Author: albarclay

Once I had sobered up, I drove home. It was lovely to get absolutely hammered with an old friend, but I have to remember to try and write to you before I am incapable.

I was on a quick turnaround. Had to be at The Globe for half three, suited and booted. Another corporate gig.

This time it was an international conference of women lawyers. “We are looking forward to the tour,” they tell me right away. Tour?

After the matinee, muggins here suddenly found himself leading groups of hammered lawyers into The Globe. It was press night for Maccers and my friend Aaron is Macduff. By the end of it people were warming up on stage. Nevertheless I thought it was Dream and told my groups so. Totally misinformed them, likely in front of the cast. But … fuck it, I literally didn’t know I was doing tours until I was doing tours. I mostly talked about what Elizabethan theatre was and why it varied from post restoration, and what that means in performance. Factory stuff. Purist stuff. They seemed happy, but I’m eloquent and charismatic. Bite me.

Then we did the usual festival of scenes. That’s a thing I really know now – After Dinner Entertainment. Damn if only I could get into something that gave my name traction then my old age would be sorted. You can ask for a lot of money to do what I do easily, so long as you are Blokey off of Tellything. I just need the Tellything to be Blokey off.

Now I’m home. It’s cold. I’m gonna crash and it feels like it has been a positive day. I’ve been helping ease people in. Youth. Three young’uns and me. When I finally explode they’ll be able to carry the after dinner torch. Today was a way for them to cut their teeth and gain confidence while I took the brunt of the last minute random stuff like unexpected tours.

I’m happy. And probably a bit tipsy too. The client gave us wine. I’m usually too “professional” to accept it as I never want a client to think I’m drinking their budget, but the young’uns had already helped themselves and I wasn’t gonna be a buzzkill so I let myself have yummy hair of the dog.

Now I’m home. Bed is happening. Hooray. zzzz

Tristan and I are sitting watching Test Match Special. All these cricketers. How did I start to care about this sport?

I’m catching up. Yes I know we drew the series, and yes had the rain not stopped over a day of play we would have won. But… we didn’t. So be it.

I’m watching Anderson and Broad batting for a few more points. These guys are bowlers. They can’t hit it well or safely. Broad just announced his retirement.

TONK.

There it goes. 6 runs. And the night hawk, this massive weirdo, Stuart Broad – he’s hit his last ball as a batsman and it’s a six.

Anderson is out shortly after.

I’m happy to have cared about this series. This ancient game, that is bigger in many other countries than it is here… I love how it responds to the wind, the earth, the ground. I was a bowler, so I hold out towards the likes of Broad, who will always be better at their job if they listen to the wind and the earth.

Tristan and I both know we drew the series. The aussies retain the ashes. I’ve very much enjoyed the hard work and play that took us to that.

I’m gonna watch it. You won’t get any remarkable insights from me right now so it’s silly to try. Be kind. Night night. A

Barbie is poking Box Office records all over the world. Of all the films. A movie about a toy. Oppenheimer is also pulling in huge crowds – nothing commensurate with Barbie but you can’t bring the kids and it’s much longer.

I am very happy about all of this. Cinema has been on its knees since COVID and now some of the bullshit humans running streaming platforms have started to believe they are gods in the industry. Numbers like this will be helpful in pulling them down a peg or two and maybe even helping them understand that this existential strike taking place currently mostly in LA is not just a load of wingeing lackeys – it is a necessary recalibration. This job is still a job. It is only a few who reach the massive paychecks that some assume we all get. The majority of us go from workshop to Panda to self-tape and back again and wonder what the hell they will do when they finally get too old to sustain the energy output. We haven’t got nest eggs. When our work is used we need to be paid. We have made many compromises. There’s passion, there’s joy, but the worse we are treated the harder it is to hold onto that, and we need to know there’s still somehow a shot at decent money and the chance of not being terrified of the cold in old age while our image is used to line somebody else’s pockets.

So yeah I’m glad that this dumb bright movie about toys has pulled people back to the cinemas. Lots of them have already closed. This might just be enough popcorn to ensure that the ones that survived don’t end up as Wetherspoons.

We were at The Dome in Worthing, and they didn’t know what had hit them. 2pm on a Monday and staff who are used to three people and a stray seagull are processing a crowded house for Barbie. The internet, more and more the haven for utter moronicism, has almost eaten itself over this movie – “Ken is not a good role model!” “My child asked me what a vagina is!” “Aqua had some weird lyrics!” “I am scared of women!” “Mattel are a vile megacorporation who only really care about the bottom line!” “Mummy I did a poo!” etc etc. I enjoyed it for the styling and the chance to just sink into some absolute colourful bollocks for a few hours on a disgusting July afternoon and now I’m writing about it on the internet too so nurrr.

