I’m sitting in a room with about sixty children who are trying to build a battery, and it suddenly dawned on me like a thunderbolt that I didn’t write anything before I went to sleep last night.
Late night up the A1 but I’ve learnt now. I left London at 8. It’s the latest sensible time to leave London really. As I shot up I passed so many of those little vans full of traffic cones, waiting to close down all the roads and send everybody who is leaving after 9pm on endless diversions through tiny A roads while your satnav panics and you honestly have no idea how long you’ll have to be driving for. I made it to Peterborough in short order, and knowing the alarm was going off before 7, I celebrated with an early bed and NO BLOG.
Filthy filthy filthy boy. How could I almost leave a hole in my unbroken record? I think it’s coming up to five years of this madness. I might have to look back over it at some point and see what I’ve created here… Usually when I miss one I get a message, but today that didn’t happen which either means you’ve all fucked off or you just think I need a break.
I’ll probably have to finish this in my lunch break. Back to work…
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So yeah. Back on the treadmill. It pays well though and the more I do it the easier it gets.
One of the lads this afternoon built the best paper airplane I’ve ever seen instead of paying attention to a workshop about maybe getting employment as an engineer. It leaves me to wonder. We all do this sort of thing with opportunity. He’s probably the best candidate in the room for the sort of work we are talking about. But if he’s not careful he’ll be flipping those big macs. I’m sure I’ve done similar things all the time. Too involved with my own crap to look up and see what’s there.
Engineering
Like with this daily writing. I still pay to host the blog but I don’t monetise it in any way and I even switched off ads so it’s cost me fiscally even if it has helped me hugely in less quantifiable ways. Maybe my time would be better focused looking for a targeted lifestyle column type thing…
Anyway, this is a blog. As so frequently happens it’s not about very much. But there are many days in a year. One day I’ll go look at the statistics and see if anybody actually reads this. I’m amazed at myself for having studiously avoided them for so long so far. Thank you if you are here still. This is my mental health accountabilibuddy, and you’re all along for the ride.
Now I’m gonna eat this sandwich and galvanise for one more weird room full of half distracted youth…
My breakfast this morning: a banana. I never get up in time to take full advantage of the Premier Inn offering.
What a lovely bank holiday weekend. Mostly it’s been about relaxing. I hope it has been for you as well.
I got my wires crossed and thought I had to sleep in Peterborough tonight ahead of a workshop on the morrow. Not so. That’s tomorrow night. So I won a whole day of nothing. I fed the fish.
Fish aren’t quite in the same league as the various animals I’ve been looking after recently. Dogs can be full on, but Cookie is easy going and well trained. She has a limited gestural palate – she jumps up or she cocks her head. Both gestures have multiple meanings. She used to enjoy being close to the human. We went for long walks and had many an incomprehensible conversation. She loves a run.
The two incredible cats I’ve been spending time with are as different as cats can ever be. The male is dumb as a post and desires attention and love without complication. The female is a tragic heroine. She has a heart condition. She must be kept in careful peace, but she likes taking a swipe at things. She had us wrapped around her finger. We only watched David Attenborough because we (correctly) thought she’d like it. She bounced up to the screen when the tiger appeared, and spent most of the programme trying to swat birds.
I would love a high maintenance pet full time. Dad always avoided them for the same reason I do – they tie you down. They make a home, but they force you to stay in that home to look after them. For every time I’m tempted to get a dog or cat, I’m grateful that I haven’t got one. This summer is looking crowded now. I’m so glad there’s not the stress / expense of a catsitting arrangement, as I’ll be off on my excursions again thank the lord.
This evening I just zoned out in my own home, and in the early evening I went pirating with Brian and we finally managed to get a huge haul of treasure back to port, despite both of us weighing anchor deliberately in order to get some photos with the loot, leading to two opposing ships spotting us and very nearly chasing us down. By some miracle we kept it all and flogged it. Hurrah. Progress. I can go to bed glad I’ve had a lovely weekend and finally got some loot home in Sea of Thieves. Back to normal life now. The good thing about that game is that it’s pointless playing it without friends, so it will always be a social thing and not a time sink.
