Category: Uncategorized

I know by now that if I start writing, something will form, even if I’m telling myself I don’t have much to write about today. Life is rich and even a day spent in contemplation (aka pottering) can yield material. I’ve done this unbroken for over 1200 days now, somehow. Lots and lots of words.

My friend Mel, the snake owner, is still stuck in New Zealand, now living in a caravan in somebody’s garden, earning her keep by making limoncello and stringing together fairy lights. Before that she was living in a brewery on the Coromandel Peninsula. “You should be the one writing a blog,” I tell her. She doesn’t like the idea. I tell her I’m moving to her place in Hampstead on Saturday. She’s pleased. “At least somebody will be getting some use out of the rent I’m paying,” she remarks. I’m lucky to have the option to shift base. It’ll be good for me, and it’ll help my neighbour not worry.

We forget that our normality is still unusual for people in a different idiom. Time and again in the years I’ve done this daily record, the things people have been activated to communicate about haven’t been the well turned phrases, but the glimpses of weakness, the flashes of vulnerability. The things I find hardest to write about.

I’m sitting in my living room, half tidy half not, still listening to the top 100 nineties albums in reverse order – (after a sabbatical when I just wasn’t in the mood to listen to anything.). I’m on Guns and Roses now but earlier this evening it was The Fugees and Wyclef Jean painfully reminding us as things go up in flames all over the world that things were just as shit 30 years ago. George Floyd. I haven’t seen the video because I know it’ll upset me deeply. This stuff keeps happening. I am so safe from it and it’s confusing to contemplate the difference in experience between being me in my nice flat worrying about trivial things and being someone in a developed country who has to worry about going to the store in case a policeman takes badly to him and actually kills him.

After this hibernation it’s a good time for rejigging old systems and throwing out patterns of thought that don’t help, and we all have generations worth of unexamined assumptions that we need to try to pull out and examine. It’s a lifetime of work, but its never too late to start and nobody is completely free of it.

But debate is getting harder and harder online as propaganda bots polarise and stoke rage and confusion seemingly just because they can. Now the ghost of “deep fakes” is starting to haunt the edges of fake news and the logical next step is to say “If you want to trust it’s me, you have to see me in the flesh” and then it’s the fecking Nuremberg rallies all over again.

I roasted a chicken and ate most of it on my own. I’ve made enough gravy to feed an army so there’ll be casserole for a week.  Good things can happen.

I’m a little torn today, despite the wonderful weather. This blog has got me into trouble again. Not major trouble. Just local, domestic trouble. With my neighbour.

I don’t like making people unhappy. It’s almost pathological – my desire not to inconvenience others. It gets me into all sorts of scrapes as I destroy my own calm and decentre myself making sure that others are ok and not taking myself into account. It’s something I’m trying to examine and deconstruct as it actively doesn’t serve me. But these old ingrained habits – they can be slow to pull apart. Like irrational fears.

One of my neighbours is extremely phobic of snakes. I had no idea. We are friendly enough to have each other on Facebook. I’ve started manually sharing these blogs again. They read on one that Hex has been staying for a while. They are extremely unhappy about him.

It’s thrown me off my stride, feeling the concern. The reaction was so extreme that I thought they were joking for too long, and by the time I realised it was a genuine extreme reaction rather than a pantomime for a joke I had lost any trust I could’ve had –  by appearing to laugh at their fear.

“What if he gets into my bedroom at night?” I am asked, and in that circumstance, if we were to pretend for a moment that it was possible, I would mostly be worried that my neighbour would roll on him and hurt him. On his supervised exercise outside the tank he spends most of his time diligently trying to get himself crushed or get underfoot. He has the survival instinct of a piñata.

He’s a long mobile pudding. He’s too small to constrict anything bigger than your thumb, and he’s not venomous either. Plus he’s surprisingly attractive, extraordinarily lazy and unexpectedly shy and basically anorexic.

I honestly couldn’t be bothered with snakes when I was asked to take him in. He’s won me over. I’d still not get one of my own, but while I used to think it laughable when people anthropomorphised reptiles (cold implacable eating machines) he has surprised me with a quantifiable personality. He gave a great performance in The Tempest every time. I reckon the reviews gave him as much copy as me.

I guess it’s just a short hop from reptiles to birds.

