the garden, stands a grove of ancient Cedar trees. Cedars are the wisdom keepers, often used for gateways. These ones, so near to Brighton, are likely well loved and ritually used. As we sat near them I got curious. A fenced off derelict atrium, overgrown with brambles but with a neatly cut entrance just begging to be explored.

Despite my cashmere coat I got in far enough to be disappointed. Broken glass everywhere under the skeleton of a pavilion roof just waiting to fall on my head. The ruins of what might once have been a cheap summer house. No wonder they haven’t bothered repairing the thing. I fought my way back out through the brambles and into the sunshine. Sometimes it’s worth going down the rabbit hole. Sometimes it isn’t. But you have to go down it to find out.

Lou and I found a place to sit and feel the sun on our face, out of the wind and backing onto churchyard, and that was that. We can both sit for ages with the sun on our faces. We did precisely that. We sat there. We sucked in the vitamin D, and breathed out into the day. Oh the sun! Every day closer to summer. This time of year I’d always prefer to be in the sun – as you well know. Just need to get that lead in a Spielberg so I can go to LA every January and make money out there.

Evening by the sea, with the sun falling behind the huge offshore wind farm south of Brighton and I’m feeling considerably less neurotic. We’ve all taken such a string of hits since this time last year. Sometimes the energy just gets low and it’s harder to see the light.

We have just got back from Chanctonbury Ring, an ancient grove atop a nearby hill with views across the downs and down to the sea, glittering all day as the weather attempts to edge us closer to Spring. It’s a beautiful walk up there, and the peace of the place is accessible even through the screaming of the children that appear to be everywhere at the moment, just before the schools reopen once more. There are a lot of parents on their final weekend before they get some downtime. They must be thrilled.

I’m glad to be out of London again. The parks are great, but the city generally feels like its lost its purpose. So many of my friends are there because that’s notionally where the work is. But it isn’t anymore. I once replied to a tweet from a stranger and found myself in a Soho studio with cans on half an hour later doing background Viking movie noises for love and cash. I dropped everything and shot into town for last minute work quite frequently actually. Development readings, last minute cover, emergency driving, short notice audition. I can go from joggers to three piece suit in about thirty seconds, and even remember my keys fifty percent of the time as I bustle out to the tube station for whatever the opportunity is this time. But … that was in the beforetimes – the times of old when the people of Londonton freely moved and lo, they breathed of the airs without fearfulness.

Now I’m glad to be in Brighton, where the sea wind helps people shake the cobwebs out of their own heads. People are far more likely to say hello to strangers here even without this nasty little shit of a situation. And it’s a beautiful evening. I’m so lucky to have a car. I honestly don’t know how I’d cope without it. I’m sitting in it facing the sea, breathing as I write. I’ll need to remember how much weight has already dropped off me, so I can try and carry that lightness back to the smoke with me tomorrow…

Don’t listen to the news.

Just don’t.

I’ve been driving to Brighton. People try and say things on the radio like they’re good news. “It might be possible for vaccinated people to travel to either Portugal or Cyprus after May 17th,” somebody says in their best happy voice. I almost have to stop the car in a layby in order to strip naked and set fire to everything. Instead I just howl at the road on front of me like a wounded manatee.

I do not want to divide my life into two sections. Into “Before the fall” and “after Covid”. I don’t want to sit in a circle of old people in thirty years and say “when we were your age, we could go anywhere we could afford to go. I remember sometimes I’d just get on a plane and go somewhere. We never knew it would change so quickly. If only we’d known.” I don’t want to say that to a young person who I can tell doesn’t even believe me because all they’ve known is ever decreasing circles.

I hate everything about this. And I’ve just driven to Brighton so I’m covering more ground here than most. Lou is my mental support bubble and I have to be able to say that in case plod tries to slap a fine on me. It’s been happening at Borough Market. Somebody walked there from Battersea, which is a pleasant walk on a sunny day. I had a similar one a few weeks ago. They were told they had strayed too far by the police, and were issued with a fine. That’s crazy.

