Author: albarclay

When I woke up this morning I honestly couldn’t have anticipated that dusk would find me pushing a motorbike three miles down the pavement. But Sexy February insists that motorbikes are sexy and so I had to push one for Day 4. The shop phoned me up. “We can’t store it here forever mate.” They wanted £45 which is lucky as that’s exactly how much I had left on my overdraft. “Hooray”, I said flatly as I watched the machine approve the transaction.

I’d definitely have preferred to ride it. But the entire back brake disc has been removed. And the guy who brought it out for me said “Don’t touch the front brake, it’ll seize. But I pumped the tyres up so you can push it ” So it’s a bike with great tyres and no brakes.

Pushing it up the bridge, I was admiring the encroaching dusk over the river. There was nobody on the pavement so once I reached the apex it made sense to sit on the the thing. Absently I sat down and took the handlebars. One foot off. Both feet off. As it gently gathered momentum down the slope towards the busy three lane road on the south side, my mind absently wandered to the words of the man in the bike shop. “Don’t touch the front brake … front brake … ake ake cake cake plum cake yum yum cake cake wake wake up Al no brake nooooo braaaaake.” Pigeons scattered in my brakeless wake as I screamed round the corner on an unstoppable heap of cobwebbed metal and finally brought the thing to a halt with ankles and shoerubber spread behind me.

I got back to pushing. Definitely the safer option, pushing. The good thing about bikes, I thought to myself, is that they’re heavy. Brian might disagree, since he’s still limping from a bike falling on his leg. And in that context I disagree too. But today was unforgivingly cold and I wasn’t dressed for the cold at all. I was in rehearsal clothes. Schrank wears a light leather jacket because he’s a badass and he wants to be able to mash your skull to a pulp nice and easily. Which is all very well for a messed up cop in springtime NYC. But London appears to have been visited by the arctic. It’s not warm here. Although it’s warm in my flat.

As I passed Battersea Power Station I stopped for a photograph.

I kind of figured the blog would end up with the bike. Also I needed a rest. I’d given myself a nosebleed. But I got the bloody thing home and then went off to a Buddhist meeting feeling a little sexier. Sexy rehearsal. Sexy lunch. Sexy bike. Then a load of chanting.

Now I’m home. The flat is full. There’ll be two of us on the sofa today. Golfo came over – we are working together tomorrow. She likes the cat. So we’ll be on the sofa tonight with the cat, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I’m off to see some sexy friends on this, the third day of Sexy February. I spent the morning learning how to resize and compress video files – I’m practicing with screen captures from a computer game. I don’t think that even I could sell that as sexy. But the results, down the line, might well be. I’ve got a couple of irons in the fire … a couple of plans cooking up… “This time next year, Rodney…” Playing my cards close to my chest? Sexy. Hell yeah.

I’m going to play darts. Darts is traditionally the domain of men that you can smell from around the corner, wearing “hilarious” stained T-shirts, beer in one hand, paunch in other, yet somehow, at the ocke, their weight, heft and breath send those little arrows unerringly on target. I haven’t arrived yet but I strongly suspect we will be doing “hipster darts” of some sort because it’s in Shoreditch. “All the fun of darts at twice the price!” Or somesuch. I’m not sure if it’s actually possible to play darts sober, but I’m willing to give it a go.

We went to “Flight Club”, and actually I enjoyed it. It’s a surprisingly pleasant way of hanging out in a big group. We were celebrating a dear friend who has moved to America. What a bunch of beautiful legends our friends are. These are old friends now, mostly actors that trained around the same time as me, still digging with our hands and whatever tools we can find – and mostly for the sake of digging although occasionally we hit bags of money or cracked mirrors, bits of shit or beautiful complex artifacts. Everybody in that room has been digging for 15 years now since we trained. We’re carving a living in this shifting trade, which perhaps explains why we were all so bad at darts.

It’s a fellowship of persistent kind hearted geeks, riding the sine wave as if it were a bucking bronco. Up and down, up and down, get thrown off, get helped back on by someone at the bottom and up we go again, but now we know enough to expect the down and maybe even prepare mentally for it. One day I’ll prepare fiscally too. That’d be sexy.

