Month: August 2025

Sitting at the top of the hill in the sun, I’m surprised to notice a stone circle. It feels very old. I knew it when I was at school here, but largely unremarked at the time. I was still making sense of the practical observable world. Ancient places of power barely registered. Mum used to drag us to a dolmen in Jersey and it was just a fucking rock.

Eight fucking rocks in a circle, near the top of the hill but shaded. What’s the etymology of Harrow? Is it from Hare? Perhaps, I have seen it argued, it comes from a heathen shrine. Heathen Shrine on the hill.

I sat with the rocks for a while sharpening my paganism once more. I asked them their names. The Hare Stone presented itself. Marking clockwise from there I found them to be Finnstone, Beestone, Flystone, Rollstone, Shadstone, Edgstone and Boystone. How had I not been talking openly with them as a boy? They’re eloquent. Neglected. Off on a limb.

This area though was generally pretty important for stones. We are near the Weald Stone. It’s a hill in a flat area, these places have been important since people were people. They’re places where the earth power comes up and raises us with it. The school was founded when everyone was busy pretending it was all about the Jewish myth and the Nazarene prophet, which largely ignores stones. I suspect someone left it out of a vague inherited respect for the ancient, but nobody attached any great significance to it. My tiny memory of it is someone saying: “If you challenged someone to a fight, they waited in the circle and you had to jump in from the wall.” Dull. But that’s boys and I’m sure the stones would have liked a bit of blood and emotion. Gotta charge up somehow.

I lay on my back in there a while. Have just been doing the funeral oration. Friends Romans Countrymen. God it’s wonderful to do. It feels like home. Muscular, emotional, full of life and joy and pain and rage. It’s a hell of a piece of writing. Charged myself up in the stone. It’s a nice way to spend the weekend, and now with the students away I can appreciate this extraordinary old and strong place that I ignored as a teenager.

There in The Speech Room at Harrow I found myself working through the lines of Marc Antony in 3.1 of Caesar. Tomorrow morning this’ll be 3.2. Honestly they are some of the most evocative lines in Shakespeare. Trying to find a truthful build through the prophecy that lets him cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war? That’s the sort of thing that requires life behind it. I’m up for it now. But it isn’t going to be a free lunch. Antony does bollocks all in the first half. He doesn’t need to, his friend who he adores is running the show. He only clicks into gear when those idiots do him in. But when he clicks in he clicks in hard. And for a period in the middle of the play his heart is exposed by the shock of losing his best friend, and simultaneously his ambition is exposed knowing that he could lose everything he’s built if he doesn’t act smartly and decisively. 3.1 and 3.2 you see conflicting sides of a true statesman, coming to terms with a personal loss while establishing how to exploit things to his advantage.

I’ve only got a few weeks to learn this and learn it well. There’s only a few sessions to stage it. Some of the Old Harrovian Players are still actors, others have never been and never would be. There are at least two octogenarians in this show. One of them is in the House of Lords and asked if he could play the Soothsayer. He won’t have any rehearsal, but I’m sure we will all beware the ides of march.

I’m here as one of the actual practitioners. There are always a few of us. I thought I’d walked away for good but I’m sad and want something to focus on and I’ve always wanted an excuse to learn Marc Antony as those speeches always get me – the structure of the funeral oration with the mix of rhetoric and heart, no surprises it’s famous, it is made up of heart. But therefore it needs to be known by heart. So there’s an end to my spare time for a few weeks and that’s probably for the best as I’m not sure I’d be able to look at myself if I finished Skyrim by the end of the summer.

It’s going to be a nice bunch. Caesar is a Guildhall lad which helps with the easy love.

I’m home. Early in tomorrow. Weird but delightful. Onwards.

I should’ve brought my book with me. I arrived to pick up two keyboards at 11am and didn’t actually get them into my car until just after 3pm.

