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The ticket says “May Cause Acute Death.” I’ve never met anyone who has told me they’ve seen this show. I have a friend in it and the ticket is in her name, so it can’t be traced back to me. I’m somewhere off the Goswell Road and its sweltering.

Looking closer at the ticket I can see that they’ll confiscate all my technology and my coat at the door. They recommend we wear pyjamas. They also say “No alcohol beforehand”. I’m having a pint. Rebel.

I’m going to get put into a gigantic blender.

I was almost involved with this lot creatively. They came to see Christmas Carol. They were very bouncy and positive. We spoke animatedly about gender and identity. “If you want some extra heads on the making side, that’s what Mel and I do.” The old guy gave his card to Mel but I think it was less about work than we thought it was at the time because he never returned our calls regarding collaboration. The old guy was very genial, rich as cake and drunker than I was last night when I spontaneously agreed to go to a festival tomorrow. What? Yes. Yep. Three nights in a field. Although I needn’t worry about it as I’m going to have everything confiscated in a warehouse off the Goswell Road and then I’m going to get put in a giant blender as punishment for this hair of the dog I’m absorbing through my tongue as I write.

And I’m still leaking out of every orifice and hacking like a riding school pony. Just as well I’m going in the blender. Three nights without proper food or sleep in a cold tent surrounded by grass will kill me as surely as this blender. I thought I was getting better at derailing my inability to say “No” to anything. Clearly I’ve got a long way to go in that regard.

Just an hour left before the door opens. I wonder what sort of sauce they’ll make of me.

The show is called “Somnai.” I think it’s about dreams. I dream lucid so dreams are usually terrific fun. I’m hoping that this will be too. I’m more interested in the shape of it than the material. They have lots of money, lots of tech and no experience making immersive or interactive work, or making theatre in general. If I had access to that budget and that tech I can dream of all sorts of things I’d be able to create. I suspect this will be unusual. Odd. Splintered. They are using Virtual Reality headsets. I think we get to walk around with heavy heads. That’s how they’ll get us into the blender. I’m curious if it’s augmented reality or a prerecorded virtual world. I’m curious to see if they use touch and smell and taste. A VR headset is an unusual mix of sensory deprivation and over-stimulation. It’s like sticking your head in a bucket when the bucket is Narnia. They’re pretty heavy on your face, and this show has been running a while in this weather so I suspect they’ll be damp too.

I might go for a little walk now I’ve written this and had this pint. I need to see if I can find a power-block for my phone. There might not be reception at this festival tomorrow… What have I agreed to? Never mind. Blender.

I’ve spent the day on the phone. I got sent a list of tasks yesterday. “Source a load of actors to play soldiers, find 4 location managers, find a load of PAs.” So I did all that, and rang back with my findings only to be told they’d already found the most of the people I’d been sourcing. Now I understand why people go and work together in the same “office” room, despite the fact that those “office” places frequently turn into noxious hellholes.

Still I managed to get a bit of work for some friends – and some strangers. But I’m fuming about the strangers right now. We are doing WW2 reconstructions in an English Heritage site, filmed, but we can’t fuck around. They won’t let us have a Churchill impersonator. They want “historical accuracy” by which they essentially mean “a load of white dudes.” I managed to get one woman approved as a radio operator. And then I shouted out to actors who had seen active service.

I’ve ended up with some really interesting ex-services actors. The fee is just barely what I would accept for the work, so charm offensive played a part in me getting them interested. But now apparently the client wants people who can be PA’s on the shoot as well and just do the acting as part of it. I’m going to send them my guys and let them decide as it’s just cost cutting and I’ve got the quality. If they want actors and PAs I want more money for those actors, especially since the fee they’re offering includes a buyout. It’s good money for a days work but these things don’t just work for a day. They play and play. If they just want people dressed up as soldiers facilitating things who aren’t too concerned about image rights then so be it. I can find those people too and they’d be marvellous. But they aren’t the people I’ve been looking for. I’ve been talking to a load of soldiers who have become actors and have genuine skill and experience in both arenas. People with hard line military experience who now prance about in tutus. Or would if the money was right. I don’t want to have to phone round and and say “uh sorry guys you have to PA as well” – even though nothing is contracted yet – because every one of them could kill me with their little finger. But acting is a craft and these people are extremely skilled specialist journeymen and should be paid accordingly. It has also made me realise that I’ve come some distance from the version of me that would spend three weeks above a pub doing something I categorically didn’t believe in while paying my own transport for the privilege. At the time I felt it was my duty to my craft. I wanted to make things and put them out there, observe, learn, adapt, make more things better. I still do, but at the start I’d try anything so long as it would involve me learning audiences and skilling myself in front of them. I had some hits. I had some misses. I wasn’t concerned. You gain confidence by winning. You learn more by failing.

