Category: Uncategorized

Last night when I got home I carbonised some leftover pizza and then picked out the few edible bits with my fingers. This evening I was no more inspired, if marginally more successful. Baked beans on toast. Even this tired I couldn’t fuck that up. Thankfully I had stopped and had a proper lunch at Bone Daddy’s in High Street Kensington so I’m nourished already. Best ramen in town, and quick.

My phone is going constantly, usually people needing information or needing to have their mind put at rest or both. Having just discovered that my call time is surprisingly late tomorrow, I’m thinking I might do something that I never normally do. I’m thinking I might switch off my phone as I sleep. Then I won’t be woken by the buzzing of the morning message swarm. I’ll still go in to work long before my call time, but I’ll take my lie in when it’s offered, especially as I’m likely to be one of the last cars on the road tomorrow, doing my usual thing of picking up the slack. If I’ve got the energy I’ll spend it. That’s always been the way. But I’ve got to make sure I’ve got enough energy to spend.

Tomorrow is crunch time, when this huge team of people comes together and something happens. I’m really hoping it doesn’t rain in London tomorrow evening. We will be working in the dark, frequently outdoors. Everybody will be much more cheerful if they’re dry. Including me.

It’s hard to believe that I had a cleaning lady come to my flat just two days ago. My bedroom looks like a volcanic eruption of clothes. Digging around for audition clothing, finding spare bits of costume for friends of mine who are working in costume tomorrow. Getting home, immediately taking all my clothes off, and falling face down on my bed without putting them away. I’ve had the place to myself the last two nights and you can tell.

My favourite thing about this job is that I get a car for the duration. Even in this town, I find driving therapeutic. But this town really is weird to drive in.

The weekend drivers were out in force today. My favourite was some old guy in his brand new Merc. I’m in an eight seater. I was trying to get off at the lights quickly enough to nip in front when my lane got blocked. He thought I was racing him, so he powered in front of me and then stopped across both lanes. Then he pulled aside to let me pass, and then did it again. He looked at me with a strange mixture of rage and triumph the second time. I was so weirded out I just kind of … shrugged. It didn’t seem to warrant an insulting gesture. It was a kid showing me a toy. I let him go ahead and then took a different route. I’ve seen too much road rage in this city and I didn’t want the insurance hassle if he kicked the panels in. Alone. Neat haircut. Clean shaven. Expensive car. Sharp suit. Those guys have the most stuff buried I guess…

And then I catch myself.

The person I was upset with yesterday. She’s 22, and she’s doing a very difficult thing. This sort of event – there’s so much left to the individuals. How can I expect a 22 year old who is just starting out in event work to understand the intricacies of etiquette around booking actors? It’s a language learnt over time. I’ve resolved to be nice to her today, and guide the things that she hasn’t learnt towards being things that she has learnt so that next time there are no disgruntled thesps. We can be a temperamental lot. And through being nice to her I’ve understood her better and learnt things about her, and through learning about her I’ve discovered compassion for her and admiration for all the things she HAS done in a very unfamiliar context and an office environment that can feel hostile because it’s so busy.

This is a temporary office. It’s a short term thing. It’s a huge team of people, some working very hard, some standing by to pick up the things that need picking up. Everybody is thrown in at the deep end to either sink or swim. Everybody is human, everybody feels and strives. Nobody wants to be made to feel like their best efforts are not good enough. Far better to accept, embrace and guide than to insist that someone’s way is wrong. I know that. I just forgot because I got angry.

It’s how I used to manage my teams of over 100 unskilled waiters. Other floor managers would manage with a rod of iron. I’d come in and try to find the strengths and joys, get to know them individually. If I could build my own team I’d build a team that was happy and efficient where people felt their work was valued. If things got crazy sometimes members of my team would cry TO me but they’d never cry BECAUSE OF me. At the end of the event we’d part as friends. It’s a form of leadership that only works if you trust other people and not just yourself.

I momentarily forgot to trust other people, based on some reactive messages I got from people whose welfare I feel responsible for. Now I’ve remembered again.

One of my drivers fucked up. She lost her phone, and all her cards, and her call time changed. She missed her call, caused the transport manager all kinds of hell, and I ended up being told she’d be fired. “Let me sit with her first,” I asked.

