On my way down to Brighton this time I didn’t think it through. There was no time to go home after pretending to be a goose. I was already in Beaconsfield so it just made so much more sense to go straight to Brighton on a Friday night. But I had no bag packed. In my car was a hat, a black velvet jacket and a jumper with more holes in it than the plot of a cheap romance novel. I stopped at my old staple, TK Maxx. Socks, pants and a couple of T-shirts. Thanks to a dozy assistant the pants weren’t rung through so I am now the proud owner of a box of extremely brief Calvin Kleins. I rather like them. I feel like Dolph Lungdren.
Lou doesn’t like the jacket which is fair enough – I last wore it at a funeral. The jumper though… I thought it was on its last legs. Cashmere but so worn and worn in with washing that the front had four holes in it. “Let me darn that,” she said, and two people I’ve run into since then have said “You look smart!” She’s a miracle worker. It only took her a few minutes and the thing has a new lease of life.
We drove to her workshop briefly, loaded up with picnic, and then on to Carmen at Glyndebourne. I think his might be my eighth different show there in two years. It’s the final dress rehearsal most of the time but I wouldn’t have it any other way. Those gorgeous gardens wake up in the summer, and the whole place is steeped in the bright energy that can only come when so many creative people come together in one place and channel the thing they channel through their bodies and voices. On stage eighty odd dancers and singers working together to tell a strange tale.
A less traditional take on Carmen, and even if I miss the joy of the huge flamenco flounce and the real period twinkles, by bringing it into a slightly seedier and more grounded world it made the interplay between characters ring out in a way it might have have done had I been distracted by petticoats. Manipulative Carmen surrounded by people worse than she is. Beautiful familiar tunes. English people pretending to be French people pretending to be Spanish people. My mum loved this opera. I remember her once telling me the story of it. It was huge and romantic in her memory. This telling of it doesn’t lose the epic sense of a big world, but reminds us that the things that feel vast to us personally don’t transfer very far from the inside of our heads. Not a huge romance of an ending. An unnecessary idiocy played out in a big world. Powerful storytelling and world building. I drove home happy.
Back to the grind now until the end of the week. I’m picking out dinner jackets to wear for an MC gig on Friday. Got to send options to the client. Man in dinner jacket is just that, no? Heigh ho.
Up to the top of Chanctonbury, which is no distance. I was wearing brand new TK Maxx Vans with no heels but no backpack either. A beautiful day to go up. We have been known to go in winter, but this day now where we can look forward perhaps to a quarter of a year with many more days like this – this was a good day to find the sun. I had no hat so a good deal of the time my T-shirt was on my head. Next to tanned Lou my poor pale skin looked positively anaemic, so I took everything off but my pants. There’s a sunspot. The nights are going purple on Instagram so that means the days are purple too as solar flares are not dependent on the clock. I’ll absorb some of those cosmic rays like The Thing from Fantastic Four. See what effect they have down the line.
One small puffball. I knew there had to be mycelia there, but it is as I’ve long suspected – someone lives locally and knows it. I’ve seen plenty of fungus over the years but none of it has been edible until today and an early early puffball. I reckon there’s a groundsman with an inherited calendar, generations of notes, and a house on top. Walks his dog a subtly changing pattern every morning and carries a basket. It’s what I’d do.
It’s gorgeous up there. Old land and old trees. A view over the downs. Not too many people. There was even someone on a horse. Often the cattle are grazing there.
We lay on a bank. I cooked. Lou cooked. There’s wind up there so it feels colder than it is. No factor anything… trying to get the base kicked off. I think we came down before we burnt but I’m feeling a bit dozy now.
We took another chance for Lou to move Bergman around a car park on the way home. Life is much easier if you are self employed and you have a vehicle you can sling around full of stuff. It’s pleasant to be part of the process that will get her on the road, less dependent on trains that strike every other day and cost too much when they don’t.
Now I’m back at hers, happy about this long weekend, one more day down tomorrow as well, then back to the madness. Happy to go up there and plug in.
Lou is thinking of teaching me some basic Ayurvedic massage as she wants me to reciprocate. I’m knackered but might be about to get oily and sleepy. Thought it best to write this first.
I was back down the bottom before my Fitbit buzzed 10000 for the first orange break on a usual walking day. Laziness. Joy.
