Author: albarclay

Well then. Here we go go go.

Are you the Production Coordinator?” someone asks. I’m not. But I’m picking up a lot of slack here. “What are you doing on this shoot?” another asks. “I’m general dogsbody,” I respond, because then they won’t look at me too closely.

I’m a driver. That’s my explicit job. But…

I also cast parts of it and I’m running with changes in the casting that are happening live as we roll along. I’m also dealing with pastoral care to the actors, making sure they have information as soon as it becomes available, looking after their comfort. I send a call just now that means 4 hours sleep for me. “Is there breakfast,” is the response. Fair enough. But that’s another hour lost. I can do with 3.

I’m trying to look after the human beings I’ve found work for. I’m bringing different units together, sorting out HR issues before they become issues, fighting fires. Sending calltimes. Working out of things have been forgotten. Looking after people.. Mediating.

Not just the actors. Many of the drivers and PAs. Also some of the managers and core staff. Lots of wonderful humans. I still feel responsible for lots of them, which I’m unpicking. It is full on, and burden more than any previous job is falling on me. People “up high” rely on me for things. I’m making those things happen. It often involves splitting myself into three or four. I’m getting better at it.

My problem is still the growing war between art and production, because I sit in the middle. Past experience of other jobs makes Art dept expect better communication from production, leading them to angrily unconsciously start setting traps. “They haven’t thought of X. Let’s see how they cope when they haven’t got it. That’ll show them!”

I’m trying to place myself as someone who can disarm these should-traps as they’re hellish. But it’s relentless…

I had to call all the actors for 7am tomorrow. Costume assure me they can get everybody ready to leave by 7.30 but I’m half expecting them to fail on purpose and say “well, we ‘should’ have had more space to do it in…” I hope and trust they won’t fuck us over like that though… I’ve got one costume here at home. The actor is on my sofa tonight. We have to leave at crack of dawn with him in full costume. The location happens to be just near my flat. By having him stay I’ve fixed a problem where nobody from costume would have been in to get him ready at unit base.

There’s a lot that hasn’t been thought of that needs solutions outside of the expected like this, but it’s all fixable if people just get on with it and seek to fix. It’s just ego all this “should” and delineation of labour. Of course I “shouldn’t” have an actor on my sofa. What?

After a morning of driving I took production up to the roof of a big store to scout angles, talking with all the staff despite our guy being off site. Then I went and organised the flow for actors into fittings. All would’ve been fine for the exec showing despite constantly moving goalposts, had one of my actors not had a totally legit panic attack. It was another production trap, and one I missed.

Costume didn’t want a female in that role. I had a woman shaped woman booked and they put her in man trousers. They split in the fitting because men don’t have hips.

Imagine if you’re an actor, you trade by your look. You almost pull out of the job because, you say, “I’m not like my photo anymore. I’m tubby.” “Doesn’t matter,” Al responds, of course, being Al. “You can be whatever shape you are. I’m not taking you off the job because you think you’re tubby. I booked you for the you I know.” Still worried, you go into the fitting, and the trousers immediately split. It would never occur to you that it might be a weapon in an obscure war. You just go to your trigger and panic.

I get that. But no. You looked fab. Production loved you in the costume too.

Still, the timing was hell for me.

At the crucial moment of show and tell, having rushed all the execs to get there, I ended up with a panicking actor running around looking for a not lost phone causing the actor after them to not be ready. But again, there’s a “we should have more space” thing. THERE IS NO AFFORDABLE SPACE IN THE AREA WE’VE DONE THE BEST WE CAN TRUST US AND BACK THE FUCK DOWN ON THE ACTIVE SABOTAGE.

I walked around for three days looking for ground floor space in Waterloo for them. I tried everything and everybody. It’s Vault Festival time. They wanted more space, yes, but we couldn’t find it because there IS NO MORE SPACE here. Why can’t we all just pull together?

I’ve only got 3 hours sleep coming, tops. I’m off to sleep now. I am still processing this fuckery between Art and Costume and the production team so I might have overstated it. But it seems pretty clear to me. And utterly unnecessary. If you think you know how things should be done better than someone, prove it by doing it better within the constraints you have been given, not by leaning back, folding your arms and saying “I could’ve told them it’d explode.” Maybe I’m just tired. I’ve been doing quite a lot… … …

Night.

