Author: albarclay

Seems like the jump start kit last night used the last of Lou’s battery. I was nervous anyway when she bought the car as she had been sitting for a while. He would take it out once a week, the old owner, but only to the shops, and it doesn’t take long for a car battery to dip below too low, and after a while it just stops taking charge. I have rarely had a car where I haven’t had to change the battery at least once.

I tried to use a jump kit. I might have spent an hour nose to nose with jump leads but the space in front of her was full and I couldn’t park in the road. So… we rang the AA and got Tony.

Tony got it started reasonably quickly and taught me a little about battery connectors in the process. Then we drove to a car park and got a new battery put in. “So long as you do 2k miles a year it’s guaranteed for 5 years,” he told us. “So long as you do 2k a year,” he reiterated, three or four times. He knows this car has sat for a month. Batteries die easy. If you have a car you rarely use, go use it now. Prevention is better than cure. A car is a machine that begs to be used.

Once there was a new battery, Lou drove us to her workshop and back and it was fine. She’s passed her test. Now it’s just psychological.

I drove to Hastings and it is weird how nervous I am when all I have to do is look after two very chilled cats. One of them hasn’t come home and there were some kids making a dirt bike video outside and until I see Carlos I’m nervous about where he is. He’s usually a homebody in my experience, but last time I was here it was cold and rainy. Maybe he’s braver in summer.

Here’s Rajah:

Carlos is a greedy fucker though. He’ll surely be back for food. Rajah is the more independent, which is why I’m surprised no Carlos. I fed him as soon as I arrived. He knows I’m good for it.

—

Here he is. He just came in jumped on the bed and said “”Ew”. Good. First night assembly. I can stop worrying and go to sleep in the woods. Cats. Cats. Cats.

It’s been lovely to briefly be back home with Brian and Maddy, Boo and Misty and my familiar comfy things, but Bergman and I have places to be. I have other cats to talk affectionate gibberish with.

A brief stop to Lou first. Her little green car has been sitting in Brighton unused while she’s been finishing up in the big London. Now she’s finished she wants to start using her, but the battery has run down too low to ignite. We aren’t yet into reprogramme the radio territory, thankfully. I brought down a jump kit for her, or at least I thought I had. In actual fact I bought a great big external battery that you can plug in to the wall in your garage overnight to fully juice up the battery of a car you don’t use often enough. No good for us so we went back to Halfords to swap it and ended up with a jump-start kit. A hundred quid. It doubles as a huge great big festival phone charger. I want one for myself to keep in Bergman. If it holds its charge I’ll probably get one. It got Lou up and running again in a moment. Tomorrow she’s gonna take me for a spin in her little green car. A bit of confidence building so she can start to move things back and forth from her workshop when its pouring with rain.

Meanwhile just a bit of time to connect when both of us have just emerged from a busy patch. It’s her birthday coming up. I’ll be living in the woods again for a week from tomorrow, and Hastings isn’t so far away from her. We can meet halfway and go for lovely walks up hills together.

Right now though I’m sitting in a dark room with Tessy. I completely forgot about writing this until on the edge of sleep my internal alarm system jolted me up to do it. I think writing it at 4am last time has slightly jolted me out of my routine. But that’s a good thing. The problem with writing like this when I’m just about to go to sleep is that my brain is already half shut down. Maybe in the woods I’ll try to do some morning writing as I’ll be up to feed the wood cats and get the dead mice off the carpet.

It’s windy here. I think Tessy is glad of the company as she’s sitting right by my leg, but I’m gonna pull myself back into bed with Lou and shut down for the night.

Andy is probably totally harmless, but he’s picked tonight to set up his little home outside my flat between my car and Brian’s bike, with the van I’m worried about parked just round the corner.

I’m woken up from light sleep by his conversation with an American. They talk for a while, and I’m roused. The American is gently probing: “So you still haven’t answered my question, what are you doing here?” He’s doing it very well, being personable but just assessing if this is a benign person or if he’s likely to be breaking into cars etc. As I say I’m pretty much certain he’s benign but tonight I’m worried about the van so my brain is on high alert. It’s secure, of course, but this is the last hurdle and my head is gonna be on it.

