Category: Uncategorized

Such a slow day today. Heavy. Like I’m carrying weight. By back hurts for no reason. Maybe it’s atmospheric. Maybe it’s the all the negative energy flying around. Social media is my window into everybody these days and everybody I’m seeing on it is popping out with unhappiness. I feel like joining in. This has been a long old slog from March until this cold January evening.

Normally I’d have had a Burns Night yesterday. I’ve kept the busts of Burns out of auction, and I’ve got a Victorian plate of him to put the haggis on top of. They all just stayed on the shelf. No friends round to get drunk on whisky and read poems. “Bring a poem” is the only rule. You don’t even have to read it yourself if you’re shy. There’s usually no shortage of willing actors, and me in an emergency.

Not this year. This year I didn’t even eat any haggis. I should be ashamed of myself. I had jerk chicken and buckwheat, and Hex had a mouse.

Perhaps I should wander to the supermarket and get myself haggis before it leaves the shelves. I could do a belated Zoom poetry sharing session tomorrow evening. It might cheer people up. Hmm maybe this is a good plan. It might even cheer me up, and stop me just constantly refreshing eBay.

One of the pictures on my eBay has garnered quite a lot of attention. It’s a virtually completely shredded antique oil painting of a kid with a vase. I’ve had a few messages from people who are thinking of using lockdown to learn how to restore art and they’re going to start with this one… And it’s been bidded up from £25 to over £100 already. The horse will likely go well too and I’ve got a feeling about the pheasant. Others don’t seem to have any interest at all.

Selling pictures is a brave new world for me, and I’m having seller’s remorse about one or two of them, knowing that once they’re gone they’re gone. I might end up pulling the Wilson… But space… I STILL have way too much stuff for the size of my home. I never want to have too little, but perhaps it’s ok to let more things go. It’s easy to cling to things that remind me of people, because we have no means of clinging to people at the moment and I miss you all and your funny smells. The picture I’m thinking of keeping is a picture of an art class. It wouldn’t be allowed right now. Maybe that’s why I want it. Maybe I should let it go. I should stop opening my eBay and looking at it or I might even start bidding on it myself without thinking.

But that’s how slow my day has been. I could’ve been painting a wall in the spare room but I just can’t find it in me to do that on my own – certainly today. It’ll get done in its own time one way or another. But today was for nesting. Thank God for central heating. I’ve been holed up in my bedroom with the radiators on eating chocolate and reading for just hours and now I’m going to go to sleep in the hole that I’ve made here and probably dream of eating chocolate, reading and Ebay because my brain doesn’t remember anything else. I haven’t even been motivated enough to go into the living room and switch on the PlayStation. Impressive, huh? I only made food because I knew it would cheer me up and it came out of a kit from Mindful Chef. A useful if expensive way of making sure I don’t starve.

So I had a walk. I needed one.

Morning found me sitting in the corner of the spare room once again, under the lights. “Try and look away at the same time,” says the director to me and the actress. We are in separate rooms and our eyeline means we can’t see each other at all. We will never be able to synchronise without being in the same room, which we will be for the shoot when we get the job. It’s one of those things where the skillset I have to demonstrate to get the job is different from the skillset I have to employ once I’ve got the job. The comfort is that all the other actors will have run into the same bollocks I did. But how many are they seeing? These online zoom recalls… My agent says “Oh, some of our clients are going in for third recalls on similar jobs”. So if there’s a neurotic client, the expense of renting the room is no longer a reason to gently suggest they have seen enough actors and let’s just pick one please!

So yeah. Post audition walk in the sunshine. Get all that twattery out of the system. This is just a commercial. It’s money. Be good to get back on the horse though, even if it isn’t the great artistic oeuvre I dream of finding when the world wakes up.

Today was shanks pony and I walked from mine to Westminster on a sharp and crisp morning. The abbey is shut of course. I could look but not touch.

