Author: albarclay

There’s a guy on my Facebook who often tells me what “the left” are doing or what they want. It involves everything bad you can possibly imagine. “And then they call me a fascist” Why do I keep him on my Facebook? Gotta keep plugged in with these people. There are people telling me similar bullshit about “the right”. It is getting worse and worse at the moment, this enforced polarisation. Remember critical thinking? It is so dead people can make nostalgic jokes about this crazy thing we used to do in the nineties where we looked at both sides of things and then made our own minds up. That doesn’t happen anymore, and unless we keep people like this on our socials who we almost always disagree with on many levels, we forget that there are other perfectly nice people who are absolutely convinced of opposite interpretations of the world.

This chap was on the march yesterday – there was a “we are scared of foreigners” march in London yesterday. There was one thing he wrote about it on his socials afterwards that got me thinking about this whole perspective problem we have at the moment.

I am paraphrasing but: “The mainstream media is telling you there were only about 100000 people here but I can tell you it was between 2 and 2 and a half million!”

He’s been in a crowd. It’s a big crowd. He wants to feel that his voice is the loudest voice. He knows he isn’t alone in his fear of the other. But: his perspective is shot.

Flat Earth. Because we cannot comprehend global physics.

Space Denial. Because we cannot comprehend celestial scale.

Evolution Denial. Because we cannot understand time.

Loads of these thinking fails come from an inability to have perspective.

Yes we are small little human people flapping around in this system we have all made up together. It was made up so long ago it is impossible to comprehend how even that has come about. We look at the edges of that and the creation of that, of society, and our brains go a bit burny because it is hard to see it because we are just tiny tiny blots of disease in the biosphere but we’ve learnt how to talk and write and make signs and shit like that but we can only have what perspective we have been able to learn, and we often learn best from hardship.

So he is in a big crowd of people who think like him and he thinks: “This must be the biggestest crowd forever of people who think like I,” and he feels validated in his thinkses but the “bad left” will do lying on him and he must tell us all the truthings.

We are all little tiny tiny tiny little people. But we have to try to think biggerer than the easy thinkies.

Yes I know the march wasn’t “we are scared of foreigners,” I was being glib. But it was a kind of “we all stand together against stuff we’ve been told to hate”. And that changes from person to person but there are trans and wokies and brown people involved in that.

“THERE WERE MILLIONS OF US.”

There weren’t but you are entrenched, mate. And you are indoctrinated. Most of what you generate is amplification and I bet at least half of the stuff you amplify originates in a building in St Petersburg. Because it is just gonna keep pulling us apart from each other as we dismiss those who are on the “wrong” side. Lefties do it too about “the right”. It’s nice to feel part of a big club. To be part of a millionty people but the wokes will lie it is smaller.

I am fucking scared now of where things are going. We are not clever enough to handle the social media algorithm and it is pushing us all into these little bubbles that we think are bigger than they are. “And if the mainstream media tells you it is just a little bubble they are lying cos I know what it feels like to me.”

God. Anyway I don’t know where I’m going with this it just makes me sad. There’s this thing I’ve noticed where people who don’t like “the left” are also desperate to tell everyone how they are victims. Aaaargh it is just getting worse and worse, and then Musk in his video basically trying to get the ball rolling to annex us as another state of America by telling people too dumb to see the endgame that we need to change how our political system works. Cos that’s what’ll happen for future “President for life” Heffalump.

This guy just made me see in that post the lack of perspective. The very very soft fragile tiny little vulnerable ME in the very heart of all the noise and hate and bluster that really really needs to feel as if what they are is validated and what they feel part of is the big safe thing please mummy.

Because if it is just a system we made up to try and stop us constantly murdering each other when we were just tribes in the stone age, if underneath the mask of society we are all capable of desperate things, that is too much to comprehend too. We’ve built this system for ages, it doesn’t work but it’s the one we’ve got.

I’m in the doghouse now for writing too long.. Haven’t read any of this back but I guess I’ll just click schedule and hope… Yikes.

