Everywhere I look, it’s roadworks. I’ve moved again. The last place had no cooling fans, but this place has got two. They just move the warm air around but it’s better than doing nothing. I’ve left them running all day while I’ve been at work. Contributing to the heat that the fans are preventing. Textbook hypocrisy. But last night I woke up every twenty minutes from sweaty dreams of ovens.
Everything has started to come back to the warehouse. Signs and scrim make up the bulk. The tool boxes are coming back pillaged. “If these were your own tools you would be making sure they aren’t lost,” says K on a WhatsApp group and he’s right. I got an empty Erbauer box back from a drill we had bought just a week ago. Nothing but a charger in it.
The good people of Paris will have tools for years to come on us and I don’t like it… Although it smacks more of carelessness than intent. There’s a nice box that’s been left. Both batteries gone but charger left in place, so Detective Barclay can clearly deduce that whoever was using it ran out of charge on their first battery and returned to the box. From thence, they removed the second battery, but neglected to put the first battery on charge. Then when the second battery ran out they asked for a second drill, which we QR coded and covered with stickers. The second drill came back with all the bits. The first drill? Left by the side of a road I reckon. “C’est cassé.” These guys throw away their Stanley Knife when the blade blunts, even though it’s reversible and they all contain three spare blades. These drills come with two batteries and a charger just so you can swap and charge and keep working. They’re the ones I used on the set break for Wolf of Wall Street. I ran my battery out every 2 hours or so, by which time my spare had charged. We were driving out damp rusted screws from a mushroom basement. I came to love that tool. So I know why they might have been nicked, but if they have it’s disappointing. We aren’t volunteering here. But… well yeah I guess lots of people are. Maybe they want the drills, and more power to them I guess if they’re broke. Still it’s disappointing.
I’ve finally worked out what the different shirts mean and I’m glad that the green volunteers have frequently been the people who have helped unclog tricky security. I like them. Worst case their coordinator comes and breaks the stalemate in a jaunty blue shirt. But this makes me much more pleasantly disposed towards these people who have always been very well meaning but strangely slow. They have largely contributed positively, as they are trying to represent the games which have been a ray of light. And they have been HELPING!
How did it all work out? I’m still astonished. We pulled an Olympic games off in the city centre of one of the busiest cities in the world. They said it couldn’t be done.
It hasn’t been gridlock. It has all gone very very well and I love that I’ve somehow got stuck into something new. I’ve got good at forklift now thanks to the occasional comment from those who learnt in the same way I have – and how else does one learn in all truth? More upskilling in handy type things just before I go and make art again as an artist. The two sides are aligning gradually. Make the event, be the event, make it, be it. Still separate but maybe not for so much longer. Soon I’ll be able to marry the skillsets, join up the dots, make a thing loads of people are in. I have largely been leery of it as self-producers are largely unskilled in one of the two sides, and more frequently both, and I’m not interesting in people who are about themselves in the art. But it feels like this is the art in me and it is where I’m being pushed by the massive energies we’ve been deciphering. It’s not clear yet how it what it erg it matak but what but it’s gonna be is fun finding out. It’s a triangle making things. Point of the triangle, covered. Right brain side of the triangle, covered. Left brain… The office. Production. Excel spreadsheets. Not me. This won’t happen alone.
Practical head right now though.
We just unloaded a whole van full of timber that had been loaded up this morning because SPA want 4×4 and we only have 2×4 and they would rather have no timber than the wrong timber. Sure they could’ve made it work even if it would’ve involved Fi and I buying every fucking 100 – 120mm screw in Paris again, but they’ve had time to restock since we did it for TRO. You’d be amazed what happens if you screw two 2×4 timbers together. You have a 4×4!! Some people just have to find problems instead of solutions. Chapeau once again to Wyn, the noticeable Welshman at TRO. I don’t just want him on my pub quiz team now, I’ll buy him a beer when this is over. Solutions man.
SPA sent it back because they want something we haven’t got and by the time we’ve got it and sent it they could have worked around it. Silly buggers. We will solve it or we won’t. I’ll be there to see how, or I won’t. Vans of wood don’t happen by magic, kids. They’ve made a problem for themselves down the line. I’m halfway out the door so I’m not gonna be the one solving it when they discover that life isn’t always handed to you on a plate, and that work involves work. Still, the show will go on.
AlBarclay 