Author: albarclay

And we are done. It was a good game. A good day. Lots of people. Lots of win. Christmas. I’m exhausted.

Nanki is sleeping in the room next door. I met her this morning. She lives in Ruislip and is here from Delhi as a Master’s Student for one year. She doesn’t really know anyone and she took a leap of faith. She was nervous for a lot of the day and then I saw her laughing joyfully at a game that one of the guests had brought with her called Drawful. That moment alone was golden. In a room where I knew very little about very many of the people, I was a host and saw people who had all met this morning swept up in the moment with one another.

I did my usual drive around in the morning, this time with Max’s car, which was thankfully in better nick than the jag was last year, albeit barely. Chiswick to Turnpike Lane and a few other stops between. Brian had appeared at 8am on his bike and he ran the kitchen like an absolute total legend. The flat gradually kept filling throughout the day. There were more unfamiliar faces than familiar and that felt right.

What I love about the way it always seems to pan out is that people bring Christmas. Sometimes that’s food. Sometimes it’s a gesture. Sometimes it’s an act of selflessness. One guest came two years running and turned herself into a one woman clean up team leader. I was floundering in her memory this year, but we still managed to keep loosely on top of proceedings. I’ll be off to bed shortly happy that a lot of people had a joyous Christmas and so did I, and there’s nothing smashed, and thinking about it there’s not so much work to get things shipshape. I’ve been using the fire-escape as a bin fridge, so I’ll have to do a few trips up and down stairs before close of play tomorrow laden with bin bags, and then work out how to make space in my fridge. Or eat all the leftovers for breakfast.

Ahh Christmas.

It used to be a hard time for me emotionally. Now it’s filled with people and colour and strangers and life and light. This was a good one – a good party – a good slice of life. I’m lying here ready for a long and happy sleep. No show tomorrow so I can budget my energy however I choose. Tomorrow is going to be about me.

Community is at the heart of this day. Everybody got stuck in. Helping cook, making blinis, helping tidy, moving tables, ferrying food to the table, bringing games, telling stories.

Here I am in Christmas bed contemplating how much ground I’ve covered in one year and knowing that every step of it was hand in hand with my community of dear friends and family. If the year to come is half as joyful as today turned out to be, then bring it on!

Good God. Having moved that oven I understand why those bastards found any excuse not to do it. That was very much not my favourite Christmas Eve evening. Carrying something that could kill you if it fell on you and is covered in grease down four flights of stairs. Campbell and I are both intact. But I’m drenched in sweat. I feel like I’ve run a marathon.

Christmas eve show was intimate in the end. We had a bunch of no-shows. Fifteen full price tickets. No sign of them. That’s a huge amount of money down the pan for them. It left Jack and I with an unusually quiet house, but we were rested and we did it for each other as well as for them and enjoyed it. We even had long silent conversations using the peculiar brand of telepathy that we have developed over the years. “Shall we cut the song?” “I think it’ll hold but I won’t stop you.” “Fuck it let’s just sing it, it’s Christmas Eve.”

There was a fair amount of food left over so it’s all gone into tupperware to bolster the huge pile of food on my fire escape. I’m using the fire escape as a large outdoor fridge. There’s not room in my kitchen and Campbell and I had enough to do already making Christmas to try and sort logistics with shopping bags. I’m hoping it doesn’t pour with rain tonight.

Christmas is more or less made now, barring the food, and Brian is going to show up tomorrow like the hero this city needs and get everybody onto prep in the morning while I’m driving around picking people up. I’m pretty much out of energy after the oven carry so I’m running a bath and I’ll be in bed a good two hours before my habit, which can only be a good thing.

I’m hoping I haven’t forgotten anything. I ran to the shop last minute this evening for biscuits for the cheese. I ended up with fifteen chocolate oranges as well. I should never be allowed near a shop unaccompanied. I am not even going to look at my bank balance until this is all over. It’ll only enrage me.

Two days off. I could’ve spent it sleeping. Seems I don’t work like that. So it’s all aboard for the sleigh ride. I hope it’s a nice bunch tomorrow. It usually is. I’m tired.

Happy Christmas you lovely lot, wherever you may be. I hope Santa brings you lovely things and you have a good rest, or a good time with family and friends and booze and games and all the things that make Christmas christmassy. Anyone else who is stuck, message me. I am sure we can fit a couple more. I’ll be driving around London between about 10 and 2. Hopefully not so long, but last year was an epic journey around the city in my dying jaguar. I think this year will be calmer. So long as I’ve installed the oven correctly and that nobody comes up onto my fire escape fridge and loads up with all my Christmas shopping overnight.

