Author: albarclay

There is a story that I think is based on truth about the cathedral at Chartres. It’s more likely to be based on truth than the stuff your mate tells you “they” don’t want you to know. I found it as a teenager, in a book in a library. This was pre-internet, but my bookish friends who followed similar “research” reading tracks – when research meant critical thinking and time and obscure books rather than conformist consumption and videos and radicalisation – they understand why I chose to break my journey here in Chartres. I always thought the story of how the cathedral was rebuilt was well known and publicised. It isn’t. “The mainstream media don’t want you to know the real story of the xxx” I hate to be like that regarding this issue, but it’s a curious one to me. It should appeal to people who are inclusive and non-hierarchical. But the story is not well known of how the edifice was restored and who helped.

You can never underestimate the power of an institution like the Roman Catholic Church to try to remove character from a story, and to make everything about hierarchy. From what I can see, the character is also now being picked out of this monolith, to the detriment of future generations.

There’s an extensive refurbishment going on inside the cathedral right now. I happened to arrive in time for a mass for the dead. People were making huge clunking noises at the start of it from the scaffolding. And I started to worry about the purpose of the scaffolding. It looks like a very busy interior refurb. And you can bet that they are covering up any personality left behind in the aftermath of the story that brought me here.

The internet is very scarce regarding this tale. It’s esoteric, but it’s perfect. I’m really surprised it isn’t readily available online. Maybe I can add to it. Here goes. The Cathedral at Chartres.

1134 and the Cathedral at Chartres burned to the ground. It was on a trade route though, and let’s compare to Notre Dame just a few years ago and how much was raised so quickly. These monolithic buildings capture our imagination. If we can add to their life we can somehow extend our remembered span. The burning of this vast and important cathedral inspired artisans from all over the world who were passing, and many who traveled specifically knowing how big the project was. Some stayed for years, some only gave a short time. The book I read, and that my friends read too… I can’t find it online and it feels like this story has been erased by the internet. But it was a beautiful book examining all the strange things these people had built into the architecture from their own set of experiences.

People from all over the world. Therefore people from different belief systems and different power dynamics. People with different skillsets. They all knew they were helping rebuild a Catholic Cathedral, but they all brought their own thing. Maybe they slept or ate for free while they worked on it. The whole thing began to be brighter and wider and more alive than many of the protective stone monoliths that characterise one of our more judgemental well followed belief structures. Different ways of making pigment and glass, different ideas of gargoyles, different names for God, different priorities, mischief, story. The foreman must have been extremely open minded, the workforce was willing but extremely diverse. The cathedral came up in 30 years, and is still weird and beautiful and huge. The book I read spoke of mischief in the roof where Islamic artists had put in a bit of their doctrine, or frescoes where there was a cheeky touch of Hinduism, or even little personal Latin motifs and materials and gargoyles that might be called “pagan” by people with a blanket reading of the huge mix of pantheism that gradually filed us to where we are now. It got rebuilt. It’s a Catholic Cathedral for the worship of the Judao-Christian continuance of Osiris but parsed through the Roman anti-pantheist lens and smudged. We call it Roman Catholic and it’s got some lovely art. Better than brute Anglicanism by a country mile. But in the end it’s run by Catholics who are just another competitive noise in a very well filled arena of “my idea is better than your idea!” This is why I love that it was rebuilt with wider angle ideas plugged in. The only belief I find ugly is the Nullgod faith of Dawkins etc. Just as doctrinal and smug, just as certain of the existence of a (NO)thing but empty of beauty and empty of magic and so so very easy.

It is still beautiful here at Notre Dame of Chartres even if I fear they are trying to obliterate the very thing that makes it powerful. To build over the strange character. Still there’s a sound and light exhibition right now though that acknowledges aspects of the history that pulled me. The artist is definitely aware if it even if the commissioner isn’t.

But … inside there’s scaffolding up all over the place and banging and clattering. And online you can’t find anything referring to the mischief I read in that book. For now, knowing how these things work, I am going with a theory I’ve just made up that the Catholic Church have bought the internet on it and they aren’t letting anything through about the random multifaith international wonder that makes up this incredible cathedral. If so that’s a spectacular own goal, and it’ll come back to haunt them.

