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It’s an early start tomorrow to piece together a tape for a nice job. They’re slightly putting me through my paces and I’m slightly fullheaded for a meeting so it’s a relief that I can send it rather than walk into a room in Soho prepared tomorrow. It means I can let it all back up, as I have done, and tomorrow morning early I’ll set up a camera and learn it live in front of the camera until it’s clean. Then I’ll do it all again different. Then I’ll try and forget about it.

Tapes tapes tapes. Man I’ve made some works of art over the years. There was a commercial tape where I was the devil and Tristan and I deliberately put in the Wilhelm scream, and loads of other little film-maker Easter eggs. No recall for that one. It is genuinely tempting to believe that half the tapes we make never get watched by the client. But still we make the tapes. I had a commercial tape the other day. The instructions asked for plain background. I did one scene in my car. It’s possible that the assistant to the casting director watched it with a checklist in front of them and just swiped left because “no plain background”. If I knew for certain how these things were parsed I would conform to it, but it’s impossible to tell. I’ve watched friends of mine casting things go all gooey eyed over a mediocre actor because of how they are positioned in the marketplace. We are all to a lesser or greater extent suckers when it comes to people selling us stuff. Actors are a commodity.

My agent has some position in the market. She’s not just a producer trying to make a second string tick over. She gets me and knows how to sell me, and as a result there are some casting directors who have started to know who I am and what I do easily and how I can improve the story. So I’ll take the time tomorrow morning and I’ll be grateful that I CAN take the time. Sometimes I just learn it and bust it out, sometimes I haven’t time to learn it so it’s about time and short term memory. I’ll send the first take I do where I remember it right. I might… might take a leaf out of a dear friend of mine’s book and use an autocue on iPad. Probably won’t though. Learning tech takes almost as long as learning lines. And the fear with autocue is that you get a recall and you haven’t learnt it. Might as well do the work, even if it’s condensed into a few hours starting at 6am on a Friday.

I was up way too early this morning. Just as I was going to bed Carlos and Rajah had a squabble and Carlos ran out. I think Rajah had decided that Lou was his territory. I didn’t want Carlos to feel he couldn’t come back in so I went and scooped him up, and deposited him inside in his favourite bit. In response Rajah stormed out of the French window in a huff and went into the woods. I figured he’d be gone for ages but he’s a big lad and he knows the woods so I just went to bed.

Half past four and I’m woken up by an almighty deluge. Half asleep I go and check on the cats and Rajah still isn’t home. This isn’t like him, he doesn’t like getting wet any more than the rest of us, so I open up and go stand on the lawn for a second in the rain. I can’t spot him, he’s got a cat flap, so I turn back and head inside and as I turn to close it behind me, he’s standing there looking at me with mild rebuke. He’s freezing and soaked so I dry him up and make a fuss of him. I know I’m off in the morning and want them to be harmonious when I go.

Problem is I didn’t really get back to sleep after restoring harmony. I’ve disbalanced myself.

I just noticed that it’s nine at night here. I’m exhausted. Not just the cats, but I’ve been fighting severe acid reflux for a while now. And last night was all about belching forever because I’ve run out of hot fix Gaviscon. So Ayurvedic Lou kicked into gear with her entire area of expertise. I’m not to drink, gotta eat cucumbers and melon, no meat, nothing fun but fish. I can have chicken too apparently with all the tasty bits chopped off. My ideal meal of a meatcheesewhiskyfatcrunchster – that’s not allowed until I’m less likely to regurgitate acid instead of snoring. My throat is a precious resource. With the beard on off on off my voice is definitely my calling card, and bathing my vocal folds in stomach acid is unlikely to leave them in the best fettle.

I’d do well to live with her. It would be much easier to eat brown rice and veg and make it taste nice. I’m largely unskilled in such matters. But that’s the way of it. I took Lou home, we went for a spin on her car, and now I’m back in London town, about to try and remember how to sleep with this fucking great big road at my back, and no owls.

Thankfully I lived on a motorway sliproad in Reading for two years, ears against the glass. I’ll remember this easily enough.

