Month: August 2021

Home in my nicely painted clean London bedroom. Clean sheets are on. I’m gearing up for a long committed and peaceful sleep.

I came back here as I was worried about the fishies. I noticed last weekend that the filter is a bit slow so I cleaned it, but I’ve been worrying that it might pack up entirely. Due to the wonders of technology they are fed automatically every evening, but if their filter packs up completely then I’ll get home to lots of floating fishies and nobody wants that. So I’ve bought another filter. I’ll plug it into a different socket. Then I’ve got backup. And they’re fine still. The filter is labouring, but working better since I cleaned it up last weekend. They still have air – there’s just more algae than usual. I’ve still only lost one fish, which ain’t bad for a load of aging second hand fishies in a tank with old equipment. They’ll get a good clean and a hoover tomorrow and then I’ll work out where to put the second filter for them. It should be fine with two so long as it’s not too noisy…

Meanwhile downstairs in my car is the most exquisite black cape, and a bag full of distressed silk Victorian style nighties. You know that thing I do when I get a load of perhaps too much beautiful stuff and then take it all into my flat and gradually work through it with an eye to theatre? Yeah, well I’ve gone and done it again. This time it’s costumes. The cape and the nighties are just the front runners – I’ll get the bulk of it on Sunday and there’s tons. I’ll be processing it through my friends and through theatre makers I know – and keeping a fair amount back so I have a costume starting point for the little theatre company I’ve recently set up and registered, and which is waiting for a first project but it helps if I know I can make people look fabulous for free. I’ve got some glorious things. Also some pretty weird stuff, frankly. I’m excited to sort through it and work it out as I mostly did it in a hurry one morning before willows, but thankfully it was an informed hurry as I’d been studying the list for some time. Hats and shirts and trousers and capes and coats and jackets galore. It’ll definitely keep me occupied until Spielberg rings. One thing I hadn’t clocked is that the lovely pale wool cape I chose … There’s 24 of them. I’ll find homes for them though. I know that. I’ve got enough maker friends, and friends with companies or making corporate theatre or on the festival circuit or just with a dressing up box. This stuff all speaks. I once had a job as a barker, standing on a podium trying to get people to pay money to go into a sideshow. It was before I had my ringmaster coat, and the employer didn’t provide me with costume, so I just wore my own clothes. Day three, and the woman running the candyfloss took me aside. She said her dad was a ringmaster. There were a few of us doing the job in shifts and she told me nice things about my “gab”. But she said a costume would make all the difference. Of course she was right too. It really can make you ping. If I ever have to do that again, God forbid, I’ll be spoilt for choice regarding costumes. I’ll just have to be super organised about labelling and storage. Ha. We’ll see how that goes.

Bedtime now though. I’m still on recovery mode from the end of willows and then all the Wagner.

It’s twenty past four on a Monday. “I’ve never been so busy in my life,” says the man who just sold me a flat white. No surprises really. We are at Glyndebourne and it’s the first interval of Tristan and Isolde. We are about to go into the middle bit. Considering I was King Marke in an experiential event thing based on the story, you’d think I’d be more familiar with the full opera. But there’s four hours of it and I was being paid in carrots and smoke.

I’m lucky enough to have a girlfriend who works at this remarkable place. This is a dress rehearsal, and if I think I had an endurance race with Badger, imagine what the lady in the red wig has to go through every night. This is the work of the Wagner who had just discovered Schopenhauer. It’s certainly not Mozart. It’s a long way from Puccini. Life and Death. Light and Dark. Day and Night. Love. Death. Light. Death. Dark. Oblivion. Pain. Oh God! Oh God! Why?

