Author: albarclay

I’m sitting in a nondescript room with seven other actors. Everyone looks fabulous, but right now we are all slumped in chairs, shut down, as if we’re androids who’ve been switched off momentarily to recharge. It’s hot out there. Those of us not in corsets are in layers. I’m the only one with a bloody crinoline though, so I have to sit upright.

I just delivered the Maid of Honour’s speech. Not one I’ve ever thought I’d get to do, if I’m honest. I’ve done Father of the Bride and Best Man so now the only one left is Groom. I’ve avoided that successfully for decades. I wonder if I’ll ever get the full set! They’re certainly happening in an unusual order.

Full disclosure: I wasn’t actually the Maid of Honour. She hid behind me and whispered her speech to me, and then I spoke it out. It was partly a joke and partly because she’s very shy, but it was rather lovely. “I’ve known her all my life and some people think we’re twins.” At the end of the speech she did sonnet 116 through me – The wedding sonnet. It was lovely to have all control taken from me and just be a conduit for her. She made a mistake which I took a call not to correct as it’d be way too pernickety and might have been an in-joke. So many writers in the room. I was very aware that there were people in the crowd – writers and a singer – who I have admired for many years and whose first and possibly only experience of me will be as a falsetto Thisbe in a crinoline hamming it up at their friend’s wedding celebration. Although one of them once retweeted me which bulked up my follower count something chronic. Still “Hi, I’m the guy that played the slightly suspicious Thisbe at that wedding at The Globe. You did retweet me once too. It’s a coincidence that my Twitter handle is almost the same as yours. Um… Yeah so hi. Love your work. And your activism. I’ll be off over here now. Need to… check this corner.”

Anyway. It’s all done. As ever the worst part was the not knowing. There was a terrific amount of goodwill in a room full of highly intelligent motivated artistic people. It was a lovely way to earn a crust even if I came off stage after Thisbe’s death quite literally cooked in my own grease. Drowning in the stuff. Dripping like Vanassis’ lamb on the spit yesterday evening and smelling considerably less appealing. I didn’t get to have an awkward conversation with any of my favourite novelists. I’ll just have to write a book that they love to have

Now I have to work out how to get a load of suitcases full of clothing over to my flat without losing them, after I’ve wound the adrenaline out of my system. These jobs are very welcome at the moment, and it seems to be a good time for them. If only they didn’t involve wearing thick clothes in an oven.

I started today in Trafalgar Square, with the sun smashing down. An audition, at 9.30am. What a day for it. Like the sun, I smashed it and then waited for my friend who went in right after me. We wandered through sunny Soho dreaming of what might be. And yet I had places to go. I had an appointment with the holy rail replacement bus service. I had to get to Hither Green. I ended up walking from Lewisham though. The rail replacement gods are shit. Don’t put your faith in them.

Hither Green is where my girlfriend lived at the millennium. I haven’t been back since I basically fucked that one up. Why go back? But with a lamb spitroasting in a different garden on the same streets? And many good people hanging out to help consume it..? I am not made of stone. It was the right place and the right time to reclaim Hither Green. Despite stupid stupid young Al stupid.

I had a turn turning the spit. If we are going to eat meat we should know what we’re doing so I thought it right to turn it and thank it as I turned it. I’ve been friends with a lamb before and I still eat lamb. Which means that I’m capable of eating my friends. Hi! Come stay. One day it might catch up with me. Today I turned the spit while Golfo’s dad basted and seasoned the thing. He fed me the kidneys. I ate them from his hand. Then we cut it up into little pieces and fed it to everyone. When can you stay? Great. Bring some fava beans. And a nice Chianti.

After dinner we played pingy Victorian ball-hook game. It was awesome. Golfo’s little sister was unbeatable at it. I had no choice but to be her Olympic commentator and blast encouraging noises about her ability until I realised it was too late and I had to be home to see my cousin outlaw. I pulled myself away into a long long Uber journey shunning the false hell-gods of rail replace, returning to my happy home again. Now I’m home, trying to hold it together despite the fact that I’m bank holiday audition level drunk.

