Author: albarclay

First tour done. It’s a lovely thing. The thing with walking tours is that you’re doing them very much in amongst the public. If somebody’s on your bench you might be able to hastily explain that you’ll only be there for a minute or so. If not then they’ll just work it out live and move on. People we stopped at zebra crossings scowled at us. At one point, down in the darkness, there was a loud and shouty fight going on just up the hill from my group. I found myself realising that, if anything untoward happens, I’m the guy who has to immediately try and deal with it. I’m very visible with my stick covered in lights and my huge hat. Thankfully I didn’t have to do any fighting this evening. Long may that continue to be the case.

I’m unexpectedly back home in Chelsea. I was planning on crashing post work in Hampstead in order to start properly packing my friends things into boxes. I couldn’t as I had left the key here. Maybe partly psychological as it’ll be a thankless task. But it means that now, post work, I can wind down in my own home rather than in a flat that will increasingly becoming harder to live in depending on how much work and time I manage to put in to make it so.

As with anything, you never know what it’ll be like until it happens. We were well sold this evening and I don’t think it showed that it was my first time. We didn’t get lost. I made up some spooky things. I had my facts largely straight.

I think this promises to be a pleasant way to spend a few nights over the next few weeks. It’ll just help if I remember to bring the damn keys to Hampstead next time. Being able to crash there after work takes the edge off spending my days packing up somebody else’s things.

I’m strangely exhausted though. I suppose that even though I’m not having to spam energy for just 30 people, first night adrenaline plays its part. I have a feeling I’ll be wrapped up in bed very soon now. And I might sack off the packing tomorrow daytime and just double down on it on Sunday.

My brain is empty. I’m just gonna sink into a bath and then into my sheets. Sometimes the blog can take a back seat. Night night you lovely lot.

I’m up in Lou’s flat looking out over the wine dark sea. Some way out, over the level waters, still pushing their heads up over the horizon, are the controversial blades of The Rampion Wind Farm. Over 100 turbines and it’s windy out there. I don’t find the turbines offensive myself. Some people don’t like new things. Others just want things to be weird about. It’s sustainable power. Got to be a good thing…?

The lonely turbines, all the way out there in the blackness, are sending a message. They flash red in synchronised irregular pulses. “That’s Morse Code,” I say to Lou, who rolls her eyes. I grab a pad, and try to record it. It’s hard on my own. I have to keep my eyes up so I can’t keep writing in a straight line. The pattern turns out to be simpler than I expected though. I almost give up before I go back to it and realise it’s just one letter on repeat. “dot dash dash / dot dash dash / dot dash dash”. Like somebody with a terrible stammer trying to welcome you. “W / W / W” playing on repeat all night.

When I first realised there was a message, I keyed into all my childhood tales of foiling exciting evil Scooby Doo plans. “The windfarm is sending us a secret message! Quick Scooby, write it down!” But nah. Nothing exciting. Just the letter W. It took me ages to work it out, but maybe if I was coming right at it in a lowflying aircraft it would come to me quicker.

I’m reliably informed by “doing my research” (Google) that it is “W” for “Warning”. So there you go. They missed a trick there. You could have jokes or adverts, politics or stories or anything really. The only real requirement of the red light is for it to flash. If they can program it, why not do it properly.

Unless it’s Brighton Council summoning the Dark Lord Crthywwwwwwwwwwwwwwewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwthotep again and I looked away too early in the ritual.

Brighton Council are going to need supernatural helpers before too long. There’s a bin strike here. In brief my understanding of the reason is that Brighton Council are clueless money-grubbing pigs.

Brighton is a reasonably ethical and recyclish type town. They are into the second week of this bin strike and it’s still possible to open the door in Kemptown. Things are getting bad, sure, but I can’t help thinking it kinda looks like Hackney on collection day but with less vomit.

In town I’m sure it’ll be much worse – they’ll have to dig tunnels before long to get from one artisan coffee shop to another. Here by the sea it’s definitely worse than I’ve ever seen it, but people seem to be trying really hard not to add to it. And maybe that’s a good thing.