“Do you have the wig sorted,” I first ask the art director about ten days ago. I know my L actor hasn’t been asked head measurements yet. “It’s not my area, but someone is looking after it,” I’m told. “Great,” I say, and brake gently to let a pedestrian cross the road.

“Just checking the wig is in hand? Without the wig we don’t have a L and that’s going to fall on me,” I say again, five days ago. “Someone’s going to be on hair and make-up, it’s not my area.” “Cool, but someone’s on it?” “Of course someone’s on it.” “Great,” I finish, and the lights change to green.

The day before yesterday I check with costume department instead: “Have you got the wig in time for the fitting?” “Hair and make-up will have the wig.” “Ok, do you know who’s on hair and make-up?” “H will know.” “Oh great – so H has got someone?” “Yeah there’ll be someone.” “Fine then. H said someone was on it a few days ago. I’ll relax,” I say, as I check my mirrors and indicate left.

There are wiggies out there with a box full of wigs. They’ve got everything. They aren’t cheap but they’re incredible. I’ve met them. I’ve kissed one. She was a great kisser. H must have booked one of those wonderful wiggies, I think, knowing my actor still hasn’t been asked for head measurements. H hasn’t seemed concerned every time I’ve checked. It must be in hand. I ease forward gently, aware of the dangerous driver on my right.

Today. 4pm. The shops close in an hour until after the shoot. I’m talking to the Art Director – the one who has told me “someone” is on it for over a week now. This time I’m actually in the office, not on speakerphone. I’m standing in Art Department.

“I’m just sending the call time to the L for tomorrow to get into his wig,” I say. “I’m calling him an hour ahead of the others so we can get him fitted up. Can you give me the email of whoever is on hair and make-up?”

“I don’t know who that is. That’s not my area.”

… that’s weird, I think. Who is your someone if you don’t know their email …

I’m sent to M. M booked me. Must’ve booked the someone.

“Hi, I’m just doing the calls for the show and tell tomorrow and I don’t have an email for hair and makeup for L?” M looks confused. “Ask H?” … “H sent me to you.”

I go back to H. By now I’ve realised that “someone” means “not me” to H but I’m still hoping… hoping. But no.

The word “should” has gotten involved when I wasn’t looking. The most poisonous word in the dictionary.

Delineations in this chaos? Really?

“Not my area.”

Oh actual fuck. We need L tomorrow and we’ve got a bloke with a face. This has been my prime concern for over a week. “Someone”.

A knife of cold runs right through me. Art MUST KNOW that nobody is on this… The amount of times I’ve checked with them. I go to art department again.

“I gave M the numbers of two people I know,” Art shrugs. “They should have phoned and booked one of them.” Another shrug.

“not my area” dances around in my head like the acid sequence in a 70’s TV show spiralling in crazy patterns alongside ticking clocks and eyes held open with toothpicks. tickticktickticknotmyareasomeonesomeonetickticktick

SOMEONE has dug a hole and let someone else walk into it and it feels it’s because of a notion of delineation of labour. If I hadn’t caught it at the last second it would’ve been considerably worse. Just as well there’s a driver that doesn’t draw a line around himself. I wasn’t even supposed to be there for another 4 hours. I just got in early to make sure all the actors had information.

It’s like “someone” would sooner make a point than get the job done smoothly.

“Can you call one of these two people of yours?” I beg H.

“It’s not my job.”

“Well, I’m a fucking driver. Do you think it’s my job? Come on do me a solid and help me out here. We’re all pulling in the same direction aren’t we?” Is that another shrug?

“Ok. I’m on it.”

A friend of H comes in at short notice and wants enough to get an Oculus Rift every day for a just few hours work tomorrow and a slightly longer day Sunday. We’ve got no choice. It’d take me three days to afford an Oculus Rift, dammit. Last minute wigs. That’s where the real money’s at.

This all could’ve been avoided if “someone” had said ten days ago: “I’m drawing a circle around myself and what I’m supposed to be doing and anything outside of that isn’t mine to deal with or care about. Just so you know in case you need to pick up some slack.”

I know now. I’ve aged ten years.

Event shoots like this don’t work like major movie sets. This is a temporary team. The budget isn’t the same. And nobody is psychic. And lots of people are doing things for the first time.