She is a friend of a friend. She needs the work. I know that much. I’ve never met her before. I took her on trust.

She pulled up in a lovely merc. I got in and got her to drive me. I felt a bit sick. I’ve never been on that side of that conversation. She’s a good driver. She was nervous though, word rolling over word, her reasons, a context for what happened. I mostly let her talk, just trying to sniff if she was likely to do it again. It’s only a few days. I was honest with her about the concerns. Better that way. This work might be short term but we have to rely on everybody to do their little bit as best they can. I think we can rely on her. I told them so. Better to err on the side of compassion. As I said the other day, as I maintain, kindness is king. Be kinder than you have to be.

If it bites me in the arse then it bites me in the arse. I don’t think it will. She is no fool. She fucked up. It happens. And often it happens more when you care.

Just before I met the driver, my friend told me a story of how she left her phone at her day job and got on the tube to go to a big audition, only realising she couldn’t check Google maps when she got out the other end and found her pockets empty. I thought I’d missed my audition for the Netflix I just did, and almost sacrificed the actual audition by getting myself into a state about an imagined error. We are extremely creative self-sabotagers when we want to be. I’m policing it in myself, and I’m going to be compassionate about it in others.

I spent all day driving in a dinner jacket. Audition in the morning. No time to change. And frankly it made me feel sexy.

This life.

Well. I had a lovely day today on set. We were in a beautiful old school at half term. My brother’s old school. Last time I went there was when the parents were still alive, before the world got emotionally complicated. The names of the houses had a special significance. They were places of legend. Places where the older boys did the mysterious things that big boys do.

There I was, in the chapel. I found out what big boys do.

It turns out that big boys get a million WhatsApp messages from disgruntled actors who have been given no information and are losing faith in the job you’ve booked for them. The problem is it’s not my job to give them this information, and yet nobody else is. I just booked them. I called them off the record the other day and tried to put their minds at rest. But one of them said “it’s been decades since I’ve worked with such a bunch of muppets.” Another one forwarded me the most unprofessional email I’ve ever seen sent to a booked actor, with a release form attached, sent from the office, connected to me. Everybody has had one of these… I was filming something else and had to be on point. I had to disconnect. It was making me too angry. It makes me so livid thinking about it still. It’s a miracle of goodwill that half of my actors haven’t walked off the job after being on pencil for weeks and then getting that sort of sorry excuse for communication.

Given time I could maybe teach the person how to book actors – especially actors working at this rate. Even agency extras are better handled. They have to be, by contract. It’s a wonder my guys can put up with the communication level and tone I’ve witnessed. My rate for the day on set today was ten times theirs. Admittedly it’s for a week where if they need me I have to drop everything. But still… I feel responsible.

I went to the office after work, exasperated. “I’m just no good at writing emails,” is the response I get from the person whose job is mostly to write emails.

I’ll calm down soon, but not if my actors don’t show at the run through because they haven’t been briefed properly. Or at all.

Oh it makes me spit.

What a lovely day on set though. I should’ve just left my phone in the trailer. Lots of actors around me all of whom have been around the block a few times. “I’d forgotten that this is a way I can make money and enjoy it too,” says a man with two restaurants. “I’m thinking of easing back on this to focus on my daughter, you only get those years once,” says another. We’ve all been in it a while. I’m one of the youngest!

I travel home in a taxi with a lovely fellow. Lives in Ham, but isn’t. He came all the way to Manchester a couple of weeks ago only to be told he wasn’t needed. “Still get paid though”, he says. Fair. “Usually after a day like this I feel elated. As it is I just feel flat,” he confides. “I don’t know what it is. Too many people I suppose.”

Fair enough. There’s must have been 150 people in that room. The camera was interested in fewer than ten of us, and really in only two. The extras must have been living in some huge tent somewhere as we were ushered in coats through the rain by helpful young men and women with tempest torn brollies.

It was a good day but I’m exhausted from focus split. Tomorrow the mill. Sunday the fruits…

Here’s a picture of my lovely kitchen. In a glorious stroke of fate the cleaning lady came today. I’m off to bed in nice clean sheets.

