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A perfect afternoon on Hampstead Heath, even if the wind has started to blow colder. Bright and still warm enough to sit outside. We had the team in place, and Canice, my emergency replacement. I’ve got a gig on the 30th now and won’t be doing the Halloween walkies that night and it is peak season. Good to get a replacement in early. Canice and I took it in shifts to stand on a podium on the South Bank for a long hard summer carnival barking for absolute fucking peanuts. Producer was half man half cocaine. There was a sword swallower with great skill and no talk. Inside: “Right this is a sword. I’m gonna swallow it. Now this one this is bigger. Here I am gonna swallow that too. What about this one? It’s big isn’t it? Here I’ll swallow it. Great there we are. I swallowed all of them. Shall I do the first one again?” Outside: “Roll up roll up ladies and gentlemen for the sideshow of your dreams! Come one, come all and experience things you have never experienced before.” etc etc. Some of the other acts were better – Aleesha mistress of pain was a strong act. But my takeaway from that job was Canice, who costumed himself (they didn’t bother costuming us.) I love the fucker and he’s kind and sharp and motivated and funny. I’m always nervous about availablity on the Halloween walk so getting him in feels like a weight off cos I know it is gonna be covered and entertaining unless I’m there.

We started where the walk starts, at The Old Bull and Bush. I booked a table and had their trio of roasts which is still good but was better two years ago. I needed a coffee after it though, so it did the trick. We wandered out onto the Heath and staggered through the skits and the stops. It feels like it’ll be a fun year this year. Part of the joy of the whole thing is these afternoons and evenings planning it as we walk in the light from pub to pub.

I didn’t find it as hard as I might have not to drink. Didn’t really want to feel bilious and I’m getting used to feeling things again instead of avoiding them. It’s a month tomorrow I decided to fully pull out of that habit after I thought I was gonna die in my sleep.

Walkies and laughter and plans. And I’m home by then, feeling chipper.

Up in the morning and into costume. This is just stuff I had lying around. I had to be there at ten. I assembled it at nine.

Regency frock coat from Lou’s opera work. Ditto topper. Indian silk waistcoat courtesy of Emma’s dad. Tails trousers from my uncle Peter and I had to cinch the straps to the utmost because I had no braces and they’re big. The shoes are my least favourite pair of Gucci from my uncle. They’re out of shot. I have theories as to whose eBay the other pair of Guccis went on. If they ever show up in a forgotten corner of my flat along with various other comics and things that have quietly vanished over the years, I will feel naughty for thinking it.

The mask isn’t mine.

Captain Fantastic is a children’s entertainer. I have no idea how he does it, the energy and noise and control. I helped him unload his gazebos. “We met last year,” I tell him. “I don’t remember.” “You wouldn’t. I was Hello Kitty.” We get talking about the artist involved here. I tell him she likes to use me for things where I am in a mascot head. “You’re her muse,” concludes Captain Fantastic. And leaves me with that. Ha. I’m certainly glad to be part of the art, it has never been anything other than delightful collaborating with her. This one is just a birthday party though. Her daughter is seven. She likes birds.

So yeah I had a rubber pigeon head on. It is designed for children. The eye holes are in my neck. Either the pigeon is looking up in the air and has a human chin, or I am completely and utterly fucking blind. Not just mascot blind. I can handle that. I’ve danced as a unicorn in a club full of coked up Germans enough times that I don’t mind the world being reduced to a slot. But this one? You can see people’s shoes. I’m mostly doing echo location.

“Carry my pram up,” one of the mothers demands of us. Sara has to stay on the door so it’s me. She’s used to service and I AM a pigeon butler so its time to pull my weight. “How can you see through the mask?” That’s one of the kids. I’m not really in the mood to pretend to be a pigeon right now carrying this pram on my own up a narrow flight of stairs blind. “I literally can’t see anything,” I tell him. “I’m part pigeon part bat.”

