Author: albarclay

“It’s a show car,” says Nessie. His Scottish accent is so strong I hear “short car.” A what car? “A show car,” he repeats with emphasis. “It’d be stupid to bring a real one to an event like this. First reason is weight. This is just a load of carbon fibres. There’s no engine. There’s no anything. Even the wheels. They’re the heaviest bit but they’re not polymerised like they would be on a working car. They’re just basic. They look the same but they’re no use – they’d burst. Second reason is damage. Someone gets drunk, tries to get in, damages a mirror – that’s only about 300 euro and quick to replace. They damage a real mirror on a model like this, first of all Ferrari have to go into the archive, that’s three months. Then they get back to you and it’s 3,000 euro.”

Nessie clearly speaks from experience. He and Stu are changing the show wheels on the show car in a concrete sun trap. I know his name isn’t Nessie, but clearly he enjoys being the Scotsman abroad as it’s how he introduces himself. “It’s because I’m hard to find.” Stu is ex army, and the butt of all his jokes. He immediately decides to call me “Big Al,” which I suppose makes sense as I’m, notionally, a trucker.

We are in the National Museum of Science and Industry. There’s a submarine through the window, and next to it a 1959 fighter jet. There is also a human cannonball cannon, which looks absolutely lethal. I’m fascinated and terrified by it. How do you shoot someone out of a cannon without breaking their legs? I never want to find out in practice. It must be a combination of technology and technique. The thing is covered in filth and what looks like it might be crusted dried blood from someone’s exploding kneecap.

My little area is in an aircraft hangar that has been meticulously cleaned and painted and evidently plays host to numerous conferences on this scale. Right now there are lots of people walking busily back and forth in Shell uniforms. Some of them are tweaking projections of oil drops on the walls. Others are interviewing people in corners with TV cameras. “How has Shell changed since you’ve worked for them?”

I did a show about the oil industry in Nigeria some years ago. Speaking to people as part of my research I came across the phrase “Shell build shells.” I was told that, in exchange for oil pipelines they promise to build schools. They do build them. But they don’t staff them. So they sit there empty. It’s a curious thing now to be employed by Shell after some of the things I’ve heard. I’m going to have to spend the money well. I recently refused to audition for an advert for The Sun. But protest as I might, clearly I’m a gun for hire right now. Roll on that gig that means I can be more choosy. I’m blissfully happy in this company though. These vast monoliths – they employ lots of lovely humans.

I’ll be up in a few minutes. “It gives me great comfort to know that Shell Rimula Heavy Duty Diesel Engine Oil is tested to the highest standards on vehicles like my truck.” Tough gig… Nessie has found out where the free food is and he’s making it his business to disseminate the information. You can take the man out of Scotland… I’m immediately fond of him. Ack here they come. Work time.

I now know a great deal more than I ever thought I’d know about viscosity and fuel efficiency. I have watched a man called Frank passionately expound the fine details of real world engine oil testing. You pick up some strange little nuggets of learning in this job. Tomorrow I might be standing on a Jeep in Como. Let’s see…

The hotel we are staying in is next to San Siro stadium. San Siro seats 80k people and is the home of both AC Milan and Milan Internationale. The two rival teams share it, which must be a strange arrangement in practice. The fact it’s there means that it’s mostly car parks in the local area. We were rehearsing this morning in one of them, in the blazing sunshine. I couldn’t go too far afield for food even though in the end I still don’t really know what I’m supposed to be doing tomorrow and they never got round to my bit. I ended up getting a hot dog from the generic American diner, which was the only place I could find. At least it was cheap, but my dream of beautiful bowls of spaghetti vongole, vast pizzas, entire dead horses – that has yet to be realised.

We are doing a job for Rimula. This Rimula job is logistically complicated but promises to be satisfying. Some people might feel that a Rimula job is beneath them, but I’m very happy to get stuck in. Rimula.

