Month: July 2025

Tonight a little wooden room that smells of sauna, in Milmersdorf. We are 8 minutes from drop-off. Rhys and I will share twin beds tonight, but it’s worth it for the fact it is within budget and so close.

We went to the supermarket and loaded up with breakfast fruit and lunch sandwich materials, and the means to cook a tasty supper. This place has cooking facilities so we were able to go some way to counteract the meatiness that just inevitably closes in as one moves further east.

Our little Pace van is holding up nicely. Last time we used them the clutch fell out and we could have been royally fucked and then they charged us loads to fix an already damaged roller door, but they have a European breakdown option. H&H don’t let you bring a Luton to Europe.

This one feels solid. We ate up the miles.

Tonight she sleeps in this field and I’m pretty confident there aren’t enough weirdos in this area that she’ll come to harm. I like to back her up against something but there’s nothing so she’s a bit exposed. Two nights I wouldn’t allow, but it’s a Thursday so not likely to have pissed opportunists with access to tools and anyone else needs time to plan something like robbing a van.

The Germans can go on the list of annoying drivers. Nothing like as bad as the Saudis. But they have a bothersome habit. If you indicate to overtake a truck and there is a car ages behind that will definitely be able to maintain their speed and not be disrupted, the car will immediately floor it and start flashing their lights to stop you overtaking the truck. The road in front of every German driver belongs entirely to them and they must have it. It is a pattern that repeated over and over again.

Drop off tomorrow and then a night in Berlin. Then a load and the return journey. A long long drive, all said. I’m knackered but happy that the plan so far has worked.

I’ll enjoy a peaceful night here tonight. It is silent. We are in the woods. Not alone, many have built summer houses around us, but in a quiet place.

A single tube fare from Sloane Square to New Cross costs £3.50 now. The daily cap is £8.90. Journey time 45 minutes. Add a further 15 minutes each end for walking from my flat to the tube, and from the tube to Pace Van Hire, it is £3.50 for over an hour on a rush hour tube in summer.

When the tube fares were put up in summer, I found myself thinking: Saddiq is putting money in the pockets of Lime and Forest bikes.

I had some admin to do though so I considered an Uber. I lined up the journey. £29.99 for half an hour. I was tired. I clicked yes. 3 minutes into my wait time it told me I could have an Uber immediately for £37.99. “No thank you”, I said. 7 minutes into my wait time it was still ticking and refreshing the pick-up time, whilst telling me that there were loads of drivers in my area. Uber have gone like the download streaming models where you either pay or wait. I did neither. I was muzzy so I hadn’t thought about it but Brian said “Just get a Lime Bike.” I had momentarily forgotten that we are in 2025 and the things exist. It was the best idea.

Lime and Forest, this summer, are the best ways to navigate this city bar none. Bike was right outside my flat, it took me half an hour to get to the van hire, it did all the pedalling for me I just had to navigate.

This will change. Witness uber.

When I first started this blog I was in LA and Uber was at war with Lyft, and you could get a pool across town for a few bucks so long as you didn’t mind sharing a lot. In London Uber was trying to tank out the black cabs, so they were cheap as chips but also somehow everywhere as they were incentivising new drivers. You always end up with an atrocious driver who hates you, but the new standard with Uber is that your terrible driver costs pretty much the same as a black cab, and what you save you lose in waiting unless you bump up the fare to black cab prices as it will suggest periodically.

Lime bikes are owned by uber, and yeah sure in the end they’re a business. Right now they’re in the “Get people used to and happy with using us. Make them love us. Check they love us” phase of the business plan. I can guarantee you that that business plan has something like “Stage 5 : Fuck ’em up the arse! Take ’em for everything we can and more! Set fire to their vessel! Shiver me timbers! Arrrrr”.

With big money businesses building loyalty, it often feels like cooking a relationship with a sociopath. “Hi, I’m your shiny lovely new life partner. You can depend on me. I’m gonna keep telling you I love you and asking you to say if you love me too. Even if you’re not sure, I am. Oh you love me? Great. Why not change your habits completely! Tell your friends how great I am. Start to think I’ll always be like this. Isn’t this wonderful? Rely on me. You think it’s wonderful? I love you forever. You love me forever? Yay! *SWITCH* take take take take take take take take take take take take take take take Hey baby you love me remember take take take EAT THE REMAINS” I’m watching you, Lime. But right now I … I like you? Um… Eek

400 minutes to be used in 30 days, for £36.99. It’s competitive. It isn’t too much, it isn’t too little. When I’m back I’ll probably buy it for August.

