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The Apogee microphone has one leg that has been reattached with a bit of bent safety clip. There’s a hairband attaching the top of the pop filter to the mic itself. Right now it sits squat in a wardrobe, on top of a stack of suitcases. Towels hang on the wardrobe door. The mic is nestled into the soundproofing. I perch on a little stepladder, legs wide and strangely angled to allow direct diaphragm draw and a good straight back. I can breathe well in that position, make the words the way I need to, and my iPad goes to sleep before my legs go numb, so it’s a perfectly workable home studio environment so long as nobody asks to come in with a camera and record me working for a “look at the sexy artist working” type scam show. In that case my studio would look like no money has been spent, which I’m fine with because it hasn’t apart from the initial purchase in New York at the end of a lucrative job. I guess if I was to get on one of those scam shows they’d slyly buy me a sexy studio first. Then I could be that guy who clearly doesn’t know how to work the shiny kit he pretends he always uses.

This is my travel set up. It’s a bit dark. It’s in a wardrobe. I know it well.

It fits in one of the two suitcases that form the platform and it comes with me wherever I go. I haven’t yet worked out how to suspend the mic from the ceiling so I can work standing up, but I position my body for the height the two cases give and it works. You can overlook a lot if the stuff you make is more important to you than the stuff you make it with.

The above is a very important distinction, and one where people often fall down. “I can’t do X because I haven’t got Y expensive piece of kit.” Don’t do that. It’s so tempting. It’s how they get you. It’s also how we stop ourselves. There’d be much more stuff made if the market wasn’t focused on telling us what to make it with.

At the start in particular you don’t have to shoot everything on an Arri Alexa etc. Make something on what you’ve got, especially if otherwise you won’t make anything. And I’m speaking very much to myself here as well as anybody else who is blocking themselves with I-haven’t-got-the-right-equipmentitis. There’s lots of filming I might have done that I haven’t done. Lots of making that you might do that you haven’t done. Don’t let ideas about having the right stuff get in the way. I say that to both of us.

I have sent plenty of content out with this sound set up. Various podcasts and events and games have been happy with it. It was still expensive starting from nothing, but before I invested in it I was using my phone and it was fine. The mic was the first investment at about £250. Straight in, straight out. The proofing was maybe £40. £300 is still a whack but your phone is likely to be adequate. 

I’m constantly lending out my kit when I’m not using it. But this kit is fine and it will hold for my needs until I’m making enough money to upgrade to something sexier and to the eventual dream of an actual dedicated permanent booth in my own damn home. Money begets money begets money. The endless cycle. If I pay for an imdb it might lead to more roles that will cover the cost of my imdb. Etc.

I laid down a track this morning about being a romantic tarot reading criminal in North London. It’s a charming piece that was written for theatre, and this morning I sight read it as I went, for a guide track, so that the composer can start working on it. I’ll do a cleaner and sharper one for the final piece later on.

I also revisited the gypsy folk type madness that I was asked to attempt to contribute to. I sent a track where it was just my bits in isolation. My bits are mostly noises and patches of shouting which might make some sort of sense alongside the extremely competent sound crafted by my friend and her instrumental prowess and excellent vocal cleverness. On their own without the headphone music, my bits sound like the mumblings of an insane and ancient mystic after a bit too much dried fly agaric. Or maybe like the slack jawed utterances of a music fan who has had one too many joints and is cluelessly singing along to an album he’s just downloaded.

My friend will likely find a use for it. Meanwhile I’ll keep looking for ways to monetise this portable studio until I can make it into a better portable studio. Living the dream.

It’s like one of those computer games where you work hard and spend time just to get stuff that makes you better at playing the game next time you play so you can get more stuff that makes you more efficient at getting more stuff etc. That’s the home studio kit progression game. The good thing about it is, unlike playing computer games, if you do it exclusively and get really good you don’t starve to death in your own bedroom surrounded by crisp packets. You make money. Voicing computer games. That’s where it’s at.

I have a more static studio, for PC. It’s on loan in Guildford at the moment and has been used towards voicing a computer game that’s gathering momentum on Steam ahead of a release. I prefer the Apple software so I don’t really miss it, plus my iPad has no noisy fan so it’s a much easier soundproofing process.