Bank holidays are always crazy. And hot ones doubly so. Everyone goes mental and all the infrastructure collapses. I suspect we are always just three consecutive bank holidays away from anarchy. I ate a friendly lamb and played ukelele and ball games, and auditioned for a part I really want.

I’ve done so much walking lately. As soon as the weather is half decent I shanks-pony it everywhere. Yesterday I went from Hampstead to Crouch End, and discovered an abandoned train track. Everything was in bloom. It’s such a glorious time of year.

“Have you mentioned that you’re drunk writing this?” says my (first cousin once removed?) Apparently that’s the relationship. I’m lost in these things but she’s hacked it together loosely. “Yes” I tell her. “Strangely I have this time.” But yeah . You need to know that. It’s effecting the cognitive leaps.

Tomorrow the world comes back. I’d sooner just hang with Golfo’s family and eat friends. I mean lamb. I don’t eat friends. Come stay. Phtp-phtp-phtp-phtp-phtp

I’m lying on a sofa bed in Hampstead, on Parliament Hill. Outside the morning is bright and still and warm. After yesterday’s walking I feel I can just lie here now, and relax. I’m wearing a baggy pyjama top and a pair of tights for decency. I didn’t bring a change of clothes and it’s all we could muster for sleeping at short notice. The tights feel strange on my leg hair but not unfamiliar. I’ve been in tights before too many times.

Bank holiday tomorrow, although I have an audition combined with laryngitis which should be interesting. I’ve spent most of the morning breathing gobbets of hideous gunk out of my lungs. Yesterday I went to Keats’s house though and he had it much worse than I do and still found time to write “To a Nightingale”. I’m eating oysters in reverse but at least there’s no ketchup. The very least I can do is write this blog, which ain’t going to be carved in stone for future generations to marvel at like that man’s structured thoughts between bouts of hacking cough.

Walking and thinking yesterday made me aware again of how unbelievably full this city is. From where I am now I can walk 2 minutes to the derelict pub where Ruth Ellis shot her husband. Five minutes and I’m at Keats’s House. 8 minutes and I’m at Erno Goldfinger’s brutalist home packed with art. There’s something of human interest in every direction. From where I’m sitting, dazzled in the sun, I can see the dome of St Paul’s shrouded in mist, or is that smog? And there’s The Shard, unmistakable – The Eye of Sauron, drawing me southwards. There will be so many people on the south bank today. I’ll be out in the sun soon too, I expect. Everyone in this huge ancient overcrowded jumble, crowding into the parks and pubs and ponds. Time to stop observing and start participating. Which is probably generally a good note for me to take.

There was a kid outside Hampstead Heath station selling his toys to passers by. Mel and I encountered him on the way to the charity shop, where we were jettisoning a load of her stored up emotional gunk. I can do it so easily when it’s other people’s stuff. And I understood how she was struggling. We gave him a keyboard, which turned out to be the right move because the charity shop didn’t take electrics so it would’ve otherwise found its way back into her flat. On the way home he tried to sell it to me for £7. We didn’t bite but I bought a toy cement mixer for a quid instead. Why not? As a kid I was fascinated by the things. Samiximentors. A hangover from that odd obsession is that I always notice them now.

Now I’m back where I started, thinking about the meeting tomorrow and playing with my samiximentor. I really hope the coughing improves a bit tonight. I feel and sound like I’m consumptive. This particular illness has redefined my whole relationship with catarrh. But when the sun is shining like it is I’m a happy man snot or not.

Brian and I set off hard into the world in the morning. I’m planning an adventure for a stranger and I’m dry running it on the right day of the weekend. I’m glad I took the precaution.