Rimula is a lubricant. It’s the new heavy duty engine oil from Shell. When products like this are launched there are large scale conferences and there’s frequently plenty of odd work to be had for performative people. Mostly in the past I’ve done this sort of thing for alcohol. I was a monkey gangster in London with free whisky, a leathery bar owner in Ijmuiden having to drink Sol in the scene halfway through a teetotal year, a newspaper vendor in Amsterdam with free Heineken, a weird sex party type guy in King’s Cross with free Courvoisier. Now I’m a trucker in Milan for engine oil. I’m less likely to be drinking the freebies. But the work is familiar. If I felt like it I could draw up an impressive looking CV for this sort of thing. The more I think about it the more I remember I’ve done. Perhaps I should pitch for it more. I love to travel for work and enjoy doing random things. When The Globe went to every country in the world for Hamlet – God I wanted an audition for that gig. I’ll have to try and instigate something like that again. Can’t think of anything I’d sooner be doing than Shakespeare and world travel combined.

Still, this is pretty good. I’m in a huge marbled hotel in the centre of town. There’s a beautiful jazz quartet noodling away in the room next door. In this room, three musicians are passing the time by jamming beautifully and playfully together. People keep bringing us free food and water. In fact a waiter just dropped a load of Montepulziano d’abruzzo on the table in front of me.

It doesn’t look bad but we have a small duty this evening. In about half an hour, we are going to come and stand by some doors and be courteous and charming to a whole load of people who really really care about engine oil. Then we’ll go off into Milan and find a bowl of spaghetti vongole, a pizza as big as the Ritz, and a dead horse.

All I can remember of the last time I was in Milan was walking far too long in the blazing sunshine swearing like a trooper because Vicky wanted to see the bloody cathedral, and then having my mind blown by that same cathedral and understanding why she wanted to see it. The Duomo. It’s stunning. I’ll be working right by it. Fuck yeah.

Right now I’m in a piazza with 14 theatre people, breaking the whole sober October thing because what happens in Milan stays in Milan unless you’re a fucking idiot and blog about it. But this blog wouldn’t be this blog if I didn’t compromise myself occasionally through honesty.

I’m lying on ancient stones in the ruins of what must have been a forum. Dogs are barking. People are singing, sharing claps, intermingling. Everyone is outside still – it’s end of summer weather. I remember from my time in Italy that the right way to drink is to get affordable booze and then hang out in the piazza. So I’m glad that’s how we are spending our first evening.

There is so much elegance here. The men and women move with poise and dress with care. There is action in people’s bodies and elegance in their mien. People move like cats. I’ve fallen in love with an Italian before many years ago. I’m remembering why now I’m back.

Today was nuts and bolts. We got up, flew, got on a train, didn’t eat, went to a hotel, tried on costume, worked out who we were sharing with, walked the route of the show, talked detail and finally decided far too quickly – because we were starving – to eat at a place that has twice as many 1 star reviews than five star on TripAdvisor. We didn’t check. Too hungry. Internet ratings are not gospel. But those numbers speak volumes, and it’s evidently worth checking. They saw us coming. We got stitched up. But that’s supposed to happen when large groups of British people are traveling. Essentially we ate at an Angus Steak House equivalent.

I’m sharing a room for the next few nights. As it happens, oh constant reader, I’m sharing with someone I met at the golf tournament from hell. Marco. I really didn’t expect to see him on this job. But that’s the joy of acting and the random associated jobs. You build a community, commit to it, then it disbands. Then you start again with a new one, but over time feathers of an old community show up in the wings of a new one, and you fly better. You have a shorthand. Marco and I lived in Pontins for a week. We both bonded on a grey beach overlooking mudflats and an oil rig. We slept in a gulag with cartoon monkeys on the walls.

I’ve been writing this post on the move, in between conversations and stopping to admire beautiful buildings. I’ve hacked it piecemeal into my phone over hours. I’m in this city again after all these years. We walked a long way, through streets broad and narrow. There’s plenty of age and beauty here. It’s alive, alive oh.