The PC mic is a bit sexier than the iPad mic and was intended for when I’m home, but even in lockdown it seems I’m not at home. The portable studio is fine – (AND YOU ARE FINE WITH AN ANDROID PHONE, AN IPHONE, WHATEVER!).

I frequently sink my earnings into stuff that might help raise my earnings. At least the PC kit investment has been earning a crust – it has been helping build a beautiful thing that just wouldn’t exist at all without my friend Dan. He uses better kit than me. He’s got my best mic and I literally don’t miss it all and wouldn’t be using it in this instance anyway so I’m glad he has it.

If you’re a gamer, keep an eye out for “The Captain is Dead!” Partly helped out by my best kit. Looking very sexy. Possibly involving some sounds by yours truly if the initial release goes as well as it should. Roger and out.

Hex and I are back in Hampstead. After his hard work as Gonzalo in The Tempest last night it was only right to give him a tasty mouse as reward and they are in the freezer up here. I’m glad he still had an appetite after the state of him when I took him into my care just before lockdown. He almost took my hand off tonight. When I met him he basically had an eating disorder. So I don’t want to cause him unnecessary stress. But the internet is not working in Hampstead and the green screen and lights are all in Chelsea so he needed to be driven to the studio for his star turn. Just as well I have a car now. That would’ve been £50 in ubers up and down.

I chauffered him to Chelsea in the car yesterday morning, he did The Tempest twice with my humble assistance, using my ape mouth to speak words whilst everybody marveled at his lithe ancient serpentine beauty.

Once the acting work was completed he very eloquently protested about being back in his travel box for a night by ensuring that every inch of it apart from his little haven under his rock was soaked with water from the bowl.

Then his driver took him back here late morning while he slept. The driver was surprised that he didn’t object to the cricket playing loudly on the car radio.

In the early afternoon he was reintroduced to his happy home in Hampstead and by evening he was enthusiastically crushing a dead helicoptermouse that he pulled out of the air almost immediately. I’m thrilled.

I’m also glad that nobody pulled the car over. I’m paranoid now. Every time I see a squad car I worry. Ok, so all the boxes are ticked as far as I’m aware, but: “What’s that?” “It’s a python, officer.” That’s not a conversation I relish.

Jack came to Hampstead for the afternoon and we had one of those days where we dream into each other. Hex seemed to like Jack.

We went onto the Heath and then stayed on Mel’s balcony. Music and company on these clement summer evenings and what a blessing to be able to live in both of the bits of town I’m currently able to move between. I’m a lucky son of a bitch.

It was only after we had consumed a spot too much beer that I remembered I’d agreed to send a track of some Gypsy Punk singy shouting fun to Hastings. We crowded beerily into my little improvised booth and made some noises that felt a bit like singing. I haven’t listened back yet as my listening muscle dies before my generating muscle after booze (as I guess it does with everybody).

We were aiming for fun over accuracy. I’ll listen back in the cold light of day tomorrow and either marvel at the fact we hit the timing, or re-record it on my own sober. Drunk boys might help the style if the timing works though…

 

Those people still on Facebook will be aware of the way in which the platform tries to blindside us with our past when we least expect it. A photo of you and your ex with the person they left you for! MEMORIES! A picture of you and the dead parent, blissfully unaware of what was just round the corner. REMEMBER THIS TIME LAST YEAR?

Because the platform was assembled and is maintained by ghastly sociopaths it doesn’t really care about such things. (All opinions etc etc this is a work of fiction fuck you blah blah don’t sue me you monsters just because you can, yes I know money drives opinion in the long term but come on, you ARE a sociopath Mark. Deep down you know it. Whether or not you’re diagnosed as such by your pet doctor. Hush now. Go to sleep. La la laaaaa.)

More than a decade ago I posted on Facebook the words “Our revels now are ended.” I was reminded of it today.