But that price says it is 70% off so that’s what they’ll gradually add, and more. The base price if you use one of these things without prepaying? It’s already absurd. Never do it. Always prepay, you can do it by you bike. But… there’s the part of the game we haven’t seen yet, when people get used to using them enough that they can fuck us. I hope we never get there. If they can sustain business around here, they have opened summer London up in a way I have never seen before. Bikes you don’t have to lock that are all over the place and power themselves. But I fear that this is the nice stage. They’ll have shareholders and this is late stage capitalism. At some point they will have to go nuclear, win or lose.

I moved one out of a parking space the other day and it went red and shouted at me. They often make everyone park in one place and make a zone no go if there’s a march or something, to stop people having them on the march as it might be bad optics. They sometimes make you go miles to park. When the power assist is gone they absolutely suck. Lime can’t have it be a good bike when the chances of it getting dropped or kicked over or thrown in the river are so high. I often see them with missing pedals etc, still available for hire.

But… this might be the summer of the electric bike in London, before stage 5 just makes them another unpleasant part of the landscape.

It’ll take a while perhaps for Stage 5, cos these bikes are still NEW. On bike lanes, the crowd of Malcolms all have things to say about us as we ride unhelmeted past their lycra-clad bony angry chins. The average vocal ability of a lycra-lout is pretty low thankfully, as they all have vocal tension in the throat, so you can’t really hear what they’re droning at you as you pass, but you know it’s negative cos you’re on a new thing and they are a cyclist in lycra. Plus you probably just logically ran a light where you disrupted literally nobody and they had stopped.

It’s not just the lycra-louts hating them though. “This shouldn’t be near our pavement,” the territorial lot who also hate new things, they are gonna be trying to campaign to have them stopped. “We didn’t have these in the nineties on our pavements.” It’ll lead to the company having more expenses which of course they will pass to the customers in charges. This city is a melting pot. It is full of crazies. And I love it as it changes, and right now this new thing is a good thing. And I got to my van hire quicker than any other way would have been possible, for £3.99. I’ve got a minute left.

Hey ho.

New head new head. Scrape off the old one. This new job ain’t about magic. Grass is just grass rather than the potential of spellcasting. I don’t have to remember verse and try to listen. Instead I have to just think about how to load up a van well enough that it all gets to Germany nicely.

These are good people who have asked me to move things about. I’m not worried about them being arsehole clients etc. But I’m trying to do the best job I can for them because I actually give a fuck. That’s a good place to be, perhaps.

It’s expensive. Vans and fuel but also people. Today I just had 3 people working, tomorrow will be more. Today we just protected things. Tomorrow we carry everything out, and load it into a van. And then I’m driving it all a long long way, so gonna need to be clever with ratchet straps.

This evening I took a bit of time out to remember how I used to negotiate this city. It was John’s birthday, my old Busky Marley. He’s an extremely talented man and someone I genuinely adore. We all bundled to a pub in Southwark and actually it was a good age mix cuz he’s a broad heart and has room for so much. We remembered a day of summertime day drinking in York when we went on the merry-go-round and I pretended I was his father. We remembered a night for my random birthday when I was stuck in York and we went to bobbalobba and Tiggy happened and it was glorious.

I waited long enough for Tom to get there. As soon as he arrived I discreetly left cuz I have much sleep to do and you can tell by the previous paragraph that John and I don’t do sleep very well. That York birthday night I had a train at 8am and we shared his double bed by the station. I peeled myself stealthily away at 7.30 and just made it. Dan was on the same train, my co-star. I was in a terrible state.

This evening I left in time, and had a lovely evening. Tomorrow lots of carrying. Then loads of unknown.

I’m happy I took the time to see my old friend. That’s the London thing. It’s what pays back for the cost of living here – getting the accessibility of new and old friends. It was a lovely night. I met someone who might be posher than I am.

It’s half past eight and I can barely keep my eyes open. Driving to Berlin is gonna be relaxing. I’m looking forward to it. Right now all I want to do is snooze.

Before the show yesterday, a challenge from a member: “When we make Jupiter, rather than pretending to summon the king of the gods, what would it be like if we genuinely tried to actually summon the king of the gods?!”

Olli up on the willow balcony wrapped in a Welsh flag, a very full soundscape, eighteen people and an audience trying hard and earnestly to make some magic, and as she spoke her last word, rain. Just a flash of it, breaking through the clouds, the only rain all night and just a light summer rain. A touch of the old thunderer, wondering why the fuck nobody did that for so long. “Juno, get the ambrosia out, something’s happening in Wales!” Just for a moment, some magic.

