Month: August 2021

And I’m in Brighton again. Just had an epic game of “get the tape measure!” with Mao and now I’m writing to you while I wait for the hot water to warm up enough for my sleepy bathtime. Lots of driving again. Bergman and I are up to 1800 miles together.

I had another one of those mixed days. First up, a trip to Lewisham to give an accordion to Mister Allodi. One of the fixtures was loose. He replaced it for free as the instrument was purchased in his shop and therefore guaranteed. He’s an incredible man, Mister Allodi. I’ve written about him and his shop before, here. It really is the best accordion shop in the world.

This accordion is a workhorse, being used daily in Amelie the Musical at The Criterion. A beautiful show – one of Brian’s – and of course there’s nothing more French-sounding than an accordion. The fixture got loose which means you can’t lock the bellows shut. This makes it much easier to damage, especially if you’re in a place where other people might pick up your instrument. My accordion didn’t lock for the first three years I had it, and it would give me palpitations whenever somebody else picked it up.

As he fixed it he told his stories. He told me of a giant with rippling muscles who purchased a tiny tiny toy accordion. Why? Because he likes to play in the bath. He told of me others in my profession that have ruined their instruments through demonstrative playing – stretching the bellows out far and high for the look of it, with no thought to the valves and the integrity of the bellows. He disapproves of that. Accordions are like living things to him. He’s the accordion doctor. And he wants you to love your instrument as much as he does. But if you fuck your beautiful accordion up, his deft fingers and incredible love and knowledge will likely have it back and playing in seconds. He brought my ruined accordion back from the dead once. I had given up on it and just took it in speculatively when I was looking for a bag for my travel instrument. He fixed it in less than five minutes, all the while berating me for not bringing it in more quickly.

He has a new thing in stock right now and I want one. Roland have released a digital accordion. Like an eighties synth but an accordion. Oh my God. I want to see if you can get it to play screams on the keys. It looks like a lovely toy and potentially something very theatrically useful. “They’ve been selling really well considering I never push them,” he tells me, and I get it. I’m immediately thinking of all the mischief I could achieve… Plus you can get them to play backing tracks which is definitely gonna make busking easier – although you’d be double-fucked in the rain.

I’ve got enough stuff though. First thing I have to do is to process the crap I’ve already got. And I’ve got to get properly practicing and improving on the accordion before I can justify any further investment there. I’m still a bit shit at it.

Instead of practicing Christmas songs, I’m driving around getting accordions fixed and having a jolly time with friends and Lou. Since I was in the congestion charge zone anyway, I picked Brian up from work and drove him back to Croydon from Bond Street. Croydon lies between London and Glyndebourne so it was a good opportunity to have a bit of extended time with him while on my way to get Lou from work. It’s always good hanging out with that fucker. I tried to persuade him to come to Brighton. He didn’t bite.

Here’s Bergman at Glyndebourne, duskily awaiting the arrival of Lou. It’s the only photo I took all day.

I’m at hers now with Mao. She’s at her friends place with Izzy and Tessy. We are slaves to cats.

His name was Tom. “Thank you for stopping,” I told him as I got him to ring me on his mobile and wrote down the the reg of his van. He’s stored in my phone as Tom who hit my car.

Sometimes I sit in Bergman and do admin. It’s comfortable in there. I was doing that this afternoon.

The council in my borough have inexplicably blocked off parking on my street until the 9th September, so the nearest place I can stop is by the busy main road. That’s where I was sitting, catching up with emails. Tom was whizzing past me a bit too close in his white van. *Whack* It’s quite a shock when it happens. Quite a solid hit to the side mirror right my head. Both of our mirrors flew down into the road and rolled. My instinct was to jump out of the car and try and see his retreating numberplate. He immediately stopped though. That’s why I thanked him.

“I always stop in these situations,” Tom assures me, which makes me wonder how often this happens to him. I assure him that if he covers the cost of repairs I’m not gonna go through insurance and screw up his policy. He tells me he will. First blood on Bergman. Bloody London drivers. It was only a matter of time.