Back then it was the last night of The Tempest at Sprite Productions up at Ripley Castle. Lucy Kerbel, our brilliant director, took a long (maybe permanent?) break from directing after the show and went into activism, from which Tonic Theatre was born, and with it many years of fucking important and timely representation towards balance for women in theatre. I suspect that part of what sent this wonderful director and (now) good friend of mine from directing to activism was one unbelievably gauche individual. His behaviour towards what he clearly saw as “just a young female director” was … well let’s just say he failed to realise the extent to which people who have had different lives from you can enhance your understanding of everything. He kind of preferred people who he felt were quite like him. He solicited my friendship at the start of the job, based on a conversation where I mentioned some of my sexy credits. He tried a few times to make me one of his “we know better than these people” crowd – (neither the first nor the last with that tactic towards me. Never works.)

Then quite suddenly my agent dumped me by email during rehearsal. In retrospect she wasn’t the right agent for me, caring nothing about the industry, but she was related to passionate people I knew and I’d mistakenly assumed she’d have their passion too, or at least understand the process of building contacts.

I told her I was gainfully employed and offered her a cut. She responded to the info by axing me from her books. I had suddenly, arbitrarily lost my agent. For a young actor seeking reputation that is psychically the hardest blow you can take.

Hindsight is 20/20. I’d still be strangled and misunderstood if she’d kept me, whereas now I’m happy and extremely well represented. But fuck me it was scary and sudden and unexpected when it happened.

“Hi, I’m working!” “Bye. It’s not working.”

And this guy I was working with.

This fucking leading actor in rehearsal with somebody who had just got perhaps the most jarring email it is possible to get as a young practitioner who cares about longevity in the industry…

This guy completely and utterly dismissed me at the very moment be heard my news.

He cancelled me. I no longer existed to him. He actually honestly and completely wouldn’t speak to me at all, from then on in. Not at all. Not even a word. He would literally turn his back to me and override my words with volume like a school bully. At the time I felt vulnerable – I’d just taken a hit – I let him kick me when I was down. I think the version of me that writes these words wouldn’t let him do it. Oh heck no. “Lemme at him, uncle Scooby”.

But 11 years is a long time.

When there’s somebody like that in a company it’s down to how good they are at the old acting. If they’re really really really good it’s a terrible disaster. I’ve seen that before – rarely thankfully – but sometimes these gorgeous cruel chameleons do exist. Usually they’re gone unless they get famous fast, as power is so important to them. Hungry destructive bastards who falsify hearts so well in the moment that it’s almost impossible to hate their work even though they’re disgusting in the green room and in the rehearsal room.

With this dude, even though it made much of the show dull, I’m kind of glad you could watch his work and shrug.

He was lumpish. At best he was workaday, absent of spark. At worst he was a smug immobile boggart reciting empty words on his own surrounded by people.

I’m not gonna name him. All this stuff is subjective. Unlike him I have no particular desire to be cruel. I thought he was a bellend though and you probably would too – because he had plenty of opportunity not to be and didn’t take it.

I saw him choose to do cruel things to people (mostly female) that he just somehow thought he was better than – (where his reference point was usually books on practice that he thought he was alone in having read). It mostly felt he was being mean to people for his own self aggrandisement and to serve his own understanding of the things he felt he had exclusively learnt.

If we were actors talking in terms of actions the main actions he was playing were “to dominate” “to belittle” “to dismiss” and “to control”. Certainly that’s what I’d use if I was playing the memory of him. Element: earth. Animal: pig. Pushing. Leading from crotch. Slow. Wide. An almost imperceptible nod to himself after each statement. Talk over listen. Never speak and move simultaneously.

I saw him. So I also saw the change in him towards me from when I was represented by a well known agency to when I wasn’t. It was huge. Now I can divorce that moment from the insecurity that accompanied it and I can see him more clearly, uncluttered by my stuff. He doesn’t stand up well.

“Well, that’s the end of you in this industry,” was literally the first thing he said to me when I got that email jettisoning me one lunchtime during rehearsal eleven years ago and, shellshocked and vulnerable, chose to share it with the company.

And that was pretty much the last thing he said to me personally. I was no more use to him in his mind.

Now I can look back and smile because time has worked in my favour. Back then I knew he was wrong. Thank  has fuck time has borne it out.

Back then he chose to say something hard instead of saying something kind. That’s always an active choice.

There is never ever ever any justification for being like that to anybody when you’re up in a lovely place being paid to do something beautiful.