Stanmer was empty, but it was cyclonic this morning in Brighton, right up until just after we pulled up there. Perfect timing, a gap in the clouds and some bright light and we thought there’d be loads of families, but it was just a few zedders in front of us in the café deciding what they wanted for half an hour. When out of civilisation, civilisation didn’t follow us. Hurrah. A moment of peace in wet nature. I found and plucked up a Destroying Angel. My friend got some in Hampstead recently. Beautiful tasty looking absolute fuckers. Same toxicity as a Death Cap and similarly there’s no cure which is never a good look. Probably best to pull them out in case there’s a well meaning clueless forager. I’ve known people to eat mushrooms on a hunch and it is madness. But maybe I’m a little overzealous with my 3 strikes and a second opinion before I can eat each one even the easy ones. But certain death is high stakes for a free vegetable.

From Stanmer into town. Metta bhavana at the Buddhist centre. I assumed it would involve chanting it but it was more of a deep dive into love through meditation. We don’t have to like everyone, we won’t like everyone. But we can try to love everyone. Even the very very hard to love. Even people you think are absolute idiots.

There was a march in London today and lots of people turned out for it by the sound of it. Likely it would have been very crowded in town. After a week of tube strikes it is likely to be a febrile night once Wetherspoons is shut. I’m glad I’m in Brighton.

Sad to miss my friend’s party tonight for not being in town, but I’m really enjoying this peaceful mindful time by the sea. After the Buddhists we went to Lunawave Beaconsfield which is up by a viaduct, a gorgeous new sauna in an old pub garden. The woowoo crowd in Brighton are very active and it seems saunas can pull in the numbers at the moment – everyone is doing them. With autumn closing in, of course I jumped at the offer from Lou, and got good and hot and relaxed.

Now we’re chilling at hers. Watched the rest of our crap action movie, discussions about ways to make shit writing sound like people. (Targeting and commitment, mostly targeting. There was so much woolly stuff or people trying not to say it cos they didn’t know why they were saying it. ’twas ever thus, it’s why I switched out of regular TV watching a long time ago. I think the nail in the coffin was an episode of Made in Chelsea (which I know was pretending to be real but was evidently staged and just so hard to filter that I lost all faith in the medium). Large scale American series bought me back but fuck me there was a dark patch. Nobody speaks when they actually don’t know what they mean). But I’m not feeling particularly ranty. I’ll leave that for those people in London.

Suddenly buckets of rain coming in from the sea. It really feels like we are doing seasons this year properly. I’m in Brighton.

Sent my pitch in for a potential big clearance job and then came down, to thoroughly unwind over a weekend at Lou’s. That quote has been preoccupying me lately. There are two consecutive parties in London tonight and tomorrow and they’ll both be full of friends of mine. That was every weekend in my thirties, but the quantity has dropped right off and I’m kind of … sad not to be at either. My friends are my family and I haven’t had much occasion to be social. But… the booze free version of myself that has emerged from this latest bout of disappointment and bodily frailty, it would find it very hard to be in the drinky rooms right now. Give me a couple more weeks sober and it’ll be easier.

That said I’m starting to see the point of this self denial now… Back pain has faded into the background, and the ability to wake up fresh is the payback to the inability to switch my brain off at night. All the minerals and vitamins are starting to kick in and make me feel more vital in the day. I’m not choking in my sleep anymore, and it’s interesting to be mixing my diet towards less interesting food for a while, with greater regularity. There’s something to be found in everything, perhaps. I’m still not at the stage where I make porridge with Manuka honey in it every morning. But I’m not washing down the hottest curry in the shop with a bottle of Chateaneuf at midnight. It’s a good decision for bodily health, and it’ll definitely help the bank balance too, and invigilating occasional resits is barely gonna cover an occasional margarita pizza and some porridge, it can’t stretch to Dishoom and a crate of Primitivo. Can’t be running up the credit cards. Gotta tighten the strings. Even if this pitch comes in. Last time with these guys I massively underquoted and ended up having to ask for a bit more as it was much bigger than I thought. Thankfully they agreed, but even then I paid everyone else plus the costs but came away with nothing but a shiver for a lot of work. Lesson learnt though and learning is expensive. I’ve been more thorough in my thinking this time and it’s a much bigger job. Hopefully this’ll make up the shortfall somewhat if if if I can find an elegant solution for the wood the wood the wood.

Meanwhile the wind is whistling on the windows hewe in Bwighton. It’s great to be with Lou. And somehow I can switch my brain off better by the sea.

