Category: Uncategorized

More cold, damn it all. When will it ever end? London is angry with cold. I stood in the window and tried to cheer a tiny bit of the freezing city up. I may or may not have succeeded. I didn’t succeed in cheering myself up. I was just too cold.

Fashionable leggings. Two pairs, with the most fashionable on the outside. Cashmere jumper under fashionable branded hoodie. Huge pink cat head. Enthusiasm. Check. More enthusiasm? Caffeine? Check.

Joy Bomb is now Love Bomb and there’s a van with videos. We’re backing it up in the window while whoever is left on the post apocalyptic streets of London can be momentarily bemused by this van with a sexy panda.

Meanwhile, opposite our window, Claridges have opened an Épicerie. People stand in short queues and emerge smiling with white boxes full of all sorts of goodies. They see us and wave as they wait. “You must be cold,” mimes a man in full chef’s uniform after he realises we’re entertaining their customers while they wait. “We are absolutely freezing,” we mime back, and a few minutes later there’s a guy crossing the road to us with two hot cups of coffee. Good coffee too. Claridges, innit. “I’m glad I’m back on the caffeine” I think while I sip. My blood has turned to ice and despite the dancing I might shatter if I bang my elbow. The coffee helps.

And so the day passes in coffee, dancing, coffee and cold. By the time I get home I’m tired from it all, so tired from this sodding cold, but Lou is running a hot hot bath and there’s food to cook. We eat and heat and wind down and then watch a documentary about The Isle of Man and the TT races. Now I’m trying to write and getting a constant flow of information about Guy Martin. He’s the centre of the doc and has clearly written his own Wikipedia as it’s full of completely irrelevant information which Lou is imparting to me as I try to hold some form of consistent memory of what I’m writing. It’s not easy, but he’s an unusual fellow, Guy. A man after my own heart in some ways but crazier than me. Addicted to adrenaline the poor lad, although his thing is motorbikes. It’s a miracle all his limbs are still attached, but you can say that of anybody who rides. Which reminds me, spring is coming. It’s nice having a car but …

Absolutely glorious day today if you look at it through glass. The sun is falling over the sea now, I’m back indoors and my feet are jammed under a radiator. Bright sunlight, clear skies and a wind from Hel herself.

We drove to Saltdene and managed about seven minutes on the undercliff before we had been stripped to the bone by ice and forced back to the Audi. Thankfully there’s a good heating system in there.

A day’s walking commuted to a day’s driving. I wasn’t going to pass up on such a glorious day, but time outside had to be minimised and time inside is only possible at home. Car time. We drove to Lewes. I didn’t really know Lewes, and frankly I still don’t because everything is closed. We looked at how we weren’t able to get into the castle, marveled at streets full of antique shops that were locked, and eventually found a walled garden where we were able to sit for a while and imagine Spring, with the sun on our face and the wall protecting us from the worst of this katabatic wind, and the squirrels frolicking. Peace for a moment. Just a couple of people and an abundance of living things.

We bought a coffee through the window of a shop, and spun over to the little village where Virginia Woolf walked to her end. A little cottage in a sweet village full of scowling people. A beautiful garden by a pretty church. She filled her pockets with stones and took herself to The Ouse. Fast flowing, deep and sharply cold. Poor spirit. Down she went. Her old house is closed, of course, but maintained by live-in caretakers who clocked us peering over the wall like apple-scrumping Victorian schoolchildren.

We found a church that was open. Most of the churches are still open which is a comfort. Empty as ever, but at least we can drop a prayer and a penny in the pot. Say what you like about the church, at least it’s not the state.

You don’t have to go far in this area to find something beautiful. With these expensive and twee towns, these retirement enclaves and with the South Downs and the many ancient sites mingled with stone vestiges of the Norman duke’s profound and irreversible smash of conquest into the old ways here. I can’t be in the countryside in this area without thinking of Paul Kingsnorth’s desperate and wonderful book “The Wake” where he imagines a man whose world is turned around by the conquest – written in an approximated lost language:

“aefry ember of hope gan lic the embers of a fyr brocen in the daegs beginnan brocen by men other than us. hope falls harder when the end is cwic hope falls harder when in the daegs before the storm the stillness of the age was writen in the songs of men so it is when a world ends who is thu i can not cnaw but i will tell thu this thing be waery of the storm be most waery when there is no storm in sight”

I really hope we’re coming to the end of the cold now. The seagulls are back in Brighton, yarking on the roofs and ruffling up their feathers, showing the early stages of horny-seagull that we associate with springtime. Today we walked in Hastings, taking in the eclectic architectural bonanza that forms the backstreets of St Leonards. H Rider Haggard lived there in an old toll booth looking down to the sea, along with Alan Turing down the road, and various dignitaries and suffragettes scattered around in Decimus Burton properties. Even George Bristow gets a plaque. Who’s George Bristow?