So I put on some clothes and head down with the intention of putting my mind at rest. Andy is on to me immediately as I walk out of the door to my block. “Evening mate, is that your bike?” he asks me, of Brian’s bike. “No, but it belongs to a mate of mine.” “It needs new mumble mumbles. I could fix that.” It’s 2:30am on a Monday morning. I’m checking on the van so I don’t get pulled into a long conversation with Andy, for whom it is very natural to have long conversations with strangers. He’s got a load of poles, the means to make a shelter perhaps. He’s got a whiteboard. He’s got an easel. He also has a mobile phone and he’s having a beer. I don’t think he’s any threat to anything other than himself to be honest, but he’s erratic and drunk right in front of Bergman. This is London I suppose. “I’m gonna drive to work,” I tell him. And I get in Bergman and drive round the block, then park him next to my van just to see the state of things. It’s secure, couple of stoners on the bench over the river. A lady jogs past on her own which surprises me at this hour. It feels ok, but it’s a hot night and Andy brings a degree of uncertainty to events. I’m awake now. Went to bed at 9 so I’ve had 7 hours sleep already. I can check things and not ruin tomorrow.

I go for a little walk just to check he’s not trying to fix Brian’s bike, and he’s on the move again. “Fucking hell this bus stop is a long way away,” he says and I reckon that’s genuine, he’s heading with his stuff to get the 170 out Roehampton way with his haul of poles and wood. There’s even an old easel. He’s carrying it in shifts from where he was in the lamplight outside my window to where he’s going. He’s different, sure, but I think I was needlessly worrying. As was the American. Andy makes active conversation with anyone who will stop and be part of it. He’s part of the fabric of this city. He’s not a threat to my load, my car or Brian’s bike, I’m concluding. And he’s moving on.

I’m awake now though. It’s 3:37. I’m sitting on the bench where the stoners were, and feeling London gradually shift from night to morning. A light dust of rain. The lights in the park reflecting in the water. Albert Bridge still glowing. I’ll go back to sleep at 4 for an hour or so but I got swept up in the night time summer city. Now it’s started pouring so the van is safe.

—

Addendum: Van was safe. Fully unloaded. I feel rested. Client paid.

Made it back. Immigration into this country the only issue all trip. Unsmiling ominous people, and they went through everything in the van and asked me a whole host of questions. I just hope they didn’t put their boots on the fucking Eames chair. We had to sit in the van while they went through it. Bunch of plates and glasses etc. That’s all. Loads of big men wasting our and their time while someone behind us probably smuggled guns onto the train. The other side they just ran us through a scanner.

It’s one thing to be professional, it’s another thing to be a dick about it. Those lads were largely on the dick side, but there’s me in my hat.

I’m so tired now though. That was a lot of ground covered in that van with the wheel the wrong way round, either cooking in an oven or blinded by the light.

I had a hot bath this evening and we ordered Dishoom and I felt full almost immediately but that black dahl is probably one of the nicest things on the planet but so filling and so rich. I think I’ll be asleep very very soon and it is just 8. My room smells of cat wee. Boo left me a present. Not my pillow though. I’m burning incense.

The van will unload tomorrow. Once again it’ll be traffic warden bingo. Once that’s done and it is all squared off I will have a huge weight off, but… the catastrophising part of me will be playing up until we have it all up in Karen’s flat and looking shipshape. And those dumb lads put their fucking boots all over our careful load. I’m livid. It’ll be fine. But right at the last minute. The French were fine. Sure maybe we had a load of drugs in there. But what happened to “innocent until proven guilty”?

Oof.

Bedtime.

Berlin did not want to let me go.

We left early under a cloud. 3 hours set to Hanover. Every fucking German driver wants to kill themselves.

It was absolutely shitting it down with rain, and I’m in a Luton van with the wheel on the wrong side, and these fucking idiots… I’ve never seen anything like it. Visibility is virtually nothing, grey skies, constant rain. But still these guys are slamming it in their Porsche at 200mph in the fast lane. One fucker wanged past us at about 10am and then twenty minutes later we all had to wait while the fire brigade cut him out. He was okayish, his Porsche was totalled. We were close to that fool so he only cost us 20 minutes, unlike the guy in an Audi who did EXACTLY the same thing but was less fortunate and caused a triple strike. We sat for an hour because of him, just totally stationery, thousands of cars held up while they cleared the debris in the rain. Why?

German drivers. Honestly as soon as we crossed the border into the Netherlands it stopped. German drivers suck.