I want a pet though. I kept on thinking I saw a creature as I was walking through my flat. But no. 😦
Having access to the cat palace through Lou is a tremendous privilege on days like this. Right in the best part of Brighton with rooms twice the height of your average room, door to seafront in five minutes or less, two friendly beasts when you return. On days like this, the whole world descends on Brighton. I wouldn’t want to have to look for an Airbnb or pay for a hotel as the prices will be hoiked up with the temperature, and you’d be paying to be in a crowd. It’s brilliant that she’s catsitting for so long and that the owner trusts me enough to let me be here.
Knowing my love of people watching, Lou suggested I rent a bike and we cycle down to Hove Lagoon. She probably knows my imagination is full of pirates at the moment so she figured she could sell it to me with the name. Arrr.
The last time I got one of those Brighton bicycles it was so memorably terrible that it scarred me slightly, so it was with a degree of trepidation that I selected and unlocked one of only two bikes that were left at the rack. The basket was full of empty cans of gin and crisp packets, but apart from the handles and brakes being sticky in different ways there was nothing else wrong with it. Functional heavy bike. We went to Hove and beyond with the wind behind us.
It’s not far to Hove Lagoon. The sun was hot but the wind was cold. I couldn’t work out if I was too hot or too cold when we stopped and stared at a puddle and a playground. We turned round and slung into the wind to get us out of Hove and back to the mass of humanity that makes up Brighton seafront on a bank holiday Sunday. Hove Lagoon was a distance, not a destination.
Happy Easter. Eostremonath. Time for rebirth. Crack out of your egg in this Libra pink moon and rebalance yourself. It’s an auspicious time…
It’s the beginning of an avalanche of busy. I made the mistake of getting stuck into my diary today and updating it, and I’m about to get swamped cos I’m doing a spot of lovely theatre, plus a bit of filming that I’m gonna have to learn super tightly as most of the other actors will be speaking German. Plus I’m trying to slot in workshops when I can to keep the positive money flow. I’m not going to have many more opportunities to lounge around with Lou surrounded by pedigree cats in a cosy Brighton seafront hideaway. The boulder is rolling down the hill again.
I remember saying in lockdown that we’d all miss the peace and quiet. And I will for sure. I’ve had time to look around a bit even despite my ability to distract myself with shinies. Things are gathering momentum. Life is wiggling again. Gonna get busy. Gonna be fun. I’ll even get to go to Sardinia for twenty days in June. Aaaaa.
I’m feeling chilled and happy. Perfect after a Sunday. I’ve synchronised again. After the little cycle trip we wandered just five minutes to get to The Thomas Kempe in time for a very tasty late Sunday roast. Not even that crowded compared to the beachfront where we were nose to tail. Tomorrow I’ll have to drive up to Peterborough and crash in another Premier Inn before hauling myself back into the Tuesday grind of screaming children full of Easter chocolate building batteries. Right now though, a comfy long sleep to make sure my own batteries are fully recharged, and it won’t be too long a drive tomorrow…
Me and my trusty steed stopping for coffee. “We don’t take cash.”
My friend returned this morning to the home where I’ve been looking after their little fluffy dog. Me and the lads had hit upon the irresponsible idea of a quick morning fix of Sea of Thieves after a brilliant litany of gaming disasters yesterday. I was trying to multitask. My laptop was open in a darkened room..Wash the dishes, mend the leaks, pack the bag, shoot the sloop, keep an eye on the dog, grab the loot arrr…
I’ve been trying to explain to people the sheer joy of Sea of Thieves. I’ve even been trying to explain it to Lou. You’re pretending to be a cartoon pirate in a very manual computer game. Everything is difficult and easy. With a crew of friends its so much more fun than on your own, plus you get to shout things like “Man the capstan!” We were piloting a Brigantine and conducting a WhatsApp voice call and when my friends returned home we were amazingly not dead, even though we had actually let the damn ship sink by ignoring a leak in favour of swimming for treasure. We were attempting to bury the treasure in a nearby atoll while one of us got a merfolk to teleport them to a random port and try and pilot a new Brigantine back solo. It’s not easy as you’ve got to run round all over the boat to adjust the sails and check the chart and raise the anchor and steer, and that’s before anybody starts shooting holes in you.