We purport to care about the environment. We say we like the wind farm as any ugliness is made up for with sustainable energy. And then we get a plastic bag and everything is packaged in multiple layers of bollocks and we throw so much shit away, mountains and mountains of shit, every single one of us, all the time, and maybe it takes a bin strike to get people to look at it.

I hope the rubbish doesn’t blow into the sea before it’s all settled. Maybe it’s good for the people of Brighton to realise how unsustainable the consumer model we have really is – we take away the people who throw away our crap and we’re only about a month away from living in rats. Maybe that’s what the Rampion is really warning us about. “I’m sustainable. You’re not. Sort your shit out.”

On the subject of sustainable, I went to the fishmonger, bought a line caught sea bass and then hacked fillets out of it with a cross between a knife and a felt tip pen. Sustainable? Who knows. Yummy? Yep.

A snatch of a morning in a basement studio in Soho. The walls are painted white. The carpet is taped down with electric tape. The clock on the wall is broken. It shudders every second and goes nowhere. Next to me sits an Italian man, humming tunelessly. I wonder if he’s even aware he’s doing it. There’s a historic atmosphere of nerves down here. The plastic plants don’t do much to help. I am called into a room.

My car is parked at Harley Street. I emerge after another swift encounter with a camera and some friendly people. Who knows how it will fall. It will fall though. Come, fates. Bring this one to me!

Autumn. The light is good this morning. I walk through Soho with a spring in my heels. I did what I could. It won’t be the cut of my jib. It’ll be mine or its beyond my control. Fingers and toes crossed.

Home.

Coffee and a tidy up. A friend is staying in my bed tonight. He’ll be there on his own. I’m off to Brighton tonight. Glad to be of service.

He arrives. I let him in and we catch up a bit but I’m thinking about names and dates – half of my head is already in Hampstead.

Jack Straw. 1381. Jimmy Reid. 1746. Hamilton. 1712. De havilland. 1968. Slowly and steadily the specifics of these historic Hampstead encounters are beginning to stick in my head. It’s one thing to tell a good story. It’s another thing to be factually correct. I need to get the balance straight. Never let the truth get in the way of a good story, sure. But I know from the old days on the river that occasionally there’s an expert who wants to assess your expertise. It was always satisfying back then to know all the things. I’m not gonna be doing this tour eight times a day on weekends thank God. And I’m not gonna have to do it at 30 knots in the driving rain with a grumpy old skipper who hates me. I’m the skipper, and I set the pace. The clearer I’ve got my stories, the more confident I appear to be, the more fun people have. I’m walking strangers through a dark heath in the cold. Best if they trust me. They’ll have more fun and I’ll have more fun.

Our tester audience is willing and entertaining. It’s made up of everybody’s friends but mine. Once again I’ve been remiss and haven’t really shouted “I’M DOING A THING!” We haven’t sold very well on Sunday evenings yet so do come on any of the next three Sunday evenings if you can walk and you like things. It’s a walk with pubs and stories, and happenings, and this idiot in a hat. It’s a pleasant way for me to spend my Halloween season weekends without risking jobclash, and might be a pleasant evening. My passport is being renewed so I can’t get that job in Bulgaria right now anyway. Here’s the ticket link. Tonight was the dress rehearsal. I was WARM. That was unexpected. I do need to think about rain, particularly as my incredible silk stovepipe hat will disintegrate in a rainstorm and it’s so striking and it fits perfectly so I would cry and cry if it was ruined. It was lovely weather today but it would be hubris to expect every night to be like tonight. It’s October, despite climate change.

Now I’m already in Brighton. To my left is the dark of a calm sea. To my right, the flat where Lou is already sleeping. I have to sneak in, so I’m writing my blog in my car as it ticks away the heat of spanking it. I’ve got a sneaky post dress rehearsal can of beer to help edge off the adrenaline that just helped me floor it from Hampstead all the way to the south coast. I think I teleported here. Once I’m in her flat it’s bedtime though, so now is my wind down.

