Category: Uncategorized

I spent the day in The Harrow School Speech Room. There’s this old tradition of turning it into an Elizabethan Theatre. They’ve got rid of the columns now though and mothballed the costumes so we are doing this modern dress, more’s the pity. Toby is clever though. The son of an English teacher who helped ignite my love of Shakespeare – we did As You Like It. I didn’t understand it in the slightest as an acting text through him, but the story made sense and there were lots of interesting little observations. His son is a good director and a good actor. I’m glad he’s flying the flag for this tradition. I’ve been out of the mix for ages as just didn’t have the time or inclination to do it, but I need to learn Marc Antony for The Factory anyway, and there’s nothing like a deadline where an audience is gonna know damn well if you haven’t put the work in.

There on the stage, observed by portraits of some of the better remembered alumni – Churchill, who didn’t enjoy it when he was at school, Jawaharlal Nehru who said that his time at Harrow helped solidify his anti-Imperialism. Various other dignitaries. One of them will play the Soothsayer, his first entrance beneath his portrait. They all stare down over the ranks of chairs as we hack our way. First half today. I’m quiet right up until I have to do Friends Romans Countrymen and then just a bit of shouting and I’m in the pink.

There are plenty of people who have been at this OH game for decades. Ricky Ritchie I remember from when I was a boy. He does a great job at Cinna the Poet. I never felt we made sense of it at The Factory, as our Cinna always seemed to know he was gonna get torn apart. Ricky is playing to win, like we should have been. You find your lessons everywhere.

Late finish though, 9pm. I’m knackered. I’ve run a hot bath as I’m gonna suggest to Toby that my servant might help me with lifting Caesar. There’s no spare flesh on Ollie, he’s skinny and buff. But I’m not gonna fuck my back for the next ten years doing firemans lifts at my old school. I need people to refer to me as “spritely” when I’m eighty. Belly is gonna have to go.

On which subject I bought porridge and bananas and some fish cakes at Tesco. Came out with two bags for less than I might have spent on an oven lasagne and a bottle of wine. This having to watch my food thing might be a good moneysaver, which is for the best because I keep getting emails from my agent to say they’ve taken the pencil off.

Bath is run, and I made myself a chamomile infusion and it is revolutionary. New things. Gotta keep finding them. I’ve largely exhausted the cornucopia of booze options. Ooh a nice cup of flowers in water? Don’t knock it. I feel relaxed and happy.

This whole acid reflux malarkey is getting old now and I’m going to have to admit because of it that perhaps I am as well. Time was I could just run into brick walls. Last night I had a pint while I was watching the old men play fiddle. Didn’t think much about it. Pint of export strength lager on an empty stomach. Then I went and bought a hot Thai curry. “Make it Thai hot please.” They obliged. Pretty much the instant I finished the curry I climbed into bed and slept until 3am when I woke up more bilious than ever. I didn’t want to go back to sleep in case I ended up gargling myself to death so I say up and read until it was time to feed Tessy. Since then I just went about my day in a kind of vague sleepy miasma, occasionally belching. Lou had honey and chamomile tea, which helped, and little turmeric and ginger pills which I pilfered. Gaviscon is too much of a mask now this is a regular affliction. And with the context of last night, I can’t fool myself that it is anything other than the fault of my proclivities. Time, it seems, to adjust things.

Not eating rich food and spicy food washed down with meat and ale, you say? Very well, doctor. How about this Guinea Fowl? No? Hmm.

I went to Café Rust, where I am often to be found over my morning cheese and death plate. I unwillingly ordered myself a granola. Yogurt and fruit and grains. Oh my. I didn’t want a coffee. Wasn’t sure it would stay down.

Lunch was a sweet potato pie with peas and mash. Nothing challenging there. It went down without too much comment. Lou got back to Brighton at 8 and we met at Pompoko. It’s a little cash only family ramen place. I just had a three blandest rice bowl I could find, with chicken on it.