You pull shit like that and it isn’t the big American company that loses, like it is in your imagination, it’s the little event company that’s won the big pitch. The one that’s paying your wage. The one that’s making this work possible for you and your team of friends.

A producer friend of mine catches me in the corridor just after it all explodes. I’m fuming. It’s palpable.

“It’s not your money Al,” he gently reminds me. “Let it go.” But it is my money because I’m so fucking angry I forget to renew my parking and I now I have a parking ticket.

And it’s also my time, because nobody else is going to drive to Slough and back to pick the fucking wig up. Three hours round trip in the worst of London traffic. Give credit where it’s due, the expensive wig guy found the wig in less than half an hour – although I think the company paid monopoly money figures for the rental too. And it was in fucking Slough.

Someone…

You live and learn. If you’re kind and willing, don’t assume everybody else is.

I don’t feel taken advantage of, by the way. I’m happy to be working hard – and actually if I ask for extra days for my extra work I will get paid extra days without question because they know me and trust me and that trust goes both ways.

I will ask too. They know that. They more or less told me to do it. Because they’re good people who know I won’t take the piss because I know they won’t.

This is why I’m baffled. I hope I’m wrong about it. Maybe it just seems like this whole shitstorm was intended as some passive aggressive object lesson.

Maybe I just prevented a massive drop at the last possible second by sheer chance. But I can’t help think that “someone” might have realised, considering my repeated concerns about it, that noone was actually on the job…

Was it really yesterday that I went to the theatre? It feels like a week.

I’m still casting this thing. I’m under NDA. It’s all so vague on purpose. But we need actors. To mostly do very little. But I pushed up the fee so that I can get good performers who won’t stop filming at a crucial moment in order to ask “what’s my motivation?” All the people I’ve employed will get it done, and enjoy it too.

I just had a good conversation at Kitcat and hell’s bells I needed it. She can listen when she wants to it seems. I left the house shortly after 8am, drove through rain for far too long, managed various egos as they imploded or exploded, found replacements for the exploding ones, swore about it, worried about it, stopped myself from worrying about it, stopped myself from swearing about it, got on with it, got it done. Now the only worry is the silence. There’s one person who has neither confirmed nor denied and I’ll have to replace her by noon tomorrow one way or the other. It’s just sometimes hard to tell people’s reasons for jumping ship. If they’re just not interested, fine, just tell me, I’m cool with not interested. I might be that guy if you were me. Often it’s panic about worth. I was that worthpanic guy too, maybe a decade ago. I get it but I can talk you out of that from my own experience with depression and self loathing.

But I guess there’s no check sheet. “I am suddenly unavailable because

A: Confidence issues

B: Better than the job.

C: Not enough information.

D: Genuine availability conflict.

Our communication has been atrocious to the actors. Because my hands are tied.

I know why my friends have felt that they can respond in kind with atrocious communication.

But when things finally move on this they have to move fast and even though I’ve tried quite purely to get money to the people I think will want need or welcome money, sometimes I’ve misjudged it against either their demons or their ego. 

This is a thing we are doing for money. If you have humour and a small amount of time, and you like money, do it with us. You’ll be paid more than me per day. It’ll be a strange but lovely day. You’ll be well treated and then you’ll send an invoice. Done

After most of the day worrying or sending emails I clocked out, and walked away. I got into my car and drove through this shitawful rain to Seven Sisters. There I went into a room with two other people to rehearse a piece of theatre I’m about to do, written by a ten year old. It’s a relief to be in a rehearsal room, even for something bonkers. She’s a Venus flytrap. I’m an ice bucket for Arsenal. The more I look into it, the stranger and more beautiful it is. Now we’ve rehearsed it once we have to learn it.

The hardest thing about Scene and Heard is the learning. Good God. But here we go. “If you can learn these you can learn anything”, I tell my flytrap partner. It’s her first one! It’s such a sweet piece.

I got home about 14 hours after I left the house. I ordered a pizza, ranted at Kitkat, bathed and now I’m writing this in my pants. Bedtime. Past bedtime.

I’m off to the theatre. What a delight. An opportunity to watch someone else work for a bit. I’ve been in the office ALL DAY. It’s a new record. I found myself unconsciously twitching and popping from time to time. Suddenly swearing out loud like Father Jack. “TITS!” was my lunchtime special.