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And the sea! The sea! Probably more than sixty musicians from the London Philharmonic and they’re on the stage uplit in blue at the start and you can see and feel the ocean as the sound rises and falls and surges and wanes. So many people and so much accumulated talent all to bring this weird and sad story of love and magic and death to a tiny audience. It’s an open dress tonight, for friends of the building. The stalls are empty as it is being filmed and the sound desk is still out with all the team checking levels and light. But my oh my it’s ready. My German is atrocious and I feel it’s getting better this evening just by hearing the perfect enunciation of the principals. There’s just over an hour to go. The music starts surging as we all learn that love is pain and life of dying and oblivion sweet sweet oblivion is waiting.

People are gonna spend a huge amount on tickets for this, I’m sure. They’ll have to for the economy of it to even slightly make sense. The talent on that stage in the numbers they’re there in… Sure, I’m sure it’s a treat to be part of something as huge and simmering and gorgeous and human as this. But we all need to eat, and if we’re gonna do what some of these guys do we need to eat a lot. It’s a true luxury to be here even though I’m exhausted and it has been a constant war against sleep…

Part 3.

War definitely won. That was electric. Apparently it’s not even sold out but tickets cost a house and it’s not fully staged, which some people consider to be a disadvantage. Honestly though, the way it was staged satisfied me completely. The orchestra dominated the stage, and they were the sea and the dawn and we always had something to watch. On the apron the singers worked with great simplicity and precision, and maybe it’s all that time at The Factory but I honestly think that when you’re working with great text, the less you do to clutter it with pyrotechnics and big sets and acting and props the harder it is for those of us watching to hear the words and let them be ours too. Semi-staged allowed me to experience this epic piece for the first time without being told what to think of it. I am glad of that. I found so much.

Yes, life is pain and happiness is merely momentary relief from the endless suffering of existence. But somehow that sort of Schopenhauerian message always makes me want to double down on being silly and having completely pointless fun lots and lots.

If you like a bit of Wagner and have pots of money, get a picnic and hope there’s good weather. The rest of you, don’t mess about with love potions even if they were made by your mum. It won’t end well.

A man is writing into his laptop on my badger bench this matinee morning. I don’t blame him. It’s a beautiful little contemplative space. He’s plugged in to his earphones though. I don’t understand how people can do that. I tried to ski once in earphones and I realised how fundamental the soundscape was to both my joy and my control. You can hear the changes in the surface. You hear small sounds of nature. You hear the other people. And here in the stillness it is no different. It’s rich here. I wouldn’t want to be just plugged in to noise.

Right here and right now if you listen there is so much. There’s nature everywhere, but this spot carries more of the natural and less of the man made sound. Even though, under everything, the road is never far.

Summer is growing old, and the leaves are in full abundance. The wind brings deeper rumblings as the forces of autumn vie to unseat the green and to force us once more into the stark and the cold. I can only tell a few birds by their songs. I wonder if there’s an app for that? Bird Shazam. There’s something nattering in a tree to my right. No idea what it is. Occasionally there’s a lark. I’ve learnt that one. And always the pigeons. Surely the easiest just as they’re everywhere.

On the road near our base, there’s some sort of small brown pigeon that by rights should be extinct. Pigeons are historically pretty bad at protecting themselves. Rats from our ships made short work of many international varieties, that were too docile after never having been predated. These brown ones, by rights, should all have been hit by cars by now. They sit in the road and you always have to slow down to a near halt to avoid killing them. Thousands of Oxford drivers have kept them safe by braking for them. If that’s their behaviour everywhere then they’re an evolutionary dead end. But here, perhaps it’s them singing to me as I get ready for the last day.

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My digs are packed. I’ve said goodbye to Clive the sick kitty. Everything is in the XTrail and farewells already mostly sung. Sad times to see the end of this little world kick-starting job. Remembering what it is to be in the groove. Off we go now, perhaps. Things might be actually picking up. This can only be a good thing…

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And I’m back in London. The concrete jungle. A very different type of pigeon here, and thankfully not as noisy. For just a few hours I’m in the city. I’m gonna sleep. I’m gonna wake. And I’m gonna go off to the opera.

But I’ll miss these guys. And Stanley who wasn’t even with us when these photos were taken. It’s been fun. Onwards!

