Author: albarclay

It wasn’t so long ago that the phone would ring at midnight and I’d find myself in a cab to Brick Lane and a late night bar and wine and talking. It wasn’t so long ago that we would end up dancing until four and then walking the east end streets clutching a bottle of wine and still talking talking laughing and putting the world to rights. Never a booty call despite the gender differential. A strange and deep friendship. It wasn’t so long ago that we would end up in a tiny flat in Whitechapel and I would pull out the mattress on a sofa bed so familiar that I gave it a name and wrote poetry about it. One or the other of us would rise to an unwelcome alarm next morning and go to work first. Sometimes I would wake to an empty flat and a note, bottles and glasses strewn everywhere, a memory of five other people sitting around in there, a throbbing head. Sometimes I would go to work myself and leave the note myself, amused and heady, half functional. Sometimes I would decant to her vacated bed and sleep the fitful sleep of the non-contributor, long into a grey day, not wanting to face my own idleness, calling it “recovery”.

It wasn’t so long ago that we would go for long restorative walks in parks and attempt geomancy with sticks. It wasn’t so long ago that we would sit opposite each other and just go “aargh”. It wasn’t so long ago that we would talk for hours on the phone because we needed to, because we didn’t have anyone else we could do it with, because we wanted to make sense of things.

She’s a mum of two now. I was in Uruguay for her wedding. She’s still my best friend but those strange lost times are a memory. We are maybe both in a better place, we have moved towards other ways of helping ourselves forget the painful things. I don’t get the late night calls anymore and I only occasionally miss them. Time relentlessly marches on, and tonight we celebrated her birthday. Another year.

We are older now and going out is harder for our friends. Out of a possible 27 people just 5 appeared. Babies, work, distance. It was a familiar group. Old friends outside as the sun set on the south bank. Even amongst the five of us there is a history of opinion and experience. We grow and change and things attach to us as we go. It was glorious.

Much too much wine. Rosé. Light and quaffable and the time passed and we kept topping up. They have a grandmother babysitting. I’m still here in this flat dreaming of the break. She’s doing great. We got drunk again, but my tolerance has changed. It wasn’t so long ago that I could drink that much wine and keep on dancing. As I walked up the stairs to the bridge in the early summer night, I stopped for what I think might have been a tactical chunder and might have been just an inevitability. Momentarily unobserved in the city, I conversationally erupted about two large glasses of wine, self conscious, in a guilty corner. The adrenaline from that and the endorphins walked me all the way home. Here I am, happy and nostalgic for those nights when I wasn’t even thinking about how much I had consumed. When I might stay up until two even though I was working at eight. No work tomorrow thankfully – but for the flat. Still post bridgespew I’m likely to wake up okay and capable. It was good wine, but I just didn’t want my liver to have to work that hard, and the opportunity presented itself. Even though I had filled up with bready pizza.

Back home and contemplating a relatively peaceful run of it. On this mizzly pizzly day, I had a friend round to help box up all the crap I’ve accumulated over the years. There’s definitely less bubble wrap and more full boxes now than there was this morning. It feels like progress even though it is still the foothills of a mountain. Still it is certainly easier, that sort of thing, when you have company. I’m paying her by the hour, but it’s companionship too, so it works well.

Tonight I’m gonna sleep. My dreams were all over the place yesterday and I was restless. My own bed and nothing to wake up for is greatly appealing. A lazy Sunday. No more rushing around.

Had it been like this yesterday I don’t think we would have rushed off to Bournemouth like that. It was all a bit half cocked but made so much more palatable by the gorgeous clear sunlight letting us stop and frolic in the New Forest.

I’ve promised myself I’m gonna make some progress here now, treat it like a job when I’m not working, push to a flat that isn’t full of delightful ridiculous junk and esoterica and geek stuff. Today with my friend to help I have felt a little shift. I’m not sure where I’ll put the boxes yet, but filling them up is movement of sorts and definitely to be encouraged.

Now I’m in bed again, listening to the rain and hoping we don’t lose too much of July to this, not to mention the cricket… We need a full day of play tomorrow dammit.

Bedtime. Past bedtime. It’s late. Gonna put my head down and seek oblivion a while…

I left my hoodie in Bournemouth a few weeks ago. Realised when I was only twenty minutes away from the place, but couldn’t turn around as I had to rush to The Globe in time to rehearse. So I rang them up, and they put it aside for me.

