Speedy drive back to the smoke from Stoke. They’re a good lot, the students we are working with, but one of them found me on the internet and found my phone number published on an old website. Good to know it was there as I’ve taken it down now. But it was an odd moment to tracked down by a student. A little privacy shift. It was just their cleverness and expression, and in the end, no harm done. It had to be formally reported though. I gave just enough about myself away for him to find me. Safeguarding etc. I should remember to go by Alex in that context as then the crime writer blurs it.
I’ve mostly just been informally interviewing the students the last few days. Spending a bit of time with these young individuals starting a journey into this strange and worrying world, but picking up some skills that might just lift them. Lots of them are concerned about AI, of course they are thinking about climate change. War is back on the table and more young people are thinking themselves back into the arms race than a few years ago. It’ll be interesting to see how learning AI can augment the Russian propaganda machine around elections in every other country. A year now since he rolled into Ukraine and we all realised that he would just keep rolling until somebody resisted. I don’t like to think of it too much, but I suppose we must. There’s a land war in Europe. It’s been going on for over a year now. It really does feel like we might be moving slowly towards something irretrievable.
I’m home though, briefly, and safe for the moment. Very happy to be here, warm in my bed. It’s later than I wanted it to get. I lost track of time and did that thing of forgetting this blog until I was about to switch the light off. But… I know I’m gonna sleep well tonight. I’m shattered. Tomorrow I can do all the car admin and packing and invoices before I’m off again on another adventure. Life ain’t bad.
Nuts and bolts today. I’m too tired to do this properly. Good tired after doing work that might bring positive change. But tired is tired. Sleep time.
Now I get to be peaceful, just for a moment. Still no towel and I forgot my toothbrush until I wrote this sentence. It’s coming up to midnight and I barely slept last night. Bedtime.
I’m staying in this Airbnb in Stoke. Even though I’ve got no towel, it feels like I got lucky compared to some. Apparently half of our group were so pissed off that they dug their heels in and ended up in a Premier Inn after they felt unsafe. Bullet holes in the walls? Yuk.
I get it. I arrived here last night still wearing a suit and a dicky bow, after the corporate entertainment joy. I parked my car and immediately assessed the area and took off the bow tie. Cold or not, I didn’t want to be seen coming out of a car that would be sitting there overnight wearing a costume that makes one look like a legitimate after dinner entertainer in London and a target almost anywhere else. I covered my suit with my coat and shuffled in.
I’m back with our cohort of young engineers. It’s a brilliant group of people and it really feels like we can be part of building the future. I wish I was as focused as they are, these young women and men. I’ve been interviewing them all over the course of the day. That’s been my primary job.
I’m asking them about the things that matter to them. Poverty is a big thing in many of their concerns – there really is a yawning gap up here. These young men and women have been given this chance and it might be enough. Talking to them, their interests are so varied. Some are into designing fighter jets for war, others are trying to find models that stop greed and start to push towards societal models with less selfishness. All of them are excellent at maths and are very much involved in seeing how equations work out in the real world. This is an extraordinary group of young people to be working with.
Driving up last night was almost a bust, but getting here was worth it for being able to help these students grow. I’ve somehow managed to combine engineering with acting. It fell out randomly with me and was likely fuelled by the fact that my best friend at school was pulled into an engineering programme by IBM in Romsey and I made some great friends out of his contemporaries. I never wanted to be anything other than an actor, but my friends and family were scientists, so it probably infused my worldview. My brother is a scientist. There but for the grace of God… Either way, the world is big and life is long, and I’m very tired. Bedtime.
They let me park in the tiny little car park at The Globe this evening, which is a relief as I’m not on until about half nine and then I’m gonna have to drive to Stoke on Trent. I’m not gonna be in bed until 2am at the earliest, and it’ll be in a shared house so I’ll have the least appealing bedroom.