The next year is going to be an adventure as I look after my angry belly by learning how to sustain myself without ingesting lit matches and bat heads of a Tuesday. Anything new is an adventure and abstention is just as much a choice as indulgence, with just as many experiences attached to it. If I’m serious about outliving my dear departed mother and her brother, the next few years will be crucial. I’m not necking vodka out of the bottle, sure. But I’ve got loads still to do. Tristan’s grandad just hit 100. He’s an actor. There’s hope for us all. But I always said I’d ease off at fifty and instead I got sad and started overeating and having silly empty tummy beers.

Sitting in a room waking up while people concentrate all around me for money. That was how the day started. It’s a strange thing to be good at, but I’ve done it on and off for twenty years this invigilating malarkey. I can do it standing on my head.

As soon as I was finished I jumped into Bergie and shifted home. I gave the cats double food – it’ll have to last them until tomorrow. Packed up some underwear. Charger. Toothpaste. Contact lenses. And got in a TRAIN. Only a few quid if you book it in advance and I knew about this. If I wanna go anywhere, Lou has Joni now, her little green car. Chances are tomorrow I’m just gonna lounge by the sea and look at lines. Need to be close to off book on Saturday. I’m not gonna drive everywhere, everything in Brighton is walkable from Kemptown.

I went to The Thomas Kemp briefly for easy food, and they had seven people playing Irish pub music, largely unobserved, doing it for the joy the practice and hopefully some money. Fiddles, mostly. Really evocative and nicely done, but I didn’t want to stay there too long as I don’t get much time with Tessy these days. If I’m gonna be here I’m gonna play with this fluffy idiot even if she’s an attack cat. She just got discombobulated chasing a moth on top of a clothes rail, and when I picked her up and brought her back to stability she considered mangling my calf in recompense. Thankfully she thought better of it as she was pretty stuck. Just didn’t want to admit it. She’s quick, and if she wants to she’ll attach herself with claws and teeth to a soft bit of you. I’ve largely learnt to read the signs but we can’t be on full alert forever.

This flat is peaceful and calm, a real sanctuary for a damaged cat. I’m about to turn in and no need for sleepy drink, I sleep like a log here and a good thing too as Tessy will be up at the first sniff of dawn and will be yelling at me no later than 5.30am. It’s already too late. I’m off to bed so I can enjoy seaside light and a warmer day tomorrow please thank you God.

My dad was very faddy about his health and occasionally I channel him. I wasn’t working today, just absorbing lines and chilling out, so I ventured north to The Kings Road and somehow found myself in Holland and Barrett, which is lethal. All I meant to get was a cup of coffee from the patriotic coffee shop. I ended up with all sorts of gumph.

Bee Propolis. It’s good for your um. It helps with and and. So obviously I bought it. Inflammation? I dunno. Just felt like eating some bees.

Cod Liver Oil. In a capsule nowadays instead of an unwelcome teaspoon attached to grandma. Rebranded as fish oil as we’ve eaten all the cod. It’s good for your brain? Joints? Fish to wash down the bees.

Multi vitamins. That old standard. Buy ’em, eat ’em. As a kid I used to crunch up the cricket ball shaped Sanatogen junior vitamin, a comforting taste still accessible by drinking a grape and ginseng Purdeys. Mum forced me to eat two a day. I volunteer myself to the Purdeys. I like you can still drink it out of glass. Happy to pay the premium.

Vitamin C. We are all supposed to neck one of those bad boys daily aren’t we? Ascorbic acid. Immune system? General useful health stuff.

Collagen. I’m going off piste now. Cowskin to give me luscious cuticles and to make my last remaining three hairs springy like the mane of a buffalo. Beef to balance the fishy bees.

Gut microbe stuff. Why? Pro-biotic nonsense… It was nicely packaged and my gut is misbehaving. There’s calcium in there and kiwi fruit, weirdly. Billions of bacteria. “Friendly” bacteria, according to the bottle, which is mildly horrifying.

Milk Thistle. It won’t magically fix my fatty liver but it might help it heal while I roll away from alcohol in the sharp hope I can try and outlive my mother and my uncle.

