Month: August 2023

I’m in The Barley Mow in Kemptown. I’m wearing my battered “Choose Love” T-Shirt – one of the few garments I took with me on Camino and still had at the end of it. I’ve been looking after little miss fishyfussyface. She is eating again. She went off her food for two days after I arrived. I started to worry, but I think she was trying to manipulate me into giving her nothing but treats and she can call it food. I think one of her carers can be manipulated thus. Not I. If I didn’t have to syringe medicine into her face in the morning, she would never get a single treat out of me. As is she gets the bare minimum to sweeten the medicine deal.

Around me in the pub, life is happening. There’s a guy on the table behind me who loves to speak in absolutes. He’s greybearded and maybe a touch older than I am. He’s a mystical bore. I hope I never get to the stage where I think I’m Gandalf. He seems to. Yes, life and love and blows and time help hone our instrument. I’m piping clearer now than I was. But he seems to think his instrument is superclear even if his tune is reflecting to himself. It all might be more about his *instrument* than his instrument. The young women he is with are polite. Save us all from ever being targeted by such politeness. oop and they’ve just now found their excuse to leave. Tough luck, Gandalf.

A lovely huge fellow came by just now and thanked the bar staff for a raffle prize. The Barley Mow had donated something to the rugby club. They had a raffle and raised over £750. “That’s a year of cleaning!” he told me happily. The prize might be connected to the fact that two big lads with sports gear to my right are currently stuffing themselves happily. Maybe they won the bar tab. They’re talking about love and expectations. “Mark my words, five years from now Jo is gonna realise…”

I like this part of the world. There’s life here, and nature is close, and we have THE SEA THE SEA just there, bringing the swift weather and the freshness and the salt. All the wipers on all the cars are rusted in Lou’s square. It’s corrosive here. Metal is attacked. A strong and moving seaside reminder of how arrogant we all are thinking we’ve made something endless.

MAN: “I HAVE CREATED BIG IRON RAILINGS”

SEA: *continues to do what it always does*

MAN: “Until there is no money, I can always pay workers to protect my big iron railings with filing and care and paint! Ha. Screw you, sea!!”

SEA: *continues to do what it always does*

MAN: “Sea! I’m buying Bored Ape nfts at the moment. Can you stop on the iron railing for a bit until I get my investment back?”

SEA: *continues to do what it always does*

MAN: My iron railings have collapsed and now I have to put scaffolding up my whole building.

SMALL VOICE: Why?

MAN: Just you wait, soon my railings outside my home will prove that man is stronger than sea! Yeah! Hoo-Ah!

SEA: *continues to do what it always does*

SMALL VOICE: Maybe actually nature is going to take over when we finally make ourselves redundant.

All this shit we do will come back to nature. If we all simultaneously died right now, I reckon at least half of us would be part plant in six months.

I met a guy called “Steve”. He hammered into all this as I was writing. He’s angry. He’s been banned from the casino and loads of the local pubs. His anger drew me but I quickly wasn’t interested in being truthful to him. I lied to him hard and lots. He was very very results driven and he wanted me to be interested in sex with him.

I fabricated that I was cat-sitter for a rich lady, just because when he asked me my job I said “catsitter”. I’ve long ago learnt that I don’t want to have to have the fucking actor conversation. He was flirting so hard. It was mostly just annoying. We reached an accord.

Nice guy. He’s been banned from the local casino. He’s a troublesome angry man. We passed the time. That was enough. I’m home.

Warm Brighton night. Towards the sea the manic beats of a wannabe Fatboy are drifting to me, reminding me how many of my friends are in a field right now while I look after miss fishy face.

She ate her food today which is good as I’ve been wondering. This is a sickly cat, who has medicine every morning. Looking after her involves listening to her.

She’s totally fine. She likes me to handle her. We have unusual conversations. We can sit together for hours. All her behaviours were familiar but for the lack of eating so I was relieved a few hours ago when she chowed down at last. The relief took me out and into the sunset.

A summer day, perhaps. Slow movement of happy people. Light and space.

