Author: albarclay

I’m sitting in a circle of young actors. They’re rehearsing Hamlet. Before rehearsal they all go round and they talk about how they’re feeling, one by one around the circle. They’re checking in. “I feel amazing,” “I feel excited.” Such a positive lot. Oh how delightful. My turn is towards the end. I always try to be honest. “I feel sad,” I say. “Really sad. But I often do. I just cover it with energy.”

It got me out of leading the warm-up. Katherine and Kaffe went in with both feet instead. Katherine even had time for asking if I needed to go outside for a bit. But I’m fine. It comes in waves. I’ve been on the road a long time. I feel slightly disconnected from my life, I’m aware that my home situation will be very different when I get back, I miss our cat very much and I don’t know where she is. Yeah I’m sad. And it’s ok to be sad. I’m not depressed. But the tears are near the surface today, and that’s allowed.

San José is a town without a centre so it’s hard to feel centred. I remember that from LA. “This place has no centre because in LA everybody is the centre,” said Peter back then. I’m not sure it’s the same with this place. “This city is still finding out who or what it is,” remarked Sarah Jane on our first day here. I know what she means by that. The most impressive old building near first and Santa Cruz is boarded up with numbers on the windows.

And yet we are right in the middle of Silicon Valley. Intel is next door and I can see the McAfee building from my bedroom window – just across the road. The hotels are so expensive here we initially ended up in the place you go if you want to get murdered in a Coen Brother’s film. We gingerly kicked up a stink. Deb in the office worked wonders. Now we’ve been moved to an incredible hotel but I know that the company is losing money on this week now and it’s because of the budgets of most of the temporary travellers coming through this area. A glass of pinot noir in the bar downstairs costs $21 after tax before tip, and I know that because I had three of them on before I got the cheque and was almost sick on the barman. They can charge what they want, so they do. And every time I’ve ever sat in the bar downstairs I’ve felt like I’m surrounded by lizards. The barman himself is the only good guy. I said farewell to him after I saw the prices though. “I’m never coming here again, but you’ve been great.”

When I walked through last night a man had been employed to sing and play guitar because that is the thing you have in the bar in such places so we too shall have it. The lizards were all as far away from the music as possible in their dressdowniform. Kaffe and I made eye contact with the musician and smiled. His reaction was that of a parched man getting water. I wonder how long he had been playing in a vacuum. But that’s this whole area. A personality vacuum. The rooms are fantastic, but somehow in this little corner of California, I can’t find the character. It could be that I’m looking in the wrong places…

So far no big one, but the ground is moving around us here. I’m in San José. Yesterday when I was just into my hotel room in the evening I felt the room shake. There’s a main road outside my bedroom. It’s soundproofed but I see the traffic shooting by. I stood in my pants by the bed regarding the nighttime road. “Big fucking truck,” I mumbled to myself. Nope. 4.5, but a good way north. “Expect after tremors.”

So today I’m on rubber legs, more curious than worried. Assessing movements. Shortly after I was done in the morning I felt a tiny shudder. I dismissed it as nothing but those physical judders we all get where we think our phone is vibrating in a pocket it isn’t even in. But then, this evening in Claire’s room, the telly is on and while she’s talking I see the telly folk tell us there was another quake today, when I felt the wobble, further south of us than the first one was north, but a little bigger. 4.7. I disconnect momentarily from the conversation as my pattern-seeking brain wonders if tomorrow it’ll land under us.

“It’s only a matter of time until the big one,” is bay area wisdom. It’s not quite Krakatoa here where they actually lived on land created by the previous eruption. It’s not even Naples, where 2 million people live near a volcano that destroyed two cities in 79AD. But there’s an inevitability about the San Andreas fault line. One day this whole area is gonna drop into the sea. In 1906 there was a big one that killed thousands, partly because buildings hadn’t been adapted for it. In 1989, 30 years ago to the day on Thursday, a slightly smaller one killed 63 and caused over 6 billion bucks of damage.