Yesterday when we were at the opera they left me a really hunpy message. There’s nowhere to store it. It’s the end of term. We’re gonna throw it away.

The woman was being a right plonker. I tried to persuade her to see if anyone would post it. “I’ll bung someone £15 if they can post it second class in no particular hurry?” She was having none of it. Even when I raised the bribe. I knew she was gonna say “no” to any figure that I named so deliberately raised it absurdly high. “Fifty quid just to walk to the post office for a minute or two, and you can offer any member of staff that, and I can pay it by any means they choose.” “No.” Because, like, apparently it would look like they were taking bribes or something. Lou was with me and I didn’t want them to burn my hoodie, so I didn’t spell out for them precisely what kind of a human I thought they were and what I would be pleased occurring in their lives as a result of the interaction.

So we woke up this morning, got in the car and drove to Bournemouth from Brighton. Two and a half hours. That’s more than the cost of a new hoodie in petrol, but that one has sentimental value.

On the way home we made sense of the trip by stopping in The New Forest. The woods near Bolderwood Deer Sanctuary, and they were bright green and fertile and ramjammed with interesting mycology.

We were both pretty glad of the chance to connect with nature. I spent a long time dancing with mushrooms but mostly failed to identify the ones I found with any certainty. Some were huge, old and probably not edible:

Others were great, but too small to take:

After enough time with horses and mushrooms and trees and light we schlepped back to Brighton and healthy food and bed. Back tomorrow to London town, and now I’ve got my hoodie back, hooray.

Once more it was a final rehearsal at Glyndebourne and once more I was fortunate enough to get invited. We met one of the chorus just before their call, out in the gardens. There are many ways in which I’m privileged, and being able to be among the first to see so many of the extraordinary works at this legendary family run opera house will really not work in my favour when they try and establish who should be first against the wall come the revolution. But I was happy today.

A beautiful setting, with expansive gardens. A field full of sheep just a breath away, and Lou and I unloading a bag full of hastily bought Waitrose snacks. I had gone with the spirit of the place. Avocado and prawn cocktail, goats cheese and quails eggs. Enough to satisfy our disgusting joke of a home secretary that I deserve everything bad that comes my way. If anyone there had seen my actual bank balance they would have beaten me to death with rolled up Daily Mails, and then told the press someone poor did it.

My cover was good though. I know the classical stories. It was Semele. MOTHER! She’s the woman who made Jupiter promise to reveal himself in his full power as a lover. He tried to use his most gentle thunder but she was only mortal. She was obliterated but out of the ashes of her womb fell immortal Bacchus, God of wine and parties and occasionally tearing people to pieces while you’re so pissed you can’t remember it. Mostly a gift to the mortal world unless you happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Handel wrote it in 1743. You might expect it to be a bit worn out, but Adele Thomas directs it with extraordinary vitality. I think I’ve enjoyed this more than anything else I’ve seen at Glyndebourne. My chief delight was seeing the repetitive moments filled with depth. That never happens at the opera. These songs in Handel – they take ten minutes to say one sentence. Back and forth and back and forth and I’ve seen some pretty good performers try the same tactic again and again and again. The skill is the voice, of course. They might say they aren’t paid to be actors as well. But these guys, mostly, were varying their tactics and expectations, making moments of actual jeopardy out of long repetitions that might otherwise endlessly repeat and add no humanity.

Within that, to my limited knowledge, were some pretty crunchy voices. Stephanie Wake-Edwards was a Mezzo Soprano with real range and grounded me into my listening head when she popped up as the complicated Ino. All the leads were assured voices, of course, within some bold physical choices. I was mostly lost in it. Something that could have been a buttoned up self important classics lesson in the wrong hands became this sexy funny sad human story. And yeah it WAS sexy, because these competent singers were being truthful in a medium that often forgets truth entirely. Opera is usually too mannered to be sexy.

Two long intervals. We went in at 4 and came out at 8.40. The intervals are part of the magic, as you have your expensive picnic in the grounds and, I dunno, convince the person you’re with to invest another 15 million into your cryptochainblock AI thingydingy. Champagne anyone?