Right now I’m in The Swan with Ffion. About an hour to go before we are up. They fed me us with prawn brioche and have twice asked us if we want wine and twice been surprised we just want water. Professionals, dahling. Upstairs lots of nice rich people are having dinner and we will stride in shortly and be charming at them. Normally I’d be husbanding my energy for the show and then accepting the wine when it’s over. This time though I’m gonna make sure my energy can take me safely and swiftly up through the empty roads. It’ll be fine if they don’t do that late night bastard trick of theirs of closing all the roads for roadworks.
“Do you think we should go and lurk?” says Ffion. Maybe so. Maybe we should go and be available for the client…
Now we are in a tiny little corner of corridor between the cloakroom and the lift, next to a little adapted carpenter’s bench where I’ve spent hours of my working life now all told, waiting and listening to them eat and talk next door and holding on for someone to pop out and say “ok I think they’re ready now,” at which time we’ve got to go in and make them love us.
A new arrangement of lines and thoughts to remember this time and we might be on any moment so I’m gonna stop writing and blither lines until they give us the all clear…
—
Well that was lovely. A pleasant thing well received and then I was off onto the dark but mercifully open roads. With the help of Radio 4 and the world service, coupled with the fact I haven’t been keeping up with the news recently, the miles wore away quickly and now at just ten to 2 I am in bed and annoyed with myself for forgetting my toothbrush.
This has got to be one of the worst Airbnbs I’ve ever stayed in to be honest. It was booked by the company. Absolutely devoid of character, one tiny room with plastic sheets, a big telly and an IKEA print of a lion on the wall. All I have to do is sleep in it, and occasionally to to the loo. All the doors are closed with people sleeping. I found a tiny cubicle with a sink and loo, but I can’t open doors to see if there’s a shower behind one or a kitchen, as it is totally unclear which are the bedrooms and which are not. I was hoping for a kitchen for chamomile tea but I’ve already switched the lights on and off in someone’s room when trying to make light happen in the bathroom.
There’s a radiator switched on right next to my bed. I’ll need water. No cups or mugs though, and no towels! I’ve gone and got a plastic bottle from the car and bent it to fill from the tiny little sink in the loo that you can’t access until you’re inside and you’ve closed the door.
There are so many properties like this all over the world now, and a whole generation that can’t afford to buy a home.
I’m gonna try to sleep in it. I might get close to six hours if I can go down like a log. Fingers crossed. Ugh.
Still feeling pretty ill, but people don’t stop for colds. I’m not working though so I slept in and felt a bit better for it. Today was about online training for future dayjobs. I’m trying to think ahead and keep my options open. This little gap is my own fault for taking some work for granted, but I’m glad of it as I can take care of myself with this damn cold.
“If you repeatedly try to explain something to a student and try different methods to make it clear and they still don’t get it so you tell them they are stupid, is this abuse?” Questions like that in the online training. I guess it’s out of the compensation culture – they want to have a paper trail for every eventuality so if someone complains about a staff member they can drop the hammer on the employee and keep their head held high. I get it, but you wonder if there’s anybody doing jobs at this level that isn’t able to navigate the modern world.
I’m trying to think of the things I thought were normal at school that wouldn’t be tolerated now. I had a teacher whack me with some wood once… Another one threw a board cleaner at students frequently enough that there would be sweepstakes. Some were still caning. One of them bonked the back of my head so I butted the desk. Another one grabbed me and my friend Jocelyn who were shouting over each other trying to blame the other one, and banged our heads together. That shut us up. It was his fault.
None of these things were particularly remarked on or bothersome by us back then. This was in the private sector of course, and at some institutions it has since turned out that there were some darker things going on that I was blissfully unaware of. For the most part we were climbing trees and cutting knees and hitting each other with sticks and experimenting. One boy drank hemlock tea thinking it was magic and almost died. Another set fire to bits of the garden while showing off his woodsman skills.
I think it’s for the best that youth these days are largely safe from being punched by grown ups who are in positions of responsibility. I worry about the lack of mud and sticks though. I guess it’s a new form of character building doing the social things through a screen a lot of the time. Maybe I’m only suspicious cos I didn’t have it, although given the portion of my pocket money I would put into the slots of arcade machines by the seaside, I reckon I would have taken to the things pretty well.
