Month: December 2025

Rudas is just down the hill from my friend’s pad. It is a bathhouse built around one of the many natural springs here in Budapest. In the morning, after a coffee, we drive there. Entry costs about £16.

They built this in about 1580 and much of it has barely changed since then. Generations of people have communed with the water spirits here. When we get there it is already pretty crowded but there’s space.

The main bath chamber is one huge dim room. We start in the saunas that gradually get hotter as you go deeper. Then a quick plunge and we get into the coldest bath. Each of the pools is fed by a different spring. The whole room whiffs of sulphur. Some of the springs are so complex with mineral that they have developed huge whorls of calcification around the feeder area. People lie and bob about in various states of torpor. There are 5 baths. The first four get hotter as you go. Then the fifth is body temperature, to readjust after the hottest one which is 42 degrees. By the time we have gone all the way round once I’m feeling absolutely whacked out. I almost fall asleep in one of them for a moment.

“My dad told me that the water is radioactive,” says Maté after an hour or so. “It’s probably good for us.”

It’s been so good to see Maté. We sat next to each other when we were told we had gotten into Guildhall. A shift in the life course, for sure. He works over here now. And he’s carved a good life for himself. This was always a flying visit, but despite the airmiles I’m very very happy to have made the effort.

Apart from Rudas, he showed me much of his town. It’s a good town, full of fine things. We have rested well and eaten well. Many dumplings.

From tomorrow it’s two jobs a day plus line learning for the next week. I didn’t have to go to Hungary to relax but it helped. In early afternoon I caught Mariann as well, a university friend, I haven’t seen her this millennium. Astonishing to think of the passage of time. If I break it down I know how busy I’ve been, but 25 years is a frightening amount of time. She was much the same. We had coffee.

I’ll be back to Budapest, back to the springs in spring I think. Now I’ve carved the path, I’ll carve it again and see Maté play his Hamlet in Hungarian. What a treat though to see him, his mum, his brother on this flying visit. To remember his dad. And he knew my mum, too, she was active meeting my friends when I was at college. I’m grateful for it now, for the shared memories she brought. For old friends and the passage of time.

I’ll be exhausted when we land though. And then I’ll have to drive home past that dastardly speed camera that is in process for me right now.

Last night I watched Gaslight in Hamburg. We don’t have much opportunity to see these chocolate box dramas these days. There’s a self conscious cleverness in the writing, the gender politics sit funny to a modern ear, everyone is at pains to distance themselves from things. Often the result in performance is a play that no longer works because everyone’s trying to modern it up. The English Theatre of Hamburg is letting the play sit in the era it was made. I was genuinely surprised there wasn’t a hatstand on the stage. This is a 1920’s show about the 1880’s. So it would have played like a piece today set in the 1980’s. There’s a sharing of delight in how backwards everybody was back then, and a smugness in the writing about how modern people understand theatre so much better. There are little jokes and tricks about staging and the fourth wall, the characters decide whether to go and see a comedy or a tragedy while the audience wonders which one they’ve gone to.

Five actors make it all. I think they’re being paid the same as the actors were when it was founded in the seventies. Still, nobody does theatre to get rich. My friend was playing the lead – she’s the reason I was there. She’s working really hard every night for the people of Hamburg.

The house was packed. Long curtain, tiered seating. The auditorium is very reminiscent of Frinton. They obviously don’t have a big storage unit though. A chaiselongue, some attractive pieces of brown furniture, but someone has gone down the AI art route. You have got to be really good with prompts to get away with that and they aren’t. There are three great big generic paintings that have no individual style and are saying nothing, ultimately generic, dead art. They take up a lot of space on the back wall, like vortexes of mediocrity sucking the beauty from the people breathing and feeling things so close to them. We used AI to bulk up Christmas Carol one year. 3D printed canvases. Adam took his time though to get things right. They looked good and it was them or a blank wall. I dunno though, you can get shitty old framed landscapes for virtually nothing all over the country. It’s not hard. Is there ever an excuse for making artistic humans share space with that dross? I like that the generation at school have started to use “That is AI!” as an expression of disappointment. “It’s RAINING! THAT IS AI!!!!” “You broke your phone? So AI for you.”

