If I was to die suddenly, nobody would have the means to give a fuck. I’m ok with that. I’m home, and I’m here trying to make things make sense. “How goes the blog,” asks Tristan. Maybe I shouldn’t have invited him over. “Look at this,” he says. “Shit pellets”. “Word word word word word word word” He says.
It’s odd. I now have to write something, irrespective of blah!!
I’m thinking about the beginnings. I’m so tired I can barely keep my eyes open. I am happy to make myself part of something but I’m not totally swept up. I’ve enjoyed being slow.
This evening it has been remarkable to be ready for a year of practicality.
I’m so happy to have been pushed. I’m done. Thanks All for being excellent xx A night night
Empty diary tomorrow. Oh joy. I’ve been leading towards that.
I tell you what, oh constant reader, it’s exhausting doing literally all the things. I made the mistake of not really budgeting very much energy for the dayjob today and good Christ they took it out of me. Absolutely atrocious room not even that full but just disengaged as you like. The workshop I was running today is very familiar to me and it is very much not the worst one I’ve had to do over the years. I’ve done it in so many places and contexts I thought I wouldn’t be surprised by it anymore. Maybe I’ve become complacent… Maybe I was budgeting energy for this evening and didn’t use enough to win them back.
My employer always asks way too much of the people I’m meeting though, and it sometimes makes them behave oddly towards me. No matter how often I feed it back, I always end up smuggling loads of stacks of unnecessary colour photocopies away in my bag so I can be the one to dispose of them and not the people who blew the budget on producing them. But if the person who stood by the copier is in the room, they see that I’m not using lots of the stuff they spent time copying or gathering. Apart from the papers they’ve been asked to get sand, mud, rocks, sticks, glitter, copper, zinc, leaves, empty plastic bottles, oranges, foil, a magnet, a knife, volt meters, wires, bulldog clips, an LED… If I’ve got enough oranges and the zinc and copper, the wires and clips and the meter then the rest can be largely improvised and it would be much less time consuming for the poor people preparing for me to be there.
The handouts don’t even need to be in colour to be honest. But feedback on this one takes a long time to convert to action. There are some simple errors on the sheets they send. And perhaps most noticeably, the whole thing starts off with an extremely cheaply made video where some poor young woman who clearly isn’t an actor speaks in an idiom that is anachronistic and unfamiliar to her and to the young people it’s targeted at. I always have to win back the room. “She’s got bits and bobs?!”
So yeah, I was wrung out when I got home. Looked at the clock and realised I only had about half an hour to turn around and go back out in a suit to entertain a room full of lawyers. I sat in my car and had a little cry of exhaustion before putting a different suit of armour on and getting an Uber to The Globe and what was thankfully a delightful if long evening of being charming with Ffion. The two of us click well together. We were both worried about the crap poem so we stood next to each other and techniqued it and it went down well, and the surge of adrenaline we got from getting through it carried us the rest of the way in style. A good end to a hard day and now I’m getting in the bath. Don’t call me before noon.
I’m pretty good at learning stuff quickly these days. At school I kept on learning poetry as I had been told by a good teacher that it was a useful muscle to develop early, and mostly it has served be in good stead. Some last minute corporate gigs where I’ve had to say absolute drivel but got it in. Training videos or conferences with in-jokes and nitty gritty about obscure financial chicanery. I’ve crammed for movies large and small with scripts running the quality gamut. I’ve had something pushed under the hotel door two hours before I was in the make-up chair. I’ve not had the discipline of a long session on set filming every day for months, but I’m keeping myself ready. Eternal optimist and all that…
Learning all the Shakespeare over the last few weeks, that was fine. I found time around all the dayjobbery and made happy clients. This poem though…
Artificial Intelligence is changing everything, they say, and I’ve seen plenty of stuff about how it might encroach on all your favourite creative industries. “A chat GPT sonnet,” I was told, and somehow in theory it’s an interesting concept. “They want you to learn it.”
From this experience, I don’t think poets are under threat yet by any means. This language model can rearrange but it has no discernment. It’s an interesting enough technological knife edge that I am sure there will be multiple shows at Edinburgh next month incorporating aspects of the tech, and some will be good. But this “sonnet”? For a start, it’s doggerel. Iambic couplets, and 8 of them. Not a sonnet. No complexity. No twist or payoff. Just rhyme such as I might expect from an American High School kid who still thinks Shakespeare is about fairies.
Out of all the things I’ve had to learn it’s the hardest, as there’s no pattern to it, no real journey through it. Even a terrible writer might have been thinking about assonance or alliteration or something to make it trip a bit, but not even that. Not even the joy of purple prose. This is a diligent uninspired and uninspiring arrangement of words in a form that suggests poetry. And I hate it.