I was thinking of what might be under it – thinking about the fact there used to be a druidic college there. Not many people out and about today though and a disappointing lack of druids teaching me things. I walked up the Aldwych to Trafalgar Square. It’s empty in the square. Some half-hearted cordons and a beleaguered looking private security guard whose job it is to politely request you don’t climb on the lions. I’ve had my fill of lion climbing – just wanted to see the place empty on such a sunny day. But a reminder that no public space is public anymore in this town. I walked down Fleet Street.

Frozen puddles beneath my feet, and everywhere are workmen in hi-vis and hard hats, getting some work done while the buildings are closed. The Temple is shut. You won’t be sneaking into the inns of court. And nowhere is open for a pee. Halfway up Ludgate Hill to St Paul’s, I chose to echo the ancient Londoners on these age long roads, and I found a parked van off the main drag and used its shadow. Not such a frozen puddle. A little bit of me for the stones.

From St Paul’s, across Millennium Bridge and left towards the Tower. Up to Tower Bridge and then back through unfamiliarly empty streets to London Bridge Station. A woman catches me looking longingly into a pub window. Her expression is one of wry shared companionship in mourning.

Back to Tower Bridge and over to The Tower before the long track home. Landmarks and familiar places, but all unfamiliarly empty. Many a time after auditions I’ve had similar walks, but never without the regular stops for a pint by the river or a paella in the yard or a prayer in the cathedral or coffee in the market. By the time I was at Victoria I would have rung somebody and persuaded them to meet me for one in the Shakespeare. Then maybe a stumble home via The Antelope, The Potter, The Surprise and oh it’s closing time.

I still have the same amount of money in my bank account as I did this morning, which wouldn’t normally be the case after a post audition day in London. So there’s a bright side. And it’ll be even brighter if I get the part. Now shut up about it, Al.

I’ve been thinking about Malmutius. About Brutus and the Trojans. I love this city I’ve adopted, but I sometimes forget the actual history of the place. This city is OLD. Long before Londinium, thousands of years before even Lud’s Dun and Lud’s Gate, 1200 years before the Nazarene prophet died in Jerusalem and kicked off a modern era there was a bitter war in Turkey between the two great superpowers Greece and Troy. It’s undeniable that it happened and that it was huge and that it changed the world forever. It is so far removed in time that it’s hard to think of it as anything but a story in this world where people find it convenient even to deny things in living memory like the holocaust. But unlike much from that distant era when the Gods still walked the earth, there’s enough to satisfy everybody who seeks it that Troy stood and that Troy fell to the Greeks.

Maybe there was a horse. Maybe there wasn’t. But one of the greatest ancient cities was deliberately turned to just a memory, and Poseidon was angry. Troy was deleted, as Cato later deleted Carthage. The fields were sown with salt. The topless towers of Ilium were burnt, and so efficiently was it done that the location of the ruins was lost for thousands of years. Even as Odysseus got lost on his way back to Ithaca, so from the other side went Aeneas, the wandering Trojan, on his own epic voyage. His brood were citymakers, as was he. Rome came out of his loins via Alba Longa and all that mess with Carthage. And one of his sons, Brutus, went wandering through Gaul. He founded Tours before forging North and crossing the channel. Eventually he settled in what would eventually become Lud’s Dun. He made his New Troy (Troy Novant) here on this island he had named for himself – The seat of what would become the Great Brutian civilisation.

Many generations down to Lud and beyond, his Brutish kin held this fortress with the mound where the Tower of London stands today. Kings and centres shifted around and borders were drawn and redrawn by warring tribes, and by ambitious warlords. Writing was scarce and conquest disrupts oral traditions, so we know next to nothing of these hundreds and hundreds of years of life before the Romans who brought a period of chronicle before another age of dark descended as they all suddenly pulled out and left the doors swinging. But we know a bit.

In this dark time – hundreds of years after Brutus – Malmutius, who could claim direct ancestry to Aeneas, laid down laws in triad in the druidic tradition. Memory works best in threes. They knew all about memory, and how to exercise that muscle, and hold things in. Universal writing took as much as it gave. But these laws were kept because they were written. We might have had a lot more if so much hadn’t been burnt in Henry’s divorce. But we have these.