So the art on the walls was AI. But the show itself wasn’t AI – I was glad I made the effort. The audience was mostly German but they enjoyed the nuance and particularly enjoyed it when people talked about tea. “Let’s go and look at the funny English”. I like this of the people of Hamburg. It speaks well of them. There’s no German Theatre of Plymouth. Perhaps there would be an audience, but I doubt it.

I enjoy these things – we used to be able to see them all the time on regional tours. Does London Classic Theatre even still exist? They were one of the last outposts of it. Alastair at Original Theatre Company, but he’s been quiet lately too, or I’ve missed it. It is so easy to go under particularly with the cost of storage / warehousing. Very few people can be Sonia. Brian and Louis have spent decades of full time hard work and risk and disappointment and luck and joy to get to the stage they are at. If you can solve storage perhaps you can weather something like COVID as a small scale theatre company. Frinton are still going! But with your main income being ticket sales you’re fucked if you stop moving. I’ve often dreamt of making a theatre company, banking a few years in that, making work for people and joy for people. I’ve got the bare bones in a storage unit that’s costing me too much already. Perhaps it is something to turn my eyes to when I get back from America. We need the rep. It was how we all learnt. Now everyone is cutting their teeth in these large scale immersive shows where the audience is cattle and the actors are paid in lice.

For now I’m in the air again. Landing soon in Budapest.

Reisen schweinhaxe. (And disappointingly not oven baked potatoes on the other side.)

That roughly translates as “Huuuge Pigknuckle.” Think crackling on a Sunday roast. Double it. Chuck in some fat and some darker meat. Then add a bit more of it. With 2 kartoffelnoedels which I guessed would be giant gnocchi and yes… Dumpling probably a better call. Potato-noodles doesn’t really work. But that’s the feeling. Oh and some sauerkraut. A mouthful of it. Because veg.

I’m in Hamburg. I won’t be here for long.

I’ve been to three Christmas Markets already today. They are all crowded.

I was in the third row of the plane. John was one row ahead of me. He was drinking his easyJet moretti as we flew. I was still digesting my breakfast. John is in Hamburg for Christmas markets, although he’s likely to eat in McDonalds. Which isn’t a British restaurant, an irony that might be lost on John.

He used to be a marine. His dad was in the army. He has travelled. I didn’t expect to be in a conversation with John. But it sustained a long long fucking queue to get our passport stamped, even though we were first off our particular plane. I learnt a lot about him. He learnt nothing about me.

It started when we hit the queue. The EU nationals were flying though on our right. I didn’t really expect anyone to hear me when I hit the queue and said in an undertone “It’s what we voted for. Taking back control. That fucking bus and here we are.”

He initiated it. “Tell you what mate, yes, I did vote for it and you know why? Cos our laws were being passed through other places. We couldn’t have any of our own law anymore.” This started a whole long chat where I was pretty much entirely asking questions and John was answering in monologue form. I was trying not to lose him, so I thought questions were the best way, and then try and get them in the right order to spark thought. ‘It’s all so woke at the moment,” “I don’t know what woke means, I hear it loads and it seems to mean just … anything people don’t agree with, what does it actually mean, John?” “When we were young we could say anything. A fattie was a fattie. A ginger was a ginger. Now we have to tread on eggshells…” John doesn’t like the small boats. He doesn’t like the fact he can’t call people names anymore, “just in banter obviously, they never minded” (they did but you had the power John. This is what they call privilege. Thin privilege. Blue eyed blonde privilege. It’s still a thing, John).

He was likeable. He wasn’t a monster. He just wants to feel safe. “You travelled a lot as a kid, you still travel now. Do you still stand by your vote?” “No because it hasn’t been the way I thought it would be.”

Brexit was a fucking car crash for us. Europe, with togetherness, could have stood up still now as a global powerhouse. I still think John and his mates might have eaten some vatrushka before that vote. Russia doesn’t want united Europe. And they haven’t got it so hooray for them and John. Because the Johns of this world were cluelessly voting for a personal fantasy that varied from person to person. John didn’t know what he was voting for apart from that he wanted to continue to stand in his privilege.

