I thought I was just going to return home today, but impulse thought better of it and as I was about to go north to London I instead went east down the coast to Hastings. A friend of mine recently moved there.
We ended up slogging through woods in search of bluebells and fresh air and sunshine. The latter two showed up, but it’s clearly too early for the bluebells so we just enjoyed the light in the trees.
Later on, as I was sitting in a carpark waiting for our fish and chips to cook and watching the most brazen drug deal I’ve ever witnessed, I realised it’s the ides of march. A time to be careful, if ever there was one. A time to watch your back. Somehow I didn’t quite manage. Nothing came of watching the atrocious drug handover, but on the way home – driving at a reasonable speed on a long straight empty road – I failed to notice the shadowed yellow camera and felt that distinctive double flash at my back like knives in the capitol. Et tu, Gatso? 35mph, I reckon, in a 30 zone. Nothing wrong but the numbers, but enough to mean I can’t rent vans if the letter comes through unless I can plead first offence, do a course and avoid the points- (I’ve been very very lucky the last 20 years with those stupid things. I keep alert). Beware the Ides of March. Bollocks. I was listening to the radio, and a bit tired so my focus was on hazards and traffic. I wasn’t on the lookout for cameras. They’re stealthy. Correct driving awareness in the UK is about 75% camera lookout, 25% hazard. I made the costly mistake of watching out for dangers.
Anyway it’s just a flash at the moment.. I’ll feel a bit sick opening my letters for the next few weeks. But it’s not going to ruin my week until it happens.
I’m home and happy after another extended weekend at the sea. This week coming, as ever, I’ve got more to do than I can do in a week, so I’ll aim for as much as I can and try to stop distracting myself by fucking off to Hastings. I’ve got a housecat coming to stay, possibly for as long as six months. I’m rescuing him from the cattery. He comes in on Thursday, so I’ve got two days to make this Aladdin’s Cave cat friendly. Wish me luck… Maybe I’ll find my bastard passport.
Words change their meaning as we sail in this ship called life. No word really means the same thing to two different people, as our context and experience is so personal.
“CANCER”
There’s one. We’ve all got an image. Maybe we first think of a person, maybe ourselves, maybe a crab, maybe even a tropic on the side of a globe.
“HERO”
Well, that used to be easier. Spandex or camouflage, doing extraordinary things maybe. Although nowadays it has lost power. “Sober Hero” – “Food waste hero”. It is so overused it means nothing much.
“WICKED”
Well that has mostly gone back to being naughty, but there was a period in the nineties when it was well cool.
Right now though I’m stuck on this one:
“SAFE”
You can put money in one, or drop it on a cartoon cat. But I’m talking about the one we hear every day. The one that is supposed to be a state of being we desire so much that we will sacrifice liberties to get to it. Everybody has a different location for their “safe” though. Some might only feel safe if every eventuality is covered, and even then they worry. Personally, I’m my father’s son. He taught me safety. He taught me how to safely stand on top of a moving car. He taught me how to safely ski faster than anybody else on the mountain. I feel “safe” when I’m within my capacity, even if I’m at the limit of it. But I don’t aspire towards safety. I’m happy to be at risk a little bit. I don’t want to sign away too much for things that might happen. I’ll deal with them if they happen, so long as I’m within my capacity. Or I won’t manage. And so long as I survive, I’ll learn.
Ok, so if you said “I’ll give you £1000 if you can win a speed-sawing competition against this lumberjack!” I would decline as I wouldn’t feel safe racing with a circular saw. I’d be outside the limits of my known capacity and I love having arms. If it was a skiing competition, I’d give it a go even though I’d probably lose, because I’m aware of my limits enough that pushing them would likely not cause me to break my neck, and if I did it would be because of my own split second bad call on the depth of a mogul or the thickness of some ice.
I’m not going to foist my idea of safe on anybody else though. It’s mine. My capacity is mine, my understanding of my limits, mine. Some of you would nail me in in a speed-sawing competition and then I’d destroy you in a memory test. We are all so different and we all have different edges. We shouldn’t impose them on other people.
