Author: albarclay

It’s ten past four. I’m lying on my back on a bench in one of the many shit parks in London. People are walking past in all directions without really paying attention. Lots of them are plugged in to music. A man with a trolley is repeatedly shouting “Rasta Dog!” at a poodle while the owners politely giggle in the hopes he’ll go away. Another man lies on the floor, holding his hand out to indifferent pigeons. There is nothing in his hand. He seems sad. Earlier he was banging an empty beer can against the wall. Occasionally he sneezes, and all the pigeons startle for a moment, take flight, and settle again. He’s only about 15 foot away from me but we are in completely different worlds.

The sun is shining, and in my patch of light I feel warm. I’m willing to believe that the worst of the season is past now. I have the warmth on my face, and occasionally I stare at the sun with eyes closed and feel the light come into my breath.

Soon we we’ll be able to leave the house without coats. The heads of the daffodils are poking up, hesitant lest it snows again, but wanting their time in the light. The pigeons are gearing up for that month where the men all get drunk-bus-stop-weirdo and follow the women around for hours without understanding they aren’t welcome.

Today is my weekend. I’ve cemented a new skill in seven days. Basically I’ve been on a Tarot bootcamp. I didn’t cross out my availability in tagmin – my agent’s software – so I was just relying on providence not to provide auditions at inconvenient times. There were no auditions, but now the engine of Macbeth is stoking hard at The Factory and I have a strong sense we will suddenly do a show very soon.

Right now I don’t have to think about that. I can soak up the last rays of the sun. Maybe I’ll get a can of beer as well, like my sad neighbour.

These shit parks get a lot of use. A guy in a Prius just pulled up on the kerb with his hazards on, emptied a bag of rice into the flock of pigeons, and got straight back into the Prius and drove away. Almost immediately a small boy in red went running at the knot of feeding birds, laughing with wonder at his ability to directly affect the world as they leapt out of his flailing path. The mother held a pushchair on the path and laughed as well. She dropped a wrapper as she laughed, unthinking.

Come to think of it, the whole park is strewn with wrappers, labels, bottle tops, fag butts, plastic forks, stirrers, food containers, bottles. This will be our archaeological legacy. “Come on,” the mother shouts. “Do you want to go get a Macdonald’s?”

This park is no bigger than a football pitch, and at this time on a weekday there are 22 people I can see, with no group larger than 2. How many people there must be in this city, all with their own stories, all with their own needs, all wanting a slice of the pie, all thoughtlessly discarding tiny bits of crap that will lie here long after they are dust…

The breeze is picking up now, and the sun is falling behind Cubana bar. I’m going to the theatre tonight. I think I’ll get a coffee before it starts. Or a beer. Or both. But not a Macdonald’s.

I woke up this morning on Carnaby Street. Right at the heart of London. In a caravan. Last night was surprisingly calm considering what I was expecting. The caravan hadn’t been there for long enough to be have become an unwanted thing in the very active community of homeless people that circulate that area. We’d largely made friends with the guys whose sleeping patch we were on. One of them got a reading yesterday. Another was too superstitious so he just had a Werther’s Original and encountered someone who treated him like a human being for a while.

People occasionally get worried about “JuJu”. We are such a superstitious species. I can understand why they did, to an extent. We both get theatre, Mel and I.  So we are both consciously wearing clothes that make us look unusual. Plus the caravan looks weird too. Plus what the hell is a caravan doing in Carnaby Street? JuJu!

I’ve been dressed in my green ringmaster coat and, for some reason I don’t fully understand, my grandfather’s bowler hat. I’m the front man in this operation. Familiar, but wrong era perhaps. Mel is all curtains shawls and veils and New Orleans and secrets, and you have to go through the caravan to get to her, so while she does secret readings for the shy, I’m doing performance tarot in the front for the extroverts.