He made guns. Then he took his guns to France and shot birds that are rare in the British Isles. Then he stuffed them, took them over the channel back here, said he’d found them in Hastings, and flogged them to enthusiastic twitchers for top dollar, simultaneously enriching himself, killing lots of rare birds and causing a terrible headache for future scientists looking at species diversity. He was long dead when he was rumbled in the sixties. Now he’s got a plaque in St Leonards. The Hastings Rarities Affair. Even cheating taxidermists get a plaque these days. And the white winged snowfinch has officially never been indigenous to the UK and is once again listed as such.

Walking was so cold though, and my feet have mostly been blocks of ice. I’ve crawled into bed now and my toes have got pins and needles where the blood is returning. Enough cold. Enough.

Curled up on the sofa this evening we went to the theatre. Strange and sad to see friends at work and not be with them afterwards. It was lovely though – powerful and atmospheric. Appropriate to the weather, my friends at Creation Theatre are doing a creepy Grimm’s Tales, live streamed on Zoom from all over the country with intricate little sets that they must have posted to the different actor’s homes. It’s lovely to see them still pushing the envelope – they really haven’t stopped and it’s an unusual evening once again. Five little tales interwoven, personally told and smartly too. Lots of death and neglect and inevitability and broken plans, and then a moment of togetherness at the end where we hold candles against the dark and see each other doing the same. Moving, and the best we can manage in this shut down world. It made me long for contact as it made me glad of what I’ve got.

So many things I want to be over. The cold. The dark. The separation. How we all feel is a great illustration of how the internet keeps us together on one level but is empty of true contact on most others. I want hugs from all of you. Actual hugs. Not pictures of hugs.

It’s gonna be ok. The light is coming.

Into the Audi and through the dark streets from London to Brighton, leaving in a flurry of snow and last minute phone calls. Cars on the road in similar quantities to a normal world, but this is because the trains are empty. Gradually bearing south, and I go through Croydon on the way. Pickle is in Croydon. Remember Pickle? There once was a cat.

I haven’t seen Pickle for over a year and thinking of her gives me little twinkles of anxiety. I hadn’t really understood that she’d be leaving when I went off to America to shout for money. But leave she did, taking Brian with her and perniciously leaving Kitcat in her place. Not the kittycat I liked to snuggle with. Kitcat was a bit bigger and less fluffy.

Pickle lives in Croydon now and ’tis for the best, I tell myself. I’ve upped and gone to Brighton for two nights which wouldn’t be possible were she in the flat. She’d starve and be sad. Also she’d eat all the fishies and tussle with Hex. Doesn’t stop me from missing her when I think about her, which is why I try not to do so. For a long time there was a cold spot next to me in bed – I literally slept with a placebo teddy for a bit after I got back from America. Then I let myself forget. Easier that way.

She’s back in my thoughts because Brian rang me up. It’s past time she was neutered and they’ve had it done, but she had funny things wrong in her tiny little body and for a while the vets were worried. They seem to be satisfied she’s okay now, which is a relief. I really wouldn’t want her to be back in my thoughts only to have her critically ill. But it’s another absolutely bastard part of this lockdown situation, that I’m in an extended enforced separation from my one time daemon. I’m sure I’d have seen her by now if the world hadn’t exploded shortly after I got back from the USA. But it hasn’t been possible. And now I miss her again.

Still, I get to see Lou. She’s a bit bigger than Pickle too, and also less fluffy. But she’s very good at making tasty food where Pickle just ate stinky things, she’s running a bath for me and Pickle could barely turn the tap, and she’s just as good at snuggles while being 100% less likely to shit on the duvet.

I’m sitting outside her flat now, finishing this with the heater running in the car. The dashboard thermometer tells me it’s minus 2 out there, God help us. It’s gonna drop to minus 5 in the small hours. I’ll be glad of not sleeping alone tonight. And of a hot bath and soup. Glory.

It’s February and suddenly I’m thinking about Christmas. The last few days I’ve been pinging questions to Brian and getting answers about things I haven’t thought about for many a year. Producing things. It’s a different world. When I shot out the gate from Guildhall I immediately produced a load of stuff, sometimes for my friends and sometimes with myself in it and sometimes just for kicks. Then mum died and etc etc for about a decade before I woke up and looked around at the wreckage and wondered who this person was that I’d gently forgotten about in favour of wine and rage.

