Month: January 2024

As I turn off the main road and into the hills beyond Abergavenny, my podcast tells me that Wales is one of the only parts of the UK to have eschewed witch trials round about that time when 60000 harmless people – almost all women, none of them witches – were executed because God and the Devil and yada yada yada misogyny.

The roads are dark and very quickly I lose signal. Magical Wales can’t be bothered assisting technology. It means I can hear the wind as I’m driving through these big hills on these tiny roads. I know the views would be incredible if this were summer because I know these roads very well now. A decade, on and off, I’ve had a relationship with this little nexus, but in summer. It’s not summer now. It’s pitch black way too early. Rain, wind and cold.

Witchcraft is nothing more than individuality and a care for and understanding of the natural world. No wonder it was vilified. Even pre industrial revolution the bulk of people pictured humanity as existing in some plane above nature. Those who got into bed with nature got into bed with Satan as far as the twits who merged Lucifer and Pan are concerned. Even CS Lewis tried to reclaim the poor fawn from the Devil trope via Mister Tumnus. Heinrich Kramer was basically just an incel in 1486. Not much has changed when you look at the climate change idiots. “He’s wearing leather shoes so I can do NOTHING.” “He flew there in a plane so I can do NOTHING.” etc etc

I’m only doing one show tomorrow, a matinee. I haven’t done it since summer, none of us have. I’ve been mumbling to myself in the car but who knows how it’ll fall out tomorrow. I’ve got a cold. My nose is running, I’m weeping my lenses out. Last time I came up and did this I only asked for expenses as it was glorious summer and I could listen to The Ashes on the drive. This time I made sure they are paying me. They’re friends but this is work.

I’m in a gorgeous big room, silent but for the buffeting of the wind. Tomorrow morning I’ll get up whenever and I don’t have to be at the venue into noon. I’ll probably go hunting coffee. I’ll get in to work early anyway cos it’s me, but I’m happy to be out of London again, even for a while. That city normalises toxicity. More and more I have got to get the fuck out.

This winter is doing what winter is supposed to, I guess. Snow in many parts of the UK and apparently the wind will be up tomorrow as I’m driving to Wales.

I’ve been nesting, and thank God I can afford to keep the heating on for now. Talking to the wardrobe department for my next job and trying to plan ahead with the unsustainable situation of this flat vs my income. One show in Wales this weekend. One day of filming in early February. If these things were more frequent, more predictable, I would have less cause for concern. But I’ve got expensive tastes and not the means to indulge them. I don’t want to end up old and broke wondering why I didn’t make better use of what I had. So I’m trying to do that growing up thing at long last.

It’s hard though, especially when the habit isn’t there and the distractions are mighty. Very easy to do what I did the other night with Tristan and open five bottles of wine between three, see the dawn, lose much of the next day either to sleep or chemical mood. But that’s not new and it certainly isn’t sexy. It’s an old mode. It hasn’t served either of us with structure. An old trick of the mind to style the helpful things as dull. Life is bright and strange and colourful. The numbing is an interesting journey when new, but once it is old it is just old patterns again, the thing it pretends not to be, the same as a well worn thoughtless track in the sand.

It likely doesn’t help my mood that it is dark and cold. It likely doesn’t help my prose that I’m now playing an incredibly densely written and wildly mad RPG on my Steam Deck which is taking the place of books for the moment. It is more or less entirely a talking game. No twitch skills. No fighting. You just have conversations and skill checks but the themes go all over the place. My character’s most developed skills range from more familiar and predictable things like Empathy and Pain Threshold into “Inland Empire” which is about gut feelings and “Electro Chemistry” which seems to want my character to be constantly high on something. It’s beautifully written and largely well voiced, with the usual context related mistakes and mispronounciations you always get in low budget games. You play a cop who wakes up one morning with no clue who he is or what he’s doing or why. You can invent the answers, largely. It’s a well written world and a bold game. They did very well out of it too. It has been PC Gamer magazines top game two years running so I bet they’ve sold well. On paper it never appealed to me. But with the Steam Deck I can read it like a book.

Still this means I’m having to set strict times for my work. Got to be a good boy. Reward myself with games, but I’ve never been one to sit and wait for the phone to ring, even if recently it has rung a few times.

Not much more winter to weather, and since the winter has done the thing it is supposed to, maybe we can count on the same for summer…

I’ve been too busy to check on my downstairs neighbour for a day or so, but it seems she’s on the mend. Time the healer. I’m glad of it. I’m happy to help for while, but I’m not a full time carer and have no desire to be one.