I’ve always held the old model in how I think of this craft. Apprentice to Journeyman (It’s an old model genderwise) to, one day, Master.  I currently put my self-identity into a skilled journeyman. I’ve met a few masters. I’ve met plenty of apprentices who think they’re masters, and many remarkable practitioners generally on all parts of the journey.

It’s nice to be able to offer work. But I’m not going to offer thankless work. “Be in my play that I writted. No money. Lots nice! Gropeygropey.” “This film will be submitted to high end festivals and will be a great experience! You’ll be working with *celebrity whose fee commanded the whole budget* It will be a great networking opportunity. The set is made out of gold. Tickets are £700. No fee.”

Bums. I’ll make some calls in the morning.

There’s a door in my kitchen that opens onto a thing that is referred to as a “fire escape.” The people in my block get extremely funny about it out there. They monitor its use. I had a “health and safety inspector” knock on my door once. “Excuse me, sir, is this your ladder to the roof?” “Yes. It is.” “Can you remove it. Someone could injure themselves on it.” “I could put a laminated sign on it saying ‘Be careful not to injure yourself using this ladder?” “No. Just remove it please.” “But what if there’s a fire in the stairwell? This is – notionally – the fire escape. It goes nowhere. People might come out here and realise they’re trapped. This ladder means they can escape across the roof.” “We have fire doors in the block. Any fire will be contained by the fire doors. Remove the ladder please.” I didn’t remove the ladder. Two weeks later it had been removed.

Today, this perfect May day, I did a load of laundry and left it on the “fire escape” to dry. I’m hoping it doesn’t get confiscated too. In the event of a fire anyone that found their way up there would be too busy trying to scale the last few foot of wall with their fingers and swearing about the fact there’s no ladder to be concerned about the obstruction of my laundry. They might even be able to stand on the laundry to grab the roof. But these health and safety bods aren’t thinking rationally. They’re working from paper. And you can never underestimate the capacity of a certain type of human to be obstructive. He wasn’t actually a health and safety inspector anyway. He was just some dude who works with the head leaseholder.

The major issue here is possession. They don’t want me to be seen to possess the space even though there’s a switch in my flat for a light out there so they bully me out of it. If I had my way I’d put a table there but someone would get weird about it very quickly even though nobody uses it or has access to it but me. I’m hoping all my socks are okay because I literally washed the lot and then had to put on the least damp ones to go out. The rest are air drying there as the evening falls.

I went mentoring tonight in my damp socks. Off to Somerstown to volunteer with a charity helping kids from some of the estates around that way. We wrote the beginning of a play about a lion in a diamond palace who wants to be the best by solving the impossible rubik’s cube. Then I walked one of the kids home to his estate, and up three floors carrying his musical instrument, and remembered this time last year and how so many people died partly as a result of similar thinking by “safety” people – “The fire doors will mean that a ladder is unnecessary.” Such arrogant thinking. That the thing we have made will defeat the force we cannot control. We are lying to ourselves. Just as we are still subject to death, so nature is still more powerful than us. If we war with it we will eventually lose. It’s going that way as the air turns to poison. But that’s probably just my hayfever talking.

8.10pm. I have been in the pub with Max. But my GP is holding a late drop in. So I drop in. Just to put my mind at rest about this bastard cough.

