Category: Uncategorized

Handel’s Messiah. If you were committed you could watch a different version of it every day throughout December. You would be in bright school halls festooned with ribbons, you would be in pubs in small islands where four tipsy friends and a fiddle hack out Hallelujah. If you were lucky you would have found a ticket to Theatre Royal Drury Lane for this evening. Tonight and tonight only. I booked this on 30th September, believing at the time that I would not be able to go because of Christmas Carol, but trusting some deep inner pessimism, sensing on some level that the show was gonna get pulled. I rarely book tickets so far in advance. Learnt the hard way. I had to give away my tickets to Peter Brook’s Hamlet. Loads of things I have had to give away. Loads of weddings and parties I’ve had to miss. My life makes sense to ME, but it requires immediacy and responds badly to advance planning.

As we took our seats there was whispering from the speakers almost entirely drowned out by audience noise, but evidently a beginning of trying to use this very traditional space slightly differently. Perhaps at some point in the creative process there was a thought that the audience entry and exit might have been populated, perhaps by cheap actors or installations. This was not to be, but the stage was very populous indeed.

Lou has managed to comp me to Glyndebourne so much in the last few years that I’m better at watching concerts than I used to be. We saw a semi staged Tristan and Isolde there which tested my endurance for a long show like that. I was ready to become interested in the choir and the musicians, and I know the piece very well. It was while we were rehearsing it for the school choir that my voice catastrophically broke over about a month and went from high open soprano, through wobbly alto and strident tenor to a very confused and very loud bass. At least I didn’t have the anxiety of not knowing what to expect. We settled in.

It’s all about Jesus, as you’d expect, but we had a big screen centre stage running often beautiful and striking moving light displays suggesting comets and suns and stars, crowns of thorns and stigmata and crosses and fire. A whirling display and always something to look at. Not that we needed it with Greg Batsleer as an animated and involved conductor, getting great sound and clear telling from the choir and orchestra. And for me the icing on the cake was three dancers, lighter than air, so free and controlled, whirling on the apron somehow in complete understanding of every movement they made. Absolute joyful weightlessness, the epitome of hard work looking easy. Truly beautiful and free next to the principal singers coming out of the opposite connection – a voice that soars and shines out of grounded still bodies.

This is why people occasionally punt a whole truck of money at a ticket to the theatre. This one wasn’t too bad – certainly for the venue and the experience. About eighty quid the pair of us. We both came dressed up. We went to Busaba beforehand after giving up on the Dishoom queue.

For forty quid each, a whole load of people worked really hard to entertain us, and we heard loads of songs about Jesus. They even make the word “Amen” last about ten minutes. It’s cracking if you like watching people singing. We sat in a great big swanky theatre full of Pre-Raphaelite art and sculptures. Some of the devout audience members even stood up during the Hallelujah chorus. They’ll be the ones with front row tickets to The Second Coming when Jesus finally gets his shit together and makes that show.

We finished up. We were full of joy. I caught Rebecca in the foyer, but a rushed tube to Sloane Square as it was already past ten. Another old friend next to us on the tube. London, innit. And then off off off back in Bergman eating up the miles and full of conversation about the joy we had just witnessed all the way home to Brighton and Lou’s. And here I lie, with a cat and a Lou sleeping beside me. It’s cold in the world. But I’m buoyed up by a lovely impulse buy and a bit of CULTCHA. I’d say “go see it” but you can’t cos it’s over. Shame. It really is awfully Christmassy… Lovely to see it sold out all the same.

Humbug? None of that to be seen.

Early start today for more workshops. I’m back in London so back on the earning train and I need to be able to power my home and eat tasty things and drive to Brighton. Vikram came over and fixed the boiler. Mel was there to let him in. He fixed it. Much better than last time it went wrong. Last time it was four months, this time it was four days. And now I’ve got water and radiators that actually get hot again. The little meter that tells me how much I’ve given to the oil folks is scaring me every time I go into the kitchen.

The day went by in a strange repetitive cycle. The same thing five times. Repetition but to very different humans every time. A fun bunch but there’s no way in hell I could do that sort of thing every day. Once or twice every few weeks is fine thanks. Let’s have some filming. Uruguay drove a wedge in my self-tape momentum. I brought all my kit with me and a sharp suit and I didn’t have to use any of it once dammit. They emailed to ask if I could do last minute cover tomorrow in Warwickshire but I told them no. Someone has lost their voice. That’s a shame and I was tempted to just do it anyway as there’s a bit of me that struggles to say no to anything, but it would have taken me too far from London for my evening plans with Lou.