A day free of obligation. I have been using it to try and organise my household service providers better. But there are plenty of distractions.
I took Lou into work at Glyndebourne and then drove to Lewes to buy a picnic ahead of Monday’s open dress rehearsal there. The perfect early summer weekend weather, and perhaps the right time to go to Lewes. It was The Battle of Lewes. Scores and scores of hairy men about my age in armour banging drums and wearing scavenged chainmail. One of them even brought his duck.
They ambled through the streets of Lewes for our pleasure, occasionally becoming excited about something or announcing something else. Lewes is a town for this sort of thing. There’s a pub where they do Dwile Flonking, which involves throwing a cloth at people while dancing. Nobody really understands it but they still do it. It reeks of a joke that got out of hand, perhaps people trying to confuse Americans by pretending they all knew the game as they made it up.
Today everyone got the weird stuff out of the garage again and ran around all morning shouting. By now they’ll all be Morris dancing or sozzled on real ale or maybe they’ll even be flonking that dwile. I enjoyed the battle for the spectacle but I couldn’t help feel that they were having more fun than we were. That’s kinda the point with reenactment though I think – much like a lot of amateur dramatics. It’s for the participants more than the audience, but that’s why the audience pay so little.
I moved from bench to bench in the sun, settling and making calls until something moved me. I thought I’d found a lovely bench looking at the river but a very jolly and catastrophically awful busker set up next to me. Now I’m at The Juggs – a fifteenth century inn outside town. They’ve made me a pint of shandy and I’m trying to get the right balance of sun and shade for maximum summer and minimum sleepy. Still a few hours before I pick Lou up from work and I don’t want to be tired or tipsy.
I thought I’d write this now so I can focus on doing very little for the rest of the day but for staying awake. A couple of events coming up next week. This weekend I fully intend to charge up properly. A deck chair would just be the ticket right now…
Trying to keep myself asleep for my 4am wee backfired on me spectacularly when I actually fell asleep on my feet and woke up in the bath.
Early morning saw me haring up through the side streets of Chelsea, through Flower Show crowds determined to get squished. I parked at South Kensington. Queue at Pret. Queue at Starbucks. No queue at the little Italian Illy place that does far and away the best coffee of the three.
Exam started at ten. Went on until shortly before one. A very organised extra time student maximising her rest breaks. Back to Pret for a Crayfish and Rocket and then I’m on the go again up to Beaconsfield.
Some young makers have written a script about Scottish geese. Four actors who have never met before. We were in a very warm soundproof booth. They played some honking and then by God we all honked. Happy honking, sexy honking, scared honking, triumphant honking. My throat feels strange.
Glass of water and then all sorts of words. Everything out of order, playfulness where possible, doing that thing that actors do at work where everyone is dropping anecdotes and bits of gossip. It all helps us stay healthy. We got it all in the can but with no time for Jammy Dodgers. I drank about three small bottles of water to combat the honking in heat. I look forward to hearing how that all hangs together. I only heard one person say “We’ll fix that in post”.
In years to come I’ll run into one of those actors again. Maybe an audition, who knows. “We’ve done something together, I’m sure of it.” That’s what we will say. We probably won’t track it all back to one strange hot afternoon pretending to be migrating Scottish geese. But who knows, maybe the shared hilarity of today’s work will get us both the job we are meeting for. If they ever start doing in person auditions again, that is.
We finished the geese and I hauled ass to Brighton. A bit more time with Lou. I’ve been looking forward to the catch up but we are both so busy. This is a window, even though she’s working all day tomorrow. We’ve got Sunday and Monday. Honk.
Beautiful weather. Shame about the noisy party somewhere nearby. But I’m so tired I’ll probably sleep through it.
I’m used to writing this in the morning from Japan. This whole time shift back to the old standard of doing it just before sleep? No thanks. Once again I’m buggered. They fed me, bless them. They fed us both. But was the client happy? Surely yes. I’m almost past caring but for the fact that this work has been crucial in the past. When the boats fucked me over I would have starved but for this. So it is precious work. Add to that the fact I’m extremely good at it now.