Tomorrow I will perform it with a smile and a flourish, and maybe even wring a laugh or two. That’s our job. Sometimes I watch telly and see someone brilliantly solve a turd of a piece of writing and I want to clap the screen. Other times – maybe more often – I see people wading through a soup of exposition or staccato emotion with no real thought other than memory.
I went to chat gpt myself and asked it for a sonnet. Arbitrary themes. Tried to get it to embed a bit of nuance. They say it’s all in how you prompt it, but I’m not convinced it could come up with anything even with really elaborate prompting… We shall see. Here’s mine, as I can’t share the one I’m learning. This one is … better… but it would still be a bugger to learn.
I’m curious what you guys might have found while tinkering with AI…
Another email with another job that didn’t go my way. I’ve always managed to resist the temptation to Google all the jobs I’ve come close to, all the jobs I cared about, all the jobs I thought I had nailed in audition and then nothing but crickets. It’s so tempting to go through email history and then see what fucker got it. I don’t do it as I think it’d probably make me angry or bitter or weird, and I’m still just about managing to continue to love what I do. Maybe it’ll just be the same guy, again and again. Some super happy guy who is in interviews saying “I just seem to have the magic touch! Now when I fly the Cessna from my private island to audition for Captain Arse in the Bognor Jalopy Theatre Christmas Extravaganza I don’t even have to worry about whether or not I’ll get the part. I just ask my agent to ask ‘Is Al Barclay auditioning?’ and if he is then I know the job is mine.”
I’m having a lovely time and I’m often so busy I don’t know which end is my mouth. Got nothing to complain about really. I just like to be liked I guess. That’s a debilitating flaw. Bah, and it’s not like I’m not valued for my work and what I bring by those that know me. It’s the pesky ones that don’t know me…
Last night I was happy working with new friends playing Gratiano again in front of Hay Castle. I’m very good at what I do. It was a great show and I’m happy with the contribution our scenes made to it. On the way home it made sense to stop and see the old man in Swindon. He’s 94. An actor too. A glorious man. Time is fucking cruel though and those years will always tell. We connected way back through a love of Shakespeare. He looks me in the eye at one point today: “there’s the respect that makes calamity of so long life,” he tells me, and there’s nuance in it all. Owch. I see him bearing the whips and the scorns.
My parents didn’t get old. My grandparents didn’t get old. I’ve met Death and I know the shape of him. But I am less practiced in watching age steal vitality from those I love. He’s still burning through the eyes even as he and his beloved fight the march of time as best they still can. All the things that make him joyful shine out there. I adore the man, and hellfire, he has existed and existed. He’s carried that spark. He still carries it high and in his truncated circumstances. Perhaps he will never act again now but I’m kinda feeling the same thing and I’m half his age. He’s still on his agent’s books… Once he nearly played Prospero at Sprite.
I’m home now. Capulet is done. Merchant ticked off again for now. Back into the fray. Dayjobbery vs bullshit vs ambition. If I make it to 94 and still have the recall for poetry that man has, at least something will have come from all the endless shattering dreaming foolishness. Life is never fair, and rarely makes sense. And so we muddle through it. And so we hope.
I’ve settled into this lovely big room near Hay Castle. It’s dark outside so I can’t see the lovely view that adds to the price. It doesn’t feel like anyone has ever slept here before. I booked it through Booking.com and they were surprisingly neurotic and intractable about check in times. I get breakfast tomorrow but only if I get there before nine. After a show, that’s not easy.
Man I’m hungry. Hay on Wye on a Sunday might as well be the bottom of a crevasse. I’ve been spoilt no doubt by living in London, but I was so hungry I found an all night garage and bought a pot noodle. The only other option was a curry place, and they got my back up by turning me away to only takeaway at 9.29pm even though they said they seated people until 9.30. I tried to tell them I would order immediately and eat quickly, and they weren’t empty. They were weird and dismissive enough that I wrote my first ever passive aggressive bad review on Google. They’ve got the area by the short and curlies – there’s no competition for late night grub and they know it. I could have got a takeaway but I actively didn’t want to give them my money.
So Captain donkey is in his room. He’s poured water into his noodle. He will eat.
Just three days ago I told a room full of young men and women that pot noodle is not food despite the freeze fried peas. Now I’m gonna put it in my face.
There I was, in front of an audience outside Hay Castle. “oh the delights and romance,” the audience might have thought as five hundred year old flashes of poetry eructated from my mobile lips. I was humanising this Flashman type prat in Merchant. Now I’m eating his atrocious diet.
I might just let it congeal, fall asleep, and wake up in time for breakfast. I just don’t like going to bed hungry, even if the only other option is eating plastic.
