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It’s pretty chill here with the gulls and the cat.

Mum was a sixties girl. She adored Richard Bach. When we lived in Jersey we had a seagull that lived on the roof. It nested there. Mum used to throw all the food waste out onto the balcony in the kitchen. Yes there was a balcony in the kitchen. Local small birds would come, but largely “Jonathan Livingstone Seagull” would wallop around and help himself.

Seagulls are no slouches. Big birds often have better brains than we want them to. Crows are a good point in case. But even if gulls are entirely motivated by their stomach – (crows like to play) – they can still learn patterns. My grandmother had a knock that she would use so mum and dad knew it was her not the postman. She would come every day. The seagull learnt the knock. I kid you not. Jonathan would knock my grandmother’s knock on the skylight, and one of us would run downstairs to let her in and she wasn’t there. Then we would work it out and shout “Muuuum, Jonathan is hungry!” And if there were kitchen scraps, they went to him. “There’s a bowl by the aga!” Before I was ten I was throwing fat to the birds, often recognisably the fat I had rejected with my dinner. Fussy kid, I was. Unbelievably fussy. Something shifted in early adulthood and I went from eating about three things only to being a proper omnivore. But my leavings went into that balcony for the sparrows (they still existed back then) and for flollopy Jonathan.

This morning at about half five Tessy came and jumped on me. At about six I started to hear a seagull beak on the skylight. No pattern but a very pointed noise. At about quarter to seven I decided to get up and turn Tessy’s food around for her. She had left some uneaten. Normally I just chuck it and replenish but that seagull knows Lou and is clearly both expectant and hungry. It’s not fair to throw unwanted cat food out when there is a hungry seagull upstairs. Better to a hungry animal than to landfill. We could all manage our waste infinitely better.

So the animals were all fed. I love that Lou takes care of the local gulls. They can be territorial and bullies but they’re just birds, with all that bird stuff. Attitude. Opportunism. Greed. Like pelicans, they’ll eat pigeons if they can. We are all more like birds than we think.

I’ll keep feeding that gull. When I opened the skylight he was right on me. If I had died in that moment he’d already be halfway through eating me. That’s the way of it though. As soon as our immune system stops we get eaten from the inside by the things that live in us.

It’s half nine. The seagulls are chuckling on the roof and calling in the sky, taking each other home to roost as the sky is darkening. And I love it. It’s still light. It’s night. This is my favourite time of year, when I can usually go out in a T-shirt, when everyone wants to be outside.

We are by the sea so occasional squalls are a hazard but not a dealbreaker. In order to perform my duties properly, I must be relaxed and regular in the vicinity of a sensitive cat. She had her meds in the morning, we hung out together, a bit of late afternoon play, evening dinner and she might get a tiny bit of overnight biscuits although she was good this morning and didn’t get me up with the dawn.

I am looking towards my burgeoning haulage empire, having finally been paid for my Newcastle haul. A big old whack, even if most of it goes directly to staff. Still, nice to be a hub where money moves around. I’ll be able to pay myself back for the tip weight now. Which is excellent news.

Breakfast this morning at Cafe Rust, a treat, not an every day thing. I’m just happy to be in a peaceful place where I can learn my lines for the next little job. I learnt Gratiano here in a day so there’s precedent. Fluellen is prose though damn him, look you.

And at this rate I’ll be asleep before the sky is dark. Ahhh summer. I’ve been waiting for you. A quiet few days by the seaside, learning and plotting. I might have a job in Berlin coming in… Let’s see. For now I’ll just relax while I can.

Tessy is still getting used to me, but she likes it when I stroke her belly. That’s basically my job. Anything else and she’ll cut me.

‘appen I’m by the seaside again.