The mirror is cracked. The electrics seem to still function though, and it hasn’t taken much scuffing. It is clearly well designed for such situations. Putting it back on and rewiring it is the work of a few seconds. Tom stands by as I check. He’s full of adrenaline now and talking rapidly about all the times he’s been hit in the past. “I’ll get it fixed out of London,” I tell him as he’s clearly worried I’m gonna go to some cowboy in Kensington and pay £250 for a £10 mirror. But I’m gonna get it done properly and I’m gonna make sure there isn’t damage we couldn’t see to the fitting etc. This car has got to last me a bit longer than the usual rubbish gumtree vehicles I work my way through. So I’ll take it seriously.

I had just driven back from seeing an old friend. It is getting more possible now to see people we love. I’m going to have to get back in the habit. She’s selling the family home and wanted my opinion on the antiques there, just in case anything had worth. I’m not an expert but I guess the last few years have taught me a great deal about the market and about how everything is really only worth what somebody is willing to pay, so you have to let go of expectations to some extent.

Now I’m about to get in the bath. I took my bruised car into the West End just now to grab an accordion from The Criterion. The mirror isn’t so broken as to make it hard to see. I’ll take the instrument to Lewisham and back tomorrow, to my favourite little accordion shop…

Little jobs. Things to do. Ticking over… Night night.

“You should find a way to memorialise her properly, now.”

My mum. Died at 55 of MRSA in a terrible hospital and the funeral was atrocious. I was in my twenties. I had barely met the guy who was running the service at Mortlake Crem. I was so young in such matters. I had very little perspective. The pallbearers were pissed off with Max and I because we wanted to be part of the procession. We had walked our dad. We wanted to walk our mum. But from their perspective, two of their mates wouldn’t get paid. They deliberately angled the coffin weight towards Max and I and I honestly nearly fell over with it. I bet Max struggled as well. I remember almost buckling under it. Petty things, forcing their way in to what you want to be a respectful memory.

Then we had the cookie cut vicar. Oh hell. Frog wasn’t available for some reason and I wasn’t in the headspace to ring round all my old vicar friends. Now I think about it I have so many friends who have taken the cloth. I had a great faith once… One of them would have done it had I asked… But in grief we ended up with the rentavicar from Mortlake. I don’t know how. He was just nothing…

He opened his address with a massive unfamiliar generalisation about mum – talking about somebody he’d never met as if he knew them. It was so disingenuous it stuck in my mind – at the time it made my skin crawl. Bad start. In retrospect I guess it was my job to organise things better and prevent the cookie-cut send off. Back then I hadn’t really processed that responsibility. I was the youngest son just horrified that things had gone how they had gone. It was just me and Max and mum’s boyfriend trying to make decisions. All three of us were shit at being organised during grief.

After that I lost touch with all mum’s old friends. I just … couldn’t spend time with them. I found it way too emotionally complicated to seek their company. I think it went both ways. That lasted a long time but I think since I walked her holy water to Santiago di Compostela, my inner life has shifted.

Today I went and sat with an old friend of hers and we remembered together. She’s the one that suggested a memorial. She too is aware of the shortfall – how we failed to give a glorious soul a proper send-off at the time. It’s a good shout, having some kind of memorial. I’ve lost touch with all of mum’s old friends though, and many of them are likely to be gone now. It’s been a long long time. And I’m still carrying stuff. I’ve looked at it but I know I’m still carrying it. I’m still so angry about how it all panned out with her. But death is just an ugly business across the board. That long walk I did two years ago was all about honouring her passing and her power in my life whilst finding how to move on from the hard parts in my memory. We’ve all got stuff that we wish had gone differently. It’s what it means to be human.

I’m glad to have established contact with one of my mum’s old friends though and there is food for thought here. I might try for a few more old friends, see who is still around. I miss her every day. It’s bollocks losing both parents before you hit 30. Memories of her will be preserved in her friends though and today has taught me that I can see those friends and talk honestly to them without collapsing from grief afterwards. That’s progress.

Bergman and I have covered over 1500 miles together already, and that’s taking into account a 3 week period doing Willows where I was pretty static. Today was another epic drive, this time for Lou.

Family is important. Lou’s mum and dad live up near Birmingham. It’s a good three hours from Brighton and occasionally we pretend that I have to deliver something to their local area so we can avoid the social niceties about whether we should go to the effort, and pop in. It’s a couple of days before her mum’s birthday. The opportunity arose. I pretended I was delivering a non specific thing to Birmingham rep. It’s well inside the bounds of possibility based on the shape of my normal day to day. In fact we just went up to see them.

