Author: albarclay

So much for a quiet one. I’d forgotten that I had a makeup test today so it was off across London to the studio and into a trailer where the fabulous Frankee made me look a little neater and shaved me. It doesn’t matter how hard you try, there will always be visible bits of stubble on my face. I’m the one-week-beard guy. An old QC used to try to make me shave at noon in my first job and at the time I thought it was because I was too hairy rather than that the old bastard couldn’t grow a beard himself. Today he’d have applauded me, the jumped up whey face. I went on Amazon and bought something I should’ve got years ago. A top quality rotary shaver that can be used wet or dry. They usually cost a small fortune but January worked its magic and it was £40.

I got home to find something I should’ve thought of ages ago. Outside of a long suffering girlfriend, which I’ve successfully avoided finding for over a decade, I’ve only got longer suffering friends to persuade to dig bits of their anatomy into my shoulder blade. Jack had his fingers in there, Tristan got his knuckles, Tanya got her fist in, and poor tiny Claire was using gravity and her whole body weight to get her elbows stuck in.

Now I’ve got a robot. It’s the future…

I found a Christmas present waiting downstairs. It had been delivered by Hermes, and as part of the service they run it over with a steamroller and then try to persuade the local crackhead to sleep on the box for a night before they actually deliver it. Thankfully it’s pretty robust so the inner package itself was fine, even though the outer box was audibly weeping as it caught sight of itself in the mirror.

It’s a shiatsu massage machine. It’s a terrifying crawling monster.

You inflict it on yourself and then it wanders around on your back hurting you as much as you let it. You control the pressure by pulling on the straps. I’m not sure if it’s self-care or masochism but I let it get right into me today and there were two moments where something went *dink* and my whole arm went tingly. I rushed to the bath afterwards and now I’m letting it rest. I don’t think it’s fully worked out yet, although I’m at peak nurofen so it’s anybody’s guess. I’ll know at my usual wake up time which is about 5am when the drugs wear off and I don’t want any more as my stomach is empty so I writhe around in semi sleep semi rage until it seems reasonable to have a bowl of Tylenol and take two granola or oh shit the other way round oh well…

I’ve got high hopes for this monstrous device. If it helps me clear this trapped shoulder nerve I am tempted to worship it as a deity. I’ll definitely be thanking TnT who impulse bought it for me in the sales.

January is still feeling very quiet in town as I go through this recalibration process. I’m keeping myself busy though. Six people round my flat over the course of today. Four of them in the daytime. We had another D&D session because we’ve all just finished Christmas Carol and the last one was good craic. Now it’s Campbell, Tom and I. We had a healthy meal and I must’ve got through three non alcoholic beers and a carton of orange juice. Placebos all the way right now as I service my sugar addiction while ditching the booze part. One thing at a time. It’s only a month and it’s only going to get easier. Besides there’s plenty coming up.

I think I’ll be a monk for a couple of weeks now though. It feels like the right time of year for hibernation…

I’ll try to avoid spending money as much as possible. Go out just for good friends and work. Get back on the looking for short term day jobs train. Spend as little as I can get away with in this town and make my home as nice as I can while I’m here. I can even get back on the eBay listing. There’s plenty more to sell. Plenty more to find out about. What with flat sorting and eBay alone I’ve got enough stuff to do to take every hour of every non working day for many months to come. No time like the present, etc. Plus there’s walks in the park and moving my shoulder.

NHS online says two weeks is pretty normal for this sort of shoulder pain so despite the constant nature of it I’m a bit less worried now. I reckon it’s pretty much definitely a trapped nerve, brought on by doing lots of theatre but not warming up or warming down properly (sorry Wendy) and exacerbated by carrying a heavy greasy oven down 4 flights of stairs. I’ll probably end up joining the hordes of bright eyed men and women who will be queuing for yoga classes for next few weeks as they cling onto the scraps of their resolutions. I’m going to keep safely using my shoulder in the hopes that it suddenly goes “ping” and stops trying to murder me. The sooner I can stop mixing and matching the painkillers the better, as it’s weird trying to detox while putting God knows what into my stomach every 4-6 hours.

