Author: albarclay

My nice relaxed Sunday evening was completely ruined when I went onto the email to see what I was supposed to be doing for dayjobbery tomorrow and discovered that I’m booked to deliver three back to back workshops about electric cars in Isleworth and I’ve never even seen the workshop I’m delivering. The last few hours have been about finding the damn thing, and now I’ve found it I’m trying to get it into my head before I go to bed. I’m supposed to be there in eleven hours though, and I’m tired. I was just going to get an early bed. I might do that anyway, set the alarm for crack of dawn and do some cramming on the way into work.

My laptop has got something on it that makes it freeze and crash every ten minutes, and it takes about twenty minutes to log in. That hasn’t helped my mental state. I think it’s forcing an update in the background, but it just makes everything unworkable. It’s meant to be a good laptop, it’s only a couple of years old, but its been about as much use as a potato since I installed the latest version of Windows onto it. I think that might have been my mistake to be honest. Too late to roll back now. The last two paragraphs have been written as I’m waiting for the damn thing to boot up after it froze and I had to hard reset it. But frankly I think I’m just going to have to do painting by numbers tomorrow. It’s not like I’ve never done anything like it before. The laptop won’t be any use to me, that’s for absolute certain. It still hasn’t loaded in yet. I’m running a bath. I’ve got good mind to drop the thing into it.

I’m not supposed to be doing workshops on sustainable energy anyway. It’s a nice a way to pass the time and it pays the bills, but now the world really is waking up again I’m gonna have to get myself into a good long shoot or a rehearsal room. But I hate doing things by halves so meanwhile I’m gonna have to try to get this crap laptop working. It’s so bad I even installed antivirus into it (Spybot) – despite my feeling that antivirus software usually just further slows things down. It hasn’t improved the situation. Normally I’d just format the hard drive and reinstall Windows but nowadays you can’t even get Windows on CD. Plus, frankly, I think the latest Windows is the cause of the problem.

Anyway. I had a Sunday of sorts. Saw my friend who has sold her house. Tried to cast around for anything she might be throwing away that has value as I want to try to rehouse it and give them money. They’re keeping everything good though. Grabbed a picture to try and sell on eBay and some bottles of prosecco which they kindly gave me and which will eventually go into my gullet. Contemplated a nice evening seeing people and then … everything exploded with dayjob as documented.

The laptop has let me in. I’m reading the notes on the presenter view. I might just leave it on all night and then go swot in the morning. I’m too tired to take this in and the bath is ready. Better me in the water than the laptop. It’s one or the other right now.

Lou and I, as is our wont, found our way out into nature. Stanmer. Turns out we coincided with a Liverpool match against Brighton, and the stadium is right there. Nevertheless the crowds were in the stadium, not the park. We could hear their singing on the wind but they weren’t everywhere.

It’s good for you, singing, particularly as part of a group. Even if it’s just the vowels and howling open shared sounds of a football song it gets you breathing together as part of a group, and aligning thoughts with breath with action. Lou and I howled along with the Liverpool fans from our vantage point in amongst the ancient cedars. The Liverpool song is from Carousel the Musical. They rarely sing the whole thing through but it’s a good piece of noise and it’s fun to sing.

We had breakfast and we took advantage of the fact that the sun was warm even if nothing else was. We sat and observed the humans.

“What are they doing?” we asked after a while. A couple were stumping around the lawn with an instructor, and everybody had a pair of long sticks like ski sticks. Lou says: “It looks like cross country skiing, but without the skis…”

Growing up, my father identified Langlaufing as the single most pointless form of exercise he could identify. It’s the crap bit of skiing, when the lift deposits you miles from the slope, expanded into a whole day. Cross country skiing? Skiing with all the joy taken out. “There’s the view, still?”

“Nah it won’t be Langlaufing without skis, that’s ridiculous,” I said, watching them, bemused. “I reckon they’re in physio. They’ve broken their backs or something. This is part of their rehabilitation.” That’s the only basis on which I can picture myself there, walking around in circles with an instructor.