As it happens Mel and I both have many years experience with other forms of Tarot, but that was a pure coincidence when we were booked for the job. The gig was just to work with these particular cards called “The Grandmother’s Tarot”, and get people to see them, connect with them and appreciate the artistry therein. Had I not already known Tarot I’d have felt a fraud doing that. I’d have gone in with both feet. But there have been lots of women who know it very well, and I’ve read for them. And thankfully it has been lovely.

People crave answers, and answers that come from somewhere outside of a mobile phone. This piece of art has made people drop their technology for a moment in a busy place, and made them think about their grandmothers. “What does grandmother want to teach you?”

My grandmother, Peggy, used to read fortunes too in her way. She had one of those plastic fish that respond to heat in the palm of your hand. It went with her wherever she went, and it would always come out after dinner. But mostly it would just tell us we were fickle.

I like to think they Peggy would appreciate what I’ve been doing. She really knew her way around stories. Her freedom within stories taught me to improvise, and her instinct helped me understand structure. She knew how to make it all about the person she was with. And she lived dreams, myths and symbols. I miss her. But that’s enough for me to know that Alice’s art is doing what it’s supposed to do. God bless peggy. I’m too tired and far gone for a photo right now. Zzz

I’m at the top of Carnaby Street, just outside Liberty, in a caravan. This month in 1912 the suffragettes smashed the windows of the shop right near my bed. It’s busy here. Very busy. Constant movement and constant talk outside. It’s 23:30pm. Everyone is milling around. It’s cold outside and the walls of this caravan are freezing. It feels as if there are people right by my head. I can hear their questions as if they were addressed to me. “Where are you? Where are you? Where?” says a man into his mobile less than a foot from my head. I have no idea how or if I’m going to sleep, but camping in Carnaby Street will be an experience very few have had. Maybe no sleep will add to it.

What a weird day today. I had loads of people who had the Queen of Hearts in their spread and then it transpired that there was some sort of conference of “social media influencers” nearby. There were some lovely readings for them, but I wouldn’t let them film. It’s worth noting that the only people this week who have told us their business unprompted are these “influencers.” Perhaps because that’s their job. If I was selling something I’d have been all over this. But I don’t carry a Mystic-al card. Because much as I enjoy this madness it’s not my stopping place. It’s just part of my journey.

I am always suspicious of people that tell me that they are influencers. Surely that’s not the point. You influence by your actions, not by your attitude towards yourself. That’s certainly my feeling. A very dear friend of mine used to introduce himself by saying “I’m kind of a big deal.” It was a joke. Since then he’s gathered momentum in his industry. Now he doesn’t do it, because the whole joke was that people who say they’re a big deal aren’t one.

For a while I was in a world of numbers though. “I have X thousand followers,” says a lovely human, unprompted, around the reading. “My job is to make people uncomfortable.”

The strange truth is that I would love to have all these thousands of followers because in this current environment “followers” can lead to work (bums on seats > talent). I love to ply my trade as an actor more than anything, so influence might help me do it more consistently. Anything that helps me to take all that I’ve learnt doing these beautiful human community-bound jobs and put my knowledge out wider – that would be welcome now. I can’t spend the rest of my life reading tarot in a caravan, even if it’s in one of the busiest intersections in this crazy metropolis.

I’ll be using the money from this gig to sort out my headshots, and to take a bit of time over my showreel rather than getting swept up in the constant madness of the next gig, the next change, the next chance.

It’s hard not to get swept up in stories after a week of this. Life is arbitrary. But if you make your life a story you have the illusion of power within it. I think I need to tell myself a story that empowers me, like I’ve done for so many people these last few days.

It’s raining, and I’m lying on my back in a little caravan outside the Tate Modern. It’s a beautiful thing this caravan. Alice, the artist, worked hard to make it look right. After a few days I wish she’d worked as hard to make it comfortable. My bum hurts from sitting on this pretend cushion. I’m not used to just sitting down for ages like that either. How the hell does such a huge percentage of the workforce manage this sedentary life? No wonder they charge so much for yoga. My back is killing me and its been less than a week and I’m enjoying myself and not surrounded by people I hate.

