Author: albarclay

“We are all weird. There is no such thing as the normal family. I wish someone had told me that when I was young.” That’s Sandie. She is sitting next to me in Easingwold. She’s not old but she’s older than I am. I’m writing on her iPad because my phone won’t take charge and my own iPad is on a Narrow Boat somewhere in Hackney Wick. But I have to write this somehow. “I hope it hasn’t become a burden on you,” she says. “No,” I reply, working it out as I speak. “I think I need it. It’s useful to have something I can sublimate as being a responsibility, every day, no matter what. Besides, I enjoy it. Fuck knows why. But I do.” “I see,” she replies. And a silence falls, punctuated by the tapping of  my fingers on the screen. Eventually … “I must go and feed the hedgehog.” And she is out through the French windows leaving me with the ticking of her crazy clock that chimes like it’s a meth addict every hour on the hour, superfast. Lucky hedgehog. I just had lasagne and a shitload of Picpoul, but it got cat biscuits and water which is probably the hedgehog equivalent.

I woke up in Catford on my best friend’s floor. She’s raising a baby and living her life at the same time, proving to us all that it’s can be done. But she needs more time to sit and write. I offered to take some of her hours and wander around trying not to lose the baby. She seemed okay with that, but told me she would need to “train me.” I’ll take a training. Kids are fucking hard work. I know the basics ten point baby list: 1: Do not drop the baby on the head even if wasps. 2: Do not forget you have the baby with you and become distracted by shiny things. 3: If the baby shouts, attempt to discover what is causing the shout. If it is a lack of attention lavish attention in the pathetic hope that the shouting stops. Realise this doesn’t work. Become more inventive. 4: The baby can derive no nutrition from Al nipples. Do not pander to its lippy insistence that this is not the case. 5: Baby. 6: Oh but the head smells like milk. 7: Baby. 8: Why is it shouting? Look at my funny glasses. Face! Weird finger things. Singing. Help? 9: Aaaargh 10: Baby.

They need some sort of stability, these babies. If you shift the routine they start shouting. There isn’t necessarily anything wrong with a bit of shouting. But it’s noisy. So I guess I’ll have to make myself more familiar by spending more time with the milky little hedgehog. Then I can give Min some rest when I am not running around the country with a van full of trunks.

For now though it’s bedtime in the north again, and tomorrow to Sheffield. Then I actually have a day and a half of downtime on the payroll. My life is odd. It’s undeniable. But it’s glorious. I’m very happy with the weirdness, although I would warn you that you might struggle to communicate with me until I renew my phone contract (it is now up for renewal though. Finally.

This is the clock. “It’s demented,” says Sandie. It’s 200 years old. Made in Leeds. Very very insistent. But keeps good time. It’s beautiful.

It’s my best friend’s birthday and I’m lying in a hammock in her garden thinking about time and friendship. This morning I had to bomb it from Yorkshire to London in a great big van full of trunks and ladders and hatstands that we packed yesterday. Tomorrow I’ll be taking it all back up to Yorkshire. Do they really need all that shit to rehearse for such a short time? Maybe, if it’s a very physical show and all that stuff is involved. But considering the subject matter I expect they could make do with stand ins or miming. I doubt it’s an acrobalance contortion prop throwing extravaganza about a Victorian children’s author.

I’m just the driver though. I’ll just move this shit around. I’m done for today. Now I’m in a hammock chilling the fuck out while they all drink prosecco in the kitchen.

Minnie’s great. We looked after each other in sad times and we look out for each other in happy times. She’s had a little girl now, who’s adorable, and I’m trying to be as present as I can in her life and mark the changes with her. The older a friend gets the more precious a resource they become. And that little girl’s mum has been integral to my discovering who I am in this world over the last decade or more. Her boyfriend just brought me a gin and tonic with sours and now he’s whistling beautifully in the garden to my right. Part of me feels I should rejoin the throng because people have arrived and I haven’t said hello. But most of me is enjoying lying in this hammock writing this and watching the wind in the eucalyptus tree above me. I can run out and say hello to the Irishman later.