I went to a mass for the dead. I lit a candle for my Catholic dead. I sang tonics. I wept. It was genuinely beautiful and resonant. We sang in the little portioned space. Three women read the list of the dead (timespan?) and it was into the hundreds – enough to fill a small mediaeval village. Was that just this year? I hope not. But… Only about 30 in the congregation and the priest flinched when I said “Thanks be to God” in English when he told me it was the body of Christ in French. Perhaps I wasn’t supposed to be there. Or perhaps he could sense that I’d spent the previous 4 hours listening to Joseph Campbell…

I just hope and pray that the Catholic church don’t overlook the chance they have for inclusion with this beautiful crowdsourced building, if they proudly bring to the fore the voices in the rebuild that clash with their doctrine they might start to build congregations where the living outnumber the dead again. It’s not like Catholicism is so weak they need to defend themselves. They own much of the best real estate in the world. They can be sanguine about the fact that humans subscribing to other curious and beautiful governing ideas lent them a hand when they were in need. Can’t they?

Peaceful Brighton, and about to go on long solo journey. It’s good to be here to connect with Lou before I go despite the fact I’m rotten with cold. I’m just run down from not having stopped. “Well if you’re gonna lower your immune system by drinking then you can’t look to me for sympathy when you get a cold,” says my beloved. She’s right of course. Nevertheless she cooked me hearty food and made me healthy tea and put the immersion on for a bath and thought about filling up water for by the bed and just made me chamomile and how the hell did I meet this incredible human?

The wind is howling outside. Lightning and constant crashing gales. It’s primal. Been like this for two days running, apparently. I’m glad I’m on the tunnel tomorrow and not the ferry. Car alarms keep going off from buffeting. I’m glad it’s a peaceful home here.

Today was just making sure things were ready to go. I had to empty my car at the lockup and then go and attend to the fishies and make sure they were gonna be ok. Then grab my passport and europlugs – both of which I have A PLACE FOR. Then shove loads of clothes into a denim bag and go to Hampstead. A car to load with a really random selection of antique furniture. I have no idea what they’re gonna say at the border having never done this sort of thing before, but I’m not a commercial vehicle so it’s hopefully gonna be okay, or am I being naïve?

It was going very well, the pack. Then Sam suddenly appeared with two huge chairs and it all went sideways. I went from a neat and logical load to a chaos of wood. There’s no backwards vision in Bergman. I even tried to repack when there wasn’t a rainstorm, but there’s no way of arranging it that lets me see behind me so I’m just gonna pretend it’s a van and hope nobody gets weird with me. The hardest border will be into France. I only have to get as far as Chartres though…

Let tomorrow do tomorrow. Tonight I’m just gonna go to sleep and listen to the wind and rain on the glass and snuggle Lou…

Happy Halloween. Samhain. A dark night but a light night. A time to consolidate.

I couldn’t leave the lockup fucked. Just too much of an energetic hangover. So I drove there again in the morning.

The cops are useless. They didn’t send forensics even though the hacksaw the thieves used to cut the lock was neatly placed in the lockup, next to a functional padlock that was taken in the same way from another lockup somewhere near. Fingerprint Bonanza, but they fobbed off my friend with some nonsense like “If it’s just boxes there’s no point us doing our job”. We were the second robbery that night I reckon, and they had enough to carry so were gonna come back for the saw. That’s why it was left in ours and the door was carefully closed. I interrupted their journey, coming when I did. They didn’t know they were finished. Maybe if I’d driven around I would have found them carrying my tools.

The whole lockup was jammed full of forensic opportunities though for anyone who gave a fuck, plus there’s gonna be someone who would like their padlock back when they realise their lockup has been robbed… but “whatever” say the met. 0 fucks given. “Can we avoid doing anything? Yes.”

Just before Halloween, bigger fish for them to fry.

Even just a patrol car to swing by with the lights flashing would at least make them know it was being watched, but they honestly can’t be fucked to do the basics in Camden. People often go back to the crime scene. I’m expecting it, frankly. Still, I tidied up the lockup and I didn’t touch any of the things the thieves had handled, apart from with gloves, you know, in case someone does their job and dusts them. It’s a transformation in there..I can leave it like that…

They’ve pulled a power cable out of the ceiling but it doesn’t look like it’ll cause a fire. They totally ruined the ornate picture frame but it only just came in and I don’t have Christmas Carol this year which would’ve been when it came in handy. Honestly, if my impact drivers hadn’t been there they would have got NOTHING for their effort. As it is they likely got about £50 cash for the pair of them which might be enough to prompt a return visit to see if they missed anything. That’s why I kinda wish the police hadn’t been dogshit. But that’s the Met. Too busy beating up women for peaceful vigils during COVID or generally raping, beating and occasionally murdering people. Cops will be cops, eh? “Join the met. Then you can break the law and do fuck all!”