But now Marco is dead to the world about three foot from me. I’ll be close behind him. I’ve been waiting to hear his breathing change because I can’t guarantee I won’t snore and he says he can’t sleep at all if someone does. It’s changed, his breathing. He’s deep. I can dive down. I’m thrilled to be here in Milan. I still don’t know what I’m doing. I think it might involve standing on a Jeep. I’m not yet sure if said Jeep will be moving. If it is, great! Chances are it’ll be driven by a friend of mine, which helps. I’m up for that. My dad taught me how to stand on a moving car when i was something like 12.

I expect health and safety won’t allow that despite me being game. Hey ho. Whatever I end up doing, it’ll be fun. And I’m in Italy. I love this country.

Two nights running I’ve struggled get this out. Usually I just get loosely to the end of the day, shit out 500 words and roll over. Sometimes I get the bit between my teeth and run. Sometimes I munch a thought or neigh out a little story. And sometimes I meander aimlessly through fields of ideas until I fall asleep standing up from booze.

Now I’m taking a bit of time off that booze, so I’m thinking too much. Which always happens when I’m on my own and sober. I can’t shut my head up. Constant chatter.

So yesterday and today I wrote multiple drafts and then deleted them. Why? Because I didn’t like them. They were probably fine, but when I get like this I get very uncompromising with myself. Pickle makes a difference. She needs food or warmth or play and can pull me out of my head. But right now she’s asleep on my feet again. It’s past 1am. Whatever crap I come up with this time it’s final or I’ll never get to sleep. I’d better not admit that it was me that ate your goldfish.

Today I’ve been plying my trade, in that I went for an audition. But my attitude towards it has been, somehow, a little more serious than usual. It was just a commercial casting. Nothing to write home about. Although the buyout is astronomical, and I know I could play the part. I’m aware of the change in my circumstances such a job could bring. I’m ready for that change, and just as I’m able to intellectually feel happy for someone else getting that call I reckon it’s about time it was me again. I unashamedly want that job. Because I unashamedly want that buyout.

My attitude in general has been subtly shifting of late though. Yes, I love my work. That love has caused me to say yes to things in the past that have swallowed time and cost me money. Recently there’s been a shift in me. I need to be properly compensated for my time either monetarily or artistically. I’ve put a lot of time in, seen a lot of beautiful places, done a lot of crazy random stuff. That’s not about to stop, but suddenly I’m not putting myself imaginatively out of the running for the things I really want to do, or the ones that will pay big money.

I went to a therapist for a while until I couldn’t afford it any more. She said “It seems to me that you’re doing a thing where you say “If I can’t have exactly what I want then I’ll have nothing.” I think to a large extent she was right, with the added stricture that I was running interference on what I wanted as well, just to make sure I didn’t get it. Brian is very aware that the inside of my head hates me. His wisdom, combined with the Buddhism I’ve recently embraced, have helped start to derail that. It’s been a while, but I feel new minted somehow, despite the headchatter tonight.

So yeah. I want things. Nice things. For myself as well as those around me. And I am allowed to have them. Even though I’ve already got some nice things I am allowed to have some more as long as I’m not a dick about it.

I’m going to try not to think about this gig now I’ve vented. You have to forget auditions like that once they’re done.  I mean, I bought a euromillions ticket and I’m not fretting about that. I might be worth 169 million quid! If I am, none of you will ever need to worry about money again. Hell yeah.

This is Nicole and I, post meeting. We are both going to be doing this gig together, when we get the call. I’ll have to come back from selecting which island to buy with my lottery windfall.

I think I might have to become an overnight expert on engine oil. It appears very likely I’ll be needing to ad-lib fluently about it on front of hundreds of people on Tuesday in Milan. Not that I’m concerned. I absorb knowledge as quickly as a well lubricated piston absorbs all the friction, making for a smoother driving experience and an extended lifespan for the vehicle you love.

Today though, I’ve got more immediate concerns. Business. I need to absorb information about business.