My mood is all over the place at the moment. Yesterday I was sad and tired, somehow I was feeling bright all day today. It might have been because I took the time, even briefly, to chant in the morning. And also I had my first ever home ground espresso.

I drove to Imperial through the tube strike traffic. Rush hour and I hate the tube at that time because everyone is so passive aggressive in this city, but now they’re all on the bikes they normally reserve for going up hills on the weekend in their lycra. I am careful to obey the rules in my area as there is a local YouTuber with millions of viewers who lost a father to a drunk driver and makes it his business to cost as many people their livelihoods as he can – his alternative to therapy. He’s a self righteous prick and it annoys me that he would be glad I’m putting my seatbelt on right away because otherwise he might film me and send it to the cops. The last thing I want is for him to be effective. He’s too smug.

It’s strange that I felt bright. It’s a complicated day. Some big things going down.

But there I was invigilating exams again. It’s nice being in that concentrated room. Only a few people, doing resits, not the sharpest tools in the box some of them, others with chronic illnesses.

Home pretty early, and costing costing costing. I’ve bitten the bullet and bought a new laptop even though I’m nervous about money at the mo. My old one took three hours to send three invoices yesterday. It’s got to go.

Splintered today as you can tell. I only had two of those home ground espressos but good heavens I have no clue why I didn’t start properly doing coffee at home sooner. It’s rare I don’t want more than 2 coffees in a day and it’s 9pm and I’m still going. And I’m still sending out feelers to people building bonfires. I’ll get the pitch in tomorrow. Costing forklift driver was slow. And I’ve really been trying to get it right even though it is just a quote at the mo.

It’s been good today but I’m more tired than I ought to be at this time. My little cough is back and I couldn’t get to sleep last night. I think the lack of booze will lead in the long term to much better sleep but in the short term I can’t go and spike my chamomile with a shot of whisky to make sure I go down. Last night all the thoughts all the time until I somehow tricked my brain off.

When I woke up I constructed a little vocal booth with filming capabilities on my stairwell. It’s the quietest bit of the house now that Christine is no longer here. When she was here I tried recording there and she kept coming out of her door as she thought I was talking to her. Today it was peaceful. I could have had the cats come through the back sheet and break the world but it was their morning snoozy time so I got away with it, and the upshot is that I’ll be going into a studio before long and recording a short story. It’s a nice idea, pleasant visuals mixed with ASMR. You can watch someone tell you a story. We did that all the time as kids, how could I ever forget Jackanory? Or Mister Davies reading us The Animals of Farthing Wood, or was it Shane? I will enjoy preparing for that, and delivering something lovely. And its work. Doing what I do. Tick.

Then I went and spoke to a lady about a panda.

There’s an artist I collaborate with periodically and she has another bananas idea up her sleeve. We had a coffee and a very good deep conversation and I’m really feeling that we can come up with something satisfying and strange together.

Phonecalls from The Netherlands and Dubai with other old friends and I ended up checking an old friend’s flat – he’s been away a while. Came home with his coffee grinder. I’m going to experiment as I’ve considered getting one for a while now.

In its way it was a full day, with lots of beginnings. I’m happy it went like it did.

But yeah, I’m disproportionatey tired. So I’ll follow the impulse and get myself to sleep early, so long as I can shut my brain up. Maybe a quick blitz of electric blanket to make it cosy…

I went out to Welwyn Garden City, contra flow to all the tube strike traffic thank the lord. Morning found me in an industrial estate, beavering around. There’s a warehouse full of wood and metal. It’s largely pretty decent wood but used. The metal is mostly iron. I’ve been asked to empty the warehouse. Nobody buys scrap iron.

The trick is going to be to find someone who wants this stuff, but as always it is a tight time frame. Moving this stuff is one problem – it is a hellish avalanche of pallets just waiting to happen. It looks like it was slung in there at 2am after a long night loading, with someone half asleep on forks for the unload. You can almost hear them say “ah that’ll fucking do lads,” as they pull the tarpaulin randomly over a small section of it and switch off the floodlights. It has settled there now, this junk. Cobwebs. But … it is gonna have to move, all things have to move eventually. The purpose this had will never again manifest – and if it does somehow, the budget will have to build it all again. There’s no real order to this anyway. It doesn’t feel like it is intended to be rebuilt. It’s an oubliette.