I didn’t really anticipate this, you know what I’m like with planning. Suddenly this morning I had to pack a bag for a week. Cat must be sat. I knew about this in plenty of time but somehow only packed this morning. I had this nice tape come in that’s bang on the money for me. It took all my thinking. I wanted to give it the time it needed. I sent a copy of the finished product to Minnie as she and Rhys provided the other roles as an audio track that I then edited for time. You lose the immediacy of a live actor if you’re working to a track, but actually you gain a huge amount. The reader will be an actor and will therefore send a smart line reading, and if there are interpretation options they might well record a few takes. Then you can edit the pauses. I’ve got it all sorted now. It’s fluent. iPad for sound. Lights for lights. Phone to record on selfie mode so I can monitor as I work. Twisted Wave on iPad to edit pauses and eventually live play the recorded voices – I tend to hold my iPad in one hand unless the shot needs both my hands. If you play the other characters through the recording device they might be louder than you. YouCut to edit.

Gone are the days where I had to fly back from Portugal early in order to do a commercial casting. And then the times when there were two castings in a day across town and the first one for FORCEFACE SPIKED CONDOMS is running late and you aren’t sure you want to be the face of spiked condoms really anyway and it’ll take you an hour to get to the theatre casting across town and if you don’t go in and say “Spongle spingle plop!” to camera with your serious face well and truly on, then the casting director will be pissed off with you, but if you stay then you’ll bruise the other job which is the career job and thus, really, the only one that matters in the final analysis.

I improvised a cunning studio with this tiny background I had ordered online. It needed to be in exactly the right place as it was so tiny that it could only just frame the shot. I tried to run with it, I gaffered a spoon to a fork and jammed the fork into a screw in the wall. Then I attached two riding crops gaffered together through a small hole below the straps of the background. I made it work, wondered if I was insane or a genius. Then after the very first take the whole thing collapsed when the screw got pulled out by gravity so I took a picture off the wall and did it against a slightly less clean background. Still looked great. My new LED lights are very handy, even if natural light is always better. I recorded this morning and it was grey so they helped. It’s a whole new world but there’s a joy in it. Karaoke self tapes … I got to act with Minnie, obliquely. I learnt it, I always do, but it can be consuming. I’ve got friends who swear by autocue, but I’m not getting enough auditions yet to make it necessary. Would be great if I was, eh?

Up early today and I haven’t done one of these power workshops since February. It’s a school in Brixton. I got there at 8am with my energetic armour on. I’ve had some hard ones in this area.

Turns out I was lucky. Year ten is not an easy age. The material I’m delivering is dry as a bone now. It used to be better, but now every inch of joy has been sucked from it by committees. I find myself in the room narrating my own process “They want me to read this, but actually let’s just see if you guys can guess based on the pictures…” “Oh and it’s this video now, someone was paid to make this video. Let’s see if the sound works.” They’ve improved the videos thank God, that’s one thing. There’s no coming back from playing year ten a video of a middle aged man in a hard hat who speaks like he’s inhaling frogs and starts every fantastically dull sentence with “and the interesting thing is…” I’m glad he’s gone.

I solved it with energy, my own energy, talking about energy. I spammed positivity at them and weirdly it stuck. I remember one time a few years ago I just said the word “power” about ten times in different ways until they all went quiet cos they thought I had had an aneurysm. That was a good workshop. Some of them started saying power back. Eventually they all did. They all said the word “power” a lot by the end of that workshop that time and it settled a very hard room. It isn’t the sort of trick you can often pull, but it worked in that particular dynamic thank God. I’ll likely never try it again. But… it’s a workshop about power. Their own power, electrical power, speaking truth to power. It got really sparky today again. I started to get some bold responses. I think in two hours they might have started thinking a bit more practically about energy, the world of work, the fact that life is coming sooner than they want it and they might be able to grab a lifeline when they can. And make some dolla!! Teacher took my number cos she wants me to come talk to the drama students about sustaining a career. Tough gig, and frankly I don’t want to charge the school what I’m worth so it’ll never happen.

My voice and my head were both absolutely overloaded by 11am. It’s almost Shakespearean when you are making up for dull material.

I have an audition due at ten tomorrow, a tape but one that makes sense for me. I was gonna do it today but it’s not in my head properly plus my voice is tired. I want my upper register for this tape. More and more these days my habit has been to wake up at crack of dawn and do a morning audition, get it in for ten. That’s the plan tomorrow. I’m trying to wind down already. Waiting for Tom B who is staying over so I can negotiate if he’s okay with an early start. I’m getting better at these tapes. But they still cost. I think the learning is in, I’ll drill it a few more times and then let sleep calibrate my brain.

