Month: January 2023

Evening by the sea again and back up to London tomorrow already. A great midweek weekend. A joyful couple of days switching the power down. Not that we sat around. We walked even longer today than we did yesterday despite not even leaving town the whole day. Bergman got a day pass so we could leave him. Sometimes our plans are built around the fact he has to be moved every four hours outside Lou’s flat, and parking ain’t cheap. The clear reality of that catalyses our venturing out to curious and ancient parts of The Downs. We would do it anyway, but it helps if you have to. Today though he sat under the pigeon-poo-tree. Tomorrow I’ll clean his windscreen and go home.

We went to The Ivy for breakfast. Lou’s treat to me and her surprise. It’s gorgeous in there and right when we were getting to know each other we sat at the bar one evening and Lou watched me work through two large red wines without writing me off. We sat at the front and it was perfect. No wine but tasty breakfast. I could use a job in the West End so I can get breakfast in the London one half price with friends… But that’s probably not the most pressing reason why I fancy a West End job…

Afterwards we decamped to Brighton museum. They have a very eclectic and strangely organised collection of … things. Egyptian mummies and modern art and Victorian pottery and somebody’s clothes and pictures of old Brighton. In the upstairs room, temporarily, one of the exhibitions I love to connect with every year. I’ve had the diary every year for years. The BBC Wildlife Photography of the Year exhibition.

These are snapshots of a changing world. Great beauty and character and movement mixed with images that will haunt you – miniatures exploding the thoughtless rapacity of our species when we group together. Dead fish, algal blooms, jellyfish swarms, ghost nets. We mostly understand in theory how we are collectively murdering everything including ourselves. We want to have it and we could have it in the past. If we can’t have it now then we think that’s bad. Camel milk on the shelf at ASDA. New Zealand wine in Bedfordshire. Sprouts from Peru. Bluefin tuna at Nobu (with a lipservice message asking diners to choose something else). The idiots are loud as they parrot messages borne from the richest in the world trying to make us dismiss our individual responsibility. Problem is it’s one of the biggest markets, Stupid. No serious ambitious business owner would want to alienate customers from the Stupid market.

All you really need to do is basic maths mixed with knowledge – and maybe stop listening to messages funded by greed. Animals don’t appear fully grown in gaps. They have life cycles. Markets are huge for various animals now now now. More and more creatures are ceasing to exist because we ate them, and when we punch enough holes in the ecosystem it’ll collapse and (hopefully) take the system we have with it.

For now though it’s nice to look at pretty pictures of wrens listening for insects, jaguars trying to get pigs, leopards hunting goats, black bears, flamingoes, whales… This rich and beautiful and colourful and happy world we are burning. It’s a true wonder. The colour, the diversity, the character! All so fragile as we wrench those tasty strips to shove into our jowls. But pretty pictures, look at the pretty pictures awww.

The sun was up today again, eliciting hyperbole from the locals: “It’s like Jamaica!” We walked home as we walked in, down the beach. I had another disposable cup of coffee, adding to my lazy hypocrisy – oh yes, I OWN a disposable cup, your honour. I just don’t wash it. Doesn’t mean I can’t be annoyed at myself and everybody else when they don’t give any fucks whatsoever.

We soaked up lovely Vitamin D. Good food, culture and nature and a long walk. All the things all together in that window we all have before the darkness crashes in. Two bright Brighton days and I feel the batteries are recharged. Lou is a wonder.

I’ll be driving back home in my fossil fueled car tomorrow. Back to the weird work grind… The only photo I took today…

I’m always happy to go to Wilmington, in Polegate, even on a cold cold day. We visited my favourite yew tree, chained outside the church and so old now. I often write about it.

Just up the road, carved into the hillside out of chalk, frequently unremarked and easy to miss: The Long Man of Wilmington. A chalk figure rivalling that of the giant at Cerne Abbas.

Abbas has his great club and priapic member. Wilmington has no vast thrusting member, but… he has two long sticks to make up for it.