I’m back in my incredible bed. My Fitbit logs my sleep these days and it calls me a parrot. Looking back over my sleep cycles and my activity certainly justifies the investment in this thing, even if it mostly tells me what I already know. I don’t get enough restorative sleep though apparently, and it can’t make sense of the variable sleeping hours from flying halfway round the world.. I’ve only had one day’s sleep this month where it’s awarded me a star for good sleep and that was Sunday, so now the heater’s fixed and I’m not working tomorrow morning, it’s time to try for another one in cosy bedland.

Cor blimey

I’m knackered.

Mel is in my bed tonight. I’m on my sofa. I’ve persuaded her to be in tomorrow in order to deal with the boiler human while I’m off to Kent to find future engineers.

I’ve tried to give her a crash course in plumbers. These guys are booked through my Vaillant insurance, and as with so many areas of skilled labour, it is easy to predict. “I won’t know what to expect until tomorrow morning when they call me. If they speak with a British accent then you’ll have to fight to get them to do the job. Here’s how to fight. Any other accent and they’ll just get on with it. I’ll let you know when they ring me in the morning.”

It’s like with Team Know How… “Team know how to avoid working”. A pair of awful humans who laughed about the old woman who turned on “the waterworks” when they found a technicality that meant they didn’t have to deliver an oven just before Christmas. I was in the loo, and one older workshy bastard was tutoring his younger colleague. He found some twenty year old mouse droppings and used them as pretext to avoid doing the job. “You’ve taken it better than a lot of people do,” he says, betraying that he thinks his job is to avoid doing his job. I don’t blame Curry’s, despite the fact I was in three months of pain after pulling something in my shoulder taking the old oven out. I do blame that nasty entitled lumpish man.

But tomorrow who knows… I just hope it’s not a brit. It’s a sad place we’ve come to though, where I don’t trust someone with my accent to be reasonable about some labour. It’s as much to do with the post code as it is to do with the economy.

I’m up tomorrow morning to inspire young people to go into engineering. Maybe I can help them pick up skills and then use those skills without cudgelling their clients. Maybe. It’s gotten to the point where it makes sense for me to get my own gas certification etc… There’s a huge price tag on a simple training. But the payback is pretty quick, and I could change the world by being an English accented plumber who isn’t a thief.

I went on a brilliant Dickens walk this evening and I’m too tired to write about it.

https://www.peculiarlondon.com/

Book a ticket.

I’m back home. Enough of his nonsense. Staffordshire? I was there for just a moment. A flash. A Premier Inn, way too much red wine, 6 hours of snoring, a careful shower, milky porridge, three coffees and a yogurt, scrape the ice off Bergman, short drive.

Park, stand in a cold corridor saying hello to young engineers. Go upstairs. Help Ben run a workshop.

Then a tour of the campus conducted with great will and small competence by two young men in branded red hoodies. “This building is full of cool stuff. It’s locked.” “This building serves great coffee. It’s closed.”

Then bundling up materials for another workshop to come, and we are done. Back in Bergman and back to London.

Three and a half hours seems nothing after Uruguay. There’s less to look at out the window in this country. But the drive flew by even though I stopped for a brew at Oxford just as I was flagging. All the wine last night, then all the energy. I’m home and my flat is so cold. Jacket potato and into Bed once more, with the successful experiment of putting the electric blanket UNDER the mattress topper. No more sleeping on wires. All the warmth. If the flat burns down you’ll know why.

More workshops on Monday. Tis the season. I need to prep for the Monday ones as well, so I guess it’s an early bed before missioning out and into the big world. My face is a great big scab now after I sandpapered the front of my face off. Hello you lot. I’m back in London and active again. Hopefully see some of you soon…

A terrible upset in the world of bed. The magical global warming button malfunctioned. Normally I travel to Kitchen where I push a button that warms the world in exchange for everything you will ever own. You can learn more about the land of Kitchen from previous blogs. Last night though, the roaring global warm machine that they have there packed up. Pressure error, it says. Filthy foreign machines. Those kitchen people need to make things like we make them in Bedroom.

