Author: albarclay

My bed is covered in tools. And with Misty who has chosen to be in here. There are many people in my flat. They are all playing Call of the Cthulu.

I went out to see my friend Dan this afternoon. If there’s anyone in my life who I might have expected would be playing Cthulu in my living room it’s Dan, but he’s not there. We met at the geekiest place you can imagine while Brian’s Cthulu geeks came to mine. Dan and I were in a railway arch full of old arcade machines where people like us who had them the first time round could go and geek out.

Dan designs games now and we are all older so it is clear to us now there are some games designed to take as much money as possible. The model is much the same across the market. Lure in players with an easy start, then start to take it out of them financially when they think they are getting closer to the end. “Continue?” Dan impressed me with his sense memory on Out Run, getting to the third checkpoint on one credit. “It’s about using the gears to slow down.” Most of the light shooter games were broken, but we could still machine gun House of the Dead. Absolute pair of nerds. I’m shameless about it. We were nerds back then, we still are. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Point Blank, Time Pilot…

The house is much more Christmassy suddenly despite the current emergence of the great old ones from Rll’yeh or whatever is going on in the living room. There’s a tree there made of wood, not flesh. I cut the top off to put the star on and it didn’t scream. No tentacles, just baubles.

I love my multitool. Don’t use it much but it is just situationally perfect for doing things that would otherwise be annoying. The tip came off in moments.

And all my tools are on my bed. I had them on the kitchen table but Cthulu happened so I moved them in. I need to pack them all nicely but first I’m charging up all the batteries. Annoyingly I’ve got a mix of DeWalt and Makita now and they need different chargers. Dewalt is better though as the 18 volt batteries charge on the same cradle as the 12 volt ones. I’ve got a corded angle grinder too but access to power points ain’t guaranteed on these jobs. Tomorrow is gonna be a long long day. I think I’ll be asleep in an hour or two max and it’s half five.

Pretty tree. Not too overloaded. But I’ve got my Harrods 2020 baubles on it…

And so it begins. The Christmas Party Season.

I’ve not been part of the offering before, usually I have to prioritise consistent shows but I could feel that sort of thing going south in this current environment. I accepted this job ages in advance. They have to programme it like that. Since then I’ve held it firm. This is a client that has been good to us over the years even if they can be tricky about money and they don’t fucking communicate.

At the costume fitting though, Ffion said “It’s not our job to pick up the costumes and transport them.” Ffion has taught me so much about boundaries, like Lou. I went with it even though it’s against my usual thinking. I kinda knew though that it wasn’t gonna be considered. I started making noise about it this morning because I didn’t want to get there and have no costume. “Do you know the costumes are still at Prangsta?” They got it there. I don’t know how. The external point is it isn’t my job to know or care how. But I do, I will. Always. And we could have made it easier.

Lovely costumes though.

Prangsta are a particular style and they are pricing themselves accordingly. Alice type stuff is absolutely their jam. In their early years they descended on Wilderness Festival with as many ripped and gorgeous young people as you can dream of all descending on the valley on the same night. “Ya, obviouslaar I got these Antlaars from Prangstaas”. They made a generation of middle class festival goers know the name of the costume place, those sexy lads and ladesses. I wanted one of the headdresses. My friends wanted the men wearing them.

My dear friend from today has an audition tomorrow for a pathologist and she’s a real trooper, she’s been through all the things. We met modelling in the nineties and even back then the dynamic was such that for me the client just wanted to make sure I could appear to be subservient and ignore how creepy they were. For her they wanted to put their hands on her and dehumanise her, as was standard practice. I remember the stories back in the day from my female modeling colleagues.

“Actors want to be objectified,” you hear it so so much from people who want to objectify us or pull out our agency or just should know better. “You guys love to be the centre of attention,” is a weapon that I’m so fucking bored of hearing deployed against this fellowship of weird but forward people who play pretend for money and frequently really actively don’t want to be the centre of attention actually, it’s just part of their job.

Anyway.