I tell her my medical history, that isn’t on her records because I went private as kid, back in the faraway moneytimes. I explain that I had double pneumonia after a broken rib, and each of my lungs collapsed in turn. It cost me a year of school. Now I’ve got a cough that won’t go away, which is where it all started last time, although last time I ignored it for months. She listens to my lungs. “Your lungs are really good,” she tells me after a run around with a stethoscope. She’s quite an unusual doctor. Very full forward. Very happy to banter with her patient. We hit it off immediately. I trust her.

I tell her “My friends have insisted I go to the doctor. Plus I’m a bit worried. And then I had a mate over last night and she told me I coughed all night long. I didn’t even know.” “Look, I can see you’re worrying given your past. But this sounds viral to me. You’ve already blown your nose twice since you’ve come in. Do you get hayfever?” “Not usually but I think the plane trees are trying to drown me this year.” “What you taking before you sleep?” “I’m on Actifed for…” She interrupts me. “None of that stuff works. That’s just ‘selling-medicine’. You should avoid all that ‘selling-medicine’ apart from maybe basic paracetamol once in a blue moon. It’s just for selling, that stuff. Most of it’s a load of rubbish.” “Yes,” I tell her. “But it sends me to sleep.”

She writes me a prescription for some sort of nasal spray. Mometasone as I recall. To stop the drip back when I sleep. So I’m not filling my lungs with snot every night. She tells me to sleep with 3 pillows but the pneumonia year leads me to know that I won’t sleep if I attempt it, and I’ll kill my own neck trying. Still, it’s her job to encourage me towards these ideal scenarios because if sleep were possible under such circumstances it would be wonderful.

I’m home now. I’ll get the prescription tomorrow. Right now I’m hungry and so is the catmistress. She’s jumped on my lap but I know it’s only cupboard love. I’ll feed her from her brand new supply of tasty vitamin nonsense.  And then I’ll cook fajitas for myself..

It’s already ten past nine. I spent most of today trying to clean and tidy things I have pretended don’t even exist for ages. I’ve got a clear job for tomorrow booking people and making calls. Things are feeling really lovely, really varied, really positive. I have a sense that the next month is going to be an absolute beauty and I’m hoping that by shoving this stuff up my nose from tomorrow my old shit bronchial tubes don’t get the better of my “remarkable lungs”. An odd thing to be complimented on, outside of it being a clumsy euphemism for boobies. I was strangely flattered.

Here’s the sunset and birds. Will I ever develop a photo habit? I remembered going home. Chelsea. Birds. Dusk.

 

Out in Hodderston in one of those homogeneous industrial estates that pepper British suburbia is a unit called The Scenery Shop. It’s essentially an aircraft hangar sized room that you can paint and cut things in.

We forget that all of those beautiful sets we see in theatres are slammed together out of recycled bits of other people’s sets and new wood and sweat and madness in places like that shop. They’ve been out there sticking lino to things and building curved flats and columns and walls and so forth.

Brian, Mel and I arrived at about 3. I had endeavoured to dose myself such that I wouldn’t leak all over the stuff I was carrying. It’s for “The Rink” at Southwark Playhouse. Looks like they’re building a great big old skate rink. We just had to shove it in the back of a great big articulated van. I got about halfway through before whatever medication I had in my system had been fully sweated out and I was hacking my guts out. Still, a money-positive day and it’ll go towards healthy food, vitamins and medication. Now I’m in the car being driven back through the evening. I like driving with Mel. She drives like I do. We one-bombed it to Liverpool a couple of months ago listening to music and putting the world to rights. Neither of us needed a wee. It took 5 and a half hours, but most of it was getting out of London. She missions when she drives. Now she’s caning it into town and I’m going to try and fight through the fog to see some friends tonight. I’ve earned some money. Now I can spend a bit. Although I don’t actually know how much I’ve made today. “You’ll be paid.” “Amazon vouchers?” “No.” “Twiglets?” “No. Money. I just don’t know how much yet. But I know they’re not taking the piss.” “I’m in.”

Labouring with friends is not a bad way of spending a Sunday afternoon. I’d have positively enjoyed it if I hadn’t been streaming. My current working theory is that I’m beating this sickness though. Antibiotics antibischmotics. I’d sooner do it the slow way. I think I had two bugs simultaneously plus hayfever. God knows what’s happened to my immune system.

