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“Oh look, it’s Stonehenge.”

One of our most ancient and internationally famous monuments bears about as much notice as a horse when you’re on a mission to get somewhere, but it’s nice how you get to catch it from the road.

A singer that I barely know is driving me to Yeovil. Enterprise have brought her a white jaguar. She hates it. She wants an SUV or a mini. “Get me behind that wheel,” I’m thinking. I don’t think I want this car for my own. It’s too generic, too low, too boring. But the engine kicks like a mule, and you barely feel it cornering, and I want to drive it.

Although to be frank I couldn’t drive to Yeovil after the day I’ve just had. I’m knackered. Droopy eyed.

“We’re getting too old for this shit,” was the quote from earlier in the day, out of Tristan. We were we in Bishop’s Stortford back then, pushing massive flats into a hot warehouse to be mothballed like The Arc of the Covenant at the end of “Raiders”.

It feels like forever ago now, as the sunset burns sharp behind Stonehenge and the new driver curses her fast car.

In my plastic Tesco “overnight” bag I have the following: A toothbrush and toothpaste from Poundstretcher’s in Kentish Town. Two items. £2.39. “Stretching”. Two pairs of psychedelic pink pants and three pairs of socks – all the cheapest option in TK Maxx. Rachel’s father’s ratchet strap, which I didn’t exactly steal – extremely helpful on the van job it has been too. How kind of him to lend it to me. It has to come to Yeovil though as I had to meet the car in fecking Bromley and barely had time to get there after returning the Luton in Kentish Town. A spare shirt! Hooray. I won’t stink for tomorrow, and the day after there’s a bottle of Tom Ford that I bought at duty free on the way back from somewhere and lost almost immediately. I’d left it at Tristan and Tanya’s. Glad it showed up. Explains why Tristan smelt so familiar the other day. And a mobile phone charger. That’s it. I didn’t realise I would be going away for two nights. I hadn’t been checking my diary, which is the external harddrive for my brain where I keep all the practical stuff. And pictures of animals.

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Today started so calmly. Me on my back, Pickle on my stomach, checking emails together to discover that the one I’ve been waiting for has landed. Then suddenly my French voisin and a man called Daryl are panicking loudly at my door and Anna comes into my room to tell me.

Daryl is an engineer. He’s locked everybody inside the block including himself, trying to fix the entryphone. The binman is waiting outside. He cannot understand why my French neighbour won’t give him her keys to pass to the binman through the letterbox. I can understand. He’s a man I’ve never met before in a boiler suit with visible panic energy, coming to your flat door at 8am saying “I need you to give me keys to give to the binman through the letterbox now quickly he won’t wait for long hurry up why are you looking at me like that?”

She’s worried he’s some kind of scammer. I reckon he’s legit so I follow him down with keys but the binman has got bored and left. He’s pissed off about it. “People are going to be leaving for work soon,” he tells me accusingly, as if I’m the one in a branded boilersuit that fucked the lock while the door was shut.

We shout at people through the letterbox a little while. Eventually someone accepts the key through the letterbox and opens it from the outside. He immediately takes the lock off entirely and fucks off. I shrug and go to work. Got a laptop to deliver, a van to unload and then I’ve got to be driven to Somerset by someone that hates their car… All in a day’s work. Early start tomorrow. Night night…

With my rented van sleeping behind me, filled with the Rotterdam set, I’m lying on my bed waiting for the bath to run, listening to the traffic through the open window, and far below me I can hear the tinnitus shriek of the overloaded entryphone system in my block. It has been like that for months. Nobody knows what to do.

I stink.

When I was clearing out the attic the other day I found a great big electric fan. It must’ve been mum’s. It’s 1980’s style. I’ve been running it all day in the living room while we worked, although Pickle isn’t used to it yet. She would occasionally come and glare at it, but avoids it for preference.

Today was one of those rare summer days where you are glad to have a fan. It’ll go back up in the attic before long, but now I know what’s in the attic I’ll be able to get it next summer for the day or two that it makes a difference. Unless Pickle attacks and destroys it, which I’m not ruling out the way she was sizing it up.

