Month: January 2024

Back today to the local emergency money job that I am trying to keep spinning in case my legs fall off. Invigilating exams. You just need to be calm and attentive. I have a cold so I was sneezing, and I was wearing brand new trainers that I just ordered off Vinted because I’ve only worn walking boots for a decade or two. They squeaked. I was very aware that I had to move extremely tentatively and that I was the only sneezer in the room. Many of the students have cultural mask wearing from long before the COVID nonsense, so my sneezing felt really loud and egregious to me. I’m supposed to be the calm centre.

The majority of the students are from China. They come over and many of them take Western names, so I’ll often see Xi on my list but Hannah on the card. One student was Minger on the list, but has westernised the name to Bella, which I thought was clever.

Nothing happened in the exam. When does it ever? I’ve only once had a cheating incident. He was so crap at it that I had to write it up, and even then I gave him the benefit of the doubt as best I could. All of this, the qualifications, the stratifying and hierarchy… it’s all nonsense and we know it deep down. Learn as much as you can, do as much as you can with it. Nobody is better than anyone else and certainly not if your metric is to do with specialised knowledge. But it’s good that so many Chinese students are learning about a different culture as they study. If only the same was the case with our students. They recently dissolved Erasmus, which was one way of helping the British remain internationally relevant. It seems that the current leadership actually wants us to become a tiny irrelevant protected island nation, rather like North Sentinel but with no trees.

I’m home and in bed. Locksmith fixed the door lock today. Finally. Early start for more exams tomorrow but fingers crossed one of my tapes is gonna land…

Up early and I bought some good coffee in Brighton which is just as well as there’s no milk. Espresso pot on the bubble and I go to neaten up my beard. I’ve laid out my costume already. Black velvet blazer, blue collared shirt, black trousers, my nice watch. My shoes won’t be in shot but I bring my best. The coffee is bubbled. I pour it in a keep cup. The lines are going round in my head. I run the scenes as I drive to Wimbledon. This is a low budget film. Normally I wouldn’t be providing my own costume or getting myself to location. But it’s interesting, and it’s what I do, and even though my last few days have been a white noise of line learning, it’s fun.

I learnt a long time ago that you absolutely have to know your lines backwards forwards and inside out when you go on any kind of set. Especially one like this where the budget can’t swing to long times in the venue and multiple days. With four scenes to shoot and pick ups etc I was pretty sure this would be one take per angle and then reset. I also figured that things might be shot in a funny order. Important to have the lines fluent so the camera doesn’t see you remembering. Reputation.

My character is very talkative. White collar criminal, probably with a family and a country house, sitting at the head of a boutique drug trafficking ring, volatile and charming, dangerous and petty. Almost certainly getting high on his own supply.

I was playing opposite Andrew. It’s a strange fellowship, this game. I met him in character. We looked at each other. I liked him and the day flew by. I know nothing about him. Once the shoot started I never stopped until wrap, and then I had to run to my car before it got ticketed.

This movie will look good I suspect for the budget, which is extremely low. No gaffer. No wardrobe or make-up. They’re very much flying by the seat of their pants. One camera and a sound guy. The director knows his movies, and it was a pleasure to work with him after many years. I am very curious to see how it all falls out in the edit. Glad to be back on set, and I got to play with guns.

Between shots at about half one I switched my phone on briefly and had about 12 missed calls from people in my block. No messages so no clue what it was about but probably flooding by the urgency. There’s a shower stuck in the cistern to work around a problem I’m having fixed on the fifteenth. Someone left it on.

Testament to the people in my block, they were kicking off because the overflow was going. Not because any damage had been done. Good to be safe though and it could have got worse. I didn’t have time to fix it so asked Brian to teach the caretaker the emergency break-in protocol.

Supervising the fellow from the insurance company it really struck me how the mechanism of insurance largely disadvantages the policy holder. My friend’s dad had three policies out for home insurance, inexplicably. He died recently and the night that the funeral was announced, the house got raided.