It was lovely, just to sit a while near them. I stuck something up my nose first yaddayadda. Then we talked about the things people talk about without bringing that fucker up.

It’s a long drive though so we couldn’t stay for ages. I didn’t want to have to book an emergency Travelodge after finding myself too tired, especially with the cats waiting.

Worth it for the connection. It must be hard for Lou, with them less mobile now so mostly stuck up there and her down here by the sea without wheels of her own. I’m always happy to enable things if I can. Today, for the price of a long drive, I got to be part of a family momentarily reunited after the year we’ve had. I’m not sure if they were surprised or pleased to see that the actor boyfriend was still on the scene. I was given lots of cake though and felt welcome even though I turned down tea, having arrived with a great big coffee in my hand.

Then we had our mission back to Brighton momentarily diverted by an opportunity to collect a humongous juicer that Lou just bought off eBay from Joyce in Stanmore. It only added about forty minutes to the journey and I’ll likely make all the effort back by getting healthy juices when I least expect them. I haven’t had a look at it, but I think it’s the same as the huge thing Dad brought back from America once in the nineties, from which he made his entire diet for most of the last four years of his life. Arguably it prolonged his life by starving the cancer (and him). It could get juice out of a stone. There will be stonejuice.

Lou found it on eBay last night and it came with all the bits and three books on juicing, box and manual still intact. I’m glad she bought it. It’s what I would have done. Impulse can get you into trouble but it can also bring lovely things to you. And it was only a few hours from her making the payment to the juicer being in the back of Bergman with us. A result.

Tomorrow I’m off back up to London again. I’m gonna be a yoyo for a while until things settle with cats. I have barely had a second to admire the costume haul. The London flat is muted chaos. I have two weeks to do my tax return.

Aargh.

Bed.

At least it isn’t a harp. Or a piano.

Just a double bass. In dressing room two of The Palace Theatre. Right by the Stage Door. I’m there first thing in the morning, the XTrail illegally parked around the corner. It’s quiet in the West End that early, but there’s a man whose job it is to keep the shiny things shiny. Maybe he does all the theatres? Right now he’s polishing one of the goldie-looking “Harry Potter” critic’s notices. He has a little bucket. I ask him where the Stage Door is, and realise again that even though my old friend plays the title role in it, I haven’t taken the time or spent the money to see the show there.

Right now though it’s about the huge instrument. I go to Stage Door. The night porter is still on duty, coming to the end of a long shift. I show my credentials. There’s a bit of checking. Eventually I am shown into Dressing Room Two where the double bass awaits me.

I have never handled one before. Precious like a violin. But vast like the price tag. What a terrifying instrument choice. How the hell do you fly with it? It’s definitely not a touring instrument. I’ve had friends that play and they are always very diligent at moving the thing themselves so I’ve never had cause to lay hands on one until now. Likely that’s the memory of their parents saying “If you’re gonna play that bloody thing, then you’re the one that has to haul it around.”

I gingerly begin to manipulate the beast. I don’t want to look like I’m discovering how to do it as I go along. For some reason I want to immediately look like I’m easy and happy with hauling a double bass around. Is that pride? Ridiculous. But it’s happening. I’m trying to look like I know what I’m doing.

The case is clever, of course. Likely very expensive too, but with various wheels and straps situated where they are useful, so long as you can find them. There’s a logic to it which at first defies me as I make my way out backwards through a stage door which is smaller than you’d think pulling a thing that is larger than you’d think. How do they get all the stuff into that theatre? There’s even a revolve on the stage. Must be a bugger getting all the big electrics in there. I saw what must be the grill for the scene dock and it didn’t look much bigger than stage door.

Meanwhile through all these thoughts I’m suddenly out on the quiet Soho streets holding this gargantuan wheeled instrument and just before the door closes I think to say “If I can’t get it in my car I’m gonna have to take it back in while I go get a zipvan.”.

The best thing about a double bass is that it’s hollow. On my own, despite the cumbersome size of it, I quickly discover that Bergman the XTrail is big enough to hold a double bass in a hard case. Yesterday the huge costume haul. Today the hard case bass. Hurrah.

