Month: June 2025

I heard tell, once, of a man who survived manflu. Perhaps if I hold hard I too could see this through. It started with the hurtythroat, oh my dear children. I suspected at the time that it might be something beginning, but not the manflu. Blithely I went about my business, visiting the apothecary who told me it was a minor infection and I should monitor it. But nay, for verily it is the manflu come upon me like a judgement in my manliness. It may unman me? Oh hell oh spite.

The hurtythroat, she is still of the ow. The bones? They do the ache now for verily the snot runneth from the nose and the not one but two eyes leak oh how they leak. And behold, I cough. I hack like writers of Daily Mail culture. I splutter as with the pollitick people as they starmer and bugger and flap. I pull deep into my body and lo! hideous vile things come into the world that were not there before, warped and strange, the exclamations of the trumpet, fit only to be spat at the roadside.

This morning is the first morning that Tessy didn’t frolic upon my head at 4am. I think she must have sensed my need for sleep and allowed it. Bless her.

I am back in London. The boats play dance music upon the Thames. I’m running a hot hot bath to try and sweat and steam this fucker from me. I’ve been learning Shakespeare for days and it isn’t in yet and it’s hard in isolation. And now this illness is upon me like the Spartans. It pulleth my resolve, niggleth at my throat, tickleth my tonsils. I am looking longingly at my sequestered antibiotics, but not yet, not yet, they are only for terrible infections, this is manflu. Nothing more. This is what my tonsils are for, to catch things like this high.

I will weather this storm of mild discomfort, much as every woman I know weathers something worse once a month for decades. And I will emerge strong and ready for Shakespeare in a field. Oh yes.

Oh God and I’ve got to get up and do a self tape before nine tomorrow. Just as well I’m pretty much ready for bed. Grumble.

Lines lines lines lines lines.

“How on earth do you learn all those lines,” the people ask. “Oh it’s my job,” I casually say. Like it’s easy.

Days and days of homework. I’ve been learning prose and verse right now. Thought reconstruction and tennis ball. Until we know our lines and know them know them we cannot be free. It’s only a short job but that doesn’t matter, you need them secure short or long.

I’ve been learning those lines and also sorting out my digital shop front as best I can. There’s some good things coming. Gotta be looking reasonable. My work in The Lady got commuted to “uncredited”on IMDB so I’ve submitted to have that changed. A week in Thailand, and I know the guy who submitted the incorrect edit. He just did it to spite me. Duncan. The fabulous imagination-free man.

I’ve also added a placeholder bio. I didn’t think it would get accepted so wrote my education and family history but didn’t get into my career. IMDB is a database so once I’ve managed to get my credits up then it’ll be golden. A friend of mine saw a documentary the other day where I was reading from the Koran. I remember it, it was one day of my life, no follow up. She’s gonna see if she can find the link, because there is so much stuff I’ve done now that is lost to me, forgotten. Even the jobs that inspire people were only a day or so here or there. I’ve been writing on the wind for so long.

I literally just had a message about Deep Cover. There’s a case in point, I guess. A lovely job, two days of my life, and it’ll pay back in notice.

I’m trying to shift again. With the agent support and some good credits in post it is time to make sure that the momentum I lost resting on my laurels after Bright Young Things doesn’t become a repeat performance. I fucking love my work and I’m good at it. Just let me do it more now please. Just let me do it more.

Meanwhile I went to Suriya the local sit down Thai, and asked the chef for a 3 chilli red curry. They are really really cagey about making their food even slightly hot. 3 chilli and it was still pretty mild (and this is the language of chilli I learnt from the chef). Next time I’ll get the duck which is bulked up with lychee and pineapple. And I’ll ask for 4 chilli which the chef seems to think of as maximum. He’ll probably only give me 2 and it’ll be like pudding. I think they have had too many people complain about heat.

This time a year ago I started in Paris. God what a long long time since then. This has been an excellent year.

