Author: albarclay

This has been our pre-weekend weekend. Both of us have stuff to do on the actual weekend so this is the relaxytime. Better that way I think. If you relaxytime when all the world relaxytimes, you find yourself in winduppytime instead because the entire population of ancient Babylon has simultaneously decided NOW is the time to chill.

Being zzzt a tiny bit out of sync with all the zzt the ones who have to be weekend on weekend because job or school or life or unexamined pattern shouts at them… It’s a nice place to be. We went to yoga at Lunarwave at 9.30am on a Friday and there was an empty mat. Beforehand we went to the land of Fika where the hipsters howl, and I was able to order immediately. I don’t like Fika because I think if I was to offer to pay with a ten pound note they would look at me as if money didn’t exist and then tell me in a supercilious tone that they don’t take cash. I have gone without coffee many times when my destination coffee house sports my least favourite phrase: “Proud to not take cash”. I usually pay with cards but “proud to restrict customer options and actually be much lazier about how we close down at the end of the day – oh and we are entirely electricity reliant now. And we are proud of that.” No. You’re a bunch of cunts. Zzt.

I’m sure I’m out of synch here too with how things are going, and I’m fine with that. We are running headlong into a situation that Japan will avoid. It’s only actually the south of this country thankfully so far that have been taken in with the “cash makes more work and we can pretend we don’t take cash cos it might be dirty but actually it saves us cashing up” routine. Up north you still have to ask if it’s okay to pay with card, and long may that continue. It’s so lazy to be cashless, but you can save on staff costs and everyone is greedy. And we the consumer, we aren’t helping cos now we can wave our card like some magical wand. And then it doesn’t feel like giving that capital we worked so hard for. Often the figure isn’t even discussed. But we wave at the boop and the boop takes our money and gives a tiny percentage to someone who is absolutely guaranteed to be an absolute total complete and utter unsalvageable cunt. Boop. Boop. Boop. Pumping up the cock.

We aren’t all millionaires. But we all like the feeling of waving the wand. It feels like magic. And that tiny percentage goes to someone we would punch if they tried to kiss us. And that person gets more and more influential cos there are millions and millions of us. And they can put a tiny tiny bit of their revenue into propagating the “cash is dirty” bullshit.

Then the machine goes down. If you haven’t got cash when the electricity goes, you’re on goodwill as happens at festivals. It happened to me in Paris. Local venue blew the power in all the local streets for a good hour and a half at ten pm. I had just eaten dinner in a local bistro after rushing in some ridiculously long plastic tubes. I can’t remember the name of the venue now. I hadn’t eaten all day, got a good quick bistro meal that ended up being a free meal cos I couldn’t wait for their internet to go back up. I thought I’d go back over the course of the event, but life never took me near again, but I offered them cash. No cash accepted. Fuckem. That’s it way of it.

Don’t take cash out of the equation. It’s like the fire alert at Grenfell telling everyone to stay in their home cos the doors and sprinklers have been assessed by experts and deemed to be all you need to save you from death by fire.

The new smart system tells you it has everything covered because it has been built by idiots. Anyone trying to muscle in on cash territory is just doing it for the percentage, of course. Cash has existed for thousands of years and lifetime after lifetime because it fucking works. It’s just more hubris going cashless. The results of cashlessness might not set a fire in our lifetime, but it WILL burn and it will burn nasty. Those who made the decision to be “proud to be cashless” will be examined in schoolrooms as the short term idiots they are. I’ll still go to cashless places, sure, I’m part of it, I’m just pointing things out.

But… I will walk away no matter how desperate I am for coffee from anyone who says “proud to be cashless”. I’ve annoyed multiple friends with that. “Proud to be cashless! *smileyface* “

You might as well tattoo “self satisfied short term lazy greedy pig trying to manipulate you and proud of it *smiley face* ” on your forehead.

Nah I won’t fund your lazy business. Nor will I give my percentage to the guaranteed extremist who gets that percentage for making an app six years ago and now has been fooled by capitalism into thinking he’s a special individual.