Maddy is playing plinkyplonky whale noise stuff next door. Boo is fighting toys on my bedroom floor. The road is busy. I am gonna zen out and see what dreams come just as soon as I’ve belched myself like a toddler.

Last evening here. We went for a long walk and didn’t see a soul. Turned about in the end as we weren’t certain where we were exactly but knew that the path was still heading in the wrong direction. These tame woods aren’t going to be trouble to get lost in. Maybe you’ll meet a frightened Mailreader with a shotgun but there are no lions or tigers or bears, oh my. Or snakes. Or bad insects. How lucky we are that the primary threat to our well being is each other.

We had salmon, fresh and baked, with tatties and broccoli. Good healthy scran. Trying to make sure I recharge here as being solitary in the woods can be a recipe for disaster if you have my propensities. Look what happened to Kerouac. Gotta have liver function. If I was on my own out here I would try to make sure I didn’t just stack up with wine and hallucinogens and get found ten years later with incomprehensible pencil scrawled all over the walls as I babble about the ancient ones and try and sell you my new religion. On which subject, Ozzie Osbourne died. Lou is with me and she’s reading about it. 76, which isn’t bad when you’ve cooked yourself to that extent, but still sad.

A peaceful evening once again here for me. No biting the heads off hamsters. Some lines to learn for a tape but other than that not much new really. We are in a lovely place. We are slowing down in it. That is a good thing.

Pushing back into the world from tomorrow. I could absolutely live here, and be happy, but how the hell would I make enough money to pay for what would end up being daily trips to the butchers and the fishmongers for increasingly fine ingredients? Better to get back into the fray. Money doesn’t happen by mistake.

I priced up a job for a friend and sent a quote. I paid myself back all my expenses from Germany. It wasn’t an entirely null day, but largely it was. We went and met some goats. Goats like Lou. Three years ago today a goat tried to climb in the window of our hire car in Kefalonia and very nearly managed it. If it had, perhaps it would still be with us today. I could use a few goat friends if I lived out here with the new religion, the ancient ones and the hallucinogens.

Sun is falling. Tomorrow it’ll likely come back up. But I’m gonna unplug and say goodbye to it, just in case. We take these things for granted.

As the light fades Lou and I are listening to the woods through the open french window in our bungalow here in the depths of Flatroper’s Wood. Wood pigeons and stillness. We had two cars come down here all day, in convoy, a guilty looking lady and a guilty looking man. Lou and I were going for a walk and they turned around and came back out again thankfully, rather than hoping we would press our faces against their window while it all got steamy.

We went for a walk. Nobody else, little pathways, easy enough to start to feel lost the deeper you go. Last time I was here I didn’t notice so many anthills. Wood Ants. There’s a hill establishing in the garden here, which is currently only small but they can get very very big. I remember them from Switzerland growing up, but never seen them over here before. They are a native species though.

The domes they create are busy and distinctive. They’ve made a smaller one than the photo near Bella’s rose garden which will be a good hunting ground for them for aphids, which they harvest for honeydew. It’ll keep the aphids off the roses. Wood Ants are bizarre and wonderful creatures. They domesticate their aphids, keep them alive and milk them like cows.

As a kid in summer in Switzerland I must have spent days of my life with Max observing these big ant piles. Sometimes a grasshopper would land on one. Or a wasp would fight some of them. Sometimes thousands of ants would drag a dead bird across a road towards one, and it was like some weird zombie. We would watch them go to war with another dome for territory, watch the battle lines drawn and the convoys bringing back the dead and wounded and replacing them with fresh troops in extended futile stalemates that might extend into a road and get broken by the tyre of a car. They clean things up though. But they are also hungry for small insects.

I tend to think of ant-hills as a single organism. An anthill is really just the queen. If you kill the queen you’ll end up with a dead nest. Every ant is an extrusion of that one life force and will, birthing what the colony needs when it needs it, extending territory, hunting resources.