Maybe he’s ancient, maybe early modern. There’s arguments for both, although certainly he wouldn’t still be in evidence without extensive sustained curation. That very curation over time could have wiped his history, but he stands there on a slope betraying a knowledge of perspective by his makers. Is he the gatekeeper to the fae realm as Gaiman would have it, or is he the expression of some pissed off Tudor? We don’t know. We won’t know. As with so many things with any true age, we can only really speculate about origin, and as ever I prefer the more interesting and esoteric solution so long as it’s still on the table.

We didn’t find the gateway to faerie today sadly. We went and hung out with an old tree and then we stumped around freezing our asses off but loving the bright sunshine and the light on the downs. We stopped in Alfriston and looked at the church. We happened on some delightfully middle class graffiti:

Lunch took us back to The Sussex Ox and bloody great big pie.

Days like this bring hope. We are past the solstice now so the light is pushing against the darkness once more. It’s a way away to equinox but again it is possible to look out the window of a heated car at the bright sharp light and to think “Summer happened here once, and perhaps it will do again one fine day.” And then as soon as you get out of the car there’s ice all over the place and your hands fall off and you start trying to remember why you had this idea in the first place and quickly decide that it’s worth blowing £16 on a steak pie. It was a hell of a pie. I’m still feeling my gut working through it. The farmer bought a pub. Family run and well sourced fresh food along with the best wine list for miles. I had none though. Ginger beer. Too early, not a weekend, driving, with Lou. All the reasons for restraint.

Late evening took us into the lanes though for a quick catch up with a friend down from London. I see her in the smoke all the time, so a treat to see her here, and I got my lunchtime wine craving out of the system with a good glass of rioja. Now it’s bed, again much earlier than I’m used to. That can only be healthy. A happy day in the bright winter sun. It falls so early that it makes sense to flip the day as much as possible if you’re a night owl. Get the heck out into the morning light and then somehow work out how to do that sleep thing earlier than you have for decades. Lou is a patient teacher of such helpful techniques. I’m trying. I still take a long time to wake up. But one thing at a time.

Damn I slept through my alarm. Not that I had to work, thankfully. I wouldn’t have opened the third bottle last night after the self tape if I had had to work. No work. Thankfully. Much nicer than work in the long run even though I’m gonna need money soon. Beach Box Sauna in Brighton.

Bergman was laden with boxes of books though. I didn’t want to drive them all the way to Lou’s. Lou didn’t want me to drive them all the way to hers either. Essentially, if I had arrived with the car still packed I would have been in the doghouse and I woke up with a jolt at half eight and no time to get to the lockup and unload in time for the sauna.

It’s not the best solution really. Big Yellow Self Storage Kingston. A hell of a big business those guys, printing money out of people’s desire to forget but still have the things. In the end they’ve got a property empire. Right now though it’s those mazes of padlocked doors, and who knows what wonders and what horrors lurk within. The staff seem strangely happy for people working for such a big company. “They look after their family,” I am told, and I can’t see programming.

They make you write a novel when you sign up though, honestly. It was endless. I have no clue what I agreed to but I filled in all the damn forms while sleepy Tristan emptied out the car onto trolleys, bless his heart, with both of us newly awake and hanging out of our arse. We loaded up the unit with no time left. Satnav said I’d land in Brighton ten minutes before the sauna slot and I had to get Tristan home from Kingston first. Reader, I floored it. And he let me shoot him out at a junction a short walk from his place.

Then it was just two litres of mineral water flying down my throat as Bergman flew down the roads of Surrey and Sussex to a hot patch of beach.

Beach Box is something of a treat, but you all know by now that I’m allergic to the cold so it’s one that makes sense for my needs and tastes. We were going to go a month ago but the wind was so intense they closed. Today was perfect. Winter sun over the beach and not much wind.

Horse boxes tricked up with felt. Wellness. It’s all very Brighton. At one point someone came into the sauna to deposit a ball of lemongrass infused ice, and wave a great big fan at us all. Six of us were in there for just 45 minutes. Lou and I sat opposite a pair of ladies in their sixties one of which kept running down to plunge in the blooming sea and run back. Wonderful madness. I made do with a cold shower for the shortest time possible before going straight back in the box and throwing more water on for steam. HEAT ME. At the end I stood in the sun for a bit in my shorts with the heat steaming off me like I was on fire. Then I put as many layers as I could on top of myself and we sat by the sea and drank a hot flask of cacao.