Lockup tidied, I took people out onto the dark heath and told them stories. Happy times with the Peculiar London brigade. Our last night and a lovely one. I’m exhausted now though. The sheer amount of dust brushed out of that lockup. Fag butts and human skin and piles and piles and piles of absolute shit. It’s all in bags now, but for the dust and butts and goodwill. Books and clothes and paper and oh God, those thieves must have been horrified to find such little reward for their effort. Maybe that’s why they trashed the place. I took the frock coats out, as I like and use them. There’s nothing there now that I would mind them having. I thought of making them a little “Welcome” sign, as they’ll be back I’m sure, undeterred by the complete lack of interest from the cops. And I’ll be in Uruguay.

Nothing in there I don’t mind losing now. But it kinda renders it much more useless knowing I can only put shit into it.

Still there’s a lot of shit in my flat. I’ll get use from it.

The lockup I have access to is just off Robert Street in Camden. I’ve been pretty careful about what I put there. Not because I expected to get robbed to be honest, but because I figure that there’s a strong chance the entire thing will be requisitioned by Camden Council at a moment’s notice. On Friday though, to make more room for car boot sale things, I temporarily stored my pair of DeWalt impact drivers there. They were the most valuable thing in there that I knew of. I just put them there to make room in my car.

It was a good padlock so they sawed through the bolt instead.

I had tidied it all up. I was all excited about using it as an extremely helpful halfway house, to sort through all the random things that come through my hands. Friday, with the doors wide open, I had been moving things in and out in the sunshine. I was optimistic about this useful space. I did an unusual thing for me and I organised it.

The thing with these lockups though, is that they all just sit unused, with somebody’s rotting car in it or somesuch. I’ve been using it so they saw it. I had tables outside it the other day with Siwan sorting clothes. We mentioned famous brandnames… And then I brought in those fucking tools. I made it visible.

“There are no tools kept in this van overnight”. Tools are a very easy nick and flog. I used to have lots of nice tools. Now someone has a few quid, and somebody else can do a job that they couldn’t normally do, and I need tools. My impact drivers… I wonder how many times I’ve written about them here. I loved them and they were so useful.

They have them now. They had enough to carry that they left the saw they had used to get through the lock. They just put it on the shelf and took the contents of the shelf. I don’t really know what they took, frankly. There were many boxes and bags. They emptied the lot all over the place. They made a fucking horrible mess in there. Everything was opened. Everything was emptied. It was dark when I got to it and I had to go to work. I’m not sure what sort of damage they did, what they took. Apart from my tools there was nothing I particularly cared about. But it still feels bad when some fucker steals from you. I feel violated. A place that was mine was invaded. It’s like when they smashed my car window to get a bag of fake money. But I’m less inclined to make a joke of it today. London. This financial environment. The need for money… Fuckers.

A locksmith has already fixed it. By the fact that it was neatly closed with the saw still inside it, it felt like we might have interrupted them before they came for a second load. “It’s most likely people with no fixed abode in the area,” the police posited, which would explain why tools instead of things that you can flog on eBay.

I don’t trust it now even though it has a new bolt and lock. I wish I could. It is an important part of the process of clearing for me, and until it gets repossessed by Camden it’ll be really really helpful. Having a space like that is so valuable and rare particularly when you’re sorting stuff like I am, but again I’ve remembered what happens when you become visible in this city. Poor bastards must have been desperate. I hope it didn’t just all go on drugs. If someone tries to sell you a pair of DeWalt impact drivers in Camden with “A” on them in sharpie (they’ll probably scrape that off though) buy ’em and I’ll pay you back …

Here I am in Gipsy Hill. Sober for a change. Tired though.

This morning was a bludgeon. I woke up on my sofa to a cordial but painful conversation with Tom. He went to work, I went back to sleep, head throbbing. About half an hour before he came home, I staggered into the bathroom and unearthed an emergency Anadin Extra. Paracetamol and caffeine. I stood in my pants in front of the fridge eating grapes until I felt I had had enough, downed the pill, refilled my water and went back to semi sleep.

Tom came home early afternoon and I was just starting to feel human after the drugs. I ordered Five Guys. With an oreo milkshake. “Do you know it’s 23 degrees out there?” I nodded. I put the fat into my body. I drank more water.