“We connect businesses dealing in high value assets to buyers.” I just asked Tom for a one sentence description of what he does. I would’ve told you he makes high end websites. He’s staying in the living room a few nights. He’s a young entrepreneur who is also somehow a pleasure to be around. I just wanted to see how he phrased it. There’s an art to the deal, as someone once pretended the President wrote. And it’s interesting the language of business. Often there are little pockets of dialect, where small groups of people have complicity subscribed to a word use that, outside of the bubble in which it is accepted, sounds like highblown rubbish.

I’m auditioning for the role of a venture capitalist tomorrow, you see, for a short job that would essentially allow me to BE a venture capitalist. Well no that’s a huge exaggeration. But still, enough for me to fix that goddamn boiler. It’s getting colder now and I’m going to start to notice it. It’s a lack of the sort of mathematical thinking that makes good business that leaves me clinging to a hot water bottle with a cat on top of me for warmth as night falls.

Besides talking to Tom I’ve been able to observe lots of budding entrepreneurs today. I’ve been watching them all take their exams at Business School. One of my many very part time jobs is invigilating them.

Maths and Statistics Foundations for Analytics was today’s joy. “Create a function that calculates the derivative of sin(x) + 9x squared for integer values of x from 0 to 10.” I just made sure they weren’t cheating and sorted out any problems with IT. Mostly I was just calm and friendly, while watching their body language and debating how to present myself tomorrow.

Then, after a brief evening rehearsal for something else, I crashed home in time to watch The Apprentice. It’s still going. It’s still astonishing. These hateful cretins in suits and dresses who insist at every possible instance that they are infallible, despite all evidence to the contrary. This festering culture of front above all, blind shallow vessels of humans who’ve locked their truth into horcruxes and are shambling around trying to prove to themselves, each other, and the camera that they are fundamentally better humans than those around them. Lord Sugar sits in the UK where Trump sat in the USA. The focal point. The aspiration point. He appears to have more humanity than his American counterpart. I can watch him without feeling slightly sick. And there is something magnificent in these early weeks about the sheer space between how these people describe themselves and how they present. Sure, they’re stitched up in the edit. But nevertheless, they have responded to the prompts off camera with the material they deliver to it.

Is it comforting to see that people who can make more money in a month than I do in a year can be so toxic and incompetent? Or is it galvanising?

I’m going with galvanising. I’ll start by booking this job playing one of them. Then when I’m toasty warm in my flat over winter I’ll use the rest of the money to plan the piece of work that will roll in the Kindness Revolution…

Right now I need my ugly sleep.

Yesterday was a big day, as you might have gleaned from perhaps my drunkest blog to date. In all honesty I have no idea how I managed to write at all in the state I was in. A load of people came round to my flat. Brian cooked up a storm. He made vegan-proof nibbles for everyone, along with beautiful non vegan insanity like Camembert Bread, which not only made everyone enjoy being in my flat, but also made them want to come back for more. Apart from Pickle who shat in the bath by way of dirty protest at too many unfamiliar people.

Suddenly now though there are lots of people who live near me who think of our home as a place where they get fed well. I was stressing out a little bit, so it was extremely positive to have Brian grounding me and giving his time like that. All we were doing was putting a scroll into a box. But it was important to me, and I’m glad it became such a lovely – if drunken – evening.

Meanwhile, across London, another friend of mine was doing something similar. I fell asleep at 4am. He rang me at 4.30 and I mercifully slept through it. A few hours later though he rang again. By that time I was awake again, like the rest of the world. He hadn’t slept and didn’t want to. He wanted me to come and play. That’s the problem with Mondays. They’re the actor’s weekend, as the theatres are frequently not running the show that night. He hadn’t had a day off for ages, opening a show and doing the first week. He was on a bender in company with some good friends of mine, and wanted me bending with him.