I went and lay on stones near the edge. The tide was coming in, the salt spray on my face. Nobody was swimming despite warmth, likely as aware as I am that our entitled and profiteering so called leadership have enabled industry to turn the waves to filth. Still, the gentle spray is still a few years from being corrosive so I enjoyed being part of this final carefree decade or so. I finished yet another Robin Hobb trilogy on my Kindle as the sun set. And I had a pint by the Volks at Fika. Atrocious music played too loud, but we have all learnt to ignore that. I watched the sun set.

Now it’s me and the pusscat again and she’s gonna have me up at dawn. I’m gonna get my sleep while I can.

I wish I could be in a field tonight with Lou, with my friends. It’s lovely to be here with the mistress, but I miss a festival. Work starts next week again, if I can call it work. Commitment. And from thence, onwards to all the strange and wonderful things that are pending.

I woke this morning to the insistent complaint of my new mistress. “Food!” she demanded, and I staggered out of bed. Blearily I made my way into a room with two full plates of food. I looked at it, looked at her, returned to bed. Half an hour.

“FOOD,” she demanded again, face thrust into mine, pulling me from dreams.

I changed old for new and gave her medicine and a small amount of treats. That’s what she really wanted. Then we had obligatory call to strokings. I cut out a deep buried knot. She purred. Still though she ignored the food. The food. The food.

The rain came. I put in my contact lenses. I shut the idea of the door. Observed by the cat, I very seriously began a day of playing Baldur’s Gate 2 alternated with reading chapters from my latest Robin Hobb trilogy and stroking the cat. That sort of a day is normally reserved for some guy over six foot tall with a motorbike, a pizza habit and a “hilarious” T-shirt highlighting happy moobs. I’ve got the beard for it. I rarely let myself have a full on nerd day. It was delightful. Still, even when I cooked and ate my easy cheesy lunch, she did not munch as I hoped she would.

She’s behaving normally. She’s just not eating. I’m hoping that tonight she will go for it. I’ll find out at 5am, no doubt.

Meanwhile it’s lovely to be in Brighton, even if I only had a wee break in the rain at about 4pm to go and hit the beach and take in the summer. It is not predictably pleasant weather right now. Lou has been at a festival and I’m glad not to have to sleep in a tent right now. Way too damp.

I’m enjoying being the cat slave. I’ve enjoyed being irresponsible and childish today. Before long I’ll have to step up again, but for now, sometimes, days like this are perfectly allowable.

A quick run back to London today but it was time consuming so I didn’t get to hang out in Brighton. A friend needed to get the hell out of his living situation, and I always like to know there’s someone in the flat so it’s not wasted. I picked him and his stuff up in Deptford and I moved it all over to mine, introduced him to the cleaning lady and gave him my only set of keys.

Now I’m back in this peaceful flat in Brighton and engaged in a full on turf war with Tessy the delightful cat who has decided to ignore her food in favour of making sure she gets her place on the bed. I’m totally happy to let her win, which she’s not expecting, but I do very much want her to eat something today. Thankfully I’m here all day everyday from now until Lou is back so whatever she’s up to I will have time to get her happy again. She is… a particular creature. I’ve got the scratch marks to prove it.

Tomorrow is going to be about doing very little, and I can’t wait. If the weather is nice I might lie on a beach. If it sucks I’ll just sit up here above the world and the sea with miss fishy face and write, read, generate, consume…

In London today I came very close to grabbing my laptop. My plan was to download Baldurs Gate 3 and then spend the whole weekend like teenage Al with the whirring of the fan in this incredibly deep and detailed world that Larian have managed to make without selling their soul as a studio. I thought better of it at the last minute. There is light and air in the world. I want to see the sky and the grass and not think about how well rendered they are and whether or not I should find a patch to make them better. So I’m gonna play BG2 on my iPad instead, because as a teenager I literally stopped playing it because it was too good and I had I life to live. iPad is portable so I can actually take it outside in the sun. I’ll find out what that dastardly Irenicus is up to this time dammit.