By our standards, many of the Malmutian laws made sense. Universal suffrage. Hospitality to strangers. Sanctuary. By the same standards, other laws were not so great. Trial by combat and similar Brutian brutalities spring to mind.

When looking for anchors in this city it’s useful for me to remember that there’s still stuff available. Really old stuff, just the way I like it. Westminster and the Isle of Thorns is right by my flat, even if the rivers are held in vast pipes now.

It’s a brisk day’s walk to go from Thorney Island to The Tower. If the weather is good I might get my boots on, strike out tomorrow and call it exercise.

I’ve been learning about art.

I got my big drill (ooer missus) and I stuck a hole in the white wall I’ve been using for self tapes. I stuck in a rawl plug and a screw. Now I’ve got a photo studio for pictures.

In my living room, propped casually against a radiator blocking the heat lies hundreds of pounds worth of unwanted art. Not good enough for auction houses, who charge to photograph and to list. Not bad enough for the charity shop, especially in lean times such as this. Hard to sell well on eBay without knowledge. And if you sell without knowledge on eBay you just sell to the dealers who then apply knowledge and get a better price.

Today was about accruing enough knowledge to try and bypass the dealers.

I have scheduled lots of very different pieces of art to pop up on my eBay between noon and 6pm Sunday. All of them listed for a week, minimum bids between £6.99 and £99 depending on how good I think they might be. There are some doozies. And there’s some tut.

Three of them – the three I set the cheapest – I know to be the work of my dear departed uncle Peter. Peter dabbled in painting as a youth but then decided he preferred to be an estate agent. Two are of the same church in Jersey and the other is The French Riviera. They’re very ambitiously framed and I worry I don’t like them because I know them to be his. But that’s the advantage of Ebay – things find their price. One of his has a racy unfinished little nude on the reverse that gives me an idea of where his true interest and talent lay. I bet he turned it round when his mum wasn’t home. I’m still selling it. I have plenty to remember him by, including most of my formal clothing.

There are Victorian lithographs and prints, there’s a huge modern limited edition etching of Brisbane.

There’s a great big oil painting from an American woman in Venice in the ’50’s called Maud. All are listing tomorrow. A Lunette Chromolithograph of the Crucifixion after Fra Angelico.

There’s a life painting by the teacher of an 1870’s life class, drawing the participants with great character and depth that’s almost impossible to photograph being monochrome black and framed in reflective glass.

There are plenty of boats and Corbière lighthouse was ever popular.

There’s an oil painting of a horse where I kept drawing blanks on an artist called Chichester before just giving up and listing it as “Antique Oil painting of a horse”.

Some of the pieces I like enough to keep. I’ve already put one of them up on the wall. More will follow, while others I’m hoping will get a good enough price that I’m gonna let them go. Seventeen of them scheduled so far and tomorrow morning I’ll keep going and get it into the twenties, with some old prints like this one of Jersey Races – one in slightly better nick sold at Christie’s for 1k in 2014.

I ran out of battery twice over the course of my research and photography. I’m not very good at photographing glass frames. I took lots of charging breaks as I’m doing it all on my phone. Such incredibly versatile devices now, despite the horrendous pillaging of minerals to feed our addiction with being up to date.

Photographing. Researching. Writing up. Recording measurements. Working out a decent starting price. Scheduling. I keep falling in love with them as I’m researching them and deciding not to sell them.

Hopefully the ones I’ve scheduled will all sell next Sunday and some might sell very well. Then I have a plan with a potentially huge gaping flaw. I’ve put them down for £12.50 each on postage. That’ll cover Hermes, but Hermes plays football with your parcels…

Essentially my plan is to courier as many as possible to their new homes myself.

I bet they all get bought by Channel Islanders and people from Aberdeen and Cornwall. I’m going to order a roll of bubble wrap online.

So long as they are no longer blocking my radiator, no matter what happens I’m going to call it a win.