There’s a lot of space here, energetically, by the sea. Things can be sent out. There’s light and big sky. I grew up with this. I know and love it.

My obligation here is mostly to Tessy. If she has her regularity and company then all I have to do is not drink in the flat and not set fire to everything by mistake.

The issue is really around Tessy’s regularity. Last night I went to Plateau and had a few glasses of their orange wine. I sat outside with the falling sun. At this time of year it is perfect and if you sit there at sunset you’ll know how I ended up ordering two glasses. But it meant I got home a little squiffy. She has a routine with me, it seems.

At 3am she likes to come in and use my head as a jumping off point to get on top of the clothes rails. Then at 4.30am she likes to come and sit by my face. She will gently rub her hairy bum in my face until I roll over, and then she will poke me in the back with a paw. She wants snacks. I’m not gonna give them so early. But you can’t train a cat and we are into the lightest part of the year, which will be her motivator.

It’s a good thing I adore cats, and think of them as psychopomps. I’m happy she is comfortable to push me around, it means there probably isn’t anything very wrong with me at the moment. Even if my throat is fucking killing me. I think I rolled onto my back and snored all night last night until Tessy woke me at 3. I had an early bed so that’s hours of dry snoring. My throat feels angry, generally. I remember dad had a humidifier by his bed in Switzerland. Altitude and heating, those rooms in St Moritz were dry. And Jesus he could snore. Hopefully it is just snoring. I bought some lemsip just in case.

I’m trying to learn lines at the mo. It’s hard, Shakespeare prose. A new crowd and I want to be easy with it.

It’s not ten yet, but I think I’m just gonna turn in and lie myself in the complicated position I assume when I don’t want to snore. My throat needs a break. It feels bad. And I’ll have to do lots of talking for money over the next month or two. Vocal rest. With this ridiculous floof. I’ve been grooming her this evening as ever. She likes me to really get stuck in with a brush. This sort of floof needs maintenance.

Argh.

So yeah I’m trying to think about my digital footprint. I hate it hate it hate it. But there’s this dude called me who likes working. And then there are loads of people who don’t know how to find dudes like me. And then there are loads of people who can’t do what the people are looking for but can make themselves visible to the dudes who are looking.

My Spotlight is about 8 years out of date and I have not addressed it cus I hate having to look at that shit but who else is gonna do it? I have lines to learn as ever. But I spoke to my old mate James and he said I have to get the things that are in my control sorted. Sure I could have done it years ago, I could have written my own wiki… I hate that sort of thing so much though. But I’m finally learning that you have to play the game to have your scores logged. I schooled with a bunch of plugs. All I knew was that I wasn’t gonna be them or care about the them things.

Lou and I went to The Reading Room, which is a new cafe experience type thing with bright red seats down the coast from hers. She drove us there in her new car. Then she asked me not to pay for parking so she could get the apps set up on her phone. So we sat. I had the photo with the numbers, she tried to get it all working. “Excuse me, I thought I should just mention, isn’t it just the most beautiful view from here whilst you are doing nothing but checking your emails,” said this guy next to us. If he cycles, he wears lycra. He had his little shitty goatee. He triggered me into my class, which Lou hates. “Oh, hello mate.” Apparently my volume went up. “It’s great you’ve pointed out this lovely view, thanks how thoughtful of you. Lou here is paying for parking and has a brand new car and has to download an app to park here.” Lou has observed that he’s got cases with him, he’s a tourist. “i live just up there,” she points. She strangely asks me to bring my volume down, which is a break as I’m happy to be high status with this idiot and a united front might have been better but fuck it, he’s an idiot to both of us for different reasons. For Lou he’s an idiot because he’s wrong, for me he’s an idiot because he thinks it’s ok to be passive aggressive like that. It’s probably for the best that she commented on my volume as I would almost certainly have torn him up into tiny tiny little pieces. I might well have hardpatronised him. He had nothing to offer. It’s good that Lou keeps me under control when it comes to things like that. I was inches away from : “Thank you for expressing this, can we both just dig into where this comes from, that you think it’s legitimate to be extremely passive aggressive to strangers, based on a misunderstanding of what they’re doing that lines up with your cognitive bias. What else do you approximate in your life?”