On the wind we hear the instructor’s voice. He’s telling them what to do with their shoulders and their core. The two people he is teaching seem interested enough in what they’re doing. They go walking around a bit more. It’s fascinating and odd. There must be something at stake here, I’m thinking.

The instructor has something written on the back of his shirt. “Use your new phone camera, get a photo and read it…”

Nordic walking for health.

It’s cross country skiing, without the skiing or the views. Or the snow. You walk around on lawns in straight lines.

Another thing dad said… “There are a lot of people in the world. Somebody out there will buy pretty much anything.”

It’s not for me. But … It’s good for you. Like singing a football song. We all like to have a thing we do. That’s his. And he’s been doing it for over a decade now. He’ll never walk alone…

Another concert this evening. I loaded the remaining sunflowers into Bergman and took them down to Brighton. Five minutes from Lou’s flat, January Thompson was doing a concert raising funds for endangered species and for International Animal Rescue.

I didn’t have to help dress the space this time, but I did a little bit anyway. I figured that the sunflowers would be attractive and topical, and I ended up backstage before it started, putting batteries into electric candles – more or less an exact mirror of what I was doing at the last minute at The Roundhouse. The amount of brand new electric candles I’ve handled in the last week make me look askance at the version of me that must have put a hundred of them into the electronics recycling bin at Park Royal dump about a month ago on the belief that keeping them would result in them sitting unused for a decade and leaking.

Then I spent much of the concert stalking around the edges trying to take good photographs with my sexy new phone camera. January is a complete musician – a singer songwriter, and surrounded by skillful artistic people who believe in her and want her supported. Her work is mystic and ethereal, but sewn through with a mercurial personality. She looks and sounds incredible. I haven’t seen her work until now. It’s often a sticky moment the first time you see another live artist work, when you know and like them socially. It can put you off people if the thing they do just doesn’t land at all with you. It’s happened to me before. The gig this evening landed with me very well. I was very happy to be helping document it. Photos might help with marketing and she really needs to be more widely known.

She was playing The Spire, which is a deconsecrated church in Brighton. It’s the sort of place we used to do Factory shows on on Sunday evenings. Freezing cold and old and strange and beautiful, seating about a hundred.

Last night at The Affordable Art Fair, I was being deliberately a little bit arch and I asked my nephew if there were any paintings of cats that I could look at. Tonight at The Spire, local Brighton stencil artist CassetteLord was selling a stencil of an endangered South East Asian Fishing Cat, sprayed onto a canvas background that reminded me somewhat of a Mao rally poster. I still miss Mao the cat, it was a picture of a cat and I had just asked for exactly that at the art fair, and it was affordable. It was up for silent auction. I put in £100, going up the animal rescue charity. Nobody bid more. Now I have a lovely bright picture of a cat. Nowhere to put it. But it’s mine and it’s signed and I like it. I’ve invested in art.

I’m back at Lou’s now. Bed approaches. A beautiful evening in a cold church in Brighton has not left me warm. I’m glad to have had such a good fix of live music lately, but seriously – it’s time for spring now. Too much cold despite heart warming music.

My kitchen is full of sunflowers. After we broke the gig, Tristan and I rolled home late in an uber XL and filled the boot with as many of the decorative garlands as we could carry. When he woke up this morning and left he only took a few. So I’ve been trying to find new homes for the ones left. Many of my neighbours now have a few stems. I took some across London with me when I met a friend in order to brainstorm some writing projects coming up. I’ll be taking the rest to Brighton with me tomorrow.

I was feeling pretty rough today. I haven’t had a hangover for a while, but that was definitely happening. I was dizzy all morning. I’m starting to feel normal again now and it’s one in the morning. Time for chamomile tea and bed.

This evening was spent looking at art. Just over the river from me, my nephew is directing The Affordable Art Fair in Battersea Park. Bloody well done him. I went to have a look around and see if I wanted to buy anything.

Last time I went to The Affordable Art Fair I was a little disappointed that the only things I could afford were the prints and they weren’t on display. I wondered about the name of the fair. Going there again I get it a bit more. You have to put a price tag on an artist’s work because the value is subjective. In any subjective medium, the value of the artist is partly determined by how highly the artist values themselves. Stated value largely determines perceived value.