So I’m going to go out tonight. Not big. But out. I might feel rough but that’s no reason to stop existing. And experience tells me that staying active when you feel rough can sometimes help you forget you feel rough. Even if it does prolong the sickness a bit. Screw you. I rested yesterday. That’s enough, surely?

I’m seeing some of my “Witches” tonight. In Alice’s tarot she has a new card called “The Witches”. It’s a card about powerful alternative women in your life who exist outside the way things are normally done. When I describe that card to people I always think about the witches in my life, men and women. Alternative thinkers, remarkable humans, some on the borderline, some in the thick of it. Over the years I have assembled the most unbelievably powerful coven. I never ever lack a source of insightful guidance. I never lack someone to walk alongside and just “be” and mutually mend in the process.

Job done. Time for fun.

 

Down day. I’m gonna go to the doctor for sure if this cough doesn’t ease off by Monday. It’s shifted down into my chest now and I feel rough as badgers. It’s making me realise how lucky I’ve been with my health for the last few decades. Just little colds occasionally for years. I could still work with this but it would be a slog. I feel heavy and I’ve twice made myself sick coughing.

This morning a parcel arrived. A huge great big plunger from Amazon. We made a successful experiment of moving Pickle’s litter into our bathroom last week. She prefers it there. She goes where we go. She’s part of the household after all. But with the proximity of our flushing cistern I was in the habit of shovelling off her poo into our loo, and flushing it with all the little bits of litter attached. Not smart. Cat litter expands in water. Before I knew it the loo was clogged. Yesterday we had to impose a “No solids” rule while we waited for the plunger delivery. First thing this morning it came. I’ve never been so conflicted about a delivery. “Yay, my parcel arrived. Boo now I have to use it.” Coughing and gagging, I went plungering in my pyjamas. It’s not a fun job. Not at all. At least it was satisfying when the fucker suddenly shifted.

Meanwhile my downstairs neighbour had some Airbnb guests that he asked me to let in. Mister Alpha and his terrified family. I arrived to find them gathered out front. Mister Alpha was nowhere to be seen. Family were huddled away from the door, two starving young boys and a haunted woman. We all shook hands and I opened the door for them. “No,” she spat, moving away from it. “We must wait for my husband.” A minute or so passed with me in the open door and them huddled in the stairwell. Then he appeared at the top of the stairs, dark and slow, scowled at me, and walked down as slowly as humanly possible. I cheerfully let him in. He responded monosyllabically, snatched the key and “possessed” the flat. I think he expected me to wait while he slowly “inspected” but I had done my job and I wanted nothing to do with him. “Enjoy your stay,” I said, and left. Since then he’s been sending photos of details to my friend the host. “Do you expect my family to sleep in this?” My friend asked me to go down and troubleshoot. No bloody way. There’s nothing I can do. The guy just wants a whipping boy. I’d only make matters worse by deliberately undermining his power-plays. I’m amazed my friend has lasted this long without a guest like that. He’s made a lot of money renting his flat. But it’s up to him to sort mister Alpha. I’m not talking to the guy. He’s a drain. The first and only guest I ever had was a kinder version of him. And I never rented again.

Better by far to go for a lovely walk through the sun with Brian, and leave behind monosyllabic brutes and shitty drains, for another perfect sunny day in pollentown.

 

 

I’ve started to feel a little schizoid lately. Too many fingers. Too many pies. I submitted the London Adventure to a slightly gobsmacked client. Nothing like exceeding expectations. Then I had two auditions with the same suit on, both of them finished by 11.05am after which the day was mine. Early finish… Too much time for reflection. If the meeting is at 5 you can justifiably have a pint to kill it shortly after. 2 meetings before 11 and it’s a long day eating sour adrenaline.

The first audition was a self tape. Me saying one line into a mobile phone held by a bemused friend who had reluctantly helped me frame it first. Adrenaline doesn’t come into these. You just … do them. Fuck it. The entirety of the part is the one line I threw into my phone while Tom reluctantly held it. He’s called “Politician”. Boom. Yep. When I’d just left Guildhall I’d have been like “seriously? They need it taped?” but with all the blood under the bridge I’ll start again wherever they’ll let me. I’m living by the old adage – all it takes is one job for people to remember I’m good at my job.