His date came back from the loo. He started blithering on about all the devices he had and then fucking Star Wars – he’s ten years older than me. I dunno … if you are going to police other people socially, you need to be able to do social properly, ya? He thought he was being clever and it came from an observable self importance and then his conversation was bullshit. I hope his date overlooks it all and I’m glad we didn’t humiliate him after she came back. What a twat. But The Reading Room is my new favourite Brighton coffee, despite mister twittybeardface. And he’s just a lycra-lout out of uniform. I’d lay money that he had a skin suit and helmet in those bags, and some kind of bicycle locked very correctly up the road somewhere with an industry standard lock that he wants to tell you about. What a twat. Sorry if you’re a lycra-lout. But God.

Lou’s day off. She is commuting where possible, but the last few nights I’ve been here for Tessy so she can be there for work. We’ve flatswapped. I’ll be here until Wednesday morning. She’s off back to mine tomorrow.

We had a little beach sauna at Lunar Wave in the morning. Half an hour of sitting in a hot box with fifteen women shouting about their children, fitness and investments. Halfway through we wandered down and momentarily threw ourselves into the sea, then back into the soap opera.

It was a start to the day. I wonder if you can comfortably wear ear plugs in the sauna. It’s weird, we are social beings but getting into that heat can be a contemplative and inner experience. I rarely want to go into nattermode when heating up my insides. I don’t know how so many people are just on the bus in there. “Maybe it’s because they have no inner life?” Still it woke me up before my coffee but I got one of them too before we went to Stanmer.

In the car park there I took Lou through her green 2006 Renault Scenic Privilege. It’s a nice first whip. Very Lou. We kept Faithless in the CD changer but now there’s Goldie, Fleetwood Mac, Duran Duran, Santana… She shall have music wherever she goes. Although she’ll likely swap some out for some Satsangs before long and have a vedanta chanty cosmic swamiwagon. Philosophies of the vedas. As long as she doesn’t fall asleep in it, but she’s wired differently to me.

There are little hidden storage spaces all over it. “What good are they apart from to smuggle drugs?” It’s a fair question. But… you can put things in them. It’s a family car so it’s all Top Trumps for long journeys, that sort of thing.

She likes it. I’m relieved, a car isn’t cheap and a first car is a big thing. It smells a bit of air freshener. She thinks maybe it’s to mask an old smoke smell, but that can be overcome and we both grew up in the seventies and eighties when everything and everybody stank of stale smoke, and all the magazines and sports were pushing snouts on all of us. Early nineties Viz spoofed it memorably:

The pong isn’t too bad really, and it’s still the chemical pong of air freshener. Before long the whole thing will smell of dhoop sticks. I’m happy she likes it. I like it. It’s an old car and something might go wrong but right now it jumps off the button.

Two hour drive back to London and parked Bergie outside the flat. I wasn’t gonna go up to the flat, Lou has my keys, but it was a surprise and a relief to see Brian who happened to be going to buy breakfast.

I had money in my rucksack, but also a great big thurible that was making the sack uncomfortable to wear, so I gave the thurible to Brian. An uncomfortable backpack with valuable contents is not clever. Brian and I walked to the station catching up on life.

Me and the rucksack were off to Ilford to meet Bogdan. Bogdan came here from Bulgaria, an economic migrant in 2019 just before it all went to tits. He works for a clothes charity. And he’s selling his car. They’ve given him a van and he can use it for non work related purposes so long as he tells them he’s doing it so they know it hasn’t been stolen. (There’s a tracker.) The boss seems to accommodate our Bogdan, who appears to be an honest and thoughtful man. He loves his cars, he’s an amateur mechanic. He shows me how to change the pollen filter… There’s a sunglasses holder. It has a 6 CD Changer under the passenger seat. This car is very very 2006.

