Month: February 2024

I’ve not spent much time in Hebden Bridge. “It’s great up there,” says Tom. “We go on day trips from York all the time.”

Like Austin in Texas – “Keep Austin Weird” – Hebden Bridge doesn’t quite fit in with surrounding Yorkshire. We stopped on the high street and had two different varieties of vegetable soup. I had a Chai Latte. This is West Yorkshire. You’re supposed to eat sheep and have tea.

I bought that juicer off eBay, and wrote about it at the time. It’s a Champion juicer but that’s the brand, not a Yorkshire expression of quality. It belonged to Lisa. She lives in Hebden Bridge and makes automata. Beautiful intricate hand operated animated woodwork. She takes commissions. We met her lovely cat when we came to pick the juicer up, and felt momentarily welcome in her space. I do love God’s Own County. Spent so much time here over the years. With all the Harrogate / Ripley time, it is a happy place for me.

Apparently you need the pith to properly get the nutrition from your fruit. Thus saith a podcast. Likely it is right, but I’m not gonna be eating the fruit at all if I’m not mungeing it, so this’ll have to do. There’s room in the kitchen and it fits my demeanour to get all my fruit all at once in liquid form. I am gonna be the fruitmunge king for about a week until I get bored. You will benefit if you come stay.

Another thing in Hebden is Sylvia Plath’s grave. We found it as dusk fell. A touch of rain, a spot of wind and here she was.

Even amidst fierce flames, The golden lotus can be planted. Well attended with coins and flowers, respectful and devoted mementoes. We spent a chilly moment. I like the lotus imagery. NMHRK.

No time though. We loaded the juicer into the back of Bergman and drove through the peaks down The Snake. We are overnighting at The Maynard in Grindleford. Great big comfortable rooms named after cricketers who stayed here over the years when on tour. Most famously Don Bradman and his Aussies. They were here in ’38. They’ve named a suite after him. Our room is upstairs and named after Sid Pegler. He was a South African right arm medium leg cutter with a break and a fast ball when he needed to mix it up. His South African career was damaged after he bowled a match for Transvaal. He toured England in 1912 as a player and again in 1924. Got 7 for 65 at Lords on 11th June 1912 but didn’t have the support to get the win. Got 35 not out a few weeks later at Headingley but his team was rolled for 147. Clearly knew which end of the bat to hold when he had to.

He was manager for a 1951 test tour to England. They lost 3-1 (1). He was in the game.

This place is an hour away from Old Trafford, an hour from Trent Bridge and an hour from Headingley. Maybe he stayed here. Who knows? Who cares? A strange choice for a room name but I like diving into random things like that so I’m glad they did it. Somewhere in the afterlife the spirit of Pegler is currently going “They are thinking of me!” Godspeed through purgatory, Peggles you old dog.

I’m off to sleep I think. What a lovely stopping place. I had ravioli and 250ml of a 2015 Rioja Reserva. Then I had a bath. Can’t be bad.

I’m outside Chelsea and Westminster Hospital. Horrid places, hospitals. I’m in A&E with my neighbour. She’s finally gone in after falling four weeks ago. Tough old boot, she’s got multiple fractures and her shoulder has been dislocated for a month. That’s gonna hurt. I have a feeling that as I write some burly fellow is about to CRONCH the whole damn thing back into the socket.

An old guy with a huge beard is being very noisily sick into a cardboard bucket. A baby is howling on constant repeat with all that it has. Some people hobble, some are masked. Some have company. Most are alone. There’s a surprising amount of French being spoken in here. Chelsea and Westminster. Near the Lycee.

The doctors are on strike, and still we have been here just two and a half hours and she’s had triage, an x-ray, a discussion of the results and now she’s with “another doctor”. She won’t pay a penny. Considering we are in the middle of another one of these necessary strikes, that’s so impressive.

The nurses are evidently knackered and running on fumes. People are wired. But there’s so much humanity here. Bloody eyes and broken bones and coughs and puke and neurosis and pain. I want food. I’m hoping this is it for the day and I can drive her home. Maybe we will go via lunch…

—

Damn. That’s a brilliant young doctor. 28. He’s sent her for a CT scan. She’s got loads of fractures all round the upper arm that have half healed badly. He needs to work out if it’s worth getting her into a sling now. She’s “too old” for them to operate, and he dismissed the idea of rebreaking it all. After the scan, he said we might as well get some lunch rather than wait for immediate results. Reading between the lines I think that means we are gonna be here for hours yet. Still, CT scan coming up. It’s all very clean here in the scan waiting room, and nobody is screaming or puking. Everyone is just in pain. We’ve only been here 3 hours so far.