I didn’t do any axe murdering though so in many ways I can call it a win. I won’t be making a habit of being in offices though.

Now I’m going to see two bloody marvelous actors speaking the words of of one of the most important living playwrights, in the achingly cool Bridge Theatre. I’m genuinely excited about it. The ticket was provided by my extraordinary cousin outlaw who is also one of the most important living playwrights. She couldn’t use her seat. I snapped it up.

I’m going to sit in this chair for an hour and just let it wash over me. I need to decompress after today. It’s almost impossible to credit how much energy and time is being spent by myself and people around me on something that is fundamentally pointless. I’m incapable of not caring so it’s like being an invested character in an unlikely sitcom where everything is constantly exploding.

The variables… If this then that if that then this but this and that and JUST FUCKING MAKE A DECISION. You can destroy something completely in the execution by trying to make it perfect in the design. Also you can stifle creativity utterly by trying to control it all.

I only know execution, so I’m just finding and sending genuine artists to these weirdos. I adore every single one of the actors I’ve dealt with so far as they understand the job interpreted through my scattered brain by phone as I can’t really write it properly. They then wryly shrug and agree to give their time for money, and I know that there’s kindness and a loyalty to me mixed up in this decision. Actors are my tribe and I am proud to be part of this mess.

Lights are going down… Theatre!!!! Yay.

That was great.

“Have you seen this play?” I overheard no less than three audience members asking this exact line of question to various members of the theatre staff before the show. “Yes. Yes I have seen it,” they all replied, because of course – they’re young theatre professionals, curious academics, fans, earning a crust. “Is it good?”

The staff members tried valiantly. “Oh, well, yes.” “I enjoyed it.” I wanted someone to say “Make your own mind up for fuck’s sake!” 

It’s inevitably well crafted. It’s made by a master, directed by a ninja, performed by two excellent and well validated performers in a high validation theatre. But that can all go for nothing if the material doesn’t speak to you.

I’m not a parent, but I’m a son to dead parents. I’m living in the pursuit of happiness but it took me many years to stop being incredibly sad. It spoke to me about responsibility and about legacy. About the choices that make us who we are. About the things that we want versus the things that we get. About the things we forget to notice about ourselves. But the point is that a good story speaks to everybody with a different voice. Those people in that audience would all have found a different route through the windings of the words. And the words work.

I’m glad I found time for some theatre. I’m glad C gave me the ticket. I’ll sleep happily now with good dream-fodder, instead of waking up with nightmares about animals falling off buildings. Gnight. Or good morning, I suppose, future people. Don’t panic, future people. It’s all going to be fine.

Still no news on the snake apart from that he still seems perfectly well bar the lack of appetite. I’m avoiding writing about my work because I’m finding it so annoying. But it’s also so revealing. So helpful. Remarkably elucidating.

“I don’t like the shirt,” is a genuine reason to reject an actor based on headshot. I’m providing literal actual talented actors here to work anonymously like SAs. I could go to an extras agency and get Joe Fuck for marginally cheaper but I bolstered the fee and I stand by that decision, because it means I can throw a bit of work towards skillful and intelligent humans I know who are short of dollar and will raise the whole program by being interesting and confident if needed. The chances are that none of the humans I employ will see more than 0.5 seconds screentime. But I’m not going to put in people I don’t trust no matter what. My reputation stands on the people I recommend. And I live by my reputation.

Usually the first question I ask when I make the call is : “How’s money right now?” I’m trying to push things to people who need things. Be it money or validation. Ideally both. I’m honest about what this is. I’m not making art right now, I’m making money.

I’m aware that you should never ever ever consider doing an acting job if you think you’re better than the job. You’ll look a twat. I did it once, at The Finborough. Nevermore. So I’m making sure my friends are okay with what this is.

But oh my God I had NO IDEA how much your headshot impacts your chances. Actors: It really is as important as your agent tells you it is – maybe more so. In the last week I’ve seen multiple fantastic performers get jettisoned because of headshots that don’t sell anything. I’ve also seen a guy I barely know get pumped up as a legend that can do anything, based on a single decent photo I ripped off the internet that said “judge” to my beleaguered imagination.