Self tape recorded I went into town to a studio where I also remembered – via the casting director – how dumb some actors can be. I was talking about the shot with the director. He wanted a close up of my eye for the client. I was up for a famous engineer. “Oh, they want ” ‘the eye that understands engines’ or somesuch,” I ventured to the director by way of meaningless connection banter. “No!” announces the casting director, using her troubleshooting voice. “It’s just your eye. Nothing else. Just your eye. Your eye. Nothing else.” And I realise that here is a woman who has watched multiple people in this scenario pulling some sort of ridiculous face. And she thinks I might be about to do the same. God help us all.

We are always just one job away from all that shit falling away. That’s what I’m holding on to. Jesus bring me that job so I don’t feel like I’m at the wrong kind of market on the wrong side of the slab. I guess Jesus can’t bring it. I could grow my hair long. It’s me or nothing. Although hi, Ethan and Joel! I check my Facebook fairly regularly or you can go through my agent. I’m the sort of guy you like. Let’s get it on.

---

This evening I went with Brian and lots of his colleagues and friends to Deadpool 2. Nothing like a bit of ultraviolent escapist superhero fuckery to help you forget the arsehole burrowing that can come from that deadening side of our art – the waiting game. I like Deadpool as a hero trope. Kamikaze invulnerable self-loathing idiot that solves pain with humour.

The weekend means something this time round. I’m not working over it for starters. That makes a change. Plus this week has been pretty full on for the random. I think a rest is in order so I can go back into the mix fresh on Monday.

Meanwhile, gin? Or sleep. Probably sleep, sadly. Gin can wait.

 

 

Radio is such a hilarious medium. I hauled myself onto a train to Beaconsfield this morning, unsticking my eyes from the aggressive antihistamine that I eventually caved in and used to get to sleep at about 2am.

I was at the NFTS. National Film and Television School. I had blithely assumed it was on the tube network, not in bloody Wycombe. A friend of The Factory teaches there, and they have a module about telling stories for radio. Most of the students haven’t worked with professional actors. I was doing two stories with them. In one I was a journalist in Afghanistan, feeling the need to settle down at 40, falling in love by telephone with a woman I first rang by mistake. That was very much within my casting remit. I spent the morning in a soundproofed box (Kabul) talking to an Australian woman I’d only just met who was in a replica kitchen eating apples. At the end she came into my booth and we danced cheek to cheek. I think it’ll be a romantic moment.

In the afternoon I was playing a psychotic Yorkshire farmer. Much closer to my natural casting. I was glad of the coughing recently as it means I have a great big pit of crackly vocal damage. The thing that’s hilarious in radio is the distance between how the sound is made and what it represents. My friends at Fitzrovia Radio Hour explored that disconnect in great detail, making serious faced women in cocktail dresses smush melons with plungers while a fan blows the juice onto men in black tie “seriously” killing themselves with a lathe.

Today I sat in a corner with a pink towel on my lap while a man I had just met repeatedly put his own head into a bucket of water. I slapped my own leg to give him audible timings while reading my lines and every time I slapped my leg he ducked himself. After the first take, we had someone coming into the studio to check I wasn’t hurting my fellow actor. I was playing an absolute brute. But in reality the poor lad was ducking himself. With vigour. I was just sitting there admiring his attack.

Hopefully they’ll release the audio. The amount of times I’ve done things like this and never seen the result, never heard the edit – I can’t count anymore. Maybe it never gets finished. Maybe they never release it. Maybe it doesn’t get graded. Maybe they never bother linking in the actors. (One time I sat in a living room in Sidcup telling the camera (in a German accent) how much I loved my dog, while a dog I had just met obsessively tongue probed my teeth and lips like a teenager kissing for the first time. I saw the rushes and they looked great if fucking weird which was the intention. I did it with gusto: “Worth it for the showreel footage.” If it had ever got finished/edited/graded it would’ve been… But I digress.)

