Author: albarclay

Tiny at NPA texted me twice at half three in the morning about gaffer tape. He’s got silver gaffer and I gave him six short rolls of black gaffer yesterday, to his hotel. At the time I told him “I’m the emergency guy, you know that right?” I know he’s got silver gaffer and a fucking Sharpie if it’s that important to him. But no. It’s a 3.30am text. I’m curious to know if that’s when he woke up or when he put his head down.

Darren got sent with his gaffer to the venue today but he forgot his roll of twine and almost had to fight the minotaur before finally lighting on the location of the north paris arena. Which comes up on Google maps.

Now Tiny is asking for cable ties to his hotel room and I’m sorely tempted to show up with some…

Squeaky wheel gets the grease. He’d have seen the read receipt on his 3.30am wakeywakey text. I’m not letting him get into the habit of it. He’s a big boy now. There are two excellent hardware stores twenty minutes drive from him. His demands are small amounts of things he’s already got.

So I took him off my radar today and did other things. The boats at the start and I ended up having to help one of the venue managers onto site as this is how obstructive the security guys are. English AND female? Push obstruct button repeatedly until dead. I snuck a delivery MDS to her and then got in the car with her. Then she sent me back with a van full of pallets and a mission to work out how to refuel the propane fuel. I delegated the pallets to Pedro and the fuel to Jack and flew out to Versailles.

Then into Paris central. We are close to opening now. Grand Palais was having a fire drill so I had to talk their stuff over the fence, and then to EIF. The Champs de Mars. A huge compound under the Eiffel Tower and I only had a pass for Invalides. Thankfully I’ve got a TOT sticker now. “Tools of the Trade” It means I’m allowed to openly carry a machete onto any of the Olympic venues. “Can you open this box please?” It’s a sealed box of cable tensioners. I immediately take my Stanley Knife out of my pocket and one guy at security jumps backwards as I open the box. His supervisor indicates how I’m using it to open a box, a reflexive move now. “He has a TOT. Pay attention. He’s obviously safe.” Oh how little you know, child.

“Shall I come back to warehouse or stay in the vicinity of the Eiffel tower and have a lovely meal on my own?” I asked the team. We are on top of it but for good old Tiny at NPA having the wrong colour cable ties.

Au bon accueil. Right here. I get to eat yummy food and watch the Instagrammers. Joy.

I’m waiting for the tumble drier. I’m glad there is a tumble drier. I woke up and my sheets were a bit pongy. It’s awfy hot in that room, even though I run the fan all night. When do I ever get the time to change the sheets? Now, it turns out. This evening.

I don’t really have the time though to be honest but I’ll make it. Walked home and got in at almost half ten. Stripped my bed and shoved it into the wash. Then put it in the drier on a thirty minute cycle that I reckon I’ll have to repeat a few times. Now it’s half eleven. I’ll be up another hour I reckon, and then wheels up from the warehouse no later than half seven. We loaded up a Luton with stuff for the boats and sorted out all the entry fuckery. We’re getting good at it now. I know in advance every time if it’ll have to be putting things through the fence or if they’ll let me through without question.

I’ve had my Paris driving spoilt forever. I have my very own lane to drive in. I shoot down it into town in my little van past loads of gridlocked vehicles. It feels incredible. And then if I wave my pass the police let me through their barrier into the central area and I can drive the busiest streets in the capital empty but for vans like mine. Yes, sure, I’m always in a hurry and stacked up with jobs. But after this is all over there will be strange memories of driving down the Seine on empty roads. Of parking my Luton next to a cherry picker just by Invalides Bridge, in the middle of what is normally a road.

Sometimes it’s useful to have a plus one. Usually I drive alone. Thankfully I had Edwin yesterday.

“Can you jump out and see if I can get under that? Send me a photo.”

That’ll be my vehicle heading to the boats tomorrow out near Torcy. VNS. Roof is unscratched. I didn’t continue.

Vaire-sur-marne Nautical Stadium. “the boats” I’m starting to be able to elongate the acronyms. My brain can’t hold homogenised information like that. I’m better attaching things to ideas as all the three letter codes swim.

Today I was in Versailles and Elancourt, La Defense, Montparnasse… Saw none of them. What is this Paris? Paris is a road.

