Rehearsals until reasonably late this evening and there’s a feeling of things coming together. Yes of course I know this beast, but it changes every time. Today I wore a mic for the first time as Scrooge and apart from a vague suspicion that I was calling bingo at Pontins it felt surprisingly good. When we were in a tiny intimate space above the Arts Theatre it was possible to get to some nuance. Sheffield, York, Jersey last time … That huge cold space in Bishopsgate… the rooms have been too big to allow much subtlety.
Suddenly I’m with a new Marley, and we are really leaning into the Spirits of Christmas. Previous years have blurred Marley and the spirits. This year we have really leant into them and it feels right. And with the mic I don’t have to bugger my nuance with volume. I think it’ll be stronger for it. It opens possibilities.
Who knows how this will be. It’ll be tiring but ultimately I think it’ll be a good one this time round.
I’ve been moving my car around for the last few days waiting until December when I’ve got a season pass. I’ve been trying to make use of my evenings in St H, either seeing friends or treating myself. This evening I went alone to Samphire restaurant as it is bloody good food and it makes me very happy.
Running in my spare time I’m still messing around with midjourney. To what extent is it a tool? If I want concept art, will I still pay a designer? I’m not sure what it is going to do to the marketplace. I haven’t asked it for logos but maybe it could do a decent logo. Mostly the stuff it does is mad, but I can’t overlook the fact that my prompts are a bit mad in the first place.
**A huge toy shop in America where all the toys are vegetables. Children run around looking slightly baffled.**
It’s my bedtime. I need my sleep right now so I’m off. Happy, well fed, creatively satisfied. It’s a lovely team.
It’s funny to think of how different we are, the two of us tonight. But we know how to be friends. He’s a good guy, and has three daughters to remind him of that. The child-lottery has locked him into it. We went to an all boys school. Maybe we aren’t as fucked by it as many of the sociopathic nightmares that tried to get one up on me over the course of my house dinner earlier this year. He seems balanced. Ditto his lady.
He’s an oil man. What’s left of it.
I’m not gonna judge him for that. I met old friends at the sociopath dinner who are buy to let landlords now on a vast scale. “Some people think I’m the devil,” said someone with no interest or edge, hoping for a rise. “Not at all,” I told them. Yes they are taking advantage of a fucked system. Yes they are dull and immune to consequence. That just makes them fish. It doesn’t make them baddies. They’re part of a thing that’s THERE. They haven’t the gumption to invent it or anything else. They’ll exist in the system where they have been put and never question it.
Andy has creativity. He’s a very curious and thoughtful man. I’m surprised how much I like him, but he was Bradby’s where most of my friends in my year were. My own year in my own house had been indoctrinated by a sociopath to the extent that they still haven’t moved past that influence.
He cooked up a storm and we had lots of red wine. I was proud that we had more than be expected. I tried to warn him.
Then we booked a local island service. This little midget drives you home. He adjusts all your mirrors, but he’s sober. Someone follows him in a little branded vehicle. The island is small enough that it doesn’t matter where you’re going, you’ll be there quickly. £35 quid, but at least I didn’t feel like I was risking my license. I’ve been breathalysed three times in my life. Two of those times have been in Jersey, and if I’ve driven 500000 miles, about 700 have been in Jersey. They love an unnecessary test.
I’m writing this on my phone in my hotel room. I am still utterly fascinated by midjourney…
So I’ve always been suspicious of the idea of human intelligence, and how it is measured. I remember once a mother announcing that her daughter was a member of MENSA when they were about to audition for drama school. I think my comment to her was “It shouldn’t be too much of a hindrance – the panel is well versed in being able to look past such things.” I think she wrote a letter of complaint when her precious darling didn’t get in. Back then Guildhall was a remarkable school, rather than the sub-university bullshit that it has been squelched into now. These days that MENSA daughter would do very well there, as could anyone who wants to spend a load of money and learn to be a critic. It won’t teach actors anymore.