I drive across town with the neck gently nudging my chin. I drop it off for repairs and then go home, boot up my computer for the first time in months, and send a load of invoices from forever ago. Getting shit sorted. Switching back on. Slowly slowly the gears are starting to grind into action. Every day a bit more rust falls off and I’m remembering that sensation of being a little bit flooded and having to organise both social and work things carefully to make sure I don’t fuck up and double book. That’s an old sensation. But it hasn’t been that way for some time now. Good. Good. About time.

Today I filled my flat with costumes. Fabulous costumes. 23 hand made distressed moleskine cream capes in all sorts of sizes. Waistcoats galore. Frock coats and military jackets and tweed tailcoats and hats. Bughead helmets and huge stovepipes and top hats and trilbys and britches and frilly shirts.

I am not very much at home at the moment owing to needy felines. So it’ll be a while before all this is sorted. But there’s huge potential here if channeled well. Before long I’ll be looking to rehouse the overspill. But right now I’m still in the giddiness of the new. I’m trying stuff on and making plans. Some of it is already earmarked for Carol, or for the ghost tours I’ll likely be doing in October. Other bits are earmarked for various friends and will likely find their way into shows and festivals and ceremonies and parties for decades to come. We’ve all worn enough costume to know the good stuff when we find it. And this is the good stuff. It’s brilliant that they’ve put it back into circulation, and I feel honour bound to be a conduit for it and either use it to help augment my own beautiful stories or to move it on to people who will. Makers, watch this space. I’ll need to do the inventory first. Another thing on the list. But once I’ve got a handle on it and on what I can sensibly use in the time I’ve got left to me, I’m gonna rehouse the rest.

These capes will be the first thing back round. They’re beside me as I write, stacked up on the sofa. I’ll sort them and keep no more than ten in different sizes for a strange idea I’ve had. The rest will be up for grabs before long, once things settle in catlandia.

I’ll be sleeping beside the capes tonight and it’s a testament to the place I picked them up from that they won’t disturb my sleep in any way. They’ve been distressed so they look worn and used, but whatever chorus of singing monks once filled the stage in them, their sweat has all been brilliantly washed away. They smell of nothing but the fabric. They are delightfully unstinky considering how thick they are. Thinking of such places as my old university costume cupboard, I know how theatre costume if not handled with care can quickly grow overbearing. This stuff is in great nick.

This load was the first test of my new XTrail. My big new set of wheels. “Bergman”. He coped very well. I tried to keep the load down when I was ordering, but I somehow overlooked that there would be that many capes. We got it all in, by the skin of our teeth. And then I unloaded it in portions over a few hours this afternoon and got it all into my flat.

One suit was immediately pressed into service for a self tape. It was the perfect material and look for a priggish sixties husband. I’ve got a good feeling about the tape.

Obviously it would be so much easier to triage this stuff if I lived in a house with loads of rooms and full length mirrors… Hey ho.

Around 400AD, likely just after the Romans left Britain taking with them all those far flung ideas about Nazarene prophets, the community of Wilmington began to plug back into the good old ways. None of this nasty writing stuff down for them. Some sort of a faith structure that involved more terraforming and planting and cycles of nature and light and the moon, plonking the occasional monolith but fewer great big stone buildings everywhere. We call them the Dark Ages as we can’t really tell what the hell anybody was up to. It’s not that nothing happened. It’s that it didn’t get recorded and what did get recorded got burnt later on. But in Wilmington they did a couple of things that have carried through.

They planted a yew tree. The Wilmington Yew. At 1600 years old it’s seen a thing or two now, beyond whatever practices took place under the hallucinatory canopy of its boughs back in the early days. A beautiful ancient tree dripping with poison and magic. Or just poison. Or just magic.

Previous generations have tried to hold it together with huge interlocked chains, that still score into the skin of it, their rusted metal now part of this ancient and unusual being. Much more recently it has been propped up with huge wooden supports. The old thing is on crutches, scarred with age, but somehow still lush in the summer heat. The seed in the berry will kill you but you can carefully eat the flesh. I looked for some but the tree chose not to show them to me today. Don’t do it at home, kids.