In the afternoon I had a Frenchman in my van. Ali is back in the warehouse with all his Ali mojo. He’s on fire at the moment. He’s total Ali. Knowing he has it all in hand makes it much easier for me to start bussing things to people who want them urgently, and to start responding properly. I’ve got one or two venue managers who have realised I’m the sharp point of the stick and have started to try and get me to do their things direct. If it’s convenient I’ll do it, but I remember Kes on my first big job for him out in Saudi noticing I was being overused by a particular small group. “Don’t let them make you their personal driver, there’s too much else.”

I try to be the emergency response guy but don’t call me if you’re not happy with the size of the cable ties you’ve got. Call me if you’ve been spiking your timber for lack of screws and it’s starting to feel dangerous. Call me if nobody will work at height because there are no harnesses and the law says xyz. Call me if there’s a donkey in your venue and you can’t make it leave. Don’t call me because you think there’s a better colour of gaffer tape than the one you’ve already got please, Tony, with two excellent hardware stores twelve minutes from your one of about fifty venues. I’ll still respond. But before long you’ll have blown your credit and then, if that donkey gets in, you’re fucked as I’ll be prioritising the quiet ones. It’s often the quiet ones who are actually drowning.

I’m home. It’s later than I want it to be but we are in the crunch now. I wish there were more drivers than we have in the warehouse – if two people were working as hard as I am with two different vehicles it wouldn’t be so stressful.

But Edgar the Frenchman was my plus one for much of today, renting huge drills. He flattered me after my first exchange: “I didn’t realise you spoke such good French.” My French is archaic and influenced by my Jersey childhood. This means my participles are all over the place. The road I lived on was “Rue au blancq” White Road. “Rue blanc” in french. That au and the q both fucked me over at school and still jump out at me now.

You know the often eastern European or Italian guy with poor vocabulary but fluent English? That’s me in french. “Hi so I’m looking for a little metal thing that I can use to put tension into a steel cable ten millimetres thick, it has a hook one end and an eye the other.” “You want a tensioner ” “probably”

My vocab is improving though. Having Edwin in the cab helped. Practice makes perfect.

Yesterday I drove with Mel to North Paris Arena simply because we had been told we could get proper accreditation there.

I’ve been working off a printout that I made and laminated myself. When someone caught on that it was hand made they anulled it and then I had another one made up. But most venues like you to have a special photocard and then another identification thing that is venue specific. With this system, for me to do my job efficiently, I would need about ten of those cards plus the special photocard. I had none of them yesterday. I had digital accreditation, Mel didn’t even have that.

“Hi, we need to get accreditation here.”

“We need to see your accreditation.”

“Here is my digital accreditation. We are here so we can both get physical accreditation.”

“Your accreditation is good. She must show hers.”

“She hasn’t got accreditation. We are here so we can get accredited properly. We have driven here because your venue is on this list where we can get accreditation.”

“You can go in and get accreditation. She has no accreditation so we cannot let her in.”

“She’s going in to get accreditation.”

walkie talkie

VOICE: “Nobody may enter without accreditation. Nobody.”

“They need to get accreditation.”

“They cannot enter without it.”

“One of them has it but the other hasn’t got it but they want to get it.”

“Nobody can enter without accreditation.”

I gave up at this point. I’ve been fine with what I’ve got. You just need good comms. Everyone has been good but Roadkill who doesn’t check his WhatsApp and won’t respond to an English number. If you can talk to someone you can make it work even if the venue is in lockdown. The only times things have not got to where they need to be have all come about because someone has given up. Like I did with accreditation yesterday. It’s easy to throw in the towel against persistent illogical high security stubborn. And it is generally better than the other option of them being too lax so I get it. This event has to be tight. Usually I’m a bulldog with these things. My brand of stubborn comes into its own when working around obtuse rules.