Both crash causing vehicles were in the same position, across the fast lane with their front in the central reservation. Basically both vehicles went faster than they were safely capable of driving in rainy conditions without a spoiler, they hit a bit of water and lost the back end, no time to react at that speed, tried to turn into the skid but felt it overcompensating that way, panic oversteered the other way with however much braking they were capable of between managing the control loss, too little too late, skewed round and found themselves horizontal to the road with their front end buried in the central reservation and their right neck whiplashed to arseholes. Bang. None of them looked fatal but they all looked stupid. It felt like karma really. I know what it is because the exact thing happened to me when I was in the slow lane at 2am too fast aged about 29 and I lost the back end in heavy rain braking suddenly because I saw a gatso that had been put up to cover some daytime roadworks. I was still managing the skid when I triggered the fucking thing but thankfully was sideways for the photos so never got a letter – or maybe it was out of film, it was in a really egregious place, at the top of a downwards slope of open road. I was in the slow lane and no other cars or wouldn’t have been bombing it, and I managed to get back control. Learned a lesson. I don’t think they can do that these days with the temporary cameras?

Berlin feels weird. We had ordered our Uber last night and it arrived. I called to Rhys “Hey mate, it’s on this side,” and two German lads came at us shouting “Yasser yasser burkha burkha” and evidently wanting to start a fight based on their perception of our foreign-ness. I think in their infinite ignorance they mistook our English for Arabic. And Rhys and I both have dark eyes and skin – he’s Celtic and I’m Hispanic and honestly that whole west coast is Tír na nOg, But we were lucky that the Uber came when it did cos they were lathered and spoiling for a fight. They looked a bit disappointed we had a ride as we got driven away by a lovely Turk called Metin who might actually have warranted the rage of two workshy boys looking for a Friday fight. They have outsourced responsibility for their anger. It’s common. You have to look yourself square in the face to really know that only you are responsible for your own happiness.

I’m happy to be out of Germany, almost home, almost dropped off. This has been a remarkable adventure. But today was one of the hardest days of driving of my life and I’ve covered hundreds of thousands of miles in so many different vehicles. The rain, the ears, the precious cargo, and… German drivers.

Still, I made it to Antwerp.

Here I am in Berlin in this incredibly badly thought out Booking.com room in Pankow.

There were no sheets on my bed when I arrived, as it was booked for 2 so the cleaner only made up 2. There’s a thing in Germany where they have two single duvets on double beds, so when I messaged the host, she angrily pulled one duvet from the double bed and threw it up into this jungle single next door. I’m sleeping in top of an undersheet that has clearly been there for multiple guests. I’m giving Rhys the good bed tonight though as he supervised the loading. He has a peculiar OCD that balances my expedience very well. It was his day as lead as I know he will be slower on the load than me. He’s had the shit bed every other night. He supervised an excellent load and I sleep in his weird jungle thing.

Max joined us and lent a hand. He’s an actor I worked with on a Rosamund Pilcher TV movie maybe a decade ago. He’s 62 now and I think he was just coming to terms with not being the romantic lead when I met him.

I love working with actors. Yes, sure it is my world, but I swear to god you get a better quality of available person by having that network. Vocational people… and if they chose to they could do extremely well in fiscal jobby things. They choose not to. So they can come and help carry a sofa down stairs, or they can sell that sofa, or write a description of the sofa, or customise it into a vehicle, or fall asleep on it. Largely they’ll try their hand and not be fazed by the unknown. Cos the unknown is our home. “You’re a butcher.” *Learn butchery* “You’re a politician,” *Study people in office* We mimic and we learn. “You’re a removal man.”

We have done well. We will continue to do well. Who knows if we will make budget, accommodation is much more expensive than I anticipated. Tonight is the most expensive stay I’ve had so far and it has been the jankiest. €250 for a dodgy mess of a place. But in Berlin.

We went out briefly. We saw the town. Much was good. And now it is bedtime.

Tonight a little wooden room that smells of sauna, in Milmersdorf. We are 8 minutes from drop-off. Rhys and I will share twin beds tonight, but it’s worth it for the fact it is within budget and so close.

We went to the supermarket and loaded up with breakfast fruit and lunch sandwich materials, and the means to cook a tasty supper. This place has cooking facilities so we were able to go some way to counteract the meatiness that just inevitably closes in as one moves further east.

Our little Pace van is holding up nicely. Last time we used them the clutch fell out and we could have been royally fucked and then they charged us loads to fix an already damaged roller door, but they have a European breakdown option. H&H don’t let you bring a Luton to Europe.

This one feels solid. We ate up the miles.

Tonight she sleeps in this field and I’m pretty confident there aren’t enough weirdos in this area that she’ll come to harm. I like to back her up against something but there’s nothing so she’s a bit exposed. Two nights I wouldn’t allow, but it’s a Thursday so not likely to have pissed opportunists with access to tools and anyone else needs time to plan something like robbing a van.