I’ll see Oppenheimer soon, but the whole double bill thing would have been too much for me. The cinema as a place we can go to watch a film and enjoy it? Hell yeah, bring it on again. Where have you been? Let’s remember the joy of film while they are still being made bold and weird. So much community was murdered when we all had to be terrified of one another. Today we had kids running up and down the aisle, people throwing popcorn and blowing their noses… Loads of us had pink clothes on just to conform, and yeah it’s that same herd instinct that made us all shut the doors that is now sending people out to watch these films. Fine. Sometimes we can go baaaa. I just did. Baaaaarbie. The studios will get a shot of adrenaline when they see the numbers. Neither film is merely a moneygrab – both have some decent artists both on screen and behind the camera. So the buoyancy of the studios should lead to more money for bolder big screen movies. And that’ll be more jobs for the boys and ultimately might mean, if I’m lucky, that I can put the heating on for an hour or so on Christmas Day when I’m ninety.

Meantime I’m gonna go to sleep happy about the fact we did something we used to do all the time. Perfect environment for a summer blockbuster to take hold, when its basically fucking January out there.

We woke up this morning to sunshine and peace at Selsdon, in a bed so vast it has warring provinces. We wandered downstairs to an outdoor breakfast. I had sausage muffin. Lou had eggs. A quick cup of coffee and on went the Panda head as Lou went off exploring the acres.

Shortly thereafter I was pushing a shopping trolley. “Look mother, teddies!” shouted a little girl as Al Barclay with a head on pushed a lady artist in high heels across a stretch of colourful floor. “I think they’re having a photoshoot,” observed the mother, in the tone of voice of someone used to that sort of thing. Instagram has had its effect on us all now. If we saw something weird going on in the nineties we would approach with caution and curiosity. Now we look for the camera, and as soon as we see it we dismiss it as just another shoot.

I’m glad to have been part of it though. If they haven’t got some fun shots and stills from this morning I’ll be very surprised and, at heart, this stuff is about remembering to have fun. My connection to it all started in lockdown when I was dancing behind a pane of glass in Mayfair. We weren’t supposed to do anything so Marie and I announced that we were a “mental health bubble” and served Amy’s bonkers imagination by reminding people not to be scared and sad all the time. Mostly that involved dancing like idiots for hours and hours in a window but we had a selection of subversive messages we could hold up. It was mostly a winter thing. There was huge light in doing it. I’m glad she still thinks of me.

This weekend has been delightful, partly for the art but partly for the venue. Birch is a strong venture, and if I lived in Croydon I would hands down get a membership at Birch even though it’s £150 a month. There’s a gym. The pool is opening soon and will be beautiful. The building is spectacular and needs love to live. And there’s 200 acres of old land that is just gonna get nicer and nicer. The pigs and cows and ponies come next week. No wolves as it’s Croydon. Tamworth instead of boar. I suspect there are too many urban foxes for chickens.

I can’t remember the exact number but there’s over 200 rooms there. Whole wings have not yet come into play. They are still finding their feet, but it’ll turn into something remarkable, and I have no idea what deal they struck with Amy but I love that they have turned a room over to her glorious bright mind, and that she has trusted me to come and be me in it (with a panda head).

Lou and I are back at hers now and her bed feels like a matchbox compared to last night. The wind is hard against the window. As soon as I was out of the Panda the rain came. This weather needs to sort itself out please. Summer? I haven’t got a tan properly yet dammit.

It’s only early and I’m knackered again but it’s okay because I’m living where I work, and there are plenty of people out there who would question interpreting what I’ve done today as “work”.

“I don’t know how you keep it up,” said one grandfather today though, in a parting comment. Mister Panda, who was by then boiling in his head like a pot of moules, had been responsively playing with two very demanding small humans for far too long. At the time he was waving goodbye and very much looking forward to decapitating himself and panting like a hot dog. “I can do it cos there are no children at home,” I said. Little tykes can do their best when I’m being paid. I never have to worry about who is gonna deal with their crap in the morning. It won’t be me cos I never made them.

“This installation isn’t for children,” says the artist. It is huge and pink and full of toys. “PSYCHEDELIC CRÈCHE,” say all the young parents of Croydon who spent their teens going Badger Badger Badger Badger MUSHROOM MUSHROOM and are hoping they can leave the little tyke with the panda while they indulge in a remarkably good if pricey wine selection.