She’s roped the block caretaker to get his wife to cook her packed lunches, and he brings them over in the morning. This is after a few days of her turning her nose up to the plates if boys food Brian and I were bringing. Chicken and veg went down fine but she wasn’t into the pies and steaks and I knew enough not to offer her the curry pasta sausage monstrosity that I made the other night. I love it, but it looks like it’ll murder you, and she’s one who has struggled with food over the years. She can get herself to the loo now without help which is progress. Horrible to be so frail.

She’s been listening to the news again. Apparently Charles is having his prostate worked on and wanted it to be known publically, which is actually a good call. Dad always said his cancer started there and he didn’t check it in time. I expect the GPs are gonna have to bulk buy rubber gloves to cope with the influx of worried men of about my age. I might even go and make myself one of them.

But not today. Today I tried to make sense of some clothes, tried to stay warm and cheerful, tried to think ahead a little.

Now I’m in bed. At nine. Brian is out in Soho and I’m thinking how easy that was every night for years. It’s all still there if we want it. I’m not ready to have a neighbour bring me pie yet.

Last night, post root canal, I went back to my flat and feverishly cooked a random pasta curry sausage thing. It was yummy, but I think I did it because it was easy. I was more tired than I was aware after the procedure.

Knowing I had an early start, I turned in early and set my alarm. I was meeting James at the archway in Waterloo at half 9 having already picked up a transit van from New Cross.

At 7 my alarm went off. I haven’t done this for years, but I incorporated it into my dream. I reset the alarm for something absurd like 2pm. I rolled over and into that sweet sweet terrible second sleep, and there I lay until 9:46 when the phone woke me up.

It was James. All the realisations happened at once. My first words this morning, into the phone, were “It’s bad, James.” James is the type to roll with it. “How bad?” “I slept through my alarm,” I remember myself saying. “Van in an hour.” “Do you mean you’ll be here with the van in an hour?” “Don’t know. Got to rush. Will tell you.”

At 9:50 I was out the door, in the clothes I wore yesterday. I had my car key. No coffee. No water. No breakfast.

By 10:33 I was in New Cross with all the paperwork done. Pace Van Hire are not in much of a hurry. The guy wasn’t there to show me the van, and when he finally showed up he wanted exhaustive photos of the van from all possible angles while I was absolutely losing my shit. I really really hate being late. With the chaotic life I’ve chosen, there are some boundaries I needed to set early, and one of them was to never be late. If you’re reliable you can get away with being a bit more chaotic.

I got to the arch by eleven, and we chucked a load in. We got the van to Kings Road. Caroline has a new space there, running studios and an events space. It’s cavernous. James and I hauled a huge leather sofa up the stairs. I was panting and drenched. We got the rest out. I ran for a coffee. Back to the arch.

Things settled. Thankfully everyone was very understanding. I’ve been reliable for them for long enough that I had one strike in the bag. But we had to work at a much faster rate than I was ready for, and come early evening I badly needed the egg and watercress sandwich I finally put into myself.

Three loads we took. I had to load the final one myself. Dropped off after dark and then had to get the van back through the early bits of rush hour, being seriously bullied by bus drivers on the Old Kent Road.

Home at last now, and wondering what happened to my body. I was lifting through the legs but that stuff was heavy. A good day though and I always like a solid graft. It just would have been possible to be kinder to myself if I hadn’t rolled over. I’m blaming the anesthetic. Pasta, bath, electric blanket, dreams.

Nectaria got stuck in to my root canal this afternoon. This is an old one, originally done by Harish Kasilingam, the butcher dentist who was all I could afford at Violet Melchett on the NHS. He replaced all my white fillings with amalgam and styled them as new fillings. I kept coming back without understanding. I didn’t know what I was agreeing to. If I could countenance suing anyone it would be him. He’s a monster. I thought I was lucky, on the NHS, but he was watching the clock without any view to health, and following his preferences without any eye to the patient.

This particular root canal, he ran out of time and basically just … stopped. He just sealed it up because of time pressure. So of course the decay continued inside the tooth. I’m not sure if he has been struck off but he certainly deserves to be. Now I’m going to competent dentists it becomes apparent what a disaster Harish was.