I said goodbye to my friends with the game still running, and attempted to pilot Bergman to a coffee shop where I could use wi-fi to help unload the treasure we had somehow not lost. By the time I made it into Banbury though it was all over. So … I got a sausage roll and drove back to London.
I’m funny in other people’s houses. I frequently don’t use the kitchen in digs, but I felt at home enough to do so there. I didn’t use the shower though. Tried to make it work once, failed, decided I’d just be stinky. So my first stop back in London was to run a lovely long hot bath and scrape the man off. Pirates and dogs and writing. I could live like that for about a week. No more. It was an excellent two days though. I got some stuff written, got a tan from all the walking, and laughed harder than I’ve laughed for ages at the absolute insane carnage of three friends trying to be pirates and dying loads.
Post bath, I did another mission, to the cat palace. This is where I am now. From doggie to pussies. One of them is wandering around on top of me trying to establish the best place to be stroked. The other one is in a box. Special delivery.
We had time to zoom in on a friend of Lou in Lewes celebrating her glamorous 70th birthday in her incredible home. It’s a performance space. I really want to do Christmas Carol there. It would go down well in Lewes… …
Cookie has been a joy to get to know. I can’t keep a dog. Not with needing to drop everything and fuck off to who knows where at the drop of a hat. I love animals, but being primary carer for anything means that you have to be there for it all the time. Both of my parents died before I was thirty and I appear to have avoided children. I’ll look after a dog for a few days and that’ll be lovely. But I just don’t have the predictability to keep one full time, more’s the pity.
We had a very very very long walk in the morning. The sun was shining, the sky was clear. There is a very good network of bridleways and allotments here in Banbury. It doesn’t take long to find open space.
Cookie comes when she is called, and she runs like crazy when she’s free. I experimented with letting her off the leash in a big field. She bounded joyfully, and I might have been more relaxed had there not been an interesting horse. Still, she held back from jumping at it. She is, of course, a good dog. Oh yes she is.
I’ll be up tomorrow morning. That’s the joy of dogs. This evening the lads and I proved ourselves to be incredibly incompetent at Sea of Thieves, a cooperative online multiplayer pirate game. We died and died and died. It was atrocious and brilliant simultaneously.. Cookie sat behind me, occasionally mumbling, as I bailed the ship out. We eventually realised that we were just going to die all the time, and gave it up as a bad job shortly after midnight. I might have been inclined to have a weekend lie-in tomorrow after writing this late blog. But not with Cookie. I’ll be downstairs bright and early to offer walkies.
I could use a dog in my life more frequently. I’ve grown very used to cats and their ways. But dogs are so incompetent that they force us to step up for them, so they can just artlessly enjoy all the moments one after the other. Two days with that glory has helped me remember to downplay my own comfort. She’s an ace dog. She’s almost silent and mostly communicates with a head turn and a mucky paw. She’s a delight. And Jesus, she can run.
The first thing that strikes me here is the quiet. At home there’s the constant roar of the road. Here in Banbury it’s quiet. I just took a clock out of the room so now the quiet is complete. It’s just pushing midnight. I’m dogsitting.
Cookie and I watched terrible movies together with the household subscription. The house is a smart house, although it is supposed to let me operate the lights through Alexa but she just tells me I’m in the wrong account.
The doorbell talks to you. The thermostat is smart. “Don’t worry if you see a camera, they aren’t everywhere – just in my studio” I am told, introducing a concern that I hadn’t considered. Cameras! I’m being recorded! If Alexa is filming me to send to Bezos then the information is going to be just as useless as all the stuff that your paranoid friend is trying to convince themselves that Bill Gates is harvesting from bad science. The nanos that serve no purpose that are being put into us for REASONS or whatever else those good looking Californian hipsters have dreamt up to deliberately fly in the face of the mainstream in exchange for hits.