I went to the supermarket and spent a huge amount of money on food today. I was on my own so didn’t fancy loading up more than one trolley but I filled it to bursting with stuff. Cheese and meat and stuffing and veg and just endless piles of food. I’ll have to go back tomorrow because I’ve got virtually no alcohol and there are other basic things that I’ve run out of and hadn’t remembered, like kitchen foil. I’ve still got a broken oven in the middle of my kitchen and a working oven unconnected in the living room. I still haven’t really got decorations up. Tomorrow afternoon and evening is going to be a busy time. Our Christmas madness has somehow reached the local papers. I’m still not certain how many people we will be catering for. It’s pushing 2am and the only reason I’m still awake is because I turned in and remembered I hadn’t written this.

I lost a few hours in the evening to family, and it was worth it. Rupert, my half brother, was having Christmas drinks. I arrived with Max and two of his kids and Svetlana. They picked me up in their car so we could arrive together. Nicholas and Catherine are 13 and 17 now. Time flies. Terrifying. There was a good sized gathering of family, spanning a wide age range.

We had quite a large amount of pink champagne and caught up, and I remembered that I’ve got family. I don’t see them as much as I should. It was lovely to catch up with all of them – two of Ruperts kids as well. A good diverse bunch of very very tall people. I’m very much on the low end of the height scale for my family. The Barclays have a habit of springing up to ungodly heights and looming over everybody from there.

Now I’m lying in bed winding down so I can rest before one last show and then Christmas.

Christmas is going to be fun, that’s certain, but I’m not convinced it’s going to be very restful. Campbell, another one of my nephews, is arriving tomorrow morning at dawn on a bus from Aberdeen. I’ve hidden my keys in various flowerpots so he can get into the flat without waking me up as I’ll need my beauty sleep. I’m not thrilled with my bank balance right now, but Christmas is Christmas and I’ve got another two weeks pay on Christmas Carol to look forward to, which if I’m careful will make up for the outlay. It’ll be worth it.

If I’m good I might be able to get the old oven out with Campbell before I go to work. I’ll set my alarm for a reasonable time and see how it goes. There’s so much to do, before I even think about the cooking. It’s gonna be completely lovely. But work first. And sleep before work.

Here’s me with Max and Rupert.. Three tall myopic brothers…

Good God. Here I am at the end of another week. I’m in my deconstructed kitchen, cooking in the oven that Currys couldn’t take because “sorry sir but we are just too lazy”. The new oven isn’t connected yet.

I’ve had four shows in two days. Spare time is an interesting concept that I heard about once. I’ve been trying to work out pick up for Christmas. As it is every year, it’s a hotch potch of glorious human beings. The last five years, including this year, it’s been harder to organise because I’ve been Scrooging it, but I’ve had a partner, in Brian. We are both extremely busy though.

I wish I had a car this year. Last year I limped around in a dying Jag. This year I’m borrowing my brother’s wheels. Hopefully that’ll work out. Who knows? I’ll find out on the morning.

It’s looking like it’ll be a good day, Christmas. I’m shopping for it tomorrow. I have no idea what the dietaries are for my guests and I have no firm idea about numbers whatsover. But that’s fairly normal for this point in proceedings. I’m still looking out for anyone who would rather be in Christmassy Christmasland than on their own, thinking about all the fellowship and cheer elsewhere. If the last few years are anything to go by, it’s a lovely day and full of joy and light and people. But right now there isn’t a single bauble up in my flat. I do things better in partnership and I’m currently out of partners. Brian will be coming on Christmas Eve, but before then I’ll have to be the light putter-upper and then reassure myself that they are in the right place. It’ll be good for me. It’ll push me further into the self-sufficiency trap. But…

I’m home now. I’m writing this while I listen to my boiler fighting an airlock and wondering how long I’ve got before the fucking thing just dies and leaves me with more fuckery to deal with. I’m hoping I can get the shower put in first. This city… I’m wary of workmen, as well I might be after the two pointless humans who appeared in my flat yesterday. Even if there’s money for a shower, I’m not happy about the idea of finding somebody who won’t attempt to to rip me off when they hear my postcode. I got skinned alive by a guy I met once and used as a plumber for the bad boiler install that I’m listening to now.