There’s no hole in the top of it, and pigeon butler talks. If you talk in a rubber mask, it heats up really fast. Three times over a few hours I have to take it off, turn it inside out, and towel off the accumulated sweat. When I get my envelope of cash I feel like I’ve earned it. They’re out of a cash point, but one of the fifties is stuck to its neighbour with what is certainly a bit of dried blood. This city, I tell you, the coke and the ket situation is awful. We are in the middle of an epidemic. Yuk.

Still, pigeons deal in filth. Pigeon butler gets dirty money. He can still spend it on crisps.

I left in character. Bought a Big Issue for a tenner from a nice young guy whose pitch I had been queering. And off I went. Job done. Pigeon Butler.

“Mother, father, I’m going to be an actor!”

Ah shucks. It’s great fun.

Very sweet of Brian to come with me. We went to St Mary’s Hospital in Paddington. I drove, parking in my usual little square off Praed Street where there are almost always very narrow parking spots, if you can get your car into them. I got Bergie in and we made it to Outpatients with no time to spare.

I was booked right at the end of the clinic. The receptionist was perhaps Middle Eastern, and politely sent us to a waiting room where a nurse perhaps of Indian extraction in her scrubs kept on top of who was coming in and out. Lots of patients announcing lots of things with the expectation of “Everything Now.” I only got mildly concerned 45 minutes after my appointment time just as by then we were the only people there and I thought perhaps we had been forgotten about.

An hour of waiting in total though, for a free procedure, is not bad. And I only went to the doctor a couple of days ago.

The ENT Specialist was Eastern European extraction, blonde and still immaculately made up at the end of her long morning clinic. She wasn’t particularly interested in talking and nor was I so we got right down to business.

A little camera on the end of a tense wire, with a light for vision, and controllable. She sticks the end under my tongue for wetness, and then makes a verbal decision: “I think the left nostril,” she says. “Keep your head still.” And in it goes, all the way into my nostril and down my throat. “Say eeee” she says so I sing. She goes left, right and left. At one point I gag momentarily but largely it was much less unpleasant than I had expected. Perhaps in part because I kept my head very still.

My nostril feels a bit funny though.

A developing nodule. Nothing to worry about. I’m not Julie Andrews, my damage is part of my sound. And the knowledge that I produce much more than the average amount of mucus nasally, dripping back. I knew that. That’s partly why I had the lung problems. I have to clear my throat too much – probably a mild intolerance to milk or wheat or London.

So not today, old blackie. I get to keep my voicebox awhile longer. Memories of dad, who would be 100 this year. Dad had a tracheotomy and artificial voicebox back in the nineties. He had specially made silk cravats. Had to put his finger over it to talk. Couldn’t laugh, so would write “ha ha ha” on a piece of paper and hold it up. Yes I write things, but the bulk of my art generation is with presence. I like to change a space with sound (and movement but sound is my primary skill). I’m glad my fears are unjustified. I’ll sleep better going forward.

She prescribed me Gaviscon and Omeprazol for a bit. She reckons the reflux caused it – the coughing from that. Bad bad booze doing bad naughty things.

Now I can start thinking ahead again. Hurrah.

Sleep was not forthcoming last night. I felt tense and hot, my neck always at the incorrect angle. Light on, light off, light on, light off. Read book. Loo. Wee. Or just lie there with my eyes open and occasionally swear.

When I saw dawn I almost gave up entirely. I would often miss whole nights a few decades ago, I’d weather the fuzzy start the next day with coffee and have a long morning, do whatever it is I had to do, and then fade out. I need to take care of myself nowadays a bit more, so I had one last attempt and it worked. I woke at half eight with a splitting headache. About 3 hours sleep? Got some breakfast and took all my pills alongside some migraine relief and felt like the walking dead most of the morning. Brian nuked some bacon in the air fryer.