Light upholstery, greenish. Very high clutch. Oil leak. Nowt wrong with it really though. Bogdan now has the money that was in my rucksack.

We sat in his kitchen. He made me a cup of tea and we looked at endless paperwork. All the service history is there, he’s been careful. Diligent. He tells me that his charity don’t keep stuffed toys, they throw them away. So now he takes them all home and posts them to his friend in Bulgaria who runs a shelter for dispossessed children. On his wall he’s stuck loads of cute cats ripped from a cute cat calendar. “The calendar belonged to my ex girlfriend.” There’s a slight sadness. He’s here in rented accommodation, rusted everything in the bathroom, a flat that could be soulless, and he’s filled it with cute fluffy things that came to him for free. The car is full of colourful and strange badges too. “Are you a musician?” “The guitar? No. They come in on the clothes, these badges.” Like the stuffed toys, they aren’t any good to his company so he rescues them. He’s got an enamel goose badge. “honk honk honk honk honk” It makes me smile.

He’s kind and sad and boyish, bald and slightly sweaty, clever. He speaks and listens in what is probably his third language brilliantly. He’s repurposing nice old things. I like him immediately.

I had to look serious and thoughtful though for hours while we went round the car. I had to notice and talk about all the snags while he was boyishly showing me all the toys. It’s a “prestige” issue car so they have absurd luxury things. “This is the sunglass holder.” We really took it all in and I couldn’t look too happy as I knew there would be haggling. So we haggled. And I think we were both happy with the result.

The car will now be Lou’s first car. I’m just the messenger so everything had to go through her by phone. I’m hoping my feelings about it will be borne out by her experience with it. Bogdan isn’t a con artist. Any car that old has… Personality.

I got in the car and realised he had left one CD in the main player. Forever Faithless. “You’ve left this one?” “You can keep it.” Maybe he didn’t like it? Madness. The CD changer is Guns and Roses, Bon Jovi, ACDC. Rollo Sister Bliss and Maxi Jazz don’t play much guitar. But… It’s a great CD for me and a nostalgia trip. Insomnia blasting out as I start back down south. Perfect. My insurance for Bergs is fully comp. “This is my church,” comes on as I hit the Ashdown Forest. God… is a DJ.

I took Bergs back to Chelsea as there’s no point paying for two cars to park in Brighton. Means I’ll be hauling my bags back on the train though. Didn’t really think it through but it’ll work out somehow. “Wicked mind is a weapon of mass destruction”. Tell that to Ben, to Don, to Vlad. It’s pretty easy saying the leaders of countries are self serving narcissistic bigots – it’s boring cos what are we supposed to do about it. They didn’t go to enough raves growing up. They’re just gonna be baddies. Baddies gonna bad bad bad bad bad bad. Vlad is gonna vlad vlad vlad vlad vlad vlad. I’m just gonna mad. In the American way? Your call.

Lou will get in late after work and I’ll pick her up from the station in her new wheels. The fruits of the Bridlington escapade. It’s a nice car for the price. Hasn’t got the punch of Bergie but it’s older and still ULEZ compliant. Until it isn’t. But it is for now.

It’s pretty chill here with the gulls and the cat.

Mum was a sixties girl. She adored Richard Bach. When we lived in Jersey we had a seagull that lived on the roof. It nested there. Mum used to throw all the food waste out onto the balcony in the kitchen. Yes there was a balcony in the kitchen. Local small birds would come, but largely “Jonathan Livingstone Seagull” would wallop around and help himself.