North of here there’s a natural gas facility on fire after the first earthquake. There’s footage of people trying to put it out by airdropping water from helicopters and it’s like watching someone try to stab an elephant to death with a drawing pin. I expect Flumpkin insisted on it. He thinks airdropping fixes everything. He was wobbling his flubby lips about why France didn’t drop tons of water onto Notre Dame and destroy what has been saved in a show of power. The tit.

But yeah, that’s some of the last natural gas in the world turning into carbon and hitting the atmosphere and there’s nothing that can be done but contain it and try to starve it. Meanwhile the hotel I’m staying in has a long pointless gas fire burning outside all evening every night with nobody standing or sitting anywhere near it. In fifty years time if people can still watch videos they’ll watch videos of stuff like that with utter incomprehension.

Meanwhile I’m just chilling out in my lovely hotel room, wondering if that’s it for the quakes. We did have one more a couple of hours ago but it was smaller, in Pleasant Hill, just north of here. 3.4. I felt nothing. It’s funny this place. People live hard here, like they do in Naples. And it’s kind of understandable when the sword of Damocles hangs over their heads. I’m only here for a few days, but it’s been good to understand the moving earth first hand, and feel a little bit of it. I’d sooner not have it any more than I’ve had, thankyouplease. We were listening to Tori Amos on the way in. Now I’ve got a better handle on the title of her first album…

We’re off to California. San Jose. It’s not on my bucket list, but Annapolis was a pleasant surprise and I’m ready for more sunshine so I’m glad to be heading west. By all accounts it’s bucketing with rain in the UK. I’m not looking forward to coming back to winter. Still, I’m on the road for another month…

The only downside of Annapolis was that we were there on boat show weekend. The place was heaving and most likely everything was marked up as well – and so slow. It took two hours for food to come from the Indian restaurant just two minutes drive from our hotel. And everybody opened conversation with “Are you here for the boat show?” with the disinterested interest of the flooded local.

It seems that the way to San Jose is by direct flight from Baltimore, which is a relief as it’s a long old way to go and a transfer makes it the much more worrisome when you’ve got an accordion that positively has to fit into the overhead locker. Thus far I’ve got it on every flight, no small thanks to the alacrity with which Jono the travel monitor checks us in online the day before.

Right now we are flying over the corner in the map that intersects Nebraska with Kansas and Colorado. The ground below is barely populated but split into strange circles of brown earth. I can’t tell from here what crop might just have been harvested, or why they’re done in circles, but they stretch out as far as the eye can see as though the Gods had dropped a load of tiddlywinks. It seems so unnatural to divide a huge nation up into geometric shapes. Box upon box, grid upon grid, and then these circles inside squares. I like organic places that flow with the landscape. It speaks too much of arrogance to just blast through it and the sheer lack of corners must make long distance driving pretty hateful. And we are at our best when we incorporate and exist alongside nature, not when we sanitise everything and whip it into familiar patterns. No wonder the planet is starting to hate us.

They’re still passing by below, these weird boxed circles with an occasional settlement breaking them up. I get the sense it’s pretty sparsely populated down there. We’ll be over Colorado before long so I’ll get a sneak preview of the Rockies.

Thankfully the person in front of me on this flight doesn’t hate me like the last one. I’ve been able to relax. I watched an unusual Wim Wenders movie with Mel Gibson sending himself up brilliantly and Milla Jovovitch being beautiful and strange. Million Dollar Hotel. Last night I ambitiously downloaded nothing but obscure movies which was a great idea, sure, but perhaps I’d sooner have had lined up the Breaking Bad movie or something a bit less thoughtful now that I’m actually in the air. Still, I’m going to delve into “Moka” now, by Frederic Mermoud.

Moka was great. I’m glad to be back on Mubi, they do have great movies. Now I’m watching the desert part to squares of green as we begin our descent to San Jose. I’ve done no research whatsover about this town. I’m curious to see what we find.

Somehow, inadvertently, a few blogs ago I hit 1,000. Christ. I’ve done this for over 1000 days, rain or shine, happy or sad, minimum 500 words. That’s minimum half a million words, probably a lot more. All about whatever is crowding into my head. Bless you, oh constant reader.