Much of the affordable art I saw was a grand or more. I was still open to splashing out for something I liked, but even though they say that paintings hold their value, my experience of selling them second hand at auction doesn’t correlate. Most of my most disappointing sales have been of paintings. It has led me to a place where I’m definitely not going to buy a piece of art unless I really love it. This evening, on a brief foray, I saw lots of art that I liked, but nothing that grabbed me by the balls. Likely I’ll go back again on Sunday and I’m not out of the race. I’m cautious. I’m not gonna buy something because I think it’ll be an investment. But I remember a girlfriend of mine buying a painting that I bet she still loves, and I imagine it has held its value too. She had it over her bed. If something strikes me that much maybe I’ll have a punt. Although I have so many paintings still stacked under my kitchen table. Disappointing sales meant I stopped pushing them, either in auction houses or online. There’s no point working out the artist’s name and then researching them and writing a spiel and then ending up having to send an awkward package via Hermes because somebody snagged it for the minimum. If I hung them all up you wouldn’t be able to see the walls here. They can’t stay under my table forever. I don’t need any more art.

At least the sunflowers are ephemeral. They’re pretty for now. They’ll do.

The music has started and my work is done.

This is an unusual one for me. Normally show start is when I peak. But today I’m Art Department and I’m tired. We are at Camden Roundhouse. We have come together to build a charity concert. I’ve been here for twelve hours. Now I’m here for to enjoy the music. I might still need to fix something, but if I did my job earlier I won’t need to. And I did my job earlier. We all did.

Huge bolts of polyester silk in blue and yellow. We cut it and hung it. A superabundance of sunflowers. We scattered them artistically around the space, keeping back many to sell to the public as a symbolic donation focus. It’s a lovely feeling to have some ownership over a space. I’m particularly proud of my sunflower garlands on the pillars. They pick out beautifully in the light.

Yuri Yurchuk just sung some beautiful opera for us. The crowd is certainly not as spare as some crowds I’ve been part of here. It’ll likely fill out further as well. Considering how last minute this all was, it’s come together well. There was a thought that we might try and paint the centre of 1500 sunflowers blue. But this was announced shortly over 24 hours ago and there aren’t that many of us.

Franz Ferdinand isn’t even on the playlist and they agreed to join today. It’s an evening done with heart in the traditional London manner. This is why I have persisted with this city so long. I love last minute heart. Tom Baxter is giving just that as I write. I keep having to stop writing just to let it wash over me.

It’s not much for me to have done considering what’s happening over there. But we do what we can, and I’m an artist. Making stuff is part of how I express myself, and making ephemeral last minute stuff has always somehow been high on my list of things that make me feel like me. I was part of a hasty team today. Hasty team done good.

The programme is pretty full. Chrissy Hynde will be playing later – I saw her in soundcheck. I’m tired so I’m not sure how long I’ll last here but hopefully I’ll see her set. It helps that I was building things during sound check as I won’t get FOMO if I leave to go to sleep.

Jack Garratt is now playing. These lovely charismatic musicians are mostly here for just one or two songs. It’s a big ask at last minute to come and play what is shaping up to be a big crowd here at The Roundhouse. I haven’t stood in a crowd this big for years.

Text DONATE to 70150 says the banner. I’m likely going to go and pay a fiver each for two of the sunflowers I’ve been throwing around all day. I’m going to switch my phone off. Joseph Toonga just did a beautiful kinetic piece called “Born to Protest”. I am going full audience from now.

That was fab. Chrissy Hynde is a legend. Camden Council pulled the plug on Franz Ferdinand. They had a finale planned. Buggers. Nevertheless, a lovely thing to be part of. I’m totally exhausted. Props to the people who organised this. I was just part of the machine.

A long day of dayjobbery. Some of my friends are teachers. I don’t know how they do it. That was a full day of it, running a pretty chaotic workshop in an inner city school. They were sparky as they always are, but I had to stay energised to match them. Now I’m absolutely battered. And it’s another early start tomorrow doing something completely different. My habit of saying yes means I’ll be up super early again and off to Camden to help hang a load of Ukrainian flags and build towards a last minute charity gig. Musicians helping out as best they can. I try to avoid thinking too much about the whole Ukraine thing as it’s vast and upsetting. We’ve seen it before, and we will see it again, how much damage a single ego can wreak… At least tomorrow I’ll be applying myself – at a discount rate – to helping make some positive energy in all this.