I’m here to be her chauffeur tomorrow. Tonight I’m just the late night gentleman caller. I should probably have brought a box of Milk Tray. Glad to have made the journey, now its made. I’ve missed her.

This is me just before the show. My contact lenses were scratching my eyes so I did it with specs. Nobody seemed to mind.

Bleary wake up. Where am I? Why are children? Who?

Ah yes. I’m at my friend’s. It’s the school run. I can sleep longer. Zzzz.

ALARM.

Whut? *fumble* “DRIVE TO NOTTINGHAM”…? *snooze* *repeat until far too late* Oh God!

Stumble up from warm comfy torpor. Coffee? Coffee.

Gemma is working from home. She makes coffee. James went to work hours ago. I am glad I’m not him. Satnav. There’s been a crash. Dart charge? Avoid it. Nottingham.

Stumble to the XTrail. I left the sunroof open all night. It didn’t rain. Lucky, or I would have had a really wet bum. Sit. Close sunroof. Drive, baby.

Hours and hours of driving… Something of a mission. I knew I was only putting it off the other day when I delayed the journey for practical reasons around the accessibility of fuel in London etc. There could be no more delay.

The roads happened, in a flash. I was there in industrial forklift land contemplating three keyboards that had been laid out for me. I was sure there were meant to just be two. Thankfully I question it. I was about to drive home with the wrong fecking keyboards. Glad I checked, especially considering the state I’m in. Lots of ladders and eventually the two correct keyboards are in my car. I’m starving. Interesting great big scene workshop up there serving multiple theatres. Lots of people working circular saws in a huge warehouse. The industry of theatre in full swing. It’s not just about me in a nice frock, darlings.

Loaded up. Happy with myself for not just blindly hauling back the wrong keyboards. Looking for lunch.

EVERYTHING in Nottingham is Robin sodding hood. Lawyers using archery in their logo. Burgers. Surely there’s more to the place than ancient anti-Norman folklore. I find a Pakistani place. They haven’t got menus and ignore me when I come in. Perfect.

I eventually get looked at, and try to behave like I know the score.

“Chicken?”

“Chicken.”

“Rice?”

“Rice.”

“Spicymild?”

“Spicy”

“Got cash?”

“Yes.”

I don’t look for these places for the choice. Nobody does. It’s busy here, so it must be good. The meat is no doubt all halal and you can bet it’s fresh and it’s half the price of anywhere else – with no fuss. I shove it into my face with a plastic spoon on a polished wooden table surrounded by the musicality of a language I don’t know, and it’s tasty. I’ve spent a fiver with a drink – that’s all. By the time I’m finished with it I’m weeping with the heat but I’m happy. Back to the car and back through the traffic.

I’d have been home hours ago if somebody hadn’t run out of petrol on the M1 and ended up causing it to be closed while the fire department and police overreacted. I sat in stationary traffic wishing I’d gone another way and occasionally pulling in to let the engines past. Waze was too slow with the reroute. Maybe we were there for forty minutes.

Now I’m home. The bath is running. Candles are lit. I’m dropping off the keyboards tomorrow morning. And then I’ve got a recall audition in Soho. A different head again. But things do seem to be happening again. At last.

Ghost Stories. ’tis the season. I had prepared some stories for reading out loud before a Women’s Institute in Tunbridge Wells. “The Wells Angels”. I’ve been working on material for a couple of weeks. Some of you have helped on Facebook. Thank you.

I wanted to try to find a good balance. I had a load of stories suggested on top of the ones that I was already considering. I listened to all of them. This last week involved a great deal of me playing weird YouTube readings of obscure ghost stories. My rule was that if I listened to it by randomer on YouTube and felt absolutely nothing then it was to be abandoned immediately. If there was a moment when I felt creeped out, it was worth considering. Some of the ones where I felt creeped out… – the reader was AWFUL. The stories too were often so firmly mired in ancient thinking. Without a good reader there was nothing left to hear but the actual words.