My friend is cunning, I was so impressed. She’s auditioning for a pathologist. She has no lab coat. She got me to drive her to a butcher and asked if she could borrow a smock for a self tape. The guy went down to the basement and came up with something that will pass for a lab coat, smelling of meat. She will bring it back but first she will send a tape with it. Impressive solving. And she’s a good actor. She’s learnt on the job. She understands it all from the other side from me – she’s going outside in. My best advice to her is to remind her to not “show” things. The less pressure we put on ourselves to demonstrate anything, the more we will find the truth. “DON’T DEMONSTRATE NOTHING,” was a key learn from the irreplaceable Vasili Scorik who mentored many of us at Guildhall.

Meanwhile musically on my journey through great albums, Rumours. I know it backwards anyway, who doesn’t? A hymn to the beauty hidden in addictive patterns and pain. So many great bands eat themselves. Sometimes they make a piece of art in the process. Fleetwood Mac did that.

Now I’m starting Purple Rain. #8 of 500. It is so unfamiliar to me that I’m astonished. We are still in the top ten. I’m gonna have a journey here.

I drove out to Dartford to look at this warehouse full of wood. There are some planks in there that are basically trees. Thirty foot or more? But I’ve tried so many windows to Lewes bonfire etc and none have opened. I tried this wood reclaiming company in Croydon and they were largely dismissive and rude. It blows my mind. I’m offering to bring people vans full of clean stripped good wood for free. They are all cagey like I’ve stolen it or it’ll all be rotten.

Still, I checked the situation with the metal and that’s always better. There’s a place out of space and time in the Erith Marshes. You drive through the apocalypse to get there and suddenly there’s someone in a hi-vis surrounded by wrecked cars. “If you can get it on a van we can get it off”. That’s all I needed to hear. Option A: Waste loads of man hours cutting girders. Option B: Erith, and the vanishing place. Right by the Thames on an isthmus. I’m gonna send both vans in convoy so the one behind protects traffic from the one in front that has girders sticking out the back. It’ll be fine. And it’ll switch tip weight from bad bad thing to good good thing.

I could fuck this up and end up paying to work. I have to work smart. I know I need to be stripping this wood this time if at all possible. If I don’t I’m gonna regret every tonne of it. Every fucking mixed load bites my ass for double and my staff costs will be the same for a smaller job. Steel steel steel. Can’t fuck around paying to dump metal this time.

All the space we cleared has been filled with stuff we can’t throw around. My forks are gonna be constricted again which will slow things down especially as I’m expecting I’ll have to cause some forklift avalanches to do this tidily. At the warehouse today : “You’re gonna get this all out in two days? … Yeah well, I suppose technically it’s possible.” This guy didn’t see us last time when we absolutely ate through that shit. But yes I want to be more elegant this time and A there’s no time for that shit and B I have to be performance ready on south bank at 6pm on Tuesday, without dirty fingernails or bleeding knees through my white tights.

Let’s watch it happen, I think. Erith and the metal gives me hope. It’s only 12 minutes from site.

Tonight I’m just gonna relax. And maybe stream the movie the event I’m doing tomorrow night is imitating.

—

My 500 greatest albums listen is going as slowly as ever. It’s gonna take me years but I love it. Abbey Road a couple of times driving and then this evening finally the first one I experienced live. #6. Nevermind. I’ve been watching what videos exist for it streamed on Spotify, as it is an album from the golden age of the pop video.

Nevermind was the one of the first albums I stole from HMV Cornmarket. It sat at £15.99 so the only options were to borrow it, tape it badly, or run your fingernail down the radar strip and pull it out. Obviously I never actually did that. That would be illegal. I’m an honest citizen with a z applying for my US working visa.

The videos aren’t that great but it’s emotional to see Kurt and the passion thing. He’d be nearly sixty now! People really committed back then, it felt sweatier and more human. I guess there was money for the musicians, not just for the snake in the office. Say what you like about U2 you can’t even watch the much out of fashion Bono play live back then and not see a man who gives a fuck. Kurt and the boys the same, whatever you think of that sound it defined my generation and these guys are working for it, living a life of passion and humanity. I think my love of a good pop video is gonna slow this 500 album thing down even more than my thing of listening to all of them multiple times.

I wasn’t ready but when are we ever ready? A show tonight and quite a few people booked in, doing Cymbeline in a great big hall in Camberwell. “It’s a work in progress,” Scott told them all and yes.