—

I went for lunch. It was heavily implied that we would have time to do so while waiting for CT scan result so I figured there was time. Now we are waiting for a nurse to put the sling on. 4.5 hours.

—

Just 5 hours. A nurse for triage. An x-ray. A doctor to explain it. A CT scan. A doctor to further explain it and allay fears. A nurse to fit a sling and explain it. Plus the sling of course. An appointment at the fracture clinic this Sunday. I was bored out my tree but… in the US this would be pricey. God damn those fucking plastic idiots trying to mirror US healthcare for their own nasty profit. Thank the lord that for now, because of the hearts that are still in it, the NHS machine is limping towards the next election. Just. Bless them in their strike action, without which this would have been much quicker. I really really hope their desperation will cause even these venal humans to make some changes. Honestly, I’ve never felt more like we need a revolution. Problem with revolution is that it all just starts again immediately with different faces.

I had no idea when I was accepted that my actor training would be so good. I just wanted to go to a drama school. I auditioned for a few, was accepted by most, probably because I was a little older.

My bridges at RADA had been burnt because I first went there secretly aged 16 and told them I’d be willing to leave Harrow. “What would your parents think of that?” “Fuck my parents.” But … that’s the problem with RADA. Royal. They can’t run interference. “How will you pay for it if you defy your parents?” So I went to Guildhall years later. And I paid for it more or less exactly with what I got from dad.

Chattie Salaman was our teacher in the first year, using “the magic space.” She challenged us. She had absolutely no interest in our bollocks. She was 80. She helped us understand how all the things we do send messages. She was stoic and brilliant and honest. Her son Joseph Blatchley directed me a few times through my training and was very much a chip off the old block. Chattie was involved with people who cared deeply about actor training. She was a practitioner, but she absolutely knew how to transfer energy. She did it until she died.

My three years at Guildhall marked a number of endings. My first year was the last Chattie year. She fired energy to us and then others tried to carry the baton. Later we had Vasilli Skorik. Again we were the last. Was he shot by Russian mafia? Who knows, but he taught me about rigour. Peter Clough was a huge influence, but he suddenly vanished too. I was finished, so didn’t mind that his place was taken by predatory Christian, even if perhaps I could have fucking stopped the rot but how? A real shame, to have someone so venal and cock-driven coming into the mix.

Nothing stays the same. I have not been following the old place. But I know it is all different now. Priapic Christian catalysed some necessary changes around identity.

I’m home. On my left a major theatre producer. On my right a major theatre director. None of us are running any sort of racket with each other, unlike filthy Christian. Our attention is only worth what our attention is worth.

I’m thinking about all this because I made a pepper sauce this evening. Joseph Blatchley, the son of Chattie, encouraged me to learn how to cook sauces because my third year character was a saucier. I went deep. As you know I do. Thanks to him, we had a fine meal. I texted him to thank him. He’s one of those who has affected thousands but doesn’t want to accept his own power. I love him to bits, and I’m sure it’s partly cos I knew his mother. There are so few of my friends left who knew either of my parents.

The night is called L’Italia s’è Festa. It’s in Cannon Street at The Steel Yard. DJs always have crazy ideas. One of them once had me dancing as a vampire in a shower of blood wearing a string vest. I still exist in some people’s imaginations as the guy who says “yes” to weird stuff.

Hopefully this night will be in my autobiography as the thing I was doing just before the call came.

Dancing Unicorns. That’s the entirety of the idea. Two eight foot tall plastic inflatable unicorn suits. Each has a fan to keep it inflated. They are hotter than the fires of hell.

“Who do I know who will do this with me for three hours on a Sunday night,” Siwan asked herself. Then my phone rang.

I’ve got the pink one. Right now I’m on a break. I haven’t got a change of clothes and I’m made out of water. I had to take the whole thing off. It’s soaking. I’m halfway through.

—

Promoters etc are all lovely and understand the need for regular breaks which is a relief. It’s all nineties Italian pop, and everyone but the unicorns know all the tracks. It’s quite strange bopping along to the childhood tunes of another world. People generally seem pleased to see us, but it’s very hard to see anything through the little window we have particularly since it tends to steam up almost immediately. I spend most of the time not even trying to look at things. Just planting and bouncing up and down. The arms are heavy. It’s a workout.

—

And relax. Gonna lie in tomorrow. That was knackering. I used to do party starting in drag in a club in Tower Bridge back in my twenties and I could go all night. By the time ten came I knew I wasn’t gonna get changed and go dancing. Straight home and into bed. Magic unicorn has used his daily magic supply up. Recharge time.