Tristan came round armed with kneepads, a breath mask and industrial gloves. Together we put large amounts of stuff into multiple boxes and threw them up into the attic. Then we got enough plates to run Christmas Carol for about 1000 people – or anything else vaguely Victorian themed for that matter – and we got them out of the flat. Finally.

I had to run a load of boxes to the Gatsby storage and left Tristan working. I realised that over the years I’ve done a lot of strange things for money, but my heart and soul aren’t in it if I’m not being paid properly. So I’m paying Tristan what I’d want to be paid myself for that kind of work in order to make it good for both of us. He’s been a great help, especially as I’d have lost ages driving to Gatsby and back had he not been beavering away at home. He even roped in Anna, who is staying on the sofa a few days. She ended up helping take some almost impossibly heavy boxes full of plates down the stairs and out of the flat.

Then we had a vindaloo – stock image.

On this hot day. I told Brian this morning that I’ve never had one. It was a gap in my knowledge. I tend to avoid them as it sounds like they’re endurance curries and I usually prefer to enjoy my food. But I hate not knowing, so the opportunity came up and I took it.

I won’t say never again. Maybe on a cold day when I feel a bit under the weather and really want a damn good sweat. But after hauling boxes up and down stairs and precarious ladders on a hot day it was ill advised. I’m slippy like a newt.

I was sweating through my ears. I was weeping but I didn’t want to wipe my eyes in case I blinded myself. Now I’m waiting for a hot bath to run so I can lie in it and sweat a different sweat. Glutton for punishment. At least it’s all good for my skin. And I’ll come out clean, ready for another hot day of labour tomorrow and then two nights in a fecking Travelodge.

 

I’m in the green room at The Oxford Playhouse, wondering where I should sleep tonight. There’ll be five people sleeping in the flat in London. I probably won’t finish work until 2am considering it’s 10.30pm and I haven’t started yet. I’m already tired and it might be nice to wake up in Oxford, even if I’ll be doing quite a lot of that in July. But where to sleep? Can I bear a Travelodge?

They’re striking the Rotterdam set upstairs, but they’ve done it loads of times before. This time it’s uncertain when and where it’ll be used again as the tour is over, so I’ll be taking it to a warehouse on an estate near Bishop’s Stortford on Monday. This means that I don’t HAVE to go home tonight, although there’s much to tidy and put in the loft. My absence tonight though – it might make the bedroom situation a little less insane at home. Perhaps someone can crash in my bed if they’re brave enough. The sheets are clean, but getting to them involves an assault course so extreme and complicated that people who work in offices pay good money to do it on the weekend for teambuilding.

I used the opportunity to take some mental snapshots of the route from London to Oxford, so it’ll be as easy and safe as possible when I’m missioning up on the bike every day. There’s “only half an hour left Waitrose,” “slow down or you’ll miss the turn-off truckstop”… It’s good to have route markers, even if I’ve never been very good at naming things… It’s why I usually just title this blog with one or two words. “House Style”.

I hope it all fits in the van. I think it will. It’s one of the banging great Lutons from H&H. The Vandroid wasn’t there this morning so I got a much quicker check-in experience.

Meanwhile, across town, the battered old Jag was experiencing its penultimate reckoning. I tried with the poor thing. I dropped it off at Collier Street Garage. They’re a family business in Kent. I rang a lot of places before I felt good about one. They seemed to know jaguars and not be money-grubbing evil scrubs. They have plenty of work so said it would take a while which suited me well too as I didn’t really want the thing back until November. But they rang to say it’s not worth saving. The cost in parts and labour for an unsatisfying fix would be more than the price of one in good nick with an MOT. What to do?

It helps to have friends who do unusual things. Lyndon bought it off me for a photo shoot. Today I think it’s going to have white paint thrown all over it and then a model is going to lay about it with a sledgehammer. Then it’ll get towed off to the big scary crane, and turned into a cube of metal. Sic Transit Gloria Mundi.

