Month: June 2021

It’s just gone 11pm. I’m awake now.

Tom is standing just in front of me, killing robots. I lost pretty much the whole day to a migraine so I’m happy to watch him and do very little. “I need to stop this in a minute otherwise I’ll be here all night,” Tom says. He’s doing a sort of tai-chi. His eyes are covered by the Oculus Quest which is sending a 360° artificial digital world into his brain. It kind of fools you into thinking you’re in the game. He’s playing “Super Hot” which makes you feel like you’re Keanu Reeves but makes you look like the bearded dude at the back of beginners Tae-kwon-do in North London.

Unfortunately I think it’s why I had a migraine today, that remarkable machine. I’m not really prone to migraines but even moving today was problematic and I had to close the blinds. I couldn’t keep anything down until about 4pm. Probably because my poor brain had to deal with me putting a screen directly in front of my face for ages yesterday.

To buy one of these things is about £300. I’ve always balked at it as it’s too much for a toy, especially if you then have to buy the software. So Dan lending me this one has opened up a whole world of stuff that I’m going to have to be very careful about engaging with if my head today is anything to judge by. Terrific fun. So immersive. But it’s almost a shock to lift the thing up and realise that you’re still in your flat and there aren’t any robots trying to kill you. As far as we know.

I’m sure there are some lovely narrative games to get immersed in as well – long form beautiful stories with moments of wonder. I know Brian had one called Skyrim but it would make me sick after about ten minutes and the whole game takes hours and hours to complete. I rarely have time to give too long to these things, and I’m gonna have to be super-double careful if there’s a chance it’s going to flatten me the next day as well. At least it’s been a pretty crappy day. It’s worse when you lose a beautiful day, and if it had been too hot in here it would have made me feel even worse.

I’m glad I’ve got a huge bath. And I’m very glad of Deliveroo who brought me easy to eat stodgy food once the headache had retreated to being just a bitter pulse at the back. I’ll probably finish writing this and try to ease myself to sleep with chamomile and books, because any screen right now is pretty wearing. I’ve turned the brightness right down on this. But I’m going to put it down. Phones before bed can’t help the sleep patterns. They’re much better for waking up in the morning.

As the nation gears up to watch the football, I’ve decided to let myself get swept up as well, in a middle class middle aged manner. I’m with Tristan. We went to Waitrose in Richmond, don’t you know. There we purchased two big boxes of “Big Drop” non-alcoholic beer, and an unbelievably vast tomahawk steak that’s in the Father’s Day sale for £15 a kilo. On balance we decided not to do the steak tonight, but at some point, with our brace of dead dads, we will eat the gift designed for them ourselves. My dad wouldn’t want it of course. Meat on the bone wasn’t his bag at all. Football wasn’t either, but I’m thinking of him tonight nonetheless because of the divided loyalties brought on by this particular football rivalry.

England are playing Scotland. Dad would’ve been rooting for Scotland all the way – if he cared about football. Dad flew a Scottish flag from the British Bobsleigh that he drove. Probably not in the actual Olympics, although in those days there was more room for personality over science in sport. At his funeral I read a sturm and drang poem from the Scottish poet Walter Scott – about identity. I had blonde hair at the time, bleached for a part in a university play (or perhaps just as a youthful experiment). This was what I considered appropriate for my very Scottish father back then – it was fun to deliver:

Breathes there the man, with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land!
Whose heart hath ne’er within him burn’d,
As home his footsteps he hath turn’d,
From wandering on a foreign strand!
If such there breathe, go, mark him well;
For him no Minstrel raptures swell;
High though his titles, proud his name,
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim;
Despite those titles, power, and pelf,
The wretch, concentred all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust, from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonour’d, and unsung.

I’m not sure I identify as Scottish. I don’t really even identify with the memory of being that peroxide blonde firebrand with the recent hole where his dad used to be. Watching this match though, I’m not going to be cheering for either team with any great gusto. I’ll enjoy the game as best I can with my slightly limited understanding. I’ll be curious to listen if people boo when any players kneel for the anthem. And I’ll crack open a non alcoholic beer or five and I’ll participate in a cultural touchpoint for a change. Sure I’m not up to date with the talent shows. I barely follow the soaps although I’m curious about what’s going to happen with Alice in The Archers. I don’t even consume the news and views as voraciously as I used to after the taste it leaves in my mouth with these horrible bastards we seem to be stuck with. I’m going to watch the kickyball on a Friday night. And why not. Hurrah. Cmon, somebody.