Plus he’s in a sealed tank for Christ’s sake. He can’t get out.

But … we all have things we’re afraid of and logic often doesn’t come into the frame with fear. I used to have it with spiders until I forced it out of me, but part of my self appointed job is to chase out my own neuroses. It’s not my job to chase anything out of others though.

So. What to do?

I’ve been thinking of going to Hampstead for a while to inhabit Mel’s flat until she’s finally back from New Zealand. Hex officially lives there, so it makes sense to go live in the same place as him now that he’s persona non grata here. It’s a bit like running away, but it’ll make the neighbour feel safe and allow me to continue to look after Hex properly without awkwardness or guilt. And perhaps it’s for the best as I can look after myself into the bargain.

I’m planning to shift base on Saturday, after making sure it’s good and tidy here for Kitcat if she shows up. A change will do me good – whatever the catalyst. Mel’s place is right on the heath, and I can use it for a month or so of reflection and self care. Eating well. Living better.

I’ve been sleeping late and waking later, eating less and drinking more. A new roof always breaks the old habits. The world looks different from North London, and The Heath is tantalising on these long warm summer days.

My old junior “prep” school is closing. It was in the news today because it happens to be the same place that our illustrious Prime Minister attended as a young’un. Being sent over the Irish Sea to this isolated school in Sussex to live there for large parts of the year was initially quite alien to my childish brain. I didn’t get it at all. But it was the thing, and it seemed inevitable despite my childish reservations. I was always sad to be wrenched from the family unit at the start of the term. But along with all the other kids from all over the world, we made the best of it.

We created our own crazes. “Blimph” was a chaos drawing game I invented with obscure and shifting rules depending on how much I wanted to make people feel included. “No you’re doing it wrong.”

We put disproportionate value in arbitrarily chosen pop culture items. I traded one Masters of the Universe figure for a whole black bin bag full of Star Wars toys. Garbage Pail Kids. Fighting Fantasy books. Shiny shiny junk.

We traded and we chased and we fought and we played.

When I was there they were building a theatre and I concealed a time capsule in the concrete of the foundations. It took the form of rolled up piece of paper in a Bic biro shell, with my stated intention to be an actor scrawled on it, probably involving blood harvested carefully from one of my inevitable constant injuries.

The first play in the new theatre was Macbeth and Mr Wimbush the maths teacher directed it so I didn’t stand a chance of a good part. O couldn’t be bothered with him or with maths. Still I got to play Seyton. One line was kept in the cut. “The Queen, my lord, is dead.” My instinct was to milk it so the only note I got was “say it quickly”. Actually it’s usually a good note. Don’t let them get ahead of you. Even more important for comedy.

Then there was “the jungle”. In my memory it was huge and overgrown. Weekends were about the jungle. Some of the kids would go home. Sometimes I’d get to hang out with someone’s family – Navin or Mark or James would pick me up for the weekend. But just as often I’d be left there to run loose in the jungle and get myself covered in filth running around inventing mountain ranges and tribes and whatever the heck else we could come up with.

Apart from the wrench from our parents it was a terrific privilege to attend that school. It’s sad to think that I wasn’t to get long with mum and dad after I came out of the remarkable and expensive education their hope and money had sent me to. I’m using it, but not perhaps in the way they anticipated.

Maybe it prepared me psychologically for the reality of their early passing, although I never stopped being an open heart and man I miss them. But for a kid who is going to be sent somewhere no matter what, I can think of a lot worse places than Ashdown House. You could see the fringe of the forest from the window where we all brushed our teeth at a long sink. Someone had planted “Wellingtonia” Redwood trees in the grounds a long time ago, and much of my time was spent clambering through the lower branches of its secondary growths. There was freedom and kindness and individuality available there. And I learnt stuff too, but that was never the focus for me at school. I was lucky that, of all places, that’s the one they chose. Farewell, old place. If someone wants to buy the grounds and turn it into a theatre-making community, I’m in.

Waking up in York, having finished my job, I had the day to myself to get back to London. A beautiful day behind the wheel of a van. I got lost in Yorkshire.

At one point I drove down a little path – so unused that the grass between the tyre tracks was worryingly high. I thought I might get stranded so I drove faster than sensible to chop it or be able to coast. It was so narrow there would be no turning so I pushed on as far as a closed gate. “Beware of the bull” said the gate. Shit.