But this ground must have been important to the people we will mostly reduce with the word “pagan” nowadays. Just up the hill there’s another preserved relic of those good old days where we could all get naked and eat each other or whatever the “pagans” were actually doing that wasn’t written down except by those scandalised Catholic monks. Probably mostly just whittling sticks and weaving stuff and just the occasional tiny little human sacrifice at harvest. But they made some art. Or was it art? Or was it worship? Or both? It’s not Caravaggio.

It’s a Man. On a hill. He’s a disproportionately long, but viewed on the angle, the proportions match much better. “Disproportionately long man? Nephilim, more like,” says that old mate of yours from school who has been pattern-matching for so long he’s gone off the deep end.

He is long and he holds two long sticks. If he ever had a huge priapic willy, it’s not there any more. Like Cerne Abbas it’s only been recorded since about 1710 but it’s likely much older. He’s probably Anglo-Saxon as he resonates with similar figures on pots. Those pesky Anglo-Saxons with their oral tradition and not writing very much down. We don’t know who it is, or why it is. But there it is, hard to see in the hillside.

In a spectacular failure to read the room, Wilmington council decided to pour concrete into the indentations to make it stand out better. Concrete, of all things. Concrete. Those “pagans” must be livid.

It still needs touching up. But we walked up there, to The Long Man of Wilmington. By the time we got there we were knackered after a morning of messing about in boats. We collapsed into the long grass and let all the creatures crawl on us as we soaked up the start of the closing act of summer. It’s busy with life up there at the feet of this long man. If he really is a man – where’s his willy? Could be a woman. If we know nothing about it, why do we assume it’s some geezer. Those “pagans” usually liked to stick a willy on the boys, or dance round one of a May morning with tassels and bells.

But I like it there at Wilmington. The houses are gorgeous and liable to set you back a few bob. There’s clearly something mystic going on. An ancient yew tree. The ruins of a Benedictine priory. This long person with a pair of sticks. And there are thorn bushes too – the Jerusalem thorn said to have been brought over by Joseph of Arimathea. They got planted in the important places by those people whose art we have lost, who perhaps knew our land better than any who have come since. But who get hauled over the coals because occasionally they liked sacrificing you or your friends.

It’s part of the local Cuckmere pilgrim trail. They mark the route with shells just like Camino. I’d like to walk that route from beginning to end – maybe bring my bivouac and take it slowly when the weather’s like this. If all the sites are as rich as Wilmington it’ll be well worth the walk.

Self tape for a commercial was due in today. I had a lovely big Badger beard. I wasn’t gonna shave it just for a shot at a commercial playing “husband” no matter how much they pay. Thankfully I hadn’t submitted it when my agent sent me another for a first name last name in something you’ve heard of. But it changed the shape of my day.

This character definitely has no beard. He thinks that people with beards are dangerous and not to be trusted. He carefully shaves with his grandfather’s razor and a brush every morning and every evening at precisely six o’clock whilst listening to sport.

The beardy shots we worked towards yesterday for the “husband” commercial were suddenly irrelevant with only a few hours before submission time. I can’t submit “husband” with a beard and then shave it. What if mister America shouts “I WANT THE GUY WITH A BEARD!”?

I wasn’t at home with my useful shaving things. I was on my way out of London to Brighton to have a nice relaxing day with Lou. But thankfully I was near Tristan in Richmond. One of my self tape tribe.

Quick trip to the barber, quick reshoot with Tristan. Honestly, I’m happier with the bearded version. The clean shaven one was rushed. But it’s just a commercial and who knows how many thousands of people are recording for it. Better to maximise my chances for the actual acting role. It feels extremely auspicious too, the acting role. I just helped my friend put down a brilliant self tape for my character’s wife. She nailed it. Mine is due on Monday. If we both get it then we have electric prefab trust on set. Fingers fucking crossed. I’m definitely getting her to read with me on it, as her character speaks more than mine in the sides I’ve been sent.

So … I look young again. Goodbye Badger beard. Hello mister sharpface. I remember you.

I made it to Brighton eventually. I’m here now. No beard but a friendly cat that I could hold against my face as a fake beard if I needed.