I started watching “Don’t f**k with cats” this evening just as a thing to pass my eyes over while I changed the filter on the fishtank and now I’ve got totally sucked in and I thought I’d pause it and write this before I got too tired. I’m back in the flat, surrounded by all the distractions that have done very well at shaking off my focus over the years. This huge TV is playing Netflix through the PlayStation while an Oculus Quest charges nearby. Next to that there’s a bucket full of filthy pond water…

Some sort of algae has started to accumulate in the tank. It had clogged up the filter to the extent that it was struggling to circulate the water, so I made it my priority this evening to get things cleaned up a bit. Considering I’m watching a documentary dealing very closely with animal cruelty I didn’t want to feel responsible for forcing all those unusual little creatures to live in a suboptimal environment. It’s a balance though with captive fish. I expect the fish are happier if they aren’t visible at all, but we keep them so we can observe them. They’ve still got plenty of places to hide in there, but the water itself was beginning to fill with algal bloom and darkening. I think I might invest in a kickass filter, as the one I inherited from the headmaster is old and cheap – he was economising on everything. It makes a hell of a lot of noise and doesn’t really do very much.

Anyway – it’s now making all that noise again, which is a good sign. The water is once more being aerated. I’ve still only lost one fish, which frankly is nothing short of a miracle. The longer I can keep them all alive the happier I’ll be. And I think making sure the filter isn’t on the edge of packing in – that’s a good way of extending their little fishy existences. Tom’s girlfriend is a writer and found them helpful when she was writing. I like them as a calming influence in here and something to look at that isn’t digital. That fucking filter though! I have to sleep in this room and it is endlessly chuntering along like the engine of a fucked old car. There has to be a better way than this.

I’m letting it settle tonight. I’ve got the filter clean and I’ve scooped out buckets of algae. I need time to work now to clear the water, and then tomorrow I might cause more disruption by trying to suck out the remaining algae with a syphon and then refilling. We were never allowed tropical fish when we were kids. “Too much maintenance”. It’s not all that bad in reality. I find it restful. Zen and the art of fishtank maintenance. Right there, that’ll be my bestseller.

Boiling hot, I sat in the reception of Observatory on Poland Street, and somehow it felt like an adventure in the familiar. A casting! In the baking heat of a London summer. In a 3 piece suit. The usual wait beforehand. The usual feeling that it’s over before it’s begun.

Name. Agent. Hands? Last time I was in that particular casting room I sang a song and clicked my fingers and a few months later my agent paid me a few grand. That was three years ago. This time I improvised quickly direct to camera and did a spot of oozing. With any luck the result will be much the same. In the end these things are the bread and butter. They pay for the slump periods.

Now I’m in Berkley Square. I’m walking home, still in my winter suit, picking my way through the streets. It’s busy here now. Oxford Street feels closer to the familiar. People walking too slowly, people walking too fast, people walking. It’s good to retread the roads that have become my pathways. To be back here and to immediately hit that recall, almost before I’ve landed. No matter how it falls I still get fifty nicker for my work today. Fingers crossed the job comes in. I fancy a day on set. Hell, I liked the director. It’s down to the client now, and of course to the cut of my jib.

Berkeley Square. Twenty years ago I walked disastrously in this square before my first agent’s meeting, just after rain, treading mud up three flights of stairs and into their office. “Is that your feet?”

The square might carry a version of my name, but it wasn’t lucky for me then. A sliding door shut. Maybe for the best. There’ve been so many doors opening and closing and here I am still, putting on the suits and doing the talking and enjoying whatever work I can carve for myself in this strange job in this strange town in these strange times and fuck-it-all I still love it. And I’m finally learning how to process this post audition adrenaline without the magical numby-juice. Walking. Thinking. Breathing.

Berkeley Square is full of wicker elephants, made in rural communities in India, touring the world for #Coexistence. Art that’s trying to do something. It’s why I’ve stopped here. I wanted to be with these elephants for a while as the adrenaline pumps through my brain. There’s been a certain amount of Ganesha energy flowing through me these last few weeks, unlocking obstacles in my life and in my outlook, and grounding me as it does so. Despite my immediate hayfever from those bloody plane trees, I’m sitting with these beautiful wicker elephants a while as the words I’ve just spoken zing digitally to a client somewhere whose decision will directly inform how nice the bathroom will be in my refurbished flat.