There was a bull near our place in Jersey. It once chased my half brothers as they cut across the field. I didn’t want to be chased by a bull. Nobody wants to get injured enough to go to hospital generally, and these days doubly so.

I very carefully opened the gate as the only way forward was through. I inspected the horned beasts for udders and was satisfied I was in no immediate danger when they all seemed to be women and to be profoundly uninterested in me, just hanging out and chewing.

I made it through the field, and closed all the gates, without getting rushed. I then decided to try and observe the delights of Yorkshire from the safety of the van. Isolated and safe from bulls. And eejits.

This decision bore out when I got to Ripley. I did almost a decade of summers, around this time, playing happy Shakespeare in the grounds of Ripley Castle. In all the years I did it I’ve NEVER seen so many people sitting around on the lawns and every spot of open grass. The ice cream shop was open. Because ice cream is essential…?

With no pubs open and nothing else, everybody from all the neighbouring villages had descended on this tiny little boutique town with one road. I drove through in slow-mo like I was in a zombie movie. Then I drove round and through one more time, getting a couple of snatched photos in places that used to be significant in those sunny times – places that weren’t thronged with people.

I’m not sure if it comforted me or annoyed me that people are as thoughtless in Yorkshire as they are in London. It seems everybody on my Facebook is being careful and then I look out the window.

I put a fire under myself and motored back in record time, through the deserted A roads, occasionally stopping for petrol, frequently deliberately puddle-ducking down little lanes, taking in the countryside from the van, getting a sense of how little is open, but how many people are defiantly gathering in outdoor spaces in large numbers. Under different circumstances it would be great to think so many people are playing outside, connecting with nature and taking pleasure from natural beauty. But it can’t help but ring strangely with me when it’s likely there’ll be a second spike of this as a result and who knows who will suffer.

Then I got home and discovered that my lovely neighbor, who now reads this occasionally, is terrified of snakes. Best get Hex back home. I’ve been looking for an excuse to go live in Hampstead. Looks like I’ve found it.

It’s coming to sunset over the river Ouse in York. People are lining the riverbank. They are occasionally being organised by friendly coppers on bicycles when it starts to feel like more of a party than it legally ought to. But mostly it’s small groups, some people playing music, others just enjoying the sunset and the weather.

I’m sitting apart, remote from the crowds as Tom and Lydia go back to their new home to switch into evening gear and freshen up. I’m only in York for one night. I’m the driver, helping them move in. All I have is a change of underwear and my iPad. But we have an evening together. We might as well have … an evening together.

Four hours drive and more, up from London and it felt like old times at first. We loaded up the van. They got in the cab with me. I’m their employee so I can sit closer to them than their mothers can sit.

We made extraordinary time through London and out up north. I might have said a few weeks ago that the road outside mine was busy but for a summer Saturday, how the hell were we steaming up the M1 so quickly?

There are bits of roadside that I think of in the same frame as books that have been in the loo for years and years. I run my eyes over them while I’m there but I take in no new information. These spots of arterial London : I know every shopfront, every bit of graffiti, every unusual detail of every house. I have spent weeks of my life in stationary traffic on these roads, endlessly heading out on the M4. We flew through, and up up and away, which is just as well as I barely slept last night for the heat and was nodding at the end of the drive. It was so quick.

I was fading before we got to Watford Gap, and we stopped for a boost in the Welcome Break. Being there suddenly helped us to remember the nature of the world we live in right now. WH Smith and Spar were open, both with coffee machines and godawful sandwiches displayed like chocolate bars. That’s it. All the great big hideous unethical global food concessions with their huge adverts looming over the motorway – shut. And I bet they’re still just munging the animals and then throwing the result away as it’s easier to keep running the machine than it is to rejig it. Every other loo cubicle shut, every other sink taped over, and every other urinal. Nobody is moving though.

I had a disgusting Scotch Egg for lunch as I needed something. Bad choice. I’m normally ok with that shit. I almost retched on the last mouthful of this one as something was definitely veering towards rancid and my brain shouted “BAD” even as I’d employed my swallow reflex and it went down and stayed.