Lou and I had nobody to persuade to invest in us. And no champagne. We just ate, lounged, watched, lounged, ate, watched, walked a bit, watched and clapped a lot. Then we went home. Now it’s just me and the cat, as Lou is asleep. The cat is trying to take advantage of Lou being asleep to persuade me to let her into a cupboard she’s not allowed into. From the warring Pantheon of Ovid to the demanding pussycat of Lou. Two different types of all powerful but wilfully flawed entity.

What a huge privilege to have access to that beautiful place, and to occasionally get the chance to witness all these crafty people coming together to tell these odd musical stories. Not counting the orchestra, I reckon they had almost 50 people in that company and it came through in the sound of it all. Lucky happy opera Al and Lou. But the pollen almost killed me. I was crying for most of the show and they must have thought me a soft touch. Now I’m trying to settle it enough to go to sleep without coughing.

“Someone took a bradawl to that I reckon,” says Ishmael. I’ve called Ishmael via Halfords and we are standing next to Bergman. He has reinflated the flat tyre and we are both looking at the big deliberate hole in it.

Here and now in this blog I call down the powers of wind and earth to blow a nasty itchy little persistent fungus into an intimate area of the anatomy of whichever road ragey twit did that. Thankfully Ishmael couldn’t get the locked wheelnut off without the lost unlocking tool, so I’ll get back most of my £167 from Halfords. He put enough air into it that I could drive it ten minutes to the local part worn tyre shop, and Sai. Sai had had a bad day. I got to him 5 minutes before he closed. He got the bolt off in no time. “You make it look easy!” “It is, but it’s also technically illegal.” I am happy to give him my £100 cash. With his help Bergman and I are back on the road despite the malice of the weird man who is going to have a slightly itchy groin for a day or so.

We drove to Lewes, Bergman and I, on very off balance tyres. I’ll need to do some pressure tweaking, but no time for that as I had a ticket to a talk at the town hall. This is why I was anxious to get back on the road. I didn’t know there was also a train strike, so I’m double pleased that it is all fixed.

David R Abram. That’s who I was anxious to see talking in Lewes. Lou is an enthusiast as he aligns with many of her things. He wrote The Rough Guide to India back in the day when she was living out there, and now he is obsessed with ancient sites in Britain. He has written The Aerial Atlas of Ancient Britain and filled it with incredible composite drone photos often taken guerrilla style despite asshat farmers or zealous security guards. It’s my jam too, as you know. I love ancient things. I find it perplexing how many people take their British identity from the Normans, or maybe the Romans. How few people consider the ancient peoples who came from the south with their handaxes and started to leave their marks through over thousands of years with barrows and monoliths. This Somerset Welsh Dad Geek has done lots of thinking for us, about how things are aligned. Ley and river, liminal borders, height and depth, different layers of rock. I reckon he spends more time on Photoshop than in the field, but his results are remarkably beautiful and approachably cosmic – just the right sort of balance in the Instagram age.

I bought his book. He will actually get money if I buy it direct, I hope. Surely nobody but the publishers can make money from books these days. Like musicians. Like actors. It’s a miracle anyone still makes nice things, but fuck it, we are obsessive and surely something will give. The actors and writers strike about AI regulation is absolutely crucial to lots and lots of people in lots and lots of creative industries not starving. I really really hope it gains some traction.

Meanwhile I’m off to sleep to dream of ancient things that have carried through despite all our fear of nature and our atrocious hubris. Good on David, getting up in the morning and pissing off his children to bring us these reminders of how we can be oblivious to the wonder we walk on every day of our cotton wool lives.

Things are afoot. This morning I went for a meeting with a friend and collaborator. She’s an artist and has a very clear but strange eye on things. She’s used me a few times before and I’ve got some remarkable images out of it, but I’m unrecognisable in them. I’ll be back working with her again soon, bringing joyful madness. Mister Panda will be running a shop. He might be a bit pompous this time. It’s about providing a place for people to play in and then giving them rein to be silly. Nothing outside my remit there. I was enjoying thinking about the possibilities when I got a call to ask where I was because of course I was supposed to be in Aylsford today doing a workshop and I had kicked it down the road. I think I had invented an extra day in the week, and was living in it. Dayjobby people were pretty cool about it, but how could they be otherwise? How cool they actually are will become apparent via how many bookings I get in the coming seasons having just cost them a day. It’s been a useful lifeline that job but in the end it is just a dayjob. I don’t love it like I did the boats, but I love the income so I’ll be glad to keep it ticking over until Spielberg finally picks up the phone. Let’s see. For now there’s Panda and pay is comparable.