That said I don’t like online training. Who does? I’m not a fan of online meetings really either. I get how they were a useful tool when we had to isolate, but we humans need to be in the same place as each other for the full breath of communication to take place. There’s a lot going on outside of the words and facial expressions and you can see when you work with young people that they have got slightly behind when it comes to the subleties of communication having missed a year.
Today has been precious though as it’s the last time I’m gonna have time to totally relax for a good while. All the everything picks up tomorrow and I’ll be a little random hamster on numerous wheels once more. Fun.
It’s a Monday. I’m going to excuse my lack of behaviour because of the old “Monday is the actor’s day off” trick.
I woke up in the morning to discover that my nose was leaking. While I had been sleeping, someone had filled my brain with sponges and then taken a blowtorch to the back of my throat. I honestly hadn’t heard them sneaking into the flat. There was no trace of them. But their work was thorough and I am still in quite some discomfort as a result of it. It was so bad that I didn’t want coffee. I didn’t. Want. Coffee. Too dehydrating. I had water instead. Then I slowly and contemplatively ate a donut. Then I went back to bed and slept until repeated phone calls hauled me back to pain.
Majorca is ON. It took a while for the deposit to come in, and sadly the lost time means that I have missed the chance of a cabin on the boat over. I’m gonna drive to Spain and then sleep in a fecking chair. I’ll arrive at 6am and my first day there is going to be hell. I slept or languished for an entire day on arrival last time – and that was with a cabin.
But… I had to be awake to sort out accommodation etc before that all gets booked up and closed down too. Lou is gonna fly and meet me. She thinks about things further ahead than I do. It was her pulling me from sleep so we could find somewhere nice to stay.
Still, even on a Monday, a man can’t stay in bed all day even if it’s warm. Once you’re active the symptoms of cold tend to recede. I got up and booked things so I now have the whole route to Majorca and back to Barcelona sorted for transport links and accommodation. I’m holding off on clarifying the return leg just in case Tristan can be persuaded to get a cheap flight to Barcelona ahead of a post Brexit ROAD TRIP through the South of France, or my downstairs neighbour needs something from Biarritz. I’ll want to have the details all squared off before I leave though so I can tell immigration when I’m coming back to the UK. They might get antsy if I don’t have a return booked, now that we’ve isolated ourselves and destroyed our economy because of squabbling old Etonians and a large number of frightened simple folk with primary school ideas about sovvrinntee.
Most of the bookings were made with these leaky eyes and this squeaky brain though so maybe tomorrow I’ll wake up and discover that I’m driving to Barcelona via Budapest. It is done though. Now I just have to not break down or drive off the road etc. Having done the drive before it is not such a concern. Last time, it was a surprisingly pleasant journey despite one day of absolutely torrential rain. I might get an interesting dense book on audible. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire perhaps.
Hopefully there’ll be sunshine in the Balearics and on the way for a clear drive. Last time I was worried and there were no issues. I don’t want to be not worried this time in case something goes to tits. It just takes one asshole… It’s a long way, and Bergie dropped his clutch only a few months ago. I’ll likely shell out again on expensive insurance and change the oil etc etc. Better safe than sorry.
I hate having a cold, but at least I don’t have to go to work today.
Self tape club this evening, across town near Camden. I drove home afterwards and only realised as I was about to crash that I neglected to do my musings. A near miss.
The room where we used to do the tapes is now occupied with a lodger. It used to be a huge empty space. Turns out we don’t need it. We can build a little studio in a small space, and we did. Two lights, a reflector, a background and a tripod for the camera. Similar kit in cupboards across town. I’ve got one too, but the comforting habit takes me to hers, and occasionally – like this evening – I get a tasty goats cheese tart out of it when we are done.
We manage to roughly alternate who gets to do the acting. This time the focus was on me and she was doing the reading in and foley. “The tone of this one is reasonably serious,” I tell her. She understands what I mean. We have come to like doing this with one another. It’s a form of playfulness. Just occasionally one of us – always the one reading in – busts out a silly voice almost by mistake and bins the take.