Why? Traditional education. The academic lens shone onto a vocational training and killed it. A drama school cannot play by the rules. It also cannot be an ego mess. Very few places toe the line. Guildhall managed while we were there, and pushed out some wonderful actors. Now it’s a dead end.
We are worried that Artificial Intelligence will take over. Midjourney in particular has come under scrutiny. The idea that it is taking money from artists.
Some of the pictures on the wall in Christmas Carol this year have been generated by AI. I became curious, so today I signed up and bought a month for a tenner. I’ve been experimenting with “prompts”. Here is my first – obviously I’m in Scrooge mode:
**A portrait in oil on canvas in the style of Rembrandt of a Victorian Gentleman at home alone. It is cold. He is seated in an elaborate soft chair, and is surrounded by ledgers. There is a candle. He looks mean, even cruel. He clearly has wealth but doesn’t flaunt it. His features are pinched. There is a small window behind him through which Victorian London can be seen. He is looking directly at us. Above his head, faint and hard to see, is the spectre of death.**
Things to immediately observe: It really doesn’t get how candles work. In the style of immediately makes in the period of. It didn’t want the window so ignored it. The spectre? Not satisfying. It always gives 4 options. This was the best to my eye.
So I started to play. Now I don’t like feeding the beast. But I work in live theatre. They’ll have to make some seriously sophisticated robots to take my job. And I know that anything generated by AI on the Christmas Carol walls will be there instead of something we hashed up in tech. Nobody is losing any work here.
Nonetheless it is fascinating. And deeply limited. I kept asking for and not receiving text in my prompts. To push it I went for: **A sign saying “You won’t do this”** which led to:
Then I went down a spaghetti hole after Frank told me AI doesn’t understand how humans eat spaghetti.
This was my first try on spaghetti. **A human is eating spaghetti in a restaurant. They are happy. The walls are decorated with photos of Italy.** No eating though. Why the hell is it on the wall in all of them?
I tried to develop it. An Italian human is in the act of eating spaghetti by a canal in Venice. They are using a fork. We see the spaghetti going into their mouth.
Again it does what it wants. No fork in any option. They’re all IN the canal. Only two have it in their mouth, and it looks so wrong. And I have not asked for them to be men, yet they all are. You can see I’m getting fascinated now. So…
Nice cartoons, but still the spag comprehension is low. So… Why not go all out?
**A human is transforming into spaghetti. They are finding the process strangely pleasant. They are nibbling parts of themselves and enjoying it.**
TOP RIGHT.
So…
This is all interesting but ultimately derivative and empty art. It is generated in seconds and frequently has big logic fails. We will see it more and more, and it is LEARNING. Don’t feed the beast, I have often felt. But the beast will be fed no matter what.
I got curious. Existential perhaps. I was also curious about the white male agenda.
**A human is doing the things humans do.**
All of this is plagiarism, of course. And it is very limited. It hates zooming out of medium close up although in the last prompt it has happily done so. Midjourney is not gonna become Skynet, but here is the edge for us, right now. We can come up with any old shit and get something that resembles it.
In all four images he is dominated by something, and his eyes are almost always down.
A human where they are supposed to be.
The human that has written this prompt sitting next to a manifestation of yourself.
It’s interesting. I can’t see it stealing jobs. If people have the budget to pay an artist they will do. This stuff is occasionally functional but mostly laughably derivative. And it wouldn’t give me Scrooge in a bikini no matter how many different ways I asked it.
You can’t get the free trial for Midjourney anymore. It just works through discord, but I had to buy a month. Happy to send it your prompts. I’m unable to not be the version of me that is immediately fascinated and thus is feeding the beast and testing the limitations.
Bedtime with Ammon Ra. Crikey. I didn’t ask for text: **Someone of your favourite race and gender, in a position of power. We see them from a distance surrounded by those under their control. They speak with confidence. All the listeners are cowed into submission.**
Top left is actually a woman for a change, and is that Set? Amnom. Hmm. So very very very white. White and male, and yeah I’m loading it by asking for its favourite and maybe it thinks I’m white and male…
There’s a lot in this though and I’m certainly hooked into mining this madness deeper and deeper. Omnom. Amnom. Sommnom. Maker.