I’ve been on the South Bank again. I’ll happily play the game when it is my ability to pay the bills on the line. It’s been hard recently as the work has fallen off post COVID. Apart from the few months when I had to rebuild post boats, the boat thing taught me never to rely on anything dayjobby. I thought I was a valued member of the team with the boat company. They fucked me with no warning and notice, even though one blessed fool tried to pass off something I had genuinely taken to be neurotic raving as a “warning”. He came up to me in a corridor, so nervous he could barely speak, babbling something about nothing. Apparently that was my “warning”, where my concern was so strong for him I genuinely asked him if he was OK.
It still hurts, being randomly taken off that job. “It’s his first decision as head guide. We have to stand by it.” He was a tamagotchi-human. Totally dependent on the big people pushing the buttons. He’s absented himself from any responsibility for his life. “Head” guide = “most obedient guide”. Let’s make up job titles based on how useful you’ll be to us!!
I loved it too much, when it was just me and the passengers and the river. I was extremely good at it. Like properly excellent. I loved it and built a whole journey. I worked so hard to have facts and stories beyond the standard ones. It would have become my only focus if it hadn’t become poison. Everything in context, losing that job was a good thing for me. But it is so hard to properly understand that until you have the benefit of hindsight. I loved it. I’d still be doing it. Thank fuck.
On the way to work tonight I watched a few of their venomous boats plying their trade. The skippers can do what they like. The guides? Someone in that horrible office will turn on them.
I found myself with the usual conflicting emotions. In the end though, thank the lord I don’t have to work with people who aren’t honest with their employees. I wrote an angry blog after they took me off roster, which is like using a swear word in an argument as they found it and actuated it. That’ll be the moral high ground for them until we all die. Hurrah, fuckers. And it’s a fucking massive shame, as they don’t have that moral high ground in reality and they fuck people over from time to time. They were utterly awful to me and I have no doubt it was the same for others I know and don’t know. We could form a club. It’s a pattern. Mostly based on the fact they only have a few skippers and there was one super poison skipper.
“Never go into the office and you’ll be ok” one of the skippers warned me, and that’s the truth. It’s lions led by donkeys. But the donkeys think they’re lions. And they really aren’t.
Thank God I’ve got a good acting job coming. I spend too much time thinking about this validation nonsense and the pain of the past. I’m still bruised by that loss of a dayjob. Because I loved it and was excellent at it. The reasons for me being taken off it had no logic. Essentially it was just office politics via boats. Thank fuck. Thank the dear lord. Thank you universe. Through nonsense they lost an excellent worker. At the time, I felt I needed it. Had they understood me they would have absorbed me. It all went wrong. I still get to be this one.
Despite the fact that jetlag is playing havoc with my sleep patterns, I’m managing to cope with a full diary. The next two weeks I’ve been trying say “yes” to as much as possible in order to try and get back to black after a delightfully profligate time in Japan. It’s just as well that the yen is suffering at the moment, as despite the fact the money worked in my favour, I’ve put myself out of pocket. Time to get my head down. Thankfully there are some things in the pipeline, and joyful ones too. No more lazy pricey food. No more coffee out. I’ve even left my aeropress in Brighton so I can make lovely brew without blowing money at the Kemptown Bakery where I usually end up getting unnecessary cake as well as the pricey but excellent coffee. It’s got so it’s often over four quid now for a coffee over the counter, and that’s too much to frame as a cheap luxury.
It does mean I have to be more organised. This morning, for instance, invigilating early after a terrible sleep, I had to stop pushing snooze and stagger into the kitchen to bubble up. It all fits with the “planning” drive. I’m not used to being organised.
But I’m feeling very heady, back in London. I think the plane trees might be dropping. I’m all blocked up and had a headache this morning. Might have been the wake. Some of us sat in Chelsea and got mildly sozzled in his favourite pub. It’s just a few minutes walk from my flat. Wakes are an odd party, everyone there for the one person who isn’t. It was good to catch up with family and friends though, even under sad circumstances. I fill up my diary and then socialise with the people who happen to be nearby, and so it goes in London. An ever shifting vortex of people coming in and out of the centre of town. When Keith died I realised how long it had been since I went and saw him. There are hugely important friends of mine that I haven’t seen for months and months. With my new organisation drive I think I’m gonna experiment with putting visits into the diary as well. Gone are the days when I could just show up and say “let’s go for a walk”. Everyone has kids.