The drive down here was lovely and perfectly timed. England started playing Australia shortly after I started and it was all winding up as I arrived. I heard our cricket team try so very very hard to do the honourable thing and lose again, but somehow despite their best efforts they inadvertently won. Thankfully some of our bowlers can bat. It’s not easy supporting England in this series, as it feels like they are much much better than they have been coming across. Still, I love a long game, and this Ashes still has life in it. We could have thrown the whole thing today with two tests left. I’m glad we didn’t. It means we can all listen to them fuck it up in a week.
This noodle tastes of nothing but I’m getting stuck in. I like a good meal, as you know. I’m definitely not having one tonight. But Merchant went very well and it was so nice to see the company again, so I’ve had sustenance even if it hasn’t been literal. Apparently Merchant might crop up again sometime in October. I’m game. I’m making friends. I’ll just have to remember how most of the world is still dead on a Sunday night, and pack my stuff accordingly.
Tomorrow I’ll have to drive to Hay Castle. Early. It’s a long drive.
I’m doing a show tomorrow. Playing Gratiano. In Merchant. I honestly don’t know if I’ll still know my lines. My focus has been this event at The Underglobe. A wonderful thing, and a difficult thing. Fights in a dinner space. Some exceptional physical control. As actors we have to be aware of the space we take up and why and how. I recently auditioned for a well known musical where I just let them see my body unconstrained. Didn’t get it. Note to self: pretend to be better than real. I feel foolish for enjoying that audition. I felt supported in the room but evidently I wasn’t. Didn’t even hear back from the casting director.
And so we muddle on.
I’ve been very happy to fill my address book with new humans. This tiny corporate gig is just a tiny corporate gig. But different people attack things in different ways, and it is easy to see the people who will still be slugging in a decade. These guys and gals are recent East 15 graduates. I’ve always loved that place. It makes possible people. Nobody is crushed by their own bullshit. I hope that a fair few of them will still be doing this silly job in ten years time.
I’m drunk again. Oh goodness me how I’m drunk. And I have to do something unfamiliar tomorrow. I’ve done it before. But fuck. I’m tired. I have to sleep before I drive.
Witness me writing this now. I’m missing out on “social time” to log words. I could just stop the hand to mouth. Why do we need to drink after a gig? There are other ways of dealing with adrenaline…
They’re talking about tattoos. I’ve never inked myself. I change my mind too often.
I’m gonna plug back in…
—
Nightbus. Well traveled route but they’ve moved the 11 route and so we are just on the 26 to Victoria. Makes sense as the fuckers used to ignore the St Paul’s stop anyway and just bust past us at speed in order to mock our optimism. This is an old and well trodden route but changed. I’ve carried so many of these events now. The bus routes shift but in the end there’s only so much London. Here I am, crossing that bastard again.
Early start. Oh I’m not good at them. The 6.20 emergency alarm was the one that finally pulled me from dreams. I was into clothes and out the door shortly thereafter and hauling through the streets of London towards the Applegreen in Vauxhall, which sells bacon rolls and a coffee at their pet Greggs for a ha’penny bit. I bought into the whole thing and then consumed it driving while Radio 4 was confused about the situation in Russia / Belarus. To me it seems pretty clear, that they’ve moved warheads to Belarus and are selling the narrative that Wagner Group are dangerous so eventually there can be a nuke fired from Belarus and blamed on Wagner. Make sure you’ve all got some max strength iodine.
Early start though so maybe that’s my imagination going wild.
By the time I’m at Arc Walworth I’m awake, and it’s a teacher’s strike so I’m gonna have to carry a fair amount. It’s year tens today, trying to help them find a career. Ben and I working together and we have history of working together. A chance to take a section of it and provide a different energy. We made it all interesting for those kids and maybe we changed some lives, there’s no quantifying these things.
Then to The Underglobe and man it has been hard work working around this event but it’s gonna be glorious. All so totally full on, but yes and yes and yes is what has got me to where I am. I’m tired right now but happy and I had time to drink a touch too much red wine with Jon and hug and think about old times before I retired to write this. He’s on my sofa. Old school friend, chaos buddy, enabler, partner, fellow weirdo. I love Jon and I’m happy we still get to hang out.
I’m in my bed now and sleepy, but last night I was dive-bombed by mossies and one of them just tried to get in my ear. I’m going on the hunt with a hand towel. The downside of living by the river. DIE, SMALL CREATURES. Sorry, Buddhists.
Early start tomorrow again and working till late so I was making sure everything was arranged so I could just walk into my clothes and out the door when I quietly realised that I had no idea where either of my sets of keys were. “I let myself in last night,” I reasoned to myself. “So they must be in the flat somewhere.” There are about three places I put keys and none of them were tenanted.
We are strange creatures when it comes to habitual things. I think I looked in the same places three times in the same manner, each time with a sort of innocence. “They’ll be there this time,” I thought. Having no flatmate is convenient in instances like this because it takes out the instant “blame” mechanic. “X person must have moved them” leading to a text message saying “Hi, just wondering if you’ve seen my keys”. I’ve been managing that instinct in myself for so long now that I’ve pretty much come to terms with the fact that it’s almost always my fault.