I might call some good friends tomorrow and see if I can get a moment with them. There are various people that I haven’t seen for months and months because of the wonderful long run of work I just had. It feels like this cold dark month might be a good time to try and chase people up for dinner parties in my flat, daytime walks in parks and family catch ups.

Right now though I’m off to sleep. I have to get a quote for a bathroom floor first thing tomorrow morning to send to my mate in New Zealand…

There’s an old railway line up in Crouch End that makes for a surprising and delightful walk. For want of anything else to do this mild show-free winter Sunday, I met my dear friend and we went for a stroll to blow the cobwebs. We were not by any means the only ones to have that idea, but that’s the obstruction that comes with living in this city. You rarely do anything alone here.

We strolled companionably through trees and mud and put the world to rights surrounded by dogwalkers and families and other people sorting out the world for each other too. Then we went for a very fine but expensive sunday roast in one of the many excellent pubs in Crouch End. I don’t think the conversation stopped for a second for the whole time we were together, which was a bloody long time. This is what friends are for. We pulled a lot of stuff out of ourselves, examined it together, and decided what to do with it. A lovely Sunday and much needed.

Unfortunately the tubes stop earlier than I anticipated in Finsbury Park. I missed the last southbound Victoria line train by a whisker and now I’m committed to the long slog on the nightbus.

It’s empty for now and we are already in Highbury, so maybe it won’t be the screaming hellzone that I associate with the night bus. And the roads are empty. It’s just before midnight on a Sunday. Everybody is in bed or working their way towards it. It’s actually rather lovely to see these ancient streets empty. Although the bins go out in Islington tomorrow morning, so there’s plenty of rubbish on the streets.

I remember the first time I was in New York there was a rubbish collector’s strike. It had not been long, and thankfully it was winter, but the piles of flyblown garbage were already astronomical by the standards of what we are used to. It’s so delicate, the mechanism of a city this big. The majority of people have to show up for work every day or the whole place will be uninhabitable in less than a week. Nobody has a clue how to feed themselves, warm themselves, find water, survive. It’s crazy to think how quickly the whole system might collapse.

Nevertheless, this late night bus driver is going to get me home almost as quickly as the underground train driver could have. He’s zooming through the city. We are already at Clerkenwell. It’s amazing, the consensus that makes all of this possible. If there were no more buses I could have found somebody who will pick me up in their own car and get me home for a premium. Even though the streets are empty the bulk of the remaining vehicles are arteries. Buses, cabs and private hire vehicles, seeking the few stragglers like me who just want to get to their destination quicksnap and are willing to pay top whack.

We are coming into The West End now, and I’m going to stop writing and start properly participating in this delightful spectacle of a mostly deserted city. It’s a rarity.

There are so many people in this town, but sometimes it can feel like there’s nobody. I’m glad to be reminded today that there are people who just fundamentally get me. What a lovely day of companionship.

Dungeons and Dragons. That’s been today’s distraction. I’m now winding down, running a bath and listening to John Coltrane. Earlier today I was visited by a motley bunch of adventurers. There was a speedy psychotic gnome ranger, the conflicted elven hero cleric of a terrible sea God, a strange beautiful man who entered into a pact with Asmodeus and a swift and extremely dangerous leatherworking dwarf turned thief.

I’m the dungeon master. This isn’t a sex thing. My job is essentially to facilitate a group of people telling a story together by deciding on a number of concrete elements to the story and then allowing their imaginations to take them through it. They can try to do whatever they want and I have to apply the odds and chance in the form of a wide selection of beautiful dice. The 20 sided one gets the most use, but there are 12 sided ones, and 10 and 8 and 4. It all provides a frame for a communal storytelling which is really rather delightful and where control is given over to the dice.