Actors are mostly a bunch of beautiful generous hearts, stuck in a vocation they love for weird reasons. When you work with someone like him who is “better than the job” it’s heartbreaking to witness how they sabotage themselves, the work, and everybody around them, (although it’s more manageable if they aren’t playing the lead – then they can just be forgettable.)

But anyway, why am I writing about him so darkly? He was probably going through something himself… Why am I even thinking of the fucker?

Because, eleven years later, I’m thrilled that I’ve just finished another Tempest – without such nastiness. A Tempest full of glorious hearts.

We did our last Zoom Tempest with Creation. It’s recorded now. Sadly without Taz, although Joey stepped in and was wonderful.

Hex was being a hilarious dick for the recording, but I’d sooner work with that sort of a snake than the one I worked with 11 years ago in Yorkshire.

What a joy the Creation Theatre and Big Telly Zoom Tempest has been. We are lucky fuckers when we work with people who really get collaboration. One last hurrah, and I’m off to bed, buzzing and glad that this happy happy memory has raised the old Creation Tempest one last time on this anniversary in order to thoroughly obliterate any remaining badness I was carrying from that knobhead in Ripley more than a decade ago. It’s amazing how long we can carry stuff until we look at it.

On the way home from Brighton I stopped in Crowborough. My godson is there, and his creators.

Also Dan.

I’ve only met Dan once, in December. He doesn’t like theatre and he hates London, but he liked Christmas Carol in London last December, God bless him. That’s the only time we ever met until today. After our lovely crazy Christmas show.

I love that we invite the audience to a party afterwards when we can. Every year around this time I want to get better at the accordion in time for December. Better accordion equals better party. But yeah, occasionally somebody ends up with their number on my phone. Like Dan.

Dan told me he had an accordion in his garage, getting gradually more and more fucked. He offered to pass it over to my custody. I told him I am in Crowborough from time to time with my godson. I knew the instrument would be past saving so didn’t prioritise it. But today I picked it up as it was very much en-route.

It’s beautiful but yep – totally fucked. It’s not pre-war – not one of those impossibly heavy unsalvageable mother of pearl beauties that occasionally get priced up for £250 in a charity shop and sit there for years because everybody that knows won’t touch it and it’s too much for everybody that doesn’t.

This accordion is for kids. It’s massively simplified in form, but it was once a lovely gift for a musical child. It’s a thing that was once fine. I like run down things that were once fine. We tend to understand one another.

It’s ruined by damp and crumbling now but mounted on a wall it’ll be decorative and that’s a better home than landfill. It was a learning instrument for Dan’s uncle, Nicholas Baldock, an early string music enthusiast and one of a few people who made it possible to string your inherited ancient lyre with gut instead of nylon – surely essential for the discerning ancient music expert. But his children’s accordion got dumped in favour of strings.

It has mostly lived in a garage. Still, if I don’t put it on a wall, I’ll bring it to mister Allodi in Lewisham as a curious gift. Or I’ll take it apart and use it to learn how better to fix my own instruments in future.

Good to be back in London, but it was so helpful to go to the sea. I’ve got the river near me in Chelsea, but just to lie and put my feet in the big water… Healing.

 

I’m standing by some French windows looking out at the sea on the marina in Brighton. Yesterday at about this time I was doing the same thing in the equivalent place in Hastings. If I’m gonna pay £300 and six points for a fucked up old car I’m going to fucking use the damn thing. I’ve been Bunberrying, or as close as can be achieved at this stage of lockdown. Careful visitations. Talking about work as well as just … talking. I even transported an instrument that needed transporting. Multitasking.

Last night I was singing gypsy folk in a living room, playing classical guitar and looking through a very beautiful and extremely worn deck of Ryder Waite Tarot Cards. Now I’m here, on another living room, with cats and Thai curry. Outside is the sea, the sea. Last night I could hear it as I slept, smashing the rocks of Hastings all night as I dreamed. Tonight it’ll be here again somehow, this sea, just a bit further west crashing onto Brighton beach. The wind is up. The fog is down. It’s primal.

I have to be back in London on Saturday to do The Tempest, and I’ll have to go get the snake from Hampstead as well as my laptop. That obligation will likely propel me back into the vortex tomorrow, but it has been a healing thing to just get the fuck out of town for a bit.