I’ll be sleeping in the caravan on Tuesday night, at the top of Carnaby Street outside Liberty’s. Something about the security. We have to be in it to prevent people squatting. I think I might freeze to death overnight. I’ll have to bring a warm sleeping bag. And a pig to cuddle. I can’t really bring Pickle.

Today was lots of little, simple, pleasant interactions. People love to hear stories about themselves. It’s tiring though, telling them. You have to meet and read people, switch on all your intuition, and tell them a story about themselves the outcome and journey of which they get intensely connected to. You have to do it without getting cluttered by your own stuff. It’s offering guidance by improvising myth – another aspect of this need we all have for story. The tarot deck carries so many threads of the monomyth. These universal stories of rebirth and crossroads, forbidden desires and opportunity and action – we all connect to them so deeply and understand them instinctively. The cards are just prisms for thinking, and a distraction from the fact that in  truth it’s just bearded stranger intuiting general life advice and giving hope. The cards are partly just a prop to lend the story weight, and partly prompts. Outside of my curiosity and my love of symbols, fables, ancient stories and convergence, it’s important to remember to take care of the person you’re reading for. The reading can affect their thinking and their actions. I’ve read the cards for years for my friends or for myself, but I’ve never done it on such scale. After the next two days I’ll definitely have read into the hundreds. The days go by fast because I’m forgetting about my own shit as I key into person after person. I’m also forgetting to eat though, and I spent most of today with a splitting headache after drinking water work on an empty stomach.

Over the day there were some remarkable synchronicities. Lovers getting each other’s cards in the spread. Families getting the same big outcome card for each member. A 13 year old boy with his mum who opened his reading with Forbidden Fruit crossed by The Mother and went bright red while his mum burst into cackles. It’s an unexpectedly lovely way to spend a few days. I want to speak to the artist and see if the project can have a life outside of this week. It’d be lovely to do this at festivals.

Here’s a shot out the window taken with my shonky new phone. I wouldn’t mind living here…

I dropped my phone again. Oddly every time I go to Catford with that phone I drop it, and every time I drop it I break the screen utterly. For the second time I’ve ended up buying a random brick in order to tide me over until I can afford to replace the screen. The first time it took me over 8 months before I could afford the £100 on a luxury screen fix, but thankfully my friend James stood me his spare on that occasion. This time, the two year contract that the nasty venal little shit at Vodafone bamboozled me into signing for one of the worst handsets in the history of the world is finally over in June.

I’m paying close to 40 quid a month for an HTC A9. It’s a terrible handset, designed to screensmash, and it has a huge fingerprint sensor (that I refuse to use) which is its only feature. I have no idea how I was so naive as to let the smiling damnéd villain in the shop persuade me that my monthly payment is even close to viable for that disposable piece of crap, especially considering I’ve been with Vodafone since they acquired cellnet so over 20 years without changing network. And I know that I would never have knowingly signed a two year contract. Someone is screwing me over here. My renewal date is, finally, in June. Someone fucked with me. Once again I understand too late the need for vigilance. Not everybody is kind.

And here am I thinking of going back to Vodafone as if it’s the only option, despite a catastrophically awful history with them, and my absolute certain knowledge that their customer service comprises of lovely pleasant bubbly helpless individuals in Alexandria who need to make sure they get 5 stars from the inevitable follow-up text, but who are given no information, no power, no help and no control. If they “escalate”, it’s pantomime and they’re just getting their mate to put on an important voice. Everyone is reading down a checklist and if your problem is not on the list then it’s not a real problem and they won’t send you to someone who can genuinely help. I give positive stars out of pity when I interact with them because it’s clear they’re in a sweatshop and desperate for the affirmation that might mean the difference between lunch and no lunch. They’re probably paid next to nothing. I try to be kind. But God, my history with Vodafone customer service – Tolstoy could write a book based on just the contents of the notes on my account. It got to the stage where I had to wait five minutes for the advisor to read enough of my history. Then they’d come back to me with nothing.