I’ll likely keep paying the last two months of insurance as I’ll be wanting to extend my “no-claims”. I rarely if ever can afford to have a car for a whole year so I’ve only picked up two years of NCD in 16 years of driving. It’s chicken and egg, since the major reason I can’t keep cars is the £200 a month insurance premium. But three years NCD might help make my planned eco-van cheaper when I look into buying it in January. We will see.

Just off Trafalgar Square, near the stage door of Theatre Royal Haymarket where they’re showing the “Only Fools and Horses” cash-cow musical there’s a vast and well appointed building full of high ceilings and marble and artworks. Well – truth be told there are thousands of buildings that could fit that description, and most of the rooms in most of them are empty most of the time. But this one is used. This is a busy building. I’ve been through it a fair few times, mostly for disappointing auditions but periodically for the flipside, as last time. Sometimes, apparently, things are allowed to go well. That’s been the pattern recently, and long may it continue.

I’ve been at the London base of The University of Notre Dame. The Fighting Irish. A Catholic university, renowned for what the Americans call “football”. “Go Irish!” I will be out there in autumn, among the chipmunks at the campus in South Bend, about to kick into a tour that will fly me all over the place in that vast populous continent. Off the top of my head, there’s Indiana, Texas, Massachusetts, California, Maryland and Colorado involved. I’ll finish in Colorado Springs in November and then I’ll probably try to get wheels and go on a great American roadtrip for a fortnight, out west, see the sights. But first I’ve got to do two Shakespeare plays for two different companies.

Today, five cast members met with the two actors who had cast the five of us. We went on a walk and had a shedload of photographs taken of us up against London landmarks. They’ll be sent to America ahead of us to bolster the public relations and garner audiences. The company has existed for 45 years now and it’s running in a well smoothed groove. I’m excited to get to see the production lot out in Indiana again. I’m sad though, as the last time we came out we had Ryan helping us out. Beautiful kind Ryan. “Guys, you’re forgetting I’m here. You keep saying you need to go to the shop and buy this and that. Gimme a list!” He passed away, his kindness and self sacrifice lost to future companies. I only just realised I wouldn’t be seeing him as I started to think about who I was looking forward to seeing. Life can be unutterably arbitrary.

In late July we will be locked in a room together in Brixton for a few weeks, and the hope is that we will emerge blinking into the light with a tight version of Twelfth Night, performed and created by the five of us with no director, working out all the tech and costume and props ourselves, and making sure that everything we need in order to run the show can fit into a single suitcase. After today’s read-through I’m confident that it’s going to be good. But fuck, it’s going to be a hell of a lot of work. I’m absolutely bricking it about the two week overlap with rehearsals in London and evening shows in Oxford. But even without that added pressure it’s a huge amount of work to get it right, particularly considering how much of my major part (Belch) is in prose. Hard as heck to learn Shakespearean prose. But I’ll be in excellent company.

Here’s a sketched distant photo of a posed photo of the five of us at the start of a journey that will teach us a great deal about one another. I deliberately haven’t cropped it for context. HERE COMES SUMMER.

Although we don’t start rehearsal for weeks yet…

I’m at the bar at The Swan after work waiting and I hit a casual conversation. I tell him I’ve been working an event. Turns out he’s a director upstairs or somesuch based on how people were talking to him. He is endowed with importance. I probably should recognise him but I don’t. He’s rightheaded though, and seems kind. I like him.

“Do you work for The Globe?” He asks. “No,” I respond, thankfully, because I haven’t realised that the question is loaded. “Technically I don’t. I work for The Swan. That’s the corporate wing.” I often say I work for The Globe on this blog, because I do as far as I’m concerned – the money goes into that remarkable building – but there is an enforced separation. We aren’t allowed to wear Shakespearean costume lest we be mistaken for “real” actors. I can see the (bad) thinking that gave rise to this, even if it pisses me off when I think about it.