I was meant to see a friend this evening but the ever present jetlag wall jumped me early. It’s all I can do to write this and I’ll be asleep the moment I finish this sentence.
London again and giving thanks to the people I love. Brian, despite his absurdly busy life, made time to come to the church and stay with me after. Lou watched it live-streamed and took screenshots.
I was stressing out, trying to make sure that my mum’s final boyfriend, a man who achieved so much, had a send-off worthy of his contentious charming brilliant human life. Stephanie, a strong Christian with time on her hands, had worked hard having made herself next of kin to give him a good last few years, and as a result she was calling the shots. Max and I were there to try to honour the man we knew, knowing we had known him deeper and longer. She took the burden of arranging things though. And did it beautifully. She was perhaps a bit too controlling about the readings. I fought for some Blake, knowing that Blake was huge for Keith, and had to butcher it to make it short, but then she wanted “If”, Kiplings piece that is in every bathroom in the home counties.
Keith gave me some Blake Tarot cards, long before tarot became part of my expression, just when I was a curious young wannabe mystic. I used to use them until I lost a card. I might try them again going forward, lost card be damned. He was always a mischief, and he helped augment my father’s drive towards mischief. Two male role models in formative years, both pushing me towards examination of external stimulus. Dad: “Work out what the herd is doing. Do the opposite.” Keith, later: “If you’re going counterflow, which you are, look after the people who haven’t thought as deeply as you and be kind.”
He knew he wasn’t my dad. He was never dumb enough to try to say he would be. He was mum’s boyfriend and he understood my conflict about him. He found the edges where he could be my friend. He gave me creative freedom on my first ever dayjob, in my summer holiday from school, to typeset and arrange the annual report for his charity. We won an award for reports on the scale of charity he ran. That was his eye and his guidance, but at 17 I had an experience of my creativity being recognised. He introduced me to David Monroe, a young film maker who took the headshots that got me my first agent, became my friend, taught me about rioja, made me feel like my idea of being an actor wasn’t the mistake my parents had worried it might be, and promptly died.
Now I look at the figures who were older and influential in my twenties, as I was making sense of this job I do, Michael McCallion, David, Dad and Keith… the first three died so suddenly… Keith stayed solid, but I started to fear being friends with older men. Michael went too suddenly, just as we were getting started. He gave me Christopher Logue and Alexander Technique and was a brilliant friend when I was auditioning for drama school, always with a helpful creative prompt. He wrote “The Voice Book” and at the time my focus and interest was on voice. A gorgeous man. He was actively instrumental in getting me into Guildhall just by being truthful when I practiced my Trigorin speech with him. David made work feel possible for me. Dad tried to discourage me but I saw his playfulness. All three died in the space of a year.
Keith…? He lived and he took time to challenge me. He wasn’t ingratiating himself with me. My trust was shot so it was hard for me to love him in case my love killed. He was happy to help me realise that success in my industry comes with work if you’re not a classic beauty. He put me in front of his friend John Schlesinger, who told me I needed to train, perhaps because I wasn’t his type. Keith never told me I couldn’t, but he taught me I had to get on with it working out how to make it work for myself, and gave me the courage that took me to Guildhall and thence to a functioning career.
Bless his heart. God rest his soul.
His was the dead body I sat with a month ago. I don’t think I ever really appreciated the extent to which he woke ambition in me until I started getting involved in his funeral and reflecting on what he was silently doing when his focus was on me. He accepted my goal – to be a regularly working actor – and was helping me to think about “how”, rather than just discouraging me as my parents were.
He was ninety when he died, after a heavy “More Menthol” cigarette habit. He lived hard and well despite suffering things nobody should suffer. He never let it dim his fire. I thought he’d be forever. If nobody else will write his life, maybe I should.
Both of us impulsebought a trip we couldn’t really afford for similar reasons. Mine you’ve heard all about. Walking off some of the things that don’t help. Burning out some eels. Clearing the pathways. Lou was upskilling herself. Working really hard over weeks in the sun learning about oily things and digestion and deepening her spiritual practice with a physical and practical Ayervedic Massage Training.
She got back to Brighton and before she assembles her client base she very generously told me that it might be helpful for her to work on a man as there were only two men on her course so she was better with women’s bodies.