I used to do it at school, and had a brief return to it about two years ago. It’s a lovely way to spend an afternoon, but the downside is that it takes a lot of time and it only really works if the same group of people can meet up every time, to pick up where they left off. Everybody has to be available. As soon as one or two people are missing it starts to feel splintered. With my life being so unpredictable, and considering most of the players are in the same line of work as me, I can’t imagine we’ll have much time to develop a campaign before availability issues start to drive the wedge in. But today was delightful. And we are committed to picking up where we left off on Monday. Let’s see what becomes of this.

It was at my flat which is lovely as it means that I don’t have to travel home now. I’m still getting bothered by my shoulder. It is unlike anything I’ve encountered before. But it didn’t stop me having a glorious day of imagination and silliness with friends.

It hasn’t quite sunk in that the run of theatre work has finally come to an end. Thankfully I’ve got some filming lined up, but that was a heck of a run and one that I’m extremely grateful for. It’s a good time for recovery now, but this city keeps on grinding and I can’t spend too long playing Dungeons and Dragons or I’ll run out of rations and have to roll to see if I’m any good at foraging.

I forced a mini oven pizza down my gullet tonight after everybody had gone, mostly as a bedrock for the ibuprofen that I’m currently overusing. Once I’ve soaked for as long as I can justify, I’m going to aim for a good night’s sleep. It’s already later than I thought it was…

Here’s a sketch from one of the players. He nicked a crap crown from the bugbear king. Gotta love this game.

The rifle range in which we did Christmas Carol is once again a rifle range.

When I left, Ria was coordinating things and Tristan was up a stepladder taking down an extremely sturdily built fake wall that provided the main entrance into the space and gave a bit of separation from the bar area.

We filled a long wheel base Luton van with incidentals and furniture related to the show. They were all clearly marked. But we took a lot more stuff than we expected. A huge wardrobe, the flats that made up the bar, boxes and boxes of silverware and gravy boats and platters, carpets, a table with a coffinish thing in it – “it’s my coffin” ended up being one of my lines as it wasn’t reading at distance. Loads of Victorian plates (I had to requisition stickers from less important things when I realised they hadn’t been marked properly – I’ll probably be back for them independently before long as they are too good to lose.)

We took them all to a warehouse near Bishop’s Stortford. I know it well. There are two warehouses next to each other on an estate and we can only use one of them.

Campbell came with me. Good nephew work. He stuck with us all day and I’ll give him some cash for his work. Jack bunged him a tenner. If you’re going to be an artist in this city you have to quickly understand the correlation between money and time, or you will collapse. He’s a dreamer but he’s not a fool. I think he’ll both do well and have integrity.

We arrived at the warehouse we use, and opened the door to find a wall of wood. There are so many shows mothballed in this warehouse. There is literally no room to walk through that door. I’m videoing it live as I’ve told Brian I’ll send him footage. We go to the other door. There is a small corridor, leading nowhere. Then all the wood, a forklift truck and a huge iron and glass tank.

At first we worry. “I don’t think we can fit it in here,” says Jack and I concur. Jack and I like to do things properly. But frankly, whoever put all the wood in front of the other door didn’t care about who came after. We end up doing the only thing we can do. We fill what’s left of the corridor. Whoever comes next will hit an impossible drop off. But for now, the show is all together, and the karma potato passes to the next soul. It’s already going to be a mammoth job to get anything from the back of the warehouse out. That’s not on us though. We are comparatively tiny. I’ve offered to be there and lend a hand because there’s also a concern where things are leaning on things which are leaning on other things throughout the warehouse which makes the whole place feel like a potential deathtrap if the wrong person moves the wrong thing.

Still. Carol is mothballed. Bye bye Christmas.

It was only on the way home that I got a message from Brian. “What about the other warehouse?”

I’ve always been told it was only that one. All the van crews, all the stage managers, everybody I know that has ever been there with me have all told me it’s just that one warehouse.

There is another warehouse right next to it.

It is huge.

I have no idea what’s in it. It might be full, of course. But for fuck’s sake!

I’m almost tempted to go out there in a car with two crew and see if it’s possible to move things. I’ve got this idea that the other warehouse is completely empty. I can’t believe it’s in play.