Three scenes, none too long, none too complicated. It’s a fresh learn, so not as fluent as I like it. Mostly that was my morning. I woke up, ordered a Deliveroo breakfast which is exactly what I’ve been saying I’ll stop doing, and I spent a large portion of the day in bed playing sound files and talking back to them. This thing I have of eschewing the autocue … it cost me a day of February sunshine, but there’s a joy in learning things. I always say it’s a muscle. If I put my mind to it I can learn a lot in a short time, and I’m sure that that is partly due to me pushing poems into my head on long evenings at school. I don’t even really know why I did it. I had lofty fantasies that, after dinner, the host of the party would say “And now, my beautiful guests, it is time for us all to share a poem each!” I would not be caught out in such a circumstance. Problem is it only ever happened at youthful Burns Night parties where I was the host and half the guests were dreading it. Perhaps now COVID has lifted I should start having salons for the last few months in my Chelsea abode and boring everybody with my poetry like Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz… “Oh freddled gruntbuggly…”
The new flatmate surprised me in that we had briefly met before the millennium turned. Ralph Fiennes of all people came and did a workshop with Lost Theatre, and at the time I was part of their Hamlet so I got to be part of the workshop. The flatmate was a friend of the company back then and sat and watched it cos he was just hitting the big time and the PR guys wanted a kinda “back to his roots” type angle. I remember it being helpful and insightful – none of us had trained so the insights of a crafty actor were golden to us.
I ask flatmate: “Did Cecil do one of his weird sculptures of you?” “Yes… I thought it was normal…” There were some oddities but it was a lovely community of people. It was before Fulham Broadway was homogenised so there was a good old pub where Jan and Ang cooked Thai food. An almost forgotten period now, buried by the experiences that were to come. Life is long. We didn’t have time for a proper deep dive into mutual friends but I expect there’s many intersections. He went off to the RADA. There are plenty of actors in London, but actually not all that many. You can tell that by the regularity with which the same faces pop up. Still there’s room for hopefulness. Things change fast. I’m rather hoping my face will pop up a bit more in the next year or so, as I’m pretty ready right now. Perhaps this tape will help…
I’m in an Uber home from Chiswick. A birthday party. Remember them?
The driver is on the phone, low volume, in an unfamiliar language. Madonna is singing Vogue on the radio. The lights of London flash through the windows. It’s a Prius, driven by 5 Star Adeel. People in cities across the world are having similar experiences right now in the same make of car.
He just got the dingle of a new job and ejected me into the warm night near enough to my flat to walk. Palpable optimism on his part. “Here is ok?” “Yes it’s fine”. It’s a warm night. Just a couple of minutes walk.
I’ve been out! Birthday partayyy!
One of my oldest friends. Copious amounts of wine. I feel happy and numb in equal measures, and I’m going to drink a huge amount of water now and maybe even run a late night bath. I pulled out earlier than my habit cos there’s stuff to do tomorrow. I’ve been carrying three scenes handwritten in my pocket to learn before tomorrow evening when I’ll have to put them down with a good friend as another of those self-tape audition things. One that for various reasons I’m very happy to get and thus one that I’m not going to interfere with by getting off my trolley and staying up until 4am. Self care now and I’ll likely go to sleep running lines in the hope they latch in my dreams. “Use an autocue,” a few of my friends say, but that just means double the work if there’s an in person recall/they book you, and I’m an optimist. Red wine though so I WILL have a bath and wash my face. I don’t want tannin lips even if it works for the character. It’d be good casting, this. God Bless the Professionals.
Bergman is chilling out absolutely full of stuff. For tonight he’s exposed but any robber would have a nightmare as it’s a huge and esoteric collection of antique furniture in there that I Tetrissed together over many hours this afternoon. The unload is gonna be interesting. Everything is dependent on everything else. There are things that I still can’t believe I fit in. It’s all going to Majorca soon, and hopefully the trip will be as stress free as the last one. They didn’t even stamp me going into France last time. My only issue was on the return, empty but for a bit of wine, when the lovely customs official in France didn’t like stamping my arrival back to England when my exit had gone unmarked. I’ve told my wonderful agent that I’m off to Majorca and she just laughed. Last time I taped for a French Captain in a little quiet room somewhere in the south of France after a long day driving and learning. This new culture of self-taping has an advantage in that it opens movement as a possibility. I don’t feel quite so strapped to London. I can do interesting life things. I can drive to Majorca and still do the auditions. Embracing the positivity of this shift in the industry towards self taping.