It was bad, but not bad enough to beat the caldera of my stomach acid these titanic days. I’ve had no repercussions yet and I won’t. My stomach is wormwood. It’s Alien-blood. I learnt that from the other night when the roiling mess of caustic horror inside me kept me up until dawn by trying to jump out of my throat.

I’ve made a bed of cushions on the floor. I don’t have to return the van until Monday at 10am. I’ll get back to London by then. But right now I want to take advantage of the fact I’ve been employed to move, and just … be somewhere notlondon. It’s lovely up here.

Brian occasionally has to go and check The Arts Theatre. It’s sleeping right now, as they all are, these huge central expensive buildings. Worth making sure everything is still secure from time to time. You wouldn’t want to get back after lockdown to find a colony of leopards living on stage.

He does it all by the book, gets forms from the government filled in so if anybody questions his journey he can avoid fines. Then he jumps on his amazing huge great big bike – is it a Triumph Rocket III? I think so. It’s 3000cc. I would drop it on my leg the first time I turned left.

His route goes past mine, and like a legend he knows I’ve been a bit starved of contact so he stops outside and we shout at each other – a bushy bearded Juliet and her biker Romeo.

This morning I actually came downstairs to see him. We sat on my bench. We consumed small snacks and spoke in the way that humans speak. We even bumped elbows. It was lovely. We had a good few years living together up here in this ivory tower with Pickle. I saw him and immediately thought about how untidy I’ve made it the last few weeks. Once I get back from York I’ll have to deal with it. I’ll just frame it in my mind as “work” and then I’ll do it. I’m much better at doing things if I can call it work.

I lost a bit of motivation in the last week or so on the flat – let some negativity seep in. But Rishi Sunak has just announced that there will be another round of income support which helped me untangle my fug of worry. It’s enough to make me like him. Thank God for the magic money tree although we are all going to have to work like trains and spend all our spare time shopping when business opens up again. I’m feeling quite optimistic now, with my mind back on things I can make and who to make them with.

I’ll be seeing Tom, who made Christmas Carol, and spending time with him tomorrow. It’s work. And it’s conflicting emotions. He’s been in London a couple of years now, getting stuck in to theatre even though his base was York. He was doing well until this hit, but now with London rent and uncertainty he’s moving back up. He’s asked me to drive the van and help with the loadup etc.

I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a gradual flood of similar cases, friends of mine in the theatre game, packing up and packing off back home. Sad for London as he and his girlfriend are good minds and kind people in the industry. Sad for London but good for York, and with his creative mind and his huge work ethic I have very little doubt but that there’ll be something interesting bubbling up in York before too long with him at the helm…

“Lucky you, living by the river,” the Uber driver mumbles to me through his mask.

“You know what,” I reply – “I am. And before all this I was running around so much I barely had the chance to appreciate it. Now I often go out and watch the tide in the evenings. And on days like this I couldn’t think of a better place to live in London.”

It’s glorious again here and we know it. Everybody’s out and about in their summer clothes and matching masks letting the sun hit their skin.

Cabby is extremely talkative so my plan of getting this written on the way might fall through. He’s listing the businesses that have been hit by this. It’s a long list. I’m reflexively repeating his last word because – you know – Uber ratings… “Airlines!” “Airlines.” “Theatres!” “Theatres.”

I’m moving. I’m crossing town. Heading to Richmond. It’s Tristan’s fortieth birthday.

However many years ago Tristan showed up at my party at a pub in North London. He’d somehow managed to get hold of a Tamahagane kitchen knife. Beautiful thing and really sharp. He gave it to me, but I could feel his imagination sticking to it as he did so. He wanted that knife, and I don’t blame him. It was £200 worth of lovely slicey Japanese steel. It’s a bit blunter now, and occasionally gets put in the dishwasher when I’m not paying attention. But I try and keep it separate and use it a great deal. It needs a sharpen at last but it kept good through heavy use. The dishwasher did for it.

The pleasure and use I’ve had from my “special knife” made it easy for me to know what to get for him when he hit the forty. I counted the years ahead. “2020?” I thought. “Ah I’ll be sorted for money by then I’m sure.” If only I’d known. Still. A plan is a plan.