Games… I’ve got multiple friends playing characters in BG3… I’ve played through whole games voiced by mates of mine now. I’ve watched YouTube videos of people where my voice is their character. It’s so odd to think how that industry has grown since the Alien Breed Tower Assault intro video (devs doing hilariously bad acting). Now it’s dolla! But it is also consuming. I’m ok with a droppable mobile game these days. I can’t sink into a desktop at the height of summer, no matter how bad the summer has been.

Peace and quiet and cat.

Tonight I’m at Lou’s on my own with Tessa the cat. Lou is at Medicine Festival and even though I’m jealous of her and I miss a festival, I have already settled into the idea of a quiet and lovely time here just soaking up the sea energy and being a slave to the cat. She’ll have me up at dawn so I’m winding down already, but this place is designed to make you sleepy. I’ve had nothing but low light since the sun went down so I’m pretty much ready to pass out.

A perfect summer day though and I drove her down the coast to Hastings. We stopped on the chalk cliffs near Beachy Head and pulled in the prana and the sheer rugged beauty from those collapsing walkways made so iconic in WW2. She hooked up with her friend and an airstream, and they’ve all gone off for a ladies festival while I’m left holding the pussy.

Once she was off I nipped to Hastings for lunch with an old friend, and I found myself thinking how well everyone looks when they have been out of the city for a while. Tomorrow I’m seeing a friend who has been up in Edinburgh and has come back to find the city unmanageable. I get it. It’s not a friendly place. You can find the joy in the cracks, and I do, but you have to dig your fingers in sometimes.

So for now I’m gonna forget all that London stuff and lounge around with the cat. It’s not the easiest, of course. I’ve already got scratches on my arm, but that’s how she shows you she loves you. But a bit of medicine, a bit of love, occasional treats and a careful stroking regime and she’ll repay you by watching over your dreams and occasionally killing those pesky little pests.

I’m so sleepy. I kept myself on the edge of sleep until morning to prevent snoring last night. Didn’t want to send Lou off to a festival already sleep deprived. Tonight I can make as much noise as I like. Yay.

It’s ten at night. Bergman and I are back in Brighton after he finally got his MOT sorted. Gotta tax him now before someone pulls me over and fines me.

It has started to get dark a little earlier. It’s becoming noticeable and I do not like this one tiny little bit. Still, there was a light smattering of summer today. We stretched out in it and let it nibble our skin. My feet are still pale. This is incorrect. Normally by this time of year they’re as brown as a nut and I taste of sea salt.

Ovingdean was pretty quiet by the time I got there, and there’s a good stretch of sandy beach before the sea. I got out of my black London trousers and walking boots, into my shorts and white Birkenstock. We both got some vitamin B as I looked longingly at the Brighton waves. They are mostly full of lazy-government sewage these days. They eased restrictions on water companies put in by the pesky EU to stop us finishing the job of making our waterways toxic.

I will be here a few more days and maybe I’ll risk a sea swim anyway. Maybe though I’ll just go for a chlorine dip in the SeaLanes over the road – after all they’re delightful, but £11.

I want to mark the fact that I’m having a little festival here at Lou’s house as catslave while she goes off to Medicine Festival and prances about with a woowoo crowd of 9000 people. That’s VAST compared to when we went in 2020 and there were like 700.

I used to get paid to go to approximately three festivals a year most years. COVID broke that thread. I might need to get some images together for a strong offering of a festival walkabout next year so I can get my fix. I don’t think I could manage Shambala now even if I wanted to, with the commitments of the work I’ve got coming up, and when you do loads of festival work it starts to feel weird to buy it.

There’s some food in the fridge, there’s the sea, a bakery selling great coffee, a small fluffy cat and all the wonders of Brighton just on our doorstep. Among other things I’m gonna try and catch up with my admin here when I’m not surrounded by all the distractions of home. If you’re around this way I’ll be here on my own, chilling, trying to make my own wellness festival. Come play.

