Month: January 2025

January January January.

It’s cold in the world.

A mate of mine sent me their website and cheered me right up by making a brand that is bang on disobedient irreverent and funny. I’ve been doing this life shit for long enough that I’ve managed to discover humans that make me forget things like tiny dick rapeylips walking into the office on a global stage and giving his list to Santa in a speech. My dad would often say “You can’t argue with stupid.”

I made bread. The first time from scratch. Brian still held my hand a bit.

There’s been a starter in the kitchen for months. When Brian was here the kitchen would occasionally be carnage for a bit, following which there would be a loaf of bread.

The starter is a living organism. Needs to be fed and watered. I’ve been looking after it. But a man gets hungry. I’ve cut out all delivered and fast foods, so I’m getting through the kitchen stock and bread will help as it’s great with so much.

This evening though I’ve got the Marmite in the oven, heating up one of the cheap cans of cassoulet I bought in the south of France. They have these incredible places where you can get them to can up fucking good quality stuff in a great big can. I got one of them and then a pack of three shitty cheap ones from a supermarket for emergencies. Tonight was the time for the quality one, I thought, but the can was so big it has been put somewhere awkward or chucked. Fuck it. That’ll teach me not to hoard food.

The bread will be baked in time for breakfast tomorrow. I’ve just realised I’ve run out of eggs but the shop ain’t far. I’ve been really enjoying remembering how I was an obsessive cook for decades before I got really lazy. Budget tells me it is past time to remember that passion.

Meanwhile Boo is behind me as I write, eating the same old dried chicken pellets, and I have to think about how lucky I am. Yeah ok so a can of the cheap cassoulet tonight ain’t the height of gastronomy, but I’ve got the Marmite and I’ve got the can so it’s gonna get eaten. Fuck waste, especially if I’m saving money which I am. I have tax approaching like a fucking steam train. Fines are worse than the tax. ADHD admin ostrich is gonna PAY.

It’s nice to get your hands sticky with dough. As I was folding it my brain immediately went to pizza and once I’ve got the basics squared off and made space in the cupboards by eating all the crap I’ve bought and never eaten then it’s time to learn to make expensive tomato cheesebread so I never have to have some unwilling guy on a bike drop me a cold circle of dispassion in exchange for my right eye.

Little Boo is lying contentedly next to me. She made the floor wet last night smashing stuff and that tends to make her spray all over the place so I’ve been drying myself in a room that whiffs of cat wee. I’ll sleep in Brian’s room tonight.

Last night I woke up in the middle of the night but got really active. I had a cup of tea,  sent some messages, and watched Max my brother on breakfast TV with the best showing I’ve seen of him so far. He usually gets distracted into the esoteric or forgets to breathe. He managed to hold the line. Back when we were teenagers we had the Durrell brothers and the Attenborough brothers as role models. “One of us will be a wonderful naturalist, one will be an outspoken media type.”

He’s a wonderful naturalist and he’s been speaking out about biodiversity for decades. Having grown up with him every day as a child and looked at the natural world and understood it through his remarkable scope, I think that’s why I’m immune to all these pernicious little anti-science narratives. They are universally borne out of ignorance. Max is a scientist doing scientific science and I love his face.

I’m already in my pajamas. It got dark early today. I cooked a pasta that was one of my favourites when I was a student. Comfort food now. It’s a sausage tomato spinach curry pasta type horror and I batch cook enough for at least three days. Money is getting tight. I haven’t worked for too long. Glad something is starting.

I’m scrubbed and sleepy, and hopefully will have more normal patterns tonight. I’ve got something in my throat, don’t want to say I’m sick but coughing is a part of it. It’ll pass. I’m not feeling too heavy. Pissed off with little Boo for making my bedroom into hostile territory again, but it’s ok cos Brian is on the other side of the world.

When I woke up last night I ended up feeding the sourdough starter. Did it again this afternoon. Tomorrow I’ll make bread. That’s a lovely meditation, creating life, then eating it with honey.

