Author: albarclay

I’m sitting in a living room in Harrogate listening to Lou and Annabel talking about dresses. We are staying at Annabel’s. She’s made me a dressing gown in the past for Scrooge, and it was wonderful. Her daughter India was part of Christmas Carol for the years at The Arts Theatre. We nipped up here as I still have unfinished business with Tennant’s Auctioneers, and the world has been so shut and neurotic it has felt like too much to come up here and start poking things in the auction house. “What happened to X?”

We had a glorious Turkish meal earlier this evening, and now we are waiting for India to get back from Leeds where she’s been at a class. I’ve been sitting here for about an hour, and have uttered two words in all that time. “Shepherd’s Bush.” I’ve got nothing to add to what is an extremely detailed, passionate and involved conversation about dressmaking. It’s fascinating – it’s wonderful hearing these two people geeking out like this sort of thing. I have my topics as well, and sometimes I love to find somebody who shares them. Annabel and Lou are both on topic right now. They can both talk about fabrics and dressmaking for England. And they are doing so. Clothes. Dresses. Fabrics. Another little corner of the world that took virtually none of my attention and headspace until I found these excellent people in my life.

This evening as we walked the streets of this little old market town we could smell the woodsmoke in the air. We wandered into the foyer of the theatre this evening as we looked for a place to eat. They let us in without batting an eyelid, just to look at the interior. Some comedian has been passing through so the door was open. A similar thing to the feeling that has made me come back up to Tennants at last has been flitting through this town. Last time we came up here it was neurotic as hell, but we all were. None of the restaurants let us eat with them because we hadn’t booked. They had space, but they didn’t have headspace. Now this evening they just let us wander into the lovely old theatre and take photographs of the woodwork without challenge or permission.

Now I’m just writing as they talk. I’ve got nothing to add and they are enjoying the conversation. Best use of my time.

I won’t get to stay up north very long. We’ve booked the spa tomorrow night and I’ll be busy at Tennant’s tomorrow morning. But hopefully I’ll have a bit more time to enjoy Yorkshire. I do love it up here. Many happy summers of my life were spent in his neck of the woods. You can’t have that sort of experience without leaving a bit of yourself behind. I like to come up here and just connect with the energies again.

First thing in the morning somebody asked me to be a cat for an hour.

This is at Central School of Speech and Drama. I’m a guinea pig for training movement directors. They are practicing their craft on us. We are just having to respond honestly.

Wendy made me a tiger for hours back at Guildhall for the animal project. My body remembers it. But this body is so much older and heavier than the peak fitness body I had in my early twenties. Even then it was exhausting. Now, after two years of corona, with less oxygen because I have a fucking mask on my face… A hard start to the day, but at the same time a happy thing to know that this old body can still sustain it. I’m just one six month run of a good physical play away from peak fitness… Hester would always give me the running-around parts in Sprite shows up in Yorkshire, knowing that I greatly prefer the accidental fitness to the gym. This is just one day of my life. By ten o’clock in the morning I’m pooped.

I have a break though. Coffee in the market outside the school, and a moment of nostalgia. Ben is here as well and we share parallel lines. We have been running alongside one another for decades, occasionally holding hands, occasionally looking away. He trained at this exact institution though, unlike me. I’m just examining the difference between my tiger-body then and my tiger-body now. He is treading corridors that were full of possibility back when we were younger. He’s back at the old school. For a moment we share the time we’ve walked through this world as we stand being friendly in the square outside Hampstead Theatre. Both of us have kept at it. Both of us have had huge wins and huge gaps. Both of us are still there, still there, still there.

Various stints at Wyrd sisters happen until suddenly I’m Macbeth in Act 5 Scene 3 with the armour. Exploring weight and groundedness and the surrender of being dressed. Then more sisters and movement codes and elements. It’s interesting stuff to explore – crucial stuff to explore. It’s much of what makes live theatre live. My body was less of a precision instrument than I wanted it to be. I’m dead tired now. Happy tired. A tiredness I remember from the first few weeks of rehearsal when there’s a movement director who is pulling louder than the call of the table. These are good practitioners being well trained. I hope they go on to be involved in interesting and powerful work in an industry with new life from somewhere.