Power. It’s an interesting word to say. Say it. Build it into your day. Full moon tonight. Power. Powah.

This new version of The Master Builder references The Fountainhead in its first sentence, and again a few times after. It’s a play about an architect referencing a huge culturally influential book about an architect. I guess if you’re going to modernise an Ibsen play about an architect, you have to look at one of the biggest popular culture shifts around the business of building. Howard Roark. Individualism. Ayn Rand. Chaotic Neutral D&D alignment – a very hard person to categorise as she led a movement until people realised she was leading a movement and was female at which point all her little Howard Roarks joined everyone who already hated her to demonise her and throw up the likes of Jordan Peterson instead.

I absolutely consumed The Fountainhead as a teenager, it’s a teenage boys wet dream. There’s nothing in it about kindness or community, it’s about the great thrusting I AM. I can see why it needed to be put at the heart of this Ibsen rework.

I love an old building. If the building is still standing and beautiful why knock it down and put a new one up?

But the theatre was packed. It was packed with Star Wars fans and the like. Afterwards it was absurd, to witness this breathing mess of people who wanted to get a photo with or a scribble from the mister famous person.

This was a beautifully directed piece of theatre, brilliantly held by excellent actors. It didn’t need to be modernised but I guess the crowd might have been perplexed if it hadn’t been. The change from “The Master Builder” to “My Master Builder” perhaps betrayed an authorial intention to make it all about the Ewan part, whereas in the original it is ambiguous – who is the master builder really? The one who builds buildings? The one who builds a social situation to fit their needs? The one who builds a career despite every possible negative influence?

It’s a dark piece about how we lie to ourselves and others, a warning about why we should never outsource our happiness. It’s an incredible account of a great play. I did enjoy the modernising, and the references. But I couldn’t find the edge. Ambiguity is all very well but I didn’t have enough to hook things on so at the end it was just like “oh he’s badly hurt” but it’s the end of a play, it comes out of nowhere and why have we sat here and watched this story if there’s no conclusion? Nora’s door slam was heard across the whole world. Ibsen, that’s the thing about him, he lets his people talk, but then he punctuates the ending.

The architect part was given enough unexamined misogyny to make him unsympathetic but it was all slightly at odds with the emotionally responsive character we watched when they weren’t saying the chosen awkward things. The ingenue was wonderful and empathetic and powerful and it is good to see an actress hold her height when surrounded by wee ones – shypokey head and hands is the end of so many gorgeous tall actresses. She really held her territory and shone for it. The master manipulator knows what she’s gonna say and how it’s gonna go down. She was certain and delicious and occasionally showed a great heart.

It was strange to see them leaving the theatre to a sea of Johnnies. Lou came out before Ewan so I didn’t see what would have descended on the poor fucker when he got out. If I was him I’d rig a deathslide to a building opposite. If he tries to be willing every night, he won’t get home until next week.

I had a great night at the theatre.

A quiet day today. Very quiet. With Lou in Brighton and Brian and Maddy in the air coming back, I decided it was about the only time I could binge the whole season 4 of Clarkson’s Farm without someone asking me why I was watching that crap. I find it compelling, the whole business of an enthusiastic ADHD clueless well meaning celebrity trying to manage a farm. Plus I understand the whole crazy ideation thing, and the split focus. It’s comforting to watch the successes and the failures. It’s getting me better at planning, just as that’s where it always collapses.

In the evening I thought it would be nice to go get Brian and Maddy from Heathrow. They got in from LA about twenty past eight. I banged up there in Bergie, left as soon as they landed, got into the short stay car park just as they came through security. If there are checked bags I normally beat people, but Brian and Maddy know how to travel. Honestly, if I am not dependent on other people I usually just pack hand luggage. Got dad’s voice in my head, showing me the wee bag he travelled round the world in. It’s actually a pretty good way of doing it, so long as you’re either Camino efficient with laundry, or happy to lose half a day on a shopping street once a week buying new shirts and pants etc.