No reason not to go to bed. I sent pretty much all of my tax stuff for this year. Last year is still a car crash.

Warm in the flat with the heating on. Boo has been demanding much play and I’m mobile again so I can sort that out for her.

I went and got her some of her favourite chicken food. She’s fed automatically and litter is turned over by a robot that Brian bought. She gets her stimulus from zoomie.

—

Literally as I wrote that sentence she walloped into my bedroom, up across the bed, onto the windowsill, knocked over a brass ornament that knocked over the light that knocked over my favourite coffee mug that knocked over my sand gong for incense.  Ornament is fine. Light is fine. Mug is in a million pieces. I just hoovered up the sand from a place of power in the desert in Saudi.  I’m told you can’t train cats, but I’ve closed the door on her for a bit as I’m pissed off. She knew she had fucked up. She watched the carnage for my reaction. I love her to bits but I’m really sad about the mug. But this is the thing… I was told she was an indoor cat but she ain’t, she isn’t what we were told she is. She’s barely off being a kitten and if I could give her a garden I know she would love it. If she’s gonna stay happy here she needs constant play but then, on days like today when she gets the play she wants, it makes her think that THE WHOLE WORLD IS PLAY.

It was a big old King Edward mug and just this morning I thought you myself “This will dissolve one day, and if I’m drinking coffee in bed I will really regret it.” The dishwasher has been cracking the Staffordshire China for years. I loved it for the size, not the message. RIP King Edward and your marriage to whatever her name was. Your mug outlasted you. I’ve still got my Charles and Lady Di mug which amuses me as the only souvenir from that wedding that tells it how it was:

I’ve already let Boo back in. She was just zooming. She’s a cat. I need to tidy up after myself. I was playing hide and seek with her for ages, pretending to be an ogre.

Saturday night, eh?? It’s only a few years ago I would have been halfway up Nelson’s Column in a bikini singing Vera Lynn.

Sad news today just before bed. David Lynch as well. This winter is cruel. I am lucky to have this nest with this hat, and to be able to afford to have the heating on and to cook an incredible reduced shoulder of it lamb and survive for three days on it in various configurations.

And now I’m gonna have a hot bath. I’m sad about my mug. Using the sand for incense meant I was already ready to lose it and I’ve got more. Bless Boo. She’s a cat. She just does.

Also that mug was the biggest one I had. She’s made space.

Aghhh. Tax. I’m really trying to line everything up properly and I’ve got a friend to help but good God I can’t do it for long stints. I remember my occasional temp jobs in offices, one time working for a man called Steve who wasn’t a natural hunchback but had transformed himself. His larynx was like a straw.

I’ve been making sure I move about, but I’ve been at the laptop when it lets me. I’m aware of how prolonged periods affect my back, which is thankfully easing every day. When it freezes I start talking to the (made up) guys in India in my head who have remotely commandeered access and are using it to mine bitcoin or try and take all the money I don’t have. How else can it be so slow?

I’ve had a number of issues recently. When I was in Stratford loads of people over a short space of time time started to receive calls that looked like they came from my phone. ‘Spoofing,” they call it. Now I’m getting loads of bullshit calls from India spoofed to look like Manchester or North London. I’m aware of Artificial Intelligence and how they need samples to make voices, so in my ridiculous way I’m answering all calls from unfamiliar numbers with a random and extreme pastiche of a regional accent. This afternoon it was Glaswegian. Twice. I’m certain something is up.