She chose a particular oil for me involving sesame and strange herbs. Warmed up gently in a special metal gong type bowl, and then two hours of absolute bliss. As is often the case with me, it was man vs head. Itches and cramps and twitches and mumbles. I had to mostly stay still for two hours. As I write, my right foot is twitching. I struggle to stay still for ten seconds even when I’m sleeping. So this is another expression of how brilliant the relationship I have with her is. I paid her with a driving lesson and lunch and she helped shut my brain.
She’s gonna pass her test, but she needs to get the sense memory back, so I could sit in Bergman and let her move him around a car park in Stanmer. We did lots of the old stopping and starting, which really is the entire nuts and bolts of it. We learn road sense as a cyclist, or a passenger. Once we can operate the car without thinking, we just have to pay attention and not be too cautious or too reckless.
Lunch was fish and chips. I got back from Japan actually craving chips and ketchup. I love umami, strange tastes, heat. But there’s such a thing as too much of a good thing. Good old fish and chips. In a pub. With a pint at lunchtime.
And then an oily massage and I can feel the wall approaching like a bullet train so I’m writing this early.
I committed to this before Japan, with the understanding that I wouldn’t be ready, but the desire to do it anyway. A trip to The Battersea Boot, offloading whatever I could fit into the car before I left. Absolute gubbins for the most part, but large amounts of absolute gubbins. Old clothes left over from the van days. Time time time. Records from my attic. Although an ex flatmate has a skaghead boyfriend who she let in to the flat when I was away. Ages ago the idiot cut off all my mum’s burglar alarm motion sensors, probably convinced they were cameras, and then loaded up on total guff that he figured would make a few bucks. Old prints and bits of art, some of which I’d painted. Some comics, loads of magic cards, lots of records.
He broke the hinges on the attic door and put his foot through the ceiling, smashed up a junction box up there too. I suspect there’s stuff gone from the other side too. Fucking creepy, thinking he was dancing around up there. I shouldn’t have said that I thought there might be a bitcoin code in one of my old bags. There isn’t. I have looked through everything that is in both attics, been through all the old phones for photos of it, but he’s too lazy and entitled to understand that.
He’d have got some value but not enough for the karmic damage he’s done himself. But this life for him is a null life anyway, so perhaps he figures nothing to lose. Addicted broke and from privilege is arguably worse than addicted broke and without privilege, as the resentment of those you can frame with “they’ve got stuff and I haven’t” is more easy to frame. “I used to have stuff, his stuff should be mine.” I might go up in the other attic when I’m back from Brighton, and might involve the police if I think it’s worth the bother, just as it’s not the first time he’s stolen from me thinking I won’t notice and each time it gets easier. I didn’t have before and after photos though.
I was flogging things today hand over fist anyway. I need to offload more and more and more. Just let it all dance away to new homes where maybe it gets loved again, and maybe it gets resold or chucked. I loaded up on incense and flogged enough at a 100% markup to cover my outlay. Now I can burn freely. And I’ve got lots to burn. They make top quality stuff out there as it is such a big part of their culture.
Off to bed. Too tired. Repeated incursion is a good incentive to get up there and get it all out and in the process really work out what’s gone. Today was hard work but I got a decent hourly rate. No single item they nicked will make you rich. But lots of little things make a big thing. It just takes hard work. Which some people don’t do well.
I landed back in London near 7am and thankfully both my bags came through, as one of them had my contact lenses in and I was tired. A careful drive back from the Gatwick long stay car park, on the left side of the road. That’s one of the things we have in common with the Japanese right now.
There’s a great deal that is very different over there, of course. It’s the other side of the world. I’ve already touched on this but cash is still king and it really highlights how arrogant we are about technology that in such an incredible tech country they respect the fact that it could all go to the wall. Attack London with something that stops all the card machines working, and everyone will go into screaming panic. If they notice in Japan they’ll just shrug. They’ve got plenty of yen around the place. I got to know the coins very well. Lucky 5 for throwing at the shrines. “It’s got a hole in it!” So does the 50. My dad showed me these coins. They haven’t changed since he was there in the forties and they are still in heavy use. I love the connection aspect, the counting, the sorting. It feels more like an exchange than *boop*. You can keep an eye on it. I had two 500 yen coins left and tiny bit of shrapnel and so I went and found a bowl of noodles for Y1225 which pretty much cleaned me out of coins. I spent the last few hundred on silly gacha for gifts.