Thankfully while I was stumbling around I managed to bump into quite a few interesting kind and creative people who didn’t mind the mess of me. I found quite a colourful existence while I was sad. And today I bent over with my creaky knees and picked up a dusty old ball with the word “producing” on it, blew off the cobwebs and tried it for heft.

Hereford is where the forces beyond our ken are pointing me right now. To the centre of town and a venue. Once again a Christmas Carol, but unlike the last few years where nobody but Brian and Rebecca thought about it until late November I’m trying to start the ball rolling in February. I’m gonna extensively rework it, make it wider and wilder and employ quite a few more people in the process. This thing might not end up being called Christmas Carol at all, but some sort of Dickensian hullabaloo of party and delight that isn’t bound by a short season and could play with tweaks in late June. Fuck it, why not? The actor in me says Scrooge but the producer is thinking about the bottom line and the bums on seats. In the faraway time I blended both roles – actor and producer – but I miscast myself. I’ve learnt better now. I know what I’m selling and I’m bloody good at it, and if the mountain won’t come to Mohammed then Mohammed is just gonna build himself a mountain in Hereford.

If we are allowed by then that is. That’s the new magic “if”. By December either everybody will have had these bad mix and match vaccines with too long in-between and died or lived as they please, or there’ll be measures in place to let live arts come back as plague death rooms where liberally minded people are sent to infect themselves and you have to sign a waiver and give your soul to Boris Johnson and note how many gold teeth you have before entry. Either way I’m building towards it being possible, and devil take the hindmost. Somebody has to start employing actors or the packaging industry will start to suffer because all the cardboard will have been eaten. I’d prefer it if the person doing the employing is like myself or Brian and not like some of the buckets I’ve spun my heart out for in exchange for a thwack in the nose and a shiny penny. It’s useful that I’ve got a friend who knows the score. He’s got a million irons in the fire but he picks up the phone to me. Haphazard boozy Al, well done sir. Good choice of friends.

Now it’s funding application time. Oh hell. Oh double hell. I can barely fill in my measurements.

Six months sober today. If I calculate six pounds per night on wine average, that’s paid for the Audi. Good thing too. It has been invaluable in this pandemic, having the capacity to move around without coming into contact with anybody else. I’m sitting in it as I write, with the heaters on, looking out at snowy London. I took the car for a spin so it doesn’t freeze up. Also I had some shopping to do for Jacky. Pinot Grigio today, mostly, and smoked fish and some other things. Jacky’s a bit weirded out that I’m not buying myself a bottle of wine anymore like she asks. Expensive chamomile tea was my luxury today. The new crack. I’ll pop open the kettle later and have a good long warning draught of the stuff. Nom.

Snow has settled in London, and the amateur artists have come out. My street was full of snowcocks. Jacky’s street was kinder – little love hearts on the snowed up cars. How bouji.

Five days ago spring was really giving a good showing but now any of the overconfident daffodils that stuck their heads up last week have been roundly murdered by this sudden descent of frost. It’s rare that it gets through the ambient temperature in this city – through the fug of warm carbon that crouches over us all. But it’s here, and it came quickly. Traffic cops are up to their eyeballs in injured delivery drivers, insurance companies are laying on more staff to field the calls from dented bodywork and broken legs, salt manufacturers are charging saffron prices by the weight to panicked councils determined to dissolve our shoes in the process of demonstrating a commitment to safety. The trains don’t really have to run on time right now but I bet they are anyway. Snow is in the city. This is why I went shopping for Jacky. She has bad legs – all the martial arts. She is now fully vaccinated, but she ain’t going shopping in this.

As always, at the top of the stairs, we had a little chat about things. Usually we talk about the industry, our shared agent, our hopes. Today, after her vaccine, she wouldn’t stop talking about Bill Gates. “I have a direct line to him now,” she told me. “He sings to me as I sleep. Join us. Come with us.” Then she stuck her tongue out and it was three foot long. Her shopping was weird too. Alongside the Pinot and the fish, the other things were basically two dozen Birds Eye Frozen London Rats (XL).

I’m back home now, looking forward to my sexy chamomile to celebrate six months sober. I should put some honey and lemon in it to celebrate. And malt whisky? Maybe in August.

Most actors I know live in small rooms in London. The younger ones are in a shared house, then they’re in a house with pets and babies, or they’re on a main road with sirens like I am, or a street where some guy with aggressive mental health issues randomly screams out expletives. Either way there’s chaos and there’s noise in the environs. And we frequently have to tape ourselves at home.