I went and had a coffee in The Railway Tavern next to West Hampstead, and then spent much of the early afternoon enjoying the late summer heat up in north London. Picking up so late I figured I’d wait until after six to drop off as then I could avoid paying Congestion Charge, so the whole deal took most of the day. Eventually I pulled up in a motorcycle bay opposite The Arts and had Maddy and Brian on hand to sling everything into the theatre. Home at half six and feeling the worse for wear. Not that I’ve had a busy day, I’m just tired at the moment. I think I’ll have to do that thing where I go through my diet. This isn’t getting any better and I don’t want to shuffle off from neglect at 50. I’ve had this programmed in by my health nut dad. “So long as you start really caring about your health at 50 you can live your life until then.” I’ve hit the magic number.

It’s hot in the flat tonight. Boo is hunting flies. Last night I dreamt she learnt how to clone herself so she was probably running all over me. It is the Lions Gate. 8/8 and the moon is high behind my head as I write. A good time to be making pledges to myself about a healthier existence going forward. I don’t HAVE to eat so badly. I just do.

Let’s have some good work coming up. Let’s get healthy and fit and make some money too, eh? Two little auditions came in today, both due by Tuesday. I see no reason why I can’t get both of them. And tomorrow I’m off to connect with my Alma Mater and throw around a spot of Shakespeare. Despite recent setbacks I’m gathering again. There’s still fight left in the old dog, I’m gearing up for another round.

This moon is big and bright tonight, right behind my head. It’s making me feel weird. Brian got an early bed and is convinced he’s got something contagious. I feel heavy and slow and I’m coughing again, but I’m convinced I’ve got advancing decrepitude. One of us might be right. Early bed will help, especially as it is hot and the cats are active in the moonlight. I can’t imagine myself sleeping like a log but I’ll try.

Thinking about fitness and money. I need to get some acting work soon. Day job stuff is a little thin on the ground suddenly. This might be my favourite time of year but that’s partly due to a history being lucky at this time of year, so I’ll need to get lucky, eh?

Right now it’s just me and the cats. I went and booted up Skyrim on the Steamdeck today just as it felt like things were slow enough that I could do it for a while. Skyrim takes weeks and weeks but it is the definition of a classic game, and I’ve never given it the time as I know how much time it needs. I’ll work my way slowly through this Nordic tale. One of my old friends saw on my Steam activity that I was playing it and sent me a message “I used to be an adventurer like you. Then I took an arrow in the knee.” That’s a decent enough in joke… It’s a very strange game. This evening my character went on a bender and sold somebody’s goat to a giant and now I’m trying to make things better. There are plenty of moral choices in the game but very few moral consequences. It was made at a time before people with agendas started making videos of one option as if it was the only option and putting them on YouTube: “This game forces everyone to sell goats to giants, look here is me doing it, it must be the only option.”

They’ve just released a simplified broken version of Disco Elysium on mobile, stolen from the devs and with all the interest removed. It’s one of the most fascinating titles from the last decade if you get the Final Cut, but for mobile they’ve cut the teeth out. It needs to have those teeth to be the challenging sad weird piece of story that was released some years ago by excellent developers none of whom will get a penny from the mobile port as the studio has gone full Sugarman.

Games are fascinating and broken right now. I’m happy to either play none or play old ones. There’s more character and style in most of the old ones. BG3 excepted.

But this is why I need to get fit. Games don’t build body. I’m talking to some personal trainer type human tomorrow who works in the park over the road. I’m gonna try to start going to yoga classes with Lou. Time to remember the old bod.

And time to try and make some money. The things are connected loosely. Nobody is gonna pay me to gather nirnroot and kill dragons (Skyrim), or overcome the conflicting voices in my head and my own self loathing and try and work out who I am (Disco Elysium).

A spot of driving tomorrow and I do have some lines to learn. All is well.

I’m still dealing with binmen and rats. Apparently a form needed to be lodged after I spoke to Freddie the rodent man. I have to lodge it not him. Technically my block caretaker has to lodge it but he’s on annual leave. So I had a go today.

The bins go out tomorrow and the guys aren’t going there unless they have to. Path of least resistance. The room is full again. I went off up RBKC to try and talk to someone, ended up on a dedicated internal phone line inside the town hall for half an hour. I was watching the interesting folk of the borough coming and going with their problems. One lovely old guy who was homeless for two years and is now having to do so much admin to keep the place he’s been housed in that he is almost done with it. The guy I spoke to was helpful when I eventually spoke to him. He was probably upstairs when I was down.

