Author: albarclay

About 4 hours into a day where I spoke pretty much constantly to a group of schoolchildren about energy, I took a massive swig of water from my flask in front of them. Immediately I was asked: “Are you aware that half of us are on Ramadan?”

A lot of people are fasting right now, not even taking in water during daylight. I had forgotten, although in the year that Grenfell burnt I tried to do it myself. Back then I wanted to have an understanding of what so many people have to go through. I’m not a devout Muslim though, and the Imam I spoke to told me I had to do it to the Mecca clock, which involved setting my alarm at like 2.45 am to drink a litre of water and go back to sleep. (I’ve subsequently been told by an angry Doctor Jesus in Saudi that he was an unhelpful Imam.). I had no close Muslim friends to advise me or to share Iftar in my area. I sat on my own in my flat and ate things I had cooked hungry at the end of my fast, clutching a draconian printout of the times in Mecca from the London Central Mosque. It was all a bit stark doing it on my own. There’s a shared hardship and shared joy that goes with Ramadan, but I was just a tourist I guess. I lasted until the Grenfell fire which was only a short way in, and then that morning I went to volunteer in the local area. It was hot. Lots of young men on my team were Muslim, coming into a Methodist Church to help sort clothes. I was seriously impressed by their devotion – to do good deeds in the heat, and to drink no water and eat no food… I began to fuel myself again, telling myself it was exceptional circumstances and I didn’t have a faith. But also it is hard and I’d had enough. It’s a huge thing to put yourself through for your faith. It’s impressive and powerful that people still do it. The other 50% of that class didn’t even mark Lent. I betcha. Most self professed Christians don’t do the difficult devotional stuff these days. They just use it as a club.

You couldn’t do a proper Ramadan fast and not come away with a strong handle on your urges to consume. I tried to look after those young men who gave their time sorting things next to Grenfell. I tried to find places for them to work that were comfortable, because they’d have worked hard anywhere and that spring was HOT. The vicar of that church was absent the whole time and I ended up organising things. I kept hearing people apologise to me. “I’m sorry I haven’t been to church lately, vicar,” they said. The part of me that was literally almost a vicar just smiled back at them: “Jesus will always be waiting. You’re here now. Thank you. We’re open for you.” I suspect some of them came to services afterwards and were surprised I wasn’t there. I stopped coming in to go manage a restaurant floor at Royal Ascot. With my beard and my ability to quote bible verses, I could probably have passed as a good fire-and-brimstone preacher if needed. Hell, I’d have even done a sermon with 24 hours notice, but it might have been my downfall as I honestly haven’t got a clue what the nuance is about Methodism. It’s likely just a scripture quibble, but millions of people have died over quibbles. “The bread is literally Christ’s body!” “No it’s just a helpful metaphor!” “DIE HERETIC! AND YOUR FAMILY!”

“I’m sorry,” I replied to the student in the first sentence of this blog. “It’s thoughtless of me to drink water in front of you.”

AndI meant it. I loved the school I went to today. Often with these urban schools the students can be angry and distracted. This lot were like that, but they somehow kept their sense of fun within it. The mischief they were making could include me – it wasn’t just to try to puncture a notional authority figure. I enjoyed myself but… It’s exhausting. The teacher even commented on it: “We never have to radiate the whole day like that.”

I’m knackered. Day is over though. Sweet sweet bedtime and some sort of weekend coming up. I’ll enjoy what I can get. Hope you do the same.

I emailed Diane at Tennant’s Auctioneers.

She’s been the patient recipient of numerous inquiries since I processed much of the loft contents here through good old Tennant’s – a family run auction house with beautiful premises up in Leyburn. I still maintain that they’re the best auction house in the UK. Honestly, I’ve tried a fair few over the years. Chiswick sent a total arse round my flat who was more interested in showing me what he knew than helping me sell things that sold well at Tennants years later after I got over how demoralising he was. Bonham’s needlessly messed me around selling a whiskey bottle, putting it through twice and hitting me with double insurance when I would have been very happy with the discretion of the high bid the first time. On the flip side, Gorringes sold a £200-£300 auctioneer discretion picture for £50 when the guy I consigned it with had been told I had been offered £120 on eBay. I got just over £35. Lots Road actually ignored my request to drop the minimum for a cabinet I was selling to test them. They had minimum £150 with discretion when I asked for £100. It went unsold at about the price it sold at the next time round (£130 ish) – they wanted double fees so made sure it went round twice. Roseberys are very nice but haven’t got the audience. Plus they flogged a picture of mine for bollocks all where I’d have made much more on eBay. All of the above places have their areas of expertise and use of course. I’m not telling you to avoid them. Don’t sue me etc. This is just my experience, and in my experience none of the above are easy recommendations. Christie’s and Sotheby’s aren’t interested unless the item is worth a few grand minimum – I did have a good experience with one item at Sotheby’s when I was on Camino. But I emailed Diane. I like and trust Tennant’s. They’re good because they’re in North Yorkshire, but they’re hard to get to for the same reason.