If I was one of those scrotes who makes money by stealing from the vulnerable, this is exactly how I would be building a database. Hack a phone. I fear that might have happened. Even if not, spoof the number and establish it works. Learn about the owner either through the hack or more likely, through calls to them. Over the course of this learning, employ your prototype software that captures the voice and starts to parse it into sounding like them. When you’re happy with it, you have a model where you can pass for the person. “Reception really bad. Can’t access bank. I’m going to be eaten by cannibals here in Utah unless you send me enough money to pay my hotel bill. I’ll pay it back. I’ll text you the details…”

It’s an old classic but with new tech it’ll start happening. So I’m giving them nothing to go on, plus there’s a freedom in being “other” when these fuckwits ring you. “What the fuck are you talking about, my accident? You’re talking absolute shite, how did you get this number? Can you take me off the list?” They sound like old scams, but these people evolve the whole time. I’ve been enjoying Pierogi for ages – he is a YouTuber so carries all that narcissist shit but … anything that raises awareness of this horrible industry of theft is absolutely worth flagging. He not only baits these guys but now is resourced enough and smart enough that he can hack them as they try to hack him. He’s learnt languages in the line of work so he can pick up background chatter. He’s incredible. I’ll look him up for a link... He calls himself Scammer Payback. It’s very entertaining but it’s also deeply frightening the extent to which the people he talks to don’t care at all about the person he’s pretending to be. These guys are pigs. I’ve been enjoying his content for years, but thought to share in case your aren’t an instinctive critical thinker. I fall foul of thinking people are my friend in person when they are the opposite, but I am good at spotting remote scams and thinking through how they work. I still might get fucked, we all might. When we were looking for a cat, Becky Holmes (@deathtospinach) helped me dodge a kitten fraud bot based on the model of romance fraud bots that she plays with. She fucks with romance fraudsters. This stuff is seeded through everything. These people don’t give a fuck but they are a literal industry because a successful hit pays well. I have always blithely thought that these things would be obvious. I’m very critical in my thinking online, I always examine the source and consider the motive, I look for edit jumps and cuts in videos and draw conclusions from them and where they are (you’ll get plenty in Pierogi, he’s crafting the narrative but I’ve seen enough of his over years to trust).

I’m sharing these things now thinking I should have done it years ago just in case someone needs to hear it. It is a lie if they put time pressure on you. Accident claims, bank fraud, distressed loved ones, family members on unknown numbers, your bank manager, the police, an authority figure… It can be very convincing I came SO CLOSE once with fucking Wizz Air customer service when I was fuming about a charge for printing out my boarding pass and tweeted them saying they were out of line. Scammers respond to their tweets with slightly adjusted user names, and Wizz Air doesn’t respond to their tweets at all ever forever until the heat death of the universe, so it’s a fertile ground.

There are buildings full of scammers doing this stuff. I know that I wouldn’t go to that level, even if I was desperate. You have to have hate in you. But plenty of people I know are very very good at “other”ing. All you have to do is convince yourself that your mark isn’t a real person that matters because of where they live, how they vote, whatever your bullshit is. That’s the slippery slope. Hold tight.

Lots of rolling definitely helped. I was feeling considerably less ginger this morning after a good sleep.

Bergman’s battery finally died a death, so I ordered a new one on eBay. Heavy great fucking thing, I found myself saying “lift with the legs” as I picked it up and carried it back downstairs this morning. Popped the bonnet and used a plug in charge pack. Click on the negative, click on the positive, key in the ignition and off we go.

It would have been an interesting venture trying to change the thing myself, but I figured I’d take it over to the local garage and get my guy with the dead snake hanging from the ceiling to do it for me. “The trick is to do it quickly enough that you don’t lose the authentication on the radio,” he says. He’s right. I had a Nissan that had died once before I bought it. The radio is factory locked, in an early venture along the lines of the snake oil Musk sells where you basically rent the functionality of your vehicle and pay monthly to be able to reverse or whatever. Extra cash to let you out when it catches fire…

I let him change it. He asked for £30 cash. I gave him £40.

He’s located in a railway arch near a huge Deliveroo hub kitchen where they pour out branded meals from all sorts of places you’ve heard of, whipped up by short order chefs following lists and conveyored to guys with mopeds who are forever nipping back and forth under the little sensor-regulated one lane tunnel that leads back to the real world. When I came back to pick up the car it was totally boxed in with police vehicles. They weren’t after me thankfully. If you think the guys riding the bikes are dodgy, you should check out the chefs in that place.   That’s where you want to bring the cameras for your GB News article about how nobody speaks English in London anymore. Half those guys are still making sense of where they ended up. I expect the local cops just raid it out of habit from time to time so they look and feel busy.