Brian cooked breakfast while I was contemplating all this, early in the morning. “What about bonfires?” he says. He’s got a fucking point.

Tis the season. Various official people across the country might be looking for a load of wood. Failing that, if I can book a venue and organise the permits, it isn’t too late to organise a bonfire with fireworks somewhere, do it nicely, lay on some concessions and entertainment, charge tickets. If anyone knows anyone where that sort of thing could be done legitimately let me know – I’m not here for guerrilla bonfires these days, not now I’m running a burgeoning theatre and haulage empire sideline alongside my job of crying and shouting for money. But I’d have to get the ball rolling immediately to organise and sell in time for November 5th…

So, things to think about. Many many things. There’s an incinerator up the way that burns waste for power. Would they take it and put it back into the grid? There’s a pallet reconditioner… There are many places where things can go back round! One guy says to me “There’s a pikey site up that way where they’ll take almost anything.”

I’m not under time pressure in the same way as the last job like this so I can afford to move towards my company raison d’etre, which is repurposing things nicely that would otherwise be destroyed. A bonfire is a purpose, a destructive act of creation, both purposes met and a house for fire… All I don’t want to do is pay tip weight on perfectly good / perfectly flammable wood. But maybe, just maybe, this is the sort of thing that leads down the line to an established bonfire night somewhere…

All I had to do was drive from mine to Imperial College. It’s about 10 minutes drive. Free parking outside the college for me. Had to be there for 9 so shot and edited a short self tape first, then jumped into Bergman but I forgot that today is one of the regular holidays for London Underground staff.

It’s a great job, working for London Underground. Very much better paid than most jobs like it, and you get these semi-regular holidays (or “strikes”) that sometimes result in being paid even more. The job description is: Do fuck all most of the time and occasionally gawp at someone or push a button. Then sometimes do even more fuck all for a few days and get a pay rise.

Tube Strikes aren’t treated like other protests in this city. If someone sits down on a lawn because they don’t think its a great idea to try and kill literally everyone on a patch of land thousands of miles away, they’ll end up with a criminal record and they’ll be carried by four policemen into a van to go get it. If tube staff stop the whole town working properly so they get even more money pushing buttons for fewer days per week then they usually get more money for their lack of effort.

Occasionally there’s a drunk person shouting. Welcome to London, kids. They’ve got us over a barrel, knowing how much disruption they can cause by not showing up. Imagine if it was air traffic controllers playing this silly crap. Or Nuclear power plant workers.

So yeah, 10 minute drive. I knew within a minute that there was a tube strike, cos suddenly everyone is driving for the first time in ages. Assertive when they don’t need to be, passive when they need to be assertive, closing gaps when gaps need to be left open, causing gridlock and then just sitting there looking helpless and complaining about the gridlock they have caused. I know the rat runs in my area and I know they’re all using Google, and I know what Google tries to make people do so I got to work and back fine. After work though I walked back to The Kings Road, and ended up helping two awkward situations resolve on the way. There was a black cabbie shouting “Salaam aleikum mate you need to fucking reverse,” at an Uber driver with his face switched off who did need to reverse but was pissed off. And there were some terribly well off cheerful useless ladies in a mini cooper convertible that were terrified at having to reverse ten foot. I walked backwards behind them, reassuring them the whole time, “left hand down a bit” “You’ve got a foot and more between you and the bikes”.

I don’t know how many days of this shit we will have to put up with, but they don’t need any more money, they pull this stunt all the time, I’m not on their side here. Tube fares are already so much I just drive and pay for parking. I’m not certain but I’m pretty sure they get paid a whole hell of a lot more than the secondary school teachers whose morning they fucked today, and those teachers earn it – I’ve been into some of those schools and probably worked to teach the kids of some of those London underground staff members and I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. Workshops once in a blue moon are fine for me. Every day? No. No. No.

There are massive schools in London where you can’t hear anything all day – some smart kids might learn to tune their ears to frequencies and understand a small portion of the lessons, but largely the places are just kettles for the restless between the hours of 9 and 3. And after work those exhausted disillusioned teachers are either gonna have to fight through the traffic, luck into a Lime bike or, I dunno, walk to wherever they’re going, to mark things first and then collapse into shit sleep knowing it’s all happening again tomorrow. I remember Luke worked in one of them and they stole his bike by throwing it over a wall. “Sir, sir, we stole your bike sir,” and they had as well.