“Oh I thought you were reading,” says Minnie’s mum, leaning over. “I’m writing,” I respond. It’s the modern age. Coleridge lost most of Kubla Khan to the man from Porlock knocking on the door. Our modern Samuel Taylors will lose their epic poems to the battery running out on their iPhone at the crucial flash of inspiration. But for certain I can write faster here on my phone than anywhere else. Although it’s hard to edit so I just shift into stream of consciousness. I left my iPad in a houseboat in Hackney Wick, along with a bit of my heart. I’ll probably need them both back before long.

For now though I’m going to stop this and rejoin the fray. I’m not feeling sociable today. I could gladly just lie here in this hammock and think of nothing whatsoever for a few more hours, read my book and fall asleep. But there are babies to play with, friends to catch up with, Irishmen to say hi to, gin to decide whether or not to drink.

The hammock is so new it still has the label on it. I don’t want to go back to the party, blog people. I’m really not in the mood for standing in small groups telling stories about myself and listening to others do the same. I just want to chill out and look at beautiful stuff. Like this gum tree.

As I wander through the sleepy town of Easingwold, I hear some adults getting kids to sing “If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands.” I find myself having a little clap, despite all the times I compromised my childish integrity by mechanically clapping even though I was actually RAGING after that bastard Jocelyn made me drop my lollipop. *clap clap*

I think I’m pretty happy at the moment all said. Not fulfilled. The acting is slow. Not comforted. The love is unusual. But happy? I mean if I look too far inside there’s someone screaming but that’s most of us, isn’t it? And I can unthinkingly clap along, most of the time. *clap clap*

My clap is echoed almost immediately by the heavy clonging of the church bell of St John the Baptist bringing in the evening proper. Six o’clock. Lawnmowers and wood pigeons. The skittering of hunting birds. To my left, the graveyard and … hang on a second are there sheep grazing in the fecking graveyard?

Yes there were. I’m going full bucolic. I woke up in Hackney Wick, but I’ll be laying my head here in God’s own country. Sprite Productions, all those years of summer joy working as an actor in well made plays, and still I’m beckoned back to Yorkshire obliquely because of them. But this time I’m not the actor. I have a great big van full of props and costumes so other people who are not me can practice that vocation. *clap clap* I’ll be loading up with Edinburgh sets ahead of most of the people I know fucking off to Scotland for the month. I’ll be moving sets around in the meantime. I’ll be greasing the wheels of other people’s joy.*clap*

It’s nice to be trusted with this. I’m being paid well and it involves not knowing where I’ll sleep tonight, for instance (sorted) and a few nights in Sheffield coming up (not sorted). And what the hell I’m supposed to do sitting around London with a van and no parking permit? (Workable).

It’ll be fun finding out. And I’m being paid the same as I’d expect for a week of fringe theatre. I’m in that mental place where I’ve turned down some acting gigs for money reasons, “keeping free for better things”, and the better things I’ve kept free for haven’t shown up yet so it’s dayjob or bust and loosely regretting turning them down. Work breeds work etc.

It’s a gamble we have to take. I’m earning money, which I can stuff into the bleeding hole left by everything I’ve cut off so far on this selfish fucking obsessional journey. I’m ticking over nicely, as I stuff more and more notes into the gash to try to staunch the dark fast fatty bleeding.

I recently had a beautiful kind message from someone who read my blog on a bad day. They asked if I wanted a change of scene by doing front of house on some shows I auditioned for, in a lovely place outside London. It would’ve been a beautiful gig. I turned it down. I knew it would twist my guts, watching it every night, applauding at the end. *clap clap*

My job is to play people. While I wait for the world to realign towards allowing me to work visibly I need to earn money. I know my craft deeply so I’m better served doing stuff disconnected from the tights and teeth. And I like seeing new places. So I’ll drive this van safe in the knowledge that before long I’ll get some gloves on and help another me unload a set for a run I’m about to star in, in a show that I really believe in. And while we unload, some of the other guys will lean against a wall smoking and complaining about the colour of the cushions. And that’s the world.