I’m here to look after Cookie.
Cookie is a dog. “What breed is she?” says Lou on the phone, and once again I feel like I just can’t ask the basic questions. She’s a dog. What does it matter what the words are? It’s like when a human tries to take the space of multiple humans because they consider themselves to be a special breed of human. Usually those “special” ones are the Boris ones that should really just get in the bin. She’s a dog.
Cookie doesn’t know what breed she is, nor does she care. She’s a good doggy. She likes a frolic. She is partial to a good leap. She’s friendly. And she’s very quiet. Only barks at birds.
Humans are complex when it comes to dogs. Over the course of one day of walkies I had to hold the doggie tight while a terrified child passed, and I had to divert my course when an eccentric old lady scolded me for potentially frightening off the stray cat she was trying to seduce. I’m generally very careful when I’m dogwalking. I’ve been with a girlfriend when the dead-eyed London lady ran the old “I’m going to call the council and your dog is going to be shot. Your dog is dead! Dead!!” That was Daphne and she had just jumped up at the wrong person to be friends. Dogs can’t tell so quickly when somebody is batshit crazy. She likely just smelt the shit and thought “interesting smelly human!” Nope. Unwell broken nasty human…
Nobody in their right mind could hate Cookien though. Silent and gentle gambolling hound.
I just put her to bed and I’m up in a little day bed in this automated house. I’ll need to be down early for morning fun. Dogs are a huge help with routine. Tomorrow I’m going to get some stuff written down.
Today though, bed in the quiet. I’ve put the ticking clock on the landing. Goodnight lovelies.
This is a really hard thing to describe, but I’m going to try to do it. Bear with me. Look at this photo.
These were both steel bars, and originally they were both universal in radius. Steel is often thought of as the hardest metal possible, but it course the quality of steel varies based on the manufacturing process. Think of Inigo Montoya in The Princess Bride. The three fingered man went to Inigo’s father knowing he made an excellent steel sword blade. He killed the father to avoid having to pay for the blade, which would have been extremely expensive. He eventually and famously paid for that mistake with his life. “My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.” If you haven’t seen the film, I’ve genuinely spoilt very little. Watch The Princess Bride for one of the stupidest and most brilliant bits of escapist fantasy that exists, with Mandy Patinkin as a brilliant swept hilt foil to Cary Elwes and Robin Wright, and a dated Mark Knopfler soundtrack that just helps set the tone for some of the most tongue in cheek celebrity cameos you will ever witness. “Mawwiage.”
But yes. Good steel is rare. Look back at that picture. They were both universal steel bars. So they were just straight lines of solid steel. Then they went to The Kirkaldy Testing Works and got pulled.
In Southwark, housed in a prime location just south of Blackfriars Bridge, there is a listed building. It contains obsolete machines. Their purpose was to test things to destruction. In that picture, there are two steel rods. They were pulled in one of the machines. The bottom one stretched but didn’t snap, even under tremendous pressure. The top one snapped.
Steel. STEEL.
These machines aren’t bending steel. They are PULLING it. They’re pulling STEEL. Pulling it. They are PULLING STEEL.
Seriously people. It’s fucking crazy. They used VAST machines. They didn’t just pull it either. That’s just the bit that pops my mind.
They pulled it, they shook it, they whacked it, they jiggered it… There are libraries of carefully catalogued teeth with different purposes. If you thought you had made something solid, mister Kirkaldy was the Scotsman with a big beard who wanted to make it clear to the world that nothing can’t be broken. The timbers of the floor are shored with steel because the testing works was on two levels and the machines weigh enough to make you suet immediately if you’re downstairs. Upstairs you would run a girder through the whole damn building, through a machine but sticking out of bith sides like a spear through a neck. Then machines connected to the hydraulics network beneath the city would respond to you turning a crank and would begin to exert impossible pressure channeled through various pumping twisting banging teeth in order to make sure that things like bridges will last forever. There was a hydraulic network under London providing water for this madness! Now it’s fibre-optic cables. But it used to be high pressure water. For the West end theatres. For the factories. And for the testing works. Ingenuity. Again it’s amazing how completely things have changed in just couple of lifetimes.