Today after endless fuckery I ended up at Yves de Manoir stadium trying to drop something that was wanted to someone that wanted it. But it’s locked down so we have to stick stickers over the doors of the van to prove it’s sealed, and they have to correspond to a docket. I was on my own and just as well. My digital accreditation and the sealed van and docket got me so far, but Omar is sharp as a scalpel. He sees I’ve got spare sealing stickers in my cab, just in case I have to grab something from Brico, sling it in, and reseal it. He doesn’t like it. He knows it means I’m someone looking for workarounds and he then isn’t happy with my lack of physical accreditation. “I’m not happy with it either,” I tell him. “But everything expects us either to have been booked in time for it to have been posted, or that we will always be in the same place. My job is to go everywhere. Can you help me here? This venue is on my list of places to get accreditation. Show me how to get it so you can let me in.” “Just down there,” he says, and with a mixture of suspicion and companionability he walks me to an accreditation booth that is actually OUTSIDE THE BARRIER, and that has French people working inside it on a SUNDAY. I fight my way through the flying pigs and now I’ve got the photo bit of my actual official accreditation. No venue bits so l will have to bother people for MDS passes every time but there’s only one per day so it’s about choosing my battles.

I’m sorely tempted to ask Morgan to send me one of each of the venue passes as I know I’m gonna be unexpectedly driving to many of them and I can never predict which one in advance. It’s based on what’s needed and how greatly it is needed.

So yeah. Summer and safety. I’m weirdly zen about how annoying it is overcoming security, because I am far happier having to jump through hoops than to run through fire.

And I’m learning this town. My evening drop was outside La Defense, which is in full lockdown. I had to stealthily arrange to meet a venue manager outside, who then brought my two small boxes of screws and one box of velcro through security instead of me. It would be funny if it wasn’t so serious. But having handballed the boxes myself for a few blocks after realising how easy it is to get caught in a one way system round there, I found myself thinking about dinner. I used the walk back to make a plan and found myself the first customer of the night here at Le Resto du Boucher. It almost immediately filled up with families. It is wonderful, and Halal meat so no alcohol on sale thus no temptation which is getting more and more important on this job as the hours get more unpredictable. I was out before 6 today and didn’t get back until eleven. That’ll start to look like a short day.

Here I sit at the edge of the sun, in the summer square in Noisy. It’s stone here, the only plants are in cages. But the people run free in space, just financially caged. Street life. Children chasing a battered football into the road.

Last week a sports hall up the road that is being demolished put a load of half decent Adidas footballs out onto the street. Good workmen there. I have worked alongside managers who would have told the workmen to put the balls into boxes first so nobody can have fun with them. Christ, I once did a job with a producer who asked me to throw away a huge amount of expired beer, and then got in the van with me and accompanied me to to the tip to make sure I threw it out. Special place in hell.

Everyone is kicking balls everywhere and running around and shouting. It’s ten to ten at night.

Today I finally had the Grand Palais experience I’ve been waiting for. This is the venue where I met Roadkill and Bob – blogs passim. I went to the gate, got in through the gate with my van, and helped some people out. Mostly it was distribution of stuff. It also partly involved a fucked boom lift. I had some jump leads and a portable charger with extension cable. I thought I was gonna have to jump the thing, but actually the thing started fine, he just doesn’t like it as there are safety features that cut the engine when you try and make it do dangerous things.

Lunch in central Paris. Then back on the road and I think I’ve finally cracked the accreditation fuckery. “Don’t go through Curtis.” It’s as simple as that, it turns out.

Early start tomorrow, and it is turning to night now. I just came outside as I wanted to be in a different place to write this. Jack and Darren are dropping off scaffolding late tonight. I’ll go get it early tomorrow morning. The team have got an 8 hour window overnight where they have staff to build the scaffolding towers, do whatever they need to do, and break the towers. They start at 11pm, and I’m gonna need to get my van ready to pick it all up at 6 really because once the work is finished they won’t stick around, and if the team has gone then I’ll be loading scaffolding on my own at dawn with hotel staff telling me I’m supposed to be gone and not helping.

So it’s bedtime. In my hot sweaty room. I think I’ll leave the fan on all night. It made me dream of rain, but it’s probably better than making myself into bed pie. It’s hot in Paris.

It’s always very varied here.