Now I’m home and I’m in bed before nine. Someone from Halfords is coming to fix the tyre because I can’t find my wheel nut unlocker. I still think it might just need to be reinflated. I wish I had a portable inflater. Can’t drive it to the pump as it is – it’ll hurt the car and I could get pulled over which would be bad as my insurance is up for renewal.

I say I’m in bed. That’s just my office. I’ve been here the last few hours sending emails and doing admin and I’ve just ordered a curry to eat here. Lou was in her office on the beach today. Mine is my bed and that’s fine. It’s the joy of being self employed.

One of my friends sent my a whole load of apps today that are supposed to help people with ADHD and I immediately thought how useful they all would be if I ever got round to actually using them which I won’t.

I’ve sent the invoices. I’ve updated the diary. I haven’t made the plans properly but … for short term I’ve put things in motion that will allow me to make the more long term plans… There’s been some sort of progress albeit slow as ever. Soon there’ll be another flurry but bed was calling today and who am I to ignore the siren song of the fluffy pillow?

Back up to London in the morning. Most of the things I’ve sold on eBay are mine this time – magic cards and the like. But I’ve been trying to sell things for a friend as well and I can tell you, it’s never a good idea. There’s loads of admin if you’re serious about eBay, just because feedback is king. You have to be constantly in touch and amenable. Some guy wanted combined postage and I couldn’t do it on my phone – it had to be my laptop. I had to go out of my way just in order to cost myself about £3.00 and get some good feedback. Loads of questions. Loads of people wanting deals. So far nobody has ever dumped me a negative, and I’m hoping to keep it that way so people feel they can trust me enough to bid on the expensive things when I put them up.

So I went back to my flat and packed loads of junk up and took it to The Royal Hospital post office. It’s staffed by Chelsea Pensioners and I always like bringing my things in there to post. Like a village post office in London.

Bergie was fine when I got home… I parked him opposite my flat and went upstairs. A little later I came down to grab some things and a guy shouted down to me from his balcony “You’ve got a flat tyre!” Sure enough, my front right wheel is as flat as a pancake. How the hell did that happen?

After I parked I sat in my car for a wee while marking all the items as dispatched on my phone etc. While I sat there, the guy in the car next to me came down and scowled at me. He inexplicably moved his car a tiny bit further away from me and then sat in it and and occasionally glared at me. I didn’t really engage as I just figured he was uptight. But now I’m considering the possibility – (surely not) – that he let it down… People are very odd in Chelsea. That tyre is so flat that I’m thinking I would have noticed it going down as I sat there. Tristan had his car keyed outside my flat, he thinks for parking too close to someone. Someone once wrote off one of my cars by shoving things up the exhaust that I didn’t consider looking for until it was too late. There are people here with too much time on their hands, a very bad grasp of consequence and no personal responsibility.

Tomorrow I’ve got to drive to Kent, but I should have time in the day to sort it out. I’ve got a jack and a space holder in the boot. I’m tempted to try and pump it up and see if it holds the air. I really hope he didn’t let it down but if he does I can salvage it. Likely I just hit some glass or something just as I was parking and it’s ruined. I’ll find out tomorrow…

Wind still, making it harder to remember that it’s summer. Still I regretted forgetting my hat as we walked west briefly and once again encountered something burning in Brighton. It was hot enough for me to want to cover my bald bits.

The West Pier burnt down twenty years ago because of arson and its skeleton still stands stark. This time the fire was closer to the east pier, at The Royal Albion Hotel. No casualties, but lots of people evacuated and a big chunk of town cordoned off as the fire service pumped water into it.

Last time The Royal Albion burnt down was in 1998. Was it arson for insurance? Who knows. They needed a refurb and got one with the payout. 160 people were evacuated that time. I have a feeling that there wouldn’t have been so many people turfed out this time. Hotels are struggling versus all the apartments etc that are taking up space in Airbnb and stopping us from being able to buy property.