It’s kind of useful to have these atrocious readings on YouTube. If the story still works when it’s read by an alien then it’s a good story.

I had decided to do three tales over my 45 minute window. That allowed time for audience to refill drinks and to chat. It didn’t allow time for any story I told to last over fifteen minutes though.

I had been suggested a decent and spooky tale by Edith Wharton, but it would’ve taken the whole evening. I stuck with shorter ones, even if I wished that I could’ve found a short one by a woman. The fault, I’m sure, is as much in my search mechanism as in anything else. But these are the ones I chose:

I started with Poe. The Tell Tale Heart. It’s fifteen minutes and it really is delightfully creepy so long as the audience can ignore the wealth of double-entendre on the first page – which mine did. I then went more modern with a Lovecraft disciple grinding a child psychology axe via a creepy story called “The Thing in the Cellar.” It’s a lovely strange piece. I ended with a weird circular tale called “Midnight Express” that I had chosen after having it recommended and then hearing it on YouTube read by somebody as an exercise in overcoming multiple speech defects. There was still something creepy in the story – maybe just in the language. I figured if I can hear it read by somebody who would never be a public reader, and if I could still find something creepy – that speaks well of the story. Weirdly, I tried to find the weird version I played to myself just a day or so ago. It’s offline now it seems. Maybe I am stuck in a similar circular loop.

Twas a lovely night. What a good bunch. How lovely to contribute to their Halloween program. And an unusual experience, to be part of the entertainment and thus part of the group at a very active and forward moving Women’s Institute in Tunbridge Wells…

My first donations from the huge costume intake have left the flat today. I’ve been characteristically disorganised so it took a little longer than it might have for me to start giving people clothes. Jack and Max showed up at mine and pressed the issue. They’re making a ghost tour in Stoke Newington imminently. They knew I had lots of stuff. They eventually left with a waistcoat, two of the 23 moleskine capes and a large grey top hat. Nice to finally see some items making their way back out of the flat. They seemed happy with their haul, and I can see them being useful. Even though I have a huge pile of those moleskine capes, every individual one is an excellent piece of workmanship and a valuable and expressive piece of costume. I just donated a few hundred quid to the Covid Fund of the place that gave them to me – it seemed rude not to. Already they’ve been useful for self tapes, tomorrow’s costume will be from them, ditto my costume for the ghost walk, and today… Today on this clement October day, I mostly swished around my flat in a broken down green raw silk nightgown. Once upon a time somebody sang incredible songs in that gown. Today it was the perfect loose garment for a Sunday-Al who didn’t want to wear clothes but was a little too cold for strolling around naked. A lovely relaxed day at home in silk, followed by a hot bath and now I’m already safely wrapped up in a lovely bed with clean sheets. Incense burning, candles lit and a lovely glass of a Crozes Hermitages I opened a couple of nights ago, because I haven’t got one of those vacuum pumps and it’ll go to vinegar otherwise. Life is pretty good right now.

Tomorrow I’ll be off to Crowborough with my stovepipe hat and my cape and maybe a tailcoat. I’ll be away to read scary ghost stories to the good people of Tunbridge Wells. I’m going to spend the morning thinking about interesting props I can incorporate. Then making sure I have the stories I’ve chosen to read properly highlighted. I’m tempted to bring my little portable audiobook rig and record myself “Al Barclay Live at the Women’s Institute!” I’ll have to clear it with the venue first. Lou was gonna come down to watch, and she can’t now with work. Maybe I’ll be able to share the fruits of my labour with you in time for Halloween. Maybe I’ll just record the stories separately anyway. Two of them are not yet on Audible so if I do it high enough quality I can whack them up there in time for Halloween and see if anybody bites. First though I’ve got to make sure they’re ready for a live reading Tunbridge Wells. Allegedly its very easy to disgust the people of that ancient town.