It’s the story we all need right now. Nathan Evans, 26, was working as a postman in Airdrie, between Glasgow and Edinburgh. Landlocked, about an hour’s drive to Leith or to the Firth of Forth. He sat down with a bangybucket in December and he sang a sea shanty to put out on TikTok. I’m in my forties. TikTok is a foreign country. I’m aware of it though. I leave it to the young’uns. This all kicked off ages ago in terms of the internet. I’m late writing about it. But…

There are loads of people making and consuming content there, and the good people of TikTok liked this sea shanty. Like any good content generator Nathan did another shanty in order to surf the wave of popularity. This one was The Wellerman – an old whaling song. And it went completely viral. And I’m thrilled about it, because sea shanties are awesome.

Now all over the world people are playing around with this ancient form of group singing – easy enough for anyone but with loads of depth and history. I’ve been loving the videos of Americans playing it while driving and various celebrities joining in the growing online chorus. Millions of people now – actually millions – from everywhere in the world and they’ve all joined in with Nathan and his hard eyes and his practical hat. There are pop remixes and there are ones with crunchy bass, and the certainty of Nathan’s version combined with the perfection of his burr, his intensity on camera and his grounded nature in interviews – he’s a good vessel for it.

So good that he’s signed with Polydor. A month ago he was a postman. Now he’s got a recording contract. They’ve probably given him a shiny penny and three magic beans in exchange for fifteen generations of his family in slavery, but that’s a pretty good deal these days from record companies. Likely he’ll be thrilled until the magic beans are gone and he reads the small print.

For now, it’s a happy story about people singing together. And maybe Polydor weren’t evil. Ha ha ha. Ha ha ha. Ha. But maybe.

Singing together is breathing together and breathing together is everything. It’s how rallies work. It’s how football supporters and churchgoers get their endorphins. It’s how I do my job. And it’s lovely to think that this guy has changed his life through a song, and made us all happy doing it.

It’s a good song too, even if you’ll get it stuck in your head. I’ve tried a few times to get Sea Shanties into plays I’ve been devising because, frankly, it’s pretty easy to make them sound awesome. The Wellerman is a verse and chorus song, designed for a different crew member to take the verses and the whole crew to join on a simple hopeful chorus. You’ve got some nice archaic language and it ends with mischief in the last moment, when the tonguing is done and they take their leave a final time and don’t sing the last word.

So thanks, Nathan. Of all the things to come out of this atrocious mess of a year we’ve just had, the resurgence of sea shanties in the popular imagination stands up.

What’s it about? It’s about an untenable situation that goes on for too long. It’s about a ship that harpoons a whale and the whale keeps fighting and pulling them by the harpoon. It pulls for 40 days. And still it pulls, long after it should all be over. For all we know the Billy of Tea is still being pulled around, and has been since 1870. The crew are in constant danger and fear for their lives, losing boats from the fleet, and comforting themselves by singing, and by hoping for the wellerman’s arrival with all the good things. Before long, kinder times will come for the Billy of Tea.

“Soon will the Wellerman come, to bring us sugar and tea and rum.” Soon. All will be well. This article has his version embedded, with plenty more. It’s exactly the sort of thing I love, as you go down the videos there – lots of people coming together to add to something beautiful for the sheer joy of it.

We have to be careful with each other. We really do. I never thought I’d say it, but thank God I lost all that time to depression and grieving back in the early 2000’s. It’s given me tools for this madhouse.

It’s dark. It’s cold. We are constantly fed division and fear. Our leaders are so narcissistic they don’t think they need to hide the fact they only care about themselves. Many of us are completely uncertain about the future of things we worked incredibly hard to build. Institutions are crumbling, character is fading. Horrible unimaginative people are cornering even more of the capital. And we all have to stay at home.

You remember somebody saying “God it’s so good to see you,” and touching your arm? Group hugs? Jumping in water together? Sharing a cake? Glastonbury is already cancelled this coming summer now. Another avalanche to come. Footballers earn a higher percentage of their wage by isolating so they can sweat and barge and bleed at each other. We can’t sit in the huge stadiums, but at least there’s a show. Not like most of the empty stages – huge wonderful historic buildings that might well end up being turned into pubs or flats by neutral faced clay men with collars, clipboards and contacts.

The only shot we seem to have at togetherness is rioting. Maybe the queue at the supermarket, but there’s no endorphin rush there. It’s why people seem to have started making up shit just so they can have a good riot.