I’ve given loads of time to this problem that is only mine because of the habit I have of making things my problem when I know that otherwise they have been disguised by a “Somebody Else’s Problem field”. (“An SEP is something we can’t see, or don’t see, or our brain doesn’t let us see, because we think that it’s somebody else’s problem. That’s what SEP means. Somebody Else’s Problem. The brain just edits it out, it’s like a blind spot.”) Douglas Adams put it well, but I’m immune to them. Much of what I do on events – the stuff that makes people call me back – that’s because I make it my problem. “The Somebody Else’s Problem field… relies on people’s natural predisposition not to see anything they don’t want to, weren’t expecting, or can’t explain.” That’s never been me. Apart from my own mess.

I don’t want to see this rubbish problem in my block, but I can, so I’m fixing it. The flies come in through my window and they wouldn’t be breeding here if the bin men were taking the bags out.

I am paying a huge amount per month in service charge, and I’m doing most of the work right now. There’s some serious fuckery taking place here… But that’s another blog.

Glorious night this evening, with Brian and Maddy, finally seeing The Play that goes Wrong. It went wrongwrong tonight, there was a genuine understudy takeover halfway through. But it’s a glory too. It has run and run and spawned copies and with good reason.

I wonder how long that actor might have held the “ledger” thing until what happened happened. There are some really smart moments of durational comedy. This is something that has run and run now, the chaos looks chaotic but it’s tightly practiced. It still feels fresh enough. I enjoyed myself and it was a lovely way for the three of us to be social in The West End. I love this city. There’s so much variety, even if people are lazy and entitled and slow and noisy. A plumber came and serviced my boiler and he wanted to buy some of my random statues… I pointed out to him they were resin not bronze.

It is much quicker to get to Smithfield Market from mine if you go by an ebike rental than any other means. It’s summer, the first of August, high summer, the month named after the emperor who was in charge when Jesus popped up. He was another Libra/Virgo cusp. Like him, this is my favourite month.

“Everything dries up in August,” is received information.

Back when it was in person auditions, I would finally start to get seen for things in August because they needed a me type and the ones with the major agents were all up at Edinburgh so they couldn’t go to Soho and do something humiliating for the possibility of money. Now it’s self tapes, so I guess the same old same old is more possible. But I’m still hopeful. It has always been a lucky month, August. I tried to ignore the poster for Cumbers and Coleman once again reinforcing the idea that there are only about twelve actors. I’m here, there are jobs, something is going to give. Yes it’s the same the same the same forever forever forever. But we hope.

I have finally auditioned for a theatre that you’ve heard of. For over twenty years, and now having worked at the RSC, I have never auditioned for a theatre you have heard of. Last month I did. I’ve got a recall too, yay. Hopefully there’ll be some work at the end of it. Thank fuck. This industry is cruel, casual and arbitrary. I graduated in 2002. I’ve worked loads and with excellent practitioners. Something’s rotten in the state of Denmark. But …! A good theatre up north put me on the list for an actual audition. Normally it’s a straight offer or nothing. Maybe I’ll be able to go through a process and fit into a company and do the thing I am here for. That’s what I dreamed when I left Guildhall, but the auditions never ever came. Let’s see how this first one goes, twenty years too late. I’m used to disappointment as there’s been plenty of film stuff which is tricky. That was my first job, a film. Is the industry really that short sighted that film people can’t audition for theatre? I can report back with confidence: “YES.”

I went to Smithfield to hang out with James. James and I did theatre back in the day, for people you’ve never heard of. I turned down a ridiculously lucrative corporate training opportunity “you’ll never get this again” because of press night for a show where I was paid virtually nothing, up in Surbiton. Sliding doors, but I knew I wanted the performer life, I needed it. James was in that show. Now he does a proper job but he was there at the nexus even if he didn’t know about it. I turned down guaranteed big bucks for … for this and I’m still struggling.