This situation has brought out the worst in a lot of people. People are febrile and angry, driving aggressively, bristling at strangers. Yes we must be careful. But we can be careful without unpleasantness yesno? I’ve still got my industrial gas mask and I’ve lost layers of skin on my hands. It’s tricky of course. Everybody’s baseline is different.

For now I’m gonna take in the sea air, breathe and relax. Just for a little bit, London feels like an unpleasant memory of elbows and rage. I still love it there. But it’s never felt more like time to get the fuck out. The last two nights I’ve been in places with space and high ceilings. The things I love London for – the cultural vibrance, the happenings, the spontaneous community – everything is shut or fettered. Everybody is renegotiating connection like shell shocked trauma victims. The loudest voices are either telling us we have to live in bubbles forever or that it’s all made up by Mesopotamian demigods and we should be licking each other.

I can’t see an end to it yet, that’s the hell. So the bars are suddenly weirdly open and everybody is either packing themselves in and consuming as much as possible or standing well back in astonished horror waiting for a second wave. Theatres have no plan outside of a nice big bag of money which might be considered to be a plan but is unlikely to convert into gainful time use for the majority of people I know for the short term.

So I threw stones into the sea in a gale for ages without getting my feet wet. And I feel good for it. Calmer. A little bit more alive perhaps. Glad of a car. Glad of good people in my life. Glad of the sea. What’s next, life?

It’s gonna be ok, somehow. But right now it’s the mangle. Let’s stay kind and stay connected. Eventually this’ll just be a stone into the sea.

In October 1936 on Cable Street, there was a fight. On one side the people in London who defined themselves as being “fascists”, led by Oswald Moseley, protected by the police, going on one of those ignorance marches. “Who do we hate? People not like us! Why do we hate them? Lack of perspective!”

They were the “Blackshirts”, echoing Mussolini in Italy who made hatred of the constructed “other” look sexy with a potentially affordable slimming fashion choice. “All you need is a black shirt and you can hate like me and look sexy too!”

We are looking at a potentially very different take on the results of the second world war from the UK perspective if Oswald’s little hateypocket had started snowballing followers. Like most people following hateful ideologies they didn’t really think about who they hated and why. As ever they hated who they were told to hate by the people with actual personality – “it’s your choice to hate who I tell you to hate, and you’re smart if you do what I tell you!”. In trying to take their own power they just listened to these endless demagogues who gave no fucks about them and spewed polemic. So it has ever been. So it is now. “If you pass this test you are clever. Send me £30 and I will give you a clever certificate.”

Mosely hated Jews first and foremost, and after that anybody that didn’t look like him. Then after that I dunno – artists? That bloke? Your mum? Anybody but Oswald, despite perhaps being the most worthy vessel of such a sentiment. But there they were in their sexy black shirts, being angry together and thinking that those positive endorphins of shared indignation were enough to cancel out the desperate hateful unhelpful ignorance of their standpoint. It’s nice to breathe together. To think you’re part of something. To think you have special knowledge that everybody else is too unenlightened to fully understand. “You just don’t get it!”

On the other side in Cable Street in 1936 stood the varied and living people of East London, in large numbers, having no tolerance for such fuckery, coming out to stand against it, not being suckered in by the initially easy bait of hate.

It’s frequently down to individuals to police fascism. It was then too, in large numbers, with the officers of the law protecting the hate.

The people on both sides went on, three years later to fight and win an important war together against a cult of personality at the heart of a recovering German nation that took these comforting ideas about blame too far, so far, further still, that far. So far that ignorant and fearful people are already attempting to pretend the astonishing atrocities didn’t happen. Wouldn’t it be lovely if they hadn’t. But they did and that’s the logical end for these thoughts and beliefs. That’s where the simplistic stuff can lead. It can easily happen again and again and again as it has across the world over and over as we breathe from hate to love and back again.

It’s terrifying what darkness we humans are capable of through shared fear and outrage. It’s amazing how much basic unpleasantnesses we can justify perpetrating individually when our leader is broken. Everything trickles down from the head. Trump is a nasty fool, Boris a compulsive liar. Both entitled. Two nations that used to have meaning, crippled by their past and by present ignorance… Grrr

Anyway, I was talking about Cable Street. Why was I talking about Cable Street?