I’m at Birch (Selsdon). It’s great. I can’t afford to be a member but I would love to be. It is the latest of many lives that belong to this incredible house, longer than a train, lead windows and with some rooms still smellinh of tobacco smoke, squat against the weather and adapted by literally a thousand years of habitation and use into a creaking breathing mess of impracticality and hospitality. The staff are the most incredible asset they have here. Whoever selected this lot is a genius. Fun and diligent humorous humans, every one of them lively and sparky. It’s The House of St Barnabus again but out in Croydon. I’m very happy to be mister Panda with them. Amy says “We are gonna roll it out internationally!” I’ll take this madness to Korea. Mister Panda is a primal force. He knows things.

I’m knackered though. Lou is here. I had a long day in the head and then some wine. Quicker tomorrow. Then nothing for a few weeks. There are worse ways to earn a crust, believe me. It’s the perfect blend of hard and easy. And for the first time in a while I’m glad that the British summer has taken a temporary back foot. It means I’m only mildly poached, not pressure cooked.

I’m in bed at half ten, in Birch Selsdon. It’s an old golf course that has been rewilded, and an old manor house attached. I’m in a room overlooking the car park. I met the staff today with a panda head on – me not them – and now I have a good sense of many of them in terms of how playful they are. I’m back to doing one of the things I’m best at – encouraging people to drop their barriers. I can’t do it without a mask, but with as mask I’m a ninja at it. How dare you suggest I don’t like my real self enough to do it without a mask! Why would you ever consider such a thing? Nonsense. You shouldn’t have brought it up as now people might think it’s true…

I’m in a brightly coloured room with a panda head on. “What are you going to say to them?” asks the artist’s PA and I’m honestly not sure. “Depends on them,” I say, knowing that you can’t rehearse a conversation with a stranger. Still there’s a lot of uncertainty…

It’s called JoyMart, and the space is dressed up like a store. People are encouraged to fill a basket and then bring it to the counter. I then extract a playful price from them. But the buzzkill is that there’s nothing replaceable here. “Which items are there enough of that I can send people away with?” “None.” “Oh.” Nobody can take anything away that isn’t made up.

Enter Panda’s mother. I couldn’t think of any other way. Mister Panda has a shop full of lovely things that he wants to give away in exchange for play. He doesn’t want money. Pandas have no use for cash. So he refuses every transaction offered for a genuine thing because the installation cannot sustain it. If it gets hard to explain this in character, his mother rings him up on the phone in order to remind him not to let people roll over him and take his things.

People are getting exactly what they desire in mime form. It seems to be working ok. I’m no Marcel Marceau, and this is just my emergency adaptation of an improv warm up game called “I’ve got you a present!” It works well, as I can create the thing they’ve asked for, give it a quality, and then pass it to them and see how it affects them and how they play with it. “As it happens, I’ve got a World Peace in a sealed test tube just here. It’s very very volatile and it could explode and burn up entirely at any moment but since you’ve asked for it you’re clearly the one to be trusted with it. Careful now. As soon as you have custody of it, my hands are clean if it blows up everywhere! And if it doesn’t blow up, perhaps you’ll know where to put it so it starts to be effective.”

So yeah, I get to be silly with people and try and get them to be silly back. This is a special skill of mine, but it is hard for me in such contexts not to create a silliness vortex. I can only see out of a gauzy window the size of a postage stamp, and the more I encourage people, the crazier it gets. Plus the lazy grown up assumption that bright fluffy things are only for children. We tried two hours this evening and, even though this is aimed at adults it was The Lord of the Flies crèche after about an hour.

I’m curious about tomorrow. I’m dreading tomorrow. I’m off to bed.

A quiet day today. I took the time to tidy up around the house, and then read lots. I’ve been burning Palo Santo and candles and incense in vast quantities. I do like smelly burny things. I always have a quantity of them. Frankincense, Tibetan stuff, sage, ylang-ylang. I pick it up almost reflexively when I travel, going into little shops where they hand make it, sometimes charging way too much. In Saudi I ended up with some oud that smells like wet camel. Thick cloying smoke. I still burn it on purpose occasionally because sometimes I feel I need that musky pungent reek. Not this evening though. Today I’ve been quite pointedly grounding. I’ve been eating homely food home made, bubbling up black coffee. This evening I opened one of the French wine bottles and had half of it before pumping it sealed. It’ll keep for weeks like that. My vacuum pump – it’s a revelation! Now I can open wine and not finish it without it going to waste. Yeah sometimes I finish it anyway, but the option of only having half a bottle is … pretty appealing. I’m off tomorrow to be Store Manager Panda somewhere near Croydon!