The police on Clapham Common last night are trying to tell us they overreacted in order to keep us safe. Again as if safety is the APEX of civilisation. NO! We deserve the opportunity to be a bit at risk. To hold a careful vigil during a pandemic and not be subjected to a show of force that is utterly disproportionate. We don’t need outside forces carrying clubs enforcing our safety… Urrgh. Save me from safety. Save us all from it. Let’s be a bit edgy, and just not be idiots.
I drove to Birmingham and back today, dropping off some bits and bobs for work. Lou came with, and we stopped outside her parents house to hand some flowers through the door. They have been vaccinated – both shots. They still don’t see anybody else and maybe it wasn’t safe for her to say hello to her mum on Mother’s Day and pass them presents – just like it isn’t safe for fathers to be present at the birth of their children even though they kissed their wife as she went into the hospital.
We didn’t hug them. We didn’t touch them. We let them guide the interaction and it involved distance despite both shots. For their safety? For ours?
This is not coming from them, it’s coming from some nebulous view of what is safe and what isn’t. We can get angry with unsafe people, perhaps. In this secular world, we can evangelise safety. But it means something different to everybody.
“Stay safe,” I get in email sign-offs, and I know that by the standards of the writer I’ve never been safe in my life. But by mine I have been. I just like the edges. I don’t want to have my voice taken away and replaced with a comforter. Gaahh
I’m not even drunk. This sort of rantfest is more familiar to drunk Al where I write angry shit about somebody I’ve just met and then pass out as soon as I hit publish.
But I just don’t want to be constantly told that the reason for an attack on our remaining liberties is for our safety. The police hit that vigil because they felt weakened by their implication in the case. They had complicated reasons as well, sure, to do with the rule of law and fear of losing control and misogyny and distaste for liberals and fear of being seen to do nothing. Safety was just a word used to justify an overreaction. If we stop thinking of safety as an aspirational state it can’t be used an excuse anymore…
By now, oh constant reader, you might have gleaned that my home is full of knick-knacks with barely an inch of space anywhere. “I love it here,” my brother said, romantically casting his eye over the sea of assorted and colourful guff. His home has just as much bollocks in it. It’s just a bigger home and better organised because he is forced to find places for it all or have it broken by the kids or thrown out. I get why he likes it though. It’s like being a kid still at mine, you’d be surprised to hear. I’ve basically built a fort in my living room, but instead of it being cardboard boxes it’s books and pokers and prints and ooh let’s have a snake and a load of fish and, I dunno, put an altar with stuff on it from at least eight official faith structures plus one I’ve made up and a load of music scores signed by the composers and the biggest TV in Christendom and some vintage ski-boots.
I’ve left it all there and decanted to Brighton. I can hear the sea ceaselessly rolling the windy pebbles to port. Lou is drifting off to starboard.
Brighton is a haven. Lou is a haven. But not in the way of being a holiday from stuff. Her thing is textiles. It’s good she gets it. She understands my flat.
“My shelves have fallen apart,” says Lou as I arrive. “It’s no surprise. I think I found them in a skip.” Ha.
It’s no surprise they’ve collapsed either. You could sneak a whole army past Polyphemus using the cashmere in this room alone and you wouldn’t even need the goats. I’m being obscure, yes. But fuck it, I might have played the Cyclops a hundred times over the course of The Odyssey. It’s my blog. I can be as obscure as I like. Especially since the idiot in chief in the UK farts classical references when he isn’t giving backhanders to his mates.
The previous paragraph is a perfect example of how to simultaneously annoy two opposing demographics at once. I’m proud of myself.
We fixed the shelves. Then we put all the items back. I stopped counting jumpers when we hit 100. There’s enough for a different jumper for her to wear every day of the winter. We shook and folded the lot because the moths are breeding somewhere and they are as unwelcome as they are hard to get rid of. We put them back with a strict system, which is a largely alien process for me with shelves. Now she knows how to get all her cashmere. She’s still gonna wear just the same two of them. Just like I’ll never read most of my books.
Long drive again tomorrow but nobody’s paying me this time. But I’ll sleep well. Textiles again. I’ve started to understand the practical difference between different materials for sleeping on top of. All of my sheets and pillows were polycotton when I met Lou, and I didn’t know or care any better. Now I’ve got some brushed cotton for winter. It makes my old pillows feel scratchy…
This place is a cosy palace. No scratchy pillows here. I’m going to drift off to dreamland. Have a delightful Sunday.