Anyway. Carry cash. Be nice. Remember that the people who don’t take the cash from you are employees so there’s no point being mean to them even though you know their boss is a lazy short termist thinker trying to make things go away, absolutely immune to the understanding that their actions are deeply negative to freedom and progress. Still, keep carrying cash. And next time the homeless guy stops you you won’t look helpless and say “I only have cards”. And you can give to the busker who doesn’t have an izettle and actually might need to get that rock of crack or that homeless shelter or that meal and who are we to judge? At the bottom cash is the only option. At the top, no cash is strangulation. We are still ok but we aren’t using it enough to make sure we will continue to be ok. And that’s as much the fault of the magic wand wavers as it is the short term idiots who are “proud to be lazy”.

Lou had a day planned. It has felt about a week long in the best possible way. It started with a tiny little early Norman church at Coombes with the remains of the original really rather odd and brilliant artwork on the walls.

We wandered awhile amid sheeps and cowses, and then drove on to pop in on friends of hers. A lovely couple, obsessively renovating their already incredible cottage in the shadow of Chanctonbury Fell. We had Earl Gray and figs and lavender cookies. I’ve met their daughter, back in the day at BAC. Didn’t mention it though as we never really spoke beyond a spot of drunken mimbling. She’s in theatre as well.

Then a short drive to Petworth Park. Never been there before. Three quid parking all day if you haven’t got a national trust sticker. It’s an old deer run, like Richmond Park still full of deer, but unlike Richmond, very empty on a weekday. We strode through sun drenched scrubland and lay long in grass on top of hills surveying domains. Too many deer to count. Bright summer sun. Nobody around. I took my shirt off. Got some sun. Glory be. Some wonderful trees. The sweet chestnuts up there have done some brilliant damage recoveries. They are ready for a bumper harvest soon. Looking at most crops, I can tell right away that this is gonna be another red letter year for red wine, like 2020 was.

Early evening we drove to Worthing. It’s the eighties in Worthing. We went to The Perch on the pier where they serve things like Prawn Cocktail and Knickerbocker Glory. I had ravioli. The sun set in our faces.

Then we went and saw The Naked Gun. When in a time warp… The Dome is a lovely old preserved cinema and everybody please keep going to the cinema, daddy doesn’t have a pension to speak of yet. Liam Neeson playing action hero at 73 helps me be peaceful that there’s still hope for this old horse, you won’t have to put a bolt in my head yet.

Now we are back at Tessy’s. She’s running around making up for lost time with play. Lou has chamomile tea brewing, she bought a load of dried chamomile flowers which thinking about it is definitely the best way to do it. You can get enough for weeks for the cost of half a packet of those teapig bags with a few flowers wrapped up in them. I’m gonna go online.

Home and happy it has been a long strong day.

It’s misty by the sea, and honestly a spot of rain was refreshing after being cooked awake in London this morning. In a break with habit I came down by train. Lou has a car here now so Bergie is surplus to requirements, and actually it probably works out about the same for an open return as it does in petrol and parking. Train is quicker too even though it’s pretty much the same door to door.

I found it disconcerting though, not having him. I actually had to think about things I keep in him for emergencies like contact lenses. My car is like a great big overnight bag. For a long time there was even a full set of bedding in there. Towels. Chargers. He’s a workhorse.

Leaving the flat was slow. I wanted to look at some lines and the heat was slowing me down. Had a cold shower at 11am. Finally got out at about noon.

I’ve started a new book. There’s the joy of trains. You can read. Much as I’ve been enjoying the endless ridiculous dynamic between Laura Whitmore and Iain Stirling on the prolific and palatable crime podcast “Murder they Wrote,” I am happy to have started on something a little more challenging. I’m not gonna say what I’m reading right now as its one of those books that people ostentatiously read on the tube if they want to look clever. I’m barely into it and have no idea if I’m gonna persist with it right now as it is huge and halfway through the trip a woman with sad eyes guilted me into filling in a “very satisfied” survey about national rail that wasted twenty minutes of my life only to crash in a tunnel and refuse to reload.

This evening we watched Deep Cover. Lou wanted to see it. I’m just a flash in it and it was a delight to work on so it’s fun to share it with people. It really adds to things when the dynamic on set is so bright. More like that please.