One more show today, then two tomorrow and we are done. So I’ll only do my scene about thirty more times. Phew. I’m tired. I feel a little dizzy with it. I kinda should’ve had a nap between shows.

There’s a cat with a brain tumour living in my digs. Clive, he’s called. He’s very affectionate and I want his every moment to be amazing as he’s perhaps not very long for this world. He’s a bit confused though. I think he’s on lots of painkillers and of course he has something in his brain. He squintily jumps up into the bed and then falls over. Sometimes he misses the bed but he doesn’t seem to mind. He likes being stroked very much indeed and he’s discovered that stroking happens on the bed.

Last night though he was worried that I was too still every time I fell asleep. Maybe I was dead? So he very helpfully stuck his paw into my mouth every hour or so and shouted “Ralph!” at me until I woke up again and stroked him. I’m not sure why he thinks my name is Ralph.

All this being woken up is probably why I’m so tired. Much as I love him I might close the door tonight…

Here I am on my badger bench. The wind is up, rippling the water into raindrop patterns that glint in the light like fairies. Or perhaps it’s fairies, fooling this tired badger into thinking they are motes of light. It’s a peaceful evening, but before long I will once more be corralling children and their adults, and throwing out all my energy.

My stamina is returning. That’s for sure. I’m tired still but despite the bad sleep I’m definitely nothing like as ragged as I was last week. The voice is recovering quickly again. I’ve been singing my marching song up the octave this morning, and I wouldn’t have got close this time last week. A few more weeks of this and I might actually be match fit again. But … it’s all over tomorrow. I’ll just have to be a bit less crap at my daily vocal and physical practices, and make sure I’m not just driving everywhere…

I’ll miss this little peaceful corner of Oxford, and this sweet and geeky group of actors. I don’t think I’ve ever been in a show where quite so many people play Dungeons and Dragons. We have brought durational jokes to a whole new level. And tonight we are off for a company meal because tomorrow we all know it will immediately dissolve after the last show, as it always does. Claire’s bike is already in my car. I’m gonna pack up my attic room tomorrow morning. The show will end. We will say goodbye. We will go our separate ways. The magic will be deconstructed. I’ll drop off Claire and the bike and I wouldn’t be surprised if I was in bed in London by 10pm. Or fixing the filter on the fish tank. Or fishing out the suffocated fish. I’m likely worrying unnecessarily…

I broke the routine. I went somewhere else for my morning coffee, and it was shit.

This is why we fall into patterns. But it might have been a wonderful coffee. The fact it was shit might propel me back to my old tried and tested source of wakey-goodness. But this is how we start to switch ourselves off…

The first time we make a journey, even across town to somebody’s home, it feels long. We notice the things on the way. We are alert to the seconds as they pass. Once we’ve made it twenty, forty, a hundred times, it passes in a flash with only the unexpected shocks slowing it down a bit. And more time is lost. More of our precious life is spirited away.

This is why I break the routines. I don’t like it when patterns start to emerge. I don’t want to wear out the same track around the edge of my enclosure. I don’t want the time to rush past. I’d prefer to slowly notice if I can. But it’s hard. Patterns and habits sneak up without you knowing. Looking over it, I think I’m about ten years older than I have experienced, because all that time just fell off somewhere when I wasn’t looking.

And here I am again on a riverbank with the willows and the wood pigeons. I’ll be whacking weasels in the wild woods before long again. And given the number of times we all have to do our scenes, it is a gift that I am trusted to try out new material, and that the audience is allowed to be in random chaotic dialogue with us. It means we don’t lose this in a haze of repetition. Next week, this will be a strange memory. For now though, it’s life. It’s the sharp end of existence. This is now and now is this. But I’ll be asleep when this publishes. I’ll be parsing through the unthought thoughts in my usual fire of brightly lucid dreams and I’m passing the fire of now to you, the reader.

Plus I’m putting this down to talk to Guy.