We started in Primrose Hill, having a little constitutional walk before breakfast. Then to Stables Market before it gets crazy – through the secret entrance. Then to a vegetarian breakfast place, My Village, which I love and which opens at 10:30. According to the website. But it’s closed when we get there at 10:40. It’s a beautiful morning. Brian and I are, as a result of my stubbornness, still waiting outside at 11:10 drinking someone else’s coffee when the owner shows up. He lets himself in without acknowledging us beyond a “hello” and emerges twenty minutes later. I collar him. “It’s staffing issues”, apparently. “It always happens on weekends.” “Do you think it’ll still be happening in two weeks.” “Yes. Yes I do. It always happens.” Brian gets a bus home without breakfast. Sorry brother. I go to my plan B breakfast – Heaven, where Inspiral used to be. The kitchen ain’t as good and I’m alone now. I have an acceptable breakfast. After that I check My Village and it’s still not open at 12:15 although the guy is very cheerfully there now telling me it’ll be open at half past. I go to Hampstead on the tube rethinking.

I revisit and consider much beauty in Hampstead. There’s one “secret” place that is now strangely crowded with Instagrauds who are so busy documenting false lives they aren’t experiencing real ones. It must’ve cropped up on a “top ten secret places” list. Bugger. Anyway it’s on the way to The Spaniard for lunch, which I love despite the prices but which has never been a place I associated with vegetarian food or food in general. Haunted, yes. Beautiful, yes. But I was told by a self styled fussy vegetarian on my Facebook that it’s good for veggies. It’s not. She must be very forgiving. I can’t recommend that shit to anyone. They have the lipservice single option per course and the main is a mushroom tart that actively reminded me of school dinner. And the rest of the food is Wetherspoonsish at thrice the price  Ugh.

Wiping it from my beard I went to a place close by that I also love and watched all the happy people eating glorious food surrounded by natural beauty and knew how to rejig things. I’m going to start her day with breakfast there I think. It’s beautiful. And reliable. And after it can be a gradual crawl south.

Anyway, now I’m chilling with Mel. Next Saturday I’m going to give a written itinerary for the whole day to a willing victim, and see how they cope and what they think. Then I can tweak and sort before I finally send it to the client. I’ll probably do a spot of geocaching for it too and hide some nice things that have no value for her to find. Yeah I don’t need to go to such lengths. But I enjoy it. I don’t like doing things by halves and I’m a massive geek.

Then, because I was considering Highgate Cemetery, Mel and I broke in after hours. It’s too far for me to put it on the list for the client, but we immediately found Karl Marx’s extremely ostentatious grave. Surely he is revolving inside that massive temple to MARX. He’ll be spinning like a drill bit. Way to undermine him, to make a huge shrine. A very understanding security guard walked us out after catching us, and on the way out I was distracted by the number “42” on a stone.

Douglas Adams. My first and strongest writing influence. I didn’t know he was there. Done with notes, I left my pen with him during my eviction, and even got a photo. So long. And thanks for all the fish.

I’m watching Brian play Fallout 4 on the PlayStation. It’s a fantasy game set in a universe where the world got nuked during a dysfunctional alternative robotic 1950’s. It’s a world where Nuclear Bunkers were a luxury item, and the soft communies that have been sheltered in them for hundreds of years are emerging to see what has been happening in the hardened ruins of the world above.

They frequently use The Inkspots as their soundtrack so I just put them on. “Into each life some rain must fall,” they sing as Brian shoots radioactive zombies in the head with a two-shot western revolver. It’s strange how we escape on a Friday night into these worlds where everything is trying to kill us. I suppose we can become terribly powerful in these games. They trigger our reward mechanisms.