My flat has an internal stairwell that turns a tight corner. There’s also a fire escape, but the door is very narrow. People don’t like bringing things up here. It’s ridiculous when I think quite how many large boxes I’ve hauled up here over the years.
The first fridge was wrestled in by two lads who told me with haunted eyes “never change your fridge”. They were right to warn me. Brian swapped it out one summer when I was at Wilderness, and his friend dropped it on his foot in the process. There’s still blood on the carpet. Last Christmas I replaced my oven and Team Know-how found a way to avoid taking the old one away. My nephew and I got it out and it was extremely unpleasant. For three months afterwards I was woken every morning with excruciating pain after doing something nasty to my shoulder. I still curse those workshy lads with all the tools and knowhow and equal amounts of laziness. They had a trolley thing for stairs. But they found prehistoric mouse droppings which meant they wouldn’t take it. “Health and safety”.
Anyway, I’m thinking about it because Max and I got a double bed into the spare room this morning. The base was touch and go. We tried the stairwell and it jammed halfway up. We were going to take it apart like I did last month in another flat with a sofa and a handsaw. Thankfully we just thought it might be worth trying to get it through the fire escape first. That involved another bunch of stairs. And by the skin of our teeth, we did it. It’s in. A bit torn. But in.
There’s a romance to it. It was my grandmother’s bed in Jersey. She used to tell me stories in it. Since she died, the replacement cost has been paid over and over and over again to storage companies, I spent my entire fee for a Holiday Inn commercial shipping it over from Jersey – (along with everything else) – and today, finally, it’s in. I didn’t want to just ditch the thing or put it on eBay for £150. So Max and I wrestled it into the flat at last, and I’ll dream in it before long.
I’m not fit though. I’m as unfit as I can remember being. I get out of breath much quicker than I ought to. Now, sneezing hurts my back too from the carrying. Hopefully it’s short term. But … I built the bed so if my back goes I’ll have a comfy place to lie. I haven’t put a mattress onto it yet as I’m giving my back a rest. But it’s a nice piece of furniture. It fits together logically and it feels sturdy. I think there’ll be some good dreams in there before long once there’s a mattress on it. So long as that ormolu doesn’t fall off and conk me on the head.
Glacier slow, but piece by piece. There’s always so much that needs to be done. And I’ve got a cat coming to stay for a while starting next week. Not a furniture scratchy cat though I think. A loungy little prince house cat. I’m thrilled. I’ve missed Pickle something chronic, and this poor little pudding is in a cattery while his companion is stuck in Australia. Best get a working hoover.
It was New Year 2020. I was at Tristan’s old place on Cambridge Park Road. Me, Lyndon, my nephew Campbell and Tristan were outside, drunkenly and enthusiastically talking. I reckon they must have been smoking and I just went for the conversation. I still find myself doing that twenty years after I gave up smoking. You have the best chats in the smoking area.
It was a mild night for New Year. Probably about 1.30am and we were outside happily. Four lads on the street in loud drunk conversation. I’m not even sure why we ended up so far from the recessed doorway of the flat – out beyond porch and front lawn. Most likely we were worried about noise and neighbours. So we were on the public road with tinnies at about 1.30am on New Year’s Day.
She was wearing heels so we heard her coming. Thirty something, professional. New Year tipsy, but with an extremely alert mien and walking fast tall and visible. She’d clearly been at a big party and she was walking home alone – maybe from the bus. We all instinctively cleared space for her to walk by, while pointedly continuing our conversation with one another. We moved in silent concert so she could pass without going between us. She changed her route actively and walked through our conversation. I saw she had her keys in her hand. As she cut through this expanded group of drunk tall men she didn’t say anything to us, and we said nothing to her, but for the briefest moment she shot me a look that I didn’t understand. It was a mixture of attack and a request. “Behind me,” it seemed to say, without it really even being clear she had communicated anything at all. “Behind me. Fuck off. Behind me. Fuck off.” That’s what I read in that deliberate split second of contact.
I might not otherwise have really noticed him at all, that grey haired shuffling man. With his smart hat and dark suit like he was a ghost from ages past, but very much made of flesh – wiry and short and hard in the face.