Vodafone, for me, are an unmitigated customer service disaster, and yet I keep coming back, like a battered husband. It’s because I know it’s worked in the past. I know I get service in my flat.

A dear friend of mine has been in love with a bully for years. I’m constantly advising her “he’ll never change. He’s too wrapped up in himself.” She has been constantly showing him her belly, believing she can teach kindness by example. Can a leopard change its spots? I don’t think so. But she never learnt. And nor have I. I’m I’m still with Vodafone.

And here’s me, reading Tarot, using stories to help people keep away from danger, whilst tithing my life blood monthly in order to feed a indifferent red monster. If only mobile phones hadn’t become so central to how we go about our business. I’m even writing this on the new brick. Which is taking a lot longer than it would otherwise and means I’m just going to let this ranty post slide, even if I’d normally think better of it and edit. Sod that. It’s past 1 and I’m working tomorrow. Random photo of the top hat I just found on my pillow. Then sleep, mumbling about naughty Vodafone.

If you’re near the South Bank Sunday or Monday, do come and visit me in the caravan. Or Carnaby Street Tuesday and Wednesday. We are directly outside the Tate Modern for now, 12 – 7. It’s really odd, being there in a peaceful caravan with all those people around. Mel and I organised for a sign to go outside telling passersby what we are doing and why, as it didn’t feel right to bark “Ladies and gentlemen, this is an art installation. We aren’t selling anything. It’s free. We’re playing cards and reading tarot.” Much as barking is second nature – (God I’ve done plenty of that over the years, sometimes until I was ragged) – it’s not right for this gig. This is a peaceful gig.

This is free contemplative art plus a free tarot or a game of cards (most people want the tarot). It’s a moment of engagement and structured thought and togetherness, with no cost but time. Very little in this town comes at no cost. In the context of the South Bank and this necessarily venal city we needed that word “free” written down out the front to derail constant shy conversations about price and give us space to work.

I’m glad it’s the two of us on this job. We’ve made so many strange things over the years, blurring the ground between real and imaginary. We like to play in the territory between the physical and the fanciful. We make “immersive” work in the real world and have done since it was the bête-noir to give the audience agency and everyone tried to tell us it would never catch on and we were wasting our time (even though this wave is not the first wave at all. Augusto Boal, Joan Littlewood etc etc). Right now though people shove the word “immersive” on the press release for a fourth wall show where some guy burns a bit of incense, one unhappy audience member holds a sign without knowing why, and some of the terrified actors occasionally look at you with dead eyes and shout a question in a voice that isn’t asking anything at all, before continuing, oblivious to your answer.

“Immersive” on a press release is getting to be a bit like “tangy” on crisps. You can charge a bit more for the crisps if you call them “tangy”. The right adjectives add value. “Immersive” for many people selling shows is equally vague but has some sense of tangy added value. 

I’ve immersed in shows many times but I’ve also seen things called “immersive” that are just trad fourth wall shows where the audience sits in a kitchen and that’s that.

Anyway, axe-grinding aside, Mel was an actor before she retrained as a director. She reads Tarot fluently and is great at reading people. I was asked to do this as an acting/facilitating job and I got her onboard as the right partner. The job involves – simply – to engage the people that come to the caravan with the beautiful deck that Alice has made. It’s a playing card/tarot deck. The last two days I’ve been doing loads of tarot readings. I couldn’t honour the artist and her beautiful work if I chose to do them in some sort of grandmother character. It would blur my connection with the person I was reading, and make it more about my choices than her art. By keeping it clean people can see the cards clearer. And they’re worth seeing.

Come play. Come be immersed in a tangy caravan of grandmaternal warmth, with your bonkers beardy Al pal.