Right now it’s time to leave Annapolis for California. Brian has moved out of my flat, to be replaced by Kitkat. I have spent too much of my time recently organising keys for plumbers and making the changeover work as best I can. I’ll be sad to see him go, frankly. We rolled along well together, and there was nurture and care when we had time. We played well together too. It felt like a positive arrangement and one which helped catapult us both forwards. There’s a lot we will still do together, but I’ll miss the breakfast hugs, the decompressions, the moments of stillness and companionable silence, the late night Rick and Morty binges, the VR madness, the easy shared humour. I’ll miss Stormtrooper Pete. Unexpected pizza. Landfill coffee. Last minute roast. Silly voices to process difficult things. I’ll miss ALECKSHA!! Dammit, I’ll miss Brian, basically. That’s the long and short of it… He’s a rare human. A true gem.

Three years we rolled along together. It’s been a changing time for both of us. It’s time though for both of us to step further forward now. There’s a lot more world to conquer, and only the two of us to do it.

I like sharing my home – if I’m alone too long I start speaking in tongues or twitching imperceptibly. Kitcat is there now, and we will see how that goes. Meanwhile, I’m finishing up in Annapolis. It’s a good town. We were here in maybe the worst possible week, with the boat show. The infrastructure in the town is pushed to the limit. Everybody is overstretched but printing money. Claire and I ordered takeaway and it took an hour and a half from a restaurant 8 minutes walk from our hotel.

I’ve got to leave at stupid o’clock tomorrow. I’m not looking forward to it. It’s been worse, but it’s a long way to California. I should probably download a movie onto my iPad or something to make it better. Even if they’re long, the internal flights haven’t got those banks of screens on the seat backs like the international ones do. I might rejoin Mubi and download something important. I always enjoyed that membership. It’s a curated site that has old films from all nations, remastered.

It was raining today. We just did laundry and hung around the hotel. At one point we drove to the supermarket, got some basics and then stopped at a place that had a fire and an indolent bastard behind the bar, just so we could pretend we were doing what most of the people in England would be doing on a rainy sunday. I should perhaps have gone to a gallery. Here’s me at the ICA in Boston. Katherine just takes great photos and sometimes I want to share them even if they have no relevance.

Two consecutive days off. We all bundled into the car to go to Washington DC. The drive is just under an hour from our hotel in Annapolis. I wasn’t sure what to expect. Hundreds of movies and TV shows had given me some idea, but nothing competes with the reality. The layout took me by surprise. It’s really very nicely thought through and executed. I guess they had the money and the time. It is the capital of this nation, after all.

We started with The White House, experienced as is traditional – by looking over the garden, past the fountain. Just a few meters from where we were all taking selfies two uniformed young men with about three guns each were laughing in conversation.

Without coffee we wandered to the Washington monument – an obelisk that’s definitely taller than you’d think. The hub of a wheel of monuments and civic buildings. You’ve got an eye to all these huge stone homages to leaders and warriors. Segway tours are popular here, as there’s a lot of stuff to cover, but we wanted to pound the ground.

It’s the 244th anniversary of the US Navy today. We were walking the trail with lots of veterans in matching T-shirts. At the Vietnam memorial one of them was studying the wall at a particular spot very closely. I saw him find the name he was looking for and spend a moment in the past. Strange to see his haunted eyes. I gave him some space. Too much space. I stepped over the fence to take a call I’d been expecting and got shouted at for being on the grass.

We had a huge amount to consume though and nothing like enough time so we were pushing ourselves forwards. I was hoping for a coffee, but all the vans were either selling bad street food or “MAGA” hats that were (genuinely) made in Vietnam – I checked the label.