My friend has a large amount of beautiful old stuff inherited from his mother, who was asset rich cash poor with property. She long ago flogged all the value she could bear to flog so the place has been stripped. My friend is convinced with the certainty of grief that everything remaining is worth about eight times what its worth – an attachment pathology I totally understand and empathise with. Partly he’s adding the sentimental value to the item – and so he must as when it’s gone it’s gone. Partly he’s an optimist. Partly he’s thinking about what he would pay for it if he wanted it and if he went into a boutique shop in Kensington to buy it wearing one of his expensive suits and showy watches. “Ah yes sir that’s worth a hundred… I mean a thousand pounds to you sir special discount.”

There are a few things he’s bought on the shopping channel stashed in with the antiques. Terrible modern rings with big shiny certificates. “This is a guaranteed real ‘I love you oh so very very much much ™’ ring, and you pay for the quality real true honest goldyish material.”

If you haven’t got the platform you can’t sell things easily or quickly at the top of their potential value. You can sell terrible rings to late night shoppers by starting them way too high and dropping them to still too high. But … that’s a platform. I don’t have a shop.

I’m going to try to raise good prices for him if he lets me. There are some wonderful things. I’ve had so much fun photographing them today. There are some beautiful items gathering dust. He’s cash-broke too. He’s trying to move to selling the flat they’re in. It needs to be emptied.

So I emailed Diane. Just two big vases for now to see if they are worth bringing up. Maiolica from Italy. Impressive pieces. My friend insists they’re 17th century. I reckon they’re 18th. Diane, on a first glance, worried they were 20th… If that turns out to be the case I will be told by my friend that Diane is just wrong. I will then have to take them into Bonham’s or somewhere similar for a second opinion and a letter on headed paper and even then if they don’t think it’s what he thinks it is, the expert will be thought of as incorrect. I’m hoping they really ARE truly old and can sell well. If they are it’ll be a shot in the arm for my friend. But … I’m so used to people thinking worthless things are valuable. It’s the easiest mistake in the world when we have old things with provenance.

Some real delights here. And a bunch of attractive pictures of Chelsea by Kathlyn Beddall. I might buy one of them as it’s my manor.

This is the interior of my key-rock.

My nerdy delight in Geocaching led me to it. Geocaching is something I’ve written about before where nerds hide things for other nerds to find. It’s delightful. I am very much one of those nerds, and even if my Geocaching stats are not very high, I try to find at least one thing in every place I go, so long as I remember to look, which I frequently don’t… I got one in Saudi though. And one in The Azores…

I’m writing about the “rock” because it alerted me to the existence of things like it. I’m sure I’ve dismissed caches in the past thinking they were rocks that were actually these things. Cunning cunning nerds. Nerds with disposable income. You have to pay to buy something you’re just going to leave for other people to find…

Sometimes things look like nothing but actually have great meaning. If everybody had key-rocks like this one then you’d just look at the top and think “oh, a key-rock”. Right now, they’re rare enough that you think “oh, a rock”. Nerdmoney well spent as a geocache. I took a photo of just the interior in order not to hasten the dissipation of the illusion.

I bought the key-rock online. It wasn’t expensive but it still cost money, just as a subscription to the Geocaching site costs money. Last night before I drove to Peterborough I left the rock out for Tom. I’m using it to hide my key, not a cache. This is what it was made for. If you try to buy something like it through the “official Geocaching website” it costs much more. The market etc etc. I bought it thinking I might make a cache. But for now it is a practical item for times like last night when an old friend is staying in my vacant flat.

I thought about giving him riddles and cryptic clues to find the thing. “First you must answer questions three!” Time got the better of me though, and I wasn’t sure what sort of state he’d be in when he got here. He’s living in York these days so chances are he was taking in some London theatre and very possibly some alcohol thereafter. I left him very clear video messages instead. Merciful, but also practical as I wanted an early bed and didn’t want to be woken up by panic calls.