Despite the Audi and the freedom it gives I still feel trapped, and I can’t see the end of it. I have a hunger to see the world. To experience as much as I can in his short story I’m creating, before my bits stop working. Right now I can still hike up a mountain. I wanna do it. Himalayas or even Kilmanjari – anything but Everest although even that – the Macdonalds of Mountains – might be a bit less of a tourist trap right now. I could join the legion of idiots throwing tissues and farting in a queue so they can go home and make out like they’re Edmund Hilleary. Get me out there. “I went up Everest and all I got is this stupid T-Shirt”. I want to see and feel and know all the things damn it all. And yes I also have my calling, and it’s always been a balance between the two energies. The need to be available for the nebulous job that could crop up at any moment is constantly at odds with the need to get up and see all the things, and both of them are balanced by the fact that money doesn’t grow on trees so I have to be resourceful within my choices. But … the world is shut. The whole fucking world is shut. I need a lear jet. Or an ocean going yacht. I need to cover some ground. But no matter how many times I buy that lottery ticket it doesn’t seem to come in. So I continue to be surrounded at home by antiques because I haven’t the financial space to say “oh just take the lot for a fiver. And while you’re at it, drop me a quote for a full redecorating job. I’ll be taking the yacht to Corsica with the puppy.” I like the antiques but they wouldn’t be there if I didn’t have to hustle for cash. And they’ve done me well over the last few months, thankfully.

Bring it back. Ugh. Has it really been less than a year? I’m done with it.

At least I’m by it seaside again. And somewhere, I guess I should remember that I chose this existence.

I finally had a really good look for my passport today. There’s the prospect of a lucrative if logistically difficult drive to Prague on the horizon. Plus who knows if I might suddenly have to jet off to foreign climes to do my job. Also, in the wet and dark, I wanted to have a little moment of triumph when I found it.

Hours of searching. Nothing. Just a vague memory of the thought “hmm that shouldn’t be there. Best put it somewhere safe.” Sod it.

It might be in the car for some reason. I’ll look tomorrow. If not, lost means lost when you’re in this flat. If it’s gone, it’s gonna show up eight years from now inside a sculpture when I accidentally drop it, or stuffed into the neck of an ornamental rabbit, or taped to the back of a photograph of a battleship. The only way to find it would be not to look for it. I’d be better off starting the process of reordering it before there’s a flood at the passport office as the airlines open up and everybody goes on their cheap flight to the sun.

Instead of searching further I’m going to walk away from the problem entirely. I’m off to Brighton tomorrow. I need to see Lou, and the sea. There’s a carpet going into the bedroom on Monday and I want to get out of here for a couple of days before that happens. Soon that room will be the peaceful haven I need. Maybe then I’ll find the passport. Maybe then. Before I leave I have to build my mini-studio and imitate my father into a microphone for a computer game. Then it’s out to the sea again, to the lonely sea and the sky.

It IS peaceful here, even with the clutter. But stuff makes noise. I’m constantly overstimulated by the sheer quantity of stories attached to all the items in my keep. 38 owls on overstacked shelves all staring at me as I write. Piles of important papers mixed up with telegrams that just showed up in a box of junk and are interesting. Winston Churchill and Hello Kitty and Nikolai Dante and a glass pelican and no passport.

At least I have a calling card. A showreel again that is new and feels new. These refreshes can help psychologically and it’s a good time for a refresh. I need to be able to think I’m doing everything in my power to get myself in the running for things. I do really hope I have a Eureka moment with the passport as it’ll be hanging over me until I find it that I can’t just jet off to Latvia tomorrow to replace poor Charlie after he threw that cameraman out of the window and lost the job.