There’s artistry here. The Korean War monument is strange and evocative. The relatively new one to WW2 is strong as well. And of course Lincoln, iconic with the long rectangular pond, the huge steps and the man himself, vast and towering above us, fasces on his armrests, his hands spelling out my name in sign language. “A L”

We broke off to find a museum. We walked down Pennsylvania Avenue past all the vast stone museums and libraries. We stumbled on a little urban garden with hidden benches and sat for a while. We ran in horror, much as Descartes did at the Eiffel Tower, but not from any of the edifices. We ran from the ice cream vans. They are a plague, and each of them has a different version of auditory hell to offer you. One had five hideous electronic seconds of “chopsticks” playing on an eternal loop. The guys working the van next to it must feel like they’re in Guantanamo. Another was playing Jingle Bells and Deck the Halls on the 12th October. Thank God I didn’t happen to be carrying a sledgehammer. I would have done the USA a service by destroying all of their speakers and probably earning a monument all of my own for services to the people.

We went into the Museum of Native American History. It was depressing to contemplate the extent of betrayal perpetrated. Educational, but less story than I had hoped. I was glad they acknowledged the evils we can do. I had hoped for a bit more folklore. I love a good myth. There was some satisfying stuff though, particularly around astronomy. But it was conflicting to engage.

We are driving back to Annapolis now. Kaffe just yawned hugely and said “I wanna beer”. I’m in full agreement. We packed it in today, but we barely stopped. A good meal. And a beer…

This has been a great week, again. Annapolis is small but excellent. It’s the first new place that I’ve visited. There are a few more coming up. The unfamiliarity has augmented my enjoyment. Even though I’ve spent a single busy week in most of the previous stops, it’s noticeable how my brain packages them as “known places” and doesn’t give me the little chemical hit that we get in entirely new places, to make sure the caveman version of us doesn’t get jumped by unknown hostile things. I was constantly surfing on unfamiliarjuice here. All the midshipmen, being so regimented but individual within the regime. All the officers so varied in their approach. Ex servicemen highly ranked and yet enjoying and understanding the work we were doing.

We are here because of a grant from a remarkable woman and her husband – an alumni now deceased. We met her – in her eighties and authentically full forward. We had lunch with her on the first day. The grant – The Brady Series – lets them have people like us come in. I spoke to one of the teachers after we were done. She was thrilled with the work we brought. It’s always good to get feedback you can trust – this lady would’ve told us if it hadn’t landed. “The midshipmen disengage if they want to. And they disengage totally.”

One time they had a pacifist quaker running workshops – it’s meant to be things that challenge the midshipmen. Five British actors doing Shakespeare fits the bill. If we were anything like as alien to them as they were to us then we would certainly be challenging to their normal expectation of people.

On my first day I had two back to back groups of 40 midshipmen in the most awkward room you can imagine, all in their matching uniforms, throwing balls around with “I see you what you are, you are too proud.” It was brilliant and bonkers and put them in an unfamiliar physical place. A good portion of them came in injured, with crutches or slings or the aftermath of concussion. Despite my telling them they could rest if they needed, they got stuck in, breathed with us, meant things with us.

I was getting them to pass the word “yes” at the start, just to wake them up really. It’s often important with civilian workshops, to wake them up. But this lot was wide awake. They went straight into “hell yeah!” and the room felt so energised and American by the time forty people had said it that I figured I’d make them all say “Jolly good”. It was disproportionately delightful to hear these huge earnest young men and women committing to “jolly good” with all sorts of different intentions, long before I got them onto Shakespeare’s text, which they tackled with the same attack.

After my class the instructor took me aside and shook my hand. There was a coin in his hand. It’s a challenge coin. It’s something of an honour to receive one, and the rank of the giver affects the rank of the coin. As it turns out, Phil Garrow is a Lieutenant Commander. That was my grandfather’s rank. Amazing.

The coin already means so much to me. I’m feeling emotional writing about it. As a young contrarian, I refused to join the navy at Harrow for CCF. I chose “Community Service” as an act of rebellion and because I wanted to be an actor. My grandfather was upset even if he never showed it. He died shortly after the decision and I never spoke with him about it. But his theatres of war with the RN were The Russian Convoys and The South China Sea. He worked very closely with the US Navy in those theatres. I wish he could know that my work in my very different type of theatre led me to working in small groups here to try to get the USNA scholarship students to be more confident in their interviews to go to Oxford and Cambridge for a year. For him to know that my acting, that was so frowned upon when I was a kid, has obliquely helped deepen the upcoming officers in the US Navy. And that a man of equivalent rank to him saw fit to give this wild haired bearded fool a challenge coin in recognition of my positive work.