I’ve already got Vitamin D. There’s plenty of sun anyway. I’ve filled up my spectacular wheel of pills and now every morning there’s a reason to have breakfast so I can then fill my stomach with the Holland and Barrett madness. Booked a bit of corporate work today so I can be slightly less buttoned up but I’m still worrying about the old wonga. Invigilating tomorrow and then a brief sojourn to the seaside. I feel generally quite dodgy, bilious and fatigued. Early beds, long baths, rest when I can get it and a cornucopia of supplements and I’ll be back to my hyperactive self in no time.

Not now though. Hot bath. Sleepy drink. Zzzz

Ladies. Gentlemen. Everything in between. Please hold a little bit of your wonder aside. I have a tale to tell.

For, once, upon a Teweresstag, the day of Tew/Tyr, the god of war and justice, a thing happenED.

Far far away in the old times, auditions would happen where the humans would be in the rooms, available to each one another, present to read and do communicationes. But then the COVID came bringing fire to all presence and togetherness and LO the self tape prevailēd wherein TRICKSY FUCKKLERETH could fool all the nice ones. And behold Tricksy fuckereth took majority of jobbbes. For the room is being a good room to knaw iff acter be kunt, whereas tayp we cannat knaw but the TRICKES so do SHIEN!

This tag, this Tewestayg, maiself wennet to a Diorama Studio in the central of this towwen.

In stewdeow ai performered an AUDIT-SHEONNE wherin for a Scheottlandish playye off Wilam Shagspar ai pertenndered for being Ross.

Wat iss AMAYYZANNG for shur is for thatt effen iff yes it be a recalling so still it happen in the person and presence of the other humans. Mane yeers gon wee could knaw the acters wee witenessed in werk, they hadd alle bene mett in personne! Not juste an ayejentt given alle clientes blinde! Anned so, this tag, ACETERS WERR WITENESSED FOR AUDIT-SHEONNE. Ringe belles! The anceyentt wayyes comme retorrn.

Mayhaps it wille be jobbe to comefor ich. Man mussen hope and beleeyve despit fukked industree and sheeitt locke foreever.

May thiss be weritten doon forr knawing, wans stil in werreld coms in person AUDIT-SHEONNE for manne and eek wumman also. Stil itt com, and gud peeopul hellpe reeding. Not fergotan be practis off no-screene acter mayk choyce for in reel room. Mayhap in Futur COVID be fergat and memorry be that until meeting sumwan, no way of telling if he is Kunt for making alle show shitte.

Butt… Mayhap otheres knawwen for not beyyen kunt wheras alle for mich iss hopen it iss sene. Behold I do nat knaw this mann but Hull Trucke, Boltone Derby? Soundeth much excellente. Mayhappen it falles well. Ach gott.

Mussen WAAAIIT. Wishen ich nat for wayeteng. Wannet knaw for thraw moneths werk kan bee. Nat for sniffen, aye? Fengers crassed. Knawwen be wannaderfuelll. Butt oneley iff yass!!!

—

Nice to have a real in the room audition again at last. It has literally been years.

Some friends of Brian and I are in town, Rob and Amy. I wanna go hang with them in the pub but right now my entire system is rejecting the booze. I don’t want it. And I’m not yet in a place where I can go be with boozy people and not step in. So I’ve put myself to bed.

It’s not even seven, but I’ve got a recall audition tomorrow after a dayjob shift at the old invigilation game. It’s resit week. I was there today presiding over the usual shitshow. Loads of them didn’t even show up. These are the ones who have to take it again so often there’s plenty of stuff going on. Nice lot though, and only ten of them but six different exams so it was a paperwork bonanza and I had to stay on top of it. They’ve frozen my card for access to lots of places because I’ve been working there on and off for so long they just automatically reset things like with a driving licence. I first did this in like 2003 when Abigail got me in shortly after we left drama school. She’s far too resourceful to still be ticking over with it, she jumped ship decades ago but I’m still letting it tick over. It takes less than ten minutes to get to work from my bed. On days that would otherwise be unused, I can make a bit of positive stack and be in a concentrated room for a few hours. It’s a decent enough place to remember lines so long as I remember not to say them out loud.