3pm. I was moving at last. I had clothes on. “Where’s my torch?” Thankfully I had left it at Siwan’s. I wore my stovepipe hat and riding cape home in the uber. I grabbed them, put them on and ordered another damn Uber.

Parking ticket on my car. I wasn’t in the right sort of resident’s bay. I pay it immediately and leave it there to prevent another one. I go to Sam’s and clamber over mountains of dust and mouse shit to find the items that will go to Majorca – to make packing easier when I zoom out on Tuesday. Another house absolutely plugged up with crap. We can cling onto things our whole life with the idea they have value. Nothing is worth more than someone you can find will pay for it. If we want it to get a fraction of what granny paid for it we have to make it our full time job, and life is way too long and interesting to only do that stuff.

Then it was walkie time, and I wasn’t in the right place. Still hanging, sweaty from clambering and burgers. How the hell to be charming like this? Interesting bunch though, a bit less full on than last night. Friendly. Talkative. Drunk. Some good costumes. And it’s fine. I do this for a living

We trail through Hampstead Heath and the little streets. Stories are told and at some point I am handed a beer but just the one. Drinking it proves complicated. I leave it half finished. Sam gives me some bags of stuff to get rid of and I mission it to Gipsy Hill, stopping momentarily in Camberwell to see some old friends post show at The Golden Goose theatre.

Now I’m in bed. I’m gonna sleep the sleep I didn’t have last night.

Uber driver took me home through tired streets. Bergman parked in Hampstead for better or worse and did we successfully park it with the app? I don’t know. Post tour a game of chess in Siwan’s flat and I never had a chance but at least we played it through. Nathan would usually abandon it when losing. Now I’m here at home with the fishtank and only a couple more nights in London before the adventures unfold in a different direction once more.

Lou is in Copenhagen on an adventure of her own now. She’s the one treading the unfamiliar while I go over ground I’ve covered before. A very happy audience tonight though, plying me with red wine until the lack of food becomes far too apparent and yes I think I’ll put my finger down my throat. Oh dear. The relief is temporary and now I must sleep and drink water simultaneously as well as somehow make words again.

Unseasonably warm, this October. Pleasant for us, and continuing I am told, but as ever one wonders about the natural world. We don’t need to put the heating on though. That can only be a good thing.

My sofa is pleasant and welcoming. Tom leaves on Sunday and my bed becomes mine again, just in time for me to be away for ages. My plants are happy, the fish are full and clean. I need to pack for Uruguay as the turnaround is going to be tight from Majorca. Right now though I need to go to bed bed bed beddiebyes. Zzzz

—

And publish. That would’ve been a good idea. Too tired. Drunk? Well, yes. Perhaps.

It’s only about three hours to get home from Stoke. I did it in one shot. This might be a frequent journey going forward. A big American company have laid down some funding to encourage youth in Newcastle under Lyme to connect with the idea of being engineers. Facilitators like myself will mentor them over some two years. They will end up with skills. Quick skills. They will get ahead of the general. They’ll have a chance to change the world on their own terms.

It’s great work. You’re helping people grow, and at that age you really see it. These are smart young men and women and they are learning from themselves and from each other and from us. I like to mix up my day jobs. I do have to chase the money where it’s available, so I’ve turned down some life jobs on that basis. But if my time is adequately compensated I’m gonna try my hand at anything. It’s a balance. Life is important. Money is important. My daily fee for this work is almost twice what I get for Extreme-E, but this stuff happens in Stoke and I’m off to Uruguay next month. I know where I’d rather be working. Yeah, complicate that with the fact I’ll always be better off and happier filming than dayjobbing, but … that’s too unpredictable to plan around. And theatre pays in magic beans, which I tried to live off for ages and would again if the right offer came, but somehow I’m not in the frame and I’m not gonna sit at home waiting for the phone to ring.

I’m home now though, waiting for the bath to run, happy and chilled. I fancy an early bed. Tom cooked sausage and mash, ready for when I got in, which was incredible after a long day and a long drive. Tomorrow will be easier but I have to start booking ferries etc so I can do this crazy Majorca drive I’ve agreed to.

I adore my existence. It is full on. Thank God Lou exists. Hopefully we will get to go on a road trip. If not, December Holiday Fun!!!!