I wish I could have made it to more of the sessions we’ve had in the run up. In the audience was Matt from Guildhall the year below me. We fell to talking like two old lags, after the show. This stuff, training for The Factory – it has got harder to do over time. It’s just so much more expensive to be alive in this city now. We have to grab hold of every single dayjob opportunity. Ads are less frequent and less well paid, voiceover stuff is pretty much nonexistent now unless you’re already established.

Yesterday I was gonna come to a session but there was a piano needed moving and money for the job. I can’t prioritise an unpaid rehearsal over that. I have expensive tastes in an expensive city and I’ve never been on a salary and it is getting to the stage where I am worried sick what will happen to me if my body gives up, cos I’m feeling older than I was. My back still ain’t 100% since lifting Julius Caesar. I need to be able to function in theatre when I’m 80, if I get that far. No pension. No savings. Hand to mouth for decades and that’s with the flat my mum’s death made possible. Sure the service charge is basically rent but… What am I gonna do? How does anyone survive in the arts right now?

For the short term it’s run around like an absolute crazyman taking every single opportunity to trade my brain or my body or both for positive numbers in this utterly fucked attrition game. And yes I KNOW the powers that be just want us all to jump ship and find our next job in cyber, but everything dies when we lose the arts. Sure I sound like an overdramatic luvvie but imagine if it was just these ham faced incel drips in silicon valley programming all the new stories out of Frankenstein’s old stories? Tilly fucking Norwood? Come on. That thing is a thin veneer over a wanking zuckerlike – a derivative and dull bit of code with a drawing of a face. Things moved faster than they can be regulated and these stains think they can do art by writing a prompt and the only way out is through. Because what they promise and predict won’t come like they think it will, in the end this is just regurgitation. Same crowd as NFT, same noise, same hope that it’s another bitcoin. Same dull sad creepy Wizard of Oz behind the curtain.

Live theatre is unlikely to suffer too much, but even with that in mind the great big nobs in the industry are apparently looking into how they use the AbbA tech to hologram in Barfy McTwitface the big famous name in the West End show when they ruin their voice on the third night and can’t go on stage. Might it be cheaper than employing an understudy once it’s up and running? Yuk. But someone with a face made of sweaty tripe is probably coding some experimental platform as I write.

We all had a lovely time together in the room tonight. Let’s have much more of that. And let’s hope we weather this storm as an industry and come out stronger so we can be on stage with Barfy using our genuine depth and life experience so they can get on with the business of being  familiar and probably nepo.

“It’s about surviving 2025,” I’ve heard a few times, but remember when we thought like 2016 was the worst year ever and then the next year was worse and the one after worse still and actually now we’ve stopped logging it cos it’s just gone bad here in the world for all but about twelve people who don’t give two hoots about anyone but themselves.

Well, I’m home. I’m in bed. The cats are sprawled on me but they are a bit unsettled and perplexed about wearing a Christmas collar.

This afternoon a moment of connection and shifting, as is my way. I’ve never really spent time with Sam. I like him though. He did a baby with my old friend and now it’s six. My old friend and I – we don’t see each other so much now. She is best friends with my ex and I wasn’t the babyfather for said ex. Everything worked out very well for everyone concerned but I had to leave the picture for that to happen.

Still, my old friend offered me cash to pick up a piano type thing. Not an upright, nothing so involved. A good weighted electric thing on a stand. I’ve carried a few over the years in Bergman. I figured it would go, and I was right. I didn’t expect to have help but I had it with Sam, her bloke.

Their son is starting to enjoy piano. He’s getting lessons but he isn’t able to practice between them. They’re being good parents and making it possible. It’s a powerful thing to offer if your child likes it. Nowadays you can plug in earphones and play. When I was a kid, Max would say everything in his power to discourage me, as he really didn’t like having to listen to me hack out scales for hours and hours on the old upright at Eyreton. My social anxiety kicked in (“everyone has to listen to me fail”) and that was that for piano. Slightly reclaimed by my accordion hacking. If only I still had a fucking instrument, damn that Camden fucker for smashing my window I still haven’t replaced it. I hope his next fart follows through unexpectedly.