This means of entertainment has been created in my lifetime, and it has become very involved since “Breakout” “Adventure”, “Air Sea Battle” “Thrust” “Repton” etc. A multi million pound industry now and you can spend your life playing these games, and make your living designing or now even voicing them. There are still tremendous voiceover cockups. I heard an actor tell me that a defeated army had been “routed” to rhyme with “booted” in a multimillion pound release only a few years ago at Christmas. I can play a bit when I’m in consistent employment. Mostly these tricky days I don’t play them, sadly. They aren’t a place for the hungry. So it’s nice to watch Brian shooting a “Super Mutant Skirmisher” and remember how as a teenager I could wake up in the morning, switch a screen on and not move until my eyes were almost bleeding at midnight. “Eye of the Beholder.” “Pools of Darkness.” “The Secret of Monkey Island.” “Betrayal at Krondor”. “Realms of the Haunted” where they used real actors and had incredibly hammy video sequences including one where you lose and the baddie destroys the world. Joyful stupid geeky storytelling, and coming out of the “there’ll never be any money in that shit” generation, it’s amazing to see how my best friend from school has gone from strength to strength designing them. The stories are so big now. Nobody has time to play them all in all their detail. You just have to stumble through. But the studios are vast now as well and the smart people are going back to making them in the attic.

The industry has gone from a couple of geeky kids in an attic to a multistorey building where every so often the less scrupulous studios announce they’re having “a crunch” which means that everyone that works there either gives up all their spare time or is ostracised from the group. So, more and more frequently, the working environments for the people who are making these escapist entertainment products are as horrible as the worlds that are being conceived by the people that work there.

Still there’s good work to be had in that industry. If I was more organised I could make use of my spare time in my home studio drawing up a good demo reel rather than invigilating exams like I have been today. In fact, what am I waiting for? I’ve got the equipment. That’s next week sorted. So long as I don’t get nuked.

Another double blog day today. I wrote one a few hours ago. But I have to write it in the live blog because I have no notepad app and no room on the phone from hell. Just now the whole thing just loaded up blank. So here we go again.

Remember the days when this was easy? “The technology. She no worky.” Those days will come again. I will force them to. Somehow.

I’m on the tube so I run the risk of losing it all again if I let my phone go to sleep, so I’ve just got to keep writing which I’m not too concerned about because I want to go to sleep now here right now on the tube. This writingness willmay stop that from happening.

Stuff happened today and that’s what this is supposed to be about, isn’t it, this writing thing blog thing thing.

People rehearsed in my flat while I waited on hold to energy companies trying to organise payment plans. I’m auditioning for a job in America soon and the last adventure I need is a county court ruling when/if it comes to magical visa-time at the new embassy that tinyhand hates so much.

They make you listen to the most offensive selection of inoffensive music, these megaliths, before you get to their human phone-being. I spoke to the humans though. And mostly the humans were understanding. So long as there’s money at the end of it for them I guess.

I think I’m in control of things now as far as possible. But damn I’m beginning to miss consistent or well paid proper employment (acting) financially and I’m very deeply aware that since I started this blog about a year and a half ago I also started the longest run I’ve ever had without it. It’s karma banking. That’s all. And the stuff I’m making in collaboration is ticking over. Generally it’s just an expression of the universal human aspiration. “I want more.” “You’ve got stuff.” “I want more.” “Look at that person. They have less than you and they’re fine.” “More.” “Run for office.”

I’ve got a photo about the rush hour because I went on the tube in the rush hour. It’s more relevant to the last lost blog than this one but you’re getting it. People jostling together, sharing diseases, shoving, tutting, and barely breathing.

Why was I on the tube in rush hour? Well I’m sick and I forgot that I had a Factory show in bloody damned Archway. I lucked out finally in casting in that I needed peace and I got it. I only had to cover Macduff’s son and Menteith so I could sit out a lot and just play when needed. Normally I’d be frustrated but it was just what the doctor would’ve ordered if I’d had the sense to go to the doctor.

Now I’m still standing, walking in fact, back through the mercifully mild evening to Sloane Square, feeling like death. Tomorrow, of course, I’m dayjobbing. Oh the delight of an early start. It better not be raining in the morning.

All of the team at Al’s blog want you to be happy. You matter to us, personally, as direct individuals. We are the blog that cares. About you. Personally. You. Yeah you. With the face.

So with the rainy days of summer fast approaching, how will you get by on just one blog per day? We understand your fear because we can look into your soul. We even know what you did that day.