I struggle on some points. He asked me just one question among his many answers and I couldn’t have answered it even if he’d let me. “Why do you think they go to all the danger and expense to cross the channel in boats, coming up north all that way? They’re safe in Italy. They’re safe in France, in Germany, all over. But they still risk their life and get on a boat here? Why?” “I don’t know.” “It’s obviously our benefit system and the fact they get free hotels…”

I’m not sure John. I think we might have a very familiar language… I don’t know though. There are so many issues facing us, is this really the biggest problem we have? A drip of desperate people? Is it so many that it’s a problem. He doesn’t want ID cards, we align on that, and the fucking triple tax return can literally go jump in the fucking sea, that’ll be the one that has me looking to emigrate. I’ll be on a boat out if otherwise I’ll have to do a tax return three times a year.

We are in that queue for a good 40 minutes. I don’t end up hating him but, like all of us, his thinking is blurred by his needs and his position. We shake hands and part. He’s off to get leathered at a biergarten Christmas market big steins and boobies type thing. I’m off to see Gaslight at The English Theatre of Hamburg. I’ll never see him again and that’s totally fine. But he’s not a baddie. Just likes himself.

—

Soundtrack:

Aretha Franklin: I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You am

Stones: Exile on Main Street pm

The cats and I are all lying together on a warm bed. Outside the wind and the rain is absolutely howling. I’m not at The Globe this evening. There’s an event and there was a possibility of it but the client is unsure what they want and are evidently costcutting. Tink’ll be there in white tie on stilts. I get to try and stop for a night. I’ve been trying to do my tax. Can’t settle my brain. I’m also extremely tired and feeling slightly unsettled. I’m connected emotionally to Lou and she’s fraught at the moment.

Her show is opening as I write, the first official show, out in Riyadh. I’ve been there for five minutes once and the moon looked different somehow and then I flew out again to Tabuk which is basically an outpost. Lou has been swept up in it, going from hotel to compound and back on repeat, much like me on some of the Extreme-E events but with much more sewing. I’m really thinking about her loads at the moment just because no matter how knackered I’m feeling working multiple jobs, I’m still getting up after her and going to bed before her and she’s three hours ahead of us. She’s on fifteen hour days and running around for most of them like a crazy thing. She sent me a step count screenshot yesterday that was reminiscent of one of my longest days on Kumano Kodo. Those were long days but I was in woodlands and then got to stay in hostels with private onsens, and eat amazing tuna meals.

My weekend will be fun but not restful. Lots of flying, lots of visiting, fun and good friends. I’ll be seeing my accountant who is a friend and watching her in a show and I’m pretty damn sure we will end up doing tax things together as my return is underway for one of the better years I’ve had for earnings recently. I ran up lots of expenses but I have a horrible feeling I’ve spent the tax already… We shall see.

I’m happy I don’t have to be anywhere tonight. Listening to what’s going on in the weather, I’ve just booked airport parking instead of getting the train tomorrow morning. So much nicer to sling everything in Bergie. I used to fuck off randomly all the time to visit friends etc. Haven’t done it for a decade or so until Ellie and Scotland, and it seems doing that has reminded me that travel doesn’t always have to be for work. I won’t have long to make sense of being in two big European cities. But I’ll see two very dear friends. One of them will entertain me and then get frustrated with me and then hopefully have a nice walk. The other one will feed me dumplings and introduce me to his missus. He’s playing Hamlet at his national theatre, but in rep and not this weekend. I just wanted to draw the path because every time you draw a path somewhere it somehow gets easier to follow it again. And I’ve missed my mighty magyar mate.

Globe is really starting to feel like a family thing now. Tink the aerialist / stilts is someone that both Ffion and I have been alongside forever. Now she’s becoming a friend. She’s a consummate pro in the crossover between circus and events, meeting Ffi and I as we cross from straight acting. The discussions and experiences we share about clients and rates are comforting in the extent to which we ellide.

The events team at The Globe are a hardworking bunch as well, and have come to know us it feels. The live staff have become part of our working circle. We show up, slot in, do it and go home. Next week it’ll be every day. Mostly around dayjobs as well. Tis the season.