We moved the piano nice and easily. A busy and unusual household, the sellers – very London. It was forgotten, but still covered in matter, a crusty but good piano. For a six year old it’ll be great.

Now I’m home, pushing for an early bed, lots to think about tomorrow and I’ve had no time to prep. Factory show and costume fitting. Life life fucking life. I love it.

The piano transported super easily. I remember watching that old black and white video by Bernard Cribbins as a small child and internalising the idea that pianos are impossible to move. That was before the Yamaha clavinova etc

Siwan came over today to help me with booking plant. I can do this shit on my own but I’m much much better with a plus one. She’s most excellent good at being together with a person who holds the purse strings. She’s been PA to numerous arseface humans. She’s currently available and valuable.

We now have 2 tipper vans despite the predicted cold snap. And we didn’t struggle with the forklift.

Siwan and I cleared a whole large section of the living room. I’m sitting with it now. She’s been brilliant. I knew we had to book the forklift and the vans. Outside of that I just knew I wanted to get a bit more space around my desk. We have everything booked, and there’s workspace. It’s not perfect but it’s better than it was. I’m gonna wind down to sleep and maybe sample a slice of this pizza I’ve got in front of me.

I’m booking up another job full of wood and honestly what the fuck? There’s all this brilliant wood and it is all gonna have to go and get mulched for fuel while I pay for the privilege. And again I’m finding people from bonfires. From the Lewes lot they are saying it’s the wrong time of year, but last time I tried them it was literally a month before the burn and actually yeah, it’s probably got to the stage that only the “right” suppliers can bring wood. Closed loop. Capitalism red in tooth and claw. “Oh hi we are doing bonfire. Guy Fawkes. Yay. Fuck the world fuck sustainability we have business arrangements.”

Bunch of idiots. Closed loop capitalist pigs.

And nobody Lewes Bonfire wants a day of work at £200 a day where they can isolate the good stuff and have me drive it back for them for free so I’m not paying tip weight. I would actually pay someone to help with the lift and they can then decide what to take. This is how the world dies. This is why the world dies. I’m so fucking bored of it. I still want to try and give people free wood but largely after all the work and the back and forth just trying to find people who want wood… Ahhhh they can just go and fuck themselves. Send me photos. Give me clarity… They must have their suppliers in place already. They must have a desperate paucity of imagination. If I said “I’ll charge you a few hundred pounds for this excellent wood I’ve got,” they would start haggling. Clueless venal fools.

They already have their suppliers, who probably charge them. Free wood from me, a new supplier and it is immediately somehow suspect. I bet you if I tried to charge them and if I isolated pallets of good wood as I’m gonna do anyway, they still wouldn’t be fucking interested cos I’m unknown to them. Lewes bonfire, “alternative” my arsehole. Buying wood from some established millionaire. And so the world wags. So I’ll have to throw this good wood out even though I’m happy to sort it and travel it. Short sighted idiots. Apparently they don’t know anyone who is willing to work for £200 for a reasonably short day. I’m gonna wait the whole of tomorrow just in case but then I have to book it in. Idiots. Grr. Etc. Sorry. Zzz

A big day today, in terms of the future material here on this blog. I met some lovely people in a delightful context.  A touring Shakespeare with workshops.

I really desperately wanted to have the “Education” role, so I had to rein myself in when it was appointed elsewhere by the American wing without my being able to affect it. (There are five admin roles, everyone has one, normally there’s some discussion but that one is always arbitrated. I actually thought I was a shoe-in as I had the sense I might be the only alumnus. Turns out there are three of us.)

There’s this company I love. We go and do Shakespeare in America and we run workshops out there. I discovered last time that I’m very good at managing interpersonal dynamics, and much of that particular education role plays deeply to my strength, of coping with other people’s stuff etc. But… for that exact reason I can handle disappointment.

I’ve ended up being the self appointed travel monitor – all other roles were self appointed. I’ll be making sure we don’t miss the flights. I had to fly home from boarding school so I’m not worried. There are five roles in total and the only one I actively didn’t want was the blog. I can’t. I’m doing this for you, for me, for who? I’d just spend my whole time recording things if I did that too, and you have to be doing things to have things to say you’ve been doing. I’m sad it wasn’t up for debate, that education role I wanted, but insha’Allah. I’m well travelled. I know I’m not gonna be stressed out by that travel role. But just… I’m just sad. I had an idea how it was all gonna go this time based on last time, which was so delightful. Plus I thought I’d nailed that role last time. Pah.