I’ve put all my semi precious stones on the windowsill in a glass jar of salt. This will achieve precisely nothing. Probably. But it might cleanse them of negative energy and make them more good at doing whatever crystallish type things they are supposed to be helping with. It’s the moon, you see. It’s all full and doing eclipsey things. People who are happy to pay double if its organic will assure you that putting your crystals in salty moony water does a thing. Who am I to assume they are wrong? I want my stones to have a thing so they can do thingy things and betterness happens!

Seriously I need all the good energy I can eat at the moment. The money just hasn’t been flowing in the right direction. Tomorrow morning I’m up at 6 to shave down to a moustache and get a short tape in before I go off and invigilate for the morning. Trying to redress the balance. One of the stones is a citrine and apparently they do something about money. Righto. I’ll always take Pascal’s Wager on these things. It generally makes life more interesting.

Post Marcus Antonius I’m just letting myself reconfigure. My back is pretty good now, still slightly ornery but the agony bit has gone. This timing coincided very well with me finishing the xanax. Seems I ordered just the right amount all those months ago. Didn’t know what it would be for but it has been the perfect companion and now I shall wean myself off it so I don’t use it as a booze replacement and end up zonked and benign like a fifties housewife.

I made the mistake of watching the news a bit today and was reminded about the state of America and how that rough beast, it’s hour come round at last, will crawl through here on its way east. I didn’t write about it at the time, but the day Starmer met with heffalump in London a few months ago there was a massive visible immigration sting on the King’s Road, with all the delivery bike drivers being stopped to have their papers checked by men with “Immigration Enforcement” written on the back of their hi-vis. We always follow America, more so now that culture is not localised.

So I switched off the news and unashamedly played Skyrim until Brian and Maddy got home at which point I ate a bit, washed a bit, wrote a bit and now I’m going to bed with an ibuprofen. It’s not good enough that I’m going with nothing but that day is coming soon. I just want to make sure I’m rested tomorrow morning, so I can turn in a decent tape. I’ll put one of my new washed stones in my pocket while I film it because, you know, might do something…

Lou came up from Brighton to see the show tonight, and I’m very happy she did so. It felt like a special thing. She got it.

All the rules and the tradition and the hierarchy and pomp of that remarkable school, and right in the centre is that Speech Room. Portraits of prime ministers staring down at the stage, a sense of history. A difficult acoustic there, and oh it is a very revealing space. As a performance space it really is just bodies and voices. You can’t hide. And voices can get lost in the echo without precision and support. But… it’s where so much began for me. Camille in Flea in her Ear directed by Martin Tyrrell. Behind closed doors, that room transformed into a very safe play space for me, and I found terrific freedom there back when I was a boy, over the course of many plays.

This evening with the full moon above the chapel, I poured my heart into Antony and not only were there old Harrow School teachers there, and Lou, I had a drama school teacher there too! We had three people who were in the third year at Guildhall when I was in the first year, and to cap it off, one of the incredible beings who made up the tight knit teaching group that helped so many young Guildhall actors learn to … to do it better. Martin Connor. The same as ever despite the college committing suicide via giving them all the heave-ho simultaneously a few years ago. The Guildhall lot were all there to support Ollie as Julius, I was as surprised to see them as they were to see me. But I’m so glad they were there. Blood moon, and so many intersections of shared blood in my life thus far.

After the show the inevitable plaudits and speeches and I’m happy I’m sober – I wouldn’t have wanted to drink the red wine they were serving anyway judging by the smell of it, but I’m sure I’d had put some away and then remembered I had my car. There up on top of that hill on such a warm September night, I don’t really know exactly what energies I was moving around or where or why, but there was some channeling going on in that building, and it felt positive and bright. I’m still crackling with something now. The cats knew it, they are sitting on the bed squabbling for prime position. It can feel draining to radiate heart and text like that, and often it seems logical and necessary to cut the edge out with booze when finished. Tonight I feel different though, like I’ve done a ritual and now I can rest feeling charged but not itchy, enervated and like I’ve shifted a blockage of some sort.