It was something different today. The client wanted us but in Shakespearean costume. We provide our own and it is strong thanks to the clearance work. I lucked into some great Elizabethan stuff. “Where do you get your costume?” That’s from someone in the education department. I can tell you where a huge amount of costume lives that was made for early seasons of The Globe and then rescued from a skip by actors of my generation. The stuff we had tonight isn’t from that haul though – it is no less authentic but perhaps marginally more practical. My ruff needs washing though.

It isn’t long until Christmas but I’m very happy that this work has fallen out in this way. It turns out it works very well, the little team we have built over time, Ffi and I. We know the space, the game and the staff, and Tink is good company and plays alongside us.

I’m exhausted though. Got to turn in. Got no words left for today. Turns out three jobs is enough.

I’m on the tube. I used to be on buses all the time, writing what I heard. There’s an apocryphal quote from Pinter saying his work suffered when he didn’t have to get the bus. You hear mundane conversations on public transport and there’s great joy in the mundane. I like transcribing it.

“Its called Popeye’s I think,” say the two old geezers. “They’re taking over. It’s proper like, grilled… not like kfc. I think it’s American”. “In America they do kfc proper like with grilled chicken. Over here it’s all greasy. I’ll eat it sometimes sure.” They are standing by the door. Proper London but you’d call them boomers. Probably got a house each somewhere out east. They’re benign. Passing the time. “Oh once in a blue moon i don’t mind eating it. Used to be one round the corner from Shepperton used to do Periperi and all that shit. That was nice.” “Ooh I can do that spicy. I like a Charlie Bigham. At home. Although even the masala is quite spicy.” I find myself thinking of “Royale with Cheese”. These lads aren’t about to shepherd the meek into the valley of darkness though. Hopefully.

Down the carriage a young man is hanging his weight off the ceiling handholds, both arms up, body heavy. He’s skinny and he looks a bit sweaty and twitchy. He doesn’t look well. Has he been drinking or is he so full of propaganda he is actually afraid and defensive?

This is the circle line, just after half four. It’s not super crowded. The young man is singing. In the stations we can all hear the words. We stop at St James’s Park. “Tommy Tommy Tommy. Tommy – Rotinhim.” Something like that but the second word is a man’s surname that I’m not writing. Here’s to you, Mrs. You are the weakest link goodbye Anne… I’ve heard it a lot recently, this name taken by a Huntingdon-Irish named twerp. He’s becoming a rallying point.

Our sweaty boy is doing it pointedly, singing this name to himself not to himself. Because to him saying the name equates to validation for the opinions he has projected on that name. “Tommy Tommy Tommy. Tommy Rottenbum.” It feels targeted, like when you look in the mirror and say “Betelgeuse Betelgeuse Betelgeuse.” I imagine what would happen if that wet fart were to teleport into this tube. Precisely nothing, I think, apart from people recrossing their legs and him looking momentarily apoplectic and then grounding himself in that learnt way.

His tune is improvised and childish, our tube singer, mirroring his viewpoint I’m sure. We all listen for a moment as a carriage, and look at him and each other. It’s the unspoken rules: One doesn’t make noise on the tube.

The chicken geezers don’t play by the rules though: “Fuck’s he doing?” asks one of them with a world weary shrug. They all shrug. And they go right back to their conversation about different chicken meals, pitched a little louder to drown out the idiot. And various worried looking people on our carriage breathe out, cos these old boys have come down on things. But yeah… Fuck is he doing?

I look at his section of the tube. Sure it doesn’t look like a nineteen fifties advert for toothpastebread. But neither does it look like Mos Eisley Cantina. For too long I think about him I wonder what he thinks his silly little song is for. Looking for a reaction most likely, sadly. He’s eyeballing a family sitting down that have some traditional wear. Two kids, a dad and a mum with face covered.

Just like the roundabout kids and the flagboys. “I was only showing my paterrotism”. Hateyface people have noticed the idea of victimhood about people they’ve been horrible about. They’re aping it. “We’re supposed to feel sorry for them? People need to feel sorry for us.”