I am glad of my peaceable day with the cats. Now we are back to the carnage of computer games on telly and VR. I’m in bed with a comic and I’m gonna just go to sleep and see how things go tomorrow. They’ll be up for ages. It’s eight hours behind over there, I find it much harder to get back on track returning than I do going out.

My head is swimming with words for a tape and other delights to come. This month is about to get busy busy. Last night was a hard sleep, if you know what I mean. My dreams were tense, I woke up wired. Misty perhaps was helping by rasping that cat-tongue over my face at 4am. I almost put her out of the room when she decided she would lick my bald patch.

Jigging all over the place right now. I found a place in Herne Bay where I wouldn’t be on top of everyone. My previous sleep was shite just as it was like staying in someone’s spare room, but the daughter had moved back in and hated the fact I was there so the whole thing was awkward where all I needed was a discreet place to sleep. Plus I had to check out by half seven.

This morning I had a lie in and then I took a load of cables to Whitstable Metals Ltd. “We call these pluggie cables,” he told me. Didn’t get the best deal by weight but he knows and I know that they aren’t great big fucking cables. He tells me how they’ll be broken down. I also gave him some old appliances  that pretty much certainly have interesting metals in the circuits. Some of them had great big coils of copper built into them. He absolutely gashed me on those. I’d have been better tearing them apart by hand before going in and working out what was what. But… this is business, I’m still piecing it together, it’s like the dump fucking me even though I’d sorted the wood, just as they knew I didn’t have an alternative option and I was under time pressure. “Ah sorry mate we can’t take that wood as wood it has to be general,” for two loads, where given time and space I could’ve sold much of it. I didn’t have dickhead charging £650 a day this time so I was able to try and get what things are worth.

I didn’t want to drive around all over the place looking for a slightly better scrap deal generally so I let the scrap metal guy take those big old circuits for his lowest rate as then they were gone. I’m just trying to move things on right now. Better by far to him, he’s a decent guy and clear about things. If I can find an old book dealer half as efficient and straightforward as he is I’ll be a happy man. I’m cutting back on the units but I’ve still got two – that needs to become one, and it can pretty quickly now. I’ve made my list. Until the list was made it was never about shifting things. Now the list is made it is ALL about shifting things.

I’m back with the cats. Had a good dinner, I’ve been chilling out. Not as early a bed as last night but working on it.

I ended up staying in Herne Bay. There’s a scrap metal dealer who I’m gonna take a load of cables to, just up the road from here. It felt a bit like progress and it’s a little bit too far from London for it to be an easy commute so I’m better off making use of my time down this way. More active time, fewer trips.

I booked into a guesthouse today. Yesterday I was in someone’s house and their 22 year old daughter is living there again and doesn’t like that mummy has paying guests. It was all a little bit fraught. I didn’t feel I could relax, particularly as the hostess doesn’t like her guests being home alone. It was literally a stranger’s spare room and I had to be out by 7:30am. So I drove over to the storage unit, parked in the shade, and began to soundproof my car interior. I set up this pink condenser mic that looks like a penis – fuck knows where all my decent kit has gone, I ordered this one in Amazon yesterday. Had to record a test for a videogame baddie. I like the script, it reminds me of intro sequences to games I loved growing up. I wanted to get some sort of decent sound environment patched together. A car is a reasonable booth, but my position in the shade was unusual to people passing by so I lost a surprising amount of time to people being dicks after they saw me parked weirdly and sitting in the back with a pink mic. Kent. It’s a timewarp. Everybody is over sixty, even if they’re thirty. “That guy in his car must be an instagrasshole porn pervert, probably foreign. I’m gonna put my radio on and bang around. That’ll show him.”

It’s not ten yet and I’m in bed and if I didn’t write this every day I would already be asleep. Early ejection and then I poured energy into that tape. Then cataloguing and carrying. Now it’s time to start sending things back out into the world. First though, sleep. Man. I’m done for the day. Early start listening to the kid moaning about me being there pitched for me to hear. Hmpf

Night night. The seagulls are all making their bedtime noises. The last of the light is fading.