It was lovely to hang with Tanya and her friends this evening. Good people and good food. A bright birthday and the first of her birthdays I’ve ever managed to get to over decades of friendship. This Antisocial job and my habits do often see me flying southwards at a moment’s notice to do service for friends and there’s obviously something karmic about the thing where I move old things that are stagnating and take them to places where they are alive and loved again. Everything in that car is wanted by my client. It’s a gift from her dead parents that would otherwise sit and gather dust. Mice had been at the bird bath, spiders lived in the dressers. Soon they will be loved. I packed all the things exactly as they were found, keeping things in drawers. Photos of them as children in the dressing table. Memories memories memories… I know that complicated knife. Bereavement can stump us for a while but it can also galvanise us. I think these memories will help my client continue to propel herself forward with dynamism as she has been. And I’m grateful to her for trusting me with her wonderful things all the way back down to where, perhaps, the sun is still shining!
Bath is running. I’m guzzling water. Time to look at the lines the lines the lines.
Oh and anyone needing anything brought from Northern Spain or anywhere in France to England, let me know. I’ll be going back empty. I’ll do you a deal. 🙂
Aged something like ten, mum and I went to Jurby Junk. They were famous in The Isle of Man. “WASH YOUR HANDS”, mum would always say after we had been, with such unfamiliar fervency that I was convinced it must have been a place of plague. And yet still we went, and being me, even then I went deep.
I only had a very small amount of pocket money. Mum had vast distaste for children who had large amounts. As far as I remember it was 10p a week. Back then that was a Beano and two penny sweets, but I wasn’t set on the Beano every week. I might have saved almost 20p by the time I went to Jurby Junk. I wasn’t given the shiny coins – (although I would occasionally find them). I had to store up.
Mum was always in a hurry when we were there. She would come, look at one section, and immediately want to leave. I suspect it was clothes she was after and she usually knew quickly when there was nothing. “Come on boys,” we would get, having literally just arrived in this treasure trove of interesting things. “One second, mummy!” I had found a bucket full of knock-off Star Wars stickers. I was trying to find one of each. I couldn’t afford one of each though so I had to leave the ones I didn’t like – Luke Skywalker yawn etc.
I spent 14p on Star Wars stickers. That was all the money I had.
I just found them, mixed in with a load of childhood junk. They aren’t worth much even now, even though they were made by FasCal (Fun Products Intl) in 1977 and “Darth Vadar” and “Millenium Falcon” are spelt wrong. I could probably get about fifty quid for the lot though, which is in keeping with inflation. I’m not gonna sell them though. Some of them might go on the back of future laptops. They don’t take up enough space to be problematic to store.
That was ten year old me. I haven’t changed. The stakes have gone up, but the instinct to buy paper with all the money I’ve got still sits strong, more’s the pity.
I was in Uruguay with Extreme-E, feeling like I had genuinely made myself a part of the team. The next season had just been announced. I felt a relief fall over me. Guaranteed work, I thought, and part time. Wonderful work. A valued member of a good team making something important. Work that resonates with my values, in a team that gets me and values and understands what I do. Ha.
Magic the Gathering were celebrating their 30th Anniversary. That’s a trading card game I used to play as a young man. I still occasionally play online these days but I long ago sold all my valuable cards. Still, I got sent a link to a YouTube channel because the internet knows I still dabble. Jake and Joel are Magic. It was an eloquent critique of a product I hadn’t heard of, critiqued by someone who HATED it. A musjudged Magic 30th anniversary celebration product. It had an absurdly high price tag. £1000 for 4 booster packs. Random selection inside. No other option. £1000 in the UK after tax. $1000 in the US, in the same way that digital products always gouge UK buyers. No guarantee of value. You are opening RANDOM packs.