It’s before midnight. I’m clean and in bed. This is an unfamiliar thing – my body must know I’m heading back into Lou-time. Sleep soon and maybe I’ll dream where the passport is. If not, the bedroom move and the following domino effect of stuff might lead to its discovery. Or I just bite the bullet, shred eighty quid and start the three week process. If I’d done that when I first noticed I couldn’t find it I’d almost have it by now. But… Eighty quid.

Just down the road from me, in Pimlico, I have a very skillful friend. He’s an actor as well, one of the ones who’s in it for the long haul. We have a shared understanding on that. Like me he has many side hustles. It’s another point of contact. You need a good distracting side hustle in this business or you slowly go insane and surround yourself with fish and snakes and antiques.

Our side hustles sometimes overlap. I’ve been Fixing on a set where he was Location Managing. We both drove for a show about speed and clothes. But he can edit film, which I really haven’t learnt yet. He’s good at it too. He has all the software, and he has that touch that you only see after long practice, where he jiggles the sound to fit the story and drops in this shot from one place and that shot from another and makes it all blend so you think it was made that way.

We’ve been trying to shove together a showreel. It’s such an odd process, showreel cutting.

First I found everything I could get my hands on. Footage that was sent to me by lovely directors. Footage from things I made years ago sent through by directors who are still friends. Stuff on YouTube. Things I’ve just had on old laptops from forgotten WeTransfers. We download and rip and assemble. Then we cut it we prune it and we end up not using most of what was collated in the first place.

My 2002 scenes with McAvoy are gone now in favour of an older looking me in glasses being mean to a load of Germans. We aren’t using poor Manfred, who was so brutally executed by his girlfriend after a fight. The dancing shaven headed sex addict has gone back to the internet where he lives. There’s currently a spot of me as Shakespeare, a moment of Michael Howard, a hospital shot, a hissing gangster and a scientist. By the time we’re finished I think we will have cut the scientist as well. “Kill your darlings” is frequently excellent advice in the creative process, and it seems it’s true of editing a videographic calling card. All we need is a few seconds really. “Let’s have a look at this Owl Berky guy. Here he is. Yeah he’s got a face. He walks. There’s his voice. Great. Put him on the list.” Job done.

A helpful way to spend the day. Once it’s finished there’s an excuse to reach out and try and get somebody to employ me to ply my trade. Joy abundantly.

It’s been a contemplation of the after effects of Brexit. Of the six things we have kept so far, one was shot in Berlin by Danes (I was flown out). That wouldn’t be possible anymore. One was a co-production with Greece, employing 50% Greek and 50% British actors, shot between Greece and the UK. That wouldn’t be possible anymore. One was a German TV show, with entirely German crew, shot in Cornwall with UK and German actors. That wouldn’t be possible anymore. By coincidence, half of the things that I’m happy enough with to include on my calling card – they’re not possible anymore because of Brexit. Were it not for Covid we would notice these things enough that there’d be much louder noises. Netflix and the Shakespeare thing were American co-pros, so still not 100% Engerlish. The only homegrown one we kept was a lovely little short for which I was paid the princely sum of a pound.

I’m glad to get a reel done even though I’m a bit shocked to find that half of my work on film as well as a large part of my work on stage wouldn’t be possible in this post Brexit world. We need to sort out an artist’s touring visa stet. Bastards.

Pretty much the highlight of my day today was discovering that the new LED panel that I bought for the fish tank has got NIGHT MODE! Now my fishies are bathed in blue light, and my penchant for fishy voyeurism can be slaked at all times. They can flibble around at night and not bump into each other. It’s like the full moon is shining on their little pond as my giant smiling mug pushes up against the glass.

I still find it astonishing that only one of them has karked it so far. That was right after the move. Considering they are all geriatric fish, I’ve done well. The internet is an amazing thing. Despite my almost complete lack of experience, charmless YouTube tutorials really can teach us to do anything. “Hey guys, today I’m going to teach you how to split the atom, please like and subscribe.”