Because somebody threw tomatoes through my car window on Cable Street today, God Dammit. Vine tomatoes too. Little ones. Quite expensive. Still fresh. Pre-split for maximum splashage. One hit my cheek, the other hit the seat by my head and dropped down behind my back. If they were propelled by any kind of ideology I’m not aware of it. It’s more likely they were chucked at me thoughtlessly by kids. I didn’t know what had hit me at first. Came as a shock. I found it more funny than anything else but still phoned it in to the local cops just as I could’ve panicked and knocked over a bike or some such and it’s not smart to condone the waste of good vine tomatoes when nobody can fly anywhere to get more.

A hit in the face with a thrown tomato? That’s the closest I’ve had to contact with a stranger since a jogger shoved me out of his way in early march. I’ll take the jogger. It was weird. I always thought I’d be on stage the first time I got a tomato in the face.

Lizzie and Dean got me back on the road pretty sharply but I was in no state to drive anywhere right away this morning.

I ran the engine for a good fifteen minutes to charge the battery and then paid for four hours parking and went back to bed. Some sort of a malaise, I’m calling it. I was sapped of all energy and couldn’t do anything other than sleep. I could barely even think.

I was still pretty ropey when I hauled myself out of the flat and wandered down to move the car at lunchtime. Hopefully it’s one off, and likely it’s brought on by the fact that last night and the night before I haven’t been so careful about what I’ve been consuming. Clearly I need to stick with some of the changes I’ve been trying to make in terms of diet and consumption. Dammit I’m not 24 anymore. And the work in the woods needs to drip through into the day to day.

Today I was moonlighting as a driving instructor so I had to be reasonably clear headed. By the time I’d hauled the Nissan across town the cobwebs were blown though. It requires reasonably active driving, as the brake is as loose as the clutch and at low rev it sounds like it’s trying to throw the exhaust off.

It’s useful not caring about the car though, to teach in it. I wasn’t flinching when my pupil ground the clutch or repeatedly stalled it.

I’ve been taking Tristan through the basics, God help us all, much as my dad did with me forever ago in The Isle of Man. Stuff that it’s worth getting into your body before you’re paying some dude through the nose for it.

Observation. Start it. Move it. Stop it. Do it again. All without stalling. That’s the theory at least. Useful for me to break down something learnt and put into my body such a long time ago. Interesting to try and explain something almost totally instinctive in terms of the mechanics. I found myself second guessing myself about the order in which things should be done. And all of it strung together with necessary reminders to keep looking around and into your mirrors ostentatiously. Not being a dad won’t stop me doing the dad stuff, it seems. Knowing what the tree is, making bad jokes, not being able to drink as much as I used to and …  teaching the little fucker to drive. Only in this case the little fucker is only a few years younger than me and definitely not my son. With his aryan features people would be whispering behind my back.

You’re never too old to learn new tricks. It seems Tristan might be on the road eventually…

I’m in Richmond with him post driving lesson. It actually worked. I tried to teach a girlfriend to ski and it was a fucking disaster as I can’t remember not being able to do it. I can remember learning to drive, with dad being ultra patient, primarily because he loved cars. Those weird driving lessons in the driveway at Eyreton, and the endless hill starts on the back road heading up to Ballabrooie Drive when dad had less than a year to live… They have become powerful memories. He’s been dead for half my life now. But it seems I can be patient and calm when there’s a liability in the driving seat anyway, like he could.

Momentary blip yesterday. Perfectly understandable given the environment. And suddenly it seems that the government has pledged a whole harvest from the magic money tree in order to keep the arts afloat, and it’s enough to make me feel a little better.

I’m sure there’ll be conditions, and nuances. I’m concerned there’ll be other things put out to pasture.

But as a statement of intent it’s something unexpected from Oliver Dowden, the Fabulous Inflated Man.

We weren’t really aware of him until this, and we thought he’d overlooked the whole sector. Turns out old whey-face has managed to create a package that just might stop some of the institutions from collapsing. Good on him and his suet cheeks.