Back in town. A little impromptu diversion on the way home took us to tiny Tudor villages in Kent, and a pub lunch at The Spotted Dog. Lou is off to India, as I keep reminding her, and my curiosity about that country has come to the fore. I’ve never been, she’s covered a lot of ground there over the years. I’m curious.

A course in a hot place. It’s a good response to jobs falling through. She’ll go somewhere beautiful and learn something new. I take my hat off to that. She was gonna be on tour for a month but instead she’ll be hot and curious.

I’m happy to be home even if it was great to be in the woods, but Lou’s impulse India trip has led to me obsessively checking Jack’s Flight Club hoping for cheap flights to Japan so I can satisfy my urge to walk Shikoku. Although I miss my friends right now. Gonna have to be organised and arrange to see people. Not everyone can be quite so responsive as I’ve been lately. Tomorrow I’ll be back doing bonkers random things for cash, and then if I’m not an idiot I’ll be best served working on my flat…

Right now bedtime. Blanket is on. I’m gonna have to get out of this bath.

Lou and I thought we might make it back to London but the flight we were meeting was delayed. It’s ten to 1 in the morning and we are about to doss down on a pullout bed in front of the fire in the chateau des chats. The bedroom has been returned to the rightful owner.

Carlos has immediately plopped next to us for warmth. Rajah is out in the garden looking for more friendly mice to play with until they fall apart and get abandoned on the sofa where one can tread on them barefoot in the morning.

Loads of driving today. We witnessed a superb example of emergency passenger dusk pee-break on the south circular. “That’s your blog sorted,” Lou said and at the time as now I wondered how to write vividly about some guy sprinting out of the car in front on a traffic queue into a dark driveway, and then returning guiltily but joyfully but in time, and failing to get back in the door for ages. It was an entertaining watch primarily due to the complete lack of stealth combined with the accepted physicality of “I am being furtive right now don’t look at me.” He’ll never be a spy, but he can definitely sprint and he has a jetwash for a prostate but then he is only about twenty. We thought maybe his friend would continue the joke of locking him out of the car, but the traffic was about to start moving. It was a bit of humanity. A live solution. Two idiots in their twenties with an expensive car already. How do they manage it? I was driving a clapped out golf at that age.

I’m glad to stop. I’m knackered and my wrist is angry about something. Back to London tomorrow. Sleep now as he fire crackles and the car purrs…

Another cold and rainy day. Sheets of water in the air like we’re in a cloud. “Let’s go to the cinema.”

Just down the road, in Rye, an old church hall has been converted into an eccentric “Kino”. About 30 comfy chairs laid out in front of a screen. We could choose between The Holdovers and Poor Things. I wanted to see them both. We chose Poor Things for costume and the fact it was slightly later.

It is bonkers and absolutely joyful. Emma Stone is attacking that part with a humour and ease that is infectious. No wonder her face arrests and dominates on that poster. She carries the movie gloriously. I’m gonna spoil nothing, but I can easily say it’s worth seeing.

A British film. I’m very happy once again that our industry can still punch like that. Great Americans in the leads will always help the international market. This mad movie is exactly what the Tories weren’t thinking of when the lazy idiots told us to try and make blockbusters. And that is why it ought to gather a fine stash of accolades. Mark Ruffalo character acting, some strong and full cameos – some by less recognisable faces, some by beloved practitioners more known for stage. I didn’t recognise Kathryn Hunter!

I’m glad we saw it in the cinema. It’s wants a big screen. The worldbuilding, the colour. Even the dynamic of guffawing in a room full of strangers at unexpected linguistic choices. It’s a charming screenplay. Adapted from a Scottish book and moved from Glasgow to London, which would upset the novel’s recently deceased writer, but … that’s most likely some sort of concession to production and the international market, to make it notionally more familiar. I was happy to feel it rooted in my city and not my father’s. And it seems to be selling well. Even in Rye at 3.10pm on a horrid day we were not the only couple in the cinema.

It was £33 for two, and worth it. Hell if we don’t keep going back to the cinema it’s another option taken from us. I’m sure someone would love to turn that place into IKEA flats all owned by the same guy and shoved into Airbnb. As was it was a little comfy friendly hub in the middle of the rain, where we could all share a well made story by a team of delightful practitioners. It looks extraordinary, the acting is bold and on point. The score is unusual and bold. Even the colouring. There’s so much to love. And he shot it all on film. Which adds so much weight to every take. It seems to have helped everything ping into a proper goddamn filmic film film to see in the cinema. Glad we did.

Up and out to Rye. Lou came over by train. I haven’t been here for any length of time really. Just a few days. But I’ve barely seen another human. Rye is a small town but it felt crowded to me.