My taste and my understanding of these performers is being sidelined utterly in favour of an interpretation of a photo that I’ve frequently just pulled randomly by instinct. Nobody is woefully miscast yet, but the level of control and judgement is such that there’s no real point even talking about skillset and ability here. It’s about face. I’ve stopped bothering listing credits now. Experience is meaningless in this sphere. I’m having to assure the decision makers that just because they have stubble in the photo doesn’t mean they can’t show up clean shaven for the shoot.

I’ve started to look at headshots in a different light myself as a result of this shit. These expensive pictures.

Photographers with a track record of taking actor shots raise and raise their prices to take them because they understand the game and have their finger on the pulse and get flooded as they get on a roll.

Eventually, like mushrooms, they reach the top of the industry and the top of the price tag where they slowly explode and collapse in on themselves until, ten years later and totally out of touch, they wonder what happened and why that whippersnapper took their business.

But yep. Now I really know it. All you need is a headshot that speaks.

“We might need an actor to play Shakespeare,” I am told yesterday. I shrug. “I’ve done that before. If it comes to it I can take that one,” I say honestly and artlessly, knowing that it’d be an utter ballache for me with all my other duties, but that I’ve done it before in a film, I know most of the canon, and he needn’t worry.

The guy laughs indulgently. He’s talking to a fixer, not an actor who knows most of Shakespeare and looks like him. He points at a friend of mine’s photo. “He could do it”. “Yes he could,” I confirm, smiling. And inside I learn. This whole gig – it’s all about money. But it’s simultaneously hard and helpful to learn the shape of how most of the producers I’ve met recently look at actors.

1:Positioning. 2: Calling Card. 3: Noise.

Know someone. Get a good picture or reel. Howl.

For them, all these things beat ability, when it comes to this sort of thing.

I’ve hated it for years. But more and more I smell the inevitability. I’ve never paid for IMDb. Perhaps I should. For £120 a year or somesuch you get my picture when you Google me.

I haven’t written my own Wikipedia. Perhaps I should. People I know have done that shit. They pretend someone else wrote it…

It’s depressing watching the Lego fall together in these brains. We never want to believe that the gatekeepers of storyland are made out of lard and petrol.

The only photo I took was of my late night cook. Yum. There’s my lard and my petrol. I’m off to storydreamland.

I need to work out how to deal with this anorexic snake. I’ve got enough going on without having to cope with a snake that won’t eat. I’m worried for him.

I’ve just picked him up from his temporary snakesitter. Tomorrow he goes back into his glass vivarium on Parliament Hill in Hampstead, darling. Maybe just in time for pub quiz at The Garden Gate. But I tried him on a mouse today.

The mouse comes in a packet. The packet has nutritional values. It contains one entire being, now deceased. But on the packet you are informed that it is 21% protein, 9% crude oil and fats, 67% moisture.

If you were in a packet the packet would say much the same. Humbling. But we are missing 3% of the ingredients. What’s missing?

3% God? 3% the love we have left behind? 3% shit, bones and yesterday’s lunch? 3% splinters and dead skin? 3% leftover technology from the alien abduction? 3% tiger? 3% coward? 3% liar? 3% hero?

It’s quite a high percentage unaccounted for…

You tear open the packet like tearing the top of a pack of Waitrose quinoa. Inside is a very dead mouse. It’s eyes are weird. It’s curled up. It’s sad and it’s strange and it smells of mouse in a way that you always knew mouse smelt even though you never knew you always knew how mouse smells.

NOT FOR HUMAN CONSUMPTION the packet reminds us. Useful, in case you stagger in drunk, open the freezer and think it’s some sort of fluffy lollipop. It isn’t appetising. I try to dangle it temptingly by the tail. I give it a voice for a while. “Yummy yummy yummy,” I say, thoughtlessly puppeting the frozen then defrosted remains of a euthanised rodent. I try not to imagine some giant doing the same with my corpse to a disinterested kraken, as is inevitably happening in a parallel universe right now.

Hex doesn’t want the mouse. I had defrosted it overnight. I had warmed it up in running hot water. I had puppeted it valiantly to an almost pointed lack of interest from Hex. So I left it there for him to find and I went to work.

He found it in the day, but he rejected it. I got home and it had moved, head a bit crushed and bloody but clearly rejected for food. Regurgitated. After a day at room temperature I discarded the poor thing.

I’m thinking it might be a bad batch of mice.