I just happened to be writing when this happened. Dammit now this blog that was gonna just be a transcript of a conversation about chicken (I’ve eaten at Popeye once and hated it) – this has turned into a thought dump about the way the simpler thinkers are being bamboozled into divisive behaviours.

Internally our singing lad is hoping for a chance to say: “What? I was just singing a name at you and now you’re cancelling me? Why shouldn’t I sing a name? Nothing in the law says I can’t sing a name. I’m singing about someone who loves their country. Don’t you love your country?” News Story: “MAN CANCELLED FOR SINGING ON LONDON JIHAD TUBE” “I was just minding me own business, staring right at this young family that had seats when I don’t have no seats after a hard morning’s ket,” says John Englishface 32 from Stockwell. “I didn’t even think that the family I was staring at might be like immigrant or whatever honest I was just innocent singing a patriotic name and this Spanish looking geezer in a hat he tells me to stop being a dick’ead. Great big beard ‘e had, jihad durka durka, but ‘e could speak English too like he’s integralating. All I was doing is singing is there a law against singing, probably is now with Keir. I care about are children! I wasn’t threatening that young family I was just singing. It’s not my seat anyway, I know that, I obey the law, I’m FROM this country but yeah it’s not my seat although maybe it should be my seat right like? I blame that Mayor of London. There’s something funny about him. I can’t say it, what I don’t like, but it’s… something. London is dangerous right now, I was told by someone in America.”

There are some things that are quite evidently ridiculously stupid. But it is clearer and clearer that we can’t trust people’s filters. People are being stuffed with tommyrot and it maybe comforts them in some way despite the fact that if you scratch the surface of all these “just saying” things all you find is fear and hate underneath. To me it is self evident that we are the target of the most sophisticated propaganda machine you can imagine, trying to prise open the cracks between us and splinter splinter splinter. Reds under the bed? Yep but they aren’t red anymore. That huge country under an increasingly mad megalomaniac autocrat. Ghengis, what did you do? Well, we know what he did. And the more they can divide the more they can conquer. Vlad the Impaler.

It might be nice to go to America again with the old bard williewoowah, mix it up a bit, get creative, do some art in the land of the free. Eat some of that juicy chlorinated chicken. Teach workshops. I’m probably less likely to get nuked out there. 

We were thinking about the music for the show on zoom the other day – the show being As You Like It. I like this bunch of people, they have an ethic, they are weird and positive and very different from me. And very serious, it seems. I’m in the right role as the dark jester Melancholy Jacques. I’ll bring the mad joy and the edge. I quoted my cousin Gordon twice in the meeting: “The context of life is death.”

Well then. I just got my first ever Notice of Intended Prosecution. Apparently I was going at 37 in a 30 zone. It was just after picking up my car from Gatwick after getting back from Scotland. I remember the flashes – hoped I would get lucky but not so. Christmas is coming. Those donuts don’t buy themselves. I’m going to have to dance through my first ever “And we all acknowledge that the thing is an important thing?” “Yes, we do. We acknowledge it. We are bad and will do better.” And I’ll only get to do that if I’m lucky. When I didn’t realise I wasn’t insured they threw the fucking book at me. They’ll choose whether I get to do my first ever course.

They are stepping up enforcement at the moment. The price of beer is up you see. All the little misdemeanours are suddenly resulting in letters. I’ve had a clean slate for years and suddenly this month a deluge. I haven’t changed so I can only assume that they have. It certainly seems that way. I’ll have to do an admin and once I’ve done it they will decide if it is straight to car insurance hell (please God no) or if it is gonna be funtime with being told I’m a baddie. “If you hit me at twenty there’s a strong chance I’ve got a baby voice.”

Max was round when I discovered it. “Oh I had one of those the other day,” he told me. Good older brother work, experiencing the thing first and telling me about it. Helps me realise it goes with the territory. Cars are expensive. They are deliberately making them more so. Tax tax tax.