Tomorrow we can kick back together. I’m just here to see her and spend a bit of time, no plans and nothing we need to achieve so we can just roll into nature and share the late summer awhile. Tomorrow hopefully we will see some yew trees… Things will pick up again soon so I’m enjoying the fact I can relax even if I have to be careful of spending now…

Up up up up. But I want more sleep. Up.

Went to Monmouth yesterday. Good coffee. Pint of water first. Ah that’s better. Monmouth coffee on in the stovetop.

Pulling on clothes. Can I reuse this sock? Collared shirt or T-shirt? Shorts today. Odd socks? Expedience. Drink coffee. Oh. Wait yes ok I’m awake because self tape. Shirt off. Shorts off. Rethink.

Record a soundtrack in bed. Then record another. Shave. I’ll be doing these to myself with me doing voices. Bite me.

Director first. Playing one. Calling the shots but not actually how they would be called on film. Time is shifted on that medium. Sticky up hair. Directors wear scarves. Hmm. Barclay tartan cravat. Corduroy jacket. No need to do hair. That’s me as a director with 5 minutes prep. Haven’t got time to do it better really. Lines. Record. Edit. Send. Done.

Ok. Now this next guy. He’s an actor in WW2. Gets a job pretending to be a famous general. I haven’t a moustache. Do I even look like him? Surely it is cast already. Still worth doing it I guess. He was a bit of a boozer this actor even though the general was teetotal. He did a good job of it. He’s army, but all I’ve got is navy. One of granddad’s coats. His tie from HMS Repulse, where he was torpedoed by the Japanese. Shove a bit of water in my hair. Haven’t got time to get this perfect. Fuck me it’s hot in wool. “Pleasure to meet you sir” FOREHEAD.

Same frame. Same light. Same fucking face, these were about ten minutes apart. Oh fuck and they want an ident with a full body shot and a clean frame. We don’t all live in fucking Saltburn darling, more’s the pity. I persuaded Maddy to handhold something that will have to do. Could have cleaned up cushions from the wide shot or worn a lower half that matched the upper but this is a crapshoot. It’s enough that I put on shoes. I’ve done them barefoot in the past as honestly what are you asking us to have here? Must we all live in vastness?

Two auditions done and it’s not even morning yet really. Maddy was sitting working on Chinese visas at the kitchen table throughout and I wished she wasn’t. Made me self conscious a little but largely didn’t negatively impact things – if anything it made it quicker to film as the social anxiety aspect was present hence why I didn’t want her there. Brian was kind enough to leave.

Spot of editing – top and tail. I’ve stopped giving too much of a fuck about getting the perfect take cos it’s an absolute crapshoot these days at this stage. I remember in 2002 seeing a role I was already cast in being advertised on the front page of PCR with a casting director who had been taken off the project. She was taken off because the director was fed up of being served the same old people from the same old agencies. But a ripple doesn’t cause a storm.

These parts are one line two line parts and I imagine they go to literally hundreds if not thousands of people for tapes. I’m allowed to play these parts according to the unspoken rules of agentranking. Esta is known in the industry and I’m not alone in loving her. They could still go to friends of the director these parts, and maybe they are already cast … but if there’s anything left it is a level playing field depending on what order they watch the tapes… I wonder how big the odds are. I’m conflicted. I’ll give a shit but I’m not gonna give you a clean landscape background for the ident as you literally have to live in a wind tunnel.

It would be lovely, of course, to do what I’m supposed to be doing, and sometimes these tapes do land. All you need is one ball bearing from the shotgun cartridge to hit the clay pigeon. Thinking about it won’t help though. So I pack up the tripod and change my clothes again. I’m awake now. Day. A day. A waddadaidai.

Into Bergie on a hot afternoon. First I have to get my festival stuff out of him to make room. I’m aware that the designer I’m collecting for needs things to be just-so. I don’t want her to slam herself to the negative when it isn’t immediately possible for me to pack the car. I’ve already made it clear to her that she can’t send the costume rail intact up three flights of stairs. She wanted us to put it in a van upright.