The Germans can go on the list of annoying drivers. Nothing like as bad as the Saudis. But they have a bothersome habit. If you indicate to overtake a truck and there is a car ages behind that will definitely be able to maintain their speed and not be disrupted, the car will immediately floor it and start flashing their lights to stop you overtaking the truck. The road in front of every German driver belongs entirely to them and they must have it. It is a pattern that repeated over and over again.

Drop off tomorrow and then a night in Berlin. Then a load and the return journey. A long long drive, all said. I’m knackered but happy that the plan so far has worked.

I’ll enjoy a peaceful night here tonight. It is silent. We are in the woods. Not alone, many have built summer houses around us, but in a quiet place.

A single tube fare from Sloane Square to New Cross costs £3.50 now. The daily cap is £8.90. Journey time 45 minutes. Add a further 15 minutes each end for walking from my flat to the tube, and from the tube to Pace Van Hire, it is £3.50 for over an hour on a rush hour tube in summer.

When the tube fares were put up in summer, I found myself thinking: Saddiq is putting money in the pockets of Lime and Forest bikes.

I had some admin to do though so I considered an Uber. I lined up the journey. £29.99 for half an hour. I was tired. I clicked yes. 3 minutes into my wait time it told me I could have an Uber immediately for £37.99. “No thank you”, I said. 7 minutes into my wait time it was still ticking and refreshing the pick-up time, whilst telling me that there were loads of drivers in my area. Uber have gone like the download streaming models where you either pay or wait. I did neither. I was muzzy so I hadn’t thought about it but Brian said “Just get a Lime Bike.” I had momentarily forgotten that we are in 2025 and the things exist. It was the best idea.

Lime and Forest, this summer, are the best ways to navigate this city bar none. Bike was right outside my flat, it took me half an hour to get to the van hire, it did all the pedalling for me I just had to navigate.

This will change. Witness uber.

When I first started this blog I was in LA and Uber was at war with Lyft, and you could get a pool across town for a few bucks so long as you didn’t mind sharing a lot. In London Uber was trying to tank out the black cabs, so they were cheap as chips but also somehow everywhere as they were incentivising new drivers. You always end up with an atrocious driver who hates you, but the new standard with Uber is that your terrible driver costs pretty much the same as a black cab, and what you save you lose in waiting unless you bump up the fare to black cab prices as it will suggest periodically.

Lime bikes are owned by uber, and yeah sure in the end they’re a business. Right now they’re in the “Get people used to and happy with using us. Make them love us. Check they love us” phase of the business plan. I can guarantee you that that business plan has something like “Stage 5 : Fuck ’em up the arse! Take ’em for everything we can and more! Set fire to their vessel! Shiver me timbers! Arrrrr”.

With big money businesses building loyalty, it often feels like cooking a relationship with a sociopath. “Hi, I’m your shiny lovely new life partner. You can depend on me. I’m gonna keep telling you I love you and asking you to say if you love me too. Even if you’re not sure, I am. Oh you love me? Great. Why not change your habits completely! Tell your friends how great I am. Start to think I’ll always be like this. Isn’t this wonderful? Rely on me. You think it’s wonderful? I love you forever. You love me forever? Yay! *SWITCH* take take take take take take take take take take take take take take take Hey baby you love me remember take take take EAT THE REMAINS” I’m watching you, Lime. But right now I … I like you? Um… Eek

400 minutes to be used in 30 days, for £36.99. It’s competitive. It isn’t too much, it isn’t too little. When I’m back I’ll probably buy it for August.

But that price says it is 70% off so that’s what they’ll gradually add, and more. The base price if you use one of these things without prepaying? It’s already absurd. Never do it. Always prepay, you can do it by you bike. But… there’s the part of the game we haven’t seen yet, when people get used to using them enough that they can fuck us. I hope we never get there. If they can sustain business around here, they have opened summer London up in a way I have never seen before. Bikes you don’t have to lock that are all over the place and power themselves. But I fear that this is the nice stage. They’ll have shareholders and this is late stage capitalism. At some point they will have to go nuclear, win or lose.

I moved one out of a parking space the other day and it went red and shouted at me. They often make everyone park in one place and make a zone no go if there’s a march or something, to stop people having them on the march as it might be bad optics. They sometimes make you go miles to park. When the power assist is gone they absolutely suck. Lime can’t have it be a good bike when the chances of it getting dropped or kicked over or thrown in the river are so high. I often see them with missing pedals etc, still available for hire.