It can change tomorrow though, our world. That’s the myth we have to live by, we dreamers. It’s why we keep selling bits of our heart. *clap clap* “I’m happy and I know it.” “What’s that screaming?” “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

It’s about 7pm. I’m by Victoria Park and the sun is moving slowly towards setting. It’ll take 15 minutes for the boat to fill with water so I’m easing back on the towpath and writing this. We’ve just come from Broadway Market. I found twenty quid in an old pair of trousers so we bought some £3.50 coconuts to drink from the hipster with the knife. She bought some sort of vegan wrap but I was still stuffed from my fat breakfast. Now as evening comes I’m beginning to feel the pangs of hunger. But it’s another hour to Hackney Wick and we can’t stop before then because it’s the stealy bit. I’ll pilot hungry for a bit to make sure no teenagers crowbar her lock in order to steal her incense burner or – I dunno, a book of poetry? Some pans? They’ll be disappointed whatever. But they don’t know it in advance and they’ve got a crowbar, fingers and no social conscience.

The boat is temperamental today. She cuts out if the engine isn’t running hard in gear, so we have to move fast or not at all. Suits me. All the osmosis skill from that lovely time I had on the RIBS that ended so petty and so foul. It went somewhere, even if knots are still spaghetti in my brain and I still see red if I think too hard about it.

The canal is fecund, coated solid with green. The coots are nesting. The beer cans swim happily alongside the ducks. The towpath is jammed with cyclists and lovers, dogwalkers and friends. There’s heat in the air, and the rich promise of more summer to come. More heat. Which is problematic as we can’t dump our bucket of shit. The sanitary outlet is bust. Damn.

In just one day here I’ve run into two people I know, not counting her. There’s a community on the canal and it elides well with some of my other communities of relaxed and broke artistic souls who don’t mind hard work. You can’t have a Narrow Boat and be a dogshit human. The maintenance will bury you or you’ll get craned out for not moving. I’d sink mine by putting too much stuff on it, I reckon. She copes well, but she’s only five foot two so has more room. And she’s a worker. She’s been trying to sort the shitbucket and I’ve just been writing. I don’t feel bad about it though, cos none of the shit is mine.

I’m writing like this is my life every day but it’s not, of course, you know that. I’m having a holiday in it. But it’s a joyful one. This is my only day of weekend before I fuck off to York and then drive around like a maniac lifting and dropping and shifting and cropping and drifting and flopping. I might end up with a car by the end of the week. That’s the plan anyway. Buy one up north at the end of the job. Hammer it back home.

But for this evening, I’m going to be Keanu in a slow version of canal boat “Speed” with a shorter blonder Sandra Bullock and a bucket of shit.

This weird island still feels like home. All my work is done. I’m sitting at St Ouen, looking out past the martello tower to Corbière. I’ll be back here before long no doubt. Meanwhile I’ve stated my case and everything seems to be in order. I think it’s going to work out well. I’m barefoot in the sunshine wondering how on earth I haven’t let my feet see the sun yet throughout this heatwave. I’ve got a hilarious briefcase, my grandfather’s white tie and naval dress uniform, a duvet cover and a Mickey Mouse watch, all in the boot of my hire car. I’m wearing a pair of sunglasses that don’t have scratches on the lenses and aren’t made out of pipe cleaners – thank you uncle Peter. Hugo Boss, no less. Very swish.

I’m letting the little lump in my stomach – the one that drives me the whole time – I’m letting it just unwind for a little bit. I don’t need to go anywhere apart from the airport tonight. I can sit on this beach until then if I want to goddammit. I fly in 4 hours. I can see if I can get my feet to match my hands. Get a bit of skin cancer. Fuck it. After all the healthy living I’m allowed it. I might get hit by a train tomorrow.

After channelling all my energy to a fine point, and getting all your positive energy sent to me (thank you) I had a good meeting. Then I went to the market and threw a coin in the fountain. Then, preoccupied, I walked towards a florist I like in order to get lavender for my godmother’s grave and hydrangeas for my mother’s. I was mumbling as I walked. I needed to find a friend, maybe two, Jersey residents, who would be willing to help out with this jigsaw I’ve been trying to sort out. “Who do I know that would do that?” I said to myself, out loud, literally at the same time as someone called my name. An old school-friend. He lives here. His kids are at the same school as the lawyer’s kids. Normally in these stories people say “I don’t believe in energy and all that nonsense,” but I do. I totally do. And right there, having a coffee in St Helier, was proof. Nam myo ho renge kyo, or however you want to frame it. If you build it they will come.