You could easily spend £1000 for £100 worth of product. Each booster contains one in 113 possible rare cards. Of those rare cards, only 9 are actually worth enough to justify the investment, and many are absolutely worthless considering the price of the booster. A Purelace from one of somebody’s four £250 boosters just sold on eBay for £22.48.
“The Power Nine”. That is all anyone is looking for out of those 113 cards. The rest is gravy. You want one of these: Time Walk, Ancestral Recall, Time Vault, one of the 5 coloured Moxes, and, of course, the unique and famous Black Lotus, the most valuable trading card ever. Find one of them from Alpha or Beta in your uncle’s attic, and you’ll never need to work again. One in good condition sold for over $800k at auction. By weight I suspect that an Alpha Black Lotus in pristine condition will be the most expensive thing in the world.
These £1000 packs are just proxies though. They aren’t tournament legal. “We have to vote with our wallet,” he said on YouTube. “We have to show HASBRO this isn’t the way forward.” But… what if nobody buys these? What might the Lotus be worth to collectors if most of the set gets pulped? Is it worth rolling the dice? Value is only by consensus, and HASBRO, who recently purchased Magic, have given no sense that they are going to do anything other than run something lovely into the ground through greed. The price tag on this set is symptomatic of that greed. I really hope they listen and go another way with it. Anyone trying to keep up is already stretched to breaking. But maybe… maybe they restricted the print run here? Despite my purchase…
My father was a contrarian. “If everybody says one thing, do the opposite,” he taught me that lesson early and I’ve lived by it for better or worse. I checked the comments on all the videos about it. Everybody hated the product. Hundreds of people were actively flaming it. I looked at other videos. Nobody wanted this thing to succeed. Nobody was gonna buy it. So… well I had to, even though it was a lot for me… More now I see that the work I was confident would repeat hasn’t repeated – short sighted… it’ll cost them. But they have to discover that themselves.
On a lunch break, I logged in. I put £1000 on my credit card, bought the most unpopular product in MTG history, and waited for the randomly selected boosters to come.
A bit later, Jake and Joel ran a video showing that the sale had been taken down before everything sold. Apparently only two people (!) had bought to the UK market. Likely a nonsense statistic, but it got my hopes up if I was just one of two. You’d need to spend something like $110k to give yourself a good chance of a Lotus. Nobody is crazy like that, but we all hope for luck. And if nobody bought it the scarcity rises.
What I knew for sure is that I had laid down serious money on a massive gamble with a controversial product.
It arrived last month. I sat on it for ages. Didn’t dare look. It was just in my bedroom looking at me. I ordered white gloves on the internet and watched some opening videos. I finally opened it under a camera on a red velvet cushion the other day and made a video. In retrospect I’m very glad I made the video considering what I opened.
I won’t keep you in suspense. The very first pack I opened yielded the fucking holy grail of magic cards. I never ever thought I would open a Black Lotus. I opened one. “You are playing it cool in the video, but your hands start shaking,” observed Rhys and Brian.
Yes I’m playing it cool. It’s just a proxy. It’s not tournament legal. But this is a very very scarce product. I have opened something rare. And when a booster goes for £250 then I’ve opened something valuable however you look at it. In a way, the mistake HASBRO made was in giving this product for free to lots of vocal YouTube commentators. In doing that relatively freely, they made it look much less exclusive than it is.
I sent the Lotus off to Florida today to get encapsulated and authenticated. “Wasn’t this Magic 30th thing a really… expensive product?” asks the mild guy at the CGC UK Headquarters. “Yes. I was told not to buy it. So I bought it.”