Lou was in town at lunch, buying fabrics in Goldhawk Road and Walthamstow. I spent a shot of time with her, but was really not feeling very much like a participant in the world today. I pulled out and drove home and cooked myself a hearty lunch. Max came over briefly in the evening and we had a short evening stroll. It’s mild again, the weather, for which I am grateful. Still about a week until my birthday and the weather has got to hold, that’s the rules. I’m getting even older. Days like this can’t become the norm, I need a blooming job please universe.

Looking for work, pitching for things, strategising about a few ideas here and there, keeping myself mostly capable and available for the nebulous *thing* that is definitely just around the corner but don’t look directly at it or it’ll vanish.

Misty is sprawled on me and I’m writing this on my back on my bed. She occasionally gently digs one sharp paw directly into the rose of my nipple, perfectly cutting through the T-Shirt and dragging. It’s an affection thing. She’s in her contact mode and everyone else is asleep. I suspect she will place herself at the foot of the bed and help me get to sleep tonight. She’s a sensitive soul. Didn’t show up last night, but I think I was working through some stuff as I lay there. Sometimes it comes up at night time.

Now she’s trying to burrow into my stomach. I’m glad I’m sharing space with these two affectionate idiots – the cats not Brian and Maddy. I can see how people who live on their own end up surrounded by the things. If I had a country estate there’d be a whole pantry dedicated to the buggers. “If I had a country estate.” A man can dream. And dream I shall, shortly. Gonna put this down, stroke Misty back a bit, and have a chamomile.

A couple of early phone calls. The first one was telling me I was supposed to be invigilating (oops). It’s a good thing that Imperial College is so close to my flat. I was up – just hadn’t written it in my diary. Shifts have been pretty scarce recently and my mechanisms have slipped as my priorities have shifted to more reliable ways of earning in the gaps. I jumped in the car. As I was driving up the other call came in and someone is gonna shove a camera down my neck in Paddington on Friday morning. When I took one up the arse I had to change my diet and then drink something that made me extremely void down below. It seems when they shove it down the other hole they don’t need you to get ready. I’ll just lie back and say “aaaah” and pretty shortly thereafter I’ll be able to stop worrying about this neck discomfort. Interesting.

Shift done I had a little wander about the streets, round by the Albert Hall and up into Hyde Park, then back through the charity shops in Bute Street and to a quick coffee at Pret. I like it round South Ken and it is close to home.

Home then and settling in with the cats. No Brian and Maddy all day and so I just got antisocial with the cats and booted up my new laptop and tried to get things running and shifted across which is always a slow and annoying business but I’m very glad to not have the old one anymore – admin should be possible once more hurray!

I refilled my carousel of pills. Some of the stuff I’m taking at the moment is just because it was in my friend’s fridge and he asked me to chuck it. I don’t even know what Chromium Picolinate is for. Glug. Turmeric and Bee Propolis and Magnesium Citrate. Aloe Vera? Cognitive enhancers and men’s health things and biotics. Collagen. I should be able to fly before long.

While I wait though I’ll have a little snooze and a cup of chamomile. Another quiet day. “For people in The Arts its just about surviving 2025,” a friend said to me yesterday. She’s right. We are in peak Fatima’s next job could be in cyber territory now. Je ne suis pas Fatima.

Over in Highgate up on the hill there’s a little shop attached to a very lovely little distillery. It’s called Sacred Spirits. They got known for their gin. Their brand and location makes them an excellent match for Peculiar London with whom I do the Haunted Hampstead Halloween walk.

Peculiar London is, essentially, my mate Siwan. She’s been running the walk with or without me for just about ten years now. We met about halfway through and if I can do it, I will. I’ll put on a top hat and make up ridiculous stories and reframe true stories. Last year I couldn’t, I was up at the RSC darling. No such luck this year. This year I’m very much doing it and I need the work and the money thank you very much.