He was going out with my girlfriend’s friend. He did some work in my flat and he literally stripped me for everything he could. We live and learn, of course we do. But I got in a friend of a friend because I was cautious, and Stuart Walkely notionally fucked me up the ass as much as he was capable, and then – I think – came back for my meter. He cost me about £700 by sending his bullshit mates to take my old gas meter.

He wanted it because he knew it was an old model and he could slow it down with a magnet. He sent some mates masquerading as official and I was naive enough and not bothered enough to let it happen, but of course EDF didn’t know, so I was charged for the notional difference in usage where I assumed they had record of the meter change but they didn’t. I got a £700 gas bill out of the blue. Took me years to work out why as I’m not instinctively a selfish manipulative sociopath like he is. It took years to work out the extent of what he stole. But it was a lot.

He even took out my immersion heater to sell for copper, promising me that the new boiler would sort the water pressure. He made my water pressure worse. He is and remains the reason why it takes 45 minutes to run a bath. Stuart Walkely. Liar and thief. His name is still on my boiler. If I die, someone might call the bastard and give him some work, God forbid.

Here’s the boiler he badly installed. The filter was added later by someone who actually gave a shit.

The new oven arrived in plenty of time this morning. Two lads. The driver’s mate helpfully phoned me with five minute updates on their location, starting from about 7.30am after a show last night when the earliest possible arrival slot was 8am.

They appear to genuinely think that their job is to do the absolute minimum.

“Oh mate, there’s mouse droppings. We can’t install the oven. Health and safety.”

“The droppings are about a decade old.”

“We can’t do it.”

“Can you take the old oven?”

“No mate. Contamination.”

I make them talk me through how I can install it myself, the fuckers. I keep my temper and focus on learning. I know that if I tell them what I think of them they won’t teach me. And I instinctively understand that they are masters at avoiding work, so now they’ve got their pretext they’re out the door.

“You’re very level headed,” he remarks, as the inside of my being literally boils like a cauldron of acid. “Usually people kick off, for all the good it does them.”

“I’ll be getting a refund on the installation fee,” I tell them.

“Oh that’s fine. We get paid anyway.” Ah. That’s why.

Their conversation drifts to Christmas. “I’ll be working on Christmas Eve. Gas installations. They’re the worst. People try the whole box of tricks. You’ve got old ladies breaking out the waterworks all the time. Tears all over the place.” He says it with a sort of wry reminiscence. I think of all the impossible shit he is leaving for these old people at Christmas because he’s too workshy and and too basically unkind to overlook the first strike-out in his official manual. He’s not looking at the humans. He’s looking at himself. And his diligent mate is just flailing around in his nasty wake.

I mildly suggest that perhaps they could consider just actually doing their fucking job and installing the fucking things for people rather than looking for ANY EXCUSE not to have to carry the thing down the stairs, which is the reason for this whole bullshit.

And then I hear this: “It doesn’t have mouse droppings in the system as a reason not to install,” he says to his mate when I’m in the bathroom. “I’ll just say it’s an electrical fault.” Dick.

This pair of clowns literally talk about their work as if their job is to find reasons why they can’t install people’s appliances.

Now I’ve got a broken oven still connected but pulled out and sitting in the middle of my kitchen, and I’ve got another oven in the living room not connected yet. At least I know I should hoover up the desiccated mouse droppings if I’m going to have any more workshy bastards come into my property. And perhaps the droppings aren’t so old now, says my insecurity. I suspect the little blighters have been coming back since Pickle went. But maybe that’s just because I’m traumatised by Pickle leaving.

Maybe I should put down all the traps and poison again. I kind of hate it. If it’s poison, you come home to a mouse dying in the living room. If it’s snaptraps you set it at one side of the room and find it on the other side with a tiny trail of destruction where a mouse has wrestled with a broken back for hours before finally collapsing into oblivion.

Still. They’ve made life a lot harder just through existing, those mice, if they exist. I’m angry with them now. Even though I’m sure that Tweedleknowhowdum and Tweedleknowhowdee would’ve come up with some other reason why they couldn’t carry the old oven out of the flat if it hadn’t been for the ancient mouse poo. “Wrong type of grease mate. Could be peanut oil. We can’t take it. People are allergic. Health and safety.”