By sheer chance, Katie and I turned out to win at killer. We looked harmless for so long we weren’t targeted, and then got lucky. Surfing my coincidental success, I swaggered into the bus home – which is considerably less lively than it was last night. I need to let a friend in who’s staying on the sofa tonight. We worked Ascot together, and were roommates at that bloody golf tournament where they threw me under a (metaphorical this time) bus. He’ll be at mine for a while – I’m not sure what’s going down at home but he asked and I like having guests. Now the heating works I can say “You’ve got a warm room to lay your head in for as long as you need.” Because I spent that money on the boiler. I was spitting about it at the time, but that thing where I traded fun for comfort… Maybe I need to make more trades like that going forward.

Year One – Fuel – (I can’t believe this one was a year ago…)

Day 2 Sexy February. I finally had a go at this hedge on my face. By the time I was done the sink looked like I’d been skinning a lemur. But now I look a little bit less as if I’ve just been released from a hostage situation. It’s only day two and I really want a drink now please now please now. I’m not saying I mustn’t, but self control is sexy because I choose it to be. And last night I slept uninterrupted apart from by Pickle who seemed a little put out by the fact I wasn’t flat out like a plank of wood all night dead to the world. Perhaps she usually uses me as a climbing frame.

I’ll be honest, I’m wary of myself around hair clippers. It’s only a few years since I inadvertently shaved a bald strip up one side of my head, panicked, and rushed through our rooms in The Lighthouse in Poole to find Chris (who was playing an old saxophone) and ask him if it was salvageable. (It wasn’t. He laughed a lot.We took it all off.) With that memory still mocking, I probably kept more beard than I wanted to this time – just for safety. It’s cold outside. Nice to have some protection.

Newly neatened, I’m heading off for the sexiest thing yet. A Saturday night sober game of Scrabble. Hang onto your hats folks. This is going to get racy.

It seems that we are too sexy for Scrabble. Who knew? We had glorious food, and I had 6 Becks blue each time hoping the next one would be an accidental alcoholic one.

ThenI was made gamesmaster. We played “the hat game” which basically involves lots of names in a hat and shouting. It’s been the centrepoint of many a drunken row on tour when a load of actors in a run down flat in Dublin or a villa in Milan or a flat in Putney get bitterly competitive over small details of arbitrage after 16 bottles of wine each. And it’s addictive as hell. My team had a secret weapon. I was sober. At the end when their motor skills had all but vanished and it was all over but the grunting, we stormed into the lead.

Now I’m at a bus stop on Putney Bridge, on my way home, waiting for the 22 surrounded by strangers. They’re all very excited. They thought they witnessed a stabbing in the club so one of them grabbed a fire extinguisher and sprayed everyone then ran away. I can believe it. His mates are pissed off because they all got kicked out. “But there was a stabbing – I saw it.” The high street is a carnage of chips, glass and vomit. Slack jawed men and women queue unfocused in the cold to get into heaving sweaty rooms full of noise and expensive booze. I’ve been in those queues. I will be again, I fear. But right now I’m punishingly sober and conscious of being in the minority.

The prevailing mood on this street is anger. The prevailing volume is loud. This is the nocturnal Saturday drunkparade and I’ve momentarily become an observer. Snippets fly by. “You don’t put your lips … on another person’s lips … unless they’re mine.” “She was sending me photos of my own child to get at me.” “Yes it’s horrid. You hate London, I love London .” And now an animated conversation in Russian, too loud for any other language to filter past.

This messy town. It’s my town now. Has been for years. But now I feel it. Taking the night bus sober makes me wonder what sort of fun I’ve missed (or provided) while taking it drunk.

Day 1: Being a sucker for trends and conformity, the whole global trend for “Sexy February” that everyone everywhere is constantly talking about has got me wrapped up. As we all know because it’s all over the internet, “Sexy February” starts on the 2nd February and goes until the 1st March. Coincidentally the second of February is the first time I had a drink last year. I had a glass of bourbon in a replica prohibition era whorehouse – obviously because it was the first day of Sexy February. Today I did the opposite. I didn’t have a glass of bourbon when I otherwise might have. I won’t have any bourbon for a bit. Because I get to choose what is and isn’t sexy, and right now I’m going with “sober is sexy” – certainly until I’ve sorted some of my shit out. What else is sexy? Not moaning about being broke when you live in Chelsea and eat with fucking silver cutlery. That’s actually one of the official rules of sexy February. There’s a whole subsection about that. Getting up in the morning and doing stuff no matter how you feel. That’s HOT. Exercise? Rrrawr. Tidying up? Stop it, baby. Going on a date? Ok maybe that’s pushing it. But you never know Sexy February. You never know.