Dinner entertainment rarely if ever aligns with deep integrity, frankly. I did a musical recently that was rehearsed carefully and diligently for weeks, ahead of a one night performance at a huge charity dinner. The diners drowned the whole damn thing out by behaving like someone had left the telly on while they were having the annual family shout-off. Thankfully the actors were diligent and confident enough, and well enough prepared, to continue to work hard for the three people who appreciated the depth of their work. But the whole of the creative team was upset afterwards.

I often frame dinner entertainment as deliberately broad and bawdy. If you satisfy the groundlings “who for the most part are incapable of anything other than inexplicable dumbshow and noise” that they will understand it and be entertained they will be less inclined to disrupt the quieter and more landed moments when you choose to make them.

We forget that Shakespeare wrote as much for the pit as he did for his sponsors. But it’s what made him endure. Marlowe wrote beautifully for the nobs. Jonson wrote glory for the pit. Will did both, with confidence and wit. He managed to balance the knife and write for the bigwigs as well as the bogwags. The work we do downstairs at The Globe for dinners – it errs on the side of pit. But we’ve arrived at it over years of experimentation and when people are drunk at a party and think they hate Shakespeare, delicacy is only going to be mistaken for self-importance. We are still refining, experimenting and changing. I rarely if ever do the same collection of material – we tailor to the client. Like everything I do, I want very much to try to do it brilliantly…

This evening the client met me before the event. “We normally pay a traditional toastmaster, but you came as part of the package so we thought we’d try it. “You’ve done well. I’m a toastmaster,” I tell them. Because I might as well be with the experience I’ve had on the job, especially considering some of the mumbly sweaty old gits I’ve witnessed over the years. I think there’s a formal place, like Mensa, where you pay to say you’re a Toastmaster, and get a newsletter. I’m leery of it. Mensa is the most wonderful example of self-negation. “Congratulations. You’re intelligent. Pay a monthly fee into this bank account and we will put you on the intelligent list and send you stuff occasionally that tells you how clever you are, well done.” It’s like the last part of the IQ test. Sign up and you might as well not have taken the test in the first place.

My duties tonight were the deep formal kind. Old school trad stuff. Fascinating and a delight to dip into. Next time I’ll do it even better but I did it well. Introducing all of the guests by name so the important people can welcome them without awkwardness. Knowing their title without them telling me from a brief and adding it. (I got them all but one. The OBE came through in a very busy patch. The MBE was momentarily gobsmacked.) But you know the voice. “Mermuna merma, MBE, splurbithets.” There were hundreds of them. “See if you can sneak through some celebrity names without them noticing,” says the President of the company. He’s enjoying himself. Some of them hit me with “Mike Hunt” and “Ivor Bigwan” etc. It’s fun pretending I’m negotiating rapids, lingering on that “H” in “Hunt” or loading the emphasis on the “wan”. Like I might dissolve if I inadvertently say something rude.

It’s a long event and I’m rarely off duty. If I’m not acting with the other actors I’m actively running logistics and informing people what’s going to happen and keeping abreast of timings. I even end up reassuring the big boss who is nervous before his big speech. “This is what they’ve come for!” “You’re very nice to say it.” I’m introducing the speakers, praying I can remember the name of their company correctly as, if I can’t, I’m the only one in the room. I’m even making up bits of Shakespearealike to bring them in. “Kind follows kind, and greatness after greatness” I find myself saying with absolute certainty before one of the speakers. It’s from The Merry King of Tyre, Act 2 Scene 3. “What an introduction,” he says to me afterwards. Lol.

I do a “Loyal Toast”. I get everybody upstanding and silent. Then I say “The Queen” and 300 people respond “The Queen.” My trousers have popped their button. As I stand there I feel the safety pin go too. They stay up, despite the brief opportunity for a perfect disaster of my trousers dropping as they toast the Queen

I use the silence and reverence to prompt them into giving to charity despite my trousers. They’ve all got envelopes. I hope they give generously. If they do I’ll make some money this time next year somewhere, and cancer patients will have a much better quality of life.