Seagulls are no slouches. Big birds often have better brains than we want them to. Crows are a good point in case. But even if gulls are entirely motivated by their stomach – (crows like to play) – they can still learn patterns. My grandmother had a knock that she would use so mum and dad knew it was her not the postman. She would come every day. The seagull learnt the knock. I kid you not. Jonathan would knock my grandmother’s knock on the skylight, and one of us would run downstairs to let her in and she wasn’t there. Then we would work it out and shout “Muuuum, Jonathan is hungry!” And if there were kitchen scraps, they went to him. “There’s a bowl by the aga!” Before I was ten I was throwing fat to the birds, often recognisably the fat I had rejected with my dinner. Fussy kid, I was. Unbelievably fussy. Something shifted in early adulthood and I went from eating about three things only to being a proper omnivore. But my leavings went into that balcony for the sparrows (they still existed back then) and for flollopy Jonathan.

This morning at about half five Tessy came and jumped on me. At about six I started to hear a seagull beak on the skylight. No pattern but a very pointed noise. At about quarter to seven I decided to get up and turn Tessy’s food around for her. She had left some uneaten. Normally I just chuck it and replenish but that seagull knows Lou and is clearly both expectant and hungry. It’s not fair to throw unwanted cat food out when there is a hungry seagull upstairs. Better to a hungry animal than to landfill. We could all manage our waste infinitely better.

So the animals were all fed. I love that Lou takes care of the local gulls. They can be territorial and bullies but they’re just birds, with all that bird stuff. Attitude. Opportunism. Greed. Like pelicans, they’ll eat pigeons if they can. We are all more like birds than we think.

I’ll keep feeding that gull. When I opened the skylight he was right on me. If I had died in that moment he’d already be halfway through eating me. That’s the way of it though. As soon as our immune system stops we get eaten from the inside by the things that live in us.

It’s half nine. The seagulls are chuckling on the roof and calling in the sky, taking each other home to roost as the sky is darkening. And I love it. It’s still light. It’s night. This is my favourite time of year, when I can usually go out in a T-shirt, when everyone wants to be outside.

We are by the sea so occasional squalls are a hazard but not a dealbreaker. In order to perform my duties properly, I must be relaxed and regular in the vicinity of a sensitive cat. She had her meds in the morning, we hung out together, a bit of late afternoon play, evening dinner and she might get a tiny bit of overnight biscuits although she was good this morning and didn’t get me up with the dawn.

I am looking towards my burgeoning haulage empire, having finally been paid for my Newcastle haul. A big old whack, even if most of it goes directly to staff. Still, nice to be a hub where money moves around. I’ll be able to pay myself back for the tip weight now. Which is excellent news.

Breakfast this morning at Cafe Rust, a treat, not an every day thing. I’m just happy to be in a peaceful place where I can learn my lines for the next little job. I learnt Gratiano here in a day so there’s precedent. Fluellen is prose though damn him, look you.

And at this rate I’ll be asleep before the sky is dark. Ahhh summer. I’ve been waiting for you. A quiet few days by the seaside, learning and plotting. I might have a job in Berlin coming in… Let’s see. For now I’ll just relax while I can.

Tessy is still getting used to me, but she likes it when I stroke her belly. That’s basically my job. Anything else and she’ll cut me.

‘appen I’m by the seaside again.

I didn’t really anticipate this, you know what I’m like with planning. Suddenly this morning I had to pack a bag for a week. Cat must be sat. I knew about this in plenty of time but somehow only packed this morning. I had this nice tape come in that’s bang on the money for me. It took all my thinking. I wanted to give it the time it needed. I sent a copy of the finished product to Minnie as she and Rhys provided the other roles as an audio track that I then edited for time. You lose the immediacy of a live actor if you’re working to a track, but actually you gain a huge amount. The reader will be an actor and will therefore send a smart line reading, and if there are interpretation options they might well record a few takes. Then you can edit the pauses. I’ve got it all sorted now. It’s fluent. iPad for sound. Lights for lights. Phone to record on selfie mode so I can monitor as I work. Twisted Wave on iPad to edit pauses and eventually live play the recorded voices – I tend to hold my iPad in one hand unless the shot needs both my hands. If you play the other characters through the recording device they might be louder than you. YouCut to edit.