Most actors I know, in the last few years, have bought lights, background screens, tripods and expensive apps on mobile phones so that they can email videos of themselves auditioning. It’s standard now, and whether or not you want to believe that the quality of the filming won’t affect your chances of getting the work, for every one person watching it that understands that technical aptitude doth not an actor make, there are three others that say “I want the one with the good lighting”. Not only is the kit expensive but it takes up space – my friend and I built a studio in her living room and it dominated the whole room. The cat was alternately curious and pissed off while we made sure we got it right for her. During the take we’ll probably keep, he started scratching the sofa – out of shot but noisily. Once it was finished we had to deconstruct the thing and all those tripods take up wardrobe space.

Still, it’s better than reading opposite somebody who died three weeks ago. I’ve had a few of those, in little rooms in Soho after sitting surrounded by people who look just like you for an apologetic hour. Some directors seem to deliberately employ actual zombies to read the other lines. That’s horrible.

Then there’s the stuff you have to do. I’ve taken my clothes off down to my pants and danced in front of a woman I’ve just met and then done it again and never heard a peep. I might have been more comfortable in my living room, but the video would still exist. Rumour has it that terrible auditions get shared for amusement. Ha ha ha. Not nice for some young actor who just needed the money and had a brainfart. At least at home, if you’ve got any discernment, you can delete the ones when you get a sudden frog in your throat and sound like Darth Vader…

Funny old business. I still love it. I just want to be working. I’m happy if I’m working. It’s as simple as that, really. If it’s going great you’re working. If it’s going ok you’re constantly having to audition but might be working because of it. If it’s horrible it’s because there’s no audition and you wonder if you’ll ever work again.

Self tapes at least give some control over your output. But they’re rarely done quickly. Build studio, test lights, sort out eyelines, LEARN LINES, choose clothes, hair, makeup, coerce somebody to read opposite you… Then dressing it all up nicely, combining the videos, uploading them… It’s an afternoon.

It was a pleasant enough afternoon though, in this madness, to see a friend because it’s work, and to make a little scene. Lovely. I hope she gets it.

Today the driving had a purpose. Saint Leonards on Sea is effectively a suburb of Hastings with big houses. There’s a huge long seafront, and it seems half of the actors in London are moving there at the moment. I had a van load of stuff from one of my very dear friends in the industry. She’s moving out of town. She’s still paying big numbers in rent – I’m a very lucky duck with this pad. It’s expensive but she’s getting high ceilings and sunlight and a huge expanse of sea. I totally get it. As you know, oh constant reader, the lure of the seaside has been tugging at me, but another bit of me knows what it’ll be like when the world switches back on. The lights! The throng! The smell of sweat! The prices! I need to be in it, of it, amongst it! The preciousss chaossss! Let me lick it in the face!

Hmmmm.

By coincidence, my friend has moved actually literally next door to a friend of mine who is constantly making things. I don’t really believe in coincidence anymore but the phrase is useful. The neighbour is an artist musician actor maker type who trained at the same drama school as my friend. She’s one of a few like that down that way. Curious and motivated people doing weird things stylishly. There’s going to be another little company in St Leonard’s before long, as well as one in Hereford. At this rate, with all my friends setting up shop all over the place like this, I’m going to need a fucking helicopter. I’ve already got strings in Brighton and Hereford and Yorkshire and Lancashire and Scotland and Wales as well as Sussex and Kent and The Isle of Man and Jersey and fucking Nassau and Switzerland. I’m spread out like jam. Even with Covid there’s not enough time in the day. I just have to choose one thing and do it. I never like that part of the process as much as I like the endless mess of possibilities. But today I was van man again. Yeah I know yesterday happened and I’m supposed to be digging back into my vocation. One thing at a time. GoT can wait.

We filled a zipvan with her boxes. We got it all in apart from the bicycle, which is an excuse to come back in a few days. “Magic things,” read one of the boxes. “Shakespeare books,” another. My personal favourite: “Shoes and tax”.

Now I’m back in London. This week rolled in fast. Blizzards tonight I’m told, although you wouldn’t believe it. I was in my T-Shirt when we loaded the van…

I woke up, threw on some clothes, went down to the car, stuck the keys in the ignition and just drove. My mind was empty of purpose. I just let my instincts take me. My instinct took me first to Brompton library, where I had my first drama school audition. Then just down the road and into a parking space that must have been left by providence – the nearest to the entrance to Brompton Cemetery. The first time I went there was in my third year at Guildhall, where I had my headshots taken by Fatima Namdar – in amongst all the mausoleums. There’s strong light – good light. She takes great headshots. They’re gold plated but they’re good. Back in 2002 the cemetery was mostly empty, but for the obligatory guys giving each other angry hand jobs behind the tombstones. (The attraction wasn’t death, it was geography. Earls Court had The Coleherne – prime gay cruising territory – and it’s a long way to the West Heath, so the cemetery was the place to go.) I didn’t go there for cruising, despite what some of you might think. I went for memory. In retrospect, that’s what the day was about.