 

Walking into the unit office at the moment is like walking into a workhouse that has been organised to confuse me by the Facebook algorithm. I stroll in, direct from the streets, with the energy of sunshine on my face, into this weird underground lair. There I will see a woman who has directed me in multiple short films where I’ve been a sociopath in a car crash and a whimsical commuter on a bridge. She’s being briefed by the producer of last year’s Vault Festival where I insanely served psychedelic tea and talked about cholera and cleansing ritual whilst people had their tarot read. Sitting beside her is a dear friend who has done countless corporate gigs at dinners and award ceremonies with me where I’ve been dressed as a ringmaster and we’ve provided potted Shakespearean entertainments. Next to her, someone I haven’t seen for years but who I’ve always felt affinity with. I read opposite her at her Guildhall audition. We found connection and truth. She saw me in Twelfth Night as Malvolio in a stately home in Kent by mistake shortly afterwards and came and said hello. She ended up at RADA with my wonderful friend Tim and many other reprobates. We are still in touch, and there she is, organising crafty.

Jobs for good hearts. Jobs for freelancers. Jobs for people who have flushed years of their life into dreaming the impossible dream. A bunch of positive fearless fools. Sure, there is still fear in them but mostly I see an overcoming. “Good grief I am driving a HUGE bloody car. Eeek! Too many smart knobs and whistles” says one of my friends who I know will just roll with it. These huge modern cars are so well kitted out with technology that they feel like it used to feel driving minis. You just have to remember to take wider corners. And, frankly, today I worked all day as a “driver”. I drove to the office and parked. In the evening I drove home. My executive had booked an earlier flight so I’d picked him up yesterday. So no Heathrow run. I was supposed to pick up some tripods but someone fucked up hugely with insurance. I ended up not needed as a driver at all.

I decided to help pick up the shortfall of capable humans in the office, rather than sit in the car, so I spent the day on the phone making sure I had made contact with every single performer involved and making sure they had a better idea of what was expected of them, and rough call times, and troubleshooting availability crises. I think… I hope … That it’s sorted.

This producing lark. It’s like I’ve accidentally bought a really shit Groupon. “BE A PRODUCER!” I’m having the “producer experience”. Without any of the risk because I’m just a driver. I’m not a producer. Although I’m beginning to think I’ve got the bones of one.

Today though I’m a helpful person picking up some of the slack. I’m not sure what has been dropped and what hasn’t. So I start by calling those actors, as I said. I suspect they’ll be worrying. I would be.

“What do you know?”

“Absolutely nothing mate. I’ve just been sent a load of forms to fill in. I’ve filled in some of them twice and I just got sent one a third time. I haven’t a clue what’s going on. Not a clue.”

“Fuck. Ok. Here’s what you’re actually doing, oh highly skilled individual who has agreed to spend a day focusing on this madness despite a fully functioning career…”

I mean, yeah. Loyalty goes a long way. Thank God for these performers who are so switched on and yet not bringing their ego to the table, who are doing this weird shit because they appreciate what it is, what it pays, why they’ve been called by Becky or I, and what they can bring to a job you’d never want to tell your auntie about at Christmas.

Many many phone calls later I have now spoken to every single one of them. It’s only 20. That I know of. One of them is a pensioner, an old friend of my parents, someone I haven’t seen for ages. “Am I too old?” she asked, and I immediately became her champion because of that question and what it must have come out of.

The rest are all performers. None of them had a clue what to expect. Most of them sounded relieved to get the call and some clarity from me. It’s shit not knowing. I understand that well.

I’m on a very different set tomorrow for a high profile telly job, and they’re doing a night shoot this evening. I hadn’t heard a call time for tomorrow by 7 this evening and I started fretting. By half seven I was emailing one of the other actors and my agent, worrying. He was worrying too thankfully. We both know now, of course. They were just shooting late and busy. The call isn’t five am. It’s 8.45, and then an hour in a comfy car before we are even on location. Lovely. But I’m very glad to be told. You need that, as a performer. Some idea of the structure in which you will be working. Without it you don’t know how to husband your energy, let alone organise childcare etc if that’s an issue. Hence my calls.

At some point today though I got so stressed out from converting energy in the office, where I sat for a while like a little stress dehumidifier, that I opened a fresh leaf of my notebook – (not the leaf photographed here in a calm moment) – and just wrote the word : “SHIT” in it. In capitals. I have no recollection of it and no idea why. I found it later and wondered. But yeah. That’s been my day.