After work today I went with a friend to her home. She’s lived there for as long as I’ve known her – over ten years now. She is an extremely talented intelligent and attractive human being. She has a lot of love to give, and also the inherited fear of being alone that plagues many of my friends and forces them into toxic relationships. I have been her friend for long enough to know that even if I respect her judgement in every other matter, she’s magnetically drawn to men who will hurt her. I often see this tendency in my friends. Perhaps it’s why I don’t often engage with the game of it myself despite sometimes missing that level of companionship. I see too many people pouring themselves into cracked pots. I neither want to be a cracked pot, nor to fruitlessly seek to fix someone else’s. 

Brian said something recently about one of my mates: “That one isn’t just Al-weird. That one’s weird weird.” Brian understands that there’s a basic level of odd running through the people in my life and was warning me that there might have been more to one particular friend (not the one from tonight). I think he was right in that instance, even if I still don’t like that he felt that. I tend to just accept whoever you are, and deal with you now one on one. It can get me into trouble sometimes, and I am learning the hard way not to be too trusting, but many of my most satisfactory friendships are with people who are – objectively – unusual, and who have been extremely hard work at times.

This particular friend from tonight has the supernatural power of excluding all positive things she hears about herself no matter what the source, and focusing, magnifying and dwelling on the negative things. It has made for a hard friendship sometimes, and a circular one at others. But we usually have fun together. My job as a friend is not to fix her and it’s only if I try that it gets frustrating. My job is to talk about fun things, and derail the circular negatives as best I can with my usual brand of naive immediacy.

I went with her to her home because she has just got back from three months away and was worried that the asshat she still loves and who has done nothing but bully and attack her for literally years might have destroyed all her possessions out of spite while she’s been away. I’d been advising her to kick him out before she left but she couldn’t bring herself to. Too damn kind. I get that. Hearing her expectations I was going to walk into a flat with “Lying old crone” daubed on the wall in faeces, dead animals and shredded letters all over the floor, and all the pillows burned. “Nobody would be so petty” I said, but he’s pretty damn petty this guy to be frank. He’s a nasty entitled little bully. It wasn’t as bad as she thought thankfully, but she was still deeply upset at the shared things he took. Their snake was still there, though, alive and well, and she picked it up with relief and care. “It’s crazy that you can give so much love to a snake,” I said, but she didn’t get the inference. Or she chose to ignore it.

A Cherokee Legend

A little boy was walking down a path and he came across a rattlesnake. The rattlesnake was getting old. He asked, “Please little boy, can you take me to the top of the mountain? I hope to see the sunset one last time before I die.” The little boy answered “No Mr. Rattlesnake. If I pick you up, you’ll bite me and I’ll die.” The rattlesnake said, “No, I promise. I won’t bite you. Just please take me up to the mountain.” The little boy thought about it and finally picked up that rattlesnake and took it close to his chest and carried it up to the top of the mountain.

They sat there and watched the sunset together. It was so beautiful. Then after sunset the rattlesnake turned to the little boy and asked, “Can I go home now? I am tired, and I am old.” The little boy picked up the rattlesnake and again took it to his chest and held it tightly and safely. He came all the way down the mountain holding the snake carefully and took it to his home to give him some food and a place to sleep. The next day the rattlesnake turned to the boy and asked, “Please little boy, will you take me back to my home now? It is time for me to leave this world, and I would like to be at my home now.”

The little boy felt safe now, and carefully picked up the snake, took it close to his chest, and carried him back to the woods, to his home to die. Just before he laid the rattlesnake down, the rattlesnake turned and bit him in the chest. The little boy cried out and threw the snake upon the ground. “Mr. Snake, why did you do that? Now I will surely die!” The rattlesnake looked up at him: “You knew what I was when you picked me up.”