Outside of riots we can’t be with friends – with strangers – with humanity. We haven’t been able to for ages now. In summer at least the outdoors was appealing. It’s the dark days of the year and we are stuck in a bubble with our heads and maybe Zoom which doesn’t do the invisible things. It’s like we’re being stretched from our daemons. Please be kind to yourself in this all. Please.

Another school friend jumped off Beachy Head. They found her this morning.

We were at the boarding school I was sent to when I was eight. I knew her as an adult too. There’s a bit of contact between the few of us. A little bit. A pleasant bit. She was great. I haven’t seen her for ages, but the call came nonetheless. She had kids. A partner. Like with one more old friend I find myself wondering how many of us she drove near to. How many of us would have wanted to welcome her, to listen to her, accept her, allow her to just be.

All the patterns are different at the moment and people are flooded with unfamiliar stimulus. We go to the internet for refuge from the world but everybody else is doing it too and lots of them are screaming into it. And I find myself honestly wondering, with my brittle history, how I seem to be perfectly okay and with enough headspace to sponge up anything you might need to offload.

Call me if it’s dark in there. I’m not sure how good at it I am but I’m very good at being distracted by shiny things and that appears to be a pretty useful trait right now. Shiny things combat the darkness and they’re everywhere. Plus I’m good at accepting. Not as good at it as Lou, but good in a kind of distracted way. Shiny distraction. And yes, I’m feeling it too. We all are. It’s just not an easy time.

A friend sent this picture. I used to go to church with the artist so I’m sure he wouldn’t mind me putting it up for you. He’s a huge heart, and a great talent. Like she was. Like you are.

Just in time, the doorbell rang. I ordered a ring light. My two halogens are useful for balancing shadow, but I needed a central light and a tripod for my phone and this thing kind of does both. That’s the plus side. In close up it can reflect a halo in your eyes which breaks the world so it needs careful handling. It’ll take me a while to make sense of how to get the best out of it, but I pressed it into service on Zoom this afternoon for its first outing.

A quick meeting. An online recall. My first.

A casting director I like, an actress I kind of recognised called Claire and a director I’ve wanted to meet for a while. All of us, gathered on Zoom, simply for a reaction shot. I literally just had to look from one side of the camera to the other. Loads of money is riding on this. How dare you tell me this is a ridiculous way of earning a living. I bloody love it. When it works. Now we’ve done the thing we came there to do. We’ve looked and it’s been recorded. We will now wait and either hear or not hear. The only comfort is that I know I did enough that any decision will come down to the cut of my face rather than the cut of my jib. It’ll stand or fall on which actors look the best together… I would like to be one of them thankyouplease. But the important part of the waiting game is to try to forget about it. It’s like “The Game” where you can only lose if you remember you’re playing it. Sorry.

Sometimes it can take weeks to hear from an audition one way or another. Often you just watch as day one of the shoot ticks closer, and you only know for sure when it clicks past. If they haven’t told you the shoot dates it’s even less exact.

One time it was two months from a very very strange recall that I got a call telling me I’d be flying to Bangkok. I’d already buried the memory of the meeting and chalked it up to experience. It ended up being the audition where I learnt that my monitor on myself in auditions is probably the worst in the room. That’s cool. Means I can rationally try to forget about it just as soon as I’ve dumped it here. Just don’t ask me if I got it. I’ll probably volunteer it if I did. And if I didn’t I’d probably prefer to forget it ever happened. Just as if I was playing that ridiculous thoughtgame that some of you have just lost because of me.

It’s a big old job right now without a dedicated studio space in my flat. About an hour of moving furniture and setting up lights. Another half an hour of sound-check. Twenty minutes of watching the clock and waiting. Ten minutes in an online waiting room fretting that maybe I wasn’t getting in because of a problem with my internet. About 2 minutes of niceties. About a minute of practice. A minute of shot, with a crucial 1.8 seconds of footage. 30 seconds of polite goodbyes. Then hours of adrenaline unwinding.

A pint or six usually does the trick, but that’s not on the menu. Instead I had a cup of tea and played computer games and suddenly it was evening and I was hungry.