Slot machines are a big part of culture here. Again this is informed by the cash use. Shinto shrines are activated by throwing a shiny thing into the box. Doesn’t matter what denomination. Some without boxes have so much money in piles in front of them. If everyone in England gave me a penny I could buy a house. Someone must occasionally go around, a priest, blessing the shrine, removing all the old shiny stuff that the spirits won’t need anymore because look at all the smoke and the chanting and now there’s NEW shiny stuff. So you chuck money in a box for worship. Then to relax you chuck money in a box and fire shiny pachinko balls. In the morning you chuck money in a box for a coffee. They have them hot in vending machines as well as cold. The can is cooked into the coffee, but you get your aluminium shot with caffeine.
Take your shoes off indoors and in the temples. Again the religion informing the secular, but also for practicality because tatami is basically straw and you’ll ruin it in wet boots. Every home provides slippers for guests. There are even special ones in the loo so you don’t wear the loo slippers in the home space. And the loo seat is almost always warm and can be calibrated to bumgun you with warm water if you can read kanji. Or make sense of some pretty clear pictures.
Bowing. We bow a lot. To the spirits and to one another. Smoke. There are smoking cafes and non smoking cafes. Hate smoke? Just go to a non smoking place. The smoking places don’t mind losing your custom. Everyone wins and the non smokers don’t have to look at someone’s horrible tunour on the table, or some actor pretending to blow smoke at kids or whatever some valueless committee has decided will be the thing to save the world from smoke. Also incense. Everywhere. I can get behind that. I’ve loaded up on the stuff. It’s strong and good and will key specific memories.
You might suddenly hear a merry tune coming from loudspeakers, like a much less demanding call to prayer. I usually got this at 5pm in rural towns but that might have been to do with the fact I was normally walking from 7 to 3. It seems pointless until you examine it and remember that Japan has all the lovely hot springs because it is volcanic, on loads of fault lines and very prone to earthquake. This is why they are so clever with living space. They can’t build high. The speakers are there as a tsunami warning, or quake or bears or North Korean Nuke. If they play that happy tune, the warning system is still working and everything is ok.
They eat very well. They eat everything. I had some pretty hairy food experiences. But even I drew the line at raw horse.
It’ll take a while for my stomach to settle now though. An onslaught of strange flavours and very little familiar. My happy place, but there is such a thing as too much variety. I’m craving fish and chips at the moment.
Naked public baths, gender segregated… but I love the onsen culture. Get clean. There’s a stool in the shower. Sit on it and scrub the hell out of yourself. You are being judged. When you are demonstrably clean, get in the onsen. You can hold a towel casually in front of your todger like it’s just a coincidence and then just leave it on the side. No tattoos. That’s yakuza. Bandage if it’s small. Not your todger, the tattoo.
Wait for the green man. Even if there is no car for twenty miles, you will be JUDGED if you walk on red man. And NEVER TALK ON YOUR PHONE IN PUBLIC.
If it was brought in after the war when they started to merge more with our culture, chances are they use English or American terms, slightly Japanesified. So even if you speak no words, you can try things and they might work. “Hotto cohee” is what I want every morning. A hot coffee. I already told you about deruggo setorro for pharmacy. Birru after a long day, or maybe aisa kirimu if you want to cool down. I got a lot of buses, so “Busu?” with a point was helpful to find the stops. There are SO MANY loanwords. And some of them work in different ways. At Imperial I learnt that cheating when you’re doing an exam can be called “kanningu”. Is that a coincidence? Maybe not when a state of massive anticipation is referred to as “hai tenshon”. Their religions absorb and merge, and so with language, creating Shakespearean joy and the possibility of new directions because nobody is the language police, tryeng too kil owr langwedge und tel uss dess onli wan wey 2 spel tings. That is a way of thinking that only leads to dead expression. I jump at bad grammar and spelling just for that it is that my brain to prosess it alot finds it, anoyingly hard?.
As with religion so with language I appreciate the Japanese way. They nicked kanji from the Chinese too, and then just totally rejigged it all for their purposes. Open, straight down the line, odd creative noisy fun people. I’ll be back.
AlBarclay 