I collect fine. Then to The Arts which has no loading bay. I reverse dangerously onto the pavement and Brian appears as if from nowhere to wordlessly start carrying this crap. This is our understanding and our deep friendship now and I hold it tight. Unloading could have been an absolute bastard, but I know it and he knows it and between us it was ok. He had a house manager who had a brilliant hairstyle and did absolutely diddly fuck tomato apart from look at me like I was in the wrong place. He walked up some stairs in front of me. He had nice hair. Useless fucker. Brian and I slung all the heavy stuff up all the stairs. I even noticed that Brian had left two bags on a landing thinking that hairstyle might take them the rest of the way. Nope. We took one each, Brian and I. Nowadays nobody does more than they absolutely have to. This is how the world dies, honestly, I can’t make sense of it. How has everyone got so partitioned that you can call it boundaries where really it’s totally just laziness?

Anyway, I went for dinner with good people. Bedtime.

Got up, rented a van, slung a load of stuff into it I want to take to Canterbury from the lockup. Drove to Shoreditch to pick up the furniture from the job. Waited.

Bought a halloumi wrap and a coffee. Waited.

Bought another flat white. Went to pret as well for some water. Waited.

Waited a bit.

Client is getting fucked over. He can’t get keys. I mention to him that my plus one can’t stay much longer as it is a 4 hour round trip to the storage. He tells me it isn’t going to work.

I go back to the lockup and load the stuff back in. Pointless going to Canterbury just for that stuff. I return the van to Kentish Town and Siwan and I go for a shandy in the garden of The Lion and Unicorn. What a waste of a day.

I’ll get the van hire money from the client. Might get a bit of money for my time too if I ask. But it feels weird to invoice for a failed attempt. I think I’m quite goal driven sometimes. It doesn’t feel like a job if it’s just my time taken. It only feels like a job if I’ve actually done some work. I should take a leaf out of the playbook of every plumber in this country.

Now I’m home and sleepy. That’s the heat and the fact that I’ve not got the curtain over the window. Sun cooks me into fever dreams at dawn and they continue until I work out which one is the one I’m pretending to be a person in. Then it goes and gets a coffee and perhaps three hours after first awareness I manage to align the brain and the body and voila *cough* c’est Al! … … *cough* … … … … *flourish*

Liney learny. Drivey drivey. Money spendy.

I’m still enraged about the latest setback.  It makes it that much harder to go back to the drawing board, but here I am, getting an early bed so I can send two tapes tomorrow for tiny little parts. One of them will surely land, maybe both, but I’m gonna make a track myself for these ones in the morning… I’ve asked too many friends too often lately. Good work my agent getting me all these small part tapes. Happy to be punting. But I need one to go in the goal now. I’m not auditioning for fun here.

Sitting at the top of the hill in the sun, I’m surprised to notice a stone circle. It feels very old. I knew it when I was at school here, but largely unremarked at the time. I was still making sense of the practical observable world. Ancient places of power barely registered. Mum used to drag us to a dolmen in Jersey and it was just a fucking rock.

Eight fucking rocks in a circle, near the top of the hill but shaded. What’s the etymology of Harrow? Is it from Hare? Perhaps, I have seen it argued, it comes from a heathen shrine. Heathen Shrine on the hill.

I sat with the rocks for a while sharpening my paganism once more. I asked them their names. The Hare Stone presented itself. Marking clockwise from there I found them to be Finnstone, Beestone, Flystone, Rollstone, Shadstone, Edgstone and Boystone. How had I not been talking openly with them as a boy? They’re eloquent. Neglected. Off on a limb.

This area though was generally pretty important for stones. We are near the Weald Stone. It’s a hill in a flat area, these places have been important since people were people. They’re places where the earth power comes up and raises us with it. The school was founded when everyone was busy pretending it was all about the Jewish myth and the Nazarene prophet, which largely ignores stones. I suspect someone left it out of a vague inherited respect for the ancient, but nobody attached any great significance to it. My tiny memory of it is someone saying: “If you challenged someone to a fight, they waited in the circle and you had to jump in from the wall.” Dull. But that’s boys and I’m sure the stones would have liked a bit of blood and emotion. Gotta charge up somehow.

I lay on my back in there a while. Have just been doing the funeral oration. Friends Romans Countrymen. God it’s wonderful to do. It feels like home. Muscular, emotional, full of life and joy and pain and rage. It’s a hell of a piece of writing. Charged myself up in the stone. It’s a nice way to spend the weekend, and now with the students away I can appreciate this extraordinary old and strong place that I ignored as a teenager.