Driving home the news put all this theatre stuff into sharp relief. Tight voiced experts trying not to crack their voices as they coldly agree that yes, Tsar Putin might be crazy enough to push the button. If we survive this newest hideousness, there’ll be so much material to make work with. It was an hour and a half to drive home from Swiss Cottage, and parking my car up there cost me £30 for the working day, in which time I had to move it thrice. I’ll still see a profit from all my writhing around but parking is fucked in his city. Not that money will mean anything when we all live in a radioactive wasteland. I’ll be better off with a good tight body and the ability to fight the cats on their own terms.

My cat this morning probably looked like a pig.

I got back from Bristol and parked up outside mine in the late afternoon, and good thing too. Now its evening, and the road outside my flat is a jungle. I was going to head into town to see Jack throwing some ideas around, but there’s no uber in this crap so I’d have to drive in myself and nobody in his right mind would get on the roads when its like this, and less so knowing I’ll have to pay the congestion charge. Traffic in both directions outside my window is backed up as far as the lights and bridges. Everybody with a job and a car has used their car to get to their job, and with lockdown restrictions dropped I bet you this week is the week that many of the people who run offices insisted that whoever’s left of the workforce comes in physically if at all possible. They’re all coming home tired. So, of course, Tfl has organised a tube strike. God knows what they’re striking about now… Maybe they’re asking for fares to be lowered? They are already ridiculously expensive. But with all the people in London, you gotta believe that a tube strike is a sure fire way of causing absolute carnage across the capital.

It’s raining as well. I was going to drive to the shop, but I took one look at it and walked. I bought myself a chicken kiev. It’s an atrocious attempt at solidarity, and it’s a cheap easy meal. I’m knackered. Sleep more or less completely eluded me in the Premier Inn last night. The school was excellent though thank God, and considering I’m talking about engineering and sustainability I felt a good deal more kosher having just been part of the team that made a sustainable race in the desert. I’m still wearing my wristband, like a teenager who has been to a festival. It helps me remember the warmth and the work. I should take the time to draw up my invoice…

On the way home I had two calls, both seeing if I was able to do something fun. One of them was a delightful bit of mentoring in Somerstown. The other was being a (mercifully unrecognisable) dancing goblin for a week starting tomorrow. Yes really. In a mask. “You’re the first person we thought of!” And honestly, I wish I could be that goblin. But I’m off to Yorkshire on Thursday, so both lovely options had to be thrown out. But then I got a third call and it looks like I might be going to ANOTHER crazy distant place at the end of April to get plugged into more electric car insanity. Watch this space. It won’t happen if Disney calls (and they actually might). But it’s starting to feel like this year, after the long wait through COVID, will be a properly adventurous year again. Bring it on, I say. I’ve needed it, and I’ll do all I can to make it happen. The world is big. This is helping me stick a few more pins in the map.

Tonight though I’m going to get into a hot bath and go to bed before ten. Tomorrow is gonna be extremely physically demanding – I’m providing my services as an actor for training movement directors to practice their craft on. I’m expecting multiple warm-ups that take my post pandemic willing actor body to the edge of vomit, and then lots of Laban efforts. I reckon I’ll be glad of a long night down, so I’m getting one.

This is not the first time I’ve slept in a faceless Premier Inn. It won’t be the last.

There were times working with this company in the early days when I would arrive at one of these places, or worse at a Travelodge, to discover that I would be sharing a room with somebody I had maybe met once before, maybe never. Thankfully these days we get our own room. Somebody kicked off as we all got a little bit older. The hotels we are booked into are often in very remote locations – one time the pipes had been dug up the night before to be sold for copper, so there was no hot water. They were still open, with a baffled receptionist. I think the company got a refund for our discomfort. We didn’t see it though.

This hotel is at least in a busy area so that won’t happen.

I still say “yes” to these jobs when they ask me, so long as I can make it work – so long as it’s possible. I’ll juggle things around as well to try and make it work. Acting is primary as it must be. But I think it’s important not to pass up honest work. Being the person people call is a precious thing.