The heat adds to things. We had a van with broken Aircon so of course it fell to me to drive it back to the van rental and change it over. Oven on wheels. You can’t have two vehicles in your name at the van rental at the same time, so the fact that I do is an absolute triumph for dyslexia. I had no pride so when my name was mangled by the first place I kinda just let it slide. The manager of the second place was very much the cliché of Monsieur clean shaven disapproval francais. He wouldn’t allow Kieron to rent because he only had a photo of his licence. He honestly would have been happier if he could block us than if he could solve it. I was there to solve it and solved it by having had the Dacia allocated to me on a dyslexic spelling of my name, and knowing it, and using a different address. He checked name and address multiple times as I had told him I already had a vehicle with his company when I was trying to overcome the photo thing : “The branch at gare du nord were fine with a photo of my licence” He seemed disappointed and upset not to have worked out how to obstruct me. Thankfully he didn’t check driving licence number – I almost thought he would. Too lazy to input it all. So I’ve got two vehicles with the same company, neither of which will actually be driven by me. We are all insured, sure. Even beyond the company I always have full full shiny comprehensive I do drivething insurance. Just broke the rules about multiple cars. I could have probably solved it slowly and less fraudulently. But I saw a fix, saw a prick, and used the fix to bypass the prick. Fraud, ladies and gents. But to overcome an obstructive ponce who wouldn’t let it go in kierons name despite a passport and a photo of his licence. Needed the real thing? No. Kieron was English. The guy was a prime example of the well turned out French racist.

As an Englishman in Paris, surrounded by English in Paris, I have really started to notice something cultural. It is hard to put your finger on, it is insipid. But… the more French you speak the easier they make it for you… But even within that, they want to make it harder for the English wherever possible. When I first hit it was with Roadkill and Bob at GPL. Even with communicable French they were more interested in making things hard for me than helping, because Bob had met me the day before and they had constructed this whole “Bad English people shouldn’t be involved” narrative. Because, as Bardot told us, Le Diable est Anglais. Most sane English people would never be able to countenance how the French don’t like us, because we largely think of them as being cool well turned out humans who eat well and are a bit too chilled out for our purposes. Bob was at the warehouse the other day. “BOB!” I said, about a foot from his ear. He ignored me so hard it could be heard in Sweden. Ponce.

French people running venues are deliberately failing to find solutions when it is an English team without accreditation trying to deliver, even though the accreditation fuck up was pretty much universally French. Some people are more interested in culture war than making this mad great big thing work. It’s tempting though, isn’t it. “We need this bungee to work. This bungee is just the other side of the fence in a van with two people anxious to deliver it. The English haven’t got a working pass and neither of them speak our language (we sent Scott and Mel). If we don’t solve it we still get paid and we don’t have to work so hard today and we can blame falling behind on the English. Let’s all go get a pasty.”

Idiots. But my French has woken up now. I’m partly thinking in it. With simple communication it is now easy for me to bypass the racism by appearing to be French. Anything more than a sentence or two and I’ll be exposed, but when they ask me in French where I’m from, I tell them I’m Spanish cos it’s half true and they don’t hate the Spanish like they hate UK. None of the people I’ve done that with so far have switched to Spanish, but it wouldn’t faze me if they did, I’d likely just switch to English as the universal. Which it is, guys. Deal with it.

I was taken by surprise by the past today, in the strangest fashion.

I’m on this job because of someone I met loading tables onto a van in Shoreditch. He introduced me to an event company that has brought much mad joy into my life. He is a man of few words, but I’ve always felt fellow feeling with him and enjoyed his lack of nonsense.

He worked out who my dad was last week. “Was your dad Norman?” “Yes”

Dad was racing everything long before people were putting it all on the internet. He was one of the survivors from a small crew who left the army after WW2 and fell into making things go faster. He was dragster racing in absolute deathtraps, running through however many fucking gears those things had, momentarily being faster than anyone. He was racing powerboats before they were safe when they were just engines too big for the boat, lifting the prow. There’s a cine video mum took where he flips and barrels at top speed. Without the barrel, broken necks all round. He just turns round and keeps going. He was called world champion for it multiple years including the year I was born. He was a multiple winter Olympian, first man to waterski across the Irish sea, one of the first to cross the Swiss Alps in a hot air balloon. Majestically stupid shit he got up to. He taught me how to drive just in time, his declining years overlapped with my mid teens. I know engines a bit because of him. He did so much stuff at a time when drivers were engineers as well. You didn’t have a team. It was you and you with you.