My second night in a plastic bed in Newcastle-under-Lyme. Ben and I have known each other for so long now. He was at Rose Bruford Drama School with Jo, my erstwhile emergency friend. Jo saved my life many times. She helped me piece things together. Hanging out with Ben helps me remember the haphazard nuance of that brilliant gobshite friendship. I miss Jo. She’s still around, but she’s got a daughter so we don’t call every night after midnight and break down the day…

This evening though we ended up in the pub breaking down our particular day. Ben and Katrina and I put the world to rights.

I’m up here in Stoke on Trent, helping to give confidence to a coming generation of engineers. Yep. It’s back to that. Shortly before cracking off with Extreme-E again, I’m trying to build a generation of engineers who think about solutions.

It’s half term today. These young men and women are in the final year at school and they are so totally brilliant that their half term is consciously being spent making elastic band powered boats with us… They have chosen to spend half term doing engineering, and they also seem to be making deep friendships. This is a wonderful thing, frankly. Even in a day I’ve seen people grow. This sort of thing at this age is golden. Shared experience. Shared making. Wherever they want to go, this is a foundation.

I’ll be off back into the desert soon. I can be a social wildcard, like so many of these engineering humans today. I’m so looking forward to fitting in to a strange team like a glove, as I seem to somehow do with Extreme-E. The Uruguay race will be much like Sardinia in terms of distances. I’ll be close to the site in digs. I’m looking forward to once again learning a new place. Bring it. You have to be flexible…

I’ve been thinking about my angry blog the other day regarding the Sunflower stunt. I didn’t know it was glassed. The picture itself was unharmed and I’m told that this was the thinking – to encourage people like me to be immediately angry about a work of art being disrespected as if we aren’t already more angry about the fact that we are destroying the world with convenience. They wanted to highlight bad priorities. I thought they had destroyed the picture, hence my reaction. They hadn’t destroyed it. Allegedly they wanted to provoke the very reaction they provoked in me, but to provoke it in people who are not already deeply engaged with the horror of how our desire to have everything NOW is truncating the natural world at a rate that most life will be unsustainable in a few generations.

I switched on the television in my digs just now and randomly watched a show where Jimmy Carr took a vote about whether Rolf Harris or Eric Gill were worse humans. They ended up dramatically taking flamethrowers to the Eric Gill.

The show is still playing. It’s a show trying to provoke outrage. It’s a show that is further normalising the destruction of art.

Just Stop Oil apparently knew that the Van Gogh was glassed. They wanted the discussion they provoked. Problem is, they’ve put art in the firing line. And shows like this bollocks with Carr are adding to it. This arrogance that our “now” thing is more important than the eternal – that’s getting compounded. “This helps us understand where our audience stands on offensive imagery,” says the narrator as they gear up to fuck up another artist’s work because of subjectivity.

Marcus Harvey’s Myra Hindley has just been shot through by paintgun.

“It feels like these are very dark times,” says someone on the programme. And yes. Yes. Based on this.

Back to Just Stop Oil. Absolutely we have to stop our reliance on oil. We have to break the relationship. We are so so lazy. We are making the world uninhabitable by being lazy. But, to Stop Oil immediately is not a just. Infrastructure would fall apart. “Stop Oil” is a call to revolution, and yeah we need revolution. But revolution is not a “just” thing. It’s bigger than “just”. And now, if we had that “simple” revolution, art is in the firing line. So who would emerge afterwards? People who don’t give a fuck about history? Is art is somehow part of the problem? This doesn’t fill me with confidence.

What are we fighting for? This home-made great extinction will eventually make convenience culture impossible, and going the way it’s going, once things finally snap there’ll be a generation that angrily starves to death waiting for a delivery. But art is something that raises us from beasts. It’s not at war with nature.

Nature will survive. Nature survives. It’s just another great extinction that we’ve catalysed. Even humanity might survive without The Amazon and without Amazon. Not in the same lazy form, but in some form. But … if we put art in the firing line, it’s only a matter of time before people stop caring about whether there’s glass in front of the art. And without art we shift back to just meeting our needs. Copycats who are angry about their small things will start wrecking beautiful “art” things to highlight their axegrind. And even now we find it informative when we find Neolithic cave art. “They were eating animals!!! Baddies! Smash it!”

Animals can learn how to play and we are filled with wonder and joy, but only we make art. Not even octopi or corvids or pigs make art. Watch now though, as people with no creativity but to justify something they believe in start to ruin beautiful things to highlight their whateverness.