Gone are the days where I had to fly back from Portugal early in order to do a commercial casting. And then the times when there were two castings in a day across town and the first one for FORCEFACE SPIKED CONDOMS is running late and you aren’t sure you want to be the face of spiked condoms really anyway and it’ll take you an hour to get to the theatre casting across town and if you don’t go in and say “Spongle spingle plop!” to camera with your serious face well and truly on, then the casting director will be pissed off with you, but if you stay then you’ll bruise the other job which is the career job and thus, really, the only one that matters in the final analysis.

I improvised a cunning studio with this tiny background I had ordered online. It needed to be in exactly the right place as it was so tiny that it could only just frame the shot. I tried to run with it, I gaffered a spoon to a fork and jammed the fork into a screw in the wall. Then I attached two riding crops gaffered together through a small hole below the straps of the background. I made it work, wondered if I was insane or a genius. Then after the very first take the whole thing collapsed when the screw got pulled out by gravity so I took a picture off the wall and did it against a slightly less clean background. Still looked great. My new LED lights are very handy, even if natural light is always better. I recorded this morning and it was grey so they helped. It’s a whole new world but there’s a joy in it. Karaoke self tapes … I got to act with Minnie, obliquely. I learnt it, I always do, but it can be consuming. I’ve got friends who swear by autocue, but I’m not getting enough auditions yet to make it necessary. Would be great if I was, eh?

Up early today and I haven’t done one of these power workshops since February. It’s a school in Brixton. I got there at 8am with my energetic armour on. I’ve had some hard ones in this area.

Turns out I was lucky. Year ten is not an easy age. The material I’m delivering is dry as a bone now. It used to be better, but now every inch of joy has been sucked from it by committees. I find myself in the room narrating my own process “They want me to read this, but actually let’s just see if you guys can guess based on the pictures…” “Oh and it’s this video now, someone was paid to make this video. Let’s see if the sound works.” They’ve improved the videos thank God, that’s one thing. There’s no coming back from playing year ten a video of a middle aged man in a hard hat who speaks like he’s inhaling frogs and starts every fantastically dull sentence with “and the interesting thing is…” I’m glad he’s gone.

I solved it with energy, my own energy, talking about energy. I spammed positivity at them and weirdly it stuck. I remember one time a few years ago I just said the word “power” about ten times in different ways until they all went quiet cos they thought I had had an aneurysm. That was a good workshop. Some of them started saying power back. Eventually they all did. They all said the word “power” a lot by the end of that workshop that time and it settled a very hard room. It isn’t the sort of trick you can often pull, but it worked in that particular dynamic thank God. I’ll likely never try it again. But… it’s a workshop about power. Their own power, electrical power, speaking truth to power. It got really sparky today again. I started to get some bold responses. I think in two hours they might have started thinking a bit more practically about energy, the world of work, the fact that life is coming sooner than they want it and they might be able to grab a lifeline when they can. And make some dolla!! Teacher took my number cos she wants me to come talk to the drama students about sustaining a career. Tough gig, and frankly I don’t want to charge the school what I’m worth so it’ll never happen.

My voice and my head were both absolutely overloaded by 11am. It’s almost Shakespearean when you are making up for dull material.

I have an audition due at ten tomorrow, a tape but one that makes sense for me. I was gonna do it today but it’s not in my head properly plus my voice is tired. I want my upper register for this tape. More and more these days my habit has been to wake up at crack of dawn and do a morning audition, get it in for ten. That’s the plan tomorrow. I’m trying to wind down already. Waiting for Tom B who is staying over so I can negotiate if he’s okay with an early start. I’m getting better at these tapes. But they still cost. I think the learning is in, I’ll drill it a few more times and then let sleep calibrate my brain.

Power. It’s an interesting word to say. Say it. Build it into your day. Full moon tonight. Power. Powah.