Despite that – (or because of it?) – we have chosen to share how it all works. After this short course you will be able to write your own Al blogs as the darkness of summer falls, so if you need an extra one you can just write it yourself.

1: “The technology. She no worky.” Identify an item of technology. Ideally an unnecessary luxury item. A dishwasher, mobile phone, boiler, furby, computer programme etc. Specify how important it is for you and how something normal is impossible to do without it. “I can’t leave the house if the furby isn’t working. It’ll scare the cat.” Now specify something about it that isn’t quite right but is easy to fix. “Needs a new battery.” Now complain about it a bit. Imply that you could’ve fixed it but you spent the money on booze or eggs or socks. Make jokes in an attempt to win people’s loyalty and try to get them to forgive the fact you just haven’t fixed the damn thing. Try to distract them from the truth, which is that you’re putting obstacles in your own way out of masochistic habit. Then throw your arms up in resignation and say “Well, it’s the life I’ve chosen.” Never ever fix it. Eventually replace it. Pretend like you’re a martyr.

2: “It’s all futile. Life is a spiral towards inevitable death. Look at the shiny thing! There are other dimensions.” This one is easy. Start with something irrefutable but hugely dark about the human condition. Then find something beautiful about the darkness. Then get all mystic and say things designed to needle orthodox thinkers. End with a maxim of your own invention. It doesn’t have to be good. If they’ve got that far they’re sold anyway. “A teddy bear might be full of nothing but fluff, but who’s to say that fluff can’t store, hold and return love just as it can with warmth?” Tick. Have a beer.

3: “Look mummy look, I’m acting I’m acting!” This is the one that costs in car insurance premiums. Talk about how you’ve been eaten by your own stubborn choices as if you’re bound upon a wheel of fire. Get weird and technical about some detail and use jargon. “This space can support great intimacy if you bust yourself for pushing and keep driving for the target despite the devil.” Try to alienate everyone who isn’t an actor. Try to annoy everyone who is. Sign off with something mawkishly sincere so nobody can attack you. “God I’ve never felt more complete than I did as I was licking flour off the blackboard dressed as a goblin. Somewhere to my left, I saw a tear trickling down an old man’s cheek. Or was it just rheum? Who cares. I was happy. Tickety-boo.”

4: “I’m on holiday and I’m punching this terrorist.” Go somewhere dangerous and do the worst possible thing can do in the circumstances. Get away with it. Write it in the present tense as if you’re just … inevitably happening to the world.

So there you are. Now you know the secrets.

Occasionally you can mix themes. “Look mummy look I fixed the technology.” “I’m on holiday and it’s all futile.” Keep on doing it until you punch the wrong terrorist and wind up in hospital. Then write one perfect piece about the shreds of the NHS. Fail to click publish. Leave on a gurney. No worries though – there are other dimen

You might have gathered that I’m not a creature of habit. I’m closer to a creature of havok. But every year for about a decade I’ve had the same diary. Wildlife photographer of the year. I love the pictures.

Today I think I tried to take it with me in my pocket when I went out to work with the kids for my volunteer after school club with Scene and Heard. I just spent the last hour ransacking my flat in search of the thing to no avail. I think I put it into the big pocket of my ski jacket and it fell out on the tube without my noticing. Either way it’s surely lost.

It highlights an operational problem with my existence. I genuinely don’t know what I’m doing tomorrow, ever, until about 10pm when I consult the oracle. That’s how it’s been for years, obviously with alarm bells installed in my head for times when I have to get planes etc. I don’t miss vehicles. That’s all rooted into what I consider to be my professionalism. I always know if there’s something coming related to the acting because acting > everything, sadly, and so it must continue until the shift (when when?) I have no pension. I can’t relax unless I know that if my body fails they’ll get me in to the occasional telly sitting in a chair. I’m not there yet.