 

 

Thirteen pounds is what it costs to transfer a parking permit from one vehicle to another in my borough. Kensington Town Hall.

I was there switching the pass for my blue Nissan to my new Ford Galaxy. I need to be able to take more passengers.

The guy at the desk is full of life. Italian. Funny. Switched on. But still at the mercy of the uncompromising bureaucratic machine.

This is an unusual request. It takes a while for us to establish how to do it, but we manage it eventually. “That’ll be thirteen pounds,” he says. He gestures at the machine. My card is in my car but I’ve got one on my phone. “Oh no, sir, there’s no contactless here,” he says.

I pat down my pockets. I find a £20 note. “Do you have anything smaller? A ten quid note. A triumphant one pound coin. And shekels. Not quite enough.

It is clear that nobody ever pays cash here. He knows what it is, at least. “This isn’t my desk,” he tells me guiltily. “If it was my desk there’d be change.”

He sends my £20 off with a post it note on it. “One ten, one five, five 1. Customer is waiting.”

We wait. We talk.

He came over here so long ago he can barely remember. His girlfriend is Chinese. “People look at her strangely because of this virus,” he says. This tallies with the cabbie I took the other night: “Chinatown is empty.”

But as we talk I’m not thinking about Corona virus. I’m thinking about how I’m here in the heart of my borough’s governance and they can’t change a score.

They’re about to release a new twenty pound note. Chances are it’s gonna be the same horrible plastic stuff that they made the five and ten from. But how frequently do we handle cash any more? In keeping with this outbreak scare that’s hanging over us at the moment, I’ve heard people tell me in the certain voice of learnt information “bank notes carry disease”. Balls.

I waited with the Italian guy long enough to mine into his sadness, and his concerns about the future. He’s a kind man, and his desire to do a good job mixed with my impatience eventually earnt him two quid. He borrowed a fiver from his colleague and came back apologetically.

I told him to keep the two, and left. I’d been there long enough – almost two hours from taking a ticket to getting everything squared off.

I never pay with cash anymore. On this job, perhaps, as I’ve been getting lots out to deal with tips to concierges etc. I also use it to pay the cleaner. But compared to ten years ago…

Ten years ago “sorry we don’t take cards”. Now “sorry we don’t take cash”.

When one of those eloquent homeless guys comes up it’s so rare that I’ve got anything to give that if I actually do have cash I tend to be so proud of myself that I give it all away. And then I haven’t got any again…

I’m going to try to pay for things with cash for the next few weeks. Keep the stuff rolling round. I like having a wodge in my pocket. Why not?

I didn’t know who Caroline Flack was until she died. I never watched Love Island – it’s not really my jam. But her high profile suicide has been in my mind a great deal since I read about it the other day.

So many of my friends experience mental health issues. I sometimes joke that it “goes with the territory”. It kind of does. As performers, or presenters or artists in general our job is both to find ways to express humanity with the sticky bits and yet also to pretend to be superhuman and aspirational. The balance is tender and it’s easily tipped either towards the belief you’re just the sticky bits, or that you’re just the superhuman…

“It’s amazing how many people you know,” says Lenka. And I suppose I do know a lot of people, but often quite briefly. We have an experience together, make something hopefully beautiful, and then move on. There’s not much that’s consistent in our lives.

Usually we remember each other, sometimes we don’t. My head gets flooded with faces and sometimes fails when there’s a hair change or it was too brief a time shared, or somesuch. I used to say “Nice to meet you,” but got “We’ve met” back so much I’ve learnt to go with “Nice to see you,” because I sharply remember those “we’ve met” moments, logged in my memory as a kind of failure.

But of all those people, remembered and forgotten, a huge number of them struggle with depression, anxiety, OCD, and so forth even with some friends enjoying the wonders of schizophrenia and so on.

I’ve seen very dear friends in very dark places saying and trying all sorts of things, and I’ve sat next to them. I’ve been in very dark places myself and pretended to ignore the person I was holding on to.

A few of them are gone now. Largely they were artists of some kind. No matter what face people wear, usually it’s a mask.