It’s a collectable not a playable so I’m paying to have it graded and boxed. It was momentarily handled by me in white gloves on video and now it is in a plastic sheath. It’ll get a very very high grade. Then I have to decide whether to sit on it or flog it, which is to do with HASBRO and the secondary market. I valued it at £7200 for insurance. It could go up, it could go down. But someone sold one for that many dollars, and this product costs the same in pounds as dollars. But… crikey. For a bit of cardboard…
I kept that fucker QUIET. Only a select few of my geek friends. The product is SO controversial that I might even end up getting flak online for this blog. I haven’t put the video on YouTube or any of my other rares up for sale yet. And, for those of you in the know, I was incredibly lucky. Thank God. As well as the Lotus, a Tropical Island, Birds of Paradise, Word of Command, a retro frame Blaze of Glory and two Sol Rings, one common and one uncommon. I could sell everything but the Lotus and still make back my stake. Cardboard. It’s the new gold.
Life is such a strange thing to navigate. We desperately seek patterns. For most of us, there was a period of relative stability when we were children. The world had edges and we were mostly kept away from them. It’s partly why flat earth is a tempting parable for the limited thinkers. There is a myth of safety, a myth of meaning, a myth of predictability. But … there are cracks in the sky. There’s a waterfall into oblivion.
Different people see the cracks at different points. Sent off to boarding school across a sea at 8, I still managed to sell myself an optimistic vision. This was to be the best for “my education”. *I will endure this nonsense and all the arbitrary rules*. I solved it by breaking those rules. No mobile phones existed and no phones allowed. We wrote letters. I once snuck into my headmaster’s office aged ten and rang home from his office phone at about 8pm when they were all having a party in the library. A slightly tipsy mum answered. Rather than having the fun and illicit conversation I expected I had my mum immediately asking me where I was and worrying I’d get into trouble. I was whispering into the phone. I was enjoying the mischief and asking my mum to join it. I was ten for fucks sake. I remember saying “Let me worry about what I’m allowed to do. Nobody’s going to catch me. I took the risk to call cos I wanted to see how you are.” Mum got me off the phone in short order and was so worried that she dobbed me in.
But… this solving it by breaking the rules thing … that prep school is the same one that nurtured our erstwhile Prime Monster, mister Johnson. You’ve taken the hit on family life, and you know your parents are paying money. In some sort of fucked logic, you can cast yourself as lucky privilege person. You DESERVE. And if you start to break the rules and get away with it then that can be a platform for life as it was with him. “Cheaper household bills if you back Brexit!” Lies lies lies lies lies and today British Gas joined in with the posting record profits malarkey as we all freeze.
My first true world-crack came at 12 when THE DIVORCE was announced and I realised that the safe little bubble I had lived in was a construct. The idea of safe family life *crack*. I was about to go to Harrow which I thought would be a haven for intelligent and thoughtful humans but instead, in my house, turned out to largely be a bucketful of yobs. Another crack in the idea of meritocracy. The cracks deepened and very soon I had no means of holding my sense of a fair and reasonable world together apart from a faith I clung to, which splintered too leaving just the interesting beautiful shards of spiritual practice and acceptance. Both parents dying before I hit thirty pushed the trust beyond endurance. The world became a cruel and arbitrary mess and rather than try and ride it I let it ride my awhile. I did a pretty good job of obliterating myself for about a decade before I noticed that that was what I was supposed to be doing and turned on my own shadow on the open sea.
I came back with this blog partly. Around that time. This daily practice as a means of staving off the drive to oblivion. California heat and light and bullshit at this time of year helping me see the nature of framing reality. Crossing water and finding changes, reframing my own strange shape. Overcoming the gebbeth. Even a daily practice as pedestrian as this tapestry of words is still a daily practice. And life is about the daily repetition of small things.
One thing I’ve never really done is gone back on this blog. There’s so much of it now, all written raw in a day, of the day in which it is written. It might be helpful now for me to look at it, to see the patterns. There’s enough now that I would be very curious to feed it all into an AI and see what it comes up with, but also I would never want to teach an AI like that. I suspect I’ll have to feed it into an Al instead.
Today I’m lost in thought. There’s a melancholia in me and a sense of time and loss. The people I might have known longer, the things I might have seen, the things I might have done. But… an email came today from my agent. A casting director that knew me when I was in the wilderness breaking things has reached out with an olive branch after a decade to this new and perhaps more stable rearrangement of cells that I find myself in. A minor redemption opportunity. And maybe some work at the end of it. Joy.