Wood ants are a very benign example of formicidae so I’m not worried about them being in the garden. Sure the drones were flying into my ear in bed two nights ago but that’s only one night a year. Most of the time they just mind their own business, and I doubt they’ll come into the house. They aren’t biters like those little red fuckers. And they won’t hurt you if they get trapped – it’s a little prick of a bite and I should know, I basically played with the damn things every summer for a year. “What happens if I stick this lolly stick in the nest OW you pushed me, now they’re all up my ARM OW.”

The day birds are passing shift over to the night birds. Somewhere far away there’s a cow shouting. The last of the light is fading and a little breeze is bringing in the night time rain.

In spring I went to Upstairs at the Tillingham. That was April, with an “r” in the month. I did a YouTube on the smallest scale that it is possible to do such things. But I was curious about this Michelin Green Star place. I had Oysters, Scallops and lamb. Spring food. Some service issues and it was pricey but largely it was a good evening. So, fuck it, I went back to see the summer menu.

It’s July. The menu is pretty much exactly the same. So now there’s no “r” in the month. Oysters and scallops likely gonna be frozen, probably the lamb as well. The morels I was so excited about with the lamb are no longer there so there has been some seasonal shift. Not much though. And the Pinot Gris I had last time is run out. “That’s a typo,” says the waitress, who is only on her third shift. It’s not. It’s an oversight.

Footfall isn’t high enough for me to really hold them down. Likely they haven’t used up all the spring lamb and being careful they are using what remains. They’ve used the morels so they’ve replaced them with garlic which was plentiful this year. I reckon if there was a train of hungry people they would have shifted the menu a few times, but it is too expensive here not to be a treat. I like my fine dining… Can’t really afford it but gonna try. And Tillingham is really about good old British English WINE from English Britain. And it’s okay, the wine. The Pinot Gris that is sold out is sold out for a reason as it is almost better than okay. And that’s a high benchmark for wine made in England. I’ve had Majorcan wines that are much much worse than okay. For an English white to be edging towards good is an impressive celebration of man made climate change mixed with opportunistic ingenuity.

I enjoyed a meal. Had some okay wine. Made cheap choices compared to last time. Left feeling largely disappointed about missed opportunities. I’m not gonna slag anything or anyone off, it’s still a great place to eat, and actually I think heavier footfall would stimulate better response. It’s at the bottom of a long old narrow road, it is a destination… I had a wonderful view and felt treated. Menu disappointed me and I’m not yet sold on British wine, but I had a little glass of orange wine and it was pudding but it wasn’t sickly pudding.

I’m back with the cats. Tomorrow we will have to have a tidy up. Lou’s birthday today but she wanted alone time, which I honour. She will get here in the morning, so the cats and I will have to buck our ideas up.

Oh it’s peaceful here.

Just up the road there’s a café where you can get a decent breakfast without getting skinned. Lime Wharf Café. I went there to start the day. Really good ingredients, well used. I don’t want to link it just as it is so good that I don’t want to encourage it to put the prices up… It is well attended, of course. Rowing people, making food for themselves and others. My first proper girlfriend ended up rowing for Balliol and left me for a woman. Good on her. I like rowing people.

Last night was a little restless, as my early bed meant I was rested when the storm came. About 3am I got out of bed and stood at the French window with the cats flanking me, watching the woods in storm. Nature can be noisy. Sheet lightning, no forked, so… nothing on fire but a huge amount of water and rain and noise. Here it is so quiet that I can record a self-tape outdoors. Suddenly the booming of an angry sky, the rushing of the water and I was glad of mankind’s ingenuity to keep me dry. I enjoyed being here in stormy emptiness for a while. The cats were mostly pretty chilled so I didn’t feel I needed to stay up for them. So I turned in again and slept until the light woke me.

Sure I’ve got Jempson’s fifteen minutes one way and Lime Wharf Café fifteen minutes the other. This is in the woods but barely. It’s enough though. I love being here as I feel totally cut off.