It’s nothing if not varied, as ever. I can sense that there are more adventures afoot, and I just don’t know what they are yet. So the next few days I’m having a midweek weekend and with an empty diary I’m taking pressure off myself to do do do so I can be be be. doobeedoobee.

Post sauna, we have just been snuggled up with the cat watching Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Gorgeous movie. Lots of well known skillful people having fun with their town, and buried under that mischief there’s a sad heart beating.

Today, something mystic happened.

I was in simultaneous connection with hundreds of actors – possibly thousands but let’s not get too exercised about that idea. Tens of actors YA who have had decades of similar absolute “why was I so certain?” hardship. It’s an American piece of work. It is silent. It’s an advert.

We all looked at an email of things that we had to do. We all re-read it. Some of us called our agents. It came in after working hours yesterday. It is due before working hours tomorrow. Four scenes, painstakingly drawn out. We all variously called our teams together. We all worked a full day to send what was required.

It’s done and I sent a good tape. Oh… wouldn’t it be lovely. But we have to send and forget, send and forget. I cannot be other than what I am. They just got a short film that we made in a day with no budget and no prep. Hey ho. I give no info. I never will. NDA is very familiar to me, and maybe doubly so because I write a daily blog no matter what. I know the lines and observe them. Anyone who worries that’s not possible should look to themselves and have everyone around them look to them.

My team… My God, I am very dear friends with the exact perfect human being for the story I’m supposed to be telling. They only want us to film 4 scenes out of… 5 …. so we don’t have to approximate the whole story…? As the world gets colder and colder and the heating is not something we can take for granted these days, Tristan and I got stuck in. He’s usually scandalised by the notion of junior producers wanting a full feature length audition tape at a minute’s notice, with scant regard for money, time, and the actuality of being an actor/human being. I thought I probably wouldn’t be able to persuade him to help with this one, but I went in hard as he’s a good friend. Turns out he needed me for a short self tape too. Phew. He bought in. He got stuck in. We made a thing. I learnt some very very useful software for self tape on Android. I’m much better now at editing than I was was when I woke up. The clever software engineer people have been making video editing things for the TikTok lot, so you can be completely and utterly useless and thick as shit and the software still makes sense.

Tristan helped me out and he was managing the ill fated St John Chinatown a decade ago when Wes Anderson was regularly eating there with Ralph Fiennes. Anyone who has seen Grand Budapest Hotel and knows Tristan will wonder about the correlation. He would not want me to point it out… but maybe Fiennes is “doing” Tristan in the way that I am known for being good at “doing” him. He was almost certainly the character study. Sad really. Acting right now: A big personality. Encapsulated by the same person the same person the same person the same person the same person the same person the same person the same person the same person the same person the same person the same person the same person the same person the same person the same person the same person the same person the same person the same person the same person the same person the same person the same person etc etc and so on because only a few actors matter etc etc and what the hell about the rest of us? Aaaaaaa you FOOLS

It’s a lottery. Whereby we butterfly our souls across a celluloid and somehow one of us is chosen. We are not chosen to do anything, we are chosen to BE. But we come and we go and we breathe and we grow. There are humans who I love who are absurdly famous and fame happened just as a consequence of what they were interested in and so it immediately became awkward. I’m not interested in attaching. I’m this guy. This… whatever the hell you think of it … this is what I do. It might be attached to sustainable racing, but even that is in balance right now. Humans often need help to know what’s good for them.

I’m off to bed. All will be well. Despite the fools.

So many of us, over the world, told a silly story today. Ting.

Blue Monday…

If you go on the internet you’ll likely find some hoopla about “Cliff Arnall” coining the phrase based on some calculation when he was working for some arsehole Murdoch travel company. It is astonishingly prevalent if you search the origins of Blue Monday on Google in yet another very good illustration of how completely pointless it is to try and research ANYTHING on the internet anymore. But here’s the problem… we have come to aimlessly assume that whichever digital presence we allow ourselves to trust is THE FOUNT OF ALL KNOWLEDGE. Be it “Super true Q news useset” or “Fox” or “The Guardian”. Even something as pointless as Blue Monday has been co-opted. Sky Travel coined Blue Monday in 2004 my fat arse. Even this Cliff Arnall character makes it his business to fly in the face of the Blue Monday stasis on Twitter. He has a hashtag. #StopBlueMonday. And he didn’t start it. Perhaps he did some ostentatious maths to connect the phrase to this third January Monday.