Delivery curry, six episodes of South Park, and now I’m in the bath pushing the last of the adrenaline onto the screen of my phone like this. Yaaaarrrk. Bleeeeeuuuuurgggh.

That’s better.

How was your day?

Today I went back to the electric sanding machine. I piled everything into the middle of the room and covered it all in a dust cover, and then I attacked the ceiling woodwork paint with the sander. It’s all cracked with damp and flaking. You can’t paint on top of it until it’s been sanded down as it’ll come off again, but the plastering is so damaged I keep knocking out chunks of it and making the job bigger for myself. This is going to be harder than it looks. It’s why normal grown-ups with normal jobs go on holiday to Crete and hide the valuables while those nice young men come in and work like slaves for three days sanding and painting and sweating oh my! I’m very tempted to get somebody in myself. My knowledge is lacking and it’s miserable doing this on your own. I keep getting paint flakes in my eyes, and the dandruff of it all was in my hair until just now.

Halfway through the job my agent rang to tell me I’m recalling for one of the self tapes I did last week. It’s on Zoom tomorrow afternoon. So now I suddenly have to stop the job again and turn the room back into an office so I can be unruffled in it tomorrow. A good excuse to pause the works again and set back. It’s a weird life, but if this job lands I hereby swear that I’m going to pay people to finish the bloody room. I’ll leave the valuables out and go to wherever I’m allowed for a few days before coming back to a lovely finished room and a bit less dollar, and I’ll feel like it’s a stepping stone in the game of life.

I won’t envy whoever does it. Even with a gyroscope in it, the sanding machine is very effective but believe me it’s heavy work using it upside down. You have to push this oddly moving vibrating weight into the ceiling above your head while chunks of old paint rain down on you and fill your ears and eyes and collar. I was wearing my grandfather’s Rockall vintage red denim chore jacket – fashionably and effectively dressed darling – and it’s just as well because after twenty minutes it was covered in crap. Twenty minutes is about the limit of my endurance for it right now so I threw the thing off and made tea. My head was spinning from vibration and my arms both hurt from working above my head and I was headrushing from lack of oxygen in a mask that’s actually getting its proper use for a change. I’m not as fit as I thought I was.

The room is a little bit closer to done after a few shifts. A little little bit closer That’s it for now though. I’m going to rebuild the studio tomorrow morning for my zoom meeting. I have a suspicion this is just a sanity check and maybe a chemistry test with the other actors. I’ll get to meet the director and he makes really nice clean stuff so I reckon it’ll be a pleasure. He gets good performances out of people. I’ll just need to look sharp and not be a twit I reckon. Both things I’m capable of, believe it or not – even in auditions.

Right now, bed is calling louder than usual…

It’s very bright in my flat – in direct contrast to how it is in the world. Over the years loads of candles have found their way into here. I always load up whenever I go to Ikea, tons of them tend to just miraculously appear here after Christmas Carol runs are over, and they are generally one of the things that my magpie instinct latches onto. TK Maxx is another repository of waxy columns.

I’ve started to think of my rooms as elementally themed and the living room is certainly fire tonight. I’ve put them everywhere and I’m basking in their glow. I even put them into some antique glass things that look like they’re supposed to hold candles but that explode from heat when the flame gets close to the bottom. Dammit.

They’re terrifically atmospheric as well – like the best budget world-build you can possibly get. Despite what they put on the risk assessment, it’s pretty hard to burn the house down with candles in proper candle holders. I was sad when we weren’t allowed them last time we did Christmas Carol because somebody was frightened of their potential for havok. There’s always a potential for havok in theatre. It just depends which head you put on.

We forget history. They’ve been around for as long as they have because they’re less likely to set fire to the theatre than a birdie with a gel on it is. But you have to have a bucket of sand and all sorts of shenanigans. Usually we do, but last year we had to choose our battles. Even The Globe, when it burnt down it was because of a bit of wadding from a cannon blast getting into the thatch. Using pyrotechnics to wake up the audience during Henry VIII – a pageant. Very much not Shakespeare at his finest.