He was following in her wake, about four car lengths behind, matching her pace, pale eyes fixed on her with something like hunger. Immediately weird. He literally put the hairs on the back of my neck up, like he was Nosferatu. We took our cue “Evening mate! Happy New Year. Lovely night, isn’t it? Good sign for 2020.” We all engaged him in friendly chatter and politely blocked his path a moment. Just niceties. Enough to slow him down and make it clear to him that we had seen him. He tipped his hat. His vowels were clipped. He could’ve been a magistrate, or a justice of the peace. My own RP vowels. Vowels we have somehow been encouraged to trust. A relic of times past but still an active Pavlovian signal. The vowels they use to lie to us every day.
By the time he was through our group she had gained some distance from him, and yet we didn’t stop him for long. We delayed him momentarily with our politeness. Meanwhile she had abruptly turned right into one of the big blocks with gardens and was out of sight.
We remained there, one of us still talking as I processed this strange moment. Clearly he had been following her for some time and she had been very aware of it.
I tuned out my friend’s monologue and watched his back as he shuffled away from us. Would he walk past the place where she turned? Was he just insensitive and going home? What could I do without making the situation worse? Was it my place to even think that?
When he was level with the path into which she must have gone, he stopped. He turned to face the house. And he remained standing there, stock still. Ten seconds. Twenty. The houses on that street are big and divided into flats, with multiple entrances.
He stood. It was like all his senses were on high alert. Tiny hairs in his ear primed for even the tiniest sound. Nostrils flaring. Breath all but held. Thirty seconds. A minute. He froze like a sniper, all of his focus on the place he had last seen her. Two of the lads with me had gone right back to talking, and the rise and fall of their alcoholic blither underscored his silent watching. It was fucking weird, this man dressed in the skin of respectability, sniffing after this woman like a nazgul after Frodo. My skin was crawling. I half expected him to suddenly move with supernatural speed. Did she live there? – Or had she ducked into the garden to finally shake this tenebrous creature? Was she standing behind a bin waiting for him to go? He must have stood for three minutes with barely a movement – hard full focus on empty space, unaware of our equal focus on him. Then he wheeled back ninety degrees and continued to walk away from us at last with a different gait – less of a shuffle. Going home. Fun over. “That guy was fucking weird,” I remarked, and swept back to the drunken friends. We went back to our friends. He went home. The only person with their evening ruined was her.
It stuck in my mind. It surprises me how clearly it all comes back to me considering how much I would’ve drunk by that stage. But it was weird. And yet, depressingly, it happens every night.
What did he think he was doing? I learnt as a young man to be aware that if there was a woman walking alone late at night she might be feeling unsafe. I try to cross the road away if I’m walking faster, or make a phone call on my mobile to a friend so I’m easily audible, or choose a slightly different route just because why be part of the problem. Because it IS a problem. Because of creepy fuckers like that old guy? Yes but more. Much more. And I’m part of it.
I’ve seen it in young men too. “You’re cockblocking me,” shouted a guy maybe 23 on a night bus, chest out at me after a woman I didn’t know suddenly sat next to me as I was heading home happily reading my book. “Pretend you know me,” she shot in under her breath. I understood and two minutes later I had a twenty year old trying to pick a fight with me. “You don’t know her. You’re cockblocking me!” To even use that phrase openly – what was he thinking when she had gone to a stranger for help? He clearly understood I didn’t know her, so evidently she was actively trying to get him to back down and he wasn’t and wasn’t and wasn’t. In a strange irony, I ended up having to walk her to her door – she lived near me. “Are you sure you’re ok with me knowing where you live after the night you’ve had?” “You’re fine. I’ve got an instinct for this. It’s not my first time doing this.” I think she even took my number and messaged me the next day to say thanks. This was like fifteen years ago… Just pings back to memory. “It’s not my first time doing this”. How often? And I’m not saying whoopee me here. She made the whole thing happen. I just got swept up.
MEN. WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?
Seriously. If you’ve ever been that guy. Stop it. And we all have. We all are. Have some respect for yourself and for others. I’ve done it. You’ve done it. What you feel is not what others feel… That’s an important lesson generally – (useful in acting as well). Just because you fancy somebody and you’re horny – it really doesn’t follow that they either fancy you or are horny. (Just because you feel sad it won’t make people cry.)