The woman who books us has a deep understanding of the fact she is mostly booking actors and that our circumstances can quite quickly change. She is extremely accommodating of last minute acting jobs. My name isn’t on the original booking for this one. It rarely is. I’m the last minute guy and I like it here. Hopefully I’m making it possible for Colin to do some filming. This came in about a week ago along with a few more days in the next few weeks. I was in the desert and I just kept yessing as I didn’t have time to think more deeply or check my diary. I was right to, as they can all fit. I’ve kept myself going this long in my changeable vocation by having a forward attitude to short term last minute jobs that help pay the bills. I don’t suffer from the stigma that some people put on doing jobs of work that aren’t in my chosen sphere. Occasionally the gutter rags run stories about so-and-so who used to be on telly and now is doing another thing for money, like it’s a binary choice. Rubbish. As with the Saudi thing, it’s always better to go towards the unfamiliar. Ultimately my job is to portray and understand people who aren’t like me. Saying “yes” is always going to bring something – actors can be good fun to hang out with but it’s good to plug into other crowds. This dayjob has been years now and it has taken me into some really interesting chaotic urban schools to work with young people. It’s shown me a side of the education system I was completely blind to, coming from the immense educational privilege I experienced. I remember walking into my first state school maybe ten years ago and feeling my lack of world knowledge, that even the schooling system experienced by the majority of people in this country was alien to me. This job asks questions of me as to how to engage young people from very different circumstances. Plus it has given me a surprisingly good comparative knowledge of the cheap hotels up and down the country.

This Premier Inn is in Bristol Town Centre. It was tricky finding the car park, and it was raining all the way down the M4. My bedroom is COLD but I think I’m just in a bodyplace where everything will be cold until June. I’m here for one day only, going in early tomorrow to try and get the youngsters engaged about the possibilities of sustainable energy. I’m there first thing in the morning, and I’ll be out by lunch. It’s late already – I was slow out of London. Another hotel room… I’m gonna have a shower and try to wind myself down from the rainy drive…

It’s only about forty minutes drive from Brighton to Winnie the Pooh land. It’s near the Ashdown Forest where I went to that boarding school for sad tiny people back when Thatcher was PM. I once played Poohsticks on the bridge near Pooh Corner with my father, in the faraway times when none of the cracks had started to show.

Life hasn’t taken me back that way really. I let myself forget those trees and little comfortable English lanes and streets. Lou and I found our way there this afternoon.

We had just successfully got into a National Trust garden without paying. Buoyed up by our terribly English disobedience, we elected to blow the money we might have given to help maintain the property on English food with a Winnie the Pooh theme. Pooh is on my mind a fair amount these days, and not just because I’ve bought Lou her EAU De Pooh oud.

Pooh Corner in Hartfield will show up on your Google maps. It’s a little Tea Room with a Pooh gift shop and a Pooh menu and very cheerful staff who don’t have to dress up in silly clothes and seem to genuinely enjoy the pleasure they give to the punters by being associated with the childish joyfulness of Winnie. Pooh goes deep. Think of The Tao of Pooh. We’ve all noticed the life lessons buried in this ostensibly childish selection of literature about a hungry friendly bear of very little brain and his friends.

We happen on the table that gets the sun latest in the day. It is still shining on our faces as we finish the last hot meal out of the kitchen. Most of the rest of the afternoon diners are in shade, and the shade is cold. The warmth of this falling sun helps cut through the fact that I’m still not recovered from plunging back into winter again from the desert. Nevertheless we drive as close as we can to Poohsticks bridge. It’s also on maps.

The bridge has had to be rebuilt a few times from sheer volume of footfall. It’s not the same bridge I stood on with my father before the world got harder. Nevertheless, Lou and I played Poohsticks. It’s compulsory – so long as you can find a naturally fallen stick, but it’s been a stormy winter. There’s a car park on one side. We approached it from the wrong side, where there’s no official parking. We went past tons of properties with “PRIVATE” written everywhere. People had stumped over their lawns with big boots and hammered stakes into the good turf in order to repeatedly order us hoipolloi to “Keep off the Grass”. We kept off it. I guess there’s going to be coach parties in the summer with armies of tourists throwing wrappers wherever they can and eating the roses. It felt like unnecessarily shouty signage for the two of us. But we still went the wrong way for a moment and ended up in somebody’s farm.

Nice step into the world of Pooh for a day. It’s a big franchise and it has given so many people so much pleasure. We had a gorgeous day in the cold. Now I’m exhausted. Lots of walking. Lots of fresh air. Cold cold fresh air.

On my last night in Saudi I was out following my final drop off and I stopped in a little commercial area to get a pizza. I didn’t want to wait in the pizza shop so I went exploring and found this little place, unerringly translated atrociously by Bixby – the compulsory joke of a “personal assistant” app that Samsung foists on all its users whether they like it or not.

I find Bixby Translate is good for a laugh from time to time. You won’t get sense out of it though. And it’s not worth the wasted button on your phone. For those who missed it, here’s its attempt at the menu in the coffee shop opposite my hotel. It made me howl.