Early hot bath despite the temperature and now it’s a toss up between a few hours reading Infinite Jest or a few hours playing Skyrim. I think I’ll veer towards the paper as it is compulsive. Great big massive fucking tome, but it has been on my shelf for years and my last two books were both Stephen King so now’s the time. Teenage Lord of the Rings enthusiast means I’m at home to a fat book. It’s easy to forget to read books with all this information in our pocket, but like cash it’s both use it or lose it and ancient.

I’m tired. Happy I made the decision to take care of myself this evening. Hopefully will start to feel a bit less heavy before too long. Boundless energy has been my schtick for too long for me to be turning down a night on the town for a book and a bath. But pajamas and slippers are calling tonight and I’m gonna hear that call and listen to myself within it.

It’s nice to just sink into Shakespeare awhile. He wrote complicated and nuanced things about the human condition. He invented bits of language, he thought about things and then put them into words. He reworked existing works but with a strong eye to putting his own stamp on it. He was a great eye, quite rightly thought of as one of the all time greatest. And what he did is really getting into sharp relief now.

We all know by now how incredibly dumb the vast majority of people on his planet are. We no longer have to struggle to survive, we have no natural predators, we don’t need to be in any way clever to even get basic sustenance, to survive in general. And the majority of people are puddings. If all the infrastructure was pulled for a week, most of us would be dead. No water for starters, so people would try and drink the sea or tidal rivers after they’d killed each other grabbing bottles from supermarkets. But more of them wouldn’t even think of it until too late and would die wearing their stolen trainers.

Now these Large Language Models are helping us do the thinking and it will make even the clever people a bit dumber. There’ll be an interim generation of recent students who didn’t learn anything cos they could pass off LLM essays as their own. By now the professors are all going to be savvy about it so people will be reluctantly learning again, but it does feel as if, generally, if people could push a button that meant they never had to think or care about anything again, lots of people would just push it.

I don’t think LLMs are going to do what the people selling them say they will do. But I have started to see so much content on social media that is made by them. I’m looking out for them but they’re in busy l video form now too. Rabbits on a trampoline. I sniffed that out just as I know rabbits aren’t like crows – they looked too conscious of the play aspect. But… people ask LLMs to make these things and with a pretty basic prompt you can start to generate stuff that will pass as real at a cursory glance. It pushes all of our critical thinking muscles into overdrive, particularly if the thing we are watching plays to our bias. “Yay I like animals having fun, this must be real.” The possibilities for manipulation are off the scale, not just because people can make convincing fake videos but because people in compromising real videos can just say they’re AI and take no responsibility.

The idea that we live in a “post truth” world really rings now. Now we can have convincing fakes appeal to our biases, it is very nearly at the stage where we can’t pick the fakes from the real ones at all. It’s too late to regulate, so we are gonna have to just stop relying on anything we see that doesn’t come from a creditable source, but then the sources! All the papers in this country carry heavy bias. They can’t be trusted to bring us the truth. Reuters etc are supposed to be immune to bias, but they still have a perspective, they still have an editor. Pages like this are entirely biased. We are close to just honestly not knowing what the fuck is actually happening anywhere unless we can see it with our own eyes. It’s not a happy place to be…

The bullshit generators often have short memories. A few weeks ago I got served a load of stuff about an alien spaceship on a collision course with earth that is gonna arrive in November. November will come and go, no alien spaceship, but there’ll be stuff predicted for March. The amount of times I’ve been given dates for things that are going to happen… They never do. Cos you can’t predict the future, kids, and I tell you that as a tarot enthusiast.

I don’t even know why I bother going on social media anymore. Twitter was fun for a while, now it’s a Gutter. And more and more of these AI slop videos and stories, I don’t mind the ones that announce themselves – they’re like shit cartoons. But I detest the ones trying to pass themselves off as true. Keanu Reeves and Elon Musk arguing. Celebrities doing nice things. Celebrities doing nasty things. Articles that would be irrelevant noise anyway but made all the worse by being inventions. But practice I guess for “this is the democrat candidate punching a baby on CCTV” “here’s Jeremy Corbyn kissing a picture of Hitler with tongues”. Elections are gonna be an absolute shit show with this tech. You don’t need the truth to damage a reputation. You just need an idea.