Today I made myself a ravishing cup of coffee, made some crazily erotic phone calls about money, and sashayed into rehearsal where I ticced popped and swore like a hot version of Errol Flynn. Then I had sexy tea with Marie and a hot catch up with Ri. On the way home my footsteps were smoking. Doves came and landed as I passed. Men and women swooned as I tapped my oyster card. The bus driver proposed marriage to me. I had to insist that I pay for my food in Tesco. They just stared, slack-jawed as I counted out the change and left it on the counter. As I left the shop I saw them stir back into action, mildly shell-shocked. I went home and cooked my dinner by looking at it. Then I had apple crumble and custard. Oh yeah. You know it.

Obviously if you Google “Sexy February” you just come up with a load of adverts for T-Shirts that happen to have both words on them. Sexy February is too sexy for Google. Sexy February transcends the traditional internet.

I’m going to do at least one thing every day to make me feel more sexy, and so are you. We get to choose what that means to us. We get to originate sexiness. Sexy February hasn’t been co-opted by charities or people who want to sell stuff. It doesn’t alliterate. There are no pictures of models and outside of this there is no copy thrown at us online or on public transport asking us if we are doing it, berating us for not doing it, implying we should be doing it, telling us why we shouldn’t do it. If it’s sexy to be completely indifferent to something – THAT’S YOUR SEXY FEBRUARY, YOU GREAT BIG HOTTIE YOU.

Picture of apple crumble? Oh yeah, baby. Ohhhshitbags yeah.

Right. Well that’s January out the way then. The month where you have to look forensically at the fiscal reality of the choices you’ve made. “Oh good. I’m below the threshold. Because I earnt so little. At my age. Hooray. I still can’t afford to pay my class four National Insurance towards a pension I’ll never have. But at least I earnt so little I don’t have to pay tax.”

Meanwhile some of my friends appear to be vegan Kung-Fu masters jetting off to work with Spielberg and the rest are angry, restless, distracted, hopeful, scared, wondering. It’s dark, and a year ago I was in Los Angeles breaking bad patterns and making contacts. Arguably going to bed sloshed every night for a fortnight despite atrocious cashflow is proof of how quickly they come back, those naughty naughty patterns.

I’m writing this in a pub waiting for a friend. I’ve also – just – had the idea of doing “Sexy February” which means I’ll have to write off the first and spill over to the first of March. “What’s Sexy February?” I hear you all cry. It’s a month where we make a conscious effort to feel sexier, every day. I need that month. I’m gonna take it. It’ll almost certainly involve less booze.

What do I find sexy? Focus. Fitness. Self control. Drive. Forward movement. Sexy February has no rules and doesn’t alliterate. It’s not for charity. It’s for us. And it starts tomorrow and ends after the first of March because I’ve just thought of it and I’ve already fucked today because I mostly felt sorry for myself and now I’m having beer and neither of those things are sexy. There’s probably going to be exercise. Exercise is sexy. Maybe there’ll be kissing (heaven forfend). There’ll be good food for cheap, optimism, ambition and fresh sheets. Mostly there’ll be me using the fact that this blog forces me to tell you what I’m doing, attempting to put out proof that I am getting sexier and sexier as February grows. And I will be. Oh yes.

This evening was the final day of the inaugural Food Film Festival. (Had it existed in the ’80s, 9 and a half Weeks would’ve smashed it.) I was at the awards gala downstairs at The Mondrian thanks to lovely Robin. They were awarding short films about food, and the winner was “Cooking with your Mouth”. It’s a one trick pony of a film, but if you are weirded out by spit you might find it funny or something. The organisers are clearly lovely but seriously – for a couple of hundred quid and a piece of paper I’d have taken that microphone and made sure that people weren’t talking throughout their ceremony. They had a gong, which was initially helpful, but then they passed the microphone to a charisma vacuum. It was an active effort of will not to get bored by him -when you could even make out his words around his atrocious mic technique. That’s why you use professionals. I kept listening, but most people disconnected and the winner was announced to an indifferent room, which is perhaps for the best because the winning team hadn’t shown up anyway.