Life is strange and varied. Long may it continue to be. You’re dead a long time.

The bay in Annapolis is full of boats. All of them flying pennants. “What the hell is going on? I’m new in town,” I ask the man with the badge. Behind me a DJ cranks up the volume on “Uptown Funk,” even though the average age of the crowd here is 70. “It’s the boat show, man! This is the biggest event of the year here.” “All weekend? Do I have to pay?” “Yep. But it’s cheaper tomorrow. Twenty bucks.” It might be interesting if I was in the market for a boat…

I just spent nine on a cocktail. A Painkiller 2 from the delightfully named “Pussers.” I’m sitting here looking at the boats. It’s like watching “remember the good times” day at the old folks home. Hawaiian shirts and baseball caps and sunglasses and grey hair and smiles. These people have pain, in that they just can’t decide which boat to buy next. Still they’re making the best of the decision making process. Happy old people, rich old people. I can’t afford a boat dammit. Been working hard for years now. A boat or two of my own would be nice, sure. And a house by a lake to sail it by. But it might be a few more years before I can afford such madness.

I was recommended this establishment by my ensign, Sam. We have a Second Lieutenant and an ensign assigned to us here. Desiree and Sam. They are incredible. Recent graduates. Calm kind thoughtful and driven. Desiree is going to be a marine, but she is injured right now and looking after us. I got to know Sam a bit today as he drove Katherine to the urgent care to get a $200 prescription for antibiotics. Thankfully we have health insurance. But yeah. $130 for the doctor. $70 for the medicine. Her tonsillitis is amoxicillin resistant. This is her second course of antibiotics. Fuck knows what she’s on now. Scary to think how we are passing the point of no return with these lifesavers, mostly because of the meat industry. Both of her courses have been shorter than I would have expected. I suspect another week of the amoxicillin would’ve finished it. She only had a week. Is this habit of only giving one week of prescription in the US part of the problem?

Anyway, I was writing about Sam. Sam has nailed it. He leaves Annapolis next week to go to Florida and be a pilot. “I don’t know what I’ll be flying,” he says. “But I’ll be flying. That’s what matters.” He’s 21, maybe. Little moustache. Short and compact. He’ll do well. He wonders what his callsign will be. He thinks it might be to do with hats, as there’s the word “hat” in his surname. He hopes it will be, anyway. “There’s a guy who’s callsign is poopy. He pooped himself on a long flight. Only piddle packs are provided.” Imagine being callsign Poopy. “I’M A PILOT I’M FLYING FIGHTER JETS OH MY GOD ALL MY DREAMS ARE COMING TRUE”. “For the rest of your working life and even into retirement no matter what degree of heroism you attain you will always respond immediately and firmly to the name “Poopy”.

Sam won’t get a duff callsign. He’ll be flying over us tomorrow as he works, just by chance. This is his goodbye week to Annapolis, and he spent time helping a sick actor get antibiotics.

Still, these two highly evolved human beings, and the five of us with all of our professional empathy – none of us could overcome the civilians whose job it is to organise the parking passes for USNA.

My dears, we have all experienced blind idiotic bureaucrats. We have all experienced fuckwits with no capacity to tell the difference between theory and reality. We have all experienced human beings who take strange pleasure in obstructing other human beings. We have all had the computer say “no”, heard that the simple thing is “more than my job’s worth.” We have all been dehumanised. We’ve been overlooked, ignored and demoted. This all fades into insignificance compared to what the indifferent, unhelpful and actively disruptive humans at gate one of the USNA are capable of with smiles when they set their minds to it.

They had to do an unusual thing, to let UK actors drive rented cars onto the campus. They literally couldn’t handle it despite the forms all being filled out. Everything that could be blocked was blocked. It was almost childish in how pathetically transparent it was. The navy can roll with it, and worked it out by just sending ensigns and second lieutenants to drive us. The civilians in the accreditation office though – they are constipated minds.