Come the revolution, the galleries will burn now. They’re in the firing line because of this relative value stuff. It’s so narrow minded. We will lose generations of wisdom and beauty in exchange for trying to make everybody as angry as you are.

If we are fighting for families that can’t heat their soup though, surely we are fighting for humanity… and if we are fighting for humanity we surely are fighting for the humanities? For art, whose message complicates and changes over years. For the fact that we cannot believe what they believed when they made that beautiful thing, but the thing is still beautiful.

But … we start to put value on belief. The Anglicans destroyed so much Catholic art with the dissolution of the monasteries because Henry VIII forced the idea that Anglican was better than Catholic as an idea. Short termism. It’s everywhere. The internet has made it a blight. Causes are rallied behind and things with time behind them fall victim to flashes in the pan. Time is always ticking and all the things that matter to you now will be dust. The library of Alexandria burnt because, apparently, the only book we need is the Qur’an. Short-termism is so unutterably boring and self centred. Me me me. And so now, to save the something, we will shortly be butchering beauty.

Now, on TV, Jimmy Carr is chopping up a Hitler painting with chainsaws. Ok yeah so I think Hitler was a baddie too so apparently I’m part of the club. These paintings though, don’t they help us remember he was a human too? He tried to paint, the fucker. And he instigated genocide. We are close to such horrors happening again and if we only look at how we frame the past, we are fools. We have to learn. We won’t. But again, this TV show is just putting art into the frame for destruction. And so we get smaller and smaller and smaller.

We make people into monsters, we chop up the monster’s paintings cos monsters have no nuance. These nasty assholes lived and loved. With Hitler we all know where it ended up, but circumstances and unexamined prejudices allowed him to follow a line where it never would have occurred to him that he was being literally evil and his outcome would be detested for a generation before dumb people started trying to pretend it hadn’t happened. We can all get sucked into being terrible. Isn’t it better to be aware that “the monster” liked to paint? Especially when we are literally going that way again. If I’m playing a baddie I want to make them relatable, not just a two dimensional being. It’s why I play them so often. Success is about making the right people think “I’m like that… Am I a baddie?”

Anyhow. Bedtime. Zzzzz

So many people I know right now are right on the edge of drowning in stuff. You know about my struggles with the accumulation. I’m in a stuff-out phase of necessity because stuff-in right now is barely possible. Any chance for me to give you a thing, I’ll take it. “You like it! Have it! Sure. No problems.”

Christmas Carol is cancelled. Kirkaldy is delayed. Suddenly I’ve gone from knowing what is happening until the end of the year to knowing that I’m gonna run off the edge of the cliff with my legs still going. The solution? Chipping away at the stuffmountain.

Things I haven’t done: Sorted out the spare room. Sorted the costumes properly. Got all the ridiculous knickknackerie gone and gone and gone from my home never to return. Organised my life. Made a proper list. Worked out what to prioritise. Stopped for a moment. More.

Brain and I are doing our pick-up Christmas again, in my flat. Something for me to build towards.

This is meant to be a solution. I used to be lonely at Christmas. I used to feel it was an imposition to join a family unit that wasn’t mine, and my family unit was mostly dead or self-determined. I would go to friends and it would be lovely but it sometimes felt like I was the charity case. So I decided to try to make a world where there was a great big party and you were invited and you were the one bringing Christmas. My friends have been my extended family for decades.

You weren’t coming to my curated Christmas back then, as now. You weren’t being served last and being watched when you reached for the bottle. The rules of the day were yours not mine, as were the timings. And it was lovely and it was mad and people fucking flew over from America! Tasmania! And then Brian happened and it got bigger and brighter and foodier. Now it might be a huge party and it might just be a few people, but as ever we are gonna try to welcome those who are stuck without options and who don’t want to inconvenience anyone or be the fifth wheel. Brian and I want to welcome you. We usually ask that you bring something that means Christmas for you. But yeah, if you’re stuck or know someone who might be, drop us a line. We’ve made good friends over the years from this. It can be a bit of light in the darkness. And God love Brian… I think I’d have been too tired to do it some years and he is a burning candle.

For it to work I need to move an ocean of stuff from my flat to the world between now and then. I have the will. I have the car. Bring it.

Today it was three loads of Bergman, up three flights of stairs in Dalston. I’m knackered. I’ll be walking like an old man tomorrow. I’m gonna go get horizonal.