Today Nectaria got right into the mess of Harish’s leavings, and hopefully she cleaned it all up. If I’m lucky I’ll have that tooth in my bite for years to come, no thanks to Harish. At least I’ve found someone I trust now, but trust don’t come for free. Maybe Harish didn’t care because I was an NHS patient. Maybe he’s just a butcher. Either way, the man made a mess. I paid him a high proportion of my income at the time. I’m now paying perhaps 9 times as much. Your get what you pay for, sadly.

I do my job just as hard no matter what I’m being paid. That’s what sane kind people do. Not Harish.

I’ve been vulnerable today since the procedure. It is never pleasant. Apparently I’m doing it wrong socially at the moment, oops. I try to stay absent from such rubbish. I went and brought some dinner to Christine and paid attention to her bullshit instead of anyone else’s.

Christine is my downstairs neighbour. She’s not good at moving these days after a fall that she can’t really account for. I’m not sure how old she is but she’s what you would call old, and she is frail. But she’s lived a life. She’s lonely. I’m trying to take her at her word, bringing her food from time to time, keeping her spirits up. She struggles to move from her sofa. She’s hurt herself. Nobody wants to end up like that. But she seems to have nobody but Brian and I, and the block caretaker. Ugh.

I’m gonna go to bed early tonight. I’m full of anesthetic and poison. Sleep will help process. I’m happy to have another of Harish’s amalgams taken out. One at a time and eventually his damage will be overcome. Wouldn’t it be nice not to have to think about my teeth every day…

I tried to go for a walk today in the crisp morning sun. It was just so damn cold though.

Tristan was parked outside my flat and a traffic warden came. I spotted him through the window and I’ve never seen someone so indifferent to consequence as Tristan. Aye he was hungover but if I hadn’t gone down and driven away from the guy as he was waiting to print his ticket, Tristan would have spent £80 on an hour of sleep. I was utterly bewildered by his indifference. I didn’t want to go move his car for him on principle. But I was up having been woken before nine to let the expensive plumber in to – hopefully – finish the job with the bust up loo. Even despite a reasonably committed evening of dinner party foolishness I was engaging with the world and caught the best part of the day. His lack of desire to do anything, even to do such a simple thing with such an immediate effect… It baffled me. Drink is a dumb thing to do with your money, body, mind and time. I thought I was gonna dial it right back but then last night happened. His state of mind this morning was a real eye opener.

We trashed the place so I was mostly putting it back slowly as the day went by. Putting the flat and myself back. Dishwasher came in handy.

Then I ordered a vindaloo. I don’t know what possessed me. Spicy potato chicken. Never again. I’ve never had one before and thought I might like it, but it I almost immediately regretted it, not least because I had to get up and walk around for the spice, but also because it tastes like bum. Seems I’ll always be happy with a Naga – there’s more flavour. Vindaloo was just hot gravy curry. Warmed me up though which was the intention. Next time I should cook it myself. Right now I’m gonna brush my teeth and try and force myself into sleep so I’m at least half rested for the dentist tomorrow.

May 2019 I had a New Yorker stay here for a few nights. She came back in January 2020, as we totally hit it off the first time. Now she’s a big shot theatre producer and doesn’t need to sleep on no sofa. But tonight she’s in London. And she arranged with me weeks ago to have dinner here tonight. And I totally forgot.

Tristan has two self tapes. I persuaded him to come over. We did one already, and the other one is tomorrow morning.

My downstairs neighbour Christine is still very frail and unwell. She won’t go to hospital with me and I’m letting her lead that. But she woke me up this morning with a WhatsApp call and I had to go and pick her up off the floor and get her back into a sofa that was mucky now. She’s been there a few days. I made her coffee. She has barely eaten the food I’ve been bringing her, which was firstly steak and then steak pie. She wants chicken. She asked for chicken. I took an opportunity.

Tristan, Anna, Brian and I.

“Look what you did tonight.” Anna is asleep in my bed. I’ll work something out on the sofa. We fed Christine with chicken. I’m spent. Tomorrow is the anniversary of this blog. Tonight I need to sleep.

I’m having a proper weekend on the weekend. This is lovely and guilt free. I’m catching up with the reading, and the computer games. I just finished Inscryption on Steam Deck which is extremely strange.

I enjoy how computer games keep coming up with new ways to tell stories. Some of the stories are great, others very odd. This one was odd but I still enjoyed it. They won’t be making a TV series of it like they did with The Last of Us. But I’ve enjoyed myself.