According to the police, gangs look through the death notices. Higher chance of a house being unoccupied if one of the occupants just died. Whoever did it knew what they were doing and came prepared. They knifed the lock on an outer porch door, sledgehammered the front door, taking out chunks of lovely old stained glass, and then stood in the hallway realising that this place has been hoarded in for years. In a fit of optimism, they bashed in the locked door to the kitchen. What did they take? It’s impossible to tell, but I reckon they would have been flooded by all the junk.

I was there this morning to let the insurance guy in to look at the doors. I was looking for value while there, hoping to be able to tell my friend that they had some lovely things to keep or sell, but this lot is not good. Things that I thought were good all turned out to be modern replicas. He lived just next to a TK Maxx and so even the clothes are mostly the weird brands that they have there – Cavani instead of Cavalli. Still nice things but there’s little worth.

The insurance guy, meanwhile, was looking for reasons to weasel out of paying for everything. I said to just write it and send it, I have no authority here. He didn’t seem fazed by the piles of crap everywhere. “I imagine you’ve seen much worse.” “Oh yes.”

How many homes across the world are just crammed full of junk? Seeing other people’s takes even more status from what remains of mine. Nobody wants this crap and when you die the whatever system you thought you had for the distant magical day when you would sort it all – it dies with you.

If there’s time I’ll help my friend sort it all. I’ve got my own things to sort as well though. It is sad, always sad, to see the aftermath of these lives in the debris. All our stuff just becomes work…

I’m hoping the insurance company is kinder than the man who assessed the damage…

I’m in a cheap hotel in Ruislip. This is more of a knocking shop than anything else really, but it was a toss up between a night here or a night at home and then trying to get here from Chelsea in rush hour. I decided to give myself a few extra hours sleep. It isn’t work in Ruislip. Just a favour for a friend, but still, I know my sleep patterns and London traffic and I’m not confident I would get up and get here in time if I didn’t go about it like this.

I wish I was still in Brighton. Lou and her toasty flat and the cutest cat and sheets made of nice material. But… I’m here, in another hotel room, and outside it is blowing and freezing. It’s coming up to ten and I’ll likely be asleep very soon. I’m not in late night mode and haven’t been since New Year. Normally I’ll be asleep by now. My routine was spun out when I got a text telling me one of my radio dramas was airing on BBC 3 at 7:30pm. I’m playing a fixer type – a type of voice I understand. I find myself tuning in.

I’m getting better at objectivity regarding my output. This week I’ve been trying to read back over these blogs again. It is unusual. Watching myself often carries unpleasant weight. Listening to myself? Even stranger. None of us sound like we hear. Still, I don’t mind what I did for that piece. But it ate into my evening checking, as I wanted to get a feeling for the whole execution. By coincidence I had a friend in it, and I reckon I can frame the director as such too, even though we met through work. We make our friends through the strange things we do.

I’ll wonder about this though, in years to come. Did I really stay in the cheapest hotel in Ruislip listening to myself play a fixer and some small parts in Bacon in Moscow, as the cold wind whistled on the glass?

I’m here with my book, my work and my Steam Deck. I think I’ll get into my lines for Tuesday a bit before bed. I have the illusion of momentum right now. Long may it last.

I’m starting to work out where all the saunas are in Brighton.

Lou found this one. Her old friend Bella has made it happen. It’s a little custom made sauna box, about the same size as the little cabin I was in over New Year. Lou had it booked ages ago for us. It’s in Stanmer Park.

We go there pretty often, to Stanmer. There’s good walking, ancient cedars, and some decent shroom activity there. Even today, in the off-season, we found some excellent ones. Velvet Shanks, which peak in January, usually on dead beech. A flourish of them. Enoki. There was enough there and in good enough condition for an excellent soup. But it is my first positive and I’m only allowed to eat them when I’ve had three clear positives backed up by second opinions. So I left them. We had plans for dinner anyway.

We wandered up to the field next to the old willow shelter. That’s where Bella has pitched her sauna. Clothes off in a little hut, paddle over between planting beds, and in you go. There were nine of us in that box. All of us as pale as we ever get, lined up in a hot box.

Two hours long. I didn’t think I would last, but Bella was coming in with essential oils to put in the steam, and wands of different plants to bash each other with. We were sucking on oranges and having cold water thrown on us with oak fronds, and gently birching each other and ourselves as well like penitent medieval monks. I was the only man in there, and about half a shade darker. None of us have seen the sun for too long.