Unlike International ‘Still Get’s Confused About Apostrophes’ Day, International I Once Saw A Woodpecker In A Birdfeeder Day and Interational You Put Diesel In A Petrol Engine You Muppet Day, I’m willing to get behind International Women’s Day even if it can be accused of being insulting to women. Every day is a day for something these days, and the way that the internet has made things it’s usually axe grinding or trying to make us buy stuff. Equality is an axe I’m happy to grind. It goes without saying that there are more than 365 axes to grind and also more than 365 niche products competing for market share. So today is also Proofreading Day and Peanut Cluster Day, apparently. Peanut Cluster Day??!? Proofreading day will be just another opportunity for joyless pedants who think that living languages should be governed by standardiszsxed rules. Every day is proofreading day in the post-Truss era. Git thersel offen das highherse. Linguage shud breethe. And peanut clusters? A day. For peanut clusters? Bollocks. What even are they? But women? I’ve met a few of them over the years, believe it or not. None of them have eaten me yet.

As far as I define the word feminist, I’m a feminist. We all understand our own language better than other people’s though, and feminism is another tag that shifts its meaning. There will be people who call themselves feminists who will give me reasons why I cannot be one, such as my presented gender. I’ve heard that before. “You’re a man. Men can’t be feminists.” Although conversely there are people who’ll tell me I am militant because I don’t think women should be… I dunno … boiled in vats – chained to the stove? Or because I’ll look at people like they just farted if they trot out the old “Why isn’t there an International Men’s Day?” – (Bless you. There is. Of course there is. It’s the 19th November for men. Make a peanut cluster in the shape of your or your friend’s penis. A penis cluster! And then…) We can only go by our own yardstick (ooer vicar). I call myself a feminist, so I am one by my definition. And I appreciate that so long as there’s a gender pay gap and so long as there are fewer women than there are people with the names David and John in top board rooms across the UK, we need to keep making noises.

So … I’m glad to start work today on an art project called “Playing Cards with my Grandmother.” I’ll be working with the artist Alice Instone. She has designed a pack of cards and a caravan for us to inhabit. As far as I understand we’ll be in high footfall areas, encouraging people to join us for a game of cards and to talk about their grandmothers. Today and Friday we’re in Canary Wharf, in Reuters’ Plaza, directly beneath the Reuters building. Saturday Sunday and Monday we’ll be on Bankside outside the Tate Modern, and Tuesday and Wednesday we’ll be on Carnaby Street.

I’m heading in to meet the artist now, and I’ll be working from 12 – 7 for the next week – so come stick your head in. I get the sense it’ll be a pleasant and calm little moment in a crazy place. It’s me and a dear old friend and collaborator. Both of us love games, both of us make lots of immersive theatre, and both of us read tarot. We won’t be in character. We’ll just be in caravan. And we likely will be craving coffee and familiar faces.

We don’t need much to be comfortable. It’s worth remembering that. There’s so much encouragement thrown at us to seek more and more and more. I am coming to the conclusion that the only really good reason to accumulate wealth is against bad health or to help others. The likes of Prince Philip and Rupert Murdoch are using it to keep themselves alive. Money is no object for them or they’d both probably be out by now. They are ekeing out their existences, sustained by the blood of virgins or the hidden cure for cancer, or injections of liquid money or just not having to constantly worry about where food is coming from. I wish they were doing more to help redistribute wealth, but they probably labour under the assumption that they deserve what they have and that everybody else is somehow less valid. That’s a hardwired upbringing fault in many people. It takes a lot of overcoming.

All of that aside, I’ve been living out of a rucksack for a few weeks and I’ve been fine. Admittedly the generosity of friends has sustained me hugely in Manchester – first Charlotte and then Robin and Amy. I couldn’t easily pay my way but I will repay their generosity when I’m able. I took a badly paid job (which still hasn’t shelled out) and I let someone stay in my room for free. It was a delight to do both, and a blessing for me and my friend, but I probably should have done the maths. As usual I chased the joy.