I’ve taken him in because his keeper has not been able to get him to eat for almost 3 months and the owner is a friend on a long trip away. My first attempt to feed him has landed in failure, although he’s still in his travel vivarium which might be affecting his mood.

Tomorrow he’ll be home. I’ll go to the pet shop for a fresh dead being. I’ll puppet it for him again in the hopes he strikes it. I might take advice from the pet shop as to how to guarantee he takes it. I’m not letting another whole mouse go to waste and I don’t want this strange predatory reptile to starve. If a snake can have a personality he has one, in terms of predictable behavioural patterns and an unwillingness to bite or constrict anything. He’s the king of the Royal Pythons. He’s a wuss of a snake.

I think – I hope – that he’s sulking because he’s not in his happy home. I have a strong feeling that tomorrow evening he’ll sort himself out and get some yummy mouse down his craw.

But with eating disorders you’ve just got to give time and love and consistency. Even with snakes. He’s just as mobile and curious as ever and his scales are good. He’s clearly just in a weird headspace. We’ve all been there. Hopefully I can help him find the mouse at the end of the tunnel. Silly old scaly idiot.

In the morning I find myself back underneath Hyde Park, walking the miles and miles of subterranean caverns full of beautiful and not so beautiful cars.

and security everywhere. I’m very wary of taking a photograph. “Oh look, it’s a Rolls Royce silver ghost in one of the Dorchester spots. Parked next to a Peugeot.” Ferraris and Lamborghinis and Aston Martins galore, likely driven more frequently by the guy – I’ll call him Steve – who is paid handsomely by the owner to turn it over once or twice a week in his absence. “Steve, I’m flying into Scotland on Tuesday! Be a good chap and bring the rolls will you? I’ve put a couple of grand into your account.” I’d do Steve’s job, but for the old obsession…

I get to the underground Enterprise in Park Lane. Drilon is there. “The company only booked it last night. We haven’t anything the size you need today.” “I’m only picking up one guy. So long as I can tell him I’m getting a bigger one tomorrow we’re fine.” “I’ll definitely have a bigger one tomorrow.”

I drive to Heathrow to pick up a producer. He’s concerned about the car. “I’m going to get a bigger one tomorrow,” I assure him. I drop him off and I get a phone call.

“Are you keeping the car you’ve got? You need a bigger one.” The dashboard IS in headbutt range but I stifle the impulse. “I’m changing it tomorrow. Don’t worry.”

An hour later I get a text telling me I’ll be changing the car tomorrow for a bigger one and giving me Drilon’s name as contact. We know each other too well. Between this company and Cragrats I’ve become a regular face at the morlock Enterprise below Hyde Park. I know them all. I miss Hussein. But Drilon is an A1 dude. And the two of us HAD THIS IN HAND. Ach.

Sometimes when people have a lot to do, they spend a long time doing things that have already been done.

In the afternoon I park the car up in Somerstown. I leave all the doors unlocked and my laptop in the back seat and I go to sightread a new play written by a ten year old in front of about 50 people alongside an actress I’ve never met before.

It’s a beautiful short play. It really is. Loss, love, past, present, future. A bright new day. I’ll be playing an ice bucket. She’ll be playing a venus flytrap. There won’t be a dry eye in the house.

I heard a lot of other wonderful plays and briefly met a large number of delightful old friends and acquaintances and kids. You’ll inevitably hear more of this project anon. But it’s always sold out so it’s not like they’ll need for audience.

I return to my unlocked car –  plum in the middle of one of the roughest estates in London – and clearly nobody wanted my laptop. Maybe they didn’t notice the car because it was so small? Perhaps I should think about asking someone to change it…

I drive it to Peckham to pick up Hex.

Hex is a royal python. He’s acting up. He’s not eating. Mummy’s on a job in New Zealand and he’s been living in an IKEA plastic bucket with a burlesque dancer and instagrammer who definitely definitely didn’t want to relinquish him and looking at the insta I can tell why. Poor thing must be knackered. No wonder he hasn’t been taking his tasty dead mice.

I’ve brought him back to my flat and tomorrow I’m taking him home to his happy glass terrarium in the hopes that he stops sulking and eats his mouse like a good little snake.

So that’s been my Sunday. Always the fucking same, my life.

Business as usual. I’m picking up a car tomorrow morning and then going to Heathrow to grab a passenger from Switzerland. The spectre of total shutdown hangs frightful over London though, and over every city worldwide.