Coincidence is strong today. In September I booked my annual boiler service. The man came this morning.

“It’s like an old car,” he says. “One thing gets fixed and the next thing breaks. I could condemn it?”

“Fix it. It’s worth it to try.”

He tried.

There’s a part, he tells me, that needs replacing. This part exists in “the wide world”. Yeah right. We all know he’s just an agent of the “wide world” theory, trying to win new recruits. But I humoured him. He is going to go to Corridor. And there he will just hide for a few days before coming back with the part that he always had. It’s worth the effort for him just to try to trick me into buying the “wide world” theory. Like the idea that we all live on an island surrounded by sea, all of us, and we don’t sink? Ha. THINK ABOUT IT, SHEEPLE. The weight would sink us immediately? How can you be so suggestible? It’s almost as if you’ve got no critical thinking. Lol.

Still I followed him to the door in Corridor to see if I could spot him hiding. He’s hidden well. I couldn’t. But knowing that there is no wide world, I “drove” Bergman to “Stoke on Trent” where I’m staying in a “Premier Inn”. All hallucination of course. Mixed with an elaborate show put on by boilerman.

I’m no sheep. I know how it is. The windows of my “car” are video screens and people jiggle it to give the illusion of movement. I appreciate the artistry. It must be a lot of work to keep the truth from me. More work than you’d think it’s worth until you take into account the New World Order who want us all to think there’s a wide world out there for their nefarious bad reasons and I’M RIGHT AND DON’T THINK ABOUT IT TOO MUCH I’M NOT LISTENING I’M NOT LISTENING AAAAAA.

So here I am. In this idea of Stoke on Trent. And what do I find in his Premier Inn? Oh look. Goodness me. It’s a bed. They don’t want you to know. But beds happen here.

Three beds. But each of them is just Bed. Proof, right here, that there’s nothing outside of bed despite what the msm want us to think. I’ve arrived here in supposed Stoke on Trent and yet here is Bed, just like in the only place that actually exists. For obvious reasons. Bed is the only place.

Now I have proved that bed is the only place that exists, it’s time for me to ask you to follow the breadcrumbs. You’ll find so much more that is just as true. Follow. FOLLOW.

Whut? Night night humans.

In previous posts I know that I stated clearly that there is no world beyond the bedroom. I stand by this statement. Some of you have attempted to discredit this by sending me forged images of other places, or fluffy animals. I am not so much of a fool as to believe your msm narrative. I have only experienced bed. I have watched other people who I admire telling me how there is only bed. There is only bed. And the loo, or “Bathroom” as the sheeple call it… But I made one small error. I said there is no kitchen.

Even geniuses like me can be wrong sometimes. Despite what they told me on the internet, I have made a discovery for you all. There IS a kitchen. So, the world is a tiny bit larger than we thought, but I’m still right. Bed is the centre, of course. Then the bathroom. The things in the bathroom are different from those comforts of bedroom of course. Foreign things happen in Bathroom. It’s wet there, whereas it is only very rarely wet in bed. They make you get wet in Bathroom. Bed is better than foreign wet bathroom. But… Sometimes it is nice to have wet clean warmth from bath, and often it if necessary to make use of the facilities they provide. I can allow Bathroom to continue. It’s close enough to bed. You can still lie down and be warm, even though it’s a different warm. The corridor to the imaginary outside I covered yesterday. I stay away from that door though. We don’t want to challenge what we know to be true. Spend too long looking at that door and you start believing the mainstream narrative that there’s a great big world out there, and you get swept up.

In avoiding the door I stumbled on The Kitchen though. I know I said it didn’t exist, but that doesn’t count now. It’s not that I was wrong. The narrative has changed. Kitchen is very distant from bed. It is not like bed at all in Kitchen. They have no clothes there, just scraps of towel, and it is wet sometimes and hot sometimes but unlike Bathroom they don’t mix their wet and their hot so readily and you can’t lie down and be hot.

They have a machines though with buttons and the buttons make things hot. Despite my terrible fear of the unknown, I pushed some buttons in that distant and foreign place. I made some food warm and consumed it without becoming unwell. Then I pushed a button that exchanges money for general warmth. I don’t know how they do it, but there’s a machine that roars, and when you operate it correctly it empties your bank account, gives all your assets to huge fat stinking liars, and makes the air warmer in the whole world.