I tried to evade him, hungover as I was. “Maybe I’ll get a bus.” But he could smell my reticence like a dog smells fear. He booked me an uber. “It’ll be outside in 3 minutes. Get your clothes on.” So I did. And I ended up drinking opening night champagne on a balcony in Putney at 11am on a Monday. 

Then the day was spent dancing and talking. Not the most productive 24 hours. I’m letting myself off the hook because I received gohonzon yesterday and it’s worth celebrating, but my intention in bringing that into my life is partly to derail my tendency to obliterate myself. For two days running, since that commitment, I’ve been on a campaign to smash myself out of my own body. Now I’m in bed. It’s early on a Monday night. There’s no way I feel as bad as the guys I’ve been hanging out with. I at least caught a few hours sleep.

This stinks of a last gasp. My negative tendencies having a last minute party to try and undo the positive work I’ve achieved recently. I need to find an ease within that negative positive balance. Energy requires positive and negative, balance requires yin and yang. Today was fun and I feel great, if exhausted. I worry that I’ve “wasted” a day, but was it wasted? Not really. It was great. It just wasn’t profitable. I’ve probably achieved less some days sending emails for hours. But I’m hitting myself too hard at the moment. Maybe a belated Sober October so I have the time and headspace to do the hashtaggy shit I decided I wanted to do this month, and can look at myself uncluttered.

Two days into October so far and two stream of consciousness knackered blogs. Silly Al. I’m going to sleep now. It’s not even ten.

So. Today.

Today is the first day of October. I’ve also made a commitment. I decided to commit to my secular Buddhism. It’s a thing that matters to me. I’m a confirmed Christian. My mother was a Catholic (until she was excommunicated and decided that God hated her). My friends cross all faith boundaries. I have always been extremely flexible around my idea of what the world means, the known and the unknown. As a teenager I was a hugely evangelical Christian. I was good at it. It’s a warm community. I met some wonderful people. I noticed a hierarchy, though, which is a thing I hate. But those friends of mine from back then – they’re doing brilliantly in that world. I think that there’s depth and weight in that Christianity. It’s a beautiful faith, despite the male patriarchal Godhead and the badly thought out detail. I practice Christianity and would gladly taIk about it for hours. I’ve cared about that faith structure for decades and there is much to love. But my recent focus has been much more on Nichiren Buddhism.

“I’m worried about Al. He’s got himself involved with witchcraft.” That’s what I’ve been hearing from my old friends. Of course it’s meaningless nonsense, the idea of witchcraft. But it’s also fascinating to engage with the fear of the other. Witchcraft. So, what’s that? You have an idea. That idea is the idea that’s the right idea because it’s yours, and it’s supported by multiple other people who you’ve met… Someone on the fringes of your idea discovers that instead of bleeding yourself with leeches, you should eat the mold from bread. Witchcraft! How can you change your idea when you’ve already had it?

Today I committed to receiving the idea of a “gohonzon” for a secular form of Buddhism. It’s the first idea after my ongoing youthful christian faith that I’ve shown or felt any commitment to.

I got up this morning and put on my three piece. “I see, so we’re dressing like it’s a christening.” Said Brian in the morning as I threw on my suit. I agreed. He was willing to come and see what’s what. Irrespective of his belief structures, we both arrived looking a million dollars. I was being christened into the practice. I was surrounded by friends.

Sue was running the event and gave me my scroll. She was the head of technical theatre at Guildhall, and her son is my very dear friend with whom I hung out in LA. Sam, my vastly loved ex, was there today too. Here’s a scratchy photo.

Now I’m trying to work out how to sleep. I feel strangely different from the people I’ve met today. Ollie is booking a flight to LA on impulse using some sort of online personal assistant thing. Right now he’s quibbling about detail. It seems like he wants to add me to his booking. I’m game, of course. But it could be difficult because I need to get back in time for my coming job in Milan.

Today was beautiful. I ended up surrounded by amazing people who I barely know. Everyone has a different idea of what’s normal. But I’m feeling very well placed, and very solid. And really quite unbelievably drunk. Xx zzz