They had to extend the exclusion zone and demolish a section of the building today. Just too much weight of water and too much fire damage. Sad to lose a wing of a lovely regency hotel like that. I wonder what will come up in its place. Apartments? Hmm.

Lou and I turned round and headed back east. Lazy Sunday was very much the vibe, not rubbernecking. Enjoying being here and having nothing much to do. I finally managed to recycle all those papers. Lou cooked a tasty stew and I filled mine with sriracha. Thoughts and responsibilities mostly switched off despite way too many questions on eBay. I’ll sort all that out tomorrow from London. All the madness of dayjobbery is finally gonna ease. It’ll be happy trails and flat sorting out from now on. Oh joy.

Well done the fire crews for somehow managing to battle a huge blaze pretty near us without us hearing sirens all night. The wind was blowing the smoke away from us too. It still is. Lucky all round.

One more night with the relative peace here. Wind and gulls, an early morning cat… The worst noise is the one I make myself when I’m sleeping and I’m the only one who doesn’t have to put up with that. I might roll over and see how quickly I can start it off…

The rain was bad enough. I’m glad I’m not in a tent tonight, I would be in danger of taking off. I’m at Lou’s, and we can hear the gusts from the windows and the skylight. When we arrived home the front door had blown open and it was whistling up the stairs. The cat is mildly traumatised and couldn’t be quite certain if she was more pleased to see us than pissed off that we had been away for the day. We went to Camber Sands.

The council put the charge up to £30 for the main car park at Camber Sands which is frankly absurd. I found a place to put Bergman for free nearby, and we wandered into a wind tunnel of sharp sand. We clung for a while to the bottom of a sand dune like gorse. Beside us a large group of boisterous Indian men played and sang along to their favourite tunes while joyfully bonding and playing keepie-uppie in the wind as we shared our quiet and reasonably woo-woo conversations. It wasn’t long before we all decided it would be nicer in the spa, and Bella had a membership so off we went.

I was the only man in this large group of women. Beaches, clothes shops, art galleries, spa… After I was pickled by the sauna I went and got myself a pint of lager and sat in the sun and for a moment there was no extreme weather. Then off to Bella’s place briefly.

She’s got an incredible woodland home, with two cats and so much light and quiet. It’s a woodland retreat. What a wonderful place to have moved to. She’s renting it, but still I envy her. For a while I lay in a deckchair facing the sunset falling perfectly between the trees to light my face. Peace.

Then out for dinner and a drive back to Lou’s. We saw a BADGER, running across the road, likely spooked by the wind. I hope it got back safely. Branches down all over the place, debris blown in the road. A couple of times the wind slammed Bergie and I had to hold him hard. This gale has come in all across the coast and it isn’t fucking around. I think if I were in a tent tonight, I’d wake up in the same tent 100 miles north.

Ow. My head hurt this morning. Serves me right. Was a fun night of catching up and backgammon. Maybe a touch overindulgent on the beverages. That’s got to be close to the worst drunk blog so far. I woke up in the morning suddenly and completely from a deathlike sleep into my clothes and out the door.

Working in Enfield today I was relieved it was a lovely crowd – the polar opposite of the one I had a few days ago. Now I’m in a tent and it’s raining.

I arrived at this campsite at about 7pm and was quite surprised to see loads of other people carrying their stuff in wheelbarrows. The great British summertime. Everyone just trying to pretend it isn’t miserable. Stiff upper lip. Tea?

I think if it hadn’t been for Lou I’d be in a foul mood now, but as it is I’m in a tent that belongs to a friend of hers and I’m warm and pretty dry and there’s snacks and a little camp stove. I didn’t pack clothes this morning because I just had to leg it out the door, so I had to stop and buy pants on the way. Now I’m listening to the wind on the canvas and in the trees. I can hear the patches of rain approach and pass. I’m looking forward to a cosy little snooze here and then up bright and early and hopefully into a rain free morning. My head has been too full to anticipate this so I came with no expectations. One thing that is noticeable is that there are far fewer mosquitoes in this tent than there are in my bedroom in London. No idea what’s going on with that.

It’s earlier than I would usually turn in, but I need the sleep and I rather like just being here and listening to the sounds on the wind. Lots of people noise too of course, even in a campsite it’s still a Friday night. I have no desire to do anything other than curl up and snooze.