I was heading off to sleep and feeling pretty chilled. Then I got a call from an old friend who is allowing themselves to get exercised over all the “Trans” debate mess. And I was wondering what to write about, when it has been a largely uneventful day.

I can’t write about that subject. It is too loaded. There’s way too much terminology. Nobody makes sense anymore. Everybody is being unutterably horrible, often based on semantics.

It made me think about what we are allowed to say in public. Public sector workers in particular but all of us are needing to guard language closer and closer because acceptable use is moving faster than generations can shift with it. We used to just know that the outdated options would die out when our grandparents did. It would no longer be groovy to take exception to something. It wouldn’t be well wicked, or dope. We wouldn’t celebrate by dabbing. But now we can be brutally punished for being behind the times. When I was a kid there were so many words we thoughtlessly used. If you couldn’t catch a ball you might be called a spastic. If you went against the consensus you might be called a great big hairy gayer. Some people my age have tried to move with the times and understand how these usages can be hurtful to people within the brackets that are used as insults, but there are many people who have become almost comedically entrenched in doing it because they always have – “Why can’t I use language I’ve always used? I don’t mean any harm by it.”

The internet has forced us to move quicker than we are used to in terms of culture and usage and micro aggressions and status quo. Much quicker. We have to be nimble to keep up. Culture is a new muscle that we need to have to be able to keep abreast of current affairs. If we don’t flex our culture and strengthen it we get left behind.

Lots of my old friends have chosen to make themselves redundant by entrenching in all their comfortable soft nasty prejudices. The ones I see who are really tanking their own relevance are usually doing it around the trans thing. “Yeah but I mean, come on what about … ?” They’re focusing on single instances in sports, or where we go to shit, or prisons. From thence they vociferously and passionately prove to me that they should no longer have a voice in any cultural debate because they’re stuck in how the world was when they were young… or at least how it was in their perception. Make X Great Again.

I’m tired though and have to get up tomorrow. It’s a minefield. Don’t be a cunt.

Bedtime.

After initial ructions regarding time of arrival etc etc it has ended up being pleasant having my brother staying. He’s a resilient fellow. Fell off his bike in Thailand, six foot three, looked like death warmed up when last I saw him. Having already lost the oldest of us to Parkinson’s some years ago I was starting to worry so it’s good to see him on better form. Still clumsy but solid. I’ve been feeding him. He’s on the mend.

For lunch we had jacket potato rarebit, and for dinner a spicy porky stew with rice. Once again I forgot to postpone HelloFresh so they dropped off a box of totally random stuff on Monday and I’ve been taking the opportunity to prevent it going to waste. If you live predictably, these recipe boxes are a damn fine way of stopping yourself from grabbing loads of unnecessary gubbins in the local supermarket. I have someone to feed so I’m much more inspired to actually take the time and cook things. It’s always easier when there’s more than one person in the equation. And I haven’t seen Jeremy properly for years.

So technically he’s a half brother, but as with all families it’s weird and personal and I’ve always called him brother. He’s an artist. The youngest of my father’s first brood. He’s been teaching for decades now alongside it, and moving around. From a reasonably visitable post at Gordonstoun in his native Scotland, he inexplicably fucked off to Lantau, an island off Hong Kong. I never visited him there, perhaps partly because I had already been there as a teenager and eaten an incredible vegetarian meal cooked by the monks who tend the giant Buddha. You don’t pay to see the Buddha, you pay for the meal and see it while you wait. Most people don’t stay for the meal. Sillies.

Then he shot off to a school in Cairo but hated it so took a job in rural Thailand. I dunno how he finds them. It’s one way to see the world… But he recently decided to come back and find out the shape of things over here. His mum died. I understand how that can catalyse a shift in thinking and pull you to security. He’s still in flux though. I’ve had him on the sofa the last few days. He chucked in the Thai job. He’s off up to Scotland next and a small island to assess what’s left of his history up there. Then at some point maybe he’ll head to France where he owns some mildly contentious damp and uninhabitable troglodytic caves machine-burrowed into a mountainside some decades ago and too damp to store things or inhabit.