I dunno. If I do a job I do it the best of my ability. You can overlook prehistoric mouse droppings if you choose to in that job – for absolute certain – and people likely do so every day. Pair of lazy unkind letter of the law bastards. Merry Christmas to them. I hope their ovens stop working. Team Know-how? Team know how to avoid the job. Eh? Eh? Oh I’ll just go home. To my flat full of ovens and desiccated mouse poo. Bastards.

Now I’m home after a two show day with another two show day tomorrow and I’m really angry again about those workshy bastards. I actually expected them to concoct some sort of bullshit like they did, because they always do if they can. But perhaps we should expect more of our big brands like Currys? I spent almost 500 quid for a pair of jokers to do fuck all and call it a living. The appliance is in my home. But it hasn’t made a difference yet, for half a grand.

I’m heating up old pizza in the working top half of the old broken oven sitting in the middle of my kitchen, and I’m contemplating how that pair of buttheads shortened their day by half an hour, while giving me a serious problem to solve before Christmas when I’ve got loads on. All because of a ten year gone infestation. Currys. Cowboys. Bunch of absolute cowboys.

Do you pull out your ovens and hoover behind them regularly? I certainly don’t. Perhaps I should’ve done in the decade since the mice lived there. But it never occurred to me I’d meet such a pair of fuckwits.

For me it falls on the number one on team Know-how. He was looking for a reason to duck the work. He found it. No thought to the knock on effects. Walking goitre.

Waking up after a night like last night isn’t one of my specialist skills. I won’t be putting it on my Spotlight. But I did it.

I arrived at the party last night with a Magnum of fizz. I booked the job I wrote about a while ago where there was a confusion about the times. I was in the mood to celebrate. I had a costume fitting in suburbia for it though, the afternoon after the party – this afternoon. Everything is shutting down for Christmas so they rushed me in. Late enough in the day for it to be perfectly reasonable for me to get across London in time. Early enough that I had to haul myself stinking and unwashed out of the house to get there in time. I’m running a bath now I’m home, but I’ve already promised myself that the money for this job goes first and foremost towards a goddamn shower. I’m used to waiting 45 minutes for the bath to fill. But it makes it hard to put the place on Airbnb. And most normal human beings get to wash quickly when they need to.

I arrived in a warehouse full of clothes.

I tried on a selection of suits. My character seems to think of himself as reasonably stylish, so I’ll be looking sharp. The wheels of this big machine are turning now, and I remember how many people are involved on a set. I’ve been sending my photograph to hair and make-up, who have been asking me to make sure I don’t have a haircut. Of course. They booked me based on my tapes. I’m not now going to go on a mini-break to Lanzarote and get a tan, or shave my head. My tape was my proposal for the part, aided by an extremely positive and helpful casting director. They accepted it. All I need to do now is make sure I look like the guy in the tape, know my lines backwards, show the fuck up and put no specifics or pointers on social media. It’s not rocket science. But you’d be surprised how often people don’t do it. No public guessing please. And if I’m not gonna fuck this up for myself if I can help it.

I’m home post show waiting for a bath to run and a chicken Kiev to cook. I’m not sure which will happen first but I suspect it’ll be the chicken. Perhaps I’ll sit in the bath eating it. Time is of the essence. I’ve got 4 shows in two days coming up, with Christmas looming close upon us and not a single bauble on my wall at home. So much to be done. Oh so very much to be done. And tomorrow morning two delivery people are going to show up with an oven and swear about the internal flight of stairs before making it as difficult as possible to remove my old oven. They might come in time for me to get to the show with comfortable time to spare. They might faff around and make it squeaky-bum time for the matinee tomorrow. 1pm. It’s too early for humbuggery. But Maddy will be in da house. So I’m just gonna do the show for her. Friends make it all better.

I’m surrounded by old friends. Jack is here, and he’s spitballing ideas, which is what he does. Directly to my left is a man who was in my first round audition at Guildhall. These are some of my base level industry friends. They’re the survivors.

Fucking hell it’s weird this profession. These incredible humans are throwing their lives into stories. They’re still full of hope and life. And we’ve all been in the acting profession for over fifteen years. Alex on my left – he’s been in New Zealand filming the baddie in a Netflix. He was in my first round audition for drama school. He was in my Guildhall recall. We both did the William Poel verse speaking festival for our schools – (now the Sam Wanamaker). He made The Factory with Tim Evans. God. So many years ago. It makes me feel old but cool.