When we overheated we went and sat in the long grass of a freezing soaking meadow in our pants in January and looked at the horses. Then back in for another blitz and it wasn’t long before we found out the time had gone by.

I’m so chilled out now. Time with Lou has that effect. I’ll be in bed hours before usual, and I’ll sleep long and deep with the sea for company. Sure Tessy will jump on me and put her arse in my face at about 3am. But that’s to be expected. And how can you fault this face?

A stroll down the flooded seafront. Water so high on some of the pathways that my sock was wet through one of my walking boots. Thankfully no rain today, so the hope of things beginning to sink into the water table and flow back to the sea.

At Ovingdene we found a stranded dogfish, hours dead but not yet found by gulls. It must have been thrown up by a swell and left there. The beach was strewn with such odd seaborne things. The bones of dead creatures, pieces of seacarved wood, strange stones and pieces of colour and interest.

Along with us, small groups of people were more actively picking things up. They had come with bags. “Don’t fill your pockets with things to take home,” advised Lou and I assured her I wouldn’t before putting down the interesting driftwood. Things like that need to be wet anyway. After a day at home they are often just a bit of wood, just a stone. My altar is covered in things I’ve picked up on important days having caught my eye, and I could only tell you now where about half of them actually came from!

We got as far as the rocks where Siwan and I set fire to a chicken full of fireworks on a dark dark night in November. There was no trace, of course. The sea covers it daily, and it has been a stormy stormy time. Plus we thoroughly burnt the thing. It was just papier-maché.

When there’s light there’s light and it is good. Even this month, always the bleakest of months and with no festival to break the dark, we had light and the illusion of warmth for a brief few hours.

I’m starting to carve shape into my early winter. Projecting positivity forward. Anticipating some shifts. Lou and I did some auspicious mystic stuff this evening and I’m feeling pretty positive now about the coming year. We walked a long way, and it was freezing. But I’m looking lustfully at the Shikoku Henro right now and that’s 30km a day for six weeks with a rucksack.

I can see why people who live near the sea have gardens full of random stuff. I wouldn’t have had the dogfish (please feel free to correct me aquatic scientists, I’m just going by the fins and size. Could it have been a small shark?)

The cold is really getting into my bones and apparently it is gonna get colder but drier. Couldn’t really be any wetter. It’s getting crazy now. I saw some old guy building a boat out of gopher wood.

I’m by the sea again, in Brighton this time. Perhaps this endless wash has been made more noticeable by me being littoral for the last month and more. St Helier feels like it’s inland but it’s right by the edge. Redwoods would grow tall in the part of Devon where I stayed, feeding as they do on coastal spray. Brighton and I’m looking at the swell as I write, and the mist was down so hard this afternoon I couldn’t even see the lights of the wind farm.

Everything is sodden. When I gave Lou her presents just now the packaging was fucked on them all. Damp fudge boxes. A bit of porcelain that had been munged for long enough that Tessy was lingering over the sniffs.

Outside the soil can’t take the wet at the rate it is coming down. I bet bulbs are getting washed out and rotted. Too much rain, too quick. There’ll still be a hosepipe ban in June, but for now we live in a lake.

We went to Ditchling briefly to check in on Lou’s workshop. She’s been away, so just making sure a branch hadn’t hit the window or something. The roads round that way were barely passable. Walls of water being thrown up by cars, fjords in the roads. Impossible for cyclists, lethal for motorbikes and barely possible for Bergman and he’s a big boy.

Here inside and in bed as I write it is comfortable and comforting hearing the roar of the wind and the crashing of the waves. It’ll lull us to sleep.

Ping pong about London. I woke in Stokey in the spare bed at Jack and Sara’s place. He had a zoom, so I did lots of admin that has been hanging over me since before Christmas, and worked out my expenses for Carol. Then we unloaded all the crap from the show that I had hauled back in Bergie. Not the booze though. I get to keep that which is odd considering I’m gonna have to sell it or give it to friends or … PUT ON A SHOW!!!