Rain all morning though so I downloaded Skyrim and started up again – I’ve never got very far in Skyrim. Too much to do and it’s too big. I’ll finally have a playthrough on my Steam Deck where I can’t be distracted with modding it. The sun came out at 3 so all games were abandoned in favour of cats and sunshine. These furry boys know me well now and they like the same things I do. Food, sun and nature. One or the other or both have been winding round my legs all afternoon as I’ve tried to balance my tan. There’s a path at the back of the house so occasionally a whippet wanders through and sees me and the cats. Mostly it is super peaceful.

Tomorrow will be much like today, a day of long banked peace. There are social things and I’m slightly at war with myself about them. I could drive up to London and back but 6 hours driving just really doesn’t appeal when I did that every day last week. I’m just going to relax here in the post storm woods with these delightful shadowcreatures. I might cook up something again. And no pressure to do anything. I can relax.

That was quite a pleasant day. I could’ve gone one of two ways when self tape auditions became the norm. Either I could have expressed my distaste by just turning them in, or I could have started to think of it as an arm of my craft. I went the latterway. I’ve tricked myself into liking them because they give me freedom. If they ask for too much I try and enjoy giving it to them. I got my friend’s gardener to hold the camera for a full length shot as requested. I drove off site and shot the scene set in a car in my car, cos he was leaf blowing and it mixed up the tape a bit. Commercial was sent just before ten and then onto Shakespeare which was due at 3pm.

You do need partners really to work with Shakey. It’s energy work. It’s a curious part in one of the great plays, in a pleasant part of the world. I’d likely drive up if it landed and find digs out of town so it’s a healthy time and not a booze soaked horrorshow. I shot the tape in the garden in blazing sunshine, moving location each scene. It was fun stitching it together and meant I got the best of the day’s heat. My iPad was playing the other voices, thanks to Scott, and it overheated so badly that I had to put it in the freezer twice. Loads of technical fuckery, one scene it is clear I’m cueing the other voices manually, but it feels like art, of a sort, crafting a little journey through some scenes for a bunch of strangers to make a decision likely based on my height or the shape of my eyebrow.

Now it’s done I feel strangely bereft. I’m sitting bollock naked in the evening sun while Rajah rolls round my feet. I just ate a fish and chips and had a shower and honestly I’m already considering bed and it’s not yet seven. The flying ants are upon us, early this year what with it being the last day of term. The school holidays are upon us too and that long period of endless summer we all remember from our childhood will begin officially tomorrow. And I’m out of immediate pressure to DO anything, so it’ll be the ants, the cats and the woods. I can’t wait to do nothing for a bit. It’s been a long time coming.

I’m back in the garden in the woods. The last of the light is fading. Bats’ll be out soon. For now it’s the birds calling in the night, and a few moths and mossies. The cats were pleased to see me. It’s 9pm and I was out at 10 this morning to drive to London. Just got back.

Parked up in Sloane Square as it’s free with my permit. Got the tube in to Waterloo and onto The Cut. Went to the barbers and had a wet shave at Making the Cut. He was particularly thorough this time and cut the head off two of my moles. Still they won’t be bleeding in the morning and that’s when I’m doing two tapes and why I had to lose the beard.

I drove to London to catch a workshop showing of a new musical that Lou made some costumes for. The designer collaborates with Lou frequently – I met her through him. It’s a major producer and it has the bones of what will undoubtedly be a big show in a year or so, either here or on Broadway. Today it was just an audience test to industry audience on the Young Vic stage which, even opened out is quite small for what they are making. I can already imagine how it will be with all guns blazing. It’s already very strong. I think it might be under wraps and I’m used to erring on the side of vague, but it’s a story I remember from early adulthood, and now is an excellent time for it to be retold. I really hope it flies. Amazing to see an R&D with such a budget. This is what is possible at the top of the industry.

Tomorrow morning I’ll be up early and then tomorrow is just gonna be about taping myself really. An advert, which should be fire and forget but THE MONEY THE MONEY. And a Shakespeare on stage. I’ve never taped for a Shakespeare on stage before. It will feel very unusual without other people, but here I am in the woods so I’ve had to ask Scott to record the other lines for me.