So yeah… Routine. You gotta be careful of that stuff, he says. But you should always question your sources. Here I am on the same bench, with the same tea, at the same time, writing a blog that I have published every morning for… Oh lord… Let’s look… For 1667 days, not including this one.

But yeah. I dunno. I haven’t got a concrete point here. Routine deadens. But sometimes if you just break it for the sake of it, you end up with a shit cup of coffee.

Here comes the audience. Badger face on. Phone on silent in the pocket. Let’s all look at the beautiful river and pretend to be badger-scouts. Etc.

Until tomorrow…

The Cuttleslowe Community Centre is our home base, but it’s a well used building. We have to be pretty adaptable in our pre-show state. Right now there’s a dance class going on in the gym, the room we usually change in is full of young’uns, and the office, where we overspill in such circumstances, has got somebody on a Zoom meeting. There is a vegetable puppeteer coming, they have bug hunting expeditions, drama classes, cooking… It’s busy.

Some of us are sitting silently here, conserving energy before a show with a zoom meeting in full swing that includes my cousin outlaw. I’ve just put my socks on while she’s been saying something. If the weather was better we’d be outside. But it’s raining.

The break between shows went quicker than usual today as there’s another company in town, and their piece was running at the perfect time for us to catch it as we ate our lunch. It’s another show for the small humans, called Bicycle Boy. Two young scots in the pouring rain playing precious easily damaged instruments in the wet, while fraught looking men and women in hi-vis try to get the cables to the amp to connect safely in the wet, and rescue the instruments at every opportunity. A gaggle of us stood at the back of a very enthusiastic Oxford audience enjoying the energy we were receiving from that stage area, and we were secretly grateful that it wasn’t us up there as the rain came down. I was wrapped in a blanket from my car,a feeling slightly sheepish about the fact that I’d driven five minutes to get there in the rain, considering the subject matter was mostly “2 wheels good, 4 wheels bad”. I was happy to have caught it. A charming piece and two actors working beautifully with one another. Chemistry is always invigorating to witness. That was my recharge…

Before long I’ll be going out there in the rain. And it’s cold again. I wish it would make up its mind. I’ve only got one pair of socks on. I think when we are done tonight that I’m gonna go immediately home, have a hot shower and go to bed.

I can’t even find my flask to make a cup of tea, because after each show all six of us have to put everything we have into a room that’s not much bigger than a cupboard. My boots are in there somewhere too. It’ll all become apparent in the few minutes before we all go back outside, when we all individually remove the ridiculous objects we all need to make this thing happen.

It’s that time… Off into the rain. Once I find my boots.

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It was lovely again. Of course. And now I’m halfway through the week and off to sleep and I’m still thoroughly enjoying myself and Badger is getting bossier and bossier but it’s all in the name of fun. And I’m tired. I’ve got to remember to budget my noise. I’m always trying to pick up the energy and keep it high as my audience comes towards me, so I don’t have to gee them up from zero. But they start at the other end of a field from me, and if it’s raining I can probably speed them up by about .05 of an mph and that’s after running my voice ragged. They’ll just lump their way to me, even if every single child sprints. Grownups are lazy. Lazy lazy lazy. Stop it. Connect with the version of you that would sprint for a bearded fool in a badger costume. That version of you could still see the colours. It is SO HARD to see the colours after a while. But it’s still possible. You just have to work hard at it.

Three more days. That’s it…

I’m off to bed.

I’m sitting in my shorts on this bench again, with a lovely flask of tea, contemplating how lucky I am, covered in suncream, and thinking that perhaps I’m to hot right now to even contemplate writing this blog…

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So I didn’t. And now I’m here again and it’s evening. Much milder. Time pressure this time though. I was way too slow getting here. The problem with glorious weather is it makes me want to luxuriate. But if I compare how I feel this evening with how I felt for a lot of last week, when the temperature plummeted and the rain slogged down … Well I’m certainly a lot happier now. But there’s the text to say the show has started. They won’t be with me for at least fifteen minutes. But I’ll need to be set up and with at least a rudimentary vocal warm-up completed to stave off the ragged vocal state that I found myself in on Sunday at this time.