Downstairs are the machines that break chains, or screws, or bolts… There’s such an inevitability about these things. You turn a crank and slowly the item is modulated. Turn after turn and the huge gears move. Gear into bigger gear into bigger gear into tooth. Oil slipping and material banging. The unstoppable turning of the handle and the gradual unstoppable result. Crack-a-tack-a-sack-a-kkkkkkkkktttt
Everything has a breaking point. This place finds it, and drily records it. Until you know the most that something can take you can’t give it your full confidence. What a fucked up situation. We just mustn’t do it with people. Even in my limited experience of being an employee in a “normal” job, I’ve witnessed bosses deliberately exploring people’s edges just to see what they can get away with. And this place fucks things up and then turns it into numbers.
I have to try to make it interesting. Breakages. Snapping point. Ping.
It’s just before midnight. I left the house at 8 and I just got in.
A friend of mine moved to Chelmsford today. She has bought a 16th century grade two listed cottage with three sheds and a greenhouse and a garden. It’s beautiful but I’d bang my head if I lived there. I loved the age and the garden and the potential in the sheds. I loved some of the rooms. I didn’t love the upstairs area. Too crowded. I like a high ceiling.
Jack and I started at noon loading a Luton van from an old council estate in North West London. I was proud of myself, and doubly so when Jack commented on it. I’ve had enough practice to get really good at van loads. Just as well really because we had a fuckton of stuff to take. I tetrissed every inch of that van. We got it all in by a whisker and closed the door.
No blankets or ratchet straps and a client who was a friend of mine, yes, but was incredibly particular about her things. I was terrified to scuff anything. Some previous loads ended up shifting as I drove. Things pile up against the roll-door making it hard to open. You have to force it up if that happens, and then there’s an avalanche. I wanted to avoid that eventuality, knowing I’d be opening it with her present at the other end, and knowing that if there was an avalanche I’d get it in the ear.
Haulage Al wanted to look professional. He didn’t want to break anything, or even make her think that anything was at risk of being broken. And he underquoted again. Sixty knicker an hour. We were at it for seven hours on the clock not counting the two hours back home from unload, and the hour in from van hire which I didn’t charge. Van hire was £100. I need my own van really. Fuel was £50. Jack was my plus one and I had told him £25 an hour. We ended up splitting what was left after expenses and it was not a negative day but I was saved from losing money on it by the fact that the load involved an awkward flight of stairs, and the unload was a long drive away. And we had an extra half an hour out of her realising as we were on our way there that her car keys were packed in a box in the back of the van.
I’m just writing about work. Honestly I’ve had such a practical head on today and I’ve been lifting things so much that I’m not sure I’m capable of insight. I think I’d be better off just going to sleep and waking up in Spring without having to do any haulage.
Heading back up to London in no particular hurry, I stopped at a car wash to give Bergman a good clean-up.
He’s had nothing for months, through all the red dust. Turns out he’s taken a couple of hits, which I hadn’t noticed until he was shiny. That’s London for you. Likely drunk people in Chelsea attempting to parallel park. I’m going to sell him before long as he’s too costly for fuel and regarding capacity I tend to use a van anyway for haulage jobs, so I’ll probably need to find a toucherer-upper. I like him, he’s big and comfy and safe. But he is way too costly to run for me and for the planet, particularly back and forth to Brighton. And you only need and want a half decent car in London really. Just one that is compliant to all the new driving taxes.