We cap the audience at about 40. It’s a bone of contention as I reckon I could manage more in exchange for more cashmoney, but it is also smart cus we do get very strung out sometimes. 40 means we won’t lose anyone. I can be heard by more, but there are actors as well jumping out and doing silly things. It’s very handmade, don’t get me wrong. It’s a pub walk with some silly things and a man in a top hat shouting at you. At one point we do a traditional silly oath called “Swearing on the horns,” and we give them all a shot of something odd.

This is where Sacred comes in. One year we had Rosehip gin, another year it was Cardamom gin. This year I went up Highgate hill and got a car load of spiced vermouth.

I’m off it now. That’ll be a new experience, running the walk sober. I know I can do it though, I’ve negotiated all aspects of my work sober before, and less than a month in I’m already at the “why was I ever drinking?” stage. This means, though, that I won’t know what the stuff tastes like. Still it isn’t my job to recommend it.

“Can you get some photos for the socials?”

I write a daily blog sure, but that doesn’t mean I’m good at that shit. “Hi, this is me getting the booze from Sacred…” Nah. I solved it with the help of the shop assistant by pretending to be Igor shuffling in to buy the stuff. Recorded it on one take through my GoPro glasses and the shop assistant was ace. That’s all it needed and I’m actually quite proud of it as a social media thing. Maybe I am good at that shit so long as I don’t take it seriously.

If you don’t come expecting high art, it’s a pleasant boozy evening in North London. There’s a crap prize for best audience costume. I won’t be doing the 27th. Gonna train in Canice and pay him for it… Hopefully nobody will die. But yeah, if there’s availability and you fancy it, let me know you’re coming in advance so I can try and work out something odd to do to you.

Another glorious weekend by the sea with Lou. She had to be in London today so I slung up in Bergie in the morning. A blustery day largely and one where it is good to be in a car instead of on foot. I do love Bergie. I use him far too much but he’s like a little extension of me on wheels. I put too much rubbish in both of us, we are both scarred but functional. I’m sure I could extend this comparison indefinitely. Expensive to run. Bigger than he should be. Pumps out hot air. Might blow a gasket.

I drove Lou up to town and would have ferried her around for longer but for the fact I had a doctor’s appointment. Just a little something I’m concerned about. Better to know than to wonder, so I’ve managed to get a referral to have someone put a tube down my throat and look around. Probably just a nodule or some damage – I was coughing like a forty a day man in April, then early summer was all about being sick most evenings. Now I’m sober and eating carefully all the symptoms have gone but the throat, and I’ve just been aware of something there. I’m not particularly worried but no point worrying while we still have the NHS. I don’t think it costs then too much to do an endoscopy. I’m in.

Still a bit scary when they call it urgent cancer referral but she reassures me that it is 1 in 10 where they find something. A good doctor and she listened to me. Sometimes at that place I’ve had to fight to get a referral but maybe they are just better when you’re older.

It’s just gone midnight. I’ve been chilling with the cats and the bath back in London town, just enjoying soft things and reading my book. Had a ramen for dinner. Nothing to report really. It’s Maddys birthday and I thought it was the 20th so she hasn’t got a present and I’ve told her I’m celebrating on the 20th regardless.

I reckon I’m about to have a great hard sleep. Lou is back in Brighton. The weekend is too short.

There’s a guy on my Facebook who often tells me what “the left” are doing or what they want. It involves everything bad you can possibly imagine. “And then they call me a fascist” Why do I keep him on my Facebook? Gotta keep plugged in with these people. There are people telling me similar bullshit about “the right”. It is getting worse and worse at the moment, this enforced polarisation. Remember critical thinking? It is so dead people can make nostalgic jokes about this crazy thing we used to do in the nineties where we looked at both sides of things and then made our own minds up. That doesn’t happen anymore, and unless we keep people like this on our socials who we almost always disagree with on many levels, we forget that there are other perfectly nice people who are absolutely convinced of opposite interpretations of the world.