Then I got myself home. Moved myself back in. Other people have been in my room. Now all my clothes are in Brian’s room. It is all very odd but I’m only here for a night.

I rang a few builders and tried to get some dates in the diary for a good look at the flat and to start the works in earnest sooner rather than later. For too many reasons I’ve procrastinated too long.

Now I’m running a bath. My bum still hurts from stacking it in the rain on those stairs at new year. I am trying to take care of myself now, and looking forward to Brian showing up. He’s having dinner out tonight.

I put the heating on. Life is good. Looking forward to heading down to the coast tomorrow, even if I might have to rebound almost immediately if my commercial tape gains traction, but what are the odds?

Quite a hard day in many ways, coming back into the world with a crash. There has been something incredibly peaceful about existing in that tiny box. The rain was almost completely constant so even going to the kitchen involved getting soaked, and the solar lighting in the kitchen had nothing to charge from so I could only cook with the little claws of gloom (the kitchen faces roughly North). For 3 days I mostly sat and thought, listened to the rain and the world. The wind brought different creatures. Somewhere not far from me were cattle but I only heard them twice. Once at night and late there were strange noises from the south. At dusk, because it is January, the humanish screams of vixens. It is fox-shagging season.

In the morning I woke and stoked the fire. A basic tidy and I was mostly already packed. A quick shower and back to the box to warm. Heavy rain still. Too dark to see in the kitchen just after dawn so I took a light and hard boiled my remaining eggs. Perfect.

Then walking and eating I squelched to the car. Getting up the path was an adventure. Too steep to move with weight in second gear, too waterlogged for the wheels to hold without skidding. Momentum. I got up without getting bogged and it might have looked like I was going too fast. Fiona would have shouted at me, but at least I didn’t get stuck.

Roads had turned into rivers there in rural Devon.

In the other direction there were bits of broken 4WD in the road. The grass on the verge was so soggy I had to get out and clear the road. I eventually got out. What a storm. What a rainy time we’ve had. And yet so many are still going to bury their heads in the sand about the fact that we are causing this to escalate, year on year as the ice caps melt. We’re lucky here in the UK, but a Cyclone came into Grouville just before Christmas and took off the roof of a house in my old road.

I drove back to the smoke and straight into human politics and crowded streets. Then I was exposed again to the messy aftermath of a hoarder. By evening I was fucked. Had to record a self tape so slung it together with Jack. I can’t speak for quality, we didn’t give it the time. We got it in, which counts for something.

Bed. I am so tired but it is a bed in a home with walls. Ahhhhh.

With constant rain outside, I’ve turned my little home into a sauna. The light is fading even though it’s only half three so I cooked my supper while I could still see something. One of those 3 minute tortellini jobs, lob in some pre-grated cheese and chopped up black olives and pesto. First meal of the year but circumstances demanded that it be a simple one. Then I had a shower, which is the equivalent of a plunge pool. Stark naked through the rain, bare feet over slippery decking, quick ablute and then back to the hot hot cabin. It took me a day or so but I’ve established the level of prep required to make things pleasant here.

The little LED light is charged again now. I won’t be stumbling around in the darkness tonight. Last night during an evening voyage to the longdrop down the hill, my feet came out from under me on some wooden stairs. My life flashed before my eyes. Instinct and luck prevented serious damage – the same falling instinct from judo aged eight that I thank myself for every time I get out lucky from a fall.I got a couple of belts. I’ve done something funny to my upper left arm but nothing but a twist in my shoulder and some bum bruising.

Back to London tomorrow. 4 hour drive first thing in the morning.

—

A bit later now and I honestly think I’ll be in bed by 7 at this rate. I’m looking out of my little window into the gloaming.

Birdsong and rain on the ceiling, the roar of the air intake for the burner. This evening I’m going to select and leave out some good logs for me to throw in when I wake up in the night. I let it go out last night and it quickly gets very cold in here.

This is the relaxed day I didn’t really know I needed. Toasting myself gently in a caravan. Not entirely work free. My host caught me swearing to myself learning my lines for a gangster flick, and I’ve got a self tape due by tomorrow. I’ll do the bulk of the work for those in the car tomorrow though. I’m gonna tune back in to the sounds.