—

I’ve moved. I can’t sit still for long. I went to Corbière lighthouse because the tide was out and it’s beautiful. My uncle, I’m told, used to say it looked like Yogi Bear sunbathing with a hard-on.

You can walk to it if the tide is out, but people do get stranded and drowned if they aren’t careful. There’s a memorial to a lighthouse keeper who drowned saving someone. Growing up in this island you learn to respect the sea. The sea isn’t fucking around, guys. People get swept out or cut off all the time. My great grandfather was taken off a fishing trawler in Folkestone by the waves – long before I was born. I just remember my grandmother’s eyes as she recited it over the dinner table after I’d failed to still a chiming glass. (Her powerful superstition. Never let it ring. A sailor drowns.) “It was his boots. His new boots. He’d saved up for months to buy them, and first time out, all happy in his expensive boots, a wave took him and those new boots – they dragged him down. Down all the way to the bottom of the sea.”

But the sea does feel good to me. There is a strong pull of “home” in those tides. I fly away in just under 2 hours now, and I’m sitting looking at the waves coming in. I just went in for a quick shiver. Now I’m lost in memory.

All these years. All these good people dragged down by their new boots along with their hopes and plans and dreams. I wondered when the tears would come but now they have and now I have time for them. Time. You bastard, time, this is your fault to begin with. I think I’ll sit with this a while. Then off.

It’s crazy, the flight time from Jersey. You’ve landed before you take off. I was in full airhead mode though yesterday evening. I had to go back out of security twice, once to drop off my hire car key and once to get the key back and use it to retrieve my mobile phone holder from the car. Idiot. It’s a good one. I’d rather not lose it. But anything is better than the last time I tried to leave Jersey.

As the plane took off I saw the sea reflecting a glorious sunset through the shoals and onto the beaches.

45 minutes later I was back in the smoke, elbowing people in a shuttle bus at Gatwick. Security was so quick and painless that I was through it before I even remembered that I had a checked bag that I should have collected. Fuck. I tried to go back through the security  doors but they dressed me down with red lights and a recorded warning. There were no staff there, so I waved at a security camera for a bit. Nope. Just got ignored. Some guy eating a donut says “Look at that prat.”

I see some security staff with coffee and explain the situation. I have to go to departures and talk with the airline. So I do, and thankfully I get someone very helpful. She takes me back through security, all the x-rays again.

Those security guys dehumanise you in the course of their jobs almost immediately. They have to I guess. I’m doing it to them. You are just a pair of steel capped boots, or a belt buckle, or a jacket that’s still on. Even if you ask them a question they respond from habit, eyes flicking over you, more interested in that lump in your shirt than the words you speak. One guy in Jersey said the same thing to me three times back to back as if I were three different people. “It’s just a random bomb check sir, nothing personal, it’s just a random bomb check sir, nothing personal, it’s just a random bomb check sir, nothing personal.” I gently poked it. “Oh so you’re checking for explosives are you?” And sure enough “It’s just a random bomb check sir, nothing personal.” I thought about “But how come I was selected?” But I that would be cruel. And these people can make your life hell if they want to.

Anyway I get through security and start to go towards the carousel but she stops me. Now I’m escorted, someone else has to get the bag off the carousel, apparently. We go to Customer Service, and thankfully, miraculously, against this very situation I TOOK A PHOTO OF MY BAG BEFORE CHECKING IT. The sardonic woman at customer service looks at the photo and disappears. Ten minutes later she’s back with my bag. I was expecting that to take hours. I am introduced to the man in “goods to declare” who was watching me try to get back in earlier I expect. That way he doesn’t think I’m up to no good and stick his fingers up my bottom in a horrible little striplit dungeon. I go back through the door that shouted at me and I’m heading to the trains. London. And a day of invigilating. Now I’m off to see an old friend. And probably have wine. Unless I’m strong.

I am pumped with adrenaline. I feel like I’ve run a marathon, whereas actually all I’ve done is write my thoughts down and structure them ahead of sitting with a lawyer at 9am tomorrow morning. The problem is that the results of this meeting – I could look back on this as either the single greatest victory of my whole life, or the day that I had a chance and fucked it. “If only I’d gone about that differently.” That old chestnut. I very much want to avoid it. It’s not chestnut season, and I’ve had too much of that shit already thank you very much. I’m going all guns blazing for “Al Barclay you nailed it.” Send me good energy just after nine please. As with auditions I’m running myself ragged with emotions beforehand so I can be calm in the room. But we all know how the auditions have been going lately.