7mph is the difference between a thing and a thing. Had there been someone in camouflage waiting to throw an unwanted child into that empty quiet fast straight road near the great big car park in Gatwick Airport, I might have hurt it a touch more had it been a good throw. I’m sure that’s the eventuality they placed the camera for, people hurling people into a clearly empty road. It’s not just a trap for tired people who have just got off a plane and are trying to demist the windows. That would make them a bunch of absolute fuckers. And they aren’t. They are good people upholding the law, and they deserve the occasional pint with their donut.

—

I’m into Thriller with my listening project. Watched the John Landis video today. Man, Michael Jackson was the king of pop. But maybe it is his baby throwing tendencies that caused the cops to choose that quiet straight empty road for their trap. He could have been there I guess, armed with an innocent child, just waiting for someone. “If you hit me at 37 there’s a high chance I am trying to make you feel guilty.”

I’m enjoying existing today. I just got out of the bath. There were civilisations beginning to burgeon in my armpits. I think one of them was on the verge of a nuclear age when I just washed them away with a deluge of water and some of Lou’s excellent rose scented soap.

I sometimes imagine that this planet is merely a strange cell in some incomprehensibly vast being operating on a schedule of time that means nothing to us its so slow. The whole observable universe to us is merely the equivalent of a tiny tiny portion of the interior of this being. We are no more significant than this single cell in it crawling with disease, trying to spread. And maybe the being we are infecting lives on a planet that is itself just an infection and so we go out and out forever and as it gets bigger and bigger time slows down more and more. There are my daydreams… The idea that we are cosmically unimportant, a tiny weird error. It gives me more hope than when I see people think of us as somehow mattering. If we are just a weird mistake then we can largely exist according to the rules we’ve all made up together and try to have a nice time. If we think we are here on purpose because of SKY PERSON that not everyone believes in, then we are justified to behave awfully towards anyone who is wrong about SKY PERSON. Also it allows various iterations of this fleshy mistake to play the rules generationally and position themselves where they can say “I’m an important flesh thing, so I can make other flesh things go to places or do things or have things happen to them. And other flesh things will help me do my desires.”

I’m not making any sense am I? If I’m not making sense to myself I’m surely not making sense to you. It’s cold and I’ve been on my own a lot and then I lay in a bath and soaked and all the heat pushed my brain into thinking too much about nothing and everything.

But yes, I’m enjoying existing. I miss Lou, she’s back in the hard work tech madness. The cats have been good company and Brian and Maddy are back now so I’ll see people. I’m going to do my tax return, the rest of it, tomorrow. So I don’t vanish into my own head again.

Tonight it is already late. I’ve had a lovely day but achieved nothing. Now I’m gonna read my book and listen to the wind and the rain outside. Thank God for this wonderful place to live.

I’m still very much enjoying my Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums listening project but it’s getting slower and slower. It’s an incredibly subjective list, made by multiple people and then likely reordered by editors with an eye to balance and keeping the readership happy, but that only matters if you care about which one is higher than which one. I don’t. It’s a long list of albums that have made it through multiple filters from a wide range of opinionated individuals. And I like an album – I grew up in the nineties. It’s what I got used to. Singles charts never interested me. I wanted the long form, even then, just as now. I’m happier with a five act play, a great big long RPG, a shaggy dog story. Lou took me to Tristan and Isolde and I felt enervated. I like long books.

So I keep listening to these albums multiple times. I’ve only got as far as #11. Purple Rain wasn’t familiar and I still haven’t seen the film. That took a few days to listen out. Then Blood on the Tracks. I used to love Bob Dylan but I’m ashamed to say he annoys me now so I went through pretty quickly into Lauryn Hill’s Miseducation, which I had on CD and which has kept me happy the last couple of days. It’s started to wear on me at last so now I’m seeing how long before I get fed up of Revolver.

Meanwhile off to the South Bank to see an old friend. I’m sure we should be worried about the fact that it is like spring in the daytime and then overnight it rains a whole year’s worth in an hour.

—

A lovely relaxed stroll through the Christmas market and an opportunity to catch up. I’m home again and switching off. Too zoned out for complicated thinking right now. I think I’ll just go to sleep without washing. The cats prefer it when I pong and I’m knackered anyway through inaction. Sunday doing what it is supposed to do.