Not today though. I’m still a bit sick with a summer cold. Leaky and coughy, but not escalating into full horrorshow. Just my body checking into itself and recalibrating. I’ll probably have some Actifed in a bit to ensure a deep and still sleep.

Outside my window the road rattles on but my little slice of London is quiet for Thursday night. My cleaning lady came for a few hours today and put on lovely clean sheets. That’s a luxury that I’m happy with myself for making room for. She’s finding it harder and harder to get work these days, and has been helping make sense of this flat for years. I like her, so I budget for her even when I’m away for months. Mostly when I’m away she stops my plants from dying and I help her pay her rent. She’s pushing seventy now, not that you’d know it to look at her. I first met her when she put an issue of Watchtower into my letterbox and I invited her and her friend up to talk to me about being a Jehovah’s Witness. I was curious. Now I’m not so curious, and she leaves that alone. She doesn’t rearrange my multifaith altar, she cleans up the ash from all my incense crap while vocally disapproving, she listens to endless seminars in tagalog while bagging up my sometimes rather excessive collection of empty bottles. She is a positive reset force here. A luxury, sure. We all deserve nice things from time to time. Now I’ve got clean sheets. I might not have taken the time.

On the 12th December 1969 a bomb went off in a bank in Milan killing 17 people. It was followed by more bombs across the city. The Ordine Nuovo were the culprits – a paramilitary organisation looking back to Mussolini and the fascists of days gone by. Make Italy Great Again. With bombs.

The Italian police were like headless chickens and followed their natural propensities. “It must have been anarchists,” they decided, and rounded up the perfectly innocent members of The Anarchist Black Cross. They didn’t fit in. And they had signed up to an anarchist society. Must be wronguns.

On the 15th December, close to midnight, Guiseppe Pinelli, who worked on the railroad, was being interrogated by the Polizia del Stato in Milan. He was wholly innocent but they were convinced of his guilt. Shortly before midnight he was defenestrated. He went through a fourth floor window. He fell to his death. Despite very fishy circumstances, his death was ruled “accidental”. Not murder. Not suicide. He “accidentally” fell out of a raised fourth floor window that was wide open at midnight on a night where it was -3° outside.

The great post war Italian playwright Dario Fo chose this as the catalyst for his famous work “Accidental Death of an Anarchist”. Since then it has been performed widely and frequently. It is on many syllabuses. Usually when it is performed the dead anarchist is Pinelli and his photo is used. The poor man has been mischievously immortalised. It is set in a police station where they are expecting an inquest into this death and they are visited by a maniac insisting he is a master of disguise and is on their side and is trying to help them get their story straight. Things gradually descend into unbridled chaos. The maniac is in dialogue with the audience, while all other characters are behind the fourth wall. Things get very weird very quickly but it all follows a strange logic. The police are lampooned, the audience is hauled out for complacency, everything is under fire. Anarchy is used to point out the flaws in our assumptions about how everything should work.

I first read it at university. Don’t read plays like books. You have to do it out loud and ideally with others. It is so tedious reading the things cold. I was deluged with references to things I didn’t understand at the time. Took me a few sittings.

It is remarkable though, seen live. It’s a brilliant clown show. One clown and the rest are all stooges. The Maniac, as he is called, does most of the talking. It’s a really high octane, full on, constant role. I saw Danny Rigby in a matinee a long way into the run and he is still firing on all cylinders, listening, playing, sweating, working. I first saw Danny at Edinburgh in “Moth Wok Fantastic” which he just booked with an anything name as he didn’t know what he was gonna make. I remember him just flowing with energy in a tiny hot room. He’s great for the maniac. Last time I saw it was at The Donmar with Rhys Ifans. Totally different productions, but both of them absolutely hilarious and completely different, carried by the undeniable charisma of their central performer. Fo is angry. The play is angry. This modern reworking, so well received that it transferred from The Lyric Hammersmith to The West End – it is angry. But the treatment of the anger is bright. By the name and the subject matter you would expect a difficult didactic play. You might go in expecting Brecht. You get a clown show with a beating heart and a sucker punch. All the cultural references and gags have been updated and there’s space for ad-lib to keep it completely now. Most of the British cultural touch points are touched, from establishment politics to social media absurdities. They even mentioned Barbenheimer, which I only heard about yesterday – this crazy cinema marathon where people watch Barbie and Oppenheimer back to back (do it that way round if you are gonna try) and put it on the socials. “I must have liberty, withal as large a charter as the wind, to blow on whom I please, for so fools have.” This is admirable fooling. And all in the majestic confines of Theatre Royal Haymarket, “the queen mother’s favourite theatre” and we are told that since it is a royal theatre, “it is against the law to boo”. And even our matinee audience boos in response, even if the plausible law the maniac cites is probably apocryphal or invented by him for the gag. Danny excels at including the house, at giving audience permission to play but keeping us playing for him, for his character, for his story.