We found a coffee shop where people kept coming up to the table asking if we wanted anything. Even that had me feeling momentarily flooded out, and I told them I wasn’t hungry when I was. “If we want something we will ask, thanks.” So… we went home (via the fabric shop, inevitably.)

Vegetables and sauce. Lou has just booked herself an Ayurvedic Course in India next month. She’s been hankering after that country for so long, and with all the recent accidents she’s had to put up with I’m glad she’s found a positive hook to pull her forward even if it means I won’t see her much in Spring. She’ll be back in time for the bluebells. We had healthy food and lay around with the cats and the fire and now it is still early but her sleep patterns can be contagious and I have a feeling I’ll be down before ten tonight.

Carlos still tries to sleep on top of me, but he’s not used to me turning in before midnight so I’m sure he’ll be behaving strangely later on. But I’m tired. I did just have a glass of whisky which tends to knock me out. I might just surf the wave into sleep.

India has been invading my dreams since Lou booked. I had an argument with a companion in the dream space last night because they wanted to die in Varanasi and thereby end their karmic cycle of birth and death. “But it’s fun!” was my predictable objection. Not the best argument, but right now it IS. I recently got to work on a nice thing. If my work is rolling my happiness is rolling with it. Whatever blockage I constructed in my twenties is breaking and shifting properly now. And I’m enjoying that whole energetic game of karma and shift. Where next? Back to London first, I guess, and all the damn people. Two more nights in the woods first, with Lou. Come say hi if you’re a lucid dreamer. The cats help keep me in REM, and they are amplifiers anyway. They tend to sleep either side of me.

Moon through clouds. The wind picking up and dropping as it does. I’m in the night garden.

The daffodils are just away from committing. Some of the enthusiastic fools popped their heads up and got drenched. Others are still waiting, but close. Snowdrops.

It is peaceful here.

There’s a bird feeder, which is the new TV. Fatballs. How did 4 fatballs vanish from the feeder when I was away a couple of days? A mystery? No. A squirrel. Fucker.

I’ve seen YouTube videos of a man in America giving up trying to make his birdfeeder squirrel proof and just making a ridiculous assault course for the squirrel. Knowing it is pointless in theory isn’t the same as failing in practice. He’s been lifting the lid. I have jammed it with twigs. His move. This is why mammals took over from dinosaurs.

Meanwhile I’ve applied for a pension. Equity… They needed the number for the recent movie and it brought home to me how long it has been since I had an Equity contract even though I’ve paid my subs every year for long enough that I’m almost due my geriatric discount. Three missed calls from my agent had me dreaming that another of the tapes had landed. Not yet. But they will. The energy is moving as the moment. But it was just admin.

I’ll be off to bed shortly. Cooked up a storm this evening, with meaty delights that Lou would abominate. She’s here from tomorrow so I’ll be less meaty, wake up earlier and feel less alone.

I’ve enjoyed turning into a hermit here. I could live like this for years, eventually becoming monosyllabic but speaking fluent cat. I’ve started to get to know the local trees. And it feels like being a grown-up having to open and close the curtains with the light. I’ve lived high up for too long. Time to plug into the earth.

A peaceful day today. I’m writing to you as I sit in front of another early evening fire that I’m starting. There’s half a bottle of wine that I may or may not look at. I’ll cook something once the fire has taken.

Carlos has decided that sitting on me is the best place. Wherever I am. Whatever I’m doing. Last night he spent all night in the Pickle place. That’s where the tiny cat who introduced me to cat keeping would position herself for maximum warmth and contact, and minimum chance of being kicked. Curled up by my heart. I’m a radiator so he enjoyed the heat, but since I woke he has been following me around. If I’m still he clambers on me. If I’m not he shouts until I am. I’ve had to break up some territorial disputes with Rajah now as Carlos is pretty much certain that I’m his property. His personal pillow.

Camden council issued me a very dodgy fine for badly signposted road restrictions on October. I drove into them trying to avoid them. The signs were atrociously placed. I appealed it and then went and did Christmas Carol before the result. My appeal failed for weasel reasons and I was too busy to notice until I missed the deadline to go to the adjudicator and win. As a result they now want £204 for something that was entirely their fault. And I have to pay as I missed the appeal window. I kinda took my foot off the gas as I knew my original appeal was ironclad. But not according to them. And now they’ve got me over a barrel. £204 quid. For a bullshit restriction where the signs pushed me into offence. Absolute fuckers. I hope the guy who wrote the letter gets raw and itchy bollocks for a month.

I’m catching up with admin. About time really. There’s a lot to catch up on. Thankfully I’ve got tomorrow as well.