This chap was on the march yesterday – there was a “we are scared of foreigners” march in London yesterday. There was one thing he wrote about it on his socials afterwards that got me thinking about this whole perspective problem we have at the moment.

I am paraphrasing but: “The mainstream media is telling you there were only about 100000 people here but I can tell you it was between 2 and 2 and a half million!”

He’s been in a crowd. It’s a big crowd. He wants to feel that his voice is the loudest voice. He knows he isn’t alone in his fear of the other. But: his perspective is shot.

Flat Earth. Because we cannot comprehend global physics.

Space Denial. Because we cannot comprehend celestial scale.

Evolution Denial. Because we cannot understand time.

Loads of these thinking fails come from an inability to have perspective.

Yes we are small little human people flapping around in this system we have all made up together. It was made up so long ago it is impossible to comprehend how even that has come about. We look at the edges of that and the creation of that, of society, and our brains go a bit burny because it is hard to see it because we are just tiny tiny blots of disease in the biosphere but we’ve learnt how to talk and write and make signs and shit like that but we can only have what perspective we have been able to learn, and we often learn best from hardship.

So he is in a big crowd of people who think like him and he thinks: “This must be the biggestest crowd forever of people who think like I,” and he feels validated in his thinkses but the “bad left” will do lying on him and he must tell us all the truthings.

We are all little tiny tiny tiny little people. But we have to try to think biggerer than the easy thinkies.

Yes I know the march wasn’t “we are scared of foreigners,” I was being glib. But it was a kind of “we all stand together against stuff we’ve been told to hate”. And that changes from person to person but there are trans and wokies and brown people involved in that.

“THERE WERE MILLIONS OF US.”

There weren’t but you are entrenched, mate. And you are indoctrinated. Most of what you generate is amplification and I bet at least half of the stuff you amplify originates in a building in St Petersburg. Because it is just gonna keep pulling us apart from each other as we dismiss those who are on the “wrong” side. Lefties do it too about “the right”. It’s nice to feel part of a big club. To be part of a millionty people but the wokes will lie it is smaller.

I am fucking scared now of where things are going. We are not clever enough to handle the social media algorithm and it is pushing us all into these little bubbles that we think are bigger than they are. “And if the mainstream media tells you it is just a little bubble they are lying cos I know what it feels like to me.”

God. Anyway I don’t know where I’m going with this it just makes me sad. There’s this thing I’ve noticed where people who don’t like “the left” are also desperate to tell everyone how they are victims. Aaaargh it is just getting worse and worse, and then Musk in his video basically trying to get the ball rolling to annex us as another state of America by telling people too dumb to see the endgame that we need to change how our political system works. Cos that’s what’ll happen for future “President for life” Heffalump.

This guy just made me see in that post the lack of perspective. The very very soft fragile tiny little vulnerable ME in the very heart of all the noise and hate and bluster that really really needs to feel as if what they are is validated and what they feel part of is the big safe thing please mummy.

Because if it is just a system we made up to try and stop us constantly murdering each other when we were just tribes in the stone age, if underneath the mask of society we are all capable of desperate things, that is too much to comprehend too. We’ve built this system for ages, it doesn’t work but it’s the one we’ve got.

I’m in the doghouse now for writing too long.. Haven’t read any of this back but I guess I’ll just click schedule and hope… Yikes.

Stanmer was empty, but it was cyclonic this morning in Brighton, right up until just after we pulled up there. Perfect timing, a gap in the clouds and some bright light and we thought there’d be loads of families, but it was just a few zedders in front of us in the café deciding what they wanted for half an hour. When out of civilisation, civilisation didn’t follow us. Hurrah. A moment of peace in wet nature. I found and plucked up a Destroying Angel. My friend got some in Hampstead recently. Beautiful tasty looking absolute fuckers. Same toxicity as a Death Cap and similarly there’s no cure which is never a good look. Probably best to pull them out in case there’s a well meaning clueless forager. I’ve known people to eat mushrooms on a hunch and it is madness. But maybe I’m a little overzealous with my 3 strikes and a second opinion before I can eat each one even the easy ones. But certain death is high stakes for a free vegetable.