This morning I woke up late in my tent. Stumbled into the house for coffee. Took the tent down. It’s damp but not wet wet, hopefully it’ll be ok when I pull it back out. I was in slight survival mode as I loaded up two passengers and began the long drive back to London. If only it wasn’t so far away, that place. It has been a joy though, to be back there again. Many times now, a beaten path, a happy place, a light.

I had a hot bath. First time I’ve had a proper scrub for a few days. My ability to stay awake, to think, to be even slightly useful – it’s all fading. Brian and Maddy are watching The Sopranos, Tom will be staying in the living room, I don’t think I can be sociable any more than I can focus on a story. I think I’m gonna let the heat take me into dreams and maybe I’ll see you there. I can scrub my brain a little now, rearrange things, let the steam out, start to relax. Phew.

Good lord. We did that. 18 actors. 3 Factory debuts, and 4 if you count Idey. She’s nine. Nell’s daughter. I gave her a piece of paper at the start of the show, with a cue and one line on it. When it came to her cue she walked with great acuity to the stage, took her place, delivered her line without script. Then she waited to be told to leave, but her character isn’t, the scene just ends. And when her scene ended, she exited. I was waiting to say well done when she came off.

It is mildly terrifying to think that last time I met Idey was here at The Willow Globe nine years ago. I was Provost among others, Nell was Isabella. Measure for Measure. She played Isabella while heavily pregnant. That makes for some interesting things. I met her daughter in a belly. Then nine years later she did an acting for us.

One of our members today played the queen and took her daughter with her into all the scenes. She’s 18 months old, and one of the best ways to make sure she’s quiet is to have her on the breast, which helped but: “Are you going to put me in the bin?” she asked at one point, shortly after she just got bored of the whole ‘we are in a pretend world’ dynamic. “Never work with children or animals,” went the advice from the oldschoolturningtricks actor crowd. Cos the children and animals are always gonna be more interesting than someone who isn’t listening and is making clever noises with their voice.

We love children and animals at The Factory and I’m thrilled at what that little girl who was just in her own authentic world brought to the thing we were doing. And yes we care deeply about voice. But we also care deeply about meaning and not about doing things that sound or look impressive and have none. The child enhanced the show.

We’re a family. A huge huge family now, of passionate and geeky people who just… give a fuck. It is so vast to know I’m part of it, as it never ceases to challenge me. Plus friendship.

Today’s show I was feeling a bit pissed off with myself for not having been to enough sessions beforehand. But I knew I needed to be here. They trusted me with a few small parts and by halfway through I was disappointed in myself, so I made a weird strong offer at the very end on impulse for Soothsayer. It landed thank fuck. Redeemed myself. Turns out I need to have at least tried a strong offer to feel like I’ve properly done my job with The Factory. I was being too coy, lost my confidence momentarily. This is why I’m part of this group.

I’ll have to pack up and go tomorrow morning, a very different venture is in the offing for a week. It’s time to plug back in to the room before everyone goes to bed. Absolute joy.

I’m sitting here in Doldowlod and wondering how many times I’ve been lucky enough to be here. So many times over so many years. One year I camped when COVID was still pernicious. This evening I’m camping voluntarily. There’s a refurb of the upper floor. There aren’t enough beds.

This land is powerful. And this house is solid. People who haven’t been in a big old house frequently want to try and feel it is haunted, I see people do it when I’m here. This place is a science house and it is about as haunted as Misty the cat. It’s just big and old, full of portraits and clocks, stone and panels, creaking floorboards and noisy things. I used to say that Eyreton would talk at night. It was another safe house, much smaller than this one but… Big houses like to be part of the conversation. If there’s strangeness it’s usually the house, not the supernatural.

So I’m camped just outside. It’s wet. I’m not thrilled with myself for agreeing to this. But with no time to go to sessions, I knew it was the only way. And actually I’m looking forward to waking up on this land.

“It’s a thin place,” the vicar once said to me about The Willow Globe. He’s right. Phil and Sue have activated magic that was already on the land. It is exactly the right place for Shakespeare.

Tomorrow there’ll be Cymbeline. “Don’t give me a big part I’ve got no time”. I’m Soothsayer and Frenchman. Like Henry last week that’s a prose part and a verse part. Soothsayer is verse so he already lives in my elbow. Frenchman is prose. I’ll say it, I think, at the right point and correctly. It’s a smaller part than Philharmonous.

I love that the Soothsayer is named by a character. Philharmonous. Bringing all the sounds together. But the script calls him Soothsayer. His role is more important than his name. He gets one of my favourite “unnecessary Shakespeare character-giving” lines.

“I saw Jove’s bird, the Roman eagle, wing’d

From the spongy south to this part of the west,

There vanish’d in the sunbeams: which portends—

Unless my sins abuse my divination—

Success to the Roman host.”