London again eh? ‘ere we go. I’m ready for you if you’re ready for me.

I’m sitting under a tree in Stanmer Park near Brighton. Lou is in a little village in the downs today working, and I thought rather than sod off back to London to sleep on my own sofa, I’d pick her up after work and spend one more night in earshot of the waves and in her good company.

It’s the perfect English countryside moment in the modern world. The ring necked parakeets are fighting with the starlings as they have been for just over half a century now. They seem to think, like we do, that impossible territorial disputes can be solved if they just shout at each other for long enough. If I tune it out I can hear the wind in the trees, the calls of the calmer birds, the lowing of domesticated animals nearby, the barking of dogs as happy as I am to be loose in nature on a day like this. But it’s an involved battle, and it’s right over my head.

Tomorrow I’m going to recall for an audition tape I sent from The Mornington. It went in a rush on the day I checked out so I condensed the scene to make it fit my purposes, cut all the other voices, sent my first take and didn’t disguise the fact that I was still laughing at myself when I recorded the ident. Sometimes recently I’ve taken twenty versions before there’s one I’m happy to send and then I’ve had nothing back. I guess there’s a lesson somewhere about how much time we can lose on these things trying to perfect them, when we don’t need to. “What’s for you won’t go by you,” I think is the saying. It’s not mine yet of course – just a pencil – but I’ve got a feeling about it. Probably the old truth that the more you need the job the harder it is to even get close to getting the thing. But yeah, I’m not sure when I’m going to recall yet tomorrow or what it’ll involve but it means things are slightly up in the air as always. I’ve only been back a day in England and that old unpredictability is right back. I’ll put up with it. Not a glory job this – a money job. My character name will involve a number. It won’t be going on the CV. But it’s good to tick over for me and for my agent.

London is most likely a furnace right now, and my top floor flat even more so. I was thinking of going on a mission for some of those sexy new fans for Tom and I, but when you think of it is never when you should get it with that sort of thing. Sexy fans are gonna be best to buy in December. Right now they’ll be thrice the price – although if I get this job I could buy ten of them. It’s only hot in this country for seventeen and a half seconds, so I reckon I’ll just enjoy it and have strange dreams.

For now though, I’m going to get up and engage the old calves. I’m gonna stump around these ancient tame woods, and then this evening Lou and I will get to stretch out on the dusky hillside at ditching beacon just a week before solstice, and get to be together in this blessed period where the days are filled with light and even the heat enthusiasts are thinking about buying fans.

A hot day back at the Sussex coast. I’m lying on a lambswool rug at the end of a long day with Lou and Mao. Mao is ridiculously cute as ever – very few creatures could piss all over your favourite things and still earn our unconditional love. Lou is pretty cute too. She’s watching “The wisdom of trauma” with Gabor Maté and actually I think that’s how I’m going to spend the next hour.

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Well that was worth it. He’s a remarkable man and his work is important more than ever. We all need to be as in touch with ourselves as we can be right now. We are coming out of an event that has shattered so much humanity, driven huge wedges between people, polarised and traumatised most of the population of the world in some way. Compassion and understanding are going to go a long way in the next decade, especially as the machine is going to start to try to click into gear and tell us to forget by buying and numbing and dying. If you’re not aware of the man and his work, it’s worth catching it – as much for the intense humanity of Caroline Campbell’s photography as the content and the way it’s all been arranged. A good watch. An advert for Gabor Maté, sure, but carrying much food for deep thought, and maybe catalysing others to move into similar work.

Good to have a warm contemplation like that after such a glorious peaceful day. From one coastline to the next, we went to Eastbourne and walked through The Italian Garden and the lush littoral landscape of our neighbouring seaside town, before taking ourselves down to a quiet patch of sea near the Holy Well, far from the madding crowd, and swimming. Now I’ve got used to getting in the water I want to do it more and more despite the fact that my left ear has been half dead and full of water for the last month. We cooked and swam and cooked and swam. The well itself is a quiet spot on a beach, full of chalky fresh water, frequented by the inevitable young man with a guitar who is in a band and hitting on somebody.

I’m glad of the summer. Been waiting for it a long time. Happy to have been in familiar company like this for the whole day. I was getting to miss that ease that you get in very familiar company. The Mornington has carried with me though despite being in a single room alone. The packed lunch has adjusted my habits. It seems a month is enough. I’m eating fruit now, and I get hungry at breakfast time where I’d normally just have coffee. Then at lunch I want a snack.