Bed room is warmer now. So is Corridor. I have much less money. This is why Kitchen should be avoided. It is a scam.

Living room does not exist and I know this will always be the case.

I streamed made up digitally forged highlights of a cricket team playing a test match in place that isn’t bedroom bathroom or corridor or even kitchen. Obviously it’s a made up place, and it is certain that they were making up the highlights as both of the computerised England opening batsmen got over 100 and we all know they are supposed to get 0, or a duck. One of them was even called “Duck-it”. He didn’t.

I’m too clever to be fooled by anyone who tells me there’s a world beyond this. There is nothing but Bedroom and the distant outlying foreign terroritories I’ve described.

Still, I’m glad of Kitchen. That button has made a difference.

…

And the boiler packed up.

Hello humans.

I live in a bed now.

Beneath me there are wires. When I switch them on they heat up. The mild discomfort of the wires under my bum does nothing to affect the joy of the heat rising up.

Ancient tales speak of a land beyond the bed. We call it “The Wider World Theory”. It is a lie. There is no world out there. We have all we need in this bed. There is a loo next door as well, yes. That exists in the place with the bath. I have visited this bathplace and returned unscathed and warm and clean. Other rooms though? Merely legend. The door to the “outside corridor” exists, of course, because I entered it in a dream and the Deliveroo man manifested bringing curry to it. But the place beyond? I am not such a fool as to believe the mainstream media. The outside place is a lie designed to fool us into thinking we have options. That “travel” thing was just a strange dream. Nothing started until I closed that door behind me. The door closed and WORLD. A spot of corridor. A bed. A loo. The kitchen? Mere hearsay. The living room? Absurd. A room for living? I live perfectly well in his bed. This talk of rooms for living – it is the fantasy around which the Wideworlders build their myth. We need no room for living if we have the room of bed. What I have experienced personally is the sum total of everything that there is. Nothing else exists.

In the room of bed I have everything that I could ever want. I have an iPad for computer games, on which I can play the fabulous Inkle text game “80 Days,” the excellent geeky starship game “FTL” and the bizarre and challenging roguelike “Sunless Sea”. Three game recommendations there for people who, like me, enjoy a bit of relatability and reading in their games, as well as an economy that only requires you to pay once. 80 Days in particular is a charming and strange piece of writing, with so many hidden secrets, all about travel – it’s the most perfect long haul travel game ever created. The flight to Sao Paolo from Montevideo flew by by on one playthrough where I was just experimenting with making as much money as possible. It’s a game about the playing, not the winning. It’s brilliant.

FTL is just good repeatedle noise. It’s hard. You think you’ve got it all sorted and then everything is lost in moments.

Sunless Sea is more chaotic. I enjoy it although I paid for the Kickstarter and never got registered for my benefits. There’s a world that exists that makes what sense you might want it to make.

And so my life passes by. In a dream once, I travelled from Montevideo to Sao Paolo and slept on a plane fitfully. I got a tube from Heathrow airport, and then walked home from South Kensington, stopping at Waitrose to buy food so I didn’t order a Deliveroo. I slept for two hours. I then ordered a Deliveroo regardless and sat on my bed eating curry. My bed. The bed. It exists. Blessed be the name of the bed. The bed is true. Research “Bed”.

One of the biggest supermarket chains in Uruguay is Tienda Inglesa. English Store. Now I’m in the airport and the place the sells overpriced tut is called Brit Shop. There’s the legacy of our failed state. Shops in South America. A reputation for being good at capitalism despite the fact that we are on fire. Three different types of banana all year round, and a plastic hat.

This is gonna be a long flight back to the cold. This is gonna be a long flight back from the hot. I bought an electric blanket in the heatwave this summer. That’ll come in handy as I don’t want to put the heating on at home. Who knows what sort of state I’ll be in when I land at half six in the morning on Wednesday but I can tell you for absolute certain that I’ll be feeling the English winter. Blazing Sol outside the windows here at Carrasco International Airport. It’s glorious. Can’t I just stay here?

I like it here in Uruguay. The weather, the optimism. The people are friendly. I doubt I’ll ever come back here again though. Big old world. Only so much time.