Add to that the fact that I’m consciously attacking my thinking regarding this murderous habit I’ve allowed into my day to day and I’m feeling unusual. The cycle: I’m happy so I have a drink or I’m sad so I have a drink or I just had an audition so I have a drink or didn’t get the part so I have a drink or I got the part so I have a drink or my friend is sad so I have a drink or my friend is happy so I have a drink or my work is hard so I have a drink or my work is great so … you get the point. There’s only one fixed point and it’s the one that literally kills your feelings and then literally kills your life and then literally kills you. And you always think you’re ok because that guy is worse than you or “I can stop any time.” (Apart from exceptions on Tuesdays or after an audition or when the wind is southerly.) Balls. For an alcoholic the drink is more important than everything and any excuse will do. And nobody can help but you. “I’m nowhere near the levels they were at.” (I once went to AA and some guy after the meeting told me I wasn’t a proper alcoholic, because I hadn’t ruined my life or my body or my face yet. He was some big CEO of a company, loved talking about that, and seemed to think I had come to AA to meet girls. It was when I decided to stop going to AA. Even though that’s what the addiction wanted. But it’s not a competition you Irish twat. Whatever level of alcoholism, if it isn’t helpful it isn’t helpful. Stet.)

I’m going to try to prioritise myself and look at things squarely, despite all the sharp hard feelings that brings up. Now is a time for feeling things sharper. For getting things done.

This is where I was born. This is where the world feels right and the stones are the right colour and the gulls aren’t annoying because they mean home. I’ve been with people who have my best interests at heart all day, eating salad and drinking … water. My poor uncle’s possessions are calling my energy one way, the ashes of my mother are on a hill a mile or so from here, pulling me the other way. Tomorrow is twenty years since my godmother died and she’s here, too, in Trinity Church. People had a habit of dying back then.

Today I dropped off a load of my uncle’s old things at the Hospice where grandma died. Pyjamas and socks and underpants. They need them, apparently. I rang in advance. And shoes etc to sell. So … there’s a good deed. And tomorrow I’m going in to an unfamiliar situation to fight for my right to have good things come after all the collapses.

It’s lovely being back in the place where I was born, but I’m nervous about tomorrow. I have a history of people taking advantage of my naïveté and don’t want to fuck it up again with trust. I know where my universal trust originated (right here in this island) and I love it even now despite the people that have kicked it over the years. When I lived on this weird rock, the world was so simple. I was enjoying a protected and lavish childhood in a beautiful place. All those people long gone now – they were radiating love and kindness into my life. I was protected, in the good and the bad sense. I had the privilege to be kept safe. I honour the work that my parents did to make that possible. I wouldn’t have had it any other way. God I was lucky.

I still carry the trust that I learnt in those kind days where the colours and sounds and smells were right. Sometimes it brings good things. Sometimes it attracts spectres. Nowadays I am learning to put on my porcupine suit before running around in the clouds, but I still don’t like wearing the thing. It itches.

The tide is coming in. It is ten past six. I’m going to jump in the car and jump in the sea before we lose the light and get back to this later on.

—

In fact, I’ve written over 500 so I can chill out. I’m in St Aubin by the harbour having steak. Staying here tonight – it’s great. Harbour View.

My suit is all laid out, I’ve talked strategy with Max. One more sleep. I found the most amazing bullshit briefcase in my uncle’s effects, which is going to be a theatrical mainstay for absolute certain, it’s one of the best props I’ve ever seen. I was thinking about bringing it and plonking it down on the table even though it’s empty, but my friend said “You don’t want them to think you’re an arsehole.” She’s right. She usually is. Dammit.

As my mother used to say, “Beam on positive” for 9am. I accept all spiritual currencies.

My uncle died a few years ago aged 61. His ex is a friend of mine, and the contents of his property have fallen to me to sort out. It’s slow work and not something I can come close to completing in the time I have on this island right now. I didn’t really know what I was dealing with until I arrived. It’s a mess.