My guy has been there decades now, attached to the estate, near where I go for Battersea Car Boot. It’s ten minutes from my flat and he’s honest and straightforward and charges what I think is right. I really like him and feel lucky to have found him. He was just local when an apoplectic neighbour put a spike in my wheel one afternoon cos he can’t get out of narrow places. “You seem to have a flat tyre,” he called down happily the next morning as I went to my car. Had I not fallen foul of the petty rich man I would have probably blown my money repeatedly on Kwik-Fit or similar. A good garage and relationship with them is absolutely golden.

Back now for fun with tax. Gotta be ready by the end of tomorrow. It fries my brain, it fucks my shoulder and then finally it takes all my money.

I recently reconnected with Wendy Alnutt. She’s 78. She taught us movement at Guildhall. I know her age because we fell into a conversation about agents that I’ve had a million times with actors much younger than me so I looked her up. She could be 60. That’s a daily practice. I’ve got some catching up to do.

The first time my back went like this I was about 23 and at Guildhall. I reached over to switch a light on in the morning and AGONY for a month.

It happened again in 2019 during a run of Christmas Carol. This time of year. For about a month I could only sleep on my left hand side. 

Wendy taught us all “movement”. Generally that means control and understanding of the body. When I first trapped this nerve I was in daily movement and wasn’t going to let pain stop me. I learnt that moving through it, rolling it etc is the best way. Plus heat.

This morning I could barely put my socks on. I put on laceless boots. Trousers and pants weren’t easy either. It wasn’t a lack of mobility, it was a pain spasm. I’ve got people who will bring me tramadol faster than a pizza if I want it, but I prefer with this sort of pain to know it and work through it, and get to the source and prevent it. Last time it was a tiny repeated action I was taking as Scrooge. This time, I think I might have given myself laptop injury with the tax stuff. Too many hours over a screen. Precious boy was never meant to work in an office.

So I carefully and gingerly got myself onto the floor and into Alexander Technique position. Stayed there ages. Tried turning my head, lifting feet. Gradually very gradually moved through the spasm side and then the other side. After hours I was able to swing my arms, roll my shoulders. The hardest position was child, usually the easiest. Eventually after some very careful dog I could get there so so slowly. I stayed there some time. Back to dog, back to child. Eventually I was on my feet again, still in agony and definitely not able to pick things up from the floor. The doorbell rang. DPS with a car battery for Bergman. The heaviest thing, just outside the front door, on the floor.

I practiced spinal rolls. “Let the weight of the head lead you, bend the knees, no tension in the back of the neck.” Impossible almost immediately, but with breathing and care after about half an hour I could bend down enough to push the battery into the flat. Couldn’t pick it up though. Couldn’t close the door. Eventually had to ask the caretaker to get it in enough that I could close the door around it.

I know my body now thank god. I’ve been rolling and moving it since I realised I fucked it. Gonna try for a sauna tomorrow. Just got out the bath. Blanket is on, gonna do some bed yoga. Then I’ll try and sleep in a safe manner. It’s only pain, thankfully. But these things respond best to quick attention and change of habit. I need my easy movement. Can’t spend my life on opiates. I’m too habitual.

Post bath I just sneezed and it wasn’t complete agony, so I’m gonna go back into child and then see where the pain has hidden so I can chase it before it sets.

Not my finest hour, last night. Kyoto was great and I was excitedly gobbling beers and neglected to remember Tom, whose key I gave to Lou over Christmas. He was staying on the sofa and had messaged to say he was close, had lost his bank card, and was on one percent. I had another beer and spoke to Tomo with Jethro. A lovely elder Japanese actor, one I have certainly met before through another mutual friend, he gets around. He’s fab. It was only when I left that I remembered Tom. Fuck.