This is of course in the light of this godawful news story about that poor woman in South London. With the home secretary having to say “every woman should feel safe”. They should. And we as men must help by taking responsibility, each and every one of us, for our behaviour. The old creepy guy, if pinned down, would try to make out like he didn’t think he was doing anything wrong. He was though, even just by failing to take into account how uncomfortable he was making another human being. And by being oblivious to his free power in this world, where whatever happened with poor Sarah is still happening and we are all too aware of it. It makes my blood boil. How do we teach these boys, these men, these creeps, these successful professionals? Me? Grrr
So that’s just poured out of me. I’ve been driving all day. 400 miles of it with radio 4. It shot by. Would’ve been nicer with Lou in the sputnik seat but it was all done and done and dusted anyway and I just had to think lots. And I thought about those women, that situation, and the question of how do we actually genuinely teach men of all ages to understand the generational stuff they’ve got for free? And I’m not free of it. I’ve fucked up before, misread signals, failed to see past my desire, let my balls do the thinking for too long. I can do better. We all can do better. And I’ve got as much work to do as anybody.
It was International Women’s Day this week and it looks like a woman in South London just got murdered by a cop on her way home.
Yesterday I cleaned out my car. I took a picture out of a sooty frame outside so I could dump the glass easily. The weather was so perfect that I put the print on the tarmac to photograph it in the sunlight. It came out quite well with the road lending an urban feel to an urban artwork.
It’s an etching done in the nineties of the treasury building in Brisbane. The artist – John Hockings – is still exhibiting but over in Australia. I emailed him and we’ve agreed to try to list it for £250. I’m gonna give him a third as it came to me for free. I said it might not be the market for it here, but there’s only one way to find out. I’ll put it up on Sunday if it’s maximum £1 listing day. See how it goes.
I’m sharing this because, looking out the window, I have absolutely no idea how it was ever possible to calmly lay a £250 artwork on the asphalt and snap it like I did just yesterday. There was no wind. No rain. Perfect peace.
The windows are shaking with wet wind from over the water as I write. It’s one of those nights when I don’t feel safe in the good ship Al’s Flat. It feels like I might sink. It doesn’t seem possible that everything changed so quickly. Just yesterday I cleared out my car, humming happily to myself in the sunshine wearing just a T-shirt. I folded up the bivouacs and blankets and bagged up the rubbish and made it ready for the next set of adventures, whatever they might be.
I’m writing all this so I don’t get drawn into all this noise with the famous couple that we’re supposed to care about so much. Every time I read “an actress in an Oscar worthy performance” it makes me want to post custard to the idiot that wrote it. But I’m not gonna bite any further. There’s a lot of world out there to think about.
I got the damn picture up in the spare room. It’s almost straight too. There. Howdja like them apples? I’ve also put one of the tables that have been in the corridor for a decade into the room. It’s supporting an attractive light that matches the paint. It looks like it’s been thought about. It HAS been, only I already had the light. Wow.
It’s an improvement. I really want to get the bed in there now but that’s a two person thing and Max has a job and kids so it’s hard to pin him down for a hand. Insects don’t stop for the pandemic and nor do children sadly.
So – I’m writing this, listening to the wind and gearing up for an early bed before a ten hour non stop drive in a Luton van tomorrow, with loading and unloading to think about too. I think it’s time, you’d be surprised to hear, for a cup of chamomile and a bath. Night night.
If we were plugged into The Matrix they’d make it better than this. I have never been on holiday for as long as this pandemic has kept us indoors. This feels like a holiday gone very wrong.
For many, it’s “The Pensioner Experience!” A brand new style of theme park! Delve deep into the world of being old! Go from room to room and forget why you did it! Live off handouts! Feel confused and trapped all the time! Drink too much and watch too much TV! Slowly forget how to do basic things! Be completely cut off from your usual social circle! Worry about your health! Fall out of the coping structure you built over years! Realise how everything is built on shaky assumptions! Start to distrust everything! Eat bad food because it’s cheap!