Various friends of mine are doing all sorts of curious things to try to help. There seems to be a large number of people going on Airbnb and renting out rooms in Kyiv that have been left listed. They have no intention of staying, but Airbnb are waiving their fees in the Ukraine so it’s a way of trying to get money to people there – but money isn’t food and its gonna get hard for the people left now the Russians are trying to funnel everybody behind enemy lines. I can’t believe there’s a land war again in my lifetime. And where will it end? Is he eventually going to roll all the way to Berlin?

The Russian narrative seems to be that this is a military action to liberate people… So other friends of mine are writing on Google restaurant reviews in Russia, trying to explain the way it looks from our side to the restaurateurs of Russia, perhaps in the hope that, were they to really know what was going on, the people of Russia will rise against their little Tsar. I’m not so sure. People are very happy to eat what they are given. For decades now globally the majority of people have taken the path of least resistance. We are complacent.

Anyway, I’m tired so I’ll start ranting if I’m not careful. It’s gonna be another short sleep. It’s midnight again. I’ll be on the tube tomorrow once more. This morning, that was an experience… Morning tube has always been an angry place, but now there are factions. The people in masks are fuming about the people who aren’t, and the people who aren’t are often contemptuous of it ones who are. We can’t even come together on something like that. No wonder Putin is relying on us wringing our hands while he just gets what he wants again.

Ugh.

Hopefully if I go to sleep I’ll have nice dreams. I’m too tired to be in a good mood. I didn’t take any pictures I can use. Boo. Night.

I was having a lovely relaxed time of it learning lines in bed right up until I went and upended a brand new huge great mug of frothy coffee all over my big soft feather duvet and lovely light coloured sheets. My Fitbit likely witnessed a sudden spike in heart rate as I went in a second from peacefully mumbling other people’s words out loud to swearing copiously while running around in my pants trying to get the wet off before it soaked through to the feathers. I think I managed to prevent the worst of it.

The learning is for an audition. Just a self tape but these things … God knows how far they go and who sees them. I can’t really think of them as “just a self tape” anymore as they are swiftly replacing in the room auditions. We are now totally used to a process that used to seem so much of a huge faff for us.

After my morning of linelearning, interrupted by the coffee spill, I drove over to Emma’s. She’s in Camden. If I’m going to do a self tape I’m usually going to call her or Tristan, and this one felt like one for her as I wanted to have time to faff about eyelines and camera angles and light and so on. We have learnt that we can be patient with one another in these matters. Nevertheless we have to erect a background and a temperamental tripod and a load of lights. The self tape issue is rarely the performance – it’s the stuff like eyeline and lighting. Had they foreseen that things would go this way for auditions I have a feeling that the top drama schools would have a series of third year workshops in basic filmography. Where to put the lights, where to get the actor to look etc etc. I was happy enough to send a take this evening when Emma suggested that it looked like the person I was talking to was sitting in the middle of the seat in front of me. Playing it back I could see what she meant so I adjusted it. We got it done quicker than I had anticipated in the end, which is good as I’ve got a whole day of dayjobbery tomorrow. The deadline is tomorrow afternoon, and I’m not going to emerge until long after it’s gone.

This is a happy tape to send. It’s going to one of the “I wonder if they even know who I am” class casting directors. They do! Yay!

But my hit rate was always high on in person meetings. If they happened I had a high chance of landing them.

These tapes are going through doors that were previously shut. Some of the names on the emails have been people I’ve marked as interesting artists on a global scale. I felt a strange release with this one, because the day the filming starts is the same day that, if I don’t get it, I’ll be flying out to do the next race for those crazy lovely madmen at Extreme-E. So either I’ll be doing a lovely job or … I’ll be doing a lovely job. I’m hopeful that this might swing in my direction though. Acting has to remain my primary.