Anyway this isn’t a blog about how hilariously crap Bixby is. This is a blog mostly about the result of my visit to “Pill Stick”. This is actual Pill Stick without the crap translation overlay.

Pill Stick sells oud. There are lots and lots of oud shops in Saudi. Scent is powerful and strong in this culture. Oud is a range of scents made from the Agarwood that grows naturally in Saudi – specifically from a resin produced by Agarwood infected with mold. It’s mushroom and wood together. Two things I like. I went in to buy some for Lou.

The guy behind the counter had no English and I had no Arabic. That was an interesting start. We made do with grunting and gesticulation. I knew I was gonna buy some no matter what. He was going to sell some no matter what. Our needs aligned.

I didn’t know what I was buying though. It was all so arcane and he was excited but not particularly helpful. Trying to ask him questions like “What is the oil for, burning or perfume” resulted in the response “Yes! Yes, oil. Yes.” So I thought I’d just buy some and work it out.

I sat with Lou just now as she opened a little box he had made up containing both oil and wood. She put some oil on her arm and rubbed it. She sniffed like and connoisseur. Rubbed it. Sniffed again. “Hmmm. I like it. It smells of Camel shit.”

I didn’t get out of that shop for cheap. Oh no. Reading up on it, it seems I inadvertently bought one of the most expensive materials in the world. Worth it for the lady to smell of camel shit. “It’s alright,” she adds – “camels are vegetarian…”

A bit later she sniffs it again. It has settled now. “Oh actually you know what this reminds me of?”

“I dread to think.”

“I was in the Himalayas.”

Ahhh exotic.

“It was a hot day and we’d walked up a mountain, and there was this cold beautiful waterfall. I just went and stood under it.”

Beautiful. Hot water. Steam. Nature.

“Then this woman came up the hill and she had this buffalo. Great big thing it was, and you know how buffalo go where they please – well it went and lumbered under the waterfall with me.”

I don’t like where this is going.

“It was hot. It probably hadn’t washed for weeks. All this steam was coming off it. Buffalo musk and sweat and shit. It smells like that.”

So there’s the oud oil. It might be for burning, of course. If not I’m gonna be pursued by the scent of hot buffalo shit. Still, it’s the thought that counts. There was wood in the package as well.

We improvised a censor and of course Lou had some quick light charcoal. We burnt some of the resinous wood. It is strangely beautiful to look at, every piece a different shape, smooth and dark and thick and hard. Burning it with a lighter doesn’t take like the incense we are mostly used to. We had to put it on top of charcoal. Then it filled the air. The scent of the wood is certainly less animal – subtler. I got some of that for myself as well and I’m glad of it. I love burning things for scent. I think in a past life I liked it a bit too much. In this one though I love the smellyburny things. I’ve ordered some of that charcoal now already and I’m wondering if maybe the oil should soak the wood before burning… Perhaps…

They also had some actual definite perfumes in that place, one of which he sprayed me with before I could stop him and which I found terribly cloying for several hours. Every time he pointed to that section I waved my hands in protest. I tried to avoid getting Lou something that sweet. Perhaps that’s how she ended up with the finest Chateau de Buffalo Humide. I like nothing more than a fine woman who smells like a ruminant bovidae.

We walked in the woods, as is our way. It’s too damn cold. Roll on summer.

Back in good old London town. My body has gone into recovery mode after I maybe punished myself a little too hard in the quest to be willing in Saudi. When a job ends we quite frequently get the sniffles. All the little boggarts that our immune system has been fending off as we push our motivation to the edge suddenly get their moment to be processed. I was feeling great in Saudi – full of beans the whole time physically. No surprises really – I was having a summer in February and doing something simultaneously interesting and progressive. Vitamin D and accidental exercise and new experience and travel. My favourites. Well … now it’s all done I’ve had a headache non stop and the cold is making my nose run. I’ll adjust, and quickly. But right now it’s permissible to chill out and listen to plinky plonky music and play stupid games and read 2000AD compendiums. If my cleaning lady hadn’t shown up this morning I wouldn’t have spoken to anybody all day. As it is I spent a bit of money to have somebody do things I’ve got time to do myself right now. It feels profligate but without her I think I might have gone feral.