We do well. It’s a good event. I’ve got this down now, just in time to go off and be unavailable because I’m doing six months of acting. Still, with this and the van driving, the old “fallback” my parents were obsessing about is manifesting. Even if it isn’t quitting the acting entirely and becoming a barrister like they hoped…

 

 

 

Today was the last day for a while that I’ll be pretending to be a miniature golf professional practicing on a tiny circle of grass just outside Haberdasher’s Hall in Smithfield. It’s been a lovely way of ticking over on weekends for me, and a lovely company to work for. It’s a good idea and it works. It’s a treasure hunt in an incredible part of town, employing lots of people and using them very creatively.

People buy a ticket to an unusual experience, normally on a Saturday, at the very heart of this ancient city. (Today was an exception as we were doing a private party.) They sort themselves into teams and walk the streets of London looking for clues. I have been part of the fabric of this beautiful thing. I have, essentially, been a human clue. I’ve never played the game so I have no idea if what I’m doing is in keeping with the other human clues, but the guys who have overarching vision on this trust the thing they’ve made, and trust their actors.

I’m off now, but it’s a jobshare anyway so we can go and do other work. Just because I’m off to Oxford and elsewhere doesn’t mean you can’t come and play the game. And typically for me I’m telling you about the job only when it’s too late to see ME do it. The job will still run though.

It’s called Dead Man’s Hand. Book here. I know I’d enjoy playing it.

They’ve really thought about it. It’s a deep game with many layers of which my interaction is but a crust.

From what I’ve gleaned it’s a tale of murder and gambling. But I know virtually nothing about the audience experience apart from my bit, where they almost always seem to be having a lovely time.

The teams explore a truly ancient part of town searching for clues. In the process they find all sorts of unusual hidden secrets. They also meet a few pretendy humans like me, who make them do stuff. I make them play mini golf, but I also just … play with them for a bit. There’s a WhatsApp group where we all track numbers and logistics. Most of us have never met one another, but we are all enjoying and sharing the utterly random nature of the interactions we are having. The company – A Door in a Wall – have managed to find and gainfully employ lots of playful people like myself, who then just listen to the people that come through and work out how best to play with them and make them enjoy themselves. We have clues to give out. I give my clues out as a reward when I see they’ve had fun. It’s heartening, after many weeks having done this, to know for certain that there’s almost always a way to jink someone into a childish place. Even if – as they once did – they open with something hideous like “You’re an actor and you have some clues for us. We want them.” Needless to say that team had to complete a large number of very difficult miniature golf challenges, and ended up laughing like children. As the gatekeeper I can do what I think is needed, and my job is to make it fun if I can. My only deep brief is to keep the interaction reasonably short, and don’t say things that sound like clues but aren’t as that way madness lies.

If you’re visiting London and have a weekend, this is an unusual way to see a historic bit of town that isn’t in the guide books, in a way that could never be replicated.

And it works even if it’s raining!

I only managed two hours sleep last night, on a sofa. I crashed to sleep when I started to notice my driving judgement was blurring. Better than the other crash option.

On the M25 yesterday I drove past an articulated lorry that was stationary in the middle lane. Despite being huge it had a low dent in it big enough to fit a quarter of a car. The impact had shattered the windscreen. The driver of this behemoth of a vehicle must have gone into the back of a queue of traffic. You must need quite a hit to shatter and puncture the windscreen on something that big. What was the driver doing? Hopefully not texting. I hope they didn’t kill anyone. It was an upsetting sight, not to mention the time it cost us.

As an experienced driver in control of a larger vehicle than usual, I called it last night as soon as I noticed I was knackered.

Technically I got four hours sleep but there’s a cat in the home I slept in that likes to lie on my face. She was either breathing into my mouth or trying to lick the skin off my arm all night. I was too tired and kind to hurl her across the room. So I got back in the van without decent rest but with a nuclear coffee from Tanya, which did the trick as I knew I could focus for the final 40 minutes. I got the van back in time to prevent a late return fee.