They get away with candles at the Sam Wanamaker playhouse. (That’s the indoor arm of The Globe). Tickets are like gold dust and so they should be. I’ve only ever managed to get a restricted view seat. Inside the place is swimming in tallow, a true testament to artisanal passion and a faith in old ways. It’s astonishing in there, and they do good work.

God I can’t wait for the theatres to open. Fuck I’d literally chew your arm off for the chance to do a run in that woodysmelling space with all the candles lit.

For now though, I’ll just have to pretend to be other people in my flat, for the fish.

The butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker. Essential trades in an earlier society. Little portable localised flames that don’t poison you and aren’t likely to torch the house. We are clever little monkeys, making such things.

I’ve always been drawn to fire. It’s a human instinct, perhaps. We are the firekeepers. It’s a remarkable thing how we are the only animal that understands it and harnesses it for warmth, for cooking, for light. Sure occasionally we do stupid crap like blow up a load of gunpowder in the dry season for a momentary effect that ends up killing loads of people and wiping out huge portions of ancient woodland. But we are also the only species that thinks we’re clever when we aren’t. It’s fascinating as well as dangerous, this thing that Prometheus stole for us. I can spend hours just staring at it…

As a kid I probably spent more time gazing at sparks as they went up the chimney than I did goggling at the telly. My parents caught on and made it my job to lay and light the fire so the morning room was warm before they woke up. And yes, we had a morning room. I loved that fireplace. I want one in my home. Not a woodburner. An open fire.

It’s joys like that which help make this period bearable, as we work our way through these wintry feardays that I hope will be remembered with a kind of mystified incomprehension a decade from now. “Oh fuck yeah, you remember lockdown…?”

I knew grandpa’s dress uniform would come in handy before long. This was today’s self-tape look – but with the hair in a ponytail to keep it out of view. I was reading for an army major, so it’s all wrong if you’re a purist. I’m in a higher ranking naval uniform… But it made me look right, and more importantly it made me feel right which is all that matters for these things. It’s a scratch at the door.

It’s technically work, auditioning, and I couldn’t do it alone so I drove to Tristan’s. He wore a mask bless him and kept his distance. We got it nailed down and sent off in short order. There’s a lovely fellowship to the self-tape. We’ve both given lots of time for each other over the years. Investing in the knowledge the investment will pay off. We both get generous when we feel flush, and we both try to give the energy we received when we’re helping each other on these home-auditions, so it goes round and round in a lovely karmic circle.

Meanwhile, on the interwebnet, I’m performing in a dramatic monologue – audio only. There’s a digital / online theatre festival. Very much grassroots stuff and some interesting and weird things will be there I have no doubt. The Festival is called The Living Record Festival and it’s live up until the 22nd February, with an opportunity for people to browse and drop in to anything they fancy. My corner of the festival is called Covert Firmament, and my specific piece is called “Read to Me” – here’s the direct link if you have fifteen quid to spare and a little over 12 minutes in the bag. It’s a strange piece and I like it. It was done in my little portable studio through the iPad, microphone on a suitcase covered in towels while sitting facing into a wardrobe in Hampstead on a hot summer’s day. I’ve got pretty good at organising my sound environment so it sounds good even if it looks weird. It was a comfortable recording session, all in one sitting for consistency, and I’m happy with how it all came out. They’ve scored it beautifully, and of course … well I’m marvelous, darling, I always am aren’t I oh dear me yes.

I haven’t really worked out how the festival all works. I’m going to go in tomorrow and virtually stroll around and see what I can find. I reckon it’ll be like Vault Festival but online. Lots of good stuff, lots of weird stuff, lots of stuff stuff. But they got people like The Guardian and The Financial Times to review it, which is testament to how different everything is under Covid. Usually it would have been passed down the list until it dropped off the bottom. But it’s a little ray of light. A little chance for me and mine to put something out into the world again and do that storytelling thing that we’ve decided is the thing we do for money life and joy.

So yeah, an auspicious Sunday. The beginnings of things again. The niggling feeling that perhaps … just perhaps … things are starting to happen again in the world.