Life will continue to be strange and arbitrary, but navigation gets easier with time, perhaps.
Tristan had an audition this morning and showed up near mine afterwards. Sometimes it can be very helpful to decompress after an audition. He would be well cast in this one – it’s one of the classics. They aren’t on so much these days so it’s always a delicious opportunity to be in something wonderful, old and familiar. Yes we must look forward. But there is also room to look back.
He and I were on a very different energetic ticket as he arrived. Just past noon and really I was still in email land. The sunlight had previously pulled me into Battersea Park for a morning stroll and I was just thinking about how best to make use of my time when he rang to say he was near. We went to Grumbles in Pimlico for the lunch menu. Moules frites and tomato soup. Very seventies. The chips were mostly fat. I managed about four. We have eaten there before though in similar circumstances, post audition. Tristan found it through his grandfather. “He’s still going, you know. Outlasted the lot of them. No idea how.”
I love Tristan’s grandfather. Michael Beint. He’s 98. He’s an actor, although he has taken himself off active roster, feeling too old to work. But he had a wonderful career for many years.
When I last went to Swindon he showed me his shed where he was making beautiful paintings. Then we sat and geeked out about Shakespeare – something he likes to initiate with me. He knows I’ve worked with the text a great deal. He likes to talk about poetry and esoteric things and doesn’t walk in circles where that’s possible these days. He reads quietly but voraciously – something else we have in common perhaps. One christmas many years ago I drove to Wales after the Christmas Eve Carol show, and spent the next day with the family. Digs in York would’ve been awkward and someone was renting my bedroom. There’s a great photo of the two of us sparked out on the sofa after Christmas food. I can’t find it, but will pop it here if I can remember.
I think of him as a friend, although he lives in Swindon and mostly gets my love sent to him second hand. In terms of the history of this profession, in terms of continuity, I am proud to know him. There’s a joy in knowing you’re part of an ongoing line of thoughtful hopeful unusual people working over decades in this hopeful and arbitrary profession. He’s 98 and he’s still bright eyed.
I was delightfully introduced to John Mills on my first film set. Wheelchaired around but still shining with mischief. One shot and he nailed it. He had been on over 100 sets by then. I wouldn’t be surprised if Michael did as many, just having one line here and one line there. Something to aspire to. A jobber, part of the early National Theatre, showing up in major movies long before I was born, doing the work. My wonderful agent remembers him. She too has been around forever. I’m sure that’s wrapped up in why I love her and feel she’s the right voice for me in the industry. I aspire to be going for as long as I can.
There’s a camaraderie that I’m finding just with those of us from my age group who are left in the industry now. The Factory. Various close friends that share things with me. Even the voices on my social media, all coming together to build a feeling of community and shared joys and hardships.
Me and my friends are less than halfway to Michael’s age though. I’m impressed with the pals I’ve got who are still in the room. Michael? He’s still going – almost played Prospero at Sprite ten years ago, but decided it would be too much. Still, he’s getting up in the morning and reading and thinking about poetry and language and meaning expressed through words. If I was a Tarantino I’d find a way to get him into my movie for the sheer weight of life he brings. A wonderful man. I should get myself to Swindon before he gets his hundred.
Tristan and I went back to my flat and threw ideas around. I burnt some oud I bought in Saudi in ritual honour of the work I did out there and the possibility of more work like that, but also to remember that I’m here in this odd life to ply my craft, not react to the needs of everybody on an event. Like Michael… He was an “actor” all his working life. Different times of course. And I like to be occupied which has sent me all over the place doing responsive things. But he’s strong in my mind tonight, and his approach to the poetry of language. 98! Remarkable. Here’s to the next twenty years!!
Around the conversation, Tristan and I managed to fit in some games of Backgammon on dad’s amazing board. It’s the only photo I took, when I suddenly remembered I’d need one for the daily musing…
AlBarclay 