Now I’m back home surrounded by my stuff again and I’m glad to be here. But I’m very conscious of being crowded in by past memories – by objects and clothing that I associate with early prototypes of me – by things that were valuable to my parents but not to me at all. I am finally understanding that the next logical step in what I consider to be my evolutionary process is to move from this flat. I’ve been told that countless times. It’s starting to hit home. Then I could perhaps have the money to pay for any medical shit when I start crumbling, or for dating attractive people who might expect things to be paid for, or even for maintaining horrible little screaming shitmachines that grow up hating us. Or for friends in need.

Meantime – I made a bit of cash today interviewing someone. Enough to keep me liquid, just. She’s a Russian technology saleswoman, and one of the most highly qualified human beings I’ve ever met. Her CV – although it needs trimming – is a hymn to her summa cum laude education in St Petersburg and London, and her incredible unstoppable work ethic. She’s personable, smart and brave. She’s working with a friend of mine who helps business people reach their full potential, and my friend realised it would help her confidence – which is a weak spot despite her qualifications – if she had a mock interview. So I sat in a beautiful office in Chancery Lane and interviewed her one on one.

In two years time she’ll have more money in the bank than I’ve ever seen but at least I’ve helped her overcome some blocks on the way to that. Sometimes I wonder what might have been if I’d taken everyone’s advice and gone chasing that dolla. But usually, in my strange cluttered creative bubble, I feel pretty happy. And I still believe that I’m only one meeting away from great change. So long as I don’t get expensive-sick in the meantime, I’m looking ahead.

Back in London and my first night was out at the theatre. I went to The Playhouse Theatre, to see The Best Man. It was Press night. The producer is Bill Kenwright, who has been a key player in British theatre for years now. All the major reviewers would’ve been there.

The play is a thoughtful debate about integrity in American politics. Gore Vidal could never have anticipated the shitstorm we have now, but he wrote a beautiful and thoughtful play back then though and there’s still resonance. It’s taken 58 years to get it to the West End, but I’m glad I got to see it – it was excellent. The actors are all really on point and working with discipline and specificity, and there were many lines and moments that were organised neatly to shine out and resonate through the decades. Simon Evans the director takes us through it really skillfully, and there is some serious coalface time in the company, including Martin Shaw, Maureen Lipman, Phil Cumbus, Honeysuckle Weeks and my lovely friend Emma to name but a few. It’s funny when it needs to be, thoughtful where it has to be and human and recognisable throughout.

After the show I ended up backstage while Emma got ready for the afterparty. A lovely old fellow came into the dressing room to congratulate her, and I gave him a companionable hug assuming he was one of the understudies. It was only when he stood up to make a speech later on that I realised I’d hugged the producer. I’m glad I mistook him for an understudy. I’ve heard Bill Kenwright described as an older version of Brian and I can see the comparison. He struck me as a kind direct and generous man. There was no status play in that dressing room hug. He merely hugged me back. Many people in that position might have been tempted to ask me who I was after the hug, in order to reinforce the notion that, in this context, he was “somebody.” This man didn’t have that problem. I like him for that. And his speech took care to make it clear he understood and respected the nuance of what his team did to bring the play to life – (while also, in the nicest possible way, nudging the reviewers towards what he might like them to have noticed.)

Well, I got a free meal which is a sure way to my heart. We all had a buffet and wine, as if we were at a wedding. A remarkable Press Night spread and I’m glad to see the stars landing in the reviews today.

I ended up in Groucho’s drinking one too many espresso martinis with some of the cast, and one of their parents – an ebullient, hammered and indiscreet man if ever there was one, but fun so long as he’s not your father. He was with “the commissioner of BBC 2,” or so he told me. (Most people are full of crap at Groucho) He must have had something though. At about 2.30am he blinked: “What are you doing tomorrow?” “Absolutely nothing,” I replied. “Otherwise I wouldn’t be here.” “Bastard.” he said. “I’ve got to go.”

But I was right. Absolutely nothing. That’s more or less how my day panned out today. I read. Played with Pickle. Sent some emails (ha ha work). And then went for a walk with a friend in the evening and cooked some Jerusalem artichokes. That’ll do…