My uncle was an alcoholic. It got him in the end. His stuff is haphazardly flung hither and yon. In a plastic bag full of old toiletries socks and rennies I found a copy of my grandmother’s will, a watch and his old rosary. In an old leather Gucci briefcase I found a load of junk, the broken filament of a lightbulb, a picture of the house I lived in with my mum his sister in The Isle of Man, golf tees, a mostly exploded packet of Lockets, a million plastic shirt collar straighteners and a tie pin.

There’s deodorant everywhere. Papers everywhere. Things scrawled on the back of envelopes that might, to his eye, unlock all sorts of wonders. Bags of ties, newly laundered pyjamas, eye masks. There are the keys to a house in South Africa. Does the house still exist? There are photos of boats, models of boats, drawings of boats, keys that might be for boats. There’s a set of initialled cufflinks in the pocket of an old fleece top. Our life makes sense to us, perhaps, but we all think we’re going to live forever. Looking at his life preserved through these things, it doesn’t look like it even made sense to him, to be honest. It feels like he was lost somewhere trying to find the way out, getting ever more entangled.

He exists in my memory as a kind, awkward ultimately tragic figure. Like my mum, the alcohol took him very early. What can be done about that? I’ve found doctor’s letters from the nineties telling him to lay off the cholesterol. “Take at least two days off drinking every week.” The last time I saw him he got ragingly drunk and that was decades later. I think he did it every night. And then one night he fell over and didn’t get up again and now all his stuff is in boxes however it was shoved, and I’m trying to make sure that we don’t throw away the Gucci briefcase along with the old rennies. Because it’s either me or some guy with a skip. And so goes the cycle of life. 61. He’d be 68 now. He could still be running around at 68. He wasn’t well at 60, and was running a habitual avoidance on himself.

Addiction is rightly thought to be an illness. When it’s killing your life and your happiness but still you return to it endlessly. It’s such a tough spiral to break as well, in yourself and in others. Because, as his ex rightly points out, the addiction is the most important thing. It’s more important than love. Than money. Than happiness. Than life.

Every neatly folded pyjama bottom I put into the hospice pile, every unanswered piece of correspondence I fish out of the bottom of a washbag, every envelope full of expired currency I find neatly labelled and forgotten, every stolen hotel match box I find in a shoe – it’s all pushing me further towards really hard-questioning the drive there is in me towards alcohol. With one hand I’m actively trying to make my life work despite a faulty career, not much romance and terrible financial management. With the other hand I’m grasping for a crutch that my mother and her brother used to bludgeon themselves to wet and miserable ends and seeing if I can do it as well. Bollocks. The sun is fading. I’m going for a swim. And I’m definitely not having a drink tonight.

This heat. Yesterday I was making over my friend’s flat. I changed the sheets, aired everything, made it lovely, plumped the pillows. It was half two in the afternoon. Terri from airbnb messaged me to say she wouldn’t be there until 4.30. The window into the bedroom was open. I curled up in the breeze, closed my eyes and fell asleep on her beautiful clean plumped bed. “I’ll just close my eyes for a second.” I woke suddenly to the buzzing of the phone in front of my face, still clutched in my fist, like no time has passed. “I’m here!” 2 hours. Gone to busy dreams.

30 seconds of feverishly pulling black hairs off the pillows and replumping and airing everything. 30 seconds of hauling on my shorts and sticking my feet into unlaced shoes and she’s at the door. Thankfully there’s a good breeze through the flat.

Then I went to Hyde Park and played ninjas with Ivo. I think the powernap helped me keep on running from tree to tree even when the energy coffers should’ve been empty. “Let’s run again.” “Ok Ivo. That’s definitely the best plan.”

Today it happened again. I took a coldstream guard’s uniform to the dry cleaners, got home, tidied my room, did some writing and fell asleep in the heat. It’s easy to do at the moment because my room is not a shitshow. Pickle curled up next to me and we simultaneously catnapped on top of the covers. I was woken by Jack at the door. I was glad of the nap.

Jack and I have been slowly making Beowulf for ages. We’ve both got lots of other stuff on but we needed to reboot the work because we care about it. Jack played some guitar on my roof, I realised I absolutely must buy a new accordion (My old workhorse fell out of a Luton in the rain after Christmas Carol and has been forever destroyed). We are starting the long road to making something we fucking believe in.