I hailed a black cab. Tried to ring him but battery long dead. At least it isn’t raining, I thought to myself. Got home and he was on the doorstep surprisingly happy considering he had been waiting. We went up. I then fell off my routine further, maybe discombobulated, maybe made worse by the beer. My head was rushing with thoughts from Kyoto. All the workshops I’ve been doing and nonsense about electric cars that has helped me look at a charged issue from many angles and reach my own conclusions. I needed to shut my head off so took my sleepy drink and then realised I hadn’t blogged. It was a race against time as my eyelids drooped. I was shipping all sorts of half thought through angry nonsense. Finally I reached a conclusion and fell asleep with lenses in. Woke up about 4 and clawed them out of my face. I’m surprised I don’t have a headache now but I suppose I had only put them in just before the show.

Today I resolved to attempt to be a bit less shoddy. I did some admin, until my brain hurt and I had to go for coffee at Heidi. Heidi is on the grounds on The Royal Hospital, my new local coffee shop, in an old stable. Today as I stumbled in for a latte there was a solitary Chelsea Pensioner stopped over a traditional organ grinder, playing Tuppence a Bag to himself. Turning the wheel. It was a time warp for a moment. I smiled at him, cut a respectful bow without thinking, it seemed appropriate. I found myself wishing he had a little capuchin monkey in a tux holding a bucket and chattering. I wondered if he wanted donations but I think he was grinding out of love and exercise. In retrospect I should have bought him a cuppa. I just got myself one. Next time.

Boo and I have been hibernating together. Tomorrow is a day of new beginnings in the Hindu calendar, so I’m gonna really try to put this dark and slow time behind me and project forward into February and beyond. Lots of change in the air. I need to fire forward, from a clear flat with well done admin and no concerns about money. First step, taking my lenses out before I go to sleep and laying off the sauce. I’ve done enough grinding of the organs.

It’s fascinating and terrifying when you get into man made climate change the extent to which people have been bamboozled by capitalism. Someone just two days ago implied they “they” were responsible for the California wildfires. There are so many narratives, specific to the needs of the ones that peddle them. How can you boil it down? You can’t. Everyone has a perspective on it, and the internet has given us a tool that lets us ignore actual researchers. For every brilliant and properly researched nightmare scientist, too tired to wash, uninterested in dressing well, speaking from their vocal constriction or writing from their social obstruction, there are fifty good looking and socially acceptable public speakers who disagree with them but present extremely well. Them and idiots are driving what is now considered to be the mainstream narrative by people who haven’t noticed that the “niche” sites are the mainstream now, however you got invited. Some of these fuckers have done physics degrees or whatever and they can call themselves “scientists” to further complicate things. The whole COVID thing didn’t help, oh god it made these thought experiments into all your biddable friends thinking they found a magic secret that makes them better then everyone else. Even those of us who know how long science takes didn’t like or respect the obedience in the narrative around the pandemic. It’s no surprise I’m enjoying Baldur’s Gate 3 when you look at the central premise of the narrative. How many people have been “tadpoled”?

I’ve already had sleepy drink for tonight, I forgot I hadn’t written. I’m about to embark on a deep attempt to look at all the stuff where people who have been used their whole life to being told they are wrong or they don’t understand things properly have been jigging around trying to say “I told you so” because of an internet shared pattern matching nonsense. The exact parameters shift consistently so there’s no point sciencing things. It used to be that the deadlines in the inherited made up shit our pattern matching friends were peddling would come quick and fast: “There’ll be a great big shift and all the crap we invented about well known people will have a made up thing happen to them by Dejanubery the 53rd, Kingyear 17662.” The dates would often be just a few months away, and I would always wonder how the people buying into this “secret knowledge” would cope when it turned out to be wrong so quicky. But they never cared. They just readjusted the dates, moved onto the next one. “Oh yeah, it didn’t happen in Dejanubery because of “Well Known Person”. “Well Known Person,” who has “{usually liberal opinion}” (and this casual attack on their politics appears whether I’ve asked for it or not) “Well known person blocked the thing that was definitely happening but it’ll be definitely happening again in X TIME.”