And on top of everything else, that’s Marc Antony learnt. I’m sure it’ll come in handy some time. Meanwhile … … back to the drawing board. Oh joy.

It’s almost half twelve. Just got home. Everyone was going to The Works Dept bar for a drink after the show and I’m gonna have to get good at going to that sort of thing and not fidgeting every time someone goes to the bar. They had Becks Blue which I know of old, but you can’t have much of the stuff. Bars in general get very old very quickly without the draw of good old Al Cohol. I did a French exit very quickly and swung home in Bergman. Avoided Macdonald’s and knocked up a quick scran at home instead. Brian and Maddy have been out all day so Boo was very happy to have company. Misty was just sleeping as usual. She’s a bit put out as her favourite cat tree was replaced for reasons I can’t really comprehend either. It was a bit tatty? She’s mostly sleeping anywhere but the new cat tree in a silent protest and I don’t blame her.

I’ve been thinking about Shakespeare’s skull.

There was a rumour propagated in 1879 that someone had nicked Shakespeare’s head from out of his grave in 1794. The rumour connected it to a skull in Beoley that we now know to be a woman’s skull. It was dismissed as a hoax back then. But in 2016 some guys with a radar checked the grave out and feel pretty strongly that there’s no head in there. People with radars often end up thinking ridiculous shit as witness the pyramids, but this one strikes me as feasible. Think about it, if you’re thinking of someone holding a human skull, who do you think of first? For a lot of us it’s gonna be Hamlet. Alas Poor Yorick. Shakespeare is Person Most Likely to get his head stolen.

It doesn’t have to have been nicked in 1794. Ollie Reed might have gone on a massive bender during The Wars of the Roses and then woken up with it on his mantelpiece and been clueless as to how it got there. There might be an amdram wardrobe somewhere with a “fake” skull in it. Or some goth kid has a candle melted on to it somewhere.

Someone stole Shakespeare’s head.

It might still be out there folks!

There’s all sorts of material there. Good God I want to believe it ended up on stage somewhere with some Hamlet playing a blinder “I don’t know what possessed me in that scene! It was like I knew it better than anyone in the world!”

This was 2016 news. How is it not more widely known? Maybe the church that houses the bones don’t want it widely known that someone broke in and robbed a grave. But people have always broken into churches and nicked stuff, or pulled lead off the roof etc – look at what happens to Bardolph in Henry V. It’s sad, but these are big lovely trusting places and they must remain so despite so many people being arseholes.

I didn’t go to see the actual tomb when I was up in Stratford because there’s a lady there that wants a fiver and I don’t really think she ought to be there so she’s not getting my fiver. If I was Deadshakespeare wouldn’t want people to pay a fiver to contemplate my dead bones. I’d want them to contemplate their own mortality, the fragility of this brief existence, the need to live while we are alive. But I also probably wouldn’t like to think I would be separated from my head perhaps forever because of enthusiasts centuries after my death.

Maybe the church needs all those fivers to get better security. What other bits might a Shakespeare fan be after? His heart is long gone I’m sure. His writing hand, perhaps. He writes a lot of right write hands. You could have that in a jar above your desk for inspiration until you got arrested. I feel there’s not much call for his penis. It might do well in the cock museum in Iceland, but he never really turned his thoughts up there. You could have it on display in The Dirty Duck, he definitely liked his pubs. Rasputin’s willy is in a museum in St Petersburg, but the Russians are weird and Rasputin was very much a willy man. Our Will likes his dick jokes as much as the next writer of that era: “Come on my right hand, Antony.” The text is stacked with stuff for the groundlings. But anyway, a dick is but flesh. Like his heart, the worms have eaten it long ago.

Hopefully the rest of him can lie there undisturbed. IF IT EVEN IS HIM IN THERE. *tinfoil hat*

There should be a campaign to try and find the skull. Maybe it’s in a hospital store, a school science cupboard, a museum drawer, unattributed. Human skulls aren’t really the sort of thing you just chuck away, even if they’re old and anonymous. Maybe it can be found. Give it a run as Yorick in the RST and then put it back where it came from, I say. You’ll fund the search if you find it. “Guest starring William Shakespeare as Yorick the Court Jester.” Packed houses every night even if, God Forbid, the actor playing Hamlet isn’t off the telly box.