It worked. I just retrieved the key for myself and I’m safely installed at home again. Sad to miss Tom, but we all have to make money. I’m back on the workshop grind, as you might have noticed from my emergency blog yesterday. Why else would I spend so much blogspace expanding details of a keyholder that looks like a rock…?

Bed.

I’m sitting in a room with about sixty children who are trying to build a battery, and it suddenly dawned on me like a thunderbolt that I didn’t write anything before I went to sleep last night.

Late night up the A1 but I’ve learnt now. I left London at 8. It’s the latest sensible time to leave London really. As I shot up I passed so many of those little vans full of traffic cones, waiting to close down all the roads and send everybody who is leaving after 9pm on endless diversions through tiny A roads while your satnav panics and you honestly have no idea how long you’ll have to be driving for. I made it to Peterborough in short order, and knowing the alarm was going off before 7, I celebrated with an early bed and NO BLOG.

Filthy filthy filthy boy. How could I almost leave a hole in my unbroken record? I think it’s coming up to five years of this madness. I might have to look back over it at some point and see what I’ve created here… Usually when I miss one I get a message, but today that didn’t happen which either means you’ve all fucked off or you just think I need a break.

I’ll probably have to finish this in my lunch break. Back to work…

—

So yeah. Back on the treadmill. It pays well though and the more I do it the easier it gets.

One of the lads this afternoon built the best paper airplane I’ve ever seen instead of paying attention to a workshop about maybe getting employment as an engineer. It leaves me to wonder. We all do this sort of thing with opportunity. He’s probably the best candidate in the room for the sort of work we are talking about. But if he’s not careful he’ll be flipping those big macs. I’m sure I’ve done similar things all the time. Too involved with my own crap to look up and see what’s there.

Like with this daily writing. I still pay to host the blog but I don’t monetise it in any way and I even switched off ads so it’s cost me fiscally even if it has helped me hugely in less quantifiable ways. Maybe my time would be better focused looking for a targeted lifestyle column type thing…

Anyway, this is a blog. As so frequently happens it’s not about very much. But there are many days in a year. One day I’ll go look at the statistics and see if anybody actually reads this. I’m amazed at myself for having studiously avoided them for so long so far. Thank you if you are here still. This is my mental health accountabilibuddy, and you’re all along for the ride.

Now I’m gonna eat this sandwich and galvanise for one more weird room full of half distracted youth…

My breakfast this morning: a banana. I never get up in time to take full advantage of the Premier Inn offering.

What a lovely bank holiday weekend. Mostly it’s been about relaxing. I hope it has been for you as well.

I got my wires crossed and thought I had to sleep in Peterborough tonight ahead of a workshop on the morrow. Not so. That’s tomorrow night. So I won a whole day of nothing. I fed the fish.

Fish aren’t quite in the same league as the various animals I’ve been looking after recently. Dogs can be full on, but Cookie is easy going and well trained. She has a limited gestural palate – she jumps up or she cocks her head. Both gestures have multiple meanings. She used to enjoy being close to the human. We went for long walks and had many an incomprehensible conversation. She loves a run.

The two incredible cats I’ve been spending time with are as different as cats can ever be. The male is dumb as a post and desires attention and love without complication. The female is a tragic heroine. She has a heart condition. She must be kept in careful peace, but she likes taking a swipe at things. She had us wrapped around her finger. We only watched David Attenborough because we (correctly) thought she’d like it. She bounced up to the screen when the tiger appeared, and spent most of the programme trying to swat birds.

I would love a high maintenance pet full time. Dad always avoided them for the same reason I do – they tie you down. They make a home, but they force you to stay in that home to look after them. For every time I’m tempted to get a dog or cat, I’m grateful that I haven’t got one. This summer is looking crowded now. I’m so glad there’s not the stress / expense of a catsitting arrangement, as I’ll be off on my excursions again thank the lord.

This evening I just zoned out in my own home, and in the early evening I went pirating with Brian and we finally managed to get a huge haul of treasure back to port, despite both of us weighing anchor deliberately in order to get some photos with the loot, leading to two opposing ships spotting us and very nearly chasing us down. By some miracle we kept it all and flogged it. Hurrah. Progress. I can go to bed glad I’ve had a lovely weekend and finally got some loot home in Sea of Thieves. Back to normal life now. The good thing about that game is that it’s pointless playing it without friends, so it will always be a social thing and not a time sink.