From Stanmer into town. Metta bhavana at the Buddhist centre. I assumed it would involve chanting it but it was more of a deep dive into love through meditation. We don’t have to like everyone, we won’t like everyone. But we can try to love everyone. Even the very very hard to love. Even people you think are absolute idiots.

There was a march in London today and lots of people turned out for it by the sound of it. Likely it would have been very crowded in town. After a week of tube strikes it is likely to be a febrile night once Wetherspoons is shut. I’m glad I’m in Brighton.

Sad to miss my friend’s party tonight for not being in town, but I’m really enjoying this peaceful mindful time by the sea. After the Buddhists we went to Lunawave Beaconsfield which is up by a viaduct, a gorgeous new sauna in an old pub garden. The woowoo crowd in Brighton are very active and it seems saunas can pull in the numbers at the moment – everyone is doing them. With autumn closing in, of course I jumped at the offer from Lou, and got good and hot and relaxed.

Now we’re chilling at hers. Watched the rest of our crap action movie, discussions about ways to make shit writing sound like people. (Targeting and commitment, mostly targeting. There was so much woolly stuff or people trying not to say it cos they didn’t know why they were saying it. ’twas ever thus, it’s why I switched out of regular TV watching a long time ago. I think the nail in the coffin was an episode of Made in Chelsea (which I know was pretending to be real but was evidently staged and just so hard to filter that I lost all faith in the medium). Large scale American series bought me back but fuck me there was a dark patch. Nobody speaks when they actually don’t know what they mean). But I’m not feeling particularly ranty. I’ll leave that for those people in London.

Suddenly buckets of rain coming in from the sea. It really feels like we are doing seasons this year properly. I’m in Brighton.

Sent my pitch in for a potential big clearance job and then came down, to thoroughly unwind over a weekend at Lou’s. That quote has been preoccupying me lately. There are two consecutive parties in London tonight and tomorrow and they’ll both be full of friends of mine. That was every weekend in my thirties, but the quantity has dropped right off and I’m kind of … sad not to be at either. My friends are my family and I haven’t had much occasion to be social. But… the booze free version of myself that has emerged from this latest bout of disappointment and bodily frailty, it would find it very hard to be in the drinky rooms right now. Give me a couple more weeks sober and it’ll be easier.

That said I’m starting to see the point of this self denial now… Back pain has faded into the background, and the ability to wake up fresh is the payback to the inability to switch my brain off at night. All the minerals and vitamins are starting to kick in and make me feel more vital in the day. I’m not choking in my sleep anymore, and it’s interesting to be mixing my diet towards less interesting food for a while, with greater regularity. There’s something to be found in everything, perhaps. I’m still not at the stage where I make porridge with Manuka honey in it every morning. But I’m not washing down the hottest curry in the shop with a bottle of Chateaneuf at midnight. It’s a good decision for bodily health, and it’ll definitely help the bank balance too, and invigilating occasional resits is barely gonna cover an occasional margarita pizza and some porridge, it can’t stretch to Dishoom and a crate of Primitivo. Can’t be running up the credit cards. Gotta tighten the strings. Even if this pitch comes in. Last time with these guys I massively underquoted and ended up having to ask for a bit more as it was much bigger than I thought. Thankfully they agreed, but even then I paid everyone else plus the costs but came away with nothing but a shiver for a lot of work. Lesson learnt though and learning is expensive. I’ve been more thorough in my thinking this time and it’s a much bigger job. Hopefully this’ll make up the shortfall somewhat if if if I can find an elegant solution for the wood the wood the wood.

Meanwhile the wind is whistling on the windows hewe in Bwighton. It’s great to be with Lou. And somehow I can switch my brain off better by the sea.