This beautiful summer morning prompted a walk down the Camden tow path after drop off.

I had time and inclination for breakfast with a dear friend in at Greenberry in Primrose Hill – highly recommended, particularly the vegetarian breakfast.

But the lack of sleep stacked up and I had to suddenly cut off.

I had a costume fitting and rehearsal in my flat this afternoon THAT I HAD ARRANGED and then a last minute gig this evening. I got home at 12:30, slept a desperate hour, and let a load of actors into The Antiques Roadshow whilst still feeling a long way off human.

We tried to remember very hard things to learn in the same room as one another, but thankfully I’ve got them hard wired. This was for Dan, who will likely be wearing my hat while I’m in Oxford and America.

That done I barely had time to wash, to drag some boxes out of Brian’s room, throw on a three piece and rush back out towards Edgware Road to do a show. Argh.

The Factory again. My happy place. Hardworking open hearted deeply skilled humans making theatre because it’s hard to do well. There was a Macbeth at The Cockpit Theatre. We were short-handed. I didn’t want to be free, but they put a call out. I love doing difficult things, so I threw myself in and ended up playing Banquo, Lady Macduff’s son and Menteith, which was a strange relief as I’ve done them all before.

We experimented with getting props from the audience to differentiate characters as we always work without costume. We may never do that game again but we were very short handed so it made sense and it was interesting. “Go to one person. Get three things. Use them in the order you get them.” I went to Mohammed. I was sent there by his mates, who were a solid bunch of lads. We were the only people in a three piece suit in the building, Mohammed and I. He and his mates were were there to have a good time in an unfamiliar context. My fave audients.

He gave me a fucked brolly first. Then a packet of cigarettes with a “Buy your own fucking lighter” lighter in it. Then a tiny tie pin in the shape of a sword.

So Banquo had a brolly and I thought I’d just use it and let it resolve. Foul and fair allows a brolly, a lot of the time Banquo was clearly just paranoid about rain, but umbrella indoors made for an unusually twitchy Banquo. It was only just as I was murdered that I noticed by speaking it that his penultimate line is “It will be rain tonight.” Old learn. I am glad I forgot. It surprised me and vindicated my persistence with a tricky prop.

Macduff’s little boy had cigarettes. “Your father’s dead,” says his mother. “And what will you do now? How will you live?” My mother, in the form of Jonno, gave the child his first cigarette. I remembered my mum doing that to me when I showed interest. Didn’t work for me but I clocked there was an agenda. I hated it but I somehow knew I was supposed to. I smoked for as good ten years. Now I hate the things again. Rebellion, eh?

Oh yeah and Menteith, who your aunt would describe to her friends as a “spear carrier” if you were doing it at the RSC. Mohammed had, perfectly, a tiny tiny sword which I didn’t ask for but he gave me. Nobody really knew about it but me as it was miniscule but it pleased me as the “spear carrier” to wield it.

I returned the stuff to Mohammed at the end of the show saying “Your stuff was brilliant, considering you had no idea. It gave so much. Thanks man. Perfect.” “You’d have been brilliant with anything.” He says, with concrete honesty. I literally wept a splash with pride when he wasn’t looking as I didn’t expect him to get us. And sometimes when you’re tired you can crash the juggernaut with a moment of bad focus. Good that it didn’t happen tonight.

What a lovely thing to have in my life, this group of very unusual hardworking makers. Long may The Factory continue to roll the stone.

We only usually announce shows three days in advance. There’s no guarantee anyone will be involved – there are many of us who play. This link sometimes has shows. And if you ask me I’ll usually know if I’ll be playing them. But I’m about to get busy…

It was far too early in the morning to have my card declined. I don’t have a plastic version of my one card with funds left in it. It exists only through my phone…

I’m at H&H van hire, in Kentish Town but they need more than the numbers and the CVV now I’m standing here. I heartily recommend them if you need a big van at short notice. They had a long wheel based Luton. The receptionist is lovely but his scrupulous efficiency really gets on my nerves. He’s too damn good at his job, so I keep instinctively poking him in the OCD and looking for his chaos because I feel the smile can’t be genuine. But maybe it is! He was unhelpful about the prospect of just taking my payment as if it was over the phone, but he was unexpectedly helpful as I looked for other solutions. Plus there’s free coffee while we wait. The solution came in the form of an employer friend who owes me some extremely overdue money. He put it on his credit card. Thank God for him. 9.30am and I’ve got wheels. Long day – HO!