My bank balance is not going to send me a Christmas card but now there’s a knife in my bag as well as a couple of bottles of wine, and none of it will be coming home with me. He’s got a garden so we can socially distance and raise a glass at the same time with proto-family, and it’s a good opportunity to pretend to be normal for a bit.

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It’s been lovely, and convivial, and we’ve been trying to be well behaved and stay away from one another as much as possible, but I did the shopping for Jacky just yesterday so I’m unlikely to be exposed to anyone more vulnerable than I am for a good fortnight and good God I needed a hug.

Now it’s the slower side of the early evening and I left a mouse to defrost in the sink for Hex as it’s time for another go this evening. I’ve managed to stay reasonably sober, and I’ve budgeted for an uber to get home so once it gets too cold to be outside in my shorts I’ll go and puppet mice for an anorexic snake and then, if things go according to plan, I’ll spend a large part of the weekend hucking out my flat.

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Snake update! Because I know it’s why you’re all here. He took it out of my hand almost immediately… Either I’m getting better at puppeting or he was hungry!

According to Mel “once a week is a bit too frequently really. He’s more like once every ten days ”

Now she tells me. I’ve been a feeder.

I was woken from a warm snooze by a phone call. I’d forgotten I had to be in in rehearsal, and was enjoying a mid-morning languish such as those of you with kids can only dream of. 5 minutes after waking from dreamtime I was in rehearsal dissecting Shakespearean language with four other people all in completely different places across the UK. That’s an advantage, I suppose, of us all doing everything through the screen of a laptop.

But it’s hard to connect. These faces in a screen, they convey the idea of people. We hear their words. But we lose so much. It’s a memory of contact. A tech-shadow of touch.

What about that unquantifiable “chemistry” thing that, for instance, makes us disproportionately fancy one person while overlooking another? What of that hackle-raising pheromone kick that lets us know when somebody is scared or angry all of a sudden – “are you ok?”. The observation of goosebumps – (“is he cold? Repelled? Turned on?) or of a knee that starts ticcing or that constant glance into a corner. Even the detail of eye contact. We can’t make eye contact on zoom. We talk to each others foreheads. To see the face we hide our eyes, to show the eyes we lose the face. It’s all veiled. No wonder this is what those awkward buggers in Silicon Valley have come up with.

Minnie’s sister is a doctor. “This virus is mutating, and it will mutate. But that’s not a bad thing so long as it mutates into less harmful strains, which is the likely evolutionary outcome for its own propagation and survival.” I can take comfort in that after spending the day dogged by dark thoughts.

“What if we’re the borderline in history between pre-Covid life and post-Covid?” I had myself thinking, unhelpfully. “What if future generations are boggled by how we used to pack in our hundreds into tiny rooms and share glasses and jump up and down with strangers and hug people all the time? Here we all are saying ‘when the doors open again,’ but what if they don’t ever in a way that we recognise?” Aaargh.

I went and sat by the river, hoping in the late evening that I’d snatch a glimpse at the space launch this evening, but it’s been delayed so I just looked at the water.

I’d like to believe we’re over the hump now, but this global lockdown is just so completely unprecedented. The longer it goes on the more businesses are going to be in tatters, and I’m still thinking about theatre and how we activate the buildings themselves that are all lying empty. It’s a tangle. Meanwhile I’m just gonna keep trying to get involved in making what can be made. Trying to get some writing done outside of my daily prose. And trying to keep my head up.

At some point I’m gonna have to do some serious tidying as well as right now the flat looks like a student dig…

I was just settling down calmly to write this when another six fire engines screamed into our little crescent yet again because somebody in sheltered housing at Chelsea Court has burnt the toast and the smoke alarms calls the fire station. I’m not sure if it’s happening even more than usual at the moment or if I’m home more so I catch it every time it does happen. They’re all shouting at each other now as they’ve established it’s another false alarm so they all have to reverse out again. It’s a regular pantomime and they all know it, just as they know that the first time they don’t show up mob-handed like this will be the time that there’s a chip pan fire and the whole block goes up.

I’d be screwed in a fire here. There’s a fire escape that goes nowhere and I’m not allowed to put a ladder up to my roof. I was told that I’d be fine no matter what because they made us all pay to have our antique doors replaced by crap ones with no letterbox which are apparently magic. Never live in a leasehold. It’s a fucking stupid system, and the management companies are all on the take. Added to which, in 26 years I lose my home unless I can pay some astronomical fee between now and then to renew it.