I’m looking forward to tomorrow but I’ve not been able to see beyond it yet. The first time will be the last time and then it’ll be done and I’ll magically discover that I have lots of space in my head. I’ve mostly just been preparing for it today. I did just one practical thing in the whole day : I fixed the Mucha print that got disrupted for the self tape. My room is back to its comparatively spartan art-deco glory. And I’m going to finish this glass of wine, have a cup of chamomile tea and drift off into dreamy reverie. It’s only 9pm. How is this even possible?

The darkness is closing in, and days like today are getting more and more precious. Especially falling on a weekend. I woke up in Hampstead in order to take photographs of appliances. Going out in the late morning sunshine just past the entrance to the heath, I felt like I was at a football match. I’m still more used to my solitude than to crowds. I felt a bit panicky, surrounded by all the summery shouting London people. I got a coffee and retreated once more into the cold dim flat.

The flat in Hampstead is still accessible to me even though the landlady has changed the chubb lock and told me about it. She could lock me out on a whim if she wanted, but for now she’s leaving it open. My friend is still in NZ though and I’ve decided to proceed as if she’s never coming back. This means I have to get increasingly intimate with her stuff and with her erratic and illegal landlady. Right now it’s a charm offensive as if I were to annoy her she could easily make things harder.

I’ve got a few boxes now. Useful boxes. Next Saturday is going to be all about putting things into them, and next Sunday will be ferrying them to storage. Like with selling other people’s antiques, I think this process at one level of remove is extremely helpful in guiding me towards a practical understanding of what I need to do in my flat.

“It’s a clear job, really,” I find myself saying. “If I were that landlord there’s only one thing I’d need to do. I’d just empty it, gut it and get the whole place turned over. New layout. New wiring. Sort the plumbing. It’ll be expensive. But fuck it’ll be worth it.” Then I hear myself, and realise I AM that landlord in Chelsea, and realise I have known that about my own flat for a decade and more and just brought in another load of hats and capes. It’s ALWAYS easier when there’s a separation. It’s useful for me to have these thoughts about a place that isn’t mine, as it might help finally smash the block I’ve had on sorting out my own place. So much to do. But doing these things we have allowed to sleep for ages sometimes feels Sisyphean. Starting is so often the hardest part. That’s always been my issue. I don’t enjoy the beginnings and the endings, but I love it when I’m just swept up in the middle.

My ghost walk in Hampstead starts next week. There’s a few happenings before it kicks off and I am keeping my head organised. But meantime, if anybody – ideally in North London – wants and has space for a York Fitness Velocity Cross Trainer (working? Not working?) I’ll deliver it to you next weekend for a tenner. If not it’ll go on eBay for a week and then freecycle. I know it’s her’s as I carried it down a road and into a black cab in Farringdon about ten years ago. Now it needs a new home. The mechanism still works but on a brief inspection I couldn’t make the display switch on. But this is the sort of thing I’m having to sort out.

There’s that, there’s the barrel of a Champion masticating juicer. The washer-drier is subject to a custody battle so I’m not getting involved. There are tables. A comfy sofa bed that I slept on for about a month once. God knows what else. I’ve got carte-blanche to sell everything electric from my friend. The landlady, incomprehensibly, wants to keep some things. I honestly think that if she really wants to turn the flat into money she can’t go half cocked. Gut it. Fill it with NEW. Rent it to some unimaginative bastard. Profit. But then I’ve lived years in a flat that essentially IS a red wine stain. Right now that prime Chelsea real estate is full of ghosts, strange antiques, things with faces and costumes. I need an Al to sort through it dispassionately and plan moves in advance and then stick to the plan… Maybe this will be the learn I need.

I still think it’s a shit situation for my friend…

Fish are absolute bastards.

Maybe you remember Maureen and Sadie? The angelfish. When I picked up the tank I had to drain it and bag up all the fish. The previous owner advised me as to who would share a bag and who could be on their own. Maureen and Sadie went in a bag together. “They’re inseparable,” he told me. “But they’re very very old for angelfish. They might not survive the journey.”

They survived. For ten months they floated around at the front of the tank, providing a serenity that the other busy fish did not bring. They were aging but calm. They were the focus for the tank, really.