I’m not really wanting to get a fully electric car as I think they are short sighted and will create a mess of needs. Everybody will have to upgrade their charging jacks every few years once enough people have them, just as we discovered we had to do with mobile phones once they were adopted. The batteries will get worse and worse as batteries always do. We will end up with chemicals seeping into the mud underneath millions of dead batteries with no infrastructure at all to dispose of them that doesn’t involve cost to the buyer. Millions of people bitter that they wasted so much money on something that has become totally worthless. It’s being implemented too quickly and without thought, the rollout. It’s gonna be a disaster. I’m not fighting against change here. I’ve just had a lifetime of observing short-termism. Ever bricked a phone, or an iPad or iPod etc? I bet most if you have. Electric cars will be a bigger brick that you can’t just put in a drawer and forget about. There’ll be dead ones everywhere and the chemical mess will be much more expensive. And nobody will want to take them for parts if the bulk of them is a fucked battery. Manufacturers and governments need to be thinking now about end of life or renewal for these things. They aren’t. They’ll be more profitable is we have to just dispose of them. We still have functional mechanical cars that are over 100 years old. Electric cars really don’t feel like they’re built to last long. I’m really not sold. Software updates, hardware adjustments, battery degradation… Nah. It’s not well enough thought through despite the shine.
I reached the city, looked around for some bits for my friend, and eventually ended up back up at the flat from the other day, cleaning things and sorting things and throwing things away for her. We are getting there, but it’s a terrible rush suddenly. Still so much lifetime paraphernalia to check through. We can make it shinier on the outside but we have to get right into the mix to really make sense of it all. For every twelve old copies of the Sun there’s one irreplaceable photo of her racing dad in an old motor car or somesuch. They remind me so strongly of the photos of my dad from that era – you haven’t got a clue who it is with the googles and helmet unless you have it written down underneath. It’s just a great big car with a number and some dude in it. It’s like the photo I found online of dad racing dragsters in like 1956. I had some tit called Duncan working as location manager on a film shoot I was helping fix once and he decided to shed suspicion on dad – and everything I said generally. It was when I was looking after Hex. He thought that the snake was an invention too. Dad is not easy to find online, but I dug for the dragster photo and of course he came back with “It just says his name in the caption. How do you know it’s him?” I told him because I had always known, and suggested that maybe just because he has always striven to the ordinary doesn’t mean that everybody does the same. I kind of love to see these black and white photos of my father and my friend’s father in their racing cars – even though they are black and white they have more colour than the likes of Duncan will ever have.
The Brighton Marathon was just out of the front window of the cat palace as I woke up this morning. I wandered over and watched them from the balcony. All these people slogging their poor bodies so the CEO of a charity can have a nicer car. The sun was shining, with a cool breeze. Lou and I encouraged the runners over breakfast.
Then we went into the throng down on the beach. There they all were with their families. Wrapped in tinfoil, shoes off, walking gingerly or sitting looking spent or getting massages. Finishers. It’s a big feat. And yes I know not every charity is a miasma of corruption. They had collectively raised a lot of money for so many different good causes. I was surrounded by dedicated, brave and ambitious people. Watching them run was definitely a great deal more relaxing than running myself though. I might continue to find other ways of donating to charities. I like my knees too much.
We ended up on Brighton Pier. It was relatively quiet there.
There’s a man called Ivor who works on the pier, doing something very similar to something I did for a while. Reading fortunes.
Here’s a blog from my tarot. You might have noticed I’m doing linky things suddenly. Why not?! Time to bring my hits up. So, Ivor… He’s in an old Gypsy Caravan on the way into the pier. Well located. And likely with better cushions than the one I sat in on Carnaby Street etc.
“Did you build this?” “Nah. It was here already. They just let me use it.” He has a gentle sense of humour, our Ivor. And he’s got a lovely way with his medium. I’m in my sunglasses (they’re lensed so it was that or blind tarot). He probably thinks I reckon I’m a rockstar. I’m not deliberately making it difficult for poor Ivor. I look at him, let him look at me.
To his left he has all his old retired public decks, worn down by so many shuffles over many years of working with them. He’s been in Brighton for thirteen years. Before then he was in Covent Garden and he thought that was forever until some arsehole council guy moved his pitch out of the thoroughfare and the footfall dried up.
It’s always a concern when you pass the deck to somebody. My heart always sinks when they riffle the damn cards.
He passed his well worn third deck to me. I pile shuffled them. It’s efficient, breaks the patterns, and it doesn’t damage them. I’m not going to hasten the end of a well worked in deck.