It’s a tough one, knowing how to play the beard in this business. It grows in just a few weeks. It’s very useful. It takes very little time to shave but much longer to grow. The problem is I know that people can’t see past it if it’s attached. It completely changes the shape of my face. It takes me from sharp to wide. It softens and ages me. It’s an endless discussion. It’s why when I went in for The Crown I shaved it (with permission) despite Tom preferring I had it for Scrooge. I know for certain I wouldn’t have got Michael Howard if they couldn’t see my shaved chin. Tom understood completely. I’m probably more castable sharp.

There are fucktons of actors out there, like it or not. The nuance of relative ability and relevant experience is often deprioritised over the look you have. Not by everyone, of course. But frequently by the crucial decision makers. And it only takes one exec producer to nix you and you are well and truly nixed. Why put yourself at that disadvantage just because you wish that people could have more imagination? People generally don’t, even in this line of work. “The character doesn’t have a beard. This guy has a beard. That other guy – the guy you didn’t like – he doesn’t have a beard. He’s my guy. He’s the guy I want. Period. Who funded this? Get me the guy without a beard.” A gross characterisation, you might say. But I’ve met him and cast for him.

I guess this is why I’m gonna have to get more well known. Once you’ve got enough extant work, they’re going off that instead. You can show up with a beard and offer it, because they already know what you look like, from Murpy Flurpy. But it carries stuff too, being the guy off Murpy Flurpy. There’s the risk of being typecast. “The character Herbie off Murpy Flurpy was a perky turkey! We don’t need perky turkeys in our production of Hamlet”… Or you get forced to be just that role forever – “I dunno what you’re trying to do here, but we hired you to be Herbie the perky turkey from Murpy Flurpy. Do the turkey thing! Gobbley gurkey!”

Plus you can’t get on the tube and talk to your friends about personal stuff anymore. HERBIE THE PERKY TURKEY’S HEART IS HURTY! There’s always someone listening. And if you don’t like the lack of privacy some shitbag tells you “you CHOSE this” because THEY would have chosen it for the recognition element. As if there’s no other reason… As if you can choose to hit that role that captures something… As if that’s been your intention. Because, with no ability, they only see the results of the work. And with no perspective they think that they would only want to be an actor to be famous. So many short sighted venal idiots in the printed media. And elsewhere.

Go to recognition if it’s offered, for sure. It opens doors. That’s a true reason. It allows us to do the thing we do … more. And it helps cut back on the downtime where we need to express an art that cannot be expressed without being witnessed. Recognition helps us be our truth.

But yeah. I’m ranting again. Hello friend. You got this far. Bless you. I’ve shorn myself again. Maybe I’ll get a job in a thing. HERE’S MY FACE.

I just did some long overdue research about fishtank filters.

I bought that tank on eBay for £150 from a deputy headmaster who was just about to retire. He was bearded with socks and sandals. Everything that was possible to obsess about regarding this particular tank of fish? He had already obsessed about it for me. He was a deputy headmaster though, with the lifelong spending power of somebody in education. He’d clearly felt the crunch of every penny spent on these fish. He chose cleverly with them. He read all the books. He did all his homework, natch. These little fishies? They all get along swimmingly.

Brian the Clown Loach is the biggest. He could maybe eat them all alive, but instead he just hangs out under his rock. Maureen and Sadie drift angelically in the light for us. Golfo goes her own way. Atropos, Lachesis and Clotho are still an unbroken threesome, either hiding or racing, but together. Chippy the weatherloach still tries to eat everything always, and has enough personality to make up for the others. The others still haven’t earnt names. I can’t tell them apart. Until they give me something behavioural or physical they are just Tetra. Boringtetra, I think their official scientific name is. I’ll check with my brother.

Anyway, I’ve just realised that that dear old fellow who sold me the tank on eBay? He correctly fitted all the bits to all the things, diligently and completely. Including the “venturi filter system.” Which I diligently copied when I moved it, having no clue and prioritising lack of fish genocide.

The venturi filter system has a little extra valve that pulls air from outside and then blows it out of the filter nozzle. Bubbles! It noisily and visibly aerates the fish. Turns out it’s optional. The fish can be fine without it so long as the surface doesn’t get oily. Damn.