APPENDIX: It doesn’t have to be Medium close up. I tried a reverse Bosch.
**zoomed out very far we see hundreds of people in heaven. In the style of Hieronymus Bosch. Oil on canvas.**
I languished in my room as the morning ticked away. Occasionally I refilled my flask. Periodically I went to the loo. Morning became afternoon and I saw nothing but darkness.
Hunger and the lack of a toaster finally drove me into the grey streets of St Helier. Mizzlepizzle. The good ship Jersey is frequently in a cloud. So it was today, and I with it.
What to eat? It is a Sunday. Everything is closed. Decent coffee people are all with the children at home. The Macdonald’s Orcs never sleep. I wandered towards the sea and the great big new waterside complex and sure enough there was a TGI Fridays for my nineties throwback sensations. I had too much chicken. The service was so scripted I wanted to howl at them.
The only light I saw was on the walk to my meaty luncheon. Now I’m in my room. Darkness once more and I start tomorrow at a very reasonable 10am. I might go down and purchase a nightcap pint. “You won’t sleep now after sleeping so long,” says Lou who doesn’t know I brought a bottle of Actifed with me. That’ll be the velvet sledgehammer I need so tomorrow I can wake up and be charming and vital and full of ideas and the leading man that St Helier needs this Christmas.
Bergman is currently more of a burden than a delight, moving from expensive car park to expensive car park, but he will come into his own in the evenings this week. Rehearsal time coming so I can sling myself all over the place in the evenings, and I hope to do just that. Lots of island, not much time.
This will be my home now. For ages. I was so tired when I came in that I didn’t arrange things like I normally do, but there’s plenty of time. All I needed when I got in was sleep. I’m there again now. I’m knackered.
I barely slept on the ferry, and checked in here at noon after trying to snooze in the car for a few hours. This room is out on a limb which I prefer. Also it has a bath which I’m thrilled about and didn’t expect. I’ve already been in it twice.
There’s a little sofa, a desk thing. I’ve put a Himalayan shawl over the telly, a gift from Lou. It makes things a little less stark. There’s a kettle. Plenty of lighting options.
I slept in the afternoon and so now I’m up way too late. At half seven I suddenly realised I needed to move fast if I was going to get anything to eat. St Helier though is better than it was when I was young, but still not so crowded that I couldn’t get a table for one in last service at Samphire. Oysters, truffle linguini and a steak, with a whole bottle of Cote de Rhone and now I’ve got a headache that hopefully I’ll sleep through. My intention is to miss breakfast and go through to noon tomorrow. The car can stay where it is until tomorrow evening so I can just nest here. This will be my weird purple home.
I forgot to write this until just now as I emerged from my second bath desiring nothing more than sleep. I have a flask of water on the table. All is well.
Apart from the fact I exploded red wine on most of my clothes by trying to take a half finished bottle on the boat. Need to find a dry cleaner as most of it went into my suit. That’s a tomorrow thing. Today it is sleep. I need to stop and refresh before Monday. Tomorrow I intend to achieve virtually nothing.
The extent to which I am driven by my stomach is yet to be fully explored in these pages. But there are certainly themes here. And food carries almost as much weight as temperature.
I’m in Portsmouth, sitting happily full in a queue, waiting to be taken to a room where I can’t cook for a month but where people will change my sheets. When I’m in a live show I’m rarely cooking anyway, so I reckon I won’t hate it. Part of me keeps swearing about the fact I’m staying in a Premier Inn just down the road from where I was born. But… life is complicated and strange. I haven’t got any property in Jersey, and I couldn’t ask my remaining family on the island to put me up as I will need to get home when and how I want to, and sleep late without making anyone uncomfortable.