In 1968 The Daily Express sponsored a London to Sydney marathon, and dad thought it was a load of pomposity so he entered it in a vintage 1920’s racing Bentley. He and his mates Keith and Patrick were running interference while everyone else had modern tooled up rally cars. They were never very popular with the “this is a serious race” crowd, being jokers who wanted to see if they could win anyway. Their car needed repairing and they ran emergency repairs on a boat and were disqualified by the joyless.

Darren’s dad won the same race in a Hillman Hunter.

And here we are in Paris together, and Kester is one of the first humans I’ve met for a long long time that can tell me things I didn’t know about my dad, and somehow we’ve been workfriends for over a decade now. Life is bonkers.

I’ve wanted to try and follow in my dad’s footsteps, in a car that is fucked, maybe avoid Afghanistan, make a documentary. You need a team of three. I know who I think the third should be… Through the land of oil… … Nothing happens by mistake and my brain is going tickerticker now… Energy. Movement. Everything for a reason. Lord alive.

Problem is, Keith’s daughter flogged their Bentley as part of a job lot. Hard work to find a new one… But I’m always up for a project.

Driving. A day of driving. Place to place to place to place. Through the summer streets of Paris.

My driving setup on event work like this is well established. A magnetic phone holder that attaches to the air vent. Otherwise you cook your phone in the sun. A charging wire that connects to the cigarette lighter, not just the car USB. So you definitely get charge rather than some janky system trying to connect your phone to the car. Bluetooth the phone to the car instead. Otherwise it won’t work properly and won’t charge. A spare port in the charger for your inevitably unprepared passenger.

Then I tune into local radio as I drive. And I Shazam all tracks that take my interest, making my Shazams into a long list of tunes that I will turn into a Spotify playlist at the end of the job. Then when I’m in the old folks home, the nurse can play my playlists from these incredible random jobs all over the world, and I can momentarily forget that I’m doolally and my legs have fallen off, and think I’m back in that hot summer in Paris when we made The Olympics.

Local worldwide radio is frequently somewhat repetitive. My playlists have been short because they’re playing the same old well represented musicians on repeat to generate interest in exchange for spondoolicks.

In Paris there is FIP. A little radio station under a big umbrella. I found it on my habitual first day quest for the most varied local radio.

105.10 – (in Paris). France Inter Paris. Coming out from Romainville just next to the warehouse.

FIP first broadcast before I was born. For what it is, it is wonderful and creative and so French that it is still going. They aren’t repeating tracks – a minimum of 48 hours. They DJ from 7am to 11pm. Outside of that it replays selections from the previous day.

It’s so French. Global art and culture is largely dictated by money. Behemoths have invested in certain cultural voices and they can often lead the cultural narrative because of the sheer volume of money put behind the voices they decide to select. Other voices can make themselves heard, but it does help an individual in the arts if they come to the attention of a behemoth. Affordable art fairs still work with galleries. FIP doesn’t care about all this. Vous n’êtes plus là, vous êtes sur FIP. Respirez, vous êtes sur FIP. Escape. Breath. FIP.

FIP is part of the necessary interference to this restricting model of serving art to people. You might occasionally get a Taylor Swift song, but it won’t be every five minutes. They are painting with a broad brush. There are multiple DJs and they will still have personal favourites, and a desire to share voices new to them. One of my regular driving time DJs is putting out a lot of Cassandra Jenkins, who reminds me of January Thompson – I like my ethereal American female singer songwriters – always have. But a lot means three different tracks in about a week. Enough for me to notice as I like her sound. I impulse booked two tickets to a gig in Brighton in November after enjoying multiple tracks from her latest album “My Light My Destroyer”. They even played Liz Lawrence a couple of days ago. She’s a Stratford upon Avon lass and I met her through Minnie when she was finishing her wonderful first album, Bedroom Hero. FIP reminded me she’s got a new album out – Peanuts. It’s ace. Talented friends, and finally a radio station putting them out there because they’re good, rather than transactionally.

The FIP DJs are clearly great listeners, cataloguers and artistic pattern makers. They theme songs, but the themes shift. Sometimes one sound flows into another, sometimes it will be three upbeat songs of loneliness. We go into opera, to classical music, through the whole history of modern music, everywhere. NAS plays next to Flight of the Conchords plays next to Madeleine Peyroux. Loads of French music, some of it so so cool. I’ve enjoyed Brigitte Bardot (Le diable est anglais), Jacques Higelin (Crocodaïl), Sporto Kantes (Lee). It’s my favourite side of the French cool thing. No judgement. No promotion. Just music played actively to make a better frame for the listener.