When I got back from Jersey, they weren’t there. Vanished. The other fish were all accounted for. There was food in the feeder. But the two most obvious and visible fish? Vanished.

I have a cleaner. Maria. She comes occasionally and stops me getting buried in shit. My immediate thought was that she might have quietly disposed of the bodies and not told me. But no. She knew nothing of it.

I googled “my angelfish vanished” or somesuch. I wanted to see if what I feared was a frequent occurrence. They are peaceful fish by nature, angelfish, and fragile. Some of my loaches are fucking mental.

Lots of people have put similar things up. It seems it doesn’t take long for a fishy corpse to be munched.

So yeah. The angelfish were old. Very old for fish of that kind. I’d like to think that maybe they both just died naturally at exactly the same time, bound together in death as in life. It’s nice to think that, as another option is that one of them died and became food, and consequently the other one was thought of as food. And the third option was that they both just got ganged up on.

The websites I found were pretty clear on it. If your fish has vanished, it’s either jumped out and is on the floor dead near the tank, or it has been frenzied. “Look for little bones hidden under things in the tank.”

I looked. I found the little bones. Oh dear. There’s not much left of Maureen and Sadie now.

I named them after an old couple in Jersey who used to babysit for me when I was five or six. They were fun. They were my first experience of a same sex couple. And they were the first people I knew who died. I knew the fishy namesakes would go earlier than the other fish. I thought that perhaps I’d be able to honour their passing this time. To bid the fish farewell in a way I never could with the humans, and thereby thank them both for their small contributions to my upbringing. But no. Maureen and Sadie from the fish tank were cannibalised by their neighbors. No matter what you might expect about how inbred it all is in Jersey, I’m pretty sure their progenitors were spared a similar fate.

Sic transit gloria mundi.

Maybe I’ll get some more angelfish. But I’m kind of worried that the loaches have got a taste for angelfish meat now… I’ll have to do some research. The tank is poorer without them, even if I’m impressed they lived as long as they did.

A night of fitful sleep. My agent is going great guns at the moment. Even though my passport expires imminently, they are getting me through the door for interesting and apposite roles.

Problem is I’m very busy. My head is full. I had three scenes due self taped at ten this morning. Normally I’d find a time to do them before bed, but today I had to take the whole process right to the wire. I set my alarm for 6am.

When I know I have an earlier start than usual I think I sleep even worse than I usually do. I woke up muzzy. No coffee in the house. And I had to set up my home studio.

I need a better system. In order to access the clean wall for backdrop, I had to unscrew the clip frame for the four Mucha prints. They all fell out while I was doing it, as you can’t unscrew it without opening it. Then I had to move my mirror, push the chaise into the corner, take everything off the desk and put it in the corridor. Then it’s assembling all the tripods and building the two lights. Screwing in the huge bulbs and covering. Then arranging it all so there’s not too much shadow. By the time I had it all set up it was gone 8.

Squeeze into a vintage suit. Contact lenses. Water in the hair. Shave – but keep the tache as I’m penciled for the advert. Thankfully it works for my guy this morning.

Scene One was just my character, so – very quickly shot and into scene two. It was during scene two that I woke up though. It was another monologue but I hadn’t had all the time I needed for the lines to sink in so I needed to focus. Somehow I’ve run out of coffee with no time to buy it so the easy wakey juice wasn’t in my system. Adrenaline started to do the job. By half eight I was done with the first two but scenes. Then I realised that other people had to speak in the third one. I was on my own.

I ended up recording the other people’s lines with gaps on my iPad and then pushing play on the audio mid-scene and hoping that the gaps I left were roughly the right length. By nine I had finished, an hour before the deadline, despite my phone running out of juice and largely having to pick up the lines on the fly. Then I had to watch myself (yuk) and rename the decent takes and decide what to send. By about quarter past nine I had decided that whatever the hell I was doing in the first scene when I was still asleep it was nothing to do with the character and delivery style I hit on later. The guy’s a barrister. He has his ways. So I reshot. Then review, rename, finalise, WeTransfer to my agent. The transfer landed in their inbox at precisely 10am. Then I had to deconstruct all the lights and tripods, move all the furniture back and try to put the fecking picture back up.