Pink clouds in the sky and there’s an owl going mad behind me. It is incredibly peaceful here. Last night my dreams were so clear. The dark is darker, the quiet is only broken by nature until the morning when the walkers come by the window with their dogs. Owls and songbirds. The movement of trees. Two happy cats. A buzz near your ear. The distant sound of something vast unfurling in the dark wood. The murmurs in the air on the edge of comprehension promising  power. The screams of the unworthy. Crickets. Wings. Sonar.

A tiny reminder of how insignificant we are in space and time.

That owl is still making loads of noise. I think it might be horny.

Seems like the jump start kit last night used the last of Lou’s battery. I was nervous anyway when she bought the car as she had been sitting for a while. He would take it out once a week, the old owner, but only to the shops, and it doesn’t take long for a car battery to dip below too low, and after a while it just stops taking charge. I have rarely had a car where I haven’t had to change the battery at least once.

I tried to use a jump kit. I might have spent an hour nose to nose with jump leads but the space in front of her was full and I couldn’t park in the road. So… we rang the AA and got Tony.

Tony got it started reasonably quickly and taught me a little about battery connectors in the process. Then we drove to a car park and got a new battery put in. “So long as you do 2k miles a year it’s guaranteed for 5 years,” he told us. “So long as you do 2k a year,” he reiterated, three or four times. He knows this car has sat for a month. Batteries die easy. If you have a car you rarely use, go use it now. Prevention is better than cure. A car is a machine that begs to be used.

Once there was a new battery, Lou drove us to her workshop and back and it was fine. She’s passed her test. Now it’s just psychological.

I drove to Hastings and it is weird how nervous I am when all I have to do is look after two very chilled cats. One of them hasn’t come home and there were some kids making a dirt bike video outside and until I see Carlos I’m nervous about where he is. He’s usually a homebody in my experience, but last time I was here it was cold and rainy. Maybe he’s braver in summer.

Here’s Rajah:

Carlos is a greedy fucker though. He’ll surely be back for food. Rajah is the more independent, which is why I’m surprised no Carlos. I fed him as soon as I arrived. He knows I’m good for it.

—

Here he is. He just came in jumped on the bed and said “”Ew”. Good. First night assembly. I can stop worrying and go to sleep in the woods. Cats. Cats. Cats.

It’s been lovely to briefly be back home with Brian and Maddy, Boo and Misty and my familiar comfy things, but Bergman and I have places to be. I have other cats to talk affectionate gibberish with.

A brief stop to Lou first. Her little green car has been sitting in Brighton unused while she’s been finishing up in the big London. Now she’s finished she wants to start using her, but the battery has run down too low to ignite. We aren’t yet into reprogramme the radio territory, thankfully. I brought down a jump kit for her, or at least I thought I had. In actual fact I bought a great big external battery that you can plug in to the wall in your garage overnight to fully juice up the battery of a car you don’t use often enough. No good for us so we went back to Halfords to swap it and ended up with a jump-start kit. A hundred quid. It doubles as a huge great big festival phone charger. I want one for myself to keep in Bergman. If it holds its charge I’ll probably get one. It got Lou up and running again in a moment. Tomorrow she’s gonna take me for a spin in her little green car. A bit of confidence building so she can start to move things back and forth from her workshop when its pouring with rain.

Meanwhile just a bit of time to connect when both of us have just emerged from a busy patch. It’s her birthday coming up. I’ll be living in the woods again for a week from tomorrow, and Hastings isn’t so far away from her. We can meet halfway and go for lovely walks up hills together.

Right now though I’m sitting in a dark room with Tessy. I completely forgot about writing this until on the edge of sleep my internal alarm system jolted me up to do it. I think writing it at 4am last time has slightly jolted me out of my routine. But that’s a good thing. The problem with writing like this when I’m just about to go to sleep is that my brain is already half shut down. Maybe in the woods I’ll try to do some morning writing as I’ll be up to feed the wood cats and get the dead mice off the carpet.

It’s windy here. I think Tessy is glad of the company as she’s sitting right by my leg, but I’m gonna pull myself back into bed with Lou and shut down for the night.