I’ve been trying to align friends with jobs recently, always aware that if someone doesn’t show up either in body or in mind it reflects on me. I’m pretty quick and instinctive with people and what the mask means and what’s behind it.

I think the people I’ve found will all thrive in the roles I’ve found for them. But there’s always things left to chance… “The bubble, reputation…”

I used to think about it a huge amount, writing this blog. “What if I show too much? What if I damage myself?” It’s always connected to this fucking obsession: my capacity to work.

Because I decided to try to be honest. And because writing every day means sometimes I just have to let the words tumble out in any old order…

Now I just write it. Yes It’s done damage to some friendships. It’s possibly damaged some job possibilities that I’d never know about but who cares? Thank God that the desperate need not to upset anyone has somehow vanished with age. This blog has cemented some friendships from unexpected quarters where people have found fellow feeling, and it has connected me to like minded artists and thinkers and makers. That’ll do.

For the moment it feels like it’s still a thing I have to do. But occasionally I worry.

I’m still careful if I mention people by name. If I was drunk I occasionally wake up and check the rant at 4am when my morning pee strikes.

Reputation is indeed a bubble. It can swell up to be huge. But the bigger it grows the bigger it might burst. And reputation is everything in this industry. Where can you go when the bubble bursts? If all your time, all your thoughts, all your past has sharpened you to become the artist you are despite all the adversity and competition. And then you see it all smashed because of a moment of rage? Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

As a young man I once swung a hard metal soda stream canister at my brother’s face with all my strength and he only just dodged it. It could have killed him. I don’t even remember what the fight was about now. It was just a thing that was to hand and I was enraged. I often think “what if that canister had connected?” because I remember the red mist as I swung it.

I’m sad for another beautiful broken soul lost. Please look after each other and yourselves. Please be kind. We are all so flawed and so delightful. And it’s never broken forever however we might feel.

Today involved a spot of driving, but mostly it was to do with recruiting. I’m wearing lots of hats right now. Happy to as well as it means I get to throw work towards friends who need work, while working myself. That’s triple win as far as I’m concerned.

I’m tired though. It’ll be good to get a day where I’m not starting early. But right now it just seems to keep getting earlier. All the planes from America are getting swept across the Atlantic super fast by the storms, and usually my first job is to meet one of them and pick up the passengers. I’m not going to make them wait so I need to get there too early and hang around near all the signs making us worry about outbreaks.

Tomorrow I’ve got to get up early in order to swap my nice new car for a bigger one. I will be very surprised if I ever fill more than three seats but they want the option and I’m rolling with it even though now I’ve got to swap my resident’s parking permit and get used to another set of unfamiliar wheels. It’s a right faff. Enterprise corporate delivers but for some reason I’ve got to be at the branch first thing. Then straight to Heathrow.

I’m glad of the work though and it keeps me occupied. So be it. I’d always sooner have too much than too little. It’s only that I just watched the weekend fly by and I really want a lie in as a good sleep helps me braindump. My head feels full to bursting. I’ve been casting actors, looking for drivers and PA’s, sorting paperwork and driving people in unfamiliar cars around annoying places. One morning soon I would like to sleep until ten.

As it is I’m running a bath at 9pm, and I’m going to try and crash out early if I can switch my head off. But I’m not sure I’ll manage it. My head is full of static. I feel like I’m an electric storm. I haven’t braindumped for too long.

Still, things are flowing. It’s good to be in a phase like this and I’ll ride the storm for as long as it rolls. All I’m really lacking is sleep and that’s because I’m terrible at going to bed at a reasonable time and sober. I reckon I’ll have a chance at a late start in the next few days though, and I can call it a pretend weekend. Maybe.

Often I don’t know the day of the week and this is why. I’m surprisingly aware that it’s Sunday right now, but that’s primarily because everything was closed when I clocked off work and because I’m tired. Also I guess I’m still in a performers pattern where Monday is the day off, so I’m spitting that I’ve got to get up and change cars first thing. But I’m actually also really enjoying myself, challenging myself and stretching myself. That counts for a lot. And it’s why I’m still smiling. Somewhere.

My blog and my bath so frequently coincide that some of you probably think I live in the thing.