It’s like a kid’s game I guess. You can just shift the rules based on the needs. Nobody playing these games is necessarily a bad person, even if some are not the best at critical thinking. Instinct is important, but if that’s your only guide you really have to be able to trust you aren’t being manipulated by clever people pretending to be like you.

I watched this fucking hard show about the way we were bamboozled by oil into leaving it too late to do anything about man made climate change.

What I didn’t know was how early people started to try to have the conversation. The first half was HARD to watch. I was still at school when this stuff happened. Maybe back then we could have slowed things down.

It’s done now. We will reap what we’ve sowed, but not fully in any of our lifetimes. These things are slow, but human society as we know it is long past tipping. We will continue for the short term to be able to get home and say “This evening I shall have Chinese food in twenty minutes, delivered to my door “. Depending on the oil, there is a bit longer before collapse. Get good at your martial arts though. Resource war is coming and our convenience habit is the main driver.

Kyoto made me sad, ultimately. I’m glad to see it, it leaves us with an optimistic finish. It’s a great piece of theatre. But I don’t buy the optimism, and I speak as an optimist. We’ve fucked it. Civilisation as we have built it will burn, it is burning, it’ll get worse because we can’t stop ourselves. More than half the world will probably lose their homes a lifetime. There will be mass graves, civil unrest on a scale we have never seen. Fire and water. Earth and air. Nature is bigger than us unless we do the ultimate and just ruin the atmosphere and then that’s that. I’ll be dead for the worst of it, or in another life, forgetful.

I’m so tired. Silly boy, had sleepy drink before I remembered I needed to write, no filter, no going over. Ooch. It was lovely to share the show with Claire and Jethro from Othello. And I got to meet Matthew from casting, and thank him. WIN. zzzz

Had a friend staying, which was helpful as I was feeling very Sunday morning. It was a work of effort to make a short walk into a local new build complex near the canal where they’ve opened a decent breakfast place. The Locals Chelsea. I sometimes order lazy coffee and croissants from there if I have guests. I have never been there in the flesh.

I wasn’t feeling great this morning, perhaps just because of wine at the theatre. It wasn’t a particularly late night. But my digestion tends not to kick it before ten at the earliest so it was touch and go. I managed some granola. It was more about the company really. None of us get out as much as we used to. The business of seeing friends is not as easy as it used to be. This was a chance to be seized. She doesn’t live in London anymore.

I left her there after my granola. She wanted to do some admin, I’m trying to get some admin done too. Also … the music they were playing in there was almost like it was designed to push people away. Factory made generic autotuned pop from that person you’ve heard of but couldn’t pick out of a line up. Louder than necessary. I needed out and the coffee was kicking in and the gents loo didn’t have a working lock. Home was the best solution. Home and pussycat and four walls and central heating.

My friend encouraged me to do some research on my next job. I haven’t wanted to, it isn’t really relevant who is playing what unless you find out you’re working with friends. I ended up back looking at stoopid IMDB etc and reminding myself how I have been remiss about all the online profile nonsense for decades now, but actually would benefit from doing something about it so I can keep walking forwards. Nice to see there’s an ex Guildhall goodie in the top billing. I’ll have some scenes with them which I guess has added to my anticipation. It’ll start in February, and I’ll be in and out a bit. I like it like that. Keeps you in a crafty headspace, helps you look to the future. There’ll be days when I’m not doing a great deal but will be on set, so those days will allow for all sorts of online admin magic to become possible in my trailer. Then there’ll be other days when I’m pretty occupied, thinking about arc, making sure I am fluent and embodied. Something to look forward to. No NDA yet but I bet it’s coming so I’m being coy as usual. No specific dates obviously. This is just me looking at what’s been announced so far.

I think an early bed tonight. Boo is already on my feet. I don’t really like being awake right now when it’s dark and cold and night, so I’ll make a chamomile and see if it helps me off to snoozeland.