The cocktails were bangarang, and free. And they brought out a meatball pasta cake which was like a cold version of the sort of thing I’d have come up with after 12 pints when I was a student. Still, it was the right event for me, being fascinated by food theatre but with a grounding and history in film.

But all that bullshit aside, SEXY FEBRUARY. Who’s in? 🙂

I’m home and warm, sitting on the sofa with Tom. Money is a real concern in this coming month, but I am allowing myself to feel sanguine that all will be well. And Tom, who is an occasional sofa visitor from Manchester, has just offered to pay 15 quid to a pizza franchise created by an anti-arbortionist nutbag, also called Tom. I’ll call him “Catholic Tom.” Catholic Tom is smart at business. Recently we’ve all learnt how people who are “good at business” can also be utterly hideous fucked up monstrous orange moronic twisted angry emotionally fucked ridiculous laughable racist misogynist parochial self obsessed abusive divisive unkind base humans. Catholic Tom still takes lots of money from people who should know better and funnels it into things like making sure people who are physically weaker and fiscally poorer than he is have even less chance to take control of their destiny. “Fuck ’em. They are so dumb they’ll shell out 15 pounds sterling for this bit of dough and a slap of processed meat.”

Anyway. For all that, I ate it. I have no problems with double standards…  Sadly. Before all the pizza, I had a great night contemplating Gatsby. Gatsby, a man who made the sort of money Catholic Tom made. But a man of principle, of kindness and ultimately of sacrifice. He was invented by the complicated dark beauty of F Scott Fitzgerald. What a glorious fiction we were given. Fitzgerald excelled at creating beautiful effortless loaded fuckwits. And the immersive Gatsby in London – I’ve been to that show so many times now I couldn’t tell you. Sometimes I’ve worked it, sometimes I’ve watched it. Jack and I saw the first ever show in a freezing pub in York. The only thing that hasn’t changed is the temperature. It’s a beautiful night, it really is, it always has been. And Fitzgerald has a special place in my heart. He wasn’t much older than me when he died. But he made his time count. And him and Jim Henson are the only two people I share a birthday with that I’ve ever given an active fuck about. As a fellow contrarian conflicted self doubting empath I hit on his excoriating semi-biographical book Tender is the Night at a privileged 19 and it blew the doors off completely. No wonder he died so young. He already had it all figured out. Nothing left to learn but the other country.

It’s worth seeing, that Gatsby show. It’s a party, and a story. And there are some lovely people making it. Obviously Brian produces it, but as well as him, much of the creative team is made of people who I’d definitely go back for in a burning building. Theatre rarely attracts arseholes and even more rarely let’s them thrive. This Gatsby is totally arsehole free and delightful for it. I was bawling my eyes out at the end. I mean, yeah I will burst out crying at the drop of a hat. But these human honest brave actors, working with a skillful frame in a beautiful venue – they were nailing it across the board.

Literally the only photo I took today is of the actress playing Daisy and a propane heater, just pre show. It tickled me because it reminded me of my pre carol. I don’t know her so I’m taking a liberty. Hopefully she won’t mind. She was ace.

Dawn this morning saw me leaning on a railing on Waterloo Bridge. I watched the glorious dawn as it broke. Wonderful. As I watched I was wearing one of Brian’s coats, a brand new scarf, and my black shoes still muddy from Jersey. Everything else was my daily wear restyled as costume. Essentially I was being paid to watch stuff, while someone filmed me. There are harder ways to earn a living. We’ve been all over London today, and the Gods have been kind. We had great light. It was a crew of three, including me, so we didn’t attract much attention. Still we did get moved on once.