Right now I’d quite like to…

 

 

Waiting to pick someone up from Heathrow today it struck me how many passengers were coming out of the gate wearing little white masks. I checked the arrivals. San Francisco. Madrid. LA. Grand Cayman via Nassau. Nowhere on the list of places that are considered to be problematic…

The masks are terribly ostentatious. Over the years I’ve grown used to seeing them worn by East Asian people on public transport. My initial thought, years ago, was “Do they think we are all dirty?” until someone hauled me up and taught me : “It’s a courtesy. They do it because they’ve got a cold and they don’t want to spread it.”

Trust us in the West to just assume that it’s done out of fear of the other, and then to do it ourselves for that reason at the first opportunity. Those masks will just be annoying to the people wearing them. If people really want to avoid catching a virus they’ll need proper respirators like the one I’ve got that says “Josh”.

But there are posters all over the airport, suggesting you self isolate if you’ve been to various countries. I wonder how many people will though? Hard to self isolate without symptoms…

Jobs are getting cancelled abroad now even though the death toll to infection rate is still pretty low. Secret Cinema all emerged blinking back to London after their Chinese tour was cancelled. It’s made a lot more work for us as well on the TV show I’m helping fix and drive for, because they were going to go out east but have now decided to do a double show here instead. Twice the work! It won’t affect me much apart from being able to find even more jobs for even more friends. I’d be working those days anyway. I’ll just be working more.

I reckon about 50 people I know personally now being gainfully employed because three or four years ago Brian put me in touch with a man called Kester who organised to meet me for an interview for event staff work somewhere in East London. I arrived at the place and he was late. There were loads of people standing round, and a van with the back door open and the hazards on.

“Is Kester here?” I asked. “No. We’re waiting for him.” “What are you supposed to be doing?” “We have to load this stuff into the van.” “Ok. So let’s go. You do this I’ll do this etc etc.” By the time he arrived the van was almost loaded. Now, a few years later, his old company trusts me to find people with a bit more gumption than that lot. Plus I get to drive lots. And I do like driving lots.

Although I do see now why some drivers have a sticker saying “If you have a preferred route, state it now.” I’ve learnt to drive with terrible backseat drivers. Road placement, jolts, braking etc. Those guys – I can usually make them forget they’re in a car, which is the trick.

But this guy always knows the best route so wherever we are he’s wondering why we aren’t going three roads south. It’s not so much that he’s actually interested. More that it’s important we all know he knows the roads. I’m using live traffic on waze. It’s usually pretty accurate.

Tedious bugger. He’s on three times my wage and more. I’d prefer it if he just zipped it up.

 

Valentine’s Day. How am I going to style it? I’m really not sure how I feel. Part of me quite likes it despite being single.

Yes I could rant on about the commercial aspect, but also isn’t it quite pleasant to have one day in the calendar where we have to remember to be romantic – if we are in a relationship. But that’s the trouble with the styling. For those of us that aren’t, it can feel like another day for other people’s lives. Like Mother’s Day and Father’s Day is now for me.

But still I like it. We can still make little gestures. Life rolls along and we are swept with it, seeking and finding, wanting and having. ‘Remember how you used to buy me flowers?” For one night we can hang up the hang-ups and leave work at the door, switch off the phone and be with those we love. And love comes in many guises.

It’s been a long time since there’s been committed romantic love in my life. There are advantages and disadvantages. “You’ve been offered the American tour!” “Shit, what’s Brunhilde going to say?”

I’m going to spend two or three weeks driving all day and then collapsing face first into my sheets, sprawled all over the bed. I sometimes wake up and there’s a pillow on the ceiling and another one in Egham. I’ve found a way to hook my feet into the bedframe and stretch myself starfish like I’m on a rack. Sometimes I wake up, sit bolt upright and speak complete sentences of garbage out loud. Sometimes if there’s no work I’ll sleep until afternoon. Nobody but I has to suffer the consequences. I can get home and dump clothes on the bedroom floor for five days running and until I run out of clothes nobody objects. One time when I was sick, I blew my nose into the duvet cover. I didn’t change it the next night. Yep. Hi ladies. Just last week I spilt coffee on my sheet and slept on it for three days before I changed it.

So yeah, I guess I’m looking for the advantages. I get to be a slob. But… Being a slob isn’t really that satisfying. It’s just being a slob.