What’s the prophecy, prophecy bloke?

Yeah so I saw this bird, and you know it stands for the Romans and it came up from where those absorbent fuckers live and into where we are and then instead of the bird I could see nothing but brightness, so this means – UNLESS I’VE FUCKED UP MY OWN MAGIC BY *!THE SPECIFIC THINGS I’VE BEEN DOING, ACTORS CHOICE!* – Romans gonna win.

I think of Jane Seymour in Live and Let Die, fucking things up for a generation of querents by playing to an idea that tarot is magic. But no matter how much the expression of the cards in that film pisses me off, there’s an interesting connection to something Shakespeare must have been aware of. She can’t read cards accurately anymore once Bond has had sex with her. “Unless my sins abuse my divination.” I wonder how old the idea is that we need to be pure to do magic? Certainly we can’t be part of the everything…

Anyway, it’s half twelve. I don’t think my tent has blown away. Everyone else is abed, I’m awake to write this in the house before hitting the tent.

Goodnight. Wish me good luck and a not too cold and wet night.

Slowly the mist is clearing although I can’t help thinking I’m overlooking something.

This morning was in The Balcony Room, giving a little talk about the history of the building. The reason behind it, the theft, the fire, the gap, Sam and then a whistle stop through the artistic directors up to Michelle. I get to mention my dear departed friend and teacher Diana Devlin, whose part in the campaign to make the building a reality needs to be remembered. I even got to mention my old school, who performed in the earthworks in 1993. It was well received. Another thing ticked off. As the ticks get ticked the head clears but I’m still a tiny bit overextended. Cramming lines again today and I’ve reached saturation point and they still aren’t fluent but there are two more sleeps so that’s ok. Tonight they’ll all reassemble. Plus I had to hold a couple of scenes in my short term for a tape playing a right old douche. Got out a regency frock coat and vintage riding crop for it. It is now in the can and edited and sent so that learn will get dumped by the 4am dream fairies to make room for more Cymbeline. It’s gonna be ok and I’ve just got to book the van and the first night out and the channel cross and I’m gonna be golden.

This evening I sent some invoices and Lou cooked dinner. It’s her evening off. She’s in bed as I write, nice and early. I’m in the living room watching Brian shoot things on VR. I’m trying to force more Cymbeline into my head but it just isn’t holding any longer so I thought I’d write this as something different for a moment.

Oh and I stopped by Rita’s flat on the way home from The Globe. Turns out I’ve got a diploma in being an SGI Buddhist which is almost as brilliant as it is pointless. Just level 1, which mostly involves having a cursory knowledge of the practice. Got a long way to go but a step is a step.

Being overextended is not the best time to make decisions like “Do you want to be involved in the Old Harrovian production of Julius Caesar?” “Yeah fuck it. I’ve got Marc Antony half learned anyway and never got to play him at The Factory.” September.

Glutton for punishment? Maybe. But I came within a hairs breadth of agreeing to get up at 6 tomorrow to drive to Chatham and shout about gas for two hours then drive back to London, and panic about lines before I drive to Wales and sleep in a fucking tent. I’ll still do the second half. But Chatham would have killed me. I said no, even though it was physically possible. Can I have a cookie?

I suspect a number of people reading this who have learnt my ways will be surprised to hear that, up until tonight, I have never eaten a lobster thermidor. Finally this evening I popped my thermidor cherry.

Gastronomically the day started very badly, with a strawberry yoghurt and a banana at the Medway Premier Inn. I slunk into Bergman and took myself back to The Hundred of Hoo where there’s a school that sounds like a sci-fi entity. We did a load of experiments that help explain the properties of gas and various sciencey engineering basics. We filled a pleasant morning. Then as the weather finally broke I drove myself back to London and mumbled lines to myself while ordering packing materials on Amazon and trying to arrange people to help with a self tape tomorrow.

The partitioning is starting to overlap. I need to clone myself. Instead I’m just feeling mildly schizophrenic. And still, there’s always time for lobster.

West End perks, innit. Lou booked a half price meal at J Sheekeys and we went and sat at an oval table after the show, right by the star of the show and a much loved director. There were some Americans in there as well, flying the flag for embarrassingly awful Americans in London. They were shouting at the top of their voices to each other all night. I tuned them out and got the thermidor.

Napoleon is tangled up in the origin of this dish, I’m told. Thermidor, for the hot months. Take all the lobster out, mince it with mustard and cheese, put it all back, charge a millionty twelve hundred pounds for it.