Today we ate at St John’s though and I’m happy to be part of £200 for lunch as I’ve got so very good at dayjobberising. We had a whole crab and loads of good stuff and a bottle of wine. I am not broke at the moment but fuck, I feel the lack of that training job I turned down. Life, eh?

This evening I went to the press night of something that is part of the problem. This is the sort of thing I was swept up into, where people eat your heart and your work. Loads of wonderful clever and skillful actors who are probably on an hourly rate because it is technically facilitation, and their undeniable skill is being vampirised by production. It was incredibly well produced, for sure. It was glorious. The fault was in the execution, the creative side. Whoever is marshalling these underpaid workers hasn’t quite got their finger on what makes things interesting for actual real people. Ok, I asked lots of workers what their hourly was. The carnival people are on less than I thought anyone worked for these days. The bar aren’t on much more. It’s barely a living wage. I cannot cannot respect anyone, particularly in something trying to pretend to be theatre, when they don’t pay their workers properly, particularly when the ticket price is tiered. You get a special wristband if you pay more. That means the actors do more with you if you’re rich. No amount of enthusiasm will get you as an audience over that border it’s posh wristband or it’s steerage. That’s capitalism embedded in an industry that has always been free of hierarchy and has to be to work. It makes me sick to my stomach. And suddenly I see why this thing they still weirdly call “immersive” instead of “tiered” has appealed to all the various narcissists I’ve known over the years. It’s a new form of hierarchy: lords and serfs. It’s a fucked model and it came out of goodwill.

Burn it.

And I’m off to bed.

Home and up early to lay down a tape. Trying to keep it understated as I get the sense this one has been round and round and the notes ask for it to be understated. I was tired though. Got it in 2 minutes before the deadline and my agent downloaded it almost immediately. Just in time. Sad to miss the last night of the festival, but prioritising in person auditions have caused me far more inconvenience back in the day. I will still fly the flag for the self tape audition. I got most of the festival.

Then I had mistaken today for a bank holiday and having discovered it wasn’t, I saw no reason not to change my plans. So I watched all the highlights for the final test match at The Oval, England vs India. It has been an amazing series but the Indian team stepped up at the end of yesterday and today and they worked so incredibly hard to force the series into the third ever drawn test series in the history of test matches. They won game 5 by 8 runs. Sure, Chris Woakes came on with his arm in a sling and knew he couldn’t face a ball. It was nail biting stuff and if Woakes hadn’t taken that fall before his first innings he would easily have gotten the 8 runs over two innings that we needed, but that’s the game. Largely I’m happy to see a drawn series if I look at the quality of the matches throughout. Absolutely brilliant cricket, as it should be. I only like test cricket, I like it because it is an endurance game, and I respect both sides utterly in that match up.

To honour the Indian victory I bought a great big takeaway Dishoom for Brian Maddy and I. I ate until there was no room left and there’ll be stuff to heat up tomorrow. Even after just a couple of nights in a field it has been lovely having access to my soft comfy bed and the friendly weird cats.

Tomorrow back in the world. Today was recovery. Worst possible time for an audition, when you’re knackered, but I’m okay with what I sent – perhaps lacking in spark but these are unnamed characters, they don’t want spark, they are doing a job in the script that pushes the story. I made choices that hopefully reflected that.  I’m back to the drawing board now so I’ll take all comers.

Home home home! I’m absolutely bushed. It was cold in that field at night.

I woke with the light cooking me out, trying to lie in, but out by about half eight. Looking up at the sky I could see it was about to rain. No more festivals this year, I didn’t want to pack up a damp tent for a season, so I took advantage of the window of dryness. Much activity in the campsite as everyone in our little band had the same idea.

We were loaded into the cars in record time. I’ve never had everyone so ready to leave so early on a Sunday. I’ve left on Sunday a few times over the years, it just becomes necessary if life things are happening. But this year we all did.