Anyway. It is done. And for the whole time of lifting and moving heavy stuff I didn’t mention my shoulder once. Which I’m proud of, as it was trying to murder me, but I will never let a bit of pain prevent me from doing my job. And of making sure this show is well stored…

Yes. That’s a part of my job. Especially if we get our way and go international next year. Whoever ends up in the nightie next year if I’m overseas will be glad of today’s work…

A good friend of mine uses Airbnb and puts her flat on it. As with me she is often away for work, so she puts it on with a minimum stay length of a few days, and if someone wants it she lets me know and I let them in and she makes some money. She was worried about my availability this time though so someone who doesn’t know the flat so well let in a bunch of young men and women for New Year and oh dear God they trashed the place.

Carnage. Somehow they fused the fridge-freezer. I would normally say that the fridge freezer fused on its own but looking at the rest of the flat I doubt it very much. I reckon they overloaded the circuit somehow. They didn’t bother telling her it wasn’t working either. I got a call because the person she asked to let them in instead of me came to “check on the flat”, announced that the fridge was broken and then fucked off. Leaving the heating on full…

My friend is in New Zealand for three months. I got an emergency call from her just after my final show of Christmas Carol for the season. We were worried about freezer water flooding the flat below. I got myself to her flat ASAP and then it was the work of five minutes to put a new 13 amp fuse into the fridge plug, which is all that was missing. Ok I took it from the microwave, but I was trying to get to the bottom of things. There was a tea towel jammed at the base of the fridge, but thankfully all of the melt water was trapped in the pans.

They’d flooded the bathroom, though. That went unnoticed by checkout. I mean, the bathroom is carpeted so it’s about time to sort that out. But the carpet (still damp) is now badly stained with flood. I had to take photos for Airbnb.

Apparently there were 11 rolls of loo paper when she left. There are none now, and no kitchen roll either.

They must have flooded it just as they were leaving, and used all the tissue they could get their hands on to try to soak up the water. It didn’t occur to them to use bedsheets and then wash them. Which is probably for the best as I’m staying over tonight and I need sheets. But I’ll have to remember to be careful in the morning and not sit down for a nice morning poo, or it’ll be running water, hands, disinfectant and shame.

This is all too much mess to sort in one evening post show, especially when I’m driving a van all day tomorrow for the get-out. So I’ll stay here tonight with Campbell, put as much as I can in the washing machine, rope him into helping with the get-out tomorrow, and then over the next few days I’ll see what I can do to help get this place back to normal.

It’s weird how, since it’s my friend’s place and not mine, I am very particular about how well it is kept. I should certainly shift some of that thinking to my own home…

First day of the year. I’ve spent it quietly. I got home late last night as found I couldn’t sleep on either side for pain. This shoulder business is annoying me now. I keep on expecting it to sort itself out.

London seems quiet and empty, but the world is about to come back now and it’ll come back with a roar as everybody straps back into the machine and goes full pelt into the new decade. But for now the main road at my back is unusually quiet. It’s usually a constant stream of traffic, even at this time of night. Right now it’s just a trickle.

My nephew and I spent the day reading. I didn’t leave the house at all for the whole day. After a few hours I made simple pasta with pesto and leftover cold cuts and tomatoes. Then I had a hot bath and read some more. I’ve got him into Joseph Campbell, and I’m dipping back in myself, as well as a large amount of considerably less dense literature. I signed up for the 2000ad Collection, and every month I’ve had two graphic novels from the history of the “The Galaxy’s Greatest Comic” sent to my door. Since June I haven’t had time to read them so they’ve been mounting up for ages. I’m trying now to get myself up to date but it’s a lot of reading and some of it – frankly – is just not good. I’d sooner be reading a book but I’m stubbornly wading through them looking for the gold.

It’s pleasant to revisit the characters and stories I enjoyed as a young man, but often I’m finding that they don’t really hold up to my more jaded imagination. Some do, for sure. There are some works of art in there. Strange unexpected tales, moments of surprise and wit, extraordinary works of penmanship and painting. Just buried in a mountain of gun toting aliens stating the obvious, predictable episodic plots, baddies and goodies, gaping plot holes and deus ex machina.