I got mine half price and it was worth it. I wouldn’t want to pay full just as the food to money ratio is out of whack and I’m a gannet. But tonight it was perfect and we both ate handsomely late at night and left feeling happy. When I get my first West End gig I’ll probably spend my wage in there.

Home now and an alarm set for early so I can get my facts straight about the history of the globe before filming a self tape and drilling lines for the weekend while booking vans and accommodation and workers. No time. No time. Where’s my PA when I need one? Maybe that would be a better spend than all the lobster thermidor.

I’m still flooded but life is a little tiny bit easier now. I’ve been in Kent today doing physics. My science teachers at school were largely completely uninspirational which is upsetting considering the reputation of the school. Today all I had to do is run a workshop that involved me trying to get a balloon full of water sucked into a glass juice bottle using fire.

My dad used to enjoy that bit of physics. Get a plate full of water and a glass, put a tealight on the plate. Put a penny in the water. “How do you get the penny out without getting your fingers wet?” Light the tealight, put the glass over the tealight. The water will be sucked into the glass by the vacuum caused by the tealight burning all the air and unable to pull new air. The penny on the plate will no longer be underwater. Science.

This is a new workshop about gas. We had three volunteers. It was hard work, with year 7, but a very good school. In many ways I was very very relieved.

So there’s a lot that I’d want done better next time. But it was a good first shift.

I don’t really get the chance to do these workshops much these days. I’m pretty clear without them. They tick me over very nicely though and damn I’m good at them now, do anything enough and you learn it. I can engage young people as a wild card even if it’s about fucking gas.

My best friend from school is an engineer. I still wonder how it was that these people who were supposed to be training a new generation of engineers couldn’t find a way to interest me. I am very easily interested in this sort of thing, but I guess I was always gonna be an actor. Adult life has taught me how incredible and vast science is. My god the things we have learnt over lifetimes of experiment and transfer and experiment and transfer. So much stuff that feels like magic until we understand it and even then still feels like magic.

I was a difficult fucker at school. Happy to hold my hand up to that. If I thought my teacher was stupid I pretty much entirely wrote them off. God forbid they were reading from a book. I still love a few old teachers, the clever ones. I think of them now.

Now… As I occasionally go into schools for science.  Who could’ve predicted that. But as I tell them, there are gaps between acting jobs and if you need to work to feel valid like I do then this sort of thing is perfect. I’m happy to share that. Some of them might have ha de yawn ha similarly to me. Like everyone forever in the whole world twice.

This’ll be my second ever night in Rochester. First one was my motorbike theory test when I thought I was gonna scream up to Oxford every night on a big bike from rehearsals.

“You should sell this stuff,” says Mel. I don’t like it. But maybe…

Here’s me with all this costume. I’m paying to store it. And sure, there’s been a bit of money back just through people knowing I’ve got it and asking for stuff that’s there. But if I’m not careful it will become an albatross.

Loads and loads of costume.

I really want an office space where I can set up a theatre company that has a sideline renting costumes. Pie in the sky? Maybe but if you don’t shoot you don’t hit. There’s a lot of work between the idea and the execution and I know all too well with the Yawn D H Yawn that I poo good ideas like a clockwork toy but I never see any of them through.

Still, we have made inroads into cataloguing it. There’s so much stuff. It’s wonderful, but the hoarder doesn’t want this to become a negative thing. Forgetting is expensive. Storage is an empire about monetising delay. There will need to be a “now” when I actually decide about all the costumes. But until then, for a while, I’ll pay to delay.

I’ve got a movie coming out in September which might help things along. Please universe. And it might be a long time before I have the headspace to drive a costume hire business. But surely something… Let’s see. For now though, damn I’m busy busy busy.

Today was a snatched day getting the globe stuff out of the old street building. Tomorrow is an unfamiliar workshop in Kent. Then I’m overnighting and another workshop the day after. And around this I’m getting ready for a show on the weekend with The Factory and a history talk at The Globe this week. Oh hell. Oh spite.

I’ll make my theatre company and make sense of this costume in the fullness of time. I’m just learning about making things happen right now. I keep getting asked to make things happen on a larger scale than the time before, and I move towards it…

I’m very happy, lost in all this. Hard to stop and see Lou, tonight is a rare opportunity. I am okay being flooded. I’ve learnt the trick. Partitioning. I put it in my diary to make sure it is logistically possible. If it is, I just know that when it is time I’ll apply fully. But things like this big drive I booked today, it needs prep. It needs me to be ahead of myself. It’s hard when it isn’t immediate for me, but insha’Allah. Plus lines lines lines. I need 3 sleeps.. I’ve had none on the latest gig and it’s on Saturday.