I’m sure Gabor Maté would tell me that my history of bad eating habits comes out of childhood trauma. But it seems all I needed was a month in a cheap hotel.

As the light falls, I’m sitting in the staff car park at Glyndebourne Opera House. I’ve found a little block of wood to sit upon and I’m drinking in the sound of the birds, who are singing their hearts out for the setting sun. I just heard a high note coming from the building itself where the soprano is going at it full pelt, and it genuinely seems that the birds around here have been working just as hard on their delivery. Even the crows and doves seem to have more musicality than usual.

I woke up this morning in Poole, refreshed from a deeper sleep than I’ve had for a month in an Airbnb room right by the ferry port. The morning found me down at Poole harbour, looking at the Sunday morning crowds as I ate a full English breakfast outside. Much more litter this side of the channel. And the people somehow look a bit less fresh. I could take a higher percentage of them in a fight. Probably all the full English breakfasts they’ve been eating.

A slow puddle over to Southsea, stopping on the way to find a geocache or two and grab coffee, and then a delay in Southsea. I’m picking up sunglasses and a microphone from Dan, but he’s out frolicking so I fill the time watching England beat Croatia and eating roast beef. This hot summer day is not deterring me from filling myself with heavy meat, it seems. I barely get time to pass the time of day with Dan, though. I get the tour of his new place in Southsea and once again wonder why anybody lives in London. As I’m leaving he lends me an unopened Oculus Quest Virtual Reality Headset. This is his work. Hopefully there’ll be some bad weather before long, because that’ll be a whole week lost at some point in the not too distant future. But for today, no time to mess around. Back on the road through the heat, and here I am in the dying light, listening to the birds and the high notes as I wait for Lou to be released.

Lou sleeps early, but she finishes work here late – it’s tricky for her. She doesn’t have a car to rush herself home so my evening talks in Jersey have been filled with her tired tales of Odyssean disasters post show – missed trains and late buses, whirlpools with names, unexpected rainstorms on bicycles, one eyed giants eating her friends and late night cat piss surprises on her eventual return to the flat in book 15. I am here in plenty of time to operate as the winged sandals of Hermes for her tonight, although right now the car is not a comfortable ride for a passenger. It’s a carnage of potatoes and headsets and clothing and microphones and bottles and boxes and bags and jumpers and wires and coffee cups and packaging. I’m writing this first, then I’m gonna try and make some sense of it in the half an hour I’ve got left before she emerges so when she does I can just get her home. Then we can see Mao and relax properly on this warm summer night before it gets too late.

The Duty Free shop on this boat wants £7.99 for a packet of biscuits. It might be free of duty, but it’s clearly got something else added to it. In front of me, a passenger was buying cigarettes and was so seasick I thought she was going to puke inside her mask. She was doubled over at the counter, monosyllabic and panting but she still stuck her card on the machine correctly. We’ve only just started this crossing. The sea is really pretty calm. Cigarettes plus mask won’t help with not feeling sick. You need to be able to breathe. It looks like she’s in for a rough crossing.

Me? I’m fine. I’m hungry. But I’m fine. I’m regretting not saving that final Mornington Hotel sandwich for dinner. The only option on this boat is the school canteen. You have to eat it on the pull out table in your chair. It costs the same as biscuits and it looks like slop. I’m going to stay hungry. I’ll find breakfast in Poole tomorrow morning. After a month of croissants I’m after bacon and eggs. We get in at midnight and I’m having to let myself into somebody’s Airbnb bungalow in the dark so I can crash out ahead of hunting breakfast, visiting in Portsmouth and eventually getting to Brighton.

Technically I can charge my phone at my chair but I only brought a wire with me and it’s a plug socket instead of the USB I expected. Book and plug are in the car, as once again I remember in the moment that I’m not so good at thinking outside of the moment.

Not that I can complain. I get to sit right at the front of this boat. There’s Guernsey, up ahead, and there’s that line of light to my left where the sun is drowning in the ocean.

For the next hour or so I’ll be able to enjoy the sea view and pretend I’m the captain. I might even be able to sneak down to the car deck when we get to Guernsey and grab the plug and book. This boat is fully sold out. Very different to the one I took to get to Jersey. Things are changing.