Audiences are better for this show in the afternoon, which I guess makes sense. After all it’s a kid’s show. We did morning performances the last time I was in a kids show, and I think the latest we ever started one was about 4pm. They’re up early, those noisy little beggars. I’m only going to have to do it six times this evening, which feels almost restful.

The tea flask is a stroke of genius as well. Taking the time to organise little luxuries for ourselves pays itself back in spades. I’ve been happily sipping my way through all the Yogi Tea since I found it in Holland and Barrett. Original blend in the morning and then the throat one in the evening. The original one is just yum, although it strikes me that the throat one would be very well assisted by the addition of some whisky. For the last few days I’ve had to resist getting a little pocket bottle of single malt and dropping a tot in with the tea. Not with all this talking. That would be madness. I already have to police myself not to confuse badgers and weasels. But still, right now that would be a lovely little loosener, if I didn’t have the hard wired code to NEVER drink before I work. A man can dream. Best warm up.

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Rested. Calm. Happy.

I’m sitting here with my flask of tea on the banks of the Cherwell. A lark has just started chirring high in the air above the river. Here we go again. 120 times this week and then we can all go home and miss it.

Wet mud on the pathway and all over my boots. I drove up to Oxford through the morning looking forward to this moment though. When there’s no rain, it’s a great joy to sit here with the willows and the water and to see which of the creatures are active today. There was a Garden Tiger Moth on my bench when I arrived. That’s the third one I’ve seen this year. The fish are jumping. Nobody is messing about in boats so they’ve come out of hiding to try and catch unwary flies. And the sun, cracking through the clouds and warming my face as I write. I took my ears off just to soak it up the better. I’ll just have to remember to put them back on before the kids come running round in about fifteen minutes. Meantime I’m gonna sign off here and just breathe at the river for a bit, and feel it breathing back.

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And there it was. A rare moment. Nature, red in tooth and claw.

It looks like nothing but a blur, but it was a magical moment for me. An Emperor Dragonfly, female, hunting. It’s bigger than you think. Like a small fast bird. Move, hover, move, hover. I was standing in the middle of her beat. She circled me repeatedly, scanning the foliage. Incredibly complex eyes able to predict the movement of prey. I snatched a photo as best I could, but it was more about just hanging out with this beautiful predator and watching it move. I put the phone away. And I was lucky.

I don’t know what it was but there was something edible living on a nettle. She zeroed in and leapt on it, and there was a brief rustle as she made sure it was held before shooting up, past my face, back bent under itself sandwiching her catch as she triumphantly munched as she flew with those nasty big teeth.

It got me thinking how lucky we are not to have any insects that are big enough to hunt us. It doesn’t matter how many times you knock a wasp off your sandwich. It keeps coming. If it wanted to fly off with you and eat your soft bits it would manage it eventually or die trying, much as it does with your jam. Whatever was on that nettle was having a lovely afternoon right up until it got bundled up and flown away. And the dragonfly would have little thought about mercy when it came to the munching. You often see insects eating things backwards.

It’s evening now. Time has jumped to the calm before the evening show and here I am again. It’s not a bad way to spend your time. Even though there now appears to be a wasp on my nipple. It’s sick. Writhing in pain – perhaps parasitised. I feel strangely sad for it so I’m just letting it wander around. Why not. I’ve got ten minutes. Maybe one of the dragonflies will come and pluck it off me

I’m at Hampstead, lying here thinking how lucky I am. I met a pair of people who make things and they want me to make things with them. I met them just down the road in The Magdala pub. I chose the venue. It’s where Ruth Ellis shot her lover. He probably deserved it. But she went on to be the last woman to be hanged in the UK. Bad timing for her life. Good timing for her legacy.