I’ve been back in Hampstead, chilling with the snake, wandering in ancient woodland. It’s a huge privilege to have both north and south London open to me. The car is a bit of a bind though, as the battery needs replacing and I can’t get a parking permit anywhere yet in this bollocks. I moved it around a bit until it wouldn’t let me kick the ignition because I sat there too long with the key in the slot. In an ideal world I’d switch the battery out for a good one. But it’s far from an ideal world.

Dean was in my year at drama school. This is his neck of the woods now, Hampstead. He trains dogs when he isn’t acting. He was talking with a client over the other side of the road from me as I sat in my car reading. I heard his voice – unmistakable. “Fuck me, hello Dean!” I ejaculated without thinking he’d be with a client. “I’d already clocked you, Al, hang on,” he responded peremptorily, before finishing with the client. His hourly rate is more than my daily rate for some jobs. It’s not necessarily the most helpful thing for him to have his sweary hairy friend shouting at him from a fucked up old Nissan while he’s talking to a client. But fuck it, we’re old mates. That counts for a lot these days. And fate keeps on swinging us together.

We grab a coffee. People keep slowing down in expensive cars to shout his name. He’s the guy that said to me a few weeks ago “Business is booming! Everybody is buying puppies!” I can really see it now, with so many people glad to see him in Hampstead. He’s made a manor for himself, and a living within that. And within that living he’s still made time for the acting. He went to NYC with Ferryman.

He’s agreed to swing by tomorrow at 9 with his wheels in order to help jump the car for me.

“I’ve not done it much,” he says and I’m laughing and crying internally at quite how frequently I’ve had to jump start my succession of hideous vehicles over the years. We’ll be fine. I know what I’m doing. Too well.

Dad was great at teaching me the basics. He was a proper petrolhead. I wish he’d lived a bit longer as I think I would have followed him.

I left the dead car for the night and went for a restorative walk on The Heath with Helen, and we remembered why we love each other. Yesterday I forgot about the huge network of friends I have. Today I remembered. And I feel supported again. And able to support.

 

The wind is hammering on the window here in Hampstead. I had to jam it shut with a sock. A friend just texted me about something I should’ve recorded by now for him – but it’s unpaid. My microphone is in Chelsea and without payment I’m never inclined to prioritise. My time is worth money. I don’t have any inclination to be front footed and generative right now with no guarantee of remuneration. I’ve bought my ability with time. I have no idea where the money might come from next. Everything I read bodes ill for the theatre part of my industry. What the fuck is going to happen? Filming might pick up, so that’s something. But God…

A year ago I hoped I’d get the audition for the perfect role in theatre somewhere that might transfer to the West End. I could get the part and then it could lead to the thing that led to the thing that eventually meant I could finally finally finally take a foot off the gas and … who knows – afford to fall in love? Even to have a kid? All these things I feel like I’ve pretty much burnt forever now in the struggle to just remain vaguely current.

Here I sit in the carcass of the dreams that propped me up, wondering what all the sacrifice was for.

What have I built? Fuck.

Friends. A fair few wonderful fragile powerful friends. Thank God.

Debt. Resilience. Perspective. Observation.

Outside of that? A web of unusual connections in an ailing industry with people who, with a few notable exceptions, don’t hate me.

I have been reasonably uncompromising. I’m kind and peaceable. But I speak my mind even as it changes, so people I’ve designated as hypocrites and people who refuse to be honest have not gone forward with my blessing and they know it.

I’ve also been visible but not in a shiny way – I write this shit every day and it’s full of the word “I”. I don’t share it widely or pepper it with hashtags. I tell you when I’m sad rather than colouring the cracks with meat. But if you wanna paint me as a narcissist you’ve got all the words, so long as you ignore the content – and that’s the nature of agendas. And I’m not doing the grinning and the dancing with tassles in my arse that apparently we are supposed to do as actors writing about our careers.

The more visible someone is the easier it is to dismiss them.

This blog is a fucking grind. It’s both my strength and my weakness. I hate it and I hate myself for forcing myself to do it no matter how I feel, over and over and over again. And I love it too. I love it for the messages you send. For the fact it helps people know they’re not the only ones. And for what I learn about myself by doing it.