We had been outside Somerset House for less than 3 minutes, filming a pretty clock, when a hard faced dane came out and reminded us, in no uncertain terms, that “even if this feels like public property it is in fact private.” This is the case with much of London. We’re there under sufferance. Somewhere in the corner of the pretty square there’s a laminated poster telling us all the things we are not allowed to do. Sitting in warm rooms, hard faced danes scowl into monitors for the best years of their lives enforcing rules because they’re rules and rules must be enforced. Yes, we can walk through the square. Yes we are positively encouraged to go to that coffee shop. Great, we want to have a meal in that restaurant. After the meal, overwhelmed with joy, we spontaneously break into achingly beautiful song. A song from the buried ancestral heart. For a moment we’ve tapped into something ancient, the song that stills the birds in the trees, that awakens the ancient spirits, stirs love in hearts long lost. Beneath our feet the earth breathes, a column of light from our head to the heavens. And perhaps… perhaps at last… “EXCUSE ME yes you excuse me – I’m afraid this square is actually private property. If you want to do that singing you’ll have to do it somewhere else thank you very much.” Welcome to London. Go and buy another coffee. Because then when someone cracks and spraypaints “WANK” on the cobbles again they’ll have enough cash in the maintenance budget to employ a guy who needs the money to get it off. And the square stays beautiful and the circle continues. Wank.

I’ve walked around the city today, looking at beautiful things, for 14km. I suspect my habit of stopping and looking is what spurred Alice – today’s film maker – into thinking of me. She first employed me as “Martin” who gave no fucks about anyone but himself. It’s lovely to come back after many years and be “The Observer…” And kind of typical that “the observer” doesn’t hit the usual buttons. He’s a simple, uncomplicated, happy fool. I just hope I’ve given the complicated people a happy start, because Martin would’ve just battened down on the least together people.

I am tired. I’m off to sleep.

All these photos were taken after I relaxed a bit.

Back in rehearsal for West Side Story. The director, who is great, has been thinking about me applied to Schrank. We’ve got an interesting fucker cooking now. He sees that I’m well meaning and a little dissipated. The well meaning has to be buried but he wants the dissipated. “I think his house stinks. There’s empty whiskey bottles and cigarettes everywhere. His fists are covered in scabs. Sometimes he gets drunk and goes out, finds some Puerto-Rican kid, beats him half to death and leaves him under a bridge.” I can get my imagination behind that. What I need to work on is the danger. I’ve got the curves for free, but I can see the guy he means and there’s edges there. And bursts of speed. There’s something a bit Joe Pesci going on. I might work with a vibrating metronome in my pocket for a while set super fast while I move super slow. I’m also thinking it’ll be a good excuse to get fit. I can do it if it’s for work!! Boxing classes would feed it. I was thinking about one of those “drunken” Kung Fu masters. The danger of an outwardly dissipated man. I’ll look for some introductory offers near home and see if I can haul myself out of this reluctance to get back to fitness.

I flinched a bit when he suggested this rangy guy based on his observation of me. I like to believe that tomorrow morning I could leave the house immaculately groomed, starched and shining, and do that every day for the rest of my life, and nobody would comment on it. I don’t like to find identity getting tangled up in habits, and this beard is only here because it’s quicker to shave than grow. But yeah. We become who we are every day. And every day I’m the furry guy who puts a hat on, walks in curves and goes out unironed and unshaven with ripped pockets – (unless I’m in my armour). There’s nothing to stop me adjusting that pattern, but it’s become a familiar groove. Identifying it has made me immediately rebel against the idea of it. I hate noticing habitual patterns in myself. I usually start running interference on them as soon as I do. The blog being an exception because I think the stricture helps me. 

My inner life and my environment have got swept up into the benign chaos of my current series of priorities. Hmmm. I’m not sure it’s boxing for me but it might be for Schrank. Worth a jab.

For now though, it’s an early bed. I’m up well before the dawn tomorrow. So it’s half nine and I’m about to take two spoons of cough medicine because it’s the only thing I’ve ever found that sends me off to peaceful sleep almost immediately, but wakes me up fresh. My mum used to give it to me when I was sick so there’s an immediate comfort. Which may or may not be as effective as the very small amount of morphine derivative… Zzzz

Yeah so I’m an actor that writes a daily blog. An obvious starter for ten is “Do you use it to promote yourself?” Nope. I mostly use it to speak frankly about what a twerp I am, and by implication how delightfully fleeting and arbitrary all our petty struggles are. No Photoshop here. Maybe that’s the trick I’m missing though. All of these manicured curated YouTube and Instagram freaks who can’t make three seconds of live content without a jump for edit, and then this freak putting out a few words daily with a badly thought through photograph, gently peeling off my own skin in public for complicated personal reasons. Nobody gives me free holidays though. I could use a bit of sun right now.