Sweeney Todd pie with gravy and mash for dinner, and I took some down to my neighbour. I don’t think she’ll eat it though. She’s had a strange relationship with food for many years, and she is so frail at the moment. It’s hard to tell what is up with her. I had to pull her up in the sofa as she was not strong enough to pull herself up. Perhaps tomorrow she will agree to come to A&E as something has definitely happened and it is only me and the block caretaker José and Brian that seem to care, and we are all busy. I helped her to the loo and mopped up the coffee she had spilt. With luck she’ll be okay all night. I’ll knock on her door in the morning. I have her spare keys, but she’s not good with mobile phones and apparently was shouting for ages before I stumbled on her slipped down on the sofa.

I’m running a bath now and perhaps I’ll get to bed early even though it’s Saturday. Consuming a bottle of Reisling with my T last night most likely contributed to the fact I feel pretty wobbly right now. Nothing a good sleep can’t. I tried to play VR computer games with Brian and lasted minutes before I felt too sick…

Time to wind down, get out a book, find a story the old fashioned way. No more sacrificing talking stoats.

My friend was teaching in South Kensington, I was dayjobbing in South Kensington and the locksmith I met at her birthday party was coming over to bring the extra two security keys for the new lock on my door at my flat, very near South Kensington… I am out of the habit of entertaining at home but twas the perfect opportunity to make use of the two rib-eye steaks that I got at the butcher the other day before I realised Brian is busy every night right now.

She came for dinner at my flat. Nom. The locksmith swung by but couldn’t stay. He’s a brilliant lad and ended up charging me fifty quid less than we had arranged as I paid him cash.

The beginning of the evening was a little muddled as, by chance, my lovely french neighbour downstairs took a bit of a fall and was feeling pretty bad about the world. I wanted to give her time, as her family is mostly absent and she is a brilliant human. She used to model back when mum was doing it, and still has all the copies of Tatler. We have a trust and an understanding, both of us being perhaps old fashioned enough to still seek community here in Chelsea. She isn’t very well supported though by friends and family, and I think her landlady is moving to sell the flat which will leave her in the schtick. I sat with her, brought her water, kept her company, and later on I brought her down a plate of food scavenged from what we had up here. Easy enough to make it go three ways, and she has had a hit. It is possible I’ll have to take her up A&E tomorrow morning, but for now she’s wanting to let it sit a night, and I’m happy to go with that as nobody wants to be in London A&E on a Friday night. Sometimes she catastrophises, so it is hard to tell if she is genuinely injured. I’m gonna let her lead in that regard.

My friend and I settled into a proper old fashioned catch up. One of the ones who has stood the test of time, she is, despite emigrating to Australia and moving back. She was at Uni with me and was the source of all the brilliant Aussie nurses who I shared this flat with for maybe ten years when they were on their walkabout… I’ve always got friends in Brisbane now.

A few days of concentrated dayjobbery. It’s been good to be back in the saddle with the invigilating, even if the last exam was plagued with technical hiccups. They often do it all on their laptop with a lockdown browser, but it is new enough that it is absolutely plagued with problems.

And the end of the week. My friend is off home in an Uber. I’m gonna wash off the week and hit the hay.

Lou is in Bulgaria and it’s something like minus 9. Helps me remember that I’m just moaning when I say I’m cold here.

Another day invigilating and I’m back home and in bed before ten. These early nights still seem to be happening at the moment. It seems to make sense when there’s so much to do. I have to keep making money, plus sort the flat. The diary is filling up again and looking as varied as it ever does, and I’m not getting any younger so it’s good to preserve the energy levels for the bouncing around. “Periods of rest and periods of frantic activity”. That’s what I signed up for. Yes I still get annoyed when someone asks me if I’m “resting” when I’m out of work, as it feels like redundant slang. But also I get it. My true work can be all consuming. One needs a rest, even after filming. Fuck being a dancer. I’d be dead by now. So yeah, I’m kinda “resting” right now, even if that involves standing up in a concentrated room watching people take exams.

These little exam periods are always better served if I’ve got lines to learn, but as usual I’ve just dispensed the most recent load of lines. I’m in the process of reformatting the hard drive to make way for some Shakespeare as I’ll be up to Hay for one day shortly to jump back on the Merchant wagon with the delightful folk of The Willow Globe.

For now though, bed in a warm flat. So much to do but I’m done doing it now. Still trying to do a little every day that is home related rather than acting, earning or writing. I feel a tiny bit splintered but all is well and all is well and all manner of things is well.

Things happened today in the course of work, but I can’t really remember them or articulate them. I think I’ll just switch out, read my book for a wee while and pass out.