One more show, tomorrow, and that’s that. Christmas Carol done for another year. We could’ve sold better this year, frankly. It’s a shame to see matinees getting cancelled. But it has been a lovely way to spend the season, and the perfect return to London after the mad joy of the US tour. I feel well and truly back home in my city. I just want to get back to fighting fit again and overcome this bastard shoulder pain. Rest is helping but not as quickly as I’d like. It’s still very hard to sleep.

It’s 3am and I’m writing this lying on my back in bed. I forgot to blog today but I have this instinct that wakes me up if I try to go to sleep without doing it. It probably helps that I’m in pain, as the prospect of anything other than restless sleep seems unlikely. Although I’m probably good to have another ibuprofen now and if I can’t sleep I’ll dig back into Stickleback.

Right. Here we go. New Year. It’s happening. I’m about to get on the tube to Richmond. Me and my fucked up shoulder are going to see the new decade arrive in a garden in the suburbs. There will be a few close friends and a lot of alcohol. I have no idea how it’ll pan out. I’m already feeling overwhelmed by people and that’s just through having to open up and be Scrooge for the penultimate time this year. I was quietly waiting in a corridor just now when somebody asked me what my price per hour is for one to one coaching. I told him I’m thrilled he’s asked but I’m decompressing a show and I can’t give him a sensible answer. Brian and Mel and Rob and Amy are here as well, but I’m leaving. I’m out. I’m pulling myself out of this party with an hour and a half to midnight and I am getting on that train to the suburbs. I’m doing it. It’s on. Here we go. This is leaving the party Al, leaving the party…

Well. So far I’m still at the party but mostly because I’m dependent on Tristan to get to his and he is just as bad as I am at leaving the party, if not worse. I’m standing next to a suitcase as he rolls another cigarette and makes conversation with people. In fact most of the people at this party are leaving the party to go to another party and we are now wishing them all happy new year before going to our party which we might not even make it in time for. “We’ve got 20 minutes to get to Waterloo,” says a suddenly galvanised Tristan. Right then. We can do this. Movement.

We made it to the platform at Bond Street. Tristan is now saying numbers to us in his authority-voice. “8 minutes we have, to get to Waterloo to platform 24 – it usually takes about 4 and a half minutes we’ve got 8. If we miss this we have to go back to Westminster and get on the tube.”

Westminster station is closed, for the fireworks. Too many people. It’s ramjammed in this tube going south from Bond Street. He’s carrying a huge suitcase. It feels like rush hour but drunker. I mean, wherever we are for midnight it’ll be a place. But I’d definitely prefer not to be on a night bus as the decade turns.

The platform is the other end of the concourse. We’ve got four minutes. We are on the up escalator.

Crowds at Waterloo so they constructed labyrinths. Then we sprinted through the crowd. Made it with a minute to spare onto the train. Tristan is swearing with a stitch. I’m sprawled out getting my breath back. Our guard has just told us that this is the best train to be on this decade. I’ll take his word for it. He has just made a second announcement panicking that some of the loos in the train aren’t working which casts his earlier assertion into doubt.

Have a great New Year, you lovely lot. I’m on my train. Now I can relax.

I told myself I needed to take care of my shoulder. That was my motivation for doing the square root of fuck all today. Truth be told, the shoulder is feeling a lot better for the rest so it was probably the right thing to do. But at twenty to seven I’ve started to feel extremely restless. I’m hardwired into showtime now. There’s no show tonight. But try telling that to my adrenal medulla. It’s started to pump me up ready for a fight.

So I went for a walk. Maybe there’ll be ninja assassins. It’s unseasonably warm and there’s no rain. The streets of Chelsea are empty at this time of year, as everybody has gone to one of their houses in The Cotswolds for New Year. I don’t blame them. I like to try to get as far from the centre of town as possible for midnight on New Year’s Eve. I’d quite like to do something more constructive than lie on my back groaning for the first day of the decade. And those loud parties tune all my instincts towards oblivion.