It is on different wavelengths in different parts of France, and occasionally Radio France snip off the head of one of the local broadcasters because not enough people are listening. But if you live there, tune in. No adverts, virtually no talking, no playing the shit the behemoths want us all to be listening to. It’s brilliant.

And it connects me randomly with Lou. She lives in Kemptown, in Brighton. Some very smart music savvy Brighton denizens that she knows managed to keep a range extender running for ages before Ofcom pissed on their parade. FIP and the DJs are still well known and celebrated over there. Lou knew it immediately. It’s a little cool bit of Paris that crossed to habitually edgy Brighton. You can get it on satellite these days all over the place, plus stream it live. There’s even a FIP app in English. Bemused executives have noticed that people actually like authentic things.

But I’m so glad I’m here at this auspicious time for France, enjoying it live as I pound the streets as a tiny team for the whole world.

Le Geo. The Globe  Les JO. The Olympics. Vous etes ici pour Geo? Oui. Bien sûr. Toujours.

Yes I know we have made civilisation up. I’m very aware that we have gradually made sense of everything and then put in systems that help us all do what we’ve got used to doing in more efficient ways.

Pallets are a good example of how we are moving to consensus. Semi-Universal wooden things. There’s a whole structure of machines designed to move pallets. There is a whole economy of pallets that most of us are not aware of.

A pallet is a plate of wood. It looks like the pictures below.

You need literally millions of them for an event like this. They go in, they go out. I sometimes take an empty one these days when I collect an order from Brico as then they are less likely to make me strip it.

This photo is just for me to locate some lost wayfinding. But the wooden thing is a very standard pallet. That’s the size they usually are. Put things on them. Then you can move the things. Too many things? Wrap them up with giant rolls of film. You can put so much stuff on one of them.

Then you can either haul them with a manual pallet truck, you can nibble them around with that electric yellow thing which is jerky and less efficient than it looks, or you can go get stuck in with a forklift providing there’s room. Having experienced all options, I am now very much of the opinion that if there’s a truck available it’s the best option. Sadly they aren’t available that often, particularly for the likes of me. I’m just trying to solve problems.

Today I sent a team on a milk run. They had a bunch of venues, I wasn’t able to generate the contacts or drop offs, they did it all through Kieran and I didn’t even know their progress. I am trying to delegate. But if I’m gonna be managerial I need more info.

I’m just a cog though. The machine is huge but I literally don’t matter other than the fact they are asking me to buy loads of stuff. I could buy it on my credit card.

Suddenly there’s loads of people. We are building up to Dday so there’s gonna be a lot to do and more people will make it more possible to delegate. I think it was tricky when it was just Darren up there for a few days, so now we are all back we have helpers.

I’m still exhausted and feeling very ineloquent. I had some paint made up as apparently they needed it at the Trocadero, but I was sent to an entrance where I could at least stop the van but my drop off contact went completely off radar for an hour. I eventually just left it in the corner and sent a “how to find your stuff” video, as it felt a bit like they were making me wait because they had had to wait. I’ve got too much to do for games, but at least my pass is working again.

I saw the Eiffel Tower close up for the first time since I’ve been in town. Even had time when I was waiting to take a photo.

It’s all steaming towards us now. I am doing what I can, we all are, to try and make this a worthwhile event for France. It’s a huge thing, it’s beginning to look amazing, like with London everyone is worrying about the outlay… I really hope that it realises the potential it has. I want to be involved in something bright.

Right now I’m just wondering where the hell all the harnesses went when I’m away. I’m dreaming the dream. There’s a lot to think about, a lot to do and a load of random consumables lost somewhere near Paris.

I’ve got screws now, for however long. I’ve got staples. I just don’t have much else. And I’m tired again. It’s eleven. I had beer last night with the football and I’m not as good at early mornings after that as I used to be.

Helping. I’m still keeping my end up when I’m here. I can really feel the five days I was off backing up into my workload now I’m back. I’m gonna try and fall asleep in my hot little noisy room in Noisy. I’m glad that at least it’s summer here. It sounds like it all went to tits again in England. Concentrate, people! Dammit.