I’d get just as much satisfaction from finishing a difficult task. Like tidying the huge pile of junk I’ve collected. More than just the momentary endorphin rush left over from childhood of “screw you mum I’m not gonna clean today”. I keep my bedroom neater these days unless I’m sick or just crazy busy. Why not? Every time I get home and the bed is made I smile to myself as I go to sleep. Better than wondering why I can faintly smell coffee as I doze.

I’m off to see a friend. Honouring the part of the intention of this day that is to do with connection. There is love between us too, and care and respect. I was going to just go home but she called and invited me. Initially I said “no, I’m too tired”. Then I realised it’s just my dark energy trying to win. I rang her back moments later. Now I’m glad I did.

Happy Valentine’s Day. I hope you spend it with someone you love. Even if that someone is yourself.

 

8.00 am. The phone rings. I’m dressed, with keys and satnav holder in hand, waiting for it. “Enterprise?” I say. “Hi, yes it’s Dawn from Enterprise Rent-a-car. Your car will be with you in half an hour.” Shit. It’s supposed to be with me now.

8.19 am. Text from unit. “Please tell me you have your car…”

8.25 am. Car arrives. Traffic warden is eyeing it avariciously as will be parked illegally in five minutes. We have admin to do.

8.26 am. Phone rings. Same person that texted me before. I’m being shown the car. I miss the call.

8.28 am I notice and ring back. The guy at Enterprise can’t operate his machine. I think it might be his first day. “I’ll be with you for 9 or just after,” I tell her. He’s faffing.

The car only has a quarter tank in it. Marginally less. “Return it with the same amount.” He says. There are many words he has to say. They’ve sent the new guy. He says all the words. I’m just pissed off about the fuel as I’ll have to get to a station which I shouldn’t really do with passengers. Months of people letting the needle slip back a tiny bit on return.

Thankfully I do get to unit base for 9 but there’s no stopping. Three people bundle into my car. They want to go and look at Heathrow Terminal 2. Then they want to look at Heathrow Terminal 3. Then Terminal 5. I can do that with my limited fuel. Off we go.

---

Heathrow is a horrible place to be driving at the best of times. I was going round in circles for ages as they don’t let you stop, or they try to trap you in car parks that cost £4.20 to drive through.

Eventually back through unexpectedly heavy traffic to a roundabout near my flat. Everybody goes for coffee and loo while I drive an endless loop around a building site knowing I need to be where they last saw me as my phone is almost empty.

Then, horror of horrors, to Piccadilly Circus. They’ve all gone to the loo and had coffee by this stage. I’m trying to be the unnoticeable robot driver but there’s two problems. 1 : My charging cable died without my notice last night and so my phone took no charge. It has run out completely and they’ll need to communicate with me about pick-up. 2: I’m desperate for the loo, I haven’t stopped for hours, and I’m in Piccadilly Circus. The roads round here are tiny and filled with vans. There is no parking.

After they get out, I end up in an expensive NCP on Poland Street or thereabouts, and I run out to buy a charging cable. Back to the car to put some charge in and find they’ve gone on lunch. Breathe out. And relax.

I like this work but I’d forgotten. Driving through London with time pressure is no fun. When I finally stopped for the first time at about 13.30 my legs were jittering and my left calf was stretched from clutch action. I had just driven 5 hours non stop in a completely unfamiliar car. Traffic was BAD in London today. Unfamiliarly so. Still, we got it done and back to base with 22 miles left on the fuel range. They got out the door and I got myself to the garage and filled up. Then straight to Kensington Town Hall to sort a residents permit, and fuck me if they don’t make it as hard as they possibly can even though I’ve got a load of these permits in my account history and incontrovertibly live in the borough. Sorted though and it’ll save a fortune in parking charges. Back to the hotel to check on what they need. Just staff. Home.

I’m ready for tomorrow now. New charging cable, full tank of gas and I’ve had enough time with the car now to switch off the fucking child locks and patch my phone in too. Not enough yet to switch off the oversensitive radar or work out how to set the Aircon properly but all things in their right time.

Off to bed now as it’s another likely to be another long one tomorrow. I think with time I’ll grow to love my little Nissan… I just need some alone-time. And the chance for a loo break.