I want a pet though. I kept on thinking I saw a creature as I was walking through my flat. But no. 😦

Having access to the cat palace through Lou is a tremendous privilege on days like this. Right in the best part of Brighton with rooms twice the height of your average room, door to seafront in five minutes or less, two friendly beasts when you return. On days like this, the whole world descends on Brighton. I wouldn’t want to have to look for an Airbnb or pay for a hotel as the prices will be hoiked up with the temperature, and you’d be paying to be in a crowd. It’s brilliant that she’s catsitting for so long and that the owner trusts me enough to let me be here.

Knowing my love of people watching, Lou suggested I rent a bike and we cycle down to Hove Lagoon. She probably knows my imagination is full of pirates at the moment so she figured she could sell it to me with the name. Arrr.

The last time I got one of those Brighton bicycles it was so memorably terrible that it scarred me slightly, so it was with a degree of trepidation that I selected and unlocked one of only two bikes that were left at the rack. The basket was full of empty cans of gin and crisp packets, but apart from the handles and brakes being sticky in different ways there was nothing else wrong with it. Functional heavy bike. We went to Hove and beyond with the wind behind us.

It’s not far to Hove Lagoon. The sun was hot but the wind was cold. I couldn’t work out if I was too hot or too cold when we stopped and stared at a puddle and a playground. We turned round and slung into the wind to get us out of Hove and back to the mass of humanity that makes up Brighton seafront on a bank holiday Sunday. Hove Lagoon was a distance, not a destination.

Happy Easter. Eostremonath. Time for rebirth. Crack out of your egg in this Libra pink moon and rebalance yourself. It’s an auspicious time…

It’s the beginning of an avalanche of busy. I made the mistake of getting stuck into my diary today and updating it, and I’m about to get swamped cos I’m doing a spot of lovely theatre, plus a bit of filming that I’m gonna have to learn super tightly as most of the other actors will be speaking German. Plus I’m trying to slot in workshops when I can to keep the positive money flow. I’m not going to have many more opportunities to lounge around with Lou surrounded by pedigree cats in a cosy Brighton seafront hideaway. The boulder is rolling down the hill again.

I remember saying in lockdown that we’d all miss the peace and quiet. And I will for sure. I’ve had time to look around a bit even despite my ability to distract myself with shinies. Things are gathering momentum. Life is wiggling again. Gonna get busy. Gonna be fun. I’ll even get to go to Sardinia for twenty days in June. Aaaaa.

I’m feeling chilled and happy. Perfect after a Sunday. I’ve synchronised again. After the little cycle trip we wandered just five minutes to get to The Thomas Kempe in time for a very tasty late Sunday roast. Not even that crowded compared to the beachfront where we were nose to tail. Tomorrow I’ll have to drive up to Peterborough and crash in another Premier Inn before hauling myself back into the Tuesday grind of screaming children full of Easter chocolate building batteries. Right now though, a comfy long sleep to make sure my own batteries are fully recharged, and it won’t be too long a drive tomorrow…

My friend returned this morning to the home where I’ve been looking after their little fluffy dog. Me and the lads had hit upon the irresponsible idea of a quick morning fix of Sea of Thieves after a brilliant litany of gaming disasters yesterday. I was trying to multitask. My laptop was open in a darkened room..Wash the dishes, mend the leaks, pack the bag, shoot the sloop, keep an eye on the dog, grab the loot arrr…

I’ve been trying to explain to people the sheer joy of Sea of Thieves. I’ve even been trying to explain it to Lou. You’re pretending to be a cartoon pirate in a very manual computer game. Everything is difficult and easy. With a crew of friends its so much more fun than on your own, plus you get to shout things like “Man the capstan!” We were piloting a Brigantine and conducting a WhatsApp voice call and when my friends returned home we were amazingly not dead, even though we had actually let the damn ship sink by ignoring a leak in favour of swimming for treasure. We were attempting to bury the treasure in a nearby atoll while one of us got a merfolk to teleport them to a random port and try and pilot a new Brigantine back solo. It’s not easy as you’ve got to run round all over the boat to adjust the sails and check the chart and raise the anchor and steer, and that’s before anybody starts shooting holes in you.