Dayjobs have started to come in. It’s nice watching them land. I’m just saying “yes” as is my habit and keeping myself open for the next bit of filming or spot of theatricals. There’s always something right around the corner, and it’s really nice to see that I haven’t been forgotten about by some of the lovely people I’ve worked alongside in unusual things over the years. The random things are landing. I sat with my diary. March is just round the corner and its not looking bare. That’s all that matters really. Filling the gaps. Funding my Deliveroo habit… Paying the ever escalating electricity bills. I need to nip the Deliveroo in the bud. I’ve had three meals brought to me since I got back and blown about sixty quid into the bargain. Sure I’ve had the chance to just chill out as a result. But it’s not a sustainable lifestyle. Besides, cooking is fun! It’s just easier to do it for multiple people.

Catching up with the news is no fun. I can’t make sense of what Putin thinks he’s doing. Even as he takes The Ukraine by force it’s not like they’ll just be loyal to Russia and lie down. It’s a short sighted power move, and it could lead to devastating consequences – it feels like he’s literally lost his mind. Imagine if we rolled into Ireland with tanks and said “We’re putting Eire back into the United Kingdom!” It would never hold. It’s ridiculous. And it is taking a huge toll on people who have done nothing but live in a former Soviet country. Horrible frightening stuff. A madman with so many nukes, and he’s talking about using them. I’ll just go back to thinking about pretending to be other people for money… What can I do other than throw hope and positivity at it. This’ll be a stretch for our idiot leader, and the Queen is sick. Strange times, still. It feels like every time we think it can’t get crazier it does.

I’m gonna go to Brighton tomorrow morning, even just for a short while, to be with Lou. There’ll be a bit of jiggery pokery about dayjobs but as long as I’ve got my memory stick with me I can cope. I’m looking forward to seeing a sea that isn’t fenced off. And Brighton is less likely than Chelsea to get nuked…

If you’ve got time, I’m posting this poem by Pablo Neruda.

I’M EXPLAINING A FEW THINGS

You are going to ask: and where are the lilacs?
and the poppy-petalled metaphysics ?
and the rain repeatedly spattering
its words and drilling them full
of apertures and birds?’

I’ll tell you all the news.

I lived in a suburb,
a suburb of Madrid, with bells,
and clocks and trees.

From there you could look out
Over Castille’s dry face:               
a leather ocean.    

                       My house was called

the house of flowers, because in every cranny
geraniums burst: it was
a good-looking house
with its dogs and children.

Remember, Raúl?

Eh, Rafael?

Federico, do you remember

from under the ground
where the light of June drowned flowers in your mouth?

Brother, my brother!

Everything
loud with big voices, the salt of merchandises,
pile-ups of palpitating bread,
the stalls of my suburb of Argüelles with its statue
Like a drained inkwell in a swirl of hake:
oil flowed into spoons,
a deep baying
of feet and hands swelled in the streets,
metres, litres, the sharp
measure of life,

stacked-up fish,

the texture of roofs with a cold sun in which
the weather vane falters,
the fine, frenzied ivory of potatoes,
wave on wave of tomatoes rolling down to the sea.

And one morning all that was burning,
one morning the bonfires
leapt out of the earth
devouring human beings –
and from then on fire,
gunpowder from then on,
and from then on blood.
Bandits with planes and Moors,
Bandits with finger-rings and duchesses,
Bandits with black friars spattering blessings
came through the sky to kill children
and the blood of children ran through the streets
without fuss, like children’s blood.

Jackals that the jackals would despise,
stones that the dry thistle would bite on and spit out,
vipers that the vipers would abominate!

Face to face with you I have seen the blood
of Spain tower like a tide
to drown you in one wave
of pride and knives!

Treacherous
generals:
see my dead house,
look at broken Spain:

from every house burning metal flows
instead of flowers,
from every socket of Spain
Spain emerges
and from every dead child a rifle with eyes,
and from every crime bullets are bom
which will one day find
the bull’s eye of your hearts.

And you will ask: why doesn’t his poetry
speak of dreams and leaves
and the great volcanoes of his native land?

Come and see the blood in the streets.
Come and see
the blood in the streets.
Come and see the blood
in the streets!

Oh God it’s winter. It’s winter winter. The air is cold. I woke up for the third time at about 8.30 in the morning. There was no possibility of going back to sleep from then. I opened the blind and looked into a rainstorm. I stared out across the river. Rain and cold and grey. I closed the blind again and went on deliveroo.

Paul delivered a selection of tasty pastries to me, and even a coffee. I am not well stocked at home. I had my guilty breakfast and then I looked out of the window again. Then I got back into bed.