I have to connect with myself and assess myself in this life where otherwise I might just divorce myself from who I am and from what I want and join the hordes who write endless saccharine content that goes for nothing and for nothing and for nothing.

Every day for 1270 days no matter what, mostly honest, mostly straightforward, frequently unedited. Minimum 500 words a day. Books and books worth of content, put out, hardly even shared, forgotten. For me? For you? Who knows anymore. For this.

I’ve learnt a lot in the process.

But I haven’t learnt to distribute it.

Maybe that should be the next lesson for these times where the theatre industry is mothballed, filming is stuttering and online shows look pointedly elsewhere. Time to bump up my numbers on the social meedjas. Time to be like the varnished turds who use words like “influencer” towards themselves. Time to make it harder for people to overlook me. Maybe accept that my unedited daily version of reality is more healthy than the curated dogshit people try to feed the world about themselves and our industry.

But … I’m leaky tonight. I’m popping sadness unexpectedly. The wind is banging on the window reminding me of a big wild world out there. Time to put a sock in it.

 

Hex likes to shed his skin and to poo at the same time. I found him this evening nonchalantly sitting under his rock having made a right mess of his terrarium. The skin he had shed though – it was remarkably neat. He made a perfect little noose, and then he went through it. I put him on my head, shiny and new, and I started cleaning up.

He immediately removed my glasses, and then settled against the warm bits and started snuffling in my ear innocently as he watched me sort out his mess.

This perfect noose of skin was surrounded by his stinky pellets. When I took the time to notice, it was as if he had made the perfect topical present, keying into so much of my work towards myself at the moment. Going all the way through nooses and shedding skin and basic snake imagery – these were all things that came up in the woods very clearly. I’m not one to overlook a chance for ceremony. So I made use of his old discarded skin.

It’s full moon tonight, with the wind bringing in a cleansing rain. The pubs might be open but I’m not feeling it. I banked up a fire in the fire pit on Mel’s balcony. I wrote out a load of stuff I needed to burn for good – stuff I’d been carrying that there’s no room for any more.

I made a fire and burnt some writing, and I put the shed skin in the hottest part of the fire and sent it up with the rest of the crap. I did my usual thing of improvising a ritual. Closing off the changes from the woods with the Skinner. Literally mixing metaphors as I do.

Then I dumped rocks on the fire and sat in drizzle until I was happy it was extinguished and wasn’t going to burn down anybody’s Hampstead pied a terre. Practicality is still present alongside my improvised mysticism.

I went back into the flat stinking of acrid burnt snakeskin. I’m learning smells through Hex.

Snake is a very specific smell. Unmissssnakeable. I’ll be like Indiana Jones now. I’ll know if I’m in a snake pit by smell.

Mouse too, although it’s a bit less of a concern to be thrown into a mouse pit. I know the mouse smell from all the puppeting back when Hex wasn’t eating properly. And from opening the packet near his nose to waft the tempting yummy mousey smell…

Burnt snakeskin isn’t as unique a smell but it clings. It’s in the same world as burnt hair and nails. Familiar and sharp. You don’t want it in your face when you’re sleeping. It stuck to me as I came back into the flat.

I had a hot bath and moisturised. Yeah baby. Now I smell of coconut.

I’m tucked up in bed listening to the wind and rain outside. Sometimes that can be one of the most beautiful feelings in the world. To be safe and warm in a storm.

I’m right on the edge of the heath. Occasionally there’s a fox, yarking like it’s stuck on a fence, firing all the instincts of the idiot local dogs. “Gaaaark gaaaark!” once. “Rolf Rolf Rolf Rolf Rolf” for ages.

Occasionally there’s an owl too, staking territory for the hunt. “Screw youuuu, it’s myyyy shreeew!”

But right now it’s too rainy for foxes. It’s too windy for owls. No owl in its right mind is gonna trust big wings and hollow bones to these unpredictable gales. The shrews will be holed up for the night as well, snug in their little hole. And so am I.

Summer has taken a sabbatical. She’ll be back. Plenty of time left thank God, even though we’ve spent the best of it locked in our own homes, and the days are already getting shorter again. I’m going to enjoy this storm for now and let it blow away old terrors and unpleasantnesses.