I assumed it was necessary for the survival of my tribe so I haven’t meddled with it until now. Plus Maureen and Sadie the angelfish love it and chippy likes to play in the bubbles. But. It makes a horribly noisy flow of air bubbles across the top of the tank. And it makes so much noise. When I was sleeping on the sofa I hated it utterly. I wouldn’t wish it on any guest. Plus it evaporates the tank at a much much faster rate, which is hard when I’m not home.

Now I know though. I can switch it off if I choose. It’s off now while I write. I’ll leave it off for a while and just see what develops. I’m still an apprentice in fishy matters.

Perhaps I should’ve done my research rather than impulsively buying a load of fish on the day I had a van, and then working things out later. I love them though. They are next to the TV as a more natural alternative to the mindless zone out fodder. The deputy headmaster assembled a lovely tribe of creatures and I can watch them indefinitely.

One day I might bring another fish into the fold and give myself more ownership. But there’s a thing I have to thank the old owner for. He chose his fish friends extremely carefully. They rarely fight. There’d be no conflict at all if Chippy wasn’t trying to eat everybody’s dangly bits.

If I brought a new fish in I’d have to be very thoughtful about what it was. Right now their bubble is secure.

One time, many years ago, Max and I brought in a catfish called Sam to a similar tank. He gradually ate everything else there, but for one loach that made friends with him. We didn’t really catch on he was doing it until most of them were eaten. The survivor slept next to him, kept him close, tried to never let Sam out of his sight. One morning though, no loach. Just Sam looking happy.

We let him hang out in the brackish water on his own. For years. Catfish like it mucky. By eating all the rivals he got the biome he preferred.

I don’t want to bring in a Sam again though. It was like a teen horror movie as the other fish vanished one by one.

These guys are just too pleasant. Calming. Simple. And even cute.

I’m just gonna look at them a while, instead of turning on the telly. Then I’m off to bed.

My mum died in Middlesex Hospital in Goodge Street over fifteen years ago. She was 55. I kept on expecting her to get better so it was a world-break when I walked in and found her on that bed with a daffodil laid on her.

I often go back over how it all panned out and look for things to blame myself for. I think that’s human nature. For a long time I was angry with her boyfriend at the time, as if somehow his behaviour could have affected the outcome. It couldn’t have, but we look for things to blame. She was an extremely rare blood type. She got a super-bug when she was weak. It all spiralled so quickly. And then suddenly, still in my twenties, she was gone.

Maybe I could’ve stayed in touch with her friends, but it was all so unfamiliar and emotionally complicated and hard. I couldn’t quite calibrate the world. All my priorities got spun around. I didn’t tell my agent either. I missed meetings and blew on the wind for a long time and likely did my career tons of damage, as momentum is important and I lost it. I lost whatever means I had to contact old friends of hers too. I had my phone cut off and lost her number. I lost the mobile with all the old numbers in the back of a 3am minicab. I dug a little hole for myself for a decent number of years, drowned myself in work and booze, found whatever ways I could find to avoid looking at the fact that the stabilisers had been taken off and just existed numb for a decade.

The last half a decade has been about regrouping, and a year off the booze plus the fact I couldn’t lose myself in work because there was none last year – that has really helped me come to terms with myself in the world without parents. I even started to go back to Jersey, my old home, and sort through things that were way too intense back then.

No matter how antagonistic or complicated your relationship with your mum might be, you first came to consciousness attached to the inside of her. Her movements and behaviours with yours were the first interactions you learnt. You ate her food and her teeth. There’s a deep connection, that can get broken immediately, and will always get broken eventually if things go in the natural order. And we can find ourselves either defining ourselves by our differences from that first great influence, or by our similarities. “I’m nothing like her!”/”I’m just like her!”

Her friends were very important to her. There’s a point of contact we have. And yet I lost touch with every one of her friends. I don’t know if they’re living or dead. I just redefined myself separately from them, as it was too hard to look at them and know she wasn’t there. It opened up all the cans of worms. Could I have done something to change the outcome?

This morning I left my number at the reception of a block where her boyfriend used to live, checking that he’s ok. This afternoon I got a call from one of her dear friends. She sounds unchanged. I’ll be seeing her next week. Her boyfriend is still alive thankfully but he’s in a home now. I’m going to go and see him as well. Time to reconnect with some of the stuff I put away to deal with later on. It seems it’s “later on” right now.