I failed. I’ve given up. I haven’t the energy for putting the picture back. I’ll need to take it off the wall completely, lie it flat and force it to behave. That’s what you get for buying the cheapest frame possible.

And that was the day really, finished at ten. With all the audition adrenaline going slowly stale in my system from then on, I wasn’t in a practical headspace. Plus I had to do lots of reading ghost stories out loud to myself for a thing on Monday. But it whizzed by.

Another prospect. Another possibility of an interesting direction for a while. It’s sent.

And now my split second decision to keep the tache before meeting for the waiter – it’s starting to get me into one of those spirals where I’ll end up having a moustache for months because there’s always something in the can with it waiting on a final decision and it’ll keep rolling over.

Still. It kinda suits me. Or so I tell myself.

Well, my stress levels are a little lower now as it looks like I won’t have to click back into top gear right away for a Shakespearean MC at The Globe. That’s a throwback to pre-pandemic days, and we pitched at the usual price for a bar mitzvah on Saturday, but the client has gone silent after trying to haggle us down. Better to stand firm if you know you offer a confident and skillful product. There’s always somebody who will offer to take the bottom out. The important thing is to make sure it isn’t you. Chances are they have somebody perfectly serviceable. Just not me. Sad really as I would have liked to have stepped back into that joyful helpful work. It’s playing to my skillset and my joy. But the absence of it gives me huge amounts of headspace that I had budgeted for building an evening around their needs at short notice.

I remember now – the fine art of headspace budgeting. That was my life pre-pandemic. I can only really focus on one thing at a time. Right now there are many things that require my attention. I’ve got to get a self tape into my agent by ten tomorrow morning. We rehearsed Halloween this evening. Mao’s owner is used to having what she wants quickly and is struggling to work with my timings regarding driving him from Brighton to Oxford, which I’m finding stressful as I don’t want to rush him off – for his own good and for ours. And the Hampstead flat hit deadline today. My focus was on that. That flat and the heath gave me a beautiful haven when Kitcat was straightening out in Chelsea over that hot hot summer of the first lockdown. It’s only fair that I smooth things for my friend now she’s lost the tenancy.

Today was a traditional London day. One of the times when the fact there are so many of us squished into a tiny space feels like an advantage. Emma and John are both North London locals, and both know my friend. With very little notice they are both on hand to help start the process of moving things out of Hampstead. It’s going to be slow. But knowing that there are friends to help occasionally will make this work considerably better. Work never really feels like work when the conversation is good. On this unseasonably sunny October day we hauled around some of my friends possessions until I was so low on fuel that I started worrying. The downstairs neighbours, who usually just complain and twitch curtains, heard the banging and came out. I ended up putting one of their numbers in my phone. She gave me some parking permits. “Your friend,” she said. “I’ve seen him on the telly I think…” “Yes. He’s an actor. We all are. He was at RADA with your upstairs neighbour who has been unceremoniously kicked out.”

I stopped and bought my friends late lunch. Tasty dated burger at BOB’S. Then I had to switch my head into the Halloween ghost tour as I had a rehearsal this evening. As I parked an almost completely empty Bergman outside Mel’s, worrying about the rest of her stuff, worrying about the ghost tour, worrying about getting petrol, worrying about Lou, a short brightly dressed woman of about my age with sharp red hair and tiny glasses suddenly and strangely sought my attention. “Excuse me,” she said as I got out of the car. “I’d never normally do this to a stranger, but look up – have you ever seen anything like that before?”

I looked up. The sky was smiling. All this stuff we’re worrying about. All the little details as the world picks back up and we remember how it all fits together… We can get swept up in our own shit so much that it takes a kind stranger to remind us to stop.

Look up. Beauty is often there if you look for it. So many people in Hampstead for that glorious moment were banging through their worries oblivious to the omen in the sky.

It’s going to be ok. Somehow it’s all going to be ok.