In the face of a particularly virulent airborne disease that appears to be not particularly lethal, how do governments respond? Is their inaction going to be held to account if this thing suddenly mutates and turns out to be 70% fatal or somesuch? Nobody wants the financial hit of missing out on work until everybody has to. So people will still get up and go to work until prevented. And anything to officially prevent movement brings both panic and huge financial trouble. Both things we have had a lot of recently in the UK anyway so I guess so a bit more won’t be so unfamiliar. The Mekon can try to use it to bang another nail of distrust into the tattered remains of our glorious NHS that they’ve been starving and torturing for so long now it’s a miracle of altruism and the Hippocratic oath that the underfunded undervalued staff are still alive to stop us from dying.

I’ll pick up a passenger from Switzerland tomorrow afternoon. I’ll try not to sneeze as I carry him back to Waterloo. Everybody is worried sick suddenly. If my passenger sneezes, I’ll notice. If I sneeze he might email someone. After all the Swiss have all got fallout shelters in their houses.

This is flu season! This is the time every year where we all get a cold, sniffle, cough etc. Winter into summer or summer into winter. But suddenly it’s loaded with prefab panic.

I have a cough. When I have a cough I always cough hugely on purpose. I was taught by a physiotherapist aged 12 that suppressing it to be polite was what had helped fill my lungs with mucus. I’d had undiagnosed pneumonia for a surprisingly long time as a kid. It was exacerbated by my attempts to keep the coughing secret and away from others. I didn’t want to make a fuss and inconvenience people. I ended up with lung collapse, a whole year off school and a much better understanding of my breath capacity and bronchial system than one normally has. And if there’s phlegm to move I fucking move it but I can hold my breath longer than you can and next time we’re in a swimming pool I’ll prove it.

I still haven’t fully learnt that sometimes it’s important to make a fuss and inconvenience people though. Anyhow…

I’m hoping to meet a Lennon tomorrow who will get past the client. It’s frustrating as I had a fantastic guy who doesn’t even need a wig but was deemed too young. It’s a lesson. Casting: it’s often all about positioning and nothing about ability. Not at all levels, but definitely sometimes. These casting decisions are made on appraisal of a photo sent digitally across the Atlantic. I could send a different photo of the same person with an adjusted name and it might pass the second time. Obviously I’ve not done that twice already honest guvnor but I could’ve…

If you want to get the part, find out what photo the producer has on their moodboard and make sure your hair is similar and your clothes are the same colour. Ugh. Night. Achoo.

I’ve been pounding the streets of Waterloo looking for temporary office space. This former police station is fucking terrifying.

The receptionist literally panicked and walked me outside when I asked him a question, and then when I tried to take a photo of the name of the business so I could email enquire about space to rent a thickset and dangerous man appeared literally out of nowhere and forcibly said “no photos”.

It’s likely a torture house. Or organised crime. I’m glad I escaped with my life. SSCL. “Transforming Services in the Public Sector”. All joking aside, I’m sure they’re a completely legitimate business. Please don’t kill me.

Bathtime. I am the walrus.

I’ve started another short term gig, but this one isn’t quite what I was expecting yet. I was hoping it would be “Here’s your car, at x o’clock you’ll need to be at y for z.” But first of all they’re using me for the old finding actors and places gig. I’m back on the hunt for a John Lennon after discovering too late that the client wants a specific era of Lennon. I found a young John, but they want Abbey Road John. Full whiskers all over the place. Big hair. White suit. The full hippy.

There aren’t many people in my business who have that look as it’s not very versatile. You can only get so much work playing “pacifist guy” or “white Jesus”. Your majority of actors have shaved the beard and the hair. The lookalikes, who proudly provide their own suit and wig… even they don’t have the beard. And the numbers they are throwing around are eye-watering, after which they continue with “and transport from Scotland and a double room in London plus a deseeded pomegranate every ten minutes and a personal serenade from Michael Buble.”