As we walked away after we had been blocked enough that it wasn’t worth our time, I looked back, and our final obstructive human happened to be looking back at I turned. We made eye contact, and I saw nothing in that face but the satisfaction of triumph.

Dear USNA gate 1 civilian staff: please look at yourselves a bit. It’s almost funny how incredibly obstructive you are. You’re making work for the brilliant lieutenants and ensigns assigned to guests like us, and you are doing it by literally being the shittest humans you are capable of being. Grow up. Learn that unfamiliar things are not always bad. Expand just a bit. Don’t set yourself in opposition to these amazing humans you are trying to be gatekeepers for – they have all the empathy you lack. See what you can learn from them. The navy are great. You suck. I judge you by your actions. Go hide under a rock. I have no further interest in you.

It’s very interesting and very odd here at the USNA. I’m sitting on a wall. Below me, between me and the sea, young men and women run in squads. Their voices carry on the wind. Beyond them someone is laying on the horn in one of their torpedo boats. I think it might be an alert practice but it makes me think of London in rush hour.

The voices, the bells, the wind in the trees, shouts of numbers, of instructions, screams of frustration and celebration and under it all the birds. And song.

They sing a lot here. They sing about goats and guns and the sea. And they learn things. Their brains are getting well exercised. If any of the freshmen gets asked “How long have you been in the navy?” they will respond with this:

“All me bloomin’ life, sir!
Me mother was a mermaid, me father was King Neptune.
I was born on the crest of a wave and rocked in the cradle of the deep.
Seaweed and barnacles are me clothes.
Every tooth in me head s a marlinspike; the hair on me head is hemp.
Every bone in me body is a spar, and when I spits, I spits tar!
I’se hard, I is, I am, I are”

They learn it by heart. They’re all expanding their memories and their possibilities. Learning, cross disciplinary. The humanities students still all study differential calculus and engineering. They are going to be sending a bunch of extremely fit curious polymaths into service on these boats and subs and helicopters. Polymaths trained to kill. And I can’t help but admire them. I’ve often found it to be the case that the officers I’ve got to know from the armed forces have had poetic souls. My dad’s great friend was a submariner and a glorious kind man to boot.

I was in three big rooms surrounded by freshmen – midshipmen – getting them to engage with Shakespearean text, getting them to have an effect on each other with words, obliquely teaching another aspect of leadership through just an hour long class on Twelfth Night. At one point, laughing in a circle of them, I noticed how hard these young men and women were. They are all in peak fitness. I can barely drag myself to a yoga class once a month. I would lose to every single one of them in a fight. Surrounded by forty of them, they’d crush my bones to make their bread, although they all are so incredibly nice as well so that’d never happen. If I attacked them they’d probably efficiently and effortlessly restrain me and then sing songs until I calmed down.

I can’t catch up with their fitness but it makes me want to get fitter, just becoming aware of the distance between me, all wild hair and beard and words and ideas, and these lean streamlined beings with their discipline and their responsibility. I think I decided as a young man that fitness and intelligence were mutually exclusive, and since I aspired to the latter, I avoided the former. It’s to my detriment. I need to start getting into the gyms in these hotels I’m staying in across the states. And drink a bit less. Ha. Chance’d be a fine thing…

Through the high security gates we go, and past a field of old fighter planes sitting by the road. As we stroll between the buildings we are hit with a solid shot of adrenaline just at the strangeness of it all. This is a world my grandfather would have understood, but a world that feels very unusual to me. We are the only people not in uniform. We are surrounded by extremely capable looking young men and women, making their families proud back home, gaining an extraordinary education within the rigour of the US Navy. They’re gonna be Seals and submariners, but right now we’re bringing them Shakespeare.

“In another life I might’ve followed my grandfather into the navy,” I muse to Claire. “How would you have coped with the discipline?” she responds. “Yeah I think that’s the reason I didn’t.”