He had made me sanitise my hands first. He also had a little wooden screen that he was expertly manipulating the whole time to try and make sure he wasn’t going to get closed down by the old cove.
As ever with a good reader, he has arrived at his own ways through trial and error, and there are things that were unique to me about his style. I’m constantly wittering on about tarot as you know. As often as not there’s a deck in my pocket. But I don’t often go and pay real money to somebody else. Good to do it occasionally though even just to contemplate adaptations and interpretations, and to break my own patterns. He offers a corporate service, which is a familiar angle. Sometimes it’s great to have something a little quiet and honest at your messed up celebrity party. It can get out of hand from time to time – “Uhh do you mind if I do some cocaine here while you’re reading, mate?” And I haven’t got the caravan or the time to do it as anything other than a festival shift these days.
He got me to count out ten cards and he marked my pile with a stone. He chose the stone – maybe a black agate? I had bundled in to his caravan in full gobshite intellectual mode, wearing my sunglasses. He likely wanted to amplify instinct. I’d have been worried if I had seen myself come in like that. Intellectuals are so blocked they forget how many ways there are to be clever.
He got me to count another ten cards. Full double Celtic cross here. I’ve never seen it before, never done it before. I’m immediately sucked in to his words and his quick hands and his soft voice.
And he was good. No bullshit. No ego. I’m not gonna meet a tall dark stranger. He’s not trying to force meaning. He’s connecting cards, working fast and eloquently, letting me make my own connections too. Twenty cards makes for a lot of information and it also allows him to downplay the arsehole cards. I love a few fuckercards in a reading. Life is messy. I had 3 of swords in unconscious. He didn’t want to focus on that one – you never want to focus on the negative. I knew exactly why it was there though and even though I welcomed it I was glad to see it crossed with The Chariot which sneaks into every single reading I ever get and I know why that was in unconscious too. It was a very very clear spread and clear message, with an excellent kind man at the fount of it. He drew extra cards to clarify a vague outcome and they kept on aligning with each other. Vague opportunity, vague opportunity vague opportunity. All subject to the old spinning wheel. Around we go. I’m an actor for crying out loud. Life is chance and grabbing hold of the sticks of vague opportunity.
I love it. Symbols. There’s so much you can do with symbols. We assign meaning to everything if we can. We choose in the moment of assignation whether to make that meaning bad or good. Black cat crosses your path? Loads of people think it’s good luck, loads of people think it’s bad. You make the choice.
Ivor is seeking the good and he reminded me to do the same. He pulls Wheel of Fortune and even before it’s on the table he’s saying ‘luck, you’re gonna have good luck.” You could just as easily say “Oh God and it’s all up to random chance!”
At the end he left me remembering that we make the world we are about to step into. We create or destroy the opportunities. It’s easy for a brain to go to an overthought or cynical pathway. Witness my comment about where the charity money for the marathon goes. Ivor told me a story about myself by interpreting symbols, and the story reminded me not to overthink things. He then shared a bit of his wisdom and a bit of his insight, based on his pretty good assessment of me through my treble camouflage of beard, sunglasses and words. I left with an angle, positive things to think about, insights into my patterns and warnings I’d given myself. Not bad for £25, really.
I’m sure if you were to say the magic words “Al Barclay Sent Me,” he would still charge you £25 and say “Who’s Al Barclay?” Nevertheless you’d then get a really insightful tarot reading in the liminal space between sea and shore. If there’s magic didn’t much of it sink with Atlantis? I dunno. Nor do you. He’s not selling magic but if he was and if magic worked he’d be in a good place for it. My thought not his. He’s not pretending to be mister mysterious magic man by any means. He’s extremely adept at interweaving symbols and observing people. I’m a keen amateur and I complicate my hooey by all sorts of random unquantifiable beliefs. Maybe he does too. Doesn’t matter. Ivor’s a pro. Thirteen years in Brighton, probably a good decade or more in London before that.
Better than me coming at you at a festival in a ringmaster coat and a bowler hat with eyes like dinner plates.
AlBarclay 