Considering they’re just geezers with no specific acting ability, a face, a wig and good positioning on the internet, I think I’d rather blow myself up than give them the work for what they’re asking. I have no guarantee they’ll be any good at it and they are totally taking the piss pricewise. So I’m looking for hairy dark haired actors, 30’s, guys…

I’m also looking for a reasonably large room for three early hours on a Sunday morning near Albert Hall. Hence I’m shouting out to RCM students for a practice room, although the college might not even be open yet at 7. I can’t picture many students getting in to practice at that time…

And I’m also looking for ground floor office space in Waterloo for a temporary art department. They’ll be the guys putting the wig on hairy Lennon, and renting the clothes…

So yeah. Just some stuff. It’s good to be busy. But until I’ve got this fucking Lennon signed off I’m not going to be able to relax. The situation is complicated by the fact that whoever I get has to have a photograph pass over a desk in America where someone who is looking for actual John actual living Lennon will go “Nah. Not him. Next.” John’s dead. The Catcher in the Rye. If he wasn’t dead he’d be old. If he wasn’t old or dead he’d still not do this gig.

I’m doing it though and as with everything I ever do I’m trying to do it well. Help a girl out with your forgotten Lennonresemblance and let’s hope I can get some money to someone who will go “oh, great, I needed that” instead of “SUCKERS, I’m off to Lanzarote to get Coronavirus with my family on a resort beach! Oh.”

Because we’re all going to die. That’s the narrative. It’s got so you can’t sneeze in public without everybody looking sideways at you. Conferences being cancelled in Europe. Milan is semi shut down. Is London going to end up the same? Maybe I don’t need to worry about Lennon cos I’ll have plague.

Ahh the Oxford and Cambridge Club. Nestling gently in the hallows of Pall Mall, close to the Athenaum. Here we are, replete with the reassuring clink of billiard balls and the gentle hum of oh so much clever conversation. Here we are where expensive wine is consumed vastly by vast expensive people. Where deals are struck and feels are snuck. The panels on the walls. The roar of the fire. “I’m sorry sir, you’re not on the list ” “Yes, madam, we have a spare tie for your friend to wear.” “Get this hobo out of here he’s an actor, it’s disgusting.”

I’ve never stepped foot in it in my life. I’m just imagining.

My old friend from school has invited me, somewhat cryptically, asking for “a favour”. I like him. He was the alternative but clever one. He had all sorts of unusual ideas and became a good friend when I was at school. We saw eye to eye. He went to Oxford and now he’s a vicar and this is his club.

I’m just about to go in now. I’ll report back.

Turns out a lot of my guesses were on point. But the fires are gas. Clean air act promoting fracking.

They have menus in there without the price. The “host” knows the cost of everything. The guest knows nothing. I’m experienced enough with menus to go with the set menu rather then get the venison from the à la carte – men of the cloth are not famously well paid. I’m not going to skin him. I still let him get me a half bottle of claret, mind. When in Rome?

He’s not drinking.

“I’ve given up booze for Lent,” he tells me. I look furtive, having not thought about Lent. “I’ve given up class A drugs for Lent,” I attempt, with a winning smile. Worried he won’t get the joke I double down. “And sex. I’ve given up class A drugs and sex. So far it’s going fine!” Jazz hands! … !!!

He’s wearing his dog collar. He’s quite serious.

You have to speak reasonably honestly to that uniform, and you feel bad when you’re glib. It’s like a more extreme version of talking to a policeman. Just a simple rectangle of white, but it’s effective. The older the uniform is the harder it’s wired into our subconscious. I respect the collar. I will be honest to the collar. The collar has no power over me but the collar must be treated well and never ever lied to. What a wonderful place to exist in. But my bad joke doesn’t land.

We talk a while about our respective ministries. I try to put into words how I feel I’m called to heal from within the darkness. “I needed to understand the darkness before I could help people to find light,” I tell him. I talk about my extremely confused but fully functioning catholobuddhist pantheism. We see eye to eye about a surprising amount. It’s just the names.

What did he want? He wants a space. God, don’t we all? It’s the conversation I have the most frequently. A central London location where we can meet once a week and do wonderful things.

I wish I was a property magnate, although I’d be shit at it because all my empty properties would be filled with burlesque dancers or Christians or Buddhist Christian burlesque dancers reading the Bible and tarot… But I would like to find him a space because he bought me dinner and he seems serious. 3 hours from 5pm on a Sunday to effect “the drama of Catholic worship in a contemporary fashion, and more inclusive in terms of gender and sexuality.”

You’ve got an empty theatre on Sunday? How about you get some powerful good vibrations coming into your building? Call me, baby. Call me.