My flat is between the van hire and Southampton so then it’s back down to pick up Tristan and load up with disgusting dusty crap from the attics. Then off to Southampton where they throw stones at you if you’re gay.

The temperature noticeably changes when we hit Southampton. It’s like we’ve suddenly gone through a time portal. Angry looking men walk out of one fishing tackle shop and cross the road to go into the one opposite. Angry looking young women talk animatedly on mobiles while pushing prams. Everybody seems to be conforming to gender stereotypes  – or is this my confirmation bias considering I’m at Gaystoner-500? We drive past a pub painted with a George’s cross on two sides.

Unless you’re Bulgarian, which seems somehow to be tolerated, you don’t want to break down in this area if you’re a bit swarthy looking and an artist. I feel a bit American Werewolf. I get a bit lost – oh God – and I pull into a quiet lane to work it out. Someone is immediately at my window. “Wherever you’re going it’s not down here,” is the opener, and not in a tone that’s designed to be helpful. It’s “Who the fuck are you, are you scoping us for robbery?” I respond instinctively in my Harrow accent using deliberately complex syntax and even guffawing at the end to my eternal shame, but it does the trick and I get the directions I need, swarthy or no swarthy. (Sorry, I used to get called “swarthy” when I worked hospitality. “You’re not from round here.” “Ascot, madam? No. I’m not. I grew up in Jersey.” “No that’s not what I mean.” “Oh. What do you mean then?” “Well where were your parents from?” …. etc … ending in the word “swarthy.”) And that’s ME, Poshyface Magoo, ten years ago too, before it was internationally government funded to be a poisonous bastard. My grandfather was an aristocratic Spaniard heavily decorated in the Royal Navy in WW2 and I’m fortunate enough to have inherited his olive skin. “Who was your father, with those dark eyes?” I was asked one November at Clapham Junction as part of an unprovoked harangue for not having a poppy on, delivered by someone with eyes that were almost animal. I remember these nonsensical hostilities, because it is stressful to find yourself suddenly unexpectedly attacked for your appearance and not your actions. God. And I don’t feel any insecurity about belonging here whatsoever and I can count the number of incidents on one hand and am not afraid or feeling marginalised already.

People like that bring us nothing but international shame as a nation. Before Brexit, arriving in Dubrovnik for work, I asked the barman on the first night how to order beer in Croatian. “American?” he asked. “No. British.” He was surprised. “Britain? Terrible international responsibility.” Those were his instinctive words, immediately. A Croatian barman. Hands up if you can say that in Croatian.

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We find the place we need and load a set. God I love theatre designers that have the budget and the understanding to make a set like the one I carried today. No steeldeck. No chipboard. Just good timber, in slats. Smells and feels lovely. Light. It was a pleasure to load in. Just a long drive. And I’m up at dawn tomorrow to get the van back in time. Night night.

 

Last night, while he was sleeping, our tiny little cat crept up to Tristan and … shat on top of him. The mercy for Tristan was that he slept long enough for the smell to dissipate into his dreams. He awoke in the morning to a damp hand. He then conducted himself heroically. Next time he comes round he won’t close the bathroom door behind him. But his stoicism was laudable. I put him to work today.

I was cooking breakfast. “So what’s the order of the day?” Tristan asks. I haven’t really thought about it. Its Father’s Day so I know he’ll want company. I’ve asked him to come and help with the stuff-mountain. He’s come and he has put his work hat on. “Make space, then fill it.” I offer.