Drawing blanks repeatedly I started looking in really obscure places. The fridge. The cutlery drawer. The kitchen cupboards. Historically I have once left my keys in the fridge and once rang my phone and heard it going from inside a kitchen cupboard so it wasn’t totally insane but it was scraping the barrel. All the pockets of all the jackets. My sporran.
Leaving the door open I decided I would try my car, and before I even got out the block they were sitting there looking at me from the mail shelf and I have absolutely no idea how that could have happened…
I bought the keyring when I gave this spare set to Mel. We both agreed it was weird enough that she would remember the keys were mine. Now I have to carry it around in my pocket… I need a new lock though as mine is literally falling out of the door, and it’s getting tricky having so few keys left. They are all copies now and copies of copies don’t work. Banham won’t issue the original again as mum is dead so I guess I’ll have to finally do my own key and pay the fortune they want to install it.
Glad to have them. Everything is laid out. Early bedtime and double job fun tomorrow! yay
A rehearsal this evening but not a particularly strenuous one. Lines are still swimming in my mind but they’ll settle by Saturday. As things were running to a close I scurried off and jumped into Bergie. I had managed to persuade them to let me put him in one of the very limited parking places at The Globe, so he was on standby for this my escape.
I haven’t seen my best friend for months and this was one of her only days off. I’m absolutely knackered and don’t feel well at the mo – nothing too serious though as we established at A&E but I’m run down. The threads are showing. I drove through the gloaming and we met at distinctly unglamorous Pizza Express in Twickenham. Just a chance to sit opposite one another.
I got there at 9.15pm so the place was already close to shutting for the night. I sat. She sat. We are both knackered. Damn it was good to see her. They don’t sell any of the pizzas I used to like – Capricciosa and Veneziana. All things change. I had some square thing with sausage and I covered it with chili oil. We started trying to catch up.
They had to kick us out and then I took her home to a sleepy house. Two little ones and Rhys all sleeping upstairs, although Rhys roused himself. I am not good company tonight though. I feel slow and still heavy. I didn’t stay for a drink and now here I am back at mine and in bed and it’s not midnight yet. We used to be so rock and roll, she and I, tearing up the late night East End dives. Now I’m ready to go to sleep at ten and I’m okay with that. I’m looking forward to a nice soft happy slumber.
She’s only 26 minutes drive away at this time of night. That’s nothing on London terms. I’m just useless at staying in touch with people… Must try harder. That was a lovely evening.
Well I can gladly say that I haven’t seen Bournemouth at all! I slept there. I woke there. I worked there. I left my hoodie there with my spare car keys. And I rushed back to London to get to an evening rehearsal. I’ll have to go back and get the hoodie before long somehow…
I’m playing Capulet in a much abridged and adapted flowing R&J for an event in Southbank on Saturday. Tomorrow my diary has “Capulet” written in it. Up until just now I’ve been too distracted to think about it so I’ve earmarked tomorrow for the learn. When things are as scattered as they usually are, with multiple heads to wear, I have to partition and work out when to think about what. Tomorrow I’ll cram lines for this. It promises to be joyful. You can’t have a proper long rehearsal process for such things, but I’m glad to be involved and everybody is up for working hard but fast. It’s an extension of the after dinner work I’ve been doing for decades, and it’s a brilliant opportunity to meet and work with people right at the start of their career. My friend has been working with them for weeks now building fights etc. He had a hand in training them at an excellent drama school.
I haven’t had to show up to rehearse until tonight as he knows and trusts I’ll work quickly, but I’m happy to be there now and to meet a load of fresh actors. My address book needs beefing up at the lower age end – I’m frequently having to cast things and haven’t had a gig like this for a while – so says the mercenary part of me. But truly it’s nice to mix it up with fresh actors and remember the passion and craft that brought me to this delightful geeky way of living. It’s why I got excited about maybe being in that damn musical up in Yorkshire. We jobbers – we are as current as the people who recommend us and who we can recommend…
I’m one of two “older” actors in this very young company. My”daughter” is 23 and yep, that’s not just biologically possible but reasonably common for men my age. That first wave of friends having babies? Well done you lot. You’re starting to get your lives back. Hopefully your daughter won’t fall in love with someone from a rival family and get involved in some interfamilial nastiness leading to way too much death.
It’s gonna be delightful this potted Romeo and Juliet. And then it’ll be over. I think I’ll make some friends in the process. Another fleeting joy. Another splash of colour in the quilt…
Meantime I’m finally at home and can sleep in my bed. Rain outside. Cosy in. mmmmm. zzzz
AlBarclay 