My nose is running and I feel run down. I’ve been in dry heat for weeks. The humidity from the fountain last night and a tiny amount of time standing in a desert hailstorm … that’s all the external moisture I’ve had. I feel like I’ve been overloaded with cold and wet. I closed the door on the world.

I was lucky in Saudi because I made loose friends – I found connections with Farah and Dr Jesus and Baraa and Susanne… People I wouldn’t ever normally meet. I got on okay with the British contingent I was with as well, but they had established patterns and relationships borne out of previous events. I was – and always am – the element of wildcard. I did the things that needed doing that couldn’t be predicted until they were needed. I did fucking well at it as I always do. But some of the regulars didn’t know where to put me, and I found myself slightly squeezed out and deliberately misunderstood by cliques. There was no deep animosity. But had it not been for Farah and the doctors I would have only had one friend on this job, and he was so busy he couldn’t look after me socially.

London is full of friends, but it’s cold here. I managed a pint with Tom this evening – the creator of Christmas Carol. Now I’m hoping I can persuade Jack to come play with me. If I’m gonna be in London I want to have the things that make it worth being here. I need to be with my friends again. I’ve been totally fine in Saudi, but its mostly either been new friends or coworkers who tolerate me. A second time with this lot now I know the deal, and they’ll get me as I’ll get how to be with them.

I’ve been visible but visibility comes with disadvantages. It’s easy to bully the visible. I know that because I’m bullyproof now and just observe the people who try to go there. There was only one person with the bully instinct on the job I just finished, and if I’d called them on it they’d have realised and stopped. Mostly it was a joy. Crazy. But a joy.

Until the theatres wake up… Unless the Netflix or the Disney tapes cash in… Bring on more like that please… My agent is wonderful. My industry often isn’t. Acting will always be my primary concern. But there’s life in these thar events. And unless the UK industry gets off its ass and realises what an asset it has in my continued availability for it after all these decades, then sure I’m gonna moonlight in races.

With eight hours in Jeddah overnight, and a hotel room booked, I still didn’t want to waste an opportunity. You need a visa to go to Saudi, so short of more work – which might happen – the best way for me to make sure that I have some sort of a touchpoint for the place was to stay up late and see the sights.

Joe and I came off the plane tired, and my travelers instinct was wonky. I approached one of the guys who shout “taxi”. “Ahh he’ll do. It’s just a broke guy with a car. Let’s give him some business.” Our mutual linguistic understanding was not good enough for us to reach an agreement. We realised before we got into his car that he was going to scam us, and we still got in. That’s how tired we were. It was a fraught journey.

We followed his route on maps and when he started going completely the wrong way we tried to make him understand that he couldn’t just take us to any hotel – we had a booking. Eventually after much tension we arrived at the back of The Airport Clarion, and had a row over money. It’s a familiar row – I once had it in Peru before I realised it amounted to fighting over pennies and gave in. When you’ve been somewhere a while you start to know the worth of things. Travelers bring money though, and we all need cash these days. This was a good fifteen pounds overcharge though, so I paid him much more than it was worth and stood my ground about the rest. It turned into an unpleasant interaction – lots of shouting in Arabic and me trying to say things in Google form translate. I felt jacked with bad adrenaline by the time ai checked in. Another reason to get more of Jeddah. I wouldn’t want my only memory of the town to be of that guy. After all, Dr. Jesus told me it was his favourite city.

I showered, changed my clothes and took off my hat in case cab guy was looking for me, and at one in the morning I jumped into the back of an uber. A much better transport idea. Mariam drove the car, and had good enough English that she understood my intentions. She took me to the waterfront, driving and conversing in English. I knew much more about the town by the time we got in sight of the fountain.

She took me to a bay with the imposing edifice of the Ritz Carlton overlooking it. I would’ve booked there for my layover had the last minute rooms not started at £350. At the back of the bay, across the water, the King Fahd Fountain jets salt water up at over 200mph to a height over 800 foot, and is reflected in the sea below. The air in the bay is wet and humid, perhaps partly because of the mist from that jet. It runs all day and all night, floodlit. It’s certainly imposing.

I walked down the strand taking in the alien smells and life and heat, trying to remain invisible and to just observe. The thing I couldn’t quite compute was the fact that the sea is out of bounds. The fence is continuous, and the perimeter is patrolled. Small huddles of animated young men and women were sitting at intervals on the pavement, as close to the water as they could get. They were mostly segregated by gender – this is the case with loos, prayer rooms, waiting rooms, security queues – there are no polygender loos in Saudi.