She tracked him down in an infidelity. How the hell did she get hold of a .38 calibre Smith and Wesson Victory Model revolver? Thank God we don’t have guns in this country, generally. She had one though, somehow. And she chased him round his car with it as he came out. The first one missed. The second one knocked him down. Six bullets in total. Three, four and five went into him at closer and closer range, just to make sure. The fifth one burnt his skin. Number six jammed, and ended up in the pavement. She kept clicking until the bullet came out, even though her purpose – to kill him – had been served.

The wall outside the pub used to have bullet holes in it, but apparently a random actor discredited them. Rather than let us all have a bunch of holes where we could contemplate a woman desperate and angry enough to take things into her own hands like that, he used whatever contacts he must have had to say that he’d heard the landlady concoct a plan to drill the holes in 1990 in order to impress a bunch of Japanese tourists. Maybe the landlady enlarged existing holes, maybe not. I don’t know. I like stories though.

Reading the articles, the name of this nothing actor is larger than anything else in them. It’s HIS puff piece. It’s like he pulled his one big favour on the “fake bullet holes” story in The Sun and in The Camden New Journal when his career went to the tits. He never realised that actually the world would be more interesting with the fake bullet holes in the pub wall than his first name last name in The Sun. Maybe he realised too late that he had made the world smaller by making his name momentarily bigger. Who knows. I’m not gonna say his name. But don’t worry. You’ve never heard of him. Like me, he’s just some tit.

But this tit writing now at least sorted out what he’s doing for Halloween, and in the run up to it. Spooky stories. North London. More about ghosts and less about guns. But hopefully I’ll be presiding over some delightful nonsense in October. Let’s see.

Meanwhile I’m at my friend’s place in Hampstead, knuckling down for an early night and an early wake…

A pair of swans came and found me here in my sett during the matinée. I thought they were gonna get up on the bank and start messing with my props but they seemed content to just come right up to the edge and see if my boots had churned up any worms. I was half expecting to have them here again this evening, but they’ve moved on. Shame. They were a beautiful distraction.

It’s always different here. Calm and still tonight again, with fish jumping and the birds showing themselves off in the branches. It’s not going to rain for a change. I have trusted it and my umbrella remains at unit base. I just have a flask of Ayurvedic tea, a bag of mucky weasels and a few scraps of voice. One more show. Then I’m gonna jump in the car and mission to London, where I’m gonna fill up a hot bath with salt and lie there until it’s cold or I’m pickled. Then tomorrow I’m gonna keep my mouth shut as much as humanly possible. No unnecessary talking. Heaven for my friends. Hell for me.

The mud on my path has been churned into a foul soup of hungry muck. Audience members have started openly worrying more about their new trainers and less about defeating those pesky weasels. I probably have just about enough energy to refocus their attention, but I’m really starting to feel the wear now. At capacity I do my scene 120 times between Tuesday and Sunday. It might well hit capacity next week, as the local rags have been kind. It’s exhausting.

I’m beginning to remember what it is to be match fit but I’m still not there. My voice is doing exactly what it does after the first full week of Carol. Thankfully I’ve got Wolverine’s vocal folds – they recover brilliantly given just a touch of rest. After my London bath and a whole day down I’ll be at 100% again.

I’m meeting somebody about a ghost walk tomorrow, hence the trip to London. Might be a pleasant thing to do in the evenings on the approach to Halloween, and it’s unlikely to clash with anything else. Plus it’s for adults. I swear, of I see a child tomorrow I’m gonna bite it.

Showtime.

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And now I’m briefly home. Bath is running. Plants are watered. Tomorrow I will clean the fish and go talk to people in Hampstead about a ghost walk. For tonight quiet peace, and a dreamy rest in the bed that used to be my grandmother’s in Jersey and now has been wrestled into my friendly boho Chelsea penthouse. Joy.

I was given a little origami butterfly by a small child. “My favourite type of army,” said Badger. So sweet. It’s the little things.