My friend couldn’t understand why I hadn’t dug out info about this upcoming gig before. I don’t find it helpful. It’s a job of work, just happens to be in the public domain. I just need, as they say, to know my lines and not walk into the furniture. Knowing the lines is the single most important thing. Then just on set comportment, arc, not being a dick. I’m glad to have a decent run at it again. Been a while.

It’s my local theatre, The Royal Court. Back in the day I was watching everything, usually standing for 10p cos of budget. I had a dream that when I was making proper money from my vocation, I’d be a member and get the perks. Maybe I will now things have started to work out at last. For now though I bought a ticket with the punters. £22.50. Back of the circle. Nobody behind me, didn’t need to take my hat off and could stretch.

Robyn is an old friend from The Factory. She’s South African, living in London. She is in A Good House there at The Court, and it opened tonight. Turns out Olivia is in the show too, a friend who used to live just down the road from me. Did someone once try and set us up? I think so. Neither of us really paid attention to it, we just lived twenty minutes walk from each other and, as with Tristan and Tanya, it’s extremely convenient when a friend gets with a friend as you get double the socialnessness for the same cost of time.

I stopped going to the RC for a while. There was this period where you could really HEAR the writing. It’s a new writing theatre so yes, of course. But it kinda lost its Mojo (that’s an in joke).

I’m booked to see Dan Evans reprise his role in 4:48 psychosis. I’ll be at The Other Place in June at 4:48am.

I love new writing, I love fresh takes, fresh output. I make noise every day because of that love, here. I’m not structuring and barely if ever proofread / reread. Sometimes I check it in the morning, if I went to bed hammered or angry. I’ve been known to excise great chunks and one entire blog. When you put thoughts out into the world in writing they can become more concrete to people who read them than they are for you.

I’ve been tempted for a while to feed my entire blog to an AI and then see what it generates bases on prompts. The thing that has stopped me is that I don’t want to feed this blog to such a model, even if the various LLMs have already scraped me and everything else ever published.

But this blog is manual, as you can tell by how many paragraphs it has taken before I finally resolve the opening. So much subjective noise. This is my blog, I can do what I want. But: I was at The Royal Court tonight, to see Robyn and Olivia and a remarkable company in their first preview of A Good House by Amy Jeptha.

We all think about privilege and identity all the time these days. We often present one thing but have lived something else. Class and economics and race. Blind spots, gatekeepers, social media. Whatever our perspective, there are people in this instant world who hate us for it and others who love us for it. It’s hard, it’s hard, it’s HARD to make a play that carries this but that isn’t trying to inform us how we must think about our privilege. This is a truly modern play, coming into the middle of a really spicy conversation and using a delightful construct of a house inhabited by notional undesirables, and a whole load of neurotic neighbours each with their own sets of social masks and learnt behaviours.

I think this play will run. I’m no judge of the industry though, they come with axes to wonderful things too often, way too often. But I think the threatened men might just avoid showing their weaknesses on this one lest they be exposed. It is so tight and clear and passionate and funny and weird and alive.

I loved it. I really loved it. Because it was masterful. Not just the writing, the direction, the fact it dared to make us wait for things that fed into character. The acting, where not a word fell fallow, actions were being actively played even in song, nothing went without target, without intention. I never had my inner demon shout “You don’t know what you mean.” Design is where my expertise starts waning but Lou has improved my view on it. The house was wonderful and funny and strange and it pleased me. I’m sure there’s stuff to get hold of but I won’t even notice if you’ve bleached your hair. Sound design was remarkable.

It’s a brilliant show. 1h 40 straight through, no interval, no re-entry. Nothing preachy here. A grown up show about grown up things. I’m rarely motivated to be so certain, but I reckon you all will get something out of this one, it’s a joy, it’s weird, it’s sad it’s funny. We, the audience, we all squirmed at different bits. I’ve never come across something so well judged before. Fully booked for first preview, I think we were a good house for A Good House. They deserve one every night and they’ll get one so if you don’t book fast you won’t see it.