To my right is Jethro. Another old friend, and someone who has helped me come into myself. He knows me deeply, and knows the things I do to block my power. Then, stretching out, there are people who have been terrifically important to me over many years. It’s a birthday party, for Maddy. It’s The Factory. It’s a distillation of the ridiculous optimistic geeks that graduated just after the millennium. We few. We many. We crazy fun bonkers open awake mad wild fewmany.

It’s a joy to be here, surrounded by old friends. I wasn’t going to show up. Jack persuaded me. It’s near his home. I didn’t want to get drunk tonight. But he was right to drag me in. He’s my dear friend for a reason. He knows me better than I know myself.

I checked myself out momentarily in order to write this down, and my friends understand that. Now that I have this daily obligation, I notice my friends and how understanding they are about the need I have to write words before bed. The more people bang it aside and tell me to get off my phone, the more I learn where a spot of empathy is lacking.

People are leaving the party. I’m rejoining for farewells.

And I’m done. In an uber. It’s pouring with rain. We are at Waterloo. Dreadful weather. My friend whose birthday it was – she lives the other side of London from me. I’ll carry on living Southwest, but it’s always a sinking feeling at the end of the night when I know I’m heading to Chelsea and that none of the artists I’m with live anywhere near Chelsea. I somehow feel it’s my responsibility to try to singlehandedly cling onto the old idea of Chelsea, before all the flats were bought by the people who wish they were cool in the sixties but were too busy oppressing third world economies in unrealistic directions for their own profit. It’s like living in the middle of a huge active mid life crisis. I love my neighbors. They seem to like me. But we fundamentally differ in worldview.

Barometer is moving hard to storms… Ech

Since yesterday’s post was about cultural reference points, I’m perfectly happy to do it again. I just booked for Star Wars. I’ll need to see it quickly so nobody spoils it, which they inevitably will, as quickly as they can, in some sort of power-quest to use their specialist knowledge. Never underestimate the ability of powerless people to wield the idea of power when they have it.

I should probably have stopped caring about Star Wars a long long time ago. The original trilogy had Joseph Campbell in a direct relationship with George Lucas. It was the hero’s journey. Campbell died around Return of the Jedi time. His advice carried through the first three films. It is conspicuously absent thereafter.

The next three were Lucas alone without the guidance of that master of myth, at a time when CGI was new in movies. In many ways those three detested films were bellwethers of technology, if for no other reason than to teach us how far you can push it before people instinctively know it’s bullshit. The “uncanny valley” is the phrase I understand was created to talk about the bit where our imagination stops believing in the CGI and starts thinking about the array of artists sitting in an office with managers and employee of the month and high end laptops, drawing and animating and colouring not only the obvious bits, but the drearily boring but constant background.

I still miss puppets. It all looks like bullshit to me. Give me Jabba the Hutt. The Alien. Fuck yes.

Most people still know the name of Jim Henson. Many know the name HR Geiger. Point me towards the CGI masters in the same frame?

Maybe it’s just that I’m not aware of them.

More likely it’s because we have heard of the old masters in the old idiom. The money men have found a way to divert us from knowing the names of the changing artists in the new. If it can be made in an animation sweatshop where everybody is told they’re even, then nobody has to be paid royalties and if there’s someone particularly changing and unusual and positive then they’re just part of the team, ya, and there’s no “I” in team ya ya? And if the team disagrees then the artist just loses their job.

I’m in to watch Star Wars tomorrow at noon. It all happened pretty suddenly. I was thinking I’d just get to hang out and have a nice relaxing morning. But my friends are going full Star Wars, and I can’t ignore that. I’ll go. My lightsaber was broken by a friend forgetting that it was actually plastic not genuine hardened light. Despite my saying “Go easy on it,” they whacked it full force into a stick that another friend was holding. I’m not one to confiscate beforehand, but I saw it coming. It was irrevocably fucked. I’m still good friends with him but I’m not square about it, and it was about seven years ago. I love him. But grrrrr, blundering with his “I’ll replace it,” and both of us knowing he never would. He’s been too busy pretending to be Irish lately. Friends, eh? We love ’em. They piss us off. I have no doubt I’m just as frustrating to many of my old mates. I certainly don’t mind if I am. But I miss my old lightsaber.