Everyone’s life is complicated and weird but I’m glad I’ve got my one and not his one. I’m happy to host him a bit, as I host his children when I can. And I hope he finds some sort of stability as we are none of us getting any younger…

So many years in London and somehow I’ve never been to Mercato Metropolitano in Elephant and Castle. There was a birthday party there tonight, and we had to use What Three Words to find it as the place is VAST. It puts me in mind of the huge bar and food parks they have in South America and some of the USA. Craft beer stalls vying with enchilada bars and pizza ovens. Wooden tables shared between all the concessions. Sort of outside but with covered areas.

It’s not warm. It feels like autumn. Where is summer? Still we were outside in jackets and drinking German lager by the bucket. Old friends and new. Another birthday, this time Ffion with whom I’m doing most of the Globe after dinner type shenanigans. She was at Bristol Old Vic around the time I was at Guildhall and has run along similar lines. It’s lovely and easy working with her. I’m happy to celebrate another year of life.

We can do this again now at last. I still really feel the repercussions of all that fear when we felt guilty about touching each other and people “hilariously” offered elbows. We’re out the other side of it and we can go and have drunken foolery in places like that huge food and booze hall. The place was rammerjammered, not just with our partygoers – the good people of London having a noisy Saturday and for a change I was swept up in it all.

Maybe I left earlier than I normally would have. I used to like to try to be the last man standing but my stamina and my bank balance can’t rise to that anymore. So I went before I had to and I’m kinda glad of it as I’m writing to you clean and bathed having had a good long (drunken) conversation with my brother who finally showed up just before I left.

Also the skies have just opened outside my flat. It’s the sort of weather nobody wants to be caught in, especially if like me you never carry an umbrella because of the certainty that you will leave it somewhere.

A gorgeous night and I’ll sleep well and long and call it a Sunday lie in for all that weekends actually mean to me. Maybe some culture tomorrow… I’ve got a shot at catching up with my brother. He’s lived in Thailand for years so I rarely get to see him.

I waited all day for my half brother.

He hasn’t really got a phone, in that he can’t use it and doesn’t check it and I think it has no credit.

About a fortnight ago I got an email entitled “Sleeping on your floor”. Not “Staying at yours” etc. A negative expectation right from the get-go. Since then the dates have changed a few times. He reminded me of a quote of my father’s by quoting it: “Guests are like fish. They start to stink after three days”. He hasn’t showed up at all yet though so the only stink is from his expectation that he will inconvenience me.

I cancelled my evening plans today so I could be in, but now it seems he’s coming tomorrow. He finally got in touch from an unfamiliar number about half an hour ago. I’ve given him a clear window of time to arrive in. If he’s late he’ll fuck up my plans.

In trying not to be an inconvenience to me, he has been more of an inconvenience than he would’ve been if he’d just let me help him. I was gonna pick him up from Heathrow a few days ago, install him in my bed, go to Brighton, and give him the run of the place. Now I’m back up in town and he’s been in some hotel as far as I can see. He occasionally emails me. I’m not gonna babysit him. And my original thought that maybe I could let him stay here while I’m catsitting in Brighton has been abandoned as it’ll be cheaper to just switch everything off and go, and from what I can glean of his competence, I think the place might end up simultaneously flooded and ablaze. It’s not worth the worry.

It’s alright here this Friday night though, and comfy and peaceful and in a way I’m glad he’s not here yet as I can walk round naked and mumble to myself. I’m listening to the party boats on the river outside and I’m cosy and comfortable in this haven of a bedroom. I’m gonna get back to reading my swashbuckling absurd tales of dragons and ships for the rest of the night.

I love my half brother, but fuck he’s bad at tech and communication. And he victims himself into this deferent tone that has no truth to it and drags everyone down. None of us ever look good when we duck our heads. But he’s much older than me. I can’t teach him shit. I can just watch as he behaves like an idiot.

Personal blog today. More of a dump than anything else. Hi. Hope you’re well.