This year I’ll be doing a show in Mayfair, finishing at 10pm. It doesn’t leave me much time to escape. The easiest option will be stay in the venue…

I’ll have to fire myself out of the centre of town hard and fast. I’m not paying entry to a thumping building full of skin and sweat and shouting. Not this year. If my shoulder is no better I might just slink to my flat and go and burn stuff in the park at midnight. I’m not enjoying being in pain so I’m hoping my lazy day has allowed some genuine recovery to take place. I’ve only had two ibuprofen today so I can keep an eye on levels and it’s not seizing up as much as it has been so I’m optimistic that the worst is past. This is over 40, kids. Random inexplicable muscle pain in unexpected places for no good reason. I remember my dad telling me all about the joys of it. Now I get to experience the ride for myself.

My nephew Campbell is staying for a few days. He is bouncing around London on his skateboard taking in the sights and sounds. He went to an art exhibition today and came back declaring that now he knows what he doesn’t want to make. “It was some old guy making a load of self indulgent rubbish, and they wanted £20 on the door to look at it, plus I couldn’t bring in my skateboard. Who’s this shite for? It’s not for me, that’s for sure.”

Good lad. Having an opinion is so important. I think he’ll end up making some interesting stuff. I’ll help out with a roof in London whenever I can. It’s nice watching him whizz around while I’m nursing this broken wing. Fly, my pretty nephew, fly!

January beckons. I might do it healthy and dry. Give my liver a little bit of a breather. Eat vegetables. Wear a badge. Go on about it to people. Look constantly restless in public. Sign up for depressingly enthusiastic daily emails written by the 15 year old intern at Macmillan. We shall see.

For now I’ve stopped in Maze Grill, Gordon Ramsey’s steak house round the corner from me. I get half price food on Monday and the steak is to die for.

I should probably have drawn the line at 500ml of Carmenere, but what the heck, it’s my night off and it’s not January yet…

Heading in to work this afternoon I met a very old friend. She was on the King’s Road shopping with her kids. She’s my age, the daughter of one of my father’s greatest friends. There was a time where we were both very aware of being set up by our parents in the way that parents do, looking for childhood crushes between their friends. “She’s great isn’t she?” And we did get on as children. We were friends. We made sense of stuff together.

It seems it’s still there in some form, that understanding, mostly through the magic of Facebook these days.

I always feel strange meeting friends from so long ago, but when I meet them and find them still young at heart and still forward moving it makes the meeting very positive. It was very good to see her, my old mate. Witnessing her ongoing vigorous attack on life has made me feel better about my version of that. We both have the notion of having a lot to do, and we both carry a lot to process as we do the things we feel we have to. We both get ourselves tangled up in the doing sometimes. I think that it’s likely we both get our endorphins from achievement and we are both curious about that in ourselves. I’m projecting on her here. I barely know her in truth. Maybe I’m only writing about myself.

I doubt either of us will ever sit down. We both have life occurring all over the place, and darkness tangled with the light. She has kids for goodness’ sake. I’ve avoided that. Maybe I’ve not met the right person at the right time. Maybe I just know that I couldn’t give them the time they need. Hey ho. Insh’Allah.

The way the dates have fallen, this has been a very light week of work. There are only two more shows in the run, and then Jack and I go our separate ways for a month or two. He’s off to be the Scottish king in Guildford, and I’m home and doing a spot of lovely filming because my agent is brilliant and totally gets how to market me. Plus I got the part for myself of course. But I can look back and sense the calls and the shifts and the persistence that got me one of the slots that led to the job. God bless the casting director and full on props to my agent for starting my decade with a job that elicited both celebration and the phrase “about fucking time” from me.

I’m done now. Bed. I’m going to try to get a massage tomorrow as my shoulder is causing me impossible pain and I really don’t like it. It’ll likely keep me up all night again. Jack and Tristan both gave me a gentle massage, but it seems the only thing that makes a difference right now is too much ibuprofen. Hopefully it’ll settle in the next few days. Shouldn’t have carried that oven. Team Know-how bastards.