It’s another thing to think about. August might be a quiet month in this town. Not going to Edinburgh, though, can sometimes be valuable in my industry if you’re not on the list. “We need an intelligent posho.” “Just get Bunty.” “Bunty’s in Edinburgh.” “What about Runty?” Runty is in Edinburgh too.” “Can’t we fly one of them?” “No, I’ve asked. They’re too busy up there.” “Well, we will just have to say that we can’t cast it. Without Bunty or Runty there really is nobody else that can play that part. Tell them to move the filming.” “We can’t.” “Well there’s nothing – literally absolutely nothing we can do if we can’t have Bunty or Runty… unless … Funty?” “He refuses. New father.” “Tell them it’s impossible. They’ll have to rewrite the part.” “Or maybe… Maybe we can *ORGAN SPIKE* see some different actors????” *cut to two terrified people in an office* *Enter Al Barclay* “So you’re Al … Barcty? Barty? Alty Barty?” “No it’s BarCLAY. It doesn’t end in “ty.” *I told you so glances.* “Well, I suppose we have to see what you’ve prepared anyway.” *Al removes a full size Alpen Horn from his trousers and blows it. A herd of buffalo crash in mooing and knock down the building. Al is swept away riding one of them, naked now and laughing maniacally. The two casting directors remain, sitting in the same two chairs amid the devastation, normalizing. Pause.* “Interesting fellow. Reminds me of Punty before the incident. Shall we give it to him?” “Do you think he always has the buffalo?” “We can ask his agent. Tea?”

Twenty past nine and I’m walking through the dusk in Hyde Park. Paul Simon is playing just the other side of a barrier and I can hear his tired nostalgia as I watch the groups of London people relaxing. He’s just started singing Diamonds on the Soles of her Shoes. I believe that, in its time, Graceland was one of the greatest albums ever. But now it’s tired. He lost touch with the now decades ago, our Paul. He’s just rolling out the oldies because he knows we find familiar things comforting, and so does the market. I wonder how much tickets are to this sleepy summer pageant. This sharp angry guy who challenged apartheid with a glorious international pop album, and actively fought the self important sellout bullshit of his partner in early greatness – he’s now rolling out greatest hits that are long past their sell by dates, and replacing the harmonies of Ladysmith Black Mombasa with his own voice shouting “nanana” into a mic. What does he actually think about all of this, I wonder.

And he literally just started “Call me Al.” I’m right outside the front. If I go on tiptoe I can see him. Bobby the 22 year old security guard says “I know this one. It’s like being in a car with your grandmother.” He’s not really singing it, but he’s out of practice. He’s just getting through it. “How many more tracks before the hotel?” The hunger isn’t on him anymore. That song is over thirty years old and he makes it sound that way. Maybe Annie Hall is bang on and he has a Piers Morgan sized coke habit to support. But either way, he can sing my song and welcome. “Why am I soft in the middle?” I’m working on it Paul. “Don’t wanna end up a cartoon in a cartoon graveyard.” I see the danger Paul. “He sees angels in the architecture.” All the time, Paul. “Call me Al.” Yep.

I will put up with weekly conversations where someone brings in the words “call me Betty” in exchange for the threats and warnings and validations of young man Paul Simon’s biggest hit. We all know uncompromising stuff when we are young that we can express sharply because we frame ourselves in opposition to the compromises we witness around us. We aren’t deadened by necessity or perspective. Popular music is a young person’s game for the expression of these extreme colours that we see more clearly when we haven’t been cluttered by time. But we also know things deeper as we get older, so long as we avoid the ruts. Complacency is the deadener. The temptation to think “I have learnt all there is to learn.” Nah. We keep learning and striving until we die surely. Hopefully.

Nobody wants to be this old dude, rolling out approximations of a redundant youthful passion thirty years after it was great.  c’mon brother, where’s your new music? Leonard left us to “You Want It Darker.” He never stopped teaching us and questioning himself. He wouldn’t be everybody’s weird father if he’d just trotted out Hallelujah every few years with a hat and a helicopter. You have integrity Paul. Shake it up with the truth. Truth is a hammer. It just costs us when we wield it. But I’d be interested to hear yours now.