Various different human beings with expensive set ups and no charisma have taught me how to change the water, change the filter, clean the gravel and sort out problems with the heater, and that’s after they taught me how to move the fish and acclimatise them in the first place. Listening to the tutorials is often like drilling holes into your own face. The YouTube tutorial phenomenon is a timely reminder that content is the prime mover. Style adds finesse, but if there’s no content you really have got nothing. If I didn’t want what they had known I’d have changed over in seconds. We need content.

Which is troublesome for me today, as I’ve done fuck all again. What content do I have for you? I’ve had about three consecutive days of ineffectual pottering despite having loads to do. I’m still a bit swamped by it. I’ve been reacting to the flood of tasks recently by walking from room to room looking at things and occasionally disconsolately wiping a paintbrush on something, or picking something up a bit.

It’s ten past one in the morning. I put my head down and said “oh fuck the blog”. So it’s rushed as well. Rushed and no content. Punch the like and subscribe button. It’s my nose.

Thankfully I’m not drunk. I think the last few days – this could have been a lot worse if I hadn’t smacked down that particular habit. Yeah I’ve been low, and retreating in a bit. Who hasn’t? Last year’s Al would be half senseless by now and this would have turned into a rant. Tomorrow I’ve set an early alarm and I’m planning to bounce around and get things done all day, yeah? Or not.

I’ve just had a winding back moment, that’s all. The lights have been switched to blue for me and I’ve been dozy in the moon. Best put that sun back on tomorrow. Maybe.

I’ve been looking over the blogs from last year again. It’s so strange to feel the change. Last year I was aware of the possibility of a lockdown, but just as a theory. A little firebreak that might be deemed necessary. I was worrying what it might do to businesses if things had to slow down for a week or two.

I was driving a selection of vehicles to Heathrow every day and waiting, breathing in and out as people came flooding from international arrivals past me and my sign. I was carrying different passengers from different countries and they were all eating tubs of Marks and Spencer flapjacks and sharing Percy Pigs out of the packet fresh off the airplane as I took them to their hotel or went location scouting. “Oh God I’m so sick,” said one woman. Her job was to run a venue where people made a load of cakes with different flags on. “I’ve got some kind of flu. My temperature is everywhere. Put the windows up, I’m cold. It can’t be this Corona, I’ve only been in Italy. Stop putting the windows down, are you trying to make me more sick?” Thankfully the cakes were just for show. Whatever it was she had she gave it to me. But those were the days where we would be unwell in each others company.

It’s the flu season, and whether or not this is a horrible year, at least we aren’t all streaming with something. Lemsip sales must be right down now that we aren’t casually infecting each other with all the little illnesses. Most of us get some sort of bug that stirs in the warmth in early spring. People would get on the tube with eyes streaming and pockets full of tissues, rocking their sleepy way full of head and paracetamol to a job they felt they couldn’t afford to miss. If you moved away when they started hacking with feverish cough next to you they’d look at you like you were being intolerant, and carry on louder. Now they’d be wrapped in clingfilm by cops in hazmat suits and clinically burnt. The world shifts.

I saw an army of masked coppers in the entrance to Mornington Crescent tube last night trying to move on one maskless homeless guy. He was cold and seemed pretty reasonable but didn’t want to move. It was a weird slow pantomime of proximity and distance. I didn’t stay to watch.

This year, if we get an eye infection it’s definitely Corona. If our leg starts twitching it’s Covid 19, no doubt about it. It’s like we’ve forgotten all about the existence of The Common Cold. There’ll be people showing up at A&E with a mild cold, weeping, begging for a spot on a ventilator.

I’m still feeling pretty good thankfully. I did another self tape this evening, perhaps a little rushed and I discovered why we don’t use ring lights when I saw the footage on a bigger screen. Fucking thing stole my pupils. I can’t imagine this one will go my way, but it was fun doing it. I’m getting to the stage where I like the paraphernalia of taping at home, God help me. The technology afterwards I can leave behind. But the acting bit is fun…

I gotta get something soon. Going crazy here. More driving this week though. That’s something I guess…