But… this might be the summer of the electric bike in London, before stage 5 just makes them another unpleasant part of the landscape.

It’ll take a while perhaps for Stage 5, cos these bikes are still NEW. On bike lanes, the crowd of Malcolms all have things to say about us as we ride unhelmeted past their lycra-clad bony angry chins. The average vocal ability of a lycra-lout is pretty low thankfully, as they all have vocal tension in the throat, so you can’t really hear what they’re droning at you as you pass, but you know it’s negative cos you’re on a new thing and they are a cyclist in lycra. Plus you probably just logically ran a light where you disrupted literally nobody and they had stopped.

It’s not just the lycra-louts hating them though. “This shouldn’t be near our pavement,” the territorial lot who also hate new things, they are gonna be trying to campaign to have them stopped. “We didn’t have these in the nineties on our pavements.” It’ll lead to the company having more expenses which of course they will pass to the customers in charges. This city is a melting pot. It is full of crazies. And I love it as it changes, and right now this new thing is a good thing. And I got to my van hire quicker than any other way would have been possible, for £3.99. I’ve got a minute left.

Hey ho.

New head new head. Scrape off the old one. This new job ain’t about magic. Grass is just grass rather than the potential of spellcasting. I don’t have to remember verse and try to listen. Instead I have to just think about how to load up a van well enough that it all gets to Germany nicely.

These are good people who have asked me to move things about. I’m not worried about them being arsehole clients etc. But I’m trying to do the best job I can for them because I actually give a fuck. That’s a good place to be, perhaps.

It’s expensive. Vans and fuel but also people. Today I just had 3 people working, tomorrow will be more. Today we just protected things. Tomorrow we carry everything out, and load it into a van. And then I’m driving it all a long long way, so gonna need to be clever with ratchet straps.

This evening I took a bit of time out to remember how I used to negotiate this city. It was John’s birthday, my old Busky Marley. He’s an extremely talented man and someone I genuinely adore. We all bundled to a pub in Southwark and actually it was a good age mix cuz he’s a broad heart and has room for so much. We remembered a day of summertime day drinking in York when we went on the merry-go-round and I pretended I was his father. We remembered a night for my random birthday when I was stuck in York and we went to bobbalobba and Tiggy happened and it was glorious.

I waited long enough for Tom to get there. As soon as he arrived I discreetly left cuz I have much sleep to do and you can tell by the previous paragraph that John and I don’t do sleep very well. That York birthday night I had a train at 8am and we shared his double bed by the station. I peeled myself stealthily away at 7.30 and just made it. Dan was on the same train, my co-star. I was in a terrible state.

This evening I left in time, and had a lovely evening. Tomorrow lots of carrying. Then loads of unknown.

I’m happy I took the time to see my old friend. That’s the London thing. It’s what pays back for the cost of living here – getting the accessibility of new and old friends. It was a lovely night. I met someone who might be posher than I am.

It’s half past eight and I can barely keep my eyes open. Driving to Berlin is gonna be relaxing. I’m looking forward to it. Right now all I want to do is snooze.

Before the show yesterday, a challenge from a member: “When we make Jupiter, rather than pretending to summon the king of the gods, what would it be like if we genuinely tried to actually summon the king of the gods?!”

Olli up on the willow balcony wrapped in a Welsh flag, a very full soundscape, eighteen people and an audience trying hard and earnestly to make some magic, and as she spoke her last word, rain. Just a flash of it, breaking through the clouds, the only rain all night and just a light summer rain. A touch of the old thunderer, wondering why the fuck nobody did that for so long. “Juno, get the ambrosia out, something’s happening in Wales!” Just for a moment, some magic.

This morning I woke up late in my tent. Stumbled into the house for coffee. Took the tent down. It’s damp but not wet wet, hopefully it’ll be ok when I pull it back out. I was in slight survival mode as I loaded up two passengers and began the long drive back to London. If only it wasn’t so far away, that place. It has been a joy though, to be back there again. Many times now, a beaten path, a happy place, a light.

I had a hot bath. First time I’ve had a proper scrub for a few days. My ability to stay awake, to think, to be even slightly useful – it’s all fading. Brian and Maddy are watching The Sopranos, Tom will be staying in the living room, I don’t think I can be sociable any more than I can focus on a story. I think I’m gonna let the heat take me into dreams and maybe I’ll see you there. I can scrub my brain a little now, rearrange things, let the steam out, start to relax. Phew.