It’s an excuse to do fuck all. Some of us have ADHD. We need that externally imposed excuse to stop.

Was it not New Order, in 1983, with the absolute ANTHEM of post Joy Division new wave synth pop “Blue Monday” that coined it? It’s a track that moves, and its about a melancholy state. It’s a track that transcends the lyrics. It flies and crashes at the same time. Life in winter. Power corruption and lies. So yeah it doesn’t specifically do Arnall stoopid maths formulas to tell us why it is dark and cold and we don’t want to have to go to work. It isn’t some pen pusher in a travel agent. It was New Order.

No it wasn’t. Was it not Kurt Vonnegut though in his stupid knockabout book written before I was born and titled for the Wheaties ad “Breakfast of Champions” but given a “What You Will” style alternative title “Goodbye Blue Monday”? Sentimental stupid funny prolific teachy Vonnegut. Known but not known Kurt, who will never be on the syllabus but will frequently be quoted in big font on some picture of a sunset or wheat fields and posted on some vapid Instagram feed. “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.” “Here we are, trapped in the amber of the moment. There is no why.” If you’re not familiar with the man’s work and you are bookish, grab one one. Or even get one online. He’s a nice voice. A mischief. A humanist. He even coined the old joke below (or did he?) 🙂

To be is to do – Socrates
To do is to be – Sartre
Do Be Do Be Do – Sinatra

So Kurt Vonnegut coined Blue Monday.

No it wasn’t him. Was it not Cat Stevens in his song of the same name in 2001?

“Blue Monday, how I hate blue Monday
Got me workin’ like a dog all day
Here comes Tuesday, oh hard Tuesday
I’m so tired, I’ve got no time to play …”

*hang on sorry I’ve got a call coming through*

Oh ok yes 2001 is after 1973 yes I know but actually, I was going to surprise them and tell them that Cat Stevens was covering Buddy Holly’s Blue Monday which was released long before Vonnegut screw you clever clogs.

So yeah, Cat Stevens was actually covering a much earlier song released by Buddy Holly in 1956, so Buddy Holly coined…

*hang on another call*

AHH ok so it was Fats Domino? In 1954? And you’re sure of that? Because Buddy’s people say it was written by Dave Bartholomew and his orchestra and Buddy sang it first? … I see … a collaboration … but the Holly money went to Dave … hmmm … I see … and Fats sung it first? God the music industry is even worse than the acting industry.

So it was Antoine Dominique ‘Fats’ Domino Junior the inspired and prolific French Creole early rocker in New Orleans who coined Blue Monday. ” ’cause Monday is a mess”.

*hang on another call*

SMILEY LEWIS? Who the fuck is … … I see … … with Dave Bartholomew’s Orchestra in 1953. Fats was a bigger name … Fuck I hate the music industry. Thanks.

Ok so it was Smiley Lewis… Surely there was nothing before 1953?

But no. Because … you can keep tracking back and back and back. Especially now we have this unreliable fact engine in our pockets. The buck only really stops when you stop looking.

It says here that in the Maryland Baltimore sun published 20th November 1849 the phrase is used. “We are enveloped in dull gray blanket-like clouds, which are slowly distilling their watery contents upon all Gotham, rendering this the commencement of a truly blue Monday. The first snow storm of the season may soon be expected if the clerk of the season does not give us a fresh instalment of Indian summer.” I got that off the internet so it MUST be true. And the article says that’s the first?

But no because we are forgetting travel, and bilingual people translating idioms. The Germans have had “Blauer Montag” on record since the 1700’s. It’s not just about the English speaking world, chum. A Monday where you do not wish to have to work. People felt they had to beat their workers to get them back to the grindstone. This dark cold Monday was the day you got bruises because you didn’t want to go back to work. You were happy and torpid after a nice boozy weekend. Your circadian rhythm was to rest, to rest, to rest. But … here’s some angry Joe in a suit with a cudgel and oh fuck it I’m pushing this wheel around again.