I’m enjoying being useful to this delightful group of people, just to be Marc Antony and to try and make people care about those fuckers killing my best friend. I’ll have to have it all learnt by next time, sure. Our director Toby is the son of one of my more memorable English teachers. MJD. He was good at detail. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

Such a strange thing to be back at that place. But it was only really the unevolved turds in my year group in my house that made the whole experience hard for me. They haven’t evolved and added to that they’ve doubled down on their lack of evolution. I bear them no ill will as largely I haven’t the headspace. Hating them would be like hating farts for being stinky. They were just kids being basic. I was in a beautiful place, with wonderful opportunities. It just happened that the people in my immediate vicinity had no real imagination. My biggest sadness is that when I got pulled into a reunion dinner they were still stuck in who they used to be.

The other day my mate Dan put it better than I could have: “We were both at Hogwarts, but Al was in Slytherin.”

But yeah I’m back, doing Shakespeare. It is a lovely thing. I’ve got a lot of learning to do as nobody wants to look like a cunt.

This evening I’m knackered. I had a half price Domino pizza thing so I bought one and froze the other. Now it’s not even nine and honestly I think I’m just gonna turn in. Boo has decided she lives on me no matter how I’m configured, and perhaps that’s my lesson for today, that all my concerns and curiosities are nothing when compared to my worthiness as a catpillow.

I’m feeling sad though tonight. Is it chemical or is it, mayhaps, that the air in London tonight is saying autumn? Persephone is still with us for a few weeks dammit. Either way, bed bed bed.

This has been our pre-weekend weekend. Both of us have stuff to do on the actual weekend so this is the relaxytime. Better that way I think. If you relaxytime when all the world relaxytimes, you find yourself in winduppytime instead because the entire population of ancient Babylon has simultaneously decided NOW is the time to chill.

Being zzzt a tiny bit out of sync with all the zzt the ones who have to be weekend on weekend because job or school or life or unexamined pattern shouts at them… It’s a nice place to be. We went to yoga at Lunarwave at 9.30am on a Friday and there was an empty mat. Beforehand we went to the land of Fika where the hipsters howl, and I was able to order immediately. I don’t like Fika because I think if I was to offer to pay with a ten pound note they would look at me as if money didn’t exist and then tell me in a supercilious tone that they don’t take cash. I have gone without coffee many times when my destination coffee house sports my least favourite phrase: “Proud to not take cash”. I usually pay with cards but “proud to restrict customer options and actually be much lazier about how we close down at the end of the day – oh and we are entirely electricity reliant now. And we are proud of that.” No. You’re a bunch of cunts. Zzt.

I’m sure I’m out of synch here too with how things are going, and I’m fine with that. We are running headlong into a situation that Japan will avoid. It’s only actually the south of this country thankfully so far that have been taken in with the “cash makes more work and we can pretend we don’t take cash cos it might be dirty but actually it saves us cashing up” routine. Up north you still have to ask if it’s okay to pay with card, and long may that continue. It’s so lazy to be cashless, but you can save on staff costs and everyone is greedy. And we the consumer, we aren’t helping cos now we can wave our card like some magical wand. And then it doesn’t feel like giving that capital we worked so hard for. Often the figure isn’t even discussed. But we wave at the boop and the boop takes our money and gives a tiny percentage to someone who is absolutely guaranteed to be an absolute total complete and utter unsalvageable cunt. Boop. Boop. Boop. Pumping up the cock.

We aren’t all millionaires. But we all like the feeling of waving the wand. It feels like magic. And that tiny percentage goes to someone we would punch if they tried to kiss us. And that person gets more and more influential cos there are millions and millions of us. And they can put a tiny tiny bit of their revenue into propagating the “cash is dirty” bullshit.

Then the machine goes down. If you haven’t got cash when the electricity goes, you’re on goodwill as happens at festivals. It happened to me in Paris. Local venue blew the power in all the local streets for a good hour and a half at ten pm. I had just eaten dinner in a local bistro after rushing in some ridiculously long plastic tubes. I can’t remember the name of the venue now. I hadn’t eaten all day, got a good quick bistro meal that ended up being a free meal cos I couldn’t wait for their internet to go back up. I thought I’d go back over the course of the event, but life never took me near again, but I offered them cash. No cash accepted. Fuckem. That’s it way of it.