Today was a low day probably through lack of sun. I just wasn’t feeling like I wanted to participate in all the caring about things nonsense. I had a meeting to break the monotony but it was pulled at the last minute, so instead I went shopping and bought lazy roast dinner. Then I refused to go to the cinema with Brian and Mel, preferring to sit at home feeling sorry for myself. I suppose I could’ve learnt my lines for West Side Story. I didn’t. I just sat here and listened to Shirley Manson. Of course you might argue that listening to the Garbage back catalogue is never a day wasted. Now I’m playing Faithless. I might open a bottle of Bandol and just stand in the window watching the trees blow.

It seems my network of hearts is too alert. A friend rang up and now she’s coming round. I didn’t ask her to, even though I secretly wanted her to. Good on her. I’ve put the oven on. I’ll open a bottle of something. We’ll almost certainly find something to laugh about! Damn. I can’t go full emo now.

Brilliant. We are listening to Bon Jovi. We’ve stuffed our faces. Claire is dancing. She’s fit as hell after training to teach barre. I’m writing this to get it done because I think dancing might have to happen. Useful to remember in this city that, if you’re feeling a complicated mix of things there are lots of people who feel the same way. Claire and I might have felt sad in isolation. We converged and now neither of us feel sad.

It’s odd how we feel pressured to curate social media. It’s some sort of self imposed tyranny. We are all flawed, unhappy in showers, happy in slashes. But somehow, unspoken, if we say we are sad we are soliciting sympathy, and if we are super happy we are bragging. One of us is up while another one is down. Existence is like sine-wave. Up down up down up down. Doesn’t matter what you have, how much better off you might feel you are. Up down up down. I was down. Claire was down. Now we are in the same room and we are both up. And I’m off to stop writing and give her a hug.

Here’s the dinner carnage.

Year One – Donkeyman

All I had to do just now was stand on a stage and speak through a radio mic about Shakespeare with Ffion for a little bit. And still, coming off stage, I’m flushed with adrenaline. It’s weird. I must be addicted to the stuff. It would make sense. Dad was. He based his existence on it too, making risky trades and going as fast as possible in all sorts of different vehicles.

Now I’ll sit here for a bit. Then I’ll go and insult Ffion for a while, and then sit here again. Then I’ll play a sort of Hamlet drinking game with 300 submarine engineers. And then I’ll eat food and drink wine. It’s not rocket science. Although it’s a bugger to learn, and I haven’t done this one for ages. Standing there with Ffion just now it felt a bit like we were speaking a foreign language. Now I’m surfing adrenaline and getting some words in the can so I can be better company when we’re finished. I haven’t seen Ffion for a while.

You have to be resourceful about making money in this game, for the periods between jobs. The fees have mostly been going down in the years I’ve done this business. Commercials, which are the jobbing actor’s big bonus – they’re often paying about half what they used to do ten years ago. I turned my nose up to a corporate job the other day where the fee was too low for the nature of the work. This was lovely but it’s been a while. There have been periods where we did this work three times a week. Now it’s been months and months. It felt like another country.

I’m home now finally. Time jump. I’m still dressed in my armor. It was fine, performing to a load of submariners. They were not the most willing. But they enjoyed it despite being hammered for the third piece of the night.

I was talking to a (drunk) friend of mine on the phone just now – on my mobile on the bus – when he got punched by a (drunk) woman mid sentence. I got it all live. The bouncer told him “If that’d been the other way round I’d be holding you down right now and asking her if she wanted to press charges. Still. Do you want to?”

Saturday night, vicariously. They’d had a (drunk) row about bullshit and mutual friends. He’d held his ground and phoned me for corroboration about some spurious crap she was slinging around. I said “Put her onto me,” but she punched him instead of talking to me. 

Everyone in this city is hammered right now. London is a seething entitled shitstorm of opinions and alcohol slosh. I’m glad I’m home, warm, with the cat. Brian and Mel are about the only people in London sleeping and they left half a bottle of white wine in the living room. I might have to do some catching up on my own with Pickle. I could neck it and punch someone about nothing. Although I guess I’d have to punch myself as I’m not punching Pickle and Brian and Mel are in bed and I don’t want to punch them either. Perhaps I should go to bed too.

Pickle and I gonna work it out.

Year one – Theatre in a shopfront