I said goodbye to my friends with the game still running, and attempted to pilot Bergman to a coffee shop where I could use wi-fi to help unload the treasure we had somehow not lost. By the time I made it into Banbury though it was all over. So … I got a sausage roll and drove back to London.

I’m funny in other people’s houses. I frequently don’t use the kitchen in digs, but I felt at home enough to do so there. I didn’t use the shower though. Tried to make it work once, failed, decided I’d just be stinky. So my first stop back in London was to run a lovely long hot bath and scrape the man off. Pirates and dogs and writing. I could live like that for about a week. No more. It was an excellent two days though. I got some stuff written, got a tan from all the walking, and laughed harder than I’ve laughed for ages at the absolute insane carnage of three friends trying to be pirates and dying loads.

Post bath, I did another mission, to the cat palace. This is where I am now. From doggie to pussies. One of them is wandering around on top of me trying to establish the best place to be stroked. The other one is in a box. Special delivery.

We had time to zoom in on a friend of Lou in Lewes celebrating her glamorous 70th birthday in her incredible home. It’s a performance space. I really want to do Christmas Carol there. It would go down well in Lewes… …

Tomorrow I’m going to stop entirely. Oh joy.

Cookie has been a joy to get to know. I can’t keep a dog. Not with needing to drop everything and fuck off to who knows where at the drop of a hat. I love animals, but being primary carer for anything means that you have to be there for it all the time. Both of my parents died before I was thirty and I appear to have avoided children. I’ll look after a dog for a few days and that’ll be lovely. But I just don’t have the predictability to keep one full time, more’s the pity.

We had a very very very long walk in the morning. The sun was shining, the sky was clear. There is a very good network of bridleways and allotments here in Banbury. It doesn’t take long to find open space.

Cookie comes when she is called, and she runs like crazy when she’s free. I experimented with letting her off the leash in a big field. She bounded joyfully, and I might have been more relaxed had there not been an interesting horse. Still, she held back from jumping at it. She is, of course, a good dog. Oh yes she is.

I’ll be up tomorrow morning. That’s the joy of dogs. This evening the lads and I proved ourselves to be incredibly incompetent at Sea of Thieves, a cooperative online multiplayer pirate game. We died and died and died. It was atrocious and brilliant simultaneously.. Cookie sat behind me, occasionally mumbling, as I bailed the ship out. We eventually realised that we were just going to die all the time, and gave it up as a bad job shortly after midnight. I might have been inclined to have a weekend lie-in tomorrow after writing this late blog. But not with Cookie. I’ll be downstairs bright and early to offer walkies.

I could use a dog in my life more frequently. I’ve grown very used to cats and their ways. But dogs are so incompetent that they force us to step up for them, so they can just artlessly enjoy all the moments one after the other. Two days with that glory has helped me remember to downplay my own comfort. She’s an ace dog. She’s almost silent and mostly communicates with a head turn and a mucky paw. She’s a delight. And Jesus, she can run.

The first thing that strikes me here is the quiet. At home there’s the constant roar of the road. Here in Banbury it’s quiet. I just took a clock out of the room so now the quiet is complete. It’s just pushing midnight. I’m dogsitting.

Cookie and I watched terrible movies together with the household subscription. The house is a smart house, although it is supposed to let me operate the lights through Alexa but she just tells me I’m in the wrong account.

The doorbell talks to you. The thermostat is smart. “Don’t worry if you see a camera, they aren’t everywhere – just in my studio” I am told, introducing a concern that I hadn’t considered. Cameras! I’m being recorded! If Alexa is filming me to send to Bezos then the information is going to be just as useless as all the stuff that your paranoid friend is trying to convince themselves that Bill Gates is harvesting from bad science. The nanos that serve no purpose that are being put into us for REASONS or whatever else those good looking Californian hipsters have dreamt up to deliberately fly in the face of the mainstream in exchange for hits.

I’m here to look after Cookie.

Cookie is a dog. “What breed is she?” says Lou on the phone, and once again I feel like I just can’t ask the basic questions. She’s a dog. What does it matter what the words are? It’s like when a human tries to take the space of multiple humans because they consider themselves to be a special breed of human. Usually those “special” ones are the Boris ones that should really just get in the bin. She’s a dog.

Cookie doesn’t know what breed she is, nor does she care. She’s a good doggy. She likes a frolic. She is partial to a good leap. She’s friendly. And she’s very quiet. Only barks at birds.