I’ve been neglecting the thing I’m here to do. Here we all are, frightened of infecting each other, hiding in our homes and waiting to be switched back on again. I’ve been looking after things connected to existence – trying to declutter and decorate, to sort antiques, to connect with another human in an non-habitual manner. But I’ve dropped the most important ball. The acting.

The Crown is out. I need to assemble my recent footage and hit things running. I didn’t even land the fucking advert – (found out today). But the sets are up and running with constant testing and restrictions. Everybody I talk to seems to be about to go on set and do something. I absolutely need to be on one as soon as humanly possible and I need to work out which mountains to move in order to make that happen. Enough with the Del Boy Trotter shit. Dancing bears and driving, selling pictures and heavy lifting – fine. It can keep ticking over. But it’s not what I’m here for.

That’s the result of the walk. At the time I was just thinking “oh, I remember this place,” but it was all connected to remembering this thing which I’ve been servicing for so long. I stopped by The Finborough, a pub theatre where many plays happened in the early days. I buzzed by the site of a church where I did an early Hamlet with Lost, before I trained. I swung over to BAC and The Latchmere. I let myself remember the joy and the passion and the time and the love and the craft over years and years and years that currently culminates in my agent’s assistant telling me they took the pencil off for a reaction shot but well done for getting that far.

It was the perfect day for it. Shocking bright sunlight. Fatima would’ve got some nice photos. I did some grave watching, and found John Snow. He knew quite a lot, John Snow. He’d have been in his element right now – the epidemiologist who worked out Cholera was caused by tainted water, and took off the handle from the tainted pump in Soho. At the time his conclusion was widely resisted – that it was poo in the water. People didn’t want to think about it. They thought it was in the air – they were likely walking around with big thick leather masks on, overheating and having a nice cool glass of deadly water.

A lovely day to go for a walk through the past. It’s all still there somewhere. Those we’ve lost. The things we did. The people we were. It’s just an edge away. And it’s nice to remember it, to remember the hopes and dreams and temper them with the reality and forge forward into the future. Onwards, ever onwards, ships against the tide. Until we move on and the stuff we live inside ends up somewhere like this.

It was about an hour afterwards that I started to feel sad again. When I had the head on it all seemed to make sense. Life was simple. Achievable. I was just Lego Man. Big tall reliable Lego Man. I was wrapped in pink, fashionably dressed, constantly smiling, hitting that damn Spotty Frog with that gimp gummy bear thing.

An hour later I had crossed London in the rain, and once again I was installed in a penthouse full of antiques, dressed like a geography teacher, with just this weird head on with all the hairy bits. The inflatable balloons with “LOVE” written all over them had been replaced by possible tiny pathogens. Lego Man could’ve fought off the blues even though his eyes are in his mouth. Lego Man was still in Bond Street though. My head is smaller, and often it gets full of noise.

I sat in my flat feeling sad.

Thankfully I have good friends, even if it’s hard to raise them these days. I ended up in a long conversation with a dear friend, taking tea and finding a way to paint the smile back on without the Lego Head.

We are still a long long way from home.

The tube is empty. Completely empty. I would’ve walked into work like I did at Christmas, but the rain had other ideas, and so I went underground. And the tube is a ghost town. If I wanted to catch Covid I’d be much better off choosing vegetables. Still, I didn’t put my hand on anything just in case.

You have to be alert, as the drivers close the door as soon as it’s open. They’re used to finishing their rounds in record time. If you’re dreaming you’ll miss your stop. There’s no faffing. I very nearly DID miss it.

Christmas ads vie for your attention with health warnings and the occasional leftover summer festival banner. The few people who are using it are isolated and scattered. Leaving the station at Bond Street at noon it struck me that we are hopefully never going to know another time where London is so peaceful. I might look back on this and miss it. I bet the people who live in Soho are sleeping well for the first time in years. It’s probably them licking all the avocados in the hopes they can sleep well for another six months, the buggers.

I’m in the bath now, with my big teapot, surrounded by candles, trying to cheer myself up so I don’t have chaosdreams again. My dreams are bonkers these days. Psychedelic crazy madness. I dreamt I was a Lego Man, hitting a spotty frog with a gummy bear, and somebody was paying me to do it.