Blue for bruises. Blue for sadness. Blue.

Da ba dee da ba di
Da ba dee da ba di
Da ba dee da ba di
Da ba dee da ba di
Da ba dee da ba di
Da ba dee da ba di
Da ba dee da ba di

Blue Monday.

Something in the church calendar in Germany? Why? When?

We could kick it back to long the invention of the weekend. The moon day comes after the sun day, which is one day after the saturnalia. If you have done your saturnalia correctly then you will need your sun day to recover before you force yourself or have to be forced back into the thing you are doing on the moon day.

Chaucer maybe used blue for sad – he wrote “Wyth teres blewe and with a wounded herte”. Some academics would bite you if you said he meant sad there though.

“ABSTRACT
The color adjective blew as used of lovers’ tears in Chaucer’s Complaint of Mars is traced through Old French to a little-studied Gallo-Romance color word, bloi, originating in the Gaulish substrate (blaros) and suggestive of wan, pale tones. Reading teres blewe as an early instance of blue as “melancholy” is premature.” Owch. ok, academic objecting to the oversimplification of things. I hear you. I note you.

Ships with lost captains would fly blue flags. Blue has carried connotations of sadness in many cultures since long before the loss of the oral tradition with the invention of the printing press. Days of the week were largely hammered out by the Romans and in particular Constantine in like AD 320? So we could easily have had the idea of Blue Monday 1000 years ago and really so long as there were seasons, feelings and some days when we need to work and other days when we can rest, then this dark day could have had a name. It’s the furthest week start from the celebration of midwinter that we call Christmas and the days where it starts getting less shit and lighter.

I stayed in bed mostly. Tom cooked pasta. I got back into rereading a brilliant discontinued obscure time travel book from the 1980’s. Then I fell into this thoughthole just before bed and shared it with you all. Blue Monday. Blauer Montag. Who the hell knows? The only charlatan is the one who insists they have the correct answer on it.

It was 2017 that Pickle came into my existence and broke a lifelong aversion to having the responsibility to look after a living thing. Hubert the frog, I suppose, and sealing up all the holes in the bathroom so he could leap around and help himself to the crickets in the bath, although I stopped that when the crickets got into the overflow and one of them popped out while I was bathing. He was only ever temporary custody, even though the best live cricket vendor is still a saved seller on my eBay… Mostly though my life had been pet free up until Pickle. A couple of childhood budgies, and dogs that lasted a day or so before being returned. Neither myself nor my parents before me wanted to be pinned down by a living thing to look after. They were pissed off enough about me being so damn expensive.

Pickle proved to be an extremely relaxed and patient companion. She fitted in very well and bonded to me, and I to her. But when Brian moved out it made sense she went to him, and I got back from an American tour to find myself catless. COVID brought me a snake, Hex, now with Flavia, and a temporary Mao – twitchy pissy old pirate Mao. I started to understand how a pet makes a home, even if I made no move towards changing my lifestyle to accommodate one full time. They’re still better for me if they aren’t mine, but I’m very much plugged into little Tessy’s existence in Brighton – she’s the reason I can’t get Lou to come and help me get this flat straight. But … I had a chance to get Brian on the case today. He needed some things moved to his place in Croydon so I took them, carried them up to the flat, and saw Pickle for the first time in ages. Then we drove to mine and hoiked absurdly heavy boxes into Bergman until there was no more room. They’ll go to the lockup tomorrow. There’s more space in the spare room now. Progress.

She knew me alright, little older Pickle. “Where the fuck have you been?” We hung out for a bit. It was emotional. Bless her little face. She probably thought I had got lost somewhere. I’m glad she knows I exist again now, as I’m sure cats do all sorts of mystic work on our behalf. Hopefully she’ll make it not rain tonight, as I could use a good night’s sleep.

I have become a slave to the weather forecast.

Just as I was heading off to sleep, it started. I’m told that the ceiling drip that started the day after the scaffolding came down has got nothing to do with the work they just did. But now every time it rains it rains into my bedroom. And last night it was heavy.