Now … its late at night. I’m home and I’ve sent the WeTransfer to my agent. Tomorrow I’m out way too early for my liking and going to a school in the congestion charge zone so I’ll have to take the damn tube. More of this talking about sustainable energy malarkey, so probably correct that I’m not driving there. It’s a decent doctrine to be preaching. I’m tired just thinking about it though. Probably should just follow that feeling to bed. No bath. No chamomile even. I’m already down to six hours sleep and even if I do fine with two hours repeatedly, I’m not good with five hours for some reason.

This place used to be The Tabard. Now I think it’s called Chiswick Playhouse. It’s a pretty relaxed room in which to watch a show – you bring your glasses up from the pub downstairs. It seats close to 100. I’m at the back right. I speculated that there would be a return on the last night of a sold out show. There was  I’m here to watch Jazz Emu…

I can’t remember the last time I came here. A long time ago. It has rebranded but I don’t think it has changed much physically. I’m glad it’s still running. The London pub theatre scene is a great and odd scene. You get a very broad mix of shows. People trying things out mix with people putting on things they know well. Showcases and artists and weirdos and comedians and musicians. I expect the last few years have killed some.

This place is buzzy tonight. Nothing on stage but a sound desk with keyboard and a load of dry ice, but every seat in the house is full. We haven’t been able to do this sort of thing very often lately. I’m looking forward to something different. Then I’ll have to head home and be well behaved. My friends have to do the get out – its their last night. And I have to make sure I turn up tomorrow for this self tape that came through while I was in Harrogate.

It’s already twelve minutes late to go up. Likely waiting for latecomers. You can be a bit loose in a venue like this. I used to be in this sort of place twice a week. This show is an hour straight through, and I know nothing about it, and I’m hoping my bladder will hold, especially considering I’ve got a pint between my legs.

“Do you know him?” my neighbor asks me. No. I don’t know Jazz Emu. I know some other people attached to this show, but I’m looking forward to seeing what he’s all about. Judging by this crowd, he’ll be fun.

It’s starting! yay theatre!

—

So that was wonderfully weird. And it turns out I was at the final night for the theatre as it is. It will be under new management. The end of an era. The pub will still be called The Tabard, and the space still has to operate as a theatre. Interesting.

Jazz Emu is a whole world. I was happy to live in it for a night. He’s a delightfully odd self effacing electronic-music comedian type. He’s made a frame to play inside and he invited us all to come with him. It was huge fun. I’ll catch him again I suspect.

Stopping on the way back down from Yorkshire at a service station made me realise how terrible those places are for anybody who cares what they eat. I can and will make do with a KFC or similar artificial hideousness, but Lou is careful and there really ain’t much for her. Marks and Spencers have a good deal as pretty much the only vendor of actual food but even that was pretty poor today. And the roads are back to normal – the crowds are back to normal.

We made it back into London before the evening traffic, and it was a swift run back down the A1, but I was hungry when I got home. Out of solidarity I couldn’t really grab a dirty chicken burger, so I just had a few snacks and drove faster.

The day started with great luxury. I’ve been in Harrogate many many times over the years, particularly in that happy decade of summers that were filled with Sprite Shakespeares in the grounds of Ripley Castle. They were busy times though. If I was in town it was usually to get something. I was rarely there with time to spare, and added to that, the wage wasn’t good enough to inspire profligacy. They were happy and important summers for me, but it was always a negotiation with the agent to accept them and I never came home feeling like I’d made a good stash – especially on the boozier years…

This morning we had some leisure time in Harrogate. I wanted a treat. I took Lou and India to Betty’s.

Betty’s is just the ultimate twee place to eat. It’s on a corner in Harrogate, and if you want to go there you’re going to have to queue up. We arrived at ten to nine in the morning and joined a queue of a good twenty groups. If we had arrived any later the queue would’ve likely been so long it wouldn’t have been worth it in the cold.

It was set up by an expat Swiss confectioner called Fritz, who changed his name to Frederick just before WW1, married the daughter of an industrialist and put her money to good use. English breakfast and cream tea fayre with a Swiss twist. India and I went the whole hog and had a tiered “Imperial” breakfast. A glass of Bircher muesli. Two slices of cinnamon cake with clotted cream and fruit. A couple of pastries. Rosti with egg and protein of choice. Coffee.