Hex and I are hanging out in the early evening. It’s hot in his home so I like to let him clamber all over me so long as I’m happy I won’t forget he’s out and lose him in the upholstery of the sofa. It’s some sort of company for both of us and it stops me worrying that he’s cooking. I never really thought I’d have a snake for as long as this, but he’s very low maintenance apart from the eating disorder, and he’s a living being. Right now he’s having a nap across my legs with his head on one of my feet and the end of his tail on my belly. I’d take a photo but I’m just in my pants so it’ll look weird. Instead I’ll share this snap from more or less this time yesterday evening.

The tide was out, and there was that ozone smell of the end of a warm clean day. The clear sky was shifting up dark, with the new moon presiding. Putting aside all the inconvenience and death, it’s probably been good for this planet. The road outside is back to normal traffic volume now, although I’m sure all the drivers are being “alert”. It’s good to see we can have beautiful memorable balmy summer evenings here in London as I don’t expect there’ll be much opportunity to go on any holidays for some time yet, which is a depressing thought as there is such a huge amount of world left for me to see.

I’m tired far too early, considering my indolence today. I’ve just been lounging around with the snake. Zoom meeting in eight minutes and then, sod it, I reckon I’ll be asleep by ten…

Home. This morning I staggered out of bed at 8 and set up the studio. Hamhanded, I tried to take photographs that would serve as an office background for a major building contracting manager. I thought about shaving my beard but somehow I felt that my boy Brian would be proud of a bushy one. I kept it. I would probably have cut my nose off if I’d tried shaving, the state I am in the morning, especially considering I’ve got a whole ecosystem attached to my chin right now.

We had to have a fifteen minute Zoom conversation about the price of wallboards. I was buying in bulk by the millions for a major housing project, and playing hard ball with the seller to see how cheaply I could get them on a renewed contract. We were recording it to send to the client, who was teaching about bad selling and wanted to use the video we make around a teaching point.

Problem was the length of the conversation – and therefore the length of the shot. We got very good at the first five minutes. We were ok at the middle five. By the time we got to the last five it was frequently slipping, because it only takes one irretrievable fuck up or some ridiculous shouting outside your door to bin the whole take and then you have to go back to the start or likely take even longer in the edit than you would retaking.

There’s no saving it in post or starting halfway through if it’s a recorded zoom meeting and it’s just the two of you and you’re both shit at editing. We had to get fifteen minutes of involved sales talk down pat in one long long shot. It took us a couple of hours all said, with breaks. I recorded it as a screengrab, the same way I’ve been recording myself playing a computer game occasionally just for YouTube shits and giggles. I’m glad I even learnt that much as it served me well today.

My terrible design head didn’t serve me so well. After failing to take photographs for my background without wacky perspective, I panicked that I’d never be able to find something that would work for an office background for my character so I decided to try and build something. I pulled all the pictures off the wall in my living room and built a weird pile of tools and cushions and boxes behind me. Panting from exertion I proudly showed it to Sylvia when she logged on at eleven. “I couldn’t find a background that worked and wasn’t right-protected. I thought rather than risk someone trying to pull down the video because we’re using their image, I’d make this. What do you think?” TADAAAA. I proudly reveal it.

“It’s shit. It doesn’t work at all.”

“Oh. Um. Well I’ve got a greenscreen…”

2 minutes later: “What about this image as background?” Oh skill-sets. She had found a public domain image that was perfect. In no time. After I fucked around for TWO HOURS! While I was berating myself she sent three more.

This is why collaboration is the key, generally. She then supervised multiple costume changes (“too smart” “too casual” “too vintage”) until I looked right, whereas she had logged on (albeit half an hour late) looking the bees knees immediately. We rolled into the takes.

We work very well together, the pair of us. Guildhall in different years but contemporary. Always friends. Always allies. Now she trains rich people to unblock themselves and tries to make herself rich in the process. It’s good work, needed work, kind work and valuable work. I occasionally come on board as her second, or help her out with writing, and it’s because of the way we complement each other. She’s dyslexic, instinctive and sharp. I’m overlexic, instinctive and blunt. Here we are. With invisible costume and prop carnage.