There in The Speech Room at Harrow I found myself working through the lines of Marc Antony in 3.1 of Caesar. Tomorrow morning this’ll be 3.2. Honestly they are some of the most evocative lines in Shakespeare. Trying to find a truthful build through the prophecy that lets him cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war? That’s the sort of thing that requires life behind it. I’m up for it now. But it isn’t going to be a free lunch. Antony does bollocks all in the first half. He doesn’t need to, his friend who he adores is running the show. He only clicks into gear when those idiots do him in. But when he clicks in he clicks in hard. And for a period in the middle of the play his heart is exposed by the shock of losing his best friend, and simultaneously his ambition is exposed knowing that he could lose everything he’s built if he doesn’t act smartly and decisively. 3.1 and 3.2 you see conflicting sides of a true statesman, coming to terms with a personal loss while establishing how to exploit things to his advantage.

I’ve only got a few weeks to learn this and learn it well. There’s only a few sessions to stage it. Some of the Old Harrovian Players are still actors, others have never been and never would be. There are at least two octogenarians in this show. One of them is in the House of Lords and asked if he could play the Soothsayer. He won’t have any rehearsal, but I’m sure we will all beware the ides of march.

I’m here as one of the actual practitioners. There are always a few of us. I thought I’d walked away for good but I’m sad and want something to focus on and I’ve always wanted an excuse to learn Marc Antony as those speeches always get me – the structure of the funeral oration with the mix of rhetoric and heart, no surprises it’s famous, it is made up of heart. But therefore it needs to be known by heart. So there’s an end to my spare time for a few weeks and that’s probably for the best as I’m not sure I’d be able to look at myself if I finished Skyrim by the end of the summer.

It’s going to be a nice bunch. Caesar is a Guildhall lad which helps with the easy love.

I’m home. Early in tomorrow. Weird but delightful. Onwards.

I should’ve brought my book with me. I arrived to pick up two keyboards at 11am and didn’t actually get them into my car until just after 3pm.

I went and had a coffee in The Railway Tavern next to West Hampstead, and then spent much of the early afternoon enjoying the late summer heat up in north London. Picking up so late I figured I’d wait until after six to drop off as then I could avoid paying Congestion Charge, so the whole deal took most of the day. Eventually I pulled up in a motorcycle bay opposite The Arts and had Maddy and Brian on hand to sling everything into the theatre. Home at half six and feeling the worse for wear. Not that I’ve had a busy day, I’m just tired at the moment. I think I’ll have to do that thing where I go through my diet. This isn’t getting any better and I don’t want to shuffle off from neglect at 50. I’ve had this programmed in by my health nut dad. “So long as you start really caring about your health at 50 you can live your life until then.” I’ve hit the magic number.

It’s hot in the flat tonight. Boo is hunting flies. Last night I dreamt she learnt how to clone herself so she was probably running all over me. It is the Lions Gate. 8/8 and the moon is high behind my head as I write. A good time to be making pledges to myself about a healthier existence going forward. I don’t HAVE to eat so badly. I just do.

Let’s have some good work coming up. Let’s get healthy and fit and make some money too, eh? Two little auditions came in today, both due by Tuesday. I see no reason why I can’t get both of them. And tomorrow I’m off to connect with my Alma Mater and throw around a spot of Shakespeare. Despite recent setbacks I’m gathering again. There’s still fight left in the old dog, I’m gearing up for another round.

This moon is big and bright tonight, right behind my head. It’s making me feel weird. Brian got an early bed and is convinced he’s got something contagious. I feel heavy and slow and I’m coughing again, but I’m convinced I’ve got advancing decrepitude. One of us might be right. Early bed will help, especially as it is hot and the cats are active in the moonlight. I can’t imagine myself sleeping like a log but I’ll try.

Thinking about fitness and money. I need to get some acting work soon. Day job stuff is a little thin on the ground suddenly. This might be my favourite time of year but that’s partly due to a history being lucky at this time of year, so I’ll need to get lucky, eh?