Thankfully my occasional dayjobs, despite deliberately being jobs I can’t live off, have an email chain, and my short term memory can hold a fair amount. So I think I know where I have to be at 9 tomorrow, and I think I know what’s happening for the rest of the week. But after that I’ll have to dig around the email chains which isn’t easy with catastrophe phone and broken iPad and so forth. If it’s a social engagement you’ll definitely have to remind me.

The loss of my diary has caused a big lump in my throat though. It’s terribly important to the way things operate for me. I can’t hold all the organisational stuff in my head. Just this morning I was asked “What would you say to someone who is considering embarking on a peripatetic existence like yours?” My response was “Are you completely fucking insane?” I meant it.

I’m lucky not to be driven by other people’s targets – only by my own. I’m lucky to know that hierarchy is bullshit. I’m lucky to be able to see outside of the reward mechanisms that keep people eating shit until they die.

But I’m not lucky that after digging around fruitlessly for ages for the concrete extension of my memory, my arsehole phone crashed forcing me to rejig the whole pile of words I’d spewed into it and now it’s past midnight and I’ve still got fifteen words to write despite having written this whole mess twice and I’ll have to try and take a photo of last year’s diary with this bastard awful phone and then watch as it repeatedly crashes on the upload.

The very fact that you’re reading this is testament to human stubbornness…

Go out to the New Cross Road, my child. Near to the college of the goldsmiths. Seek deep, between kebab shops and charity shops, past the William Hill where men still go to look unhappy and lose what little they have left in the desperate quest for what they had when they started. The rain is falling, my child. Don’t slip. The buses drive wild here. The cars drive wilder. Be smart. It is there if you look. Nestled among the many train stations.

Look in the windows. Not where the man in sandals digs in the sofa for change. Not that window. Go to the east. Further. Past the angry family. Yes, my child, do you see it now? Do you see it reflecting, glinting, glowing, flowing? That is where you must go, my little one. Through the door at the sign of the Prangsta. Tinkle the bell. Tinklytink. Go in. In, and swiftly. Speak to the creatures within. There you will find the transformation you seek.

The floors are varnished wood. Hanging on the walls are feather headdresses, antlered masks, Valkyrie wigs, the helmets of gods, the wings of angels. If you cross their palm with silver they will make you fabulous.

I went there today, my beloved. They dressed me in hose and a shirt of great beauty. And also a pink crinoline, a bustle, voluminous skirts and a necklace to die for. A hat with a feather. A fine silken mantle. They offered a wig of fine ginger hair but I knew it was too much, too much, too much. I have now a fine transformation awaiting. I need to get lashes. And maybe some make-up. But I’m a happy bunny, my beauty. Oh yes.

Meanwhile the creatures of Prangsta sew and sew. They make clothes from the things we throw away. They make them rich and bright and strange, like you, my beloved, like you. They also know that they provide things of beauty, and price themselves accordingly. As we all must remember to do.

I have worked at events where all the waiters are dressed from there, and they look beautiful, powerful, woodland, strong and mysterious. Their work steps the whole event up a peg or two. They are the ultimate hipster costume service. But they are good creative people doing it for love, and they’ve got it all so right. I’m thrilled with my costume. Last time they made me a bondage Henry VIII. This time I’m steampunk drag Thisbe. And it’s great. And that was my day. Dayjob morning. A magical journey to New Cross in the afternoon. And then returning home to THAT email. Two jobs. Same company. Both drowned. They keep getting me in. They keep not using me. It’s getting so frustrating, and it’s punctured a hole in my hopes for the summer. I was buoyed up on my lovely costume fitting but then I got blindsided by a very lovely email with precisely 0 bananas.

So rather than prowl round my flat spitting the word “idiots” with clockwork regularity every five minutes, I went for a half price rump steak that I can’t really afford, accompanied by Brian and Mel. Now I’m home with the cat, and the firm resolution that I will find something to do in that period that will make me say “Thank God that gig fell through.”

Anyway, until tomorrow, my little pumpkins. Until tomorrow…