Many of the people I saw had ice cream. It was a warm night. Occasionally a breeze would waft the scent of stagnant water to me, occasionally the scent of mist. Taking a lovely deep breath over the sea was a calculated risk. Mud and talking and a surprising number of children considering it was past two in the morning. Considering the Ritz complex is just the other side of the road it is still pretty run down on the lawns, but it gets a huge amount of use here even late at night. The moon was at its mid point, filled at the top, empty at the bottom, unfamiliar, hanging over the Ritz.

Having glutted myself with sensation and cheerful late night ice cream from the stall, I ubered back to the hotel and hit the hay for another short sleep. I’m in the cat nap pattern so I woke a split second before my alarm.

The morning uber to the airport was more than seven times cheaper than the amount the “Taxi” guy was trying for. It made me feel a bit less of a dick for not just giving it to him – I don’t like leaving any human interaction with a sour taste. Who does?

I’m back in London now. What a strange place Saudi is to me – it is already taking on a kind of dreamlike property, and I woke up there. I’m going to miss the heat. But at least I got Bergman back intact. Now I can plug myself back into London and all the friends and strange things I’ve built here. First, though: a hot bath. A beer. My own bed… Oh joy. Oh joy. Zzzzz

Today I walked into the desert. Very quickly the quiet descends. I only walked a few kilometres from the road. This is inhabited desert here. But it is still peaceful. The tracks of 4x4s through the sand and vast quantities of casually discarded plastic are a constant reminder of the extent to which our species ought to be wiped off the face of the earth. We haven’t yet managed to completely ruin the peace and the beauty here though. But it’s harsh. The sun beats down hard. I’m glad of my hat and cravat, and of course my flask.

My footprints are still there now until the rain and wind obliterate them. They go weaving through the stands of camelgrass, unusually green from the rain, rife with rustling lizards. They go between the tall sea carved mesas, eroded into eloquent shapes that stand in sharp relief against the blue sky. They pick their way past the bleached skulls of camels and goats that lie where they fell – or where they were dragged. Often there’s a cloven hoof still shaggy – picked clean above the knee and just lying in the sand.

The desert is a place of death, even here so close to the road. Small silver birds twitter and wheel in the air. Maybe part of their diet consists of those oafishly discarded chips and bits – but mostly it will be the beetles and the insect life that has been here forever.

So much plastic though. My eye frequently catches movement, expecting a lizard or a scorpion, but getting instead a band of thin plastic caught in a zephyr. I’ve seen the window go down so many times from somebody’s car, and a handful of junk discarded. I wonder how far I’d have to go to find a trackless part of this wasteland without bleached plastic, slowly reducing to microscopic particles that go back into the food chain.

Here in local desert the mesas are often partitioned with scavenged barbed wire – a different, threatening type of homelessness. Concentrated piles of bones near fenced off mesas denote feeding grounds but for what? Dogs or people? I don’t go under any of the fences even though they might have been made decades ago.

I find a Geocache stashed in a hole in the rock in an unfenced area. It is part of why I chose this direction. A little bit of something familiar and now I have a smiley face on a digital map in The Middle East. Just one. That’s all I wanted. More litter. Just directed litter.

Having done my technology thing I put the phone away and go into a ceremonial spiritual place.

I am led to a thornbush located far from the tyre tracks. I sit for a long time in the heat of noon and I say my farewells at length to this powerful beautiful hostile place. I fill a glass with sand, thorns and bones. This will come back with me and join the international oojie-boojie strangeness that is accumulating on my altar at home – so long as it doesn’t get poured out by a bewildered customs official. (I checked my bag in. Unusual for me, but there’s stuff in there I don’t want to have confiscated.)

Now I’m in the air, heading to Jeddah. It’ll be late when I arrive. I’m going to try to get to the Red Sea, even just for an hour, to connect with that body of water before I head back to London.

An unexpected trip to Saudi. A good one. I’ve been hopping about recently. I’ve learnt things. Now to consolidate before more hopping…

A 9 hour layover in Jeddah. I made the cardinal error of saying yes to one of the guys who say “taxi”. An argument later and we are followed as far as the security guard by a shouting man who understands numbers far more now he wants way too much of our money. I embarrassed Joe by holding firm. Now I’m gonna hit the red sea before 2 hours sleep and the flight home.