Nevertheless here I am now at the USNA in Annapolis Maryland. It’s technical rehearsal and they’re focusing the lights so I’m snatching a chance to write this. The days will be a very different shape here. Very high security, early morning classes, most working days finished by lunchtime apart from the shows in the evening. At 7pm, in about three hours, 600 of these young men and women in uniform will file into the theatre and watch the five of us in our little circle of light for a few hours. There are Union flags in the walls above our stage, stained with time and use and gunpowder smoke and salt damp. I went and looked at the plaques and they were all captured from British ships in “the 1812 war”. Outside our stage-right door is a wooden “British lion” captured alongside a royal standard during “the occupation of York”.

This marbled hall where we will tell our story is rank with pillage from the dying days of empire. I had to Google the occupation of York. It was when America was at war with England and considering expansion northwards to Canada, and there was a fair amount of looting, burning and general sacking going on which catalysed some anti-American sentiment among Canadians which probably worked to the advantage of the British. Nevertheless the pillage means that we’ve got these lovely old flags around us as we work reminding us of home. “I like the flags,” I remark to one of the young men in uniform who is helping with the lights. “You know how we got them off you, right?” He asks. “Well, yes. But it’s good to see them.”

Lovely show tonight to a sea of brown uniforms. Every venue Kaffe sings a song about the town at the end of the interval. The one he’s got this week is one the midshipmen all sing while they’re training. He had it reflected back in a wall of sound that was quite extraordinary to feel – 600 voices tunefully bellowing back at him as he stood alone in our little square of light whilst we sat behind him thrilled. It propelled us into a very connected and enjoyable second half. Semper fi…

You can tell we are near to the heart of bureaucracy in this country. Everybody that has sat on the other side of a counter we’ve stood at has made life as difficult as humanly possible. Those endless jousts at the counter. They somehow do get worse the closer you get to the administrative centre. Mister Enterprise was a total twerp. So was miss Marriott. But despite their obstructive and ultimately completely pointless fuckery we are still all checked in and sitting out on a balmy evening. It’s only about an hour in the plane from Boston but it’s noticeably warmer here, and chances are we’ll get to go to DC on the weekend.

Right now it’s just about settling in to a new city after travel day. But tomorrow I’ll have to get up early because everything is on fire back home. My bank has blocked my card and my appliances are flooding copiously into the flat below and we need to sort it out ASAP but I can’t pay for a plumber and I can’t let anybody into my flat and I don’t know anybody’s availability and Brian is about to open a huge show and is working like a train and I’m honestly clueless about how I’m going to get this fixed but I have to and it has likely already cost me loads of money in repairs to the flats below me who will likely insist that their ceiling was made of gold, and it’ll cost me more in bad blood in the block. It’s a fucking shitshow. 7am here is already midday in UK l. It’s hard to organise things.

Meantime we are all bundled into the car and driving to Annapolis for dinner. The hotel has huge rooms but it’s in the middle of nowhere. I’ve never been to this state before. For the first time this tour it’s a new place for me. I want to get to know it…

On a first touch it’s great. We drove in and found little streets that feel like they have actual history. Like Massachusetts, you see “established 1755” on the stone front of the restaurant and you can almost kid yourself that you’re in Whitby. The food is more varied than the UK seaside fayre where the choices are: Fish and Chips, a 200 year old saveloy or “no sorry mate we’ve run out of that but we’ve got this saveloy.”

There are seagulls too, but not so many. This is a country with guns. They still want your food though but that’s what seagulls are. I see them wheeling but perhaps short term evolution has taught them not to try and steal people’s crab cakes.

I think I’m going to be happy here for a week. The sea is home for me. I’m pulled to it. “You’ve got the sea in your blood,” my grandmother used to say as a child, and I ignored her as any normal child will do when somebody older makes an incomprehensible statement. But she might have had a point. I think I do need the sea. I don’t do well if I’m parted from water.

A new city. A new week. I’m looking forward to Annapolis.

Here’s me under the same tree at Wellesley College that I took my Twitter profile underneath more or less exactly five years ago. There’s lots more grey in my beard now. I’m wiser…