It started dropping onto my bed. Just occasionally but I was hyperaware of it just as every single ploink by my ear seeped into my dreams. “Why didn’t you move your bed?” That’s Lou and she’s right but I was too close to sleep and it’s a big heavy thing to move. I just lay there half awake and half asleep for pretty much the whole damn night, with a now damp blanket on top. Mostly it went in the saucepan. Tomorrow I’ll look at ways of catching it in the attic before it gets into my room. Tom is on the sofa so I can’t just pretend it’s not happening. I might move the bed but right now the weather says there’s no rain tonight and I still kinda can’t believe that it comes in every time now, even though it evidently does.

Tired though I am I still made the time to see old family friends in the pub, and a convivial hour or so catching up over a pint, but I’m now ready and willing to fall flat on my face so I’ve run a bath and switched on the electric blanket and if there’s no rain it won’t electrocute me while I’m sleeping. I’m gonna roll the dice, baby.

There’ll be scaffolding up the block again soon. This time surely they’ll get to the bottom of it … With what little money I have left.

Another evening falls at this stark time of year. I look in my diary and it is a blank for a week. Time to move things from the flat. Time to see people. Time to try and catch the morning light. But it’s not easy to motivate when the darkness falls so early. Still, there is much to do.

I went on the roof today in a hopeful attempt to see if I could source this new leak. It is faster now and every time I look at the ceiling I think about how many layers it took to cover the stains the first time. Painting the ceiling is never fun. It’ll have to happen again though.

My blunder onto the roof yielded nothing but speculation as how could it do anything else. Apparently they’ll put scaffolding up again and surely this time I’ll finally have a watertight home. Fingers crossed, I say. I let a neighbour in this evening which at least shows that it’s tidier than it was. Still a way to go before it’s optimal but there are fewer piles of random guff.

He’s a good lad, this neighbour. Lives downstairs in the flat with a balcony. Family is textiles in Lancashire which might explain the Chelsea address but he’s chasing the acting, which is how I’ve come across him. He’s a quickshot with a business card. His name. Actor. His headshot is on it… He gave one to Tom who is on the sofa, and a little bit of me felt icky but then I knew for certain that if he hadn’t given me one however long ago, I wouldn’t have texted him 5 months later and said “Hey it’s your neighbour Al. Fancy that pint?”

Maybe it’s time to set up the shop front a bit better. This blog is haphazard, and I like the haphazard and I doubt that’ll change, but perhaps some more shiny looking content for the humans that like shiny things… perhaps that’s in order. Internet things. Even just updating my spotlight and looking on one of those silly sites for… I dunno paid short films or other things to spice up the gaps… Or… there’s enough to do at home. There’s so much. I want to carry lots of boxes out this weekend. I WILL carry lots of boxes out. All will be well…

Under the Globe. The underglobe. A little hidden space in the heart of bankside, and one I know well now. The shape of it has changed over the years and the way it is run, but it is a good and functioning entertainment space, and they have all sorts of events and ceremonies there. What with the multiplicity of different types of company existing in this country, spaces like this can be booked out semi-constantly for award ceremonies or company birthday parties or end of year celebrations or whatever.

It was awards today. Two photographers, a DJ, a champagne aerialist and me. Loads of guests.

My job was a bit of energy really. I was neat and tidy, in my natty suit. Master of Ceremonies.

Yesterday after work I stopped at what I thought was a barber shop. No price list. I sat down and didn’t ask. Idiot. Shave and a haircut. Two bits? If only. A very softly spoken Iranian man fussed over my topiary for a while, and I got a glass of mineral water. I sensed it was going to be pricey and was bracing myself for a £40 bill. They charged me eighty nine pounds.

So, with the most expensive haircut in the world, I went and earned my crust under The Globe this evening, working for The Swan. I’ll earn more than the haircut but it’s taken a chunk out. At least I can write it off against tax, absurd though that might sound. But I was inclined to feel expensive as a result. I sprayed myself with aftershave and stood on stage with a dickybow on and introduced all the people. A very simple job, essentially just logistics and a tiny bit of extempore energetic talking. Then exit pursued by an invoice.