—

Now I’m in Brazil. I’m not sure if it really counts as being in Brazil but I exited security and have two stamps in my passport even if I then went straight back through security. Stopover in Sao Paolo. Sometimes they load out your luggage onto the conveyor belt. That happened to Amelia but seemingly not to me. Hopefully that means it’s gone to London. It’s raining. I’ve had a beer and it has made me sleepy and given me indigestion. Or maybe that was the pizza. But… we board soon and I’m burpy. Window seat again. Hopefully not quite so boxed in by large males this time as I am planning on trying to get some sleep on the long haul. London will happen at 6.30am. Then it’ll be a tube home.

I think I’ll sleep for a week when I get back. I’m not ready for it to be cold though. And I feel very odd. Maybe I’ve been holding something off and now my body is beginning the stopping process and no longer holding it off. England are about to start playing Wales. If I can stream the second half in the plane that might replace my bedtime reading, as my Kindle is in my checked bag.

Onto the beach and into the sea with a little bit more vigor than necessary. Here on this stretch of strand overlooking the boat and the Saint Helena, I miscalculate my shallow dive assuming a deeper shelf. I mildly sandpaper the top of my nose and forehead. Salt water is an antiseptic. I’ll just look like I’ve been in a fight for a few days.

My last evening was perfect but for the loss of skin. Now I’m lying in bed in the San Marcos listening to the crickets and trying to make sense of the fact that it’s winter in London and I’m going back to it.

Such a lovely team, so hanging with them on the beach tonight felt the right closure. Then I went off for a steak. They are all here another week or more on the graft of the derig. With the final few hours of my day I was on site with them stacking the heras and getting the pegs out. Familiar tasks now.

I like Uruguay, with the weather and the happy people. They got beaten by Portugal in the football today and I was sorry for them. Happy friendly people here, with good weather and great seas and sharp sand.

Long long flight coming up though and I’ve left it too late to write this. Gonna turn in and bank some sleep. Rest well yourselves.

Big old party happening right now. Noise. DJ. All the crap.

They tried to fuck us over with the bar. They DID fuck us over with the conversion rate, quoting in US Dollars and then charging us in Pesos converted on their terms. 200 people though and a big party. I didn’t like parsing the card on that basis but I’m aware that most people who parse the card wouldn’t even have that thought.

Everybody is on it now. It’s the night out wagon. I’ve found a corner below a speaker that can’t cope with the decibels. It has shorted the lights out around me and cuts out for ten second intervals pretty regularly, giving me a break from the thump thump thump. It’s a little haven, and with my navy suit I’m mostly invisible so long as I don’t move. I realised I need to write this before everything goes south as it publishes at 2am my time and we are pushing to midnight.

Done. A good race. Very fun. Good people. A successful season and I very much feel like a useful part of the machine now. People know what I do and how I do it. I’m beginning to make actual friends, which is an impossibly slow process for me but one that cements over time.

I’m sure someone has clocked me by now though, sitting in the darkest place on my phone. This shit doesn’t write itself dammit. And even though I’m at a party and not in the thick of it, it’s totally fine as I’ve got no real reason to get stuck in. Nothing to prove. Done that already this week.

This broken speaker has started working better now which means I get a flash of noise right at me every few seconds. Awful. I might have to just go and dance randomly to this mess of music. But the DJ is mostly playing bollocks.

Yep, I’m tempted to hide under the table or go sit on the loo for an hour. But it has to be done. People have noticed me in the darkness. It’s only a matter of time before they send an envoy and the whole “I write a daily blog, it’s not for general consumption, I don’t care who reads it, I’ve got nothing to prove” kinda dialogue comes up.

Pump up the Jam? Are you kidding. I’m gonna pump it. I don’t want a place to stay.

—

I just hit the boogie. For a glorious moment. We started ‘aving it large, but then Abba happened and now I’m on the beach. An empty strand. There they all are. Haddaway is asking “What is love?” but he’s not waiting for the answer before he tries to protect himself which makes sense of why he’s asking. The Atlantic waves are lapping over my boots. How the hell have I made this role work? But I have because it is needed and I’m good at it. As Suzanne Hansen observed in Tabuk, right man in the right job. I secretly balked at it when she said it more than once because I’m an actor etc etc. But yeah. Actually yeah. This work makes sense with me and the world. I’ve done it Arabic and South American and both worked well. So long as I can get some filming in the gaps it might become a thing. Never count on anything though, eh? I’ve learnt that the hard way. But for now, a lovely thing and lovely people. Win.