I’ll be on the high seas tonight, snoozing in a cabin on a Condor Ferry that gets into St Helier just after 6am. I can’t check in to my new homefor a few hours so tomorrow morning will be about finding somewhere lovely to sit and maybe snoozing in the car. It looks like the weather will be calm on the sea thankfully.
The stomach thinking is because I managed to snatch an hour to fill myself with brisket in Southsea with an old schoolfriend. It has made me very very happy and was worth risking a late boat. Lunch was miso mushrooms on sourdough. I do very much like to eat well on somebody else’s plates. And I have very much done so lately.
Boat is boarding.
—
We are underway. A long night but I’ve learned from sleeping on freezing cushions that a cabin is a worthwhile splash on overnight ferries so I’m feeling comfortable and profligate and I’m gonna publish this before we go out of reception and then try and get some shuteye.
Breakfast at the hotel with decent sausages and all the bits. We started with a swim and were the only people in the pool, in the jacuzzi, in the steam room, in the sauna. There’s something to be said for waking up earlier than usual.
A morning stroll in winter sun down the tow path. So many sunk and derelict narrow boats. Beautiful buildings and then in through the dreaming spires to drop off Lou at work. I found artisan coffee and peace and before long Lou was on lunch and we were in Gloucester Green talking with the other people on our table about how good our respective curries were. I was on the Goan. Just gorgeous, and good ingredients too. The big downside is that parking is getting close to London prices, but I guess they have to discourage driving in.
I went to Boots and bought the next generation of toothcare nonsense. My hygienist blew smoke up my arse the other day about the fact I’ve been shoving things in between my teeth for the first time in my life. Then she told me to get a water pik in the black Friday sale. Sometimes I can be obedient.
Evening quickly and before the curry was even digested I was chasing it with Sardinian pizza and now I’m struggling to stay awake, it is coming up to half 7, I’m gonna have to watch the show again and then drive almost 3 hours through the night to Brighton without killing myself, my passengers, or anyone else. With my droopy eyes right now that’s a big ask. Normally for a day like this I wouldn’t get out of bed until half eleven.
It has been dark for ages. I’m so sleepy. And I’m in the middle of the stalls. I really hope I don’t snore during the show, but it’ll likely be better then than during the drive south.
There’s a suspicious whiff of cheese in Bergman and I can’t for the life of me work out why. I’m sitting inside waiting for the text from Lou to say she’s done at The New Oxford Playhouse, and when I get it I’ll take her back to the hotel and we will both fall asleep like bricks. She’s been working like a train and I was up far too late last night burning the midnight oil like old times with dear old Nathan.
I stopped at a little Sardinian pizza place in Gloucester Green just before it closed.
Really good doughy cheesy pizza which has done nothing to make me feel more awake. The food options there have always been brilliant – student towns can be like that. Back in the nineties it was incredible sandwich shops at the forefront, pushing the boundaries at a time when cheese and ham was exotic if there was mustard on it. They would do Pastrami and Emmenthal in a ciabatta and it was like a revelation. And so many questions when you made your order. “Butter, mayo or both?” Ah the heady days.
There’s my call to pick up Lou
—
We are back at Lou’s lovely hotel. Checkout tomorrow at noon and there’s a spa. She isn’t starting work until elevenish tomorrow so we are going to potter in the morning. I’m pretty coldy at the moment as is to be expected at this time of year. Better by far to be sick now than once Carol is open.
Friday morning will probably be the last time I see Lou this year, so I plan to make the best of it.
That was unexpected. It seems like something cosmic wanted me to have a night of connecting with old friends before Jersey. First of all I went and saw Boy’s mum in Camden. Good chats and catch ups and then another dear friend was nearby. We have collaborations we have been talking about for ages. We catalysed some thinking about that. London is fecund if you want it to be. She came and joined us in Camden and we drove back to mine as it’s on her way home.
I wanted to go home as tomorrow I need to leave packed for a month in Jersey and I’m not very good at that. Then a text from NATHAN.