Humans are complex when it comes to dogs. Over the course of one day of walkies I had to hold the doggie tight while a terrified child passed, and I had to divert my course when an eccentric old lady scolded me for potentially frightening off the stray cat she was trying to seduce. I’m generally very careful when I’m dogwalking. I’ve been with a girlfriend when the dead-eyed London lady ran the old “I’m going to call the council and your dog is going to be shot. Your dog is dead! Dead!!” That was Daphne and she had just jumped up at the wrong person to be friends. Dogs can’t tell so quickly when somebody is batshit crazy. She likely just smelt the shit and thought “interesting smelly human!” Nope. Unwell broken nasty human…

Nobody in their right mind could hate Cookien though. Silent and gentle gambolling hound.

I just put her to bed and I’m up in a little day bed in this automated house. I’ll need to be down early for morning fun. Dogs are a huge help with routine. Tomorrow I’m going to get some stuff written down.

Today though, bed in the quiet. I’ve put the ticking clock on the landing. Goodnight lovelies.

This is a really hard thing to describe, but I’m going to try to do it. Bear with me. Look at this photo.

These were both steel bars, and originally they were both universal in radius. Steel is often thought of as the hardest metal possible, but it course the quality of steel varies based on the manufacturing process. Think of Inigo Montoya in The Princess Bride. The three fingered man went to Inigo’s father knowing he made an excellent steel sword blade. He killed the father to avoid having to pay for the blade, which would have been extremely expensive. He eventually and famously paid for that mistake with his life. “My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.” If you haven’t seen the film, I’ve genuinely spoilt very little. Watch The Princess Bride for one of the stupidest and most brilliant bits of escapist fantasy that exists, with Mandy Patinkin as a brilliant swept hilt foil to Cary Elwes and Robin Wright, and a dated Mark Knopfler soundtrack that just helps set the tone for some of the most tongue in cheek celebrity cameos you will ever witness. “Mawwiage.”

But yes. Good steel is rare. Look back at that picture. They were both universal steel bars. So they were just straight lines of solid steel. Then they went to The Kirkaldy Testing Works and got pulled.

In Southwark, housed in a prime location just south of Blackfriars Bridge, there is a listed building. It contains obsolete machines. Their purpose was to test things to destruction. In that picture, there are two steel rods. They were pulled in one of the machines. The bottom one stretched but didn’t snap, even under tremendous pressure. The top one snapped.

Steel. STEEL.

These machines aren’t bending steel. They are PULLING it. They’re pulling STEEL. Pulling it. They are PULLING STEEL.

Seriously people. It’s fucking crazy. They used VAST machines. They didn’t just pull it either. That’s just the bit that pops my mind.

They pulled it, they shook it, they whacked it, they jiggered it… There are libraries of carefully catalogued teeth with different purposes. If you thought you had made something solid, mister Kirkaldy was the Scotsman with a big beard who wanted to make it clear to the world that nothing can’t be broken. The timbers of the floor are shored with steel because the testing works was on two levels and the machines weigh enough to make you suet immediately if you’re downstairs. Upstairs you would run a girder through the whole damn building, through a machine but sticking out of bith sides like a spear through a neck. Then machines connected to the hydraulics network beneath the city would respond to you turning a crank and would begin to exert impossible pressure channeled through various pumping twisting banging teeth in order to make sure that things like bridges will last forever. There was a hydraulic network under London providing water for this madness! Now it’s fibre-optic cables. But it used to be high pressure water. For the West end theatres. For the factories. And for the testing works. Ingenuity. Again it’s amazing how completely things have changed in just couple of lifetimes.

Downstairs are the machines that break chains, or screws, or bolts… There’s such an inevitability about these things. You turn a crank and slowly the item is modulated. Turn after turn and the huge gears move. Gear into bigger gear into bigger gear into tooth. Oil slipping and material banging. The unstoppable turning of the handle and the gradual unstoppable result. Crack-a-tack-a-sack-a-kkkkkkkkktttt

Everything has a breaking point. This place finds it, and drily records it. Until you know the most that something can take you can’t give it your full confidence. What a fucked up situation. We just mustn’t do it with people. Even in my limited experience of being an employee in a “normal” job, I’ve witnessed bosses deliberately exploring people’s edges just to see what they can get away with. And this place fucks things up and then turns it into numbers.

I have to try to make it interesting. Breakages. Snapping point. Ping.