Right now it’s just me and the cats. I went and booted up Skyrim on the Steamdeck today just as it felt like things were slow enough that I could do it for a while. Skyrim takes weeks and weeks but it is the definition of a classic game, and I’ve never given it the time as I know how much time it needs. I’ll work my way slowly through this Nordic tale. One of my old friends saw on my Steam activity that I was playing it and sent me a message “I used to be an adventurer like you. Then I took an arrow in the knee.” That’s a decent enough in joke… It’s a very strange game. This evening my character went on a bender and sold somebody’s goat to a giant and now I’m trying to make things better. There are plenty of moral choices in the game but very few moral consequences. It was made at a time before people with agendas started making videos of one option as if it was the only option and putting them on YouTube: “This game forces everyone to sell goats to giants, look here is me doing it, it must be the only option.”

They’ve just released a simplified broken version of Disco Elysium on mobile, stolen from the devs and with all the interest removed. It’s one of the most fascinating titles from the last decade if you get the Final Cut, but for mobile they’ve cut the teeth out. It needs to have those teeth to be the challenging sad weird piece of story that was released some years ago by excellent developers none of whom will get a penny from the mobile port as the studio has gone full Sugarman.

Games are fascinating and broken right now. I’m happy to either play none or play old ones. There’s more character and style in most of the old ones. BG3 excepted.

But this is why I need to get fit. Games don’t build body. I’m talking to some personal trainer type human tomorrow who works in the park over the road. I’m gonna try to start going to yoga classes with Lou. Time to remember the old bod.

And time to try and make some money. The things are connected loosely. Nobody is gonna pay me to gather nirnroot and kill dragons (Skyrim), or overcome the conflicting voices in my head and my own self loathing and try and work out who I am (Disco Elysium).

A spot of driving tomorrow and I do have some lines to learn. All is well.

I’m still dealing with binmen and rats. Apparently a form needed to be lodged after I spoke to Freddie the rodent man. I have to lodge it not him. Technically my block caretaker has to lodge it but he’s on annual leave. So I had a go today.

The bins go out tomorrow and the guys aren’t going there unless they have to. Path of least resistance. The room is full again. I went off up RBKC to try and talk to someone, ended up on a dedicated internal phone line inside the town hall for half an hour. I was watching the interesting folk of the borough coming and going with their problems. One lovely old guy who was homeless for two years and is now having to do so much admin to keep the place he’s been housed in that he is almost done with it. The guy I spoke to was helpful when I eventually spoke to him. He was probably upstairs when I was down.

I’ve given loads of time to this problem that is only mine because of the habit I have of making things my problem when I know that otherwise they have been disguised by a “Somebody Else’s Problem field”. (“An SEP is something we can’t see, or don’t see, or our brain doesn’t let us see, because we think that it’s somebody else’s problem. That’s what SEP means. Somebody Else’s Problem. The brain just edits it out, it’s like a blind spot.”) Douglas Adams put it well, but I’m immune to them. Much of what I do on events – the stuff that makes people call me back – that’s because I make it my problem. “The Somebody Else’s Problem field… relies on people’s natural predisposition not to see anything they don’t want to, weren’t expecting, or can’t explain.” That’s never been me. Apart from my own mess.

I don’t want to see this rubbish problem in my block, but I can, so I’m fixing it. The flies come in through my window and they wouldn’t be breeding here if the bin men were taking the bags out.

I am paying a huge amount per month in service charge, and I’m doing most of the work right now. There’s some serious fuckery taking place here… But that’s another blog.

Glorious night this evening, with Brian and Maddy, finally seeing The Play that goes Wrong. It went wrongwrong tonight, there was a genuine understudy takeover halfway through. But it’s a glory too. It has run and run and spawned copies and with good reason.

I wonder how long that actor might have held the “ledger” thing until what happened happened. There are some really smart moments of durational comedy. This is something that has run and run now, the chaos looks chaotic but it’s tightly practiced. It still feels fresh enough. I enjoyed myself and it was a lovely way for the three of us to be social in The West End. I love this city. There’s so much variety, even if people are lazy and entitled and slow and noisy. A plumber came and serviced my boiler and he wanted to buy some of my random statues… I pointed out to him they were resin not bronze.