Nathan lived with me here for six years, sleeping in the room I’m in now. Long before I started this blog we were up all night together regularly,.going out looking for the things.
When I moved in here he moved in. The same day. We walked in to a flat with nothing but a single beanbag.
He had been a close friend at drama school. Max and I realised that I couldn’t live with him and his burgeoning family anymore so I landed here just as we were about to sell it. Nathan was looking at the time so we made sense of it together.
Our time together was varied and nuanced and often delightful. We fought and we made up and we helped each other and caused each other problems. We played poker and wii bowling and cooked and dreamed. We helped with auditions and shared contacts and hopes. He helped me into a part time day job that led to an excellent deal for a leather sofa that has been central to this place for over a decade. He has fully quit acting now and gone into sales. Charismatic bastard. The industry is weaker without him, but it can be a slog.
He showed up this evening with a friend, both of them in dinner jackets with bow ties. They had been over in Battersea Park for an award ceremony in their industry. Both of them live in Manchester with two children. It was remarkable to see him, and lovely. Considering people used to literally assume we were closeted lovers, we haven’t stayed in touch since life changed for him and he got married and had kids. We were friends in an older time, but we were so close. We wanted the best for each other. We still do.
He’s just left mine to go to his posh hotel and I’m running a late night bath. I wouldn’t be surprised if he ended up trying to get into a club somewhere… I miss the fucker though. For a wee while we would finish each others sentences.
The plan is to try and get back into the habit of sending each other pointless text messages often. I guess that’s how we make these connections consistent. I’m not very good at it. I can go years and then I might ping you something as if it was yesterday we last saw each other.
But yeah. So I’ve had a lovely unexpected friend night just before I’m out of London for a month. Partly it was made possible by the fact that I didn’t hear from Nathan until an hour before he showed up at mine. I’m so much better at last minute.
This kind of night is why I love being here in the thick of it though. Frank got stuck meeting my old friends. He got on very well with them.
My last night at home, and an evening where I get to relax with such a variety of lovely friends. A rare and surprising joy and I’m feeling very lucky. There’s loads of people I haven’t seen for ages. It is a reminder that, no matter how much time has passed, it is easier than we make it to reconnect. Thanks universe. I’m gonna sleep happy tonight.
I’ve often heard people say that time speeds up as you get older. My feeling on it is that it only speeds up when we hit routines. If we do the same thing over and over again then our memory forgets the individual days and the small variations, and even though the present experience of them rolls along much as it always must, we look back on those periods and wonder where the time went.
November is almost over and I am about to go to Jersey. It felt like we had forever at the end of October and suddenly it is here upon us. The downtime in the month was eaten up by small things. Sure, I went to see Diversity and down to Brighton and had the gala auction and so on. But in between times I was cold and I read my books and messed about on my Steam Deck and had endless baths and long lie ins to try and outfox the cold. And it all went so quickly. I’ve got one full day left before I go up to Oxford. My car is full of clothes and a chicken trolley that needs to be returned. I have to empty it and then load in the things I’ll want in Jersey.
I’ve started to pack my bags. Things I might forget include my accordion, a load of old metal planes that used to belong to my uncle and are going to go to a Jersey cousin’s plane obsessed son, toothbrush. But I’ve started packing earlier than usual to try and catch things like that. Socks pants etc all done. Various bits of tech. If I’m gonna be in a hotel room I’m gonna wire it for sound so I can ask Siri to play music when I get home after the show.
The guys that cast my face for dead Scrooge have arbitrated my facial hair for me. They’ve painted it with a few days of stubble so I won’t be beardy Scrooge this year. So be it. He was only beardy cos I have grey in it so it makes me look older. I don’t need to look older now cos time has done its magic trick and I actually AM older. It’s comforting that Frank has also experienced a swift November as he is only 24 so it’s not just my advancing years. It’s the dark and the cold. At least I’m about to be very very busy. Although I think I’ve just got a cold again. Dammit. It better not be like the one I had at Halloween.
AlBarclay 