It’s a lovely mad short tour anyway. The person covering the role I want – they went to Cambridge uni. They’re very organised…

Either way. I’m not gonna get tangled up in it. It’s not like I’m a stranger to disappointment.

It’ll be delightful and now I’m thinking it might be interesting to see what all five of the roles feel like from the inside. I’ll learn “travel” this time. This is a friendship group, this company, and it has been at the heart of many many very happy times in my life, with more to come. I can’t get sad over job roles. They asked me to come on tour with them. That’s enough.

The next month I’m just gonna have to learn my lines very very hard, we all will. This is a busy busy time going forward. I’m game. And less answerable. Muhahahaha

I only just arrived in Glasgow and here I go back again. Gordon drove me to the airport.

He lives by the botanic garden. He and Sue make up fifty percent of my Scottish cousin allocation and I got to see them both plus her partner – for Sunday lunch. My suggestion had been a roast in a pub but Gordon is an authentic Scot and that’ll cost far too much money. Richard cooks a mean Shepherd’s Pie, and in the tradition of my family it’s called a shepherd’s pie if it’s with beef mince as well as if it’s with lamb. That crosses the family. My mother had Shepherd’s Pie as her speciality, mince interchangeable, great big rounds of carrot, chunks of onion so fat they squeaked on your teeth, Cadbury’s Smash, a rime of burnt cheddar. Hearty warm and flavourless. Food for a hungry shepherd. I found one in the freezer a decade after she died. Cooked it. It was rancid. I still remember the disappointment of my first and only mouthful. Spat in the bin. Time had taken that pie. Time foiled my attempt at a physical memory of my mother. Screw you, time. But mayhap for the best. When I find mum’s perfume on clothes I sometimes have to cry a moment, just a moment, at the shattering. More than twenty years. I’ll be her final age soon. She was a good mum.

“Death is the context of life,” is Gordon’s opener. He’s never been one for smalltalk. I’m up for that though. His mother died recently. Dear aunt Sylvia. Again again and always the mother can hurt when she goes. Sure there’s the nurture, the teaching, the sense of solidarity and the feeling of being loved even though you’re a bit crap. But also just selfishly, the parents go and that’s the buffer zone fucked. That just leaves THIS TWAT vs THE VOID the void the void “Your turn next” the voooooooooooi

8

8

Gordon’s a therapist and curious about psychedelics applied in therapy. It’s an area I feel very strongly about. Some of my greatest shifts have come with mindful application of weapons grade psychedelics. Nothing gets you out of a hole like seeing the entire universe imploding. Nothing gives you perspective like unanchoring from linear time and fully comprehending that we are all splinters of universal consciousness where time is a trick to help us navigate infinity without madness and your finger hurts? Death is the context of life. Strong and true. If we forget we are just dancing through this colourful noise for a very very short time, we might forget to take it all in while we can. Glasgow was a glory today, crisp and bright, the best of Scottish winter. We find it where we can, that strange joy of presence, but it takes noticing or we are merely painting things with ourselves.

Sue puts me in touch her daughter’s boyfriend who is in Lewes and builds the Lewes bonfire. He might take the wood next week for next year. That’ll be an absolute coup… Sue’s daughter swims away from us perpetually on a picture she painted that I still have in my living room, bright and peaceful in blue and red. I would be very happy to help build a bonfire and save myself £75 a tonne plus VAT for wood and reconnect with family now based in Lewes. Which reminds me, I still haven’t found those tipper vans.

I’m in the pub where Begbie throws his pint off the balcony. Brew Haus, now. It’s directly opposite my hotel. Tonight was a masked celebration of Ellie and Janet. It was at the Oran Mor in Kelvinside – the old Kelvinside Parish Church. There’s a ballroom upstairs decorated by Alasdair Grey. My nephew recently got married there. I was dancing on the ghost of my father.