No booze post show today. My friend getting sick has triggered me to a spot of sobriety for a while, especially considering there is Christmas to make and lots of shows to do this week. Another delighted bunch at Carol and we are back in the swing of it already for the longest week we have.

Those of you who have known me for years will be surprised to know that I’m now capable of having a conversation about football, having avoided it my entire life. I can speak about the form of different players. I watch it quite closely. When the matches are playing I sometimes have as many as 4 live score widgets open on my phone screen simultaneously, and you will catch me saying things like “De Bruyne just banged another one in.” Or “What’s happened to Abraham all of sudden?” “Oh dammit Salah scored again, Mane better have had the assist on that, I gave him the armband.”

It’s a good season for me to start with, as the team that I tell people I support when they ask me who I support is winning the league. I lived with a big Liverpool fan for a few years, and I had quite a few childhood years in The Isle of Man so they were my closest team geographically. Hopefully I’ll see them take the cup at the end of my first season following it…

It’s more of a computer game to me than anything else. A durational game over the course of months and months. I’m learning by playing a fantasy premier league manager. And I’m number 362,975 in the world. Which isn’t impressive at all but I’m still pretty pleased with myself considering I was clueless this time last year and there are millions of players.

It hasn’t changed much though. It just means there are a few more conversations where I don’t go quiet and walk away knowing I have nothing to contribute and no desire to contribute either. Football conversations are just name after name and I would find them annoyingly arcane. Now I can hold my own.

I’m not sure what made me decide to change that and learn some of the names, but it’s turned out to be quite fun learning and now I’ve started to get competitive – mostly with myself but there are some leagues I’m in as well. It’s all free to play and there’s no betting.  If you do riculously well they send you some bizarre stuff like a Nike Manager’s Jacket. But I won’t be anywhere near that. It’s never too late to pick up something new, I suppose. I might even watch a live match sometime. Although that might be pushing it.

For this evening I’m going to get into a hot bath with a book to wash the potato out of my hair and then see how I do going to sleep sober after Christmas Carol. It’s already had a positive effect. I cooked some healthy food, changed a lightbulb, put in some laundry and washed the dishes. And my bank balance won’t have changed…

A good day of very little. I went to hospital to see my friend just in time for her to be discharged. She had been referred to infectious diseases yesterday, which I couldn’t quite understand. But the head of infectious diseases wondered why she’d been referred, and thankfully she didn’t end up on their ward. I think it’s because none of the doctors could quite work out what was causing the organ damage. But it’s not an infectious disease.

Hopefully she’ll be better now. She had some colour back today. She left surrounded by family and had the understanding of me to say “It’s probably good for you to be able to associate these places with healing.” She’s right. It is. My only real experience, despite all the nurses I’ve known, has been pretty mortal so I’m definitely glad to see someone I know come out better than they went in. I’m still worried about her. But I guess that’s my job as a friend, to worry.

Things have been quite bleak with a few people close to me at the moment. It’s very clear why, in this culture, we arrowed in on this point in the winter for the joyful happy festival of light and kindness. Almost universally when Scrooge asks audience members what Christmas means to them they come back with a variant of “Coming together with family and friends.” We need togetherness. The huddle of warmth and light against the cold and the dark. All we’ve got is each other.

Her ward was so persistently noisy. You forget the soundscape of the hospital. All the automated systems using sound to alert people to what needs to be done. Low level beeping and buzzing, in shifting patterns. Occasional full on alarms, such as the one that was going off everywhere when I first arrived, leaving the receptionist in the ward completely unruffled. Not his alarm.

At discharge, she went down to the discharge office. I was still obsessively gelling my hands at every door and trying not to touch people or things. We went into a little room full of chairs where she had to wait for her medicine. Her sibling showed up as we arrived there to be told that it would be a minimum wait of an hour for medicine. Her mum decided to do the waiting, and sent the two of them home to catch up. I said goodbye and emerged blinking into the end of the daylight, with no evening show to do. I went home, put my feet up, and geeked out on graphic novels and computer games. Now it’s more or less the time that I’d normally finish the show and I’m almost asleep. I’m sad after hearing some upsetting news from a close friend and I have a visitor staying over for the night. I’ve told them I’m not going to be good conversationalist though, and I’m gonna run a hot bath and make sure my head is down well before midnight. Today is for rest. I feel rested. And my friend will be able to sleep without beeping for the first time in a while… Joy.