Gen is prosecuting tomorrow morning so she had to study the case, she set her laptop up in a sheltered area by the lake and worked all morning. Dedication. I got back onto the frankincense. I don’t know why that seemed the right thing to do but it really did. That was my festival thing this year, swinging a thurible full of incense. There were very few peaceful calm areas where I could set up and read tarot, so apart from a few very lovely readings for people it was largely just cleansing smoke. Next time I’ll bring bigger charcoal discs and a gauze, and I’ll have different cleansing smokes for different times. Sage on Friday, Palo Santo Saturday, Frankincense Sunday. That seems the right combination.

My fingers are a little tender now from poking hot things.

We watched a couple of acts today. Generally though the music isn’t the draw at Wilderness. If they get the big bands they attract the lager lot so they don’t get them. Let them go to Reading whilst we get the throwbacks and the kooky chilled trancey stuff. Sometimes it’s incredible. Bjork was off the scale a few years ago. Often there is something ethereal and delightful and weird, but this year if it was there I missed it. But I wasn’t in a very consuming mood. I wanted to kick back, but I also wanted to shift energy. No Wilderness Orchestra, which was a sadness. Another orchestra, and lots of people talking that perhaps we were supposed to know. I recognised some of them, and others could tell they were well known by the fact that they weren’t particularly trying to be engaging.

I’ve had a lovely few days and I do feel refreshed. I think the unexpected experience yesterday was net positive – even if at the time it was hard work. Good people. Still a lovely festival even despite the corporate takeover.

Everyone has gone on the ride. I thought I’d take the opportunity to write something. Supergrass is playing the end of their headline set. Much of the music has been a throwback this year, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. We weren’t feeling Supergrass though.

Today was a long long sunny day and I kinda called it a day of work even though I’m not officially on a walkabout this year. I spent the morning reading tarot for people and wafting a Frankincense censer around. Had some lovely interactions with strangers through those remarkable cards, and also saw some old friends. John Limb, bless his face, coming out at me when we were at the cricket.

I used to do the commentary at the horse racing here. The cricket is still going. It’s an attempt at making cricket more fun, largely by allowing people to streak. I think I’d have been fine if I hadn’t met lovely John, who crossed my palms with a mushroom. Sometimes they hit you hard. “It’s Hawaiian,” he told me. He didn’t say “It’s gonna blow your face off.”

I spent most of the afternoon lying on my back near the lake reading the messages in the trees and contemplating life the universe and everything. I think I’ve got it sorted now guys, if I only I could remember it…

It took me a long long time to come back, like weeks, 5 hours, forever? Eventually I walked back into my own skin and now they are all spinning in the air to the sound of Supergrass while I write to you here, oh constant reader.

Ride is coming to an end. Time to plug back into these glorious people in this happy place. Last night here until next time…

—

It’s very late, I thought I’d be asleep by now but there was good dancing that needed to be done and I had my glosticks and my Frankincense thurible. It’s amazing how comforting fucked people seem to find the smell of Frankincense. “It reminds me of childhood,” said many, which puts into perspective how much more secular we are becoming, generation to generation.

We are off into the festival.

We started an “overheard at the festival” group just as, from within the bubble, this festival and the clientele kinda puncture themselves on purpose.

“It’s funny cos the most hardcore place is the bubble tent” was one man this afternoon walking away from a slightly earnest we choir mistress.

“Would you mind stopping burning that next to the kids,” “It’s wood.”

“He told me he had a system with roulette and he kept on putting his arm around me and then he lost like sixty quid in a few minute.”

“I realised after I did it I thought oh God I’ve just given the ADHD kid caffeine and now I guess I’ve got to deal with it.”

“No she was the prime minister’s aide though so she was in a position to know…” (this mostly remarkable as it was a conversation at 4am walking past our tents.

“Yeah I wasn’t gonna do it and then I saw the twenny five k so I just … kissed everyone in the room.” “Everyone?” “Ya everyone.” There is no context in which this one makes sense…

“Oh these aren’t mushrooms these are fertility pills.”

These were just a few. It’s a fertile ground.

Tomorrow I’ll get to know people around the festival better doing my readings with Alice’s deck, just doing my way to add value, and find a connectivity at the same time. It’s a lovely practice, and well worn in these woods.

…

Trying to publish. Internet very choppy now. Send in the hounds.