I’ve been in Jersey for over a month. I’m not sure if this boat feels more like it’s going home or leaving it. I’m going back to things that have become familiar, to larger volumes of people I can call deep friends. I have a roof over my head on the north side of the channel. I still pay for it but at least I can call it mine, despite the fact I’ve rented out the spare room, filled my bedroom with boxes and chucked out my bed. I can sort that out when I’m back in London. Brighton first. Movement again. I love movement. Time to do some work, perhaps, and plot what’s next. But movement seems possible again. And there’s no time like the present.

Mist is rising from the beach like smoke from a battlefield. It means that despite the desert starkness of this vast strip of white there is moisture in the air, and a cool. The tide will be full in three hours, rushing in. The oyster catchers and the surfers shout in excitement at the swells rolling in from the Atlantic on this calm hot evening. I’m lying on a blanket that I last used to carry a dead pheasant. This time it’s going to be my towel, as no matter what else I do today, I’m going in. But right now I’m plucking up the courage, bathed only in this fog.

The lifeguard has moved as close as he can to the sea because of the fog. Apart from visibility, conditions are good. The swell is not high and the tide is rising. I’m mostly just concerned about the cold. I can swim in this. It’s glorious. No more writing. I’m going in. Just got to hope I put this blanket far enough up the beach that I’ll have a phone to come back to.

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Just on instinct, after I wrote that sentence, I picked everything up and stumped a further twenty paces up the beach with it all. “Surely the sea won’t get this far,” I said to myself, making a pile. Shoes, blanket and hat containing car key and mobile phone on top of the blanket.

This perfect evening, and I walked into the breakers and wondered how the hell it took me so long. Huge lines of water slamming into me as I whooped and laughed, immediately warm from the buffeting, wishing I had a board of some sort. Getting out far enough to catch them on the break, rolling in them, jumping with them, trying to stand against them as they winded me. I don’t know how long I was in but I pulled myself back bewildered to see a very different beach and where the hell is my pile? Just on the edge of the tide. Just at the point of the highest wave. The original place was already under a foot of water as I went with the tide to reclaim my phone and the keys to my car and just as I put my hand on the hat containing them a wave rushed past me, scattering my shoes and shifting the blanket. I see the flash of all the parallel universes where my phone and keys are lost in the surf at St Ouen, giving me a very different potential last evening in Jersey. But no, I was just in time. No disaster, just a wet blanket.

Here I sit, barefoot and barechested, sundrying with good adrenaline pumping through my system and a smile on my face as the water pushes right up to the wall. There’s a lot to be said for this “being alive” lark. I’m going to wander, salty and damp, down to El Tico, and have my last evening meal on the island accompanied by the sound of the surf, looking out west to the setting sun over the Atlantic.

Ahhh. A hot bath. And likely an early bed to follow. Well, earlier than usual. I’m a night owl. But I’m sleepy.

Last night I woke up overheating. What luxury! I’m always happy to be too hot, even if it fucks with my sleep. The dreams I woke up into were unpleasant though and tangled with the past. I’m lancing boils and all the pus of unfinished business is jetting back out through my unconscious. So, a hot bath to wash it away and an attempt at an early bed, knowing I’ll probably wake up in the small hours beaded in sweat but hopefully this time in a dreamscape of adventure and not regret.

In Texas I went to great lengths to switch off the air conditioning in my hotel room so I could lie like I will lie tonight – roasting in the hard warm air. I’m always happier out of dry fake cold air, so it’s a blessing that air-con hasn’t really been invented in England yet, and certainly not in Jersey. I’ll just have those interesting dreams.

Today was mostly about finding beautiful places and sitting in them. I synchronised badly with the tide again and so there was no swimming. But there was plenty of time taken just enjoying the beauty of his island – soaking it all up before I head back. It really helps me root myself, coming back here to where those roots were established. If only we’d kept the property here. That’s the huge loss for me. That little white cottage up on the hill. Not that it would have gotten much use over the last few decades. I still miss it now I’m here though, despite being safe in the bosom of The Mornington Hotel. Ham and cheese sandwich today, and a strawberry yogurt. I ate them watching the sea, and then for a bit of distraction I went hunting for a few geocaches about the place, and enjoyed my spot of geekery.

Now I’m clapped out, wrapped in a towel, ready to just sleep. I’ve got a pint of water by the bed. I’m ready for a long hot sleep. And what luxury to have the heat. I just wish I had a double bed! It feels like forever since I’ve been able to properly starfish. Still. I’ll make my little sweaty imprint, warm from my bath, and then tomorrow I just have to remember to grab my towel and check the tides, as I’m gonna be jumping into the water in my new shorts.