It’s running until 9th September and it’s a big theatre to fill so if you’re diligent you might well find cheap tickets. If you’ve never seen it, it’s a good one. And if you have, it’s been brought right up to date.

An unexpected morning Lou started my day. She was on a train to Victoria. I picked her up and we slung up to Bounds Green and a huge theatrical dry cleaners. All the West End shows were getting cleaned there, in the big old warehouse. Lou had a sheep to collect – it had gone in with copper stains. I took note of the place, just as it was clearly clever with costumes. Sometimes dry cleaners make a right mess of the lovely things I’ve accumulated, and I’m capable of quite a sweat when I’m jumping up and down, so vodka spray doesn’t always cut it. I’ll likely use them some time.

Once the sheep was collected we drove to Regent’s Park. She was making some costume for an upcoming show there. The Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre. I’ve had a few friends do seasons there over the years. I love it. So central, and yet it almost feels like a country theatre. It’s outdoors, under the elements. Often the shows are fun and well put together. Back when I was youthful and optimistic I wrote a few letters to the artistic director hoping to be considered for company members. Never got a meeting. Insha’Allah. I’ll be going to see La Cage aux Folles there soon just to see the design, as the guy she was collaborating with is part of the whole set of circumstances that brought Lou and I into orbit with one another back in lockdown.

Then to Camden for a snatch of lunch with a friend and home home home as the evening warms up and I start winding down. Bed and rise is later when I’m not working, and I’m voraciously consuming literature through my Kindle. I almost dropped it in the bath just now, but I invested in a waterproof one for that very reason. It goes everywhere with me now. I have to be careful not to read when I’m driving.

Lou finished and returned to Brighton and the pussycat so it’s just me and the traffic up here. A few more things packed in boxes, a thorough clean, and now to settle on this balmy summer London night. The mosquito problem seems to have moved on, thankfully. Likely some water in the gutter above my window that’s washed away now…

Off to BAFTA this evening. Very glam.

Maybe five years ago there was a screening at BAFTA where I was in the movie. It was an American project where young “street” youth got to make a movie – they were part of a Ghetto Film School over in LA, coming here to make a thesis film. The script was unusual, about a writer faking Shakespeare and being haunted. Interesting as the writer Gillian was 17 and Nico Baur the director, who I worked with most closely, was 18. They were both on their first journey outside of the USA. They likely both have big careers ahead of them. They still can’t be older than 23.

I was Shakespeare’s ghost. They had some serious contacts attached to what was essentially a mentoring project – it was about giving the young artists some confidence. All I had to do was be me and let them work with me. One day they had 150 extras on set, just so the young film makers could experience managing a crowd like that. It was an experience thing for them, and it turned into something like that for me as well to be honest. They managed to persuade Barbara Broccoli to come to the BAFTA screening. Champagne and canapes, the whole nine yards. A full cinema and a big screen. I invited a woman I liked on a first date. I felt a million dollars. I’m okay with my work. It is what it is. Here’s a link.

I haven’t been back to BAFTA since then, until tonight. Alice is a film maker and sportswoman and friend. We haven’t seen each other for ages so we arbitrarily decided that tonight was the night to catch up. Problem is, now I’ve got some peace ahead of me, I’ve got all the symptoms of a cold. My body is repairing after a few weeks of not being allowed to be anything other than full forward.

I sat with her, refused to hug, caught up, felt like shit. We had a bottle of white between us, and the fat chips – which I can recommend. We talked of ideas and hopes and dreams, the usual. I didn’t mention my last visit to that building, but it was in my mind. I wonder when I’ll next get a screening there? Then I got a black cab home.

Now I’m looking at a diary that is empty apart from a spot of mister Panda. I have no doubt it’ll fill, and perhaps for a day or two I can recover and let this cold thing play itself out. There’s always work to do in the flat.