Don’t take cash out of the equation. It’s like the fire alert at Grenfell telling everyone to stay in their home cos the doors and sprinklers have been assessed by experts and deemed to be all you need to save you from death by fire.

The new smart system tells you it has everything covered because it has been built by idiots. Anyone trying to muscle in on cash territory is just doing it for the percentage, of course. Cash has existed for thousands of years and lifetime after lifetime because it fucking works. It’s just more hubris going cashless. The results of cashlessness might not set a fire in our lifetime, but it WILL burn and it will burn nasty. Those who made the decision to be “proud to be cashless” will be examined in schoolrooms as the short term idiots they are. I’ll still go to cashless places, sure, I’m part of it, I’m just pointing things out.

But… I will walk away no matter how desperate I am for coffee from anyone who says “proud to be cashless”. I’ve annoyed multiple friends with that. “Proud to be cashless! *smileyface* “

You might as well tattoo “self satisfied short term lazy greedy pig trying to manipulate you and proud of it *smiley face* ” on your forehead.

Nah I won’t fund your lazy business. Nor will I give my percentage to the guaranteed extremist who gets that percentage for making an app six years ago and now has been fooled by capitalism into thinking he’s a special individual.

Anyway. Carry cash. Be nice. Remember that the people who don’t take the cash from you are employees so there’s no point being mean to them even though you know their boss is a lazy short termist thinker trying to make things go away, absolutely immune to the understanding that their actions are deeply negative to freedom and progress. Still, keep carrying cash. And next time the homeless guy stops you you won’t look helpless and say “I only have cards”. And you can give to the busker who doesn’t have an izettle and actually might need to get that rock of crack or that homeless shelter or that meal and who are we to judge? At the bottom cash is the only option. At the top, no cash is strangulation. We are still ok but we aren’t using it enough to make sure we will continue to be ok. And that’s as much the fault of the magic wand wavers as it is the short term idiots who are “proud to be lazy”.

Lou had a day planned. It has felt about a week long in the best possible way. It started with a tiny little early Norman church at Coombes with the remains of the original really rather odd and brilliant artwork on the walls.

We wandered awhile amid sheeps and cowses, and then drove on to pop in on friends of hers. A lovely couple, obsessively renovating their already incredible cottage in the shadow of Chanctonbury Fell. We had Earl Gray and figs and lavender cookies. I’ve met their daughter, back in the day at BAC. Didn’t mention it though as we never really spoke beyond a spot of drunken mimbling. She’s in theatre as well.

Then a short drive to Petworth Park. Never been there before. Three quid parking all day if you haven’t got a national trust sticker. It’s an old deer run, like Richmond Park still full of deer, but unlike Richmond, very empty on a weekday. We strode through sun drenched scrubland and lay long in grass on top of hills surveying domains. Too many deer to count. Bright summer sun. Nobody around. I took my shirt off. Got some sun. Glory be. Some wonderful trees. The sweet chestnuts up there have done some brilliant damage recoveries. They are ready for a bumper harvest soon. Looking at most crops, I can tell right away that this is gonna be another red letter year for red wine, like 2020 was.

Early evening we drove to Worthing. It’s the eighties in Worthing. We went to The Perch on the pier where they serve things like Prawn Cocktail and Knickerbocker Glory. I had ravioli. The sun set in our faces.

Then we went and saw The Naked Gun. When in a time warp… The Dome is a lovely old preserved cinema and everybody please keep going to the cinema, daddy doesn’t have a pension to speak of yet. Liam Neeson playing action hero at 73 helps me be peaceful that there’s still hope for this old horse, you won’t have to put a bolt in my head yet.

Now we are back at Tessy’s. She’s running around making up for lost time with play. Lou has chamomile tea brewing, she bought a load of dried chamomile flowers which thinking about it is definitely the best way to do it. You can get enough for weeks for the cost of half a packet of those teapig bags with a few flowers wrapped up in them. I’m gonna go online.

Home and happy it has been a long strong day.