Behind me as we sat were polished up versions of lots of the type of teapot I sold in large quantities for not very much on eBay a little over two years ago. In bulk for decoration is pretty much the only use they have really, the majority of them. Or pouring tea of course. They looked nice on the shelf but I found myself thinking that the current worth of the whole shelf of teapots probably amounted to the cost of the breakfast. That’s not to say the pots are completely worthless. But I paid it with pleasure. I was the one that wanted to go there. I was happy to foot the bill for good company while I shoved tasty food into my face. And arriving at that service station on the A1 some hours later, I was glad that we’d started the day up in Harrogate with some top scran.

I’m back in London again now, and I’m gearing up for another schizophrenic week, thankfully punctuated by a lovely and interesting self tape due Tuesday, going to a director who has taken the time to write publicly that he sees and appreciates the work we all put in for the things. (It was the first thing I found when doing my due diligence research). I’m glad of him saying it. Makes me hope the part lands so I can work with him. But then… well I hope they ALL land. Of course I do. For all of us! Ha. It will.

The last few times we’ve been up to Harrogate, the Turkish baths have been closed. They’re open again now, at the end of this long winter. Lou and I booked for the two and a half hour session at the end of the day. Why the hell not since we are here anyway?

It is so cold in the world, and we have all battled through a shit summer and a long winter. Perhaps not surprisingly we were in plentiful company as we began our journey through the different spa rooms. I’m not disappointed to see lots of people. It inhabits the place – gives it life and more personality. It’s not as big as it was. Lots of the original building has been eaten by Wetherspoons, and a Chinese Restaurant. Still, they’ve kept the most important parts.

There’s underfloor heating, and the walls are warm. Mahogany changing rooms, with bright fresh-painted mandalas and crescent moons decorating clocks. Leather recliners next to the frigidarium – the coldest room containing a long plunge pool for when you overheat. It feels old and considered, not twee. I like it here. An ancient cleansing ritual reinterpreted by Victorians but with lessons learnt and passed on from thousands of years ago.

The Romans really made sense of this form of bathing and relaxation, but the Victorians got right behind the blend of decadence and engineering. Mosaic tiles for beauty and easy washing, curved walls for water run off and safety, and all these different rooms. After the frigidarium you can shift into one of the warmer rooms, and then move back and forth as you please. They are hard, these rooms, but hot. You have your towels but you’re sitting on marble, stone, wood or just tiles. Soft seats would get pretty horrible pretty quickly. But you sit and you warm up. You can get water in little paper cones from a little brass tap. All the plumbing feels Victorian and old but in a good way. Even the loos are The Venerable Thomas Crapper. You find ways to let it wash over you. Your body gets cleaner and warmer.

We alternately cooked and cooled and cooked and cooled for ages. At the heart of the sauna is the laconicum and it’s HOT in there. At the end of the day when it felt like it was cooling off in there I checked the thermometer and it read 68°C. Off to the side is a steam room and I couldn’t take full breaths in through either my nose or mouth in there it was so hot. 68 is hot enough but that steam room was maybe even more – a blinding eucalyptus scented pressure cooker. I was in heaven, gradually cooking myself like a sausage, occasionally plunging myself into the cold water for a second just “because I think it’s good for my skin”, going back to languishing in heat. At one point Lou had everybody in the Caldarium shamelessly adopting yoga poses – legs up the wall. It’s hot and unfamiliar there, but it’s inevitably quite a social experience. You aren’t pretending the other people aren’t there – you can’t, you’re sitting in their sweat sometimes. You’re surrounded by all these different bodies of all shapes and sizes, and the people living in them are happy to pass the time with you like you’re at the bus stop. It’s an odd mix of intimacy with yourself and small-talk with others. I found time to retreat into my own head, and time to talk about the different parishes in Jersey.

Now we are cosy and sleepy, back in Harrogate. I feel so warm now – heated through to my bones. I’m about to sleep hard and well and long. A treat, the Harrogate baths. A real treat in this cold. My throat feels funny now. But I’m gonna sleep beautifully.