I’ve got a plaster on my thumb from an incident with a potato peeler. Lou boiled up some tatties veg and mackerel for her lunch, and I melted up a fuckton of reblochon and poured it on top of my portion, cos… if you’ve got good ingredients then know the right time and how to use them. I was excited for my lunch and perhaps a touch too enthusiastic with the peeler.

It’s not like I’m bleeding everywhere, but my last time in temporary accommodation down here near Canterbury there was washed out blood on the sheets. I’d sooner not cause my hostess that problem. So it’s covered.

I’ll have to leave by 7:30. This is what comes of booking private accommodation instead of a hotel. She goes to work, and she doesn’t want anyone in her house when she’s not there. I get it perhaps. But I’ve stayed in quite incredible houses – ones in Spain, California and France spring to mind – where the host has been away but there’s been a way to get in. I’ve ghosted through these properties filled with valuables, felt lucky, left no trace. The booking website and your profile on it is usually enough to stop the host worrying someone will nick their … i dunno … Plates? Pictures? Silver plate cutlery? Bananas? Generally, your stuff isn’t worth even a fraction of what you think it is worth. Shops lie. Grannies exaggerate. But… This host is very boundaried and she’s located exactly where I need to be for tomorrow plus she’s very cheap so … fuck it this is tonight. 18 more Euro Crates to inventory tomorrow. Game on.

I went to Korean Cowgirl Barbeque tonight and ate meat. It was good. It was meat. I had a glass of organic rioja that was excellent even if I had to send the first one back as it was stale. Now I’m lying here upstairs and very happy just to have a bed near where I’ll be working for myself tomorrow. I’ll definitely finish the cataloguing tomorrow. Then I can start to move things on. Need any cables? Lavverley.

Silk Street. With Minnie.

In a previous millennium, I walked through a door in this complex. I began the process of training that gave me the skills and the perspective that I have now, and the friends. Minnie is one such friend.

I used to walk in to Drama School every day from Mansion House tube. I’d go through the deserted high walks. I’d stop and talk to the sculpture of the muse. It felt like we always had alone time, that sculpture and I. I shared my hopes and dreams with it. I projected onto it. Guildhall.

In the same building, just a bit down, there’s a great big cinema. Orlando Bloom, one of the stars, says in the Q&A “I trained just next door,” and Minnie and I both momentarily get very emotional that he’s keyed that specific geography. That training, those teachers… You can only really know a golden age in retrospect. We were so lucky to have met and worked with those people, a shared experience. That building isn’t really used anymore. The staff is different. Still wonderful. But there are crucial pieces missing from the puzzle now.

SXSW London tonight though with all the glitz and the glam and I’m there with Min and she was with me plus one when Bright Young Things opened in flipping 2002. How many years? Friendship is friendship.

I’m so happy she showed up for tonight and honestly, all I needed to do is tell her the premise of the movie and she was curious. Improv comedians are seriously recruited as spies. (I think she really came to support me though! Love her.)

It’s s great movie. It’s genuinely hilarious. It’s exactly what I like to see. I’m kinda gobsmacked that I’m in it, right at the start and right at the end. I’m playing an eejit. Thankfully I know that life role intimately. There’s a satisfaction in knowing that you did a good job in a good thing. This is a good thing. And I’m happy with my work.

It was good to talk to the muse again, up on the high walks, before and after. My walk to the college was always somewhat talismanic. I knew I would still be working still be playing still still still after time time time and one of my only moments of rage back then was when the potential major agent said “you seem to me like a long term slow burn type actor,” to which I said “Yep, I’m here for that, let’s go” to which they said “But life is long. Who knows where you might go. You have many other things you could do.” … I said “I think you underestimate how stubborn I am,” and they said “I don’t think you know how many times we’ve had this conversation.” They had met a load of fucking daytrippers and they mistook me for one. Ach. So be it.

I found Esta. Wish I’d found her sooner. But here we are. And there is a great film that I’ve touched. It exists. We are go. Release on the Twelfth I think on Amazon Prime. Boom. Deep Cover. Bryce Dallas-Howard, Orlando and Nick Mohammed. It’s a fucking delight. A tightly written British comedy flick. It’s a win.