I remember as a child being driven around these streets. Dad had moved on but he left a bit of his heart here always. He was my age when I was born and a proud Scotsman through and through. My memory of this city is a sixty year old dad driving me through his old stomping grounds. I absorbed a few of his stories, with the indifference of a child who doesn’t know he’ll be clinging onto memories before long. The swimming baths. The place where he broke a window throwing an unwanted meatball. “Get thee gone and come back never,” she shouted, exactly like this. “Nobody speaks like her nowadays.” 1984.

His brother’s wife died just the other week. She was here, just here, near here. My uncle wrote me out of his will: “I did a bad thing”, but it was always tense between them and I was a late child. My cousins are all living around this way though. I’ll see them tomorrow. One of their exes is a dear friend. Another spent ages trying to persuade me: “You should come work in Glasgow, it’s a smaller pond.” “No. I want to crack London.” Oof.

I walk out of Hillhead station and in under a minute I hear a shout : “BARCLAY!” He can’t remember the first name immediately, goes with the surname…

There he is, the same cousin’s husband, divorced now. He is in my industry. He’s shouting my name and I am strangely glad to see him. I ignored him when he said I should move here. He always annoyed the fuck out of me but he might have been right back then. He also told me to set up a Vlog. In about 2006, long before this noise I’m making here. “Even a stopped clock gives the right time twice a day,” said Bruce Robinson through Paul McGann. I didn’t take his advice – you can’t take advice from someone that needs to see you take it. I’m still in the mix, but hey maybe that would have been the way to get the big spondoolicks quickly. I’ve always been about the long and winding road though. He put his daughter under so much pressure to be a singer that it killed the love. I saw it happening and tried to tell him. But she’ll make more money elsewhere.

It was wonderful to be here in this city for my friend Ellie. I’ve known her almost as long as my father has been dead, and she’s sewn into the Scottish arts scene. My understudy in Stratford this time last year was a gorgeous softly spoken man my age from around here, known to her. Maybe I could shift here, now, in this time of self tapes. The tyranny of London is cracked. Let’s see how it all pans out but … maybe maybe. For now, I’m gonna hit the hotel in Glasgow… See family tomorrow. Fly back to London. Glory. Lou is already in Dubai. This big world ain’t so big right now, at the end of the age of aviation. We should probably use it while we can. Generations to come will wonder how we justified wasting so much fuel. But it’s happening now, we can happen with it. I’m in Glasgow. Fuck it. Hi.

Quiet early evening. We watched what we could of the sunset from Lou’s sky cottage overlooking the sea. Just as the day drew to a close we had a flash of sun below the clouds before it fell into the sea. Just a few minutes of it.

“It’s gonna be like this for months,” says Lou, referencing the cloud cover and the grey skies, the light drizzle. “It’s 34 degrees in Riyadh.” I check the temperature in South Bend Indiana. 4 degrees. Lou is getting the hotter version of an adventure, that’s for sure.

We grabbed an amazing meal, you know how I love that. With no booze you can get out from under a place like The Ginger Fox pretty reasonably, and the food is amazing. Mushroom and Jerusalem Artichoke soup and a venison pie. I won’t be needing anything else today. The venison pie had one tiny tiny little shiver of a carrot in it. Other than that just meat meat meat and meat. I was very happy.

Now she’s packing and trying to take a call about work. We are both flying out tomorrow, I’m off to Scotland for a jolly. Booked it so I fly from Gatwick a bit before her. My single tiny little backpack would be nothing at all if I hadn’t slung in the script of As You Like It and my Steam Deck. Doubt there’ll be much time for either – I’m back in town on Sunday. Readthrough and photo shoot Monday and my oh my things are all starting to happen again. This time without Lou is gonna fly by with being busy. I’m also bringing a Glyndebourne frock coat rolled up in a plastic bag. When I get on the plane I’ll be wearing it, but then it’ll be back in the bag when I get to Glasgow, cos otherwise Begbie will beat the crap out of me in the toilet.

Gonna switch into the last evening. We are both gonna have a winter adventure. She’s excited. She’ll be doing shitloads of work. I’ll be ok once I’ve learnt my LINES. Hence bringing it on the plane. I just Facebook stalked the rest of the cast and I’M GONNA BE THE OLDEST WAAAAAAA. They better not all call me grandpa.