I’m glad these events seem to be resurfacing. I’m going to need to make some money this year now. One of my happy income streams looks like it might have dried up so it’s back to the drawing board unless oh good God unless this is the year that the acting really pushes up a gradation and I start to see more than a lucky trickle. Come on Spielberg. I’m just here on the end of the phone. 🙂 nobutseriouslyfolks

Apologies for yesterday and my attempted writings. I didn’t really know who I was by then. Apparently two of us burnt through five bottles of red wine and almost hit the spirits before it got too much for us. I don’t think I’ve done anything like that for a long long time, but we had time and I had motive. I was fuming about some stupid annoying dumb ridiculous news.

This evening I’ve been having a wonderful time. I got to properly hang out with my dear brother and some of his work colleagues. Then I went home and had dinner with lovely Tom who is staying with me. And I earned some money.

For pretty much 20 years now, thanks to my old drama school friend Abigail, I’ve been periodically dayjobbing as an invigilator at Imperial College. I can fit it around my schedule. Frequently I’ve even done it when I’ve got an evening show. Usually it’s quite pleasant and contemplative work. You build the room, you set the atmosphere, you bring in the candidates, you troubleshoot, and then… you collate all the stuff and call your own end and hopefully they do well.

“Have you ever caught anyone cheating?” I get asked that a lot and have always said “no”.

Catching cheats is not my focus. I’m trying to make a nice exam. I like that concentrated room. Hell, I’ve learnt tons of lines in exam rooms because my eyes rarely need to be down when I’m learning so I can watch and learn. If someone does something odd I’ll zero in on them. I hadn’t realised how obvious they would make themselves until today though when it’s off the scale odd.

He was five minutes late, so of course he missed the announcements about being sure his phone wasn’t with him. He went to the loo for about fifteen minutes an hour into the exam. I realised he was long gone after he was gone for ten. I went to find the invigilator who had taken him. She was waiting outside looking confused. “I didn’t know how to contact you?” I went into the big shared loo space and called his name, which caused an immediate fit of deliberate coughing to come from his cubicle, followed thereafter by him. He had not coughed at all for an hour and a half but suddenly he was coughing hard and continued for the rest of the exam, bless his commitment. I searched him immediately and of course he had his mobile phone in his pocket. An oversight? It really didn’t want to fuck him over, but he was generating rope to hang himself. I didn’t check the cubicle. Schoolboy error.

Three minutes before the end of the exam he insisted on going back to the loo and the same cubicle and when he was again searched he this time had a folded up piece of paper on him that he didn’t have before… I ended up having to give it all to the exam office, and leave it with Jo.

This is this guy’s expensive degree. I am not in the business of fucking anyone over, and frankly if you can cheat well enough to beat me then well done – that’s how the world works. But for fuck’s sake… If you can’t even do the basics you deserve everything you get. Honestly, over ten minutes in the loo and then you’re in and out of it as a matter of urgency but somehow getting paper from it with stuff written on it and then actually when you’re in the exam office later and you’re writing your version of events for the head of exams you’re not coughing and you’re not sick for a clear half hour after all the demonstrative coughing… Bullshit, mate. He was not alone in it, he was just terrible at lying and blew it for everyone else. I feel bad for him as actually I’m like that too. He was sweaty faced and panicky. He was a decent young man, but clearly hadn’t done the work and had tried to get involved in some stupid undergraduate scheme. I reckon they were using a particular cubicle basically as a dead-drop for questions and answers. In a two hour exam, I’ve never known so many people to take loo breaks. Next time I’ll check the bog brush.

These guys will all be earning loads in a few years. These courses are not easy to get onto, and those who get on them would have to work hard not to be rich. I kinda hope that idiot doesn’t lose his degree because of a stupid idea and a few points on his mark. But… he’s an idiot. It’s an exam. Work to it. If you honestly haven’t and can’t, don’t show up as they’ll pretty much always let you retake it. But … you can try to cheat, and you will probably end up looking stupid. And if I’m invigilating I’ll only feel sad about it. Funny idiot. I was nice and light hearted to him right until he got into the office with Jo but I knew it was going to be bad for him. He must have had a horrible day because of me. I don’t want it to cost him his degree.