After a slow bacony morning throwing things away from plastic boxes, the inevitable attic sort begins. My mother used to put things up there that she couldn’t throw away. They were still there, haphazard, with fifteen years of dust. Old blinds, broken frames, bits of timber, cupboard doors, boxes of junk, unwanted VHS players, broken phones. All in boxes in a dry and airless attic with a beautiful complete pigeon skeleton in pride of place that must be twenty years old. I have never experienced so much dust, once I started disturbing it. I was loading it down, Tristan was taking it out onto the fire escape. It’s a redundant fire escape that doesn’t go anywhere. There’s moving air there though. And this stuff was so thick with dust that I occasionally had to come down. One time I was actually sick from dust inhalation. I’ve never experienced that before. My nose, my eyes, and then I had to be sick into the sink and lie down and breathe for twenty minutes.

Then an improvised breath mask out of a scarf and back up to hell. It’s hell up there, but there’s a hell of a lot of space. Especially now. I’ve got everything my mother didn’t know how to throw away, in a shared space in my block – but not actually a fire escape. But there’s more room up there than I imagined. So out with the old, in with the new. This can be dealt with in January when i finish my run of work. This antique dealing is a fine sideline and needn’t be rushed. I’ve got a lifetime of being an actor ahead and now I can make pennies in the quiet times on my own terms, instead of ordering slow teenagers to polish cutlery for entitled parasites to lick their honey off.

Tomorrow morning I’m renting a van for a job. I can keep it here another day perhaps and get all the things done that have to be done. My fee will cover a second days rental.

I’d forgotten how much room there is in the flat. We’ve really made a hole in this huge massive job. It’s a few more days work to get things looking sexy as fuck, but I reckon I’m going to have a fucking awesome pad by the time I’m commuting from Oxford…

I’m with Mel, who caught up with me on Camino by bike. We’ve been talking about that whole walking experience. I’ve not really thought about it since. The two of us threw some theatrish stuff together afterwards, unrelated. Neither of us stopped to blink about Camino. But I underwent a profound internal change. And then went back to old habits for ease while thinking about it.

I learnt so much on Camino. And then I immediately slammed myself back into London existence. Brian quite rightly noticed that I didn’t let the lessons of the path drop in right away. He didn’t phrase it that way. But he made me realise that I walked 700 miles and then immediately slotted into an existence that didn’t take that into account. But I suppose those lessons take time. I’m better placed now to establish what that walk brought me than I was when I arrived home tired and seeking home comforts and wanting the happy old shit.

God, Camino was powerful, taking that time and making that commitment. Rising long before dawn every day and wondering why other people weren’t doing the same when you were on top of a hill alone with l’aube astonished by beauty. My headline photo was set up by walking away from a dawn and propping my camera on a rock with a timer. It is both sincere and insincere. Sincere because, if you look the other way it is a glorious dawn that I wanted to be recorded, and I wanted it to be a picture about rebirth through work. Insincere in that I set my camera to a timer and walked away from it three times before I was happy enough. Curated truth.

Camino was ace as it’s lovely to know what you have to do every day, occasionally. That’s the thing I don’t usually have in my life and – frankly – don’t usually want. I don’t miss knowing my every day. It would definitely kill me to be trapped in an office. But for a little bit I merely had to walk every day. That was all. And it was fine. I’m really not used to jobs that last more than 3 months. I’m fine with this.

Camino.

Get up. Pack efficiently. Walk fifteen miles alongside lovely humans many of whom believe in that patriarchal God. Start looking for a place to sleep. Rely on the infrastructure. Meet lovely humans, eat far too well for the money, go to sleep in a farting room full of bunk beds, wake up when the old guy’s alarm goes off at full volume at 5am, do it again.

That’s part of Camino. And you meet people on the way, even if – like I was -you’re actively trying to be solo. I’m only now taking stock. I think it takes that long to sink in. Good to think back though.

I’d advise it to anyone. I saw some huge beauty, challenged my fears about my capacity, and deepened my spiritual sense. A better use of my time than sitting in an art installation in Smithfield…