For all of us, we are gonna have to work hard to do the things we did easily. Social interaction will be rusty as hell. We’ll probably all just shout at each other for a while. At some point we will all stagger blinking into the sun, likely buoyed by some jaunty saccharine slogan: “Go Out to grow Out!” Loads of people will probably get run over crossing roads. Pubs will start to fill, while others will watch from their windows predicting doom. People will keep dropping pints. Passive aggression will be scattergunned by the self appointed adjudicators both of going out and of staying in. It’s gonna be weird and there’ll be lots of judgement. Because this situation has been politicised, like everything these days. While we’ve been home, the internet has become a closer friend than before to most of us. All the biggest hairiest trolls have shiny little sock puppets and lots of us are listening to them talk without seeing what the puppet is attached to, or noticing the tentacles sliding towards our sphincters as we listen. It’s an army of little Murdochs from all sides of the political spectrum, they’re all shitting in our brains for profit.
Why is it that everybody tangles up politics and morality? They are two separate things. But it often feels that everything is bundled together. You vote one way, and therefore you have to believe many things that notionally come in the same package. People seem to just buy the package and homogenise their views on everything and there’s nothing I hate more than fundamentalism and blind conformity. I don’t care what you think, just so long as you’ve arrived there yourself through reasoning and that you never lose sight of the fact that you might have got it wrong. If you’re just following some spokesperson or movement, and if you won’t entertain that you might not have everything bang on, then I’m bored of you. It’s so easy to kneejerk and oversimplify in order to belong. It’s as easy to be manipulated as it is to manipulate, but right now people are wide open, and it takes a certain personality type to seek to manipulate. Most of us just absorb.
As a result, lots of us have somebody’s hand up our arse right now. Those hands are moving our mouths for us…
I’ve got friends who seem to be constantly shouting other people’s words. I don’t like it. Shout, yes – by all means. But work out what your own words are and shout them. Your words are the best ones, even if they’re confused and contradictory and passionate and ultimately meaningless like this blog.
Anyway. Yeah I’m not sure where I’m going with all that. Just asking you to be aware when you jump on bandwagons. If you know you’re doing it and you know why then go for it. Just keep an eye on the edges. The flock can be guided from within. But you need to know yourself first or the noise will overwhelm you, and that naughty hand will gently slide up your bum when you’re distracted.
This room isn’t sacred yet, but it’s getting there.
I’m sitting back in the newly painted spare room. I’m right in the middle of a brand new carpet enjoying the relative lack of clutter as I write. A dump trip tomorrow will make it better still. I can get rid of some of the rubbish that’s crept in here. Broken and calcified fish tank lights, a cat-mauled swivel chair, an unwanted damaged IKEA bedside table… I’m sitting on the swivel chair. It’s comfy and even if I’ve used it a fair amount over the years I’ve decided it takes up more space than the usage warrants, and the mauling makes an already cheap item undesirable. I absolutely must start being more efficient and more ruthless and if I regret ditching it down the line then so be it. Part of me thinks I should put it on eBay for a fiver collection only, but if I’m going to say that to myself then I have to do it tomorrow or never.
I bought a clip frame online that was the right size to fit my Mucha prints and I really wanted to get them up today. It’s a frame by some company that specialises in those display stands that crop up with graphs inside for fictional board meetings. It actually looks good reconstituted as an art frame for a piece in those colours, but I’ve only just realised that they didn’t incorporate any means of attaching the thing to a wall. I measured it all up and marked it beautifully with LX tape before I realised they provide no means of hanging the damn thing. It’s meant to be propped up in boardrooms saying “Productivity Graph” or “The word of the week is EXCELLENCE”. It’s meant to be on display in one of those many rooms where love used to go to die before people had to learn to start making that happen in their front room instead. “We are a HAPPY workforce!!”
I’ve put semi-naked ladies from the 1920’s into it. I call them artworks. I’m hoping my guests will as well.
Going on the website it seems they were supposed to include fittings, so hopefully it’s nothing that a phone call can’t fix. Then just get the bed in here along with a very carefully curated quantity of organised things. A room of one’s own. Oh what a delight it shall be. Free from the strange cornucopia of antique weirdness that fills all the other rooms in the house. Oh glory.
I’ve learnt that the floorboards would actually look pretty nice if I exposed them in the living room and just chucked rugs around. I’ve even got some antique rugs in a corner of the living room. There ain’t cheap carpet big enough for the living room, so I reckon that’s the long term plan in there. None of this has been as quick as it was in my desires, but at least today I can again feel like I’ve seen some progress.
So yeah. Today it feels like there has been movement. I just have to make sure that’s how I feel every day. I’ve been a bit slower than I wanted. No more.
Knowing I was going to be sleeping in London tonight, we went to find more green today. Stanmer is much more accessible than Chanctonbury, and we were feeling lazy Sundayish. With beanie hat and impractical coat despite the optimistic sunshine we struck out.
Stanmer Park was once a private garden, now thrown open to the public. It’s busy. Everybody either had a dog or a child. I had Lou and she had me. We strolled through the remains of the landscaped gardens, drinking it in. I’ve needed to get some green into my eyes. It’s much harder to be glum when you remember how nature just gets on with it.
The house at Stanmer stands empty but not derelict or overgrown. There are people whose job it is to look after it. In the past perhaps it’s been event space, and catered for evening revelry and mealtimes. In this quiet time it is being refurbished ready for a world where parties are allowed again. We leaned up against the glass and peered intol the window at the paneling and paintwork, the curtains and chandeliers. Another huge empty home. Round the back, in what would have been part of the garden, stands a grove of ancient Cedar trees. Cedars are the wisdom keepers, often used for gateways. These ones, so near to Brighton, are likely well loved and ritually used. As we sat near them I got curious. A fenced off derelict atrium, overgrown with brambles but with a neatly cut entrance just begging to be explored.
Despite my cashmere coat I got in far enough to be disappointed. Broken glass everywhere under the skeleton of a pavilion roof just waiting to fall on my head. The ruins of what might once have been a cheap summer house. No wonder they haven’t bothered repairing the thing. I fought my way back out through the brambles and into the sunshine. Sometimes it’s worth going down the rabbit hole. Sometimes it isn’t. But you have to go down it to find out.
Lou and I found a place to sit and feel the sun on our face, out of the wind and backing onto churchyard, and that was that. We can both sit for ages with the sun on our faces. We did precisely that. We sat there. We sucked in the vitamin D, and breathed out into the day. Oh the sun! Every day closer to summer. This time of year I’d always prefer to be in the sun – as you well know. Just need to get that lead in a Spielberg so I can go to LA every January and make money out there.
Evening by the sea, with the sun falling behind the huge offshore wind farm south of Brighton and I’m feeling considerably less neurotic. We’ve all taken such a string of hits since this time last year. Sometimes the energy just gets low and it’s harder to see the light.
We have just got back from Chanctonbury Ring, an ancient grove atop a nearby hill with views across the downs and down to the sea, glittering all day as the weather attempts to edge us closer to Spring. It’s a beautiful walk up there, and the peace of the place is accessible even through the screaming of the children that appear to be everywhere at the moment, just before the schools reopen once more. There are a lot of parents on their final weekend before they get some downtime. They must be thrilled.
I’m glad to be out of London again. The parks are great, but the city generally feels like its lost its purpose. So many of my friends are there because that’s notionally where the work is. But it isn’t anymore. I once replied to a tweet from a stranger and found myself in a Soho studio with cans on half an hour later doing background Viking movie noises for love and cash. I dropped everything and shot into town for last minute work quite frequently actually. Development readings, last minute cover, emergency driving, short notice audition. I can go from joggers to three piece suit in about thirty seconds, and even remember my keys fifty percent of the time as I bustle out to the tube station for whatever the opportunity is this time. But … that was in the beforetimes – the times of old when the people of Londonton freely moved and lo, they breathed of the airs without fearfulness.
Now I’m glad to be in Brighton, where the sea wind helps people shake the cobwebs out of their own heads. People are far more likely to say hello to strangers here even without this nasty little shit of a situation. And it’s a beautiful evening. I’m so lucky to have a car. I honestly don’t know how I’d cope without it. I’m sitting in it facing the sea, breathing as I write. I’ll need to remember how much weight has already dropped off me, so I can try and carry that lightness back to the smoke with me tomorrow…
AlBarclay 