It’s a student project. I’m there to do what I do and teach them through being a practitioner. And it was an entertaining day. I met some smart people and had fun. Now it’s bedtime. While I was messing about my agent booked me some self tapes. One of them is due by 10 tomorrow…

I was having a huge amount of fun upstairs in The Globe making sound effects for witches with The Factory when I realised I just had to pull out and get a bus home because I was hacking my guts out every time I exerted myself. I’m still sick with this bloody cough. It’s gone full on consumptive now. I’ll give it a couple more days before I go and screw up antibiotics even further for myself by getting a course of the damn things, if I can get that past my doctor. I’m fed up of it though. I’d never normally consider going to the doctor but perhaps that’s why I should go.

I had a fun audition today at least, and didn’t cough when I was supposed to be talking. As soon as I left I realised how bloody unwell I am. I guess it’s my body telling me to stop running around like a lunatic and to take care of myself, eat healthily, sleep long. I think it might have been compounded by those goddamn ubiquitous plane trees shitting their spiky pollen into our eyes and lungs over the last few days. Great that they absorb so much pollution all year round. But we pay for that work at this time of year when they try to dissolve our faces and choke us.

I’m not going to the doctor tomorrow. I’m working in Beaconsfield all day instead, in a radio studio in front of a condenser mic with this cough. Whoever is on the cans is going to go on a magical sound journey through the inside of my lungs.

I’ll change my sheets when I get home. Who knows, perhaps I’ve discovered that I’m allergic to cat hair. I sincerely hope not. Although I have a friend that gets atrocious streaming eyes and nose whenever he has beer, but he still tanks more than I do on a big night. Anyway, clean sheets will be less dusty and nicer to sleep on. And Pickle will hate me but I’ll banish her this evening.

Good. The people on the bus behind me are talking about the plane trees as well. Pavna never normally has hayfever symptoms and she’s coughing terribly plus her eyes are streaming. Her husband speaks with the certainty of the speculative, but I’ll buy it.” After that heat the plane trees have been shedding so much pollen, and with the low pressure after the high pressure and this wind it’s pulling it all up from the ground.” Ok. Fine. So I’m not necessarily dying of tuberculosis yet. I’m living in an invisible pollen maelstrom of death. I get a little worried when I cough because 12 year old Al lost a year of school to double pneumonia and lung collapse and it was horrid. I spent far too much time coughing at night instead of sleeping. I never want to go back to that. I should probably see if I can get sleepy drink from somewhere that’s open at this time as I’ve got an early start tomorrow and I’m staring down the barrel of a long coughy night. Damn either the plane trees or the spectre of an underlying illness that I’m not acknowledging properly yet. Damn you to hell.

I declared war with Germany before 9am. Three times. Busy morning. Neville Chamberlain’s declaration of war is not the most stirring piece of oratory. I gave three versions. One that was a Chamberlain impression – his piping voice, his dipthongs, cracks and edges of weakness. His downflections. Then I did another one as if it was Churchill. Deeper, harder and more skilled, but in the same linguistic world. Then one more throwing everything out and going for pace and drama. It’s for a US reality show. They probably don’t give a whale’s arse about historical accuracy. It’s nice having my own studio. The basic fee will pay for the soundproofing. If it gets used then I could buy myself a whole new studio. Or just spend it on cat food.

Recording submitted, I got some writing done. The adventure day still needs to be written out now it’s planned! I tell you what, when it’s finished and done I could resell the thing. I couldn’t tell you my hourly rate now but it’s really low and I care not in the least because I’m still enjoying it. Even the writing. I enjoy writing thankfully. How else could I have have remained consistent so long with this blog?

In the afternoon I went and looked at a black cabbies’ café in High Street Kensington. They were just closing up when I arrived – they’re open from 6am to 3pm. All the cabbies can stop and get a bit of food, have a hot drink, chill out and bitch about cyclists and uber drivers and drunks etc. It’s tight in there. I was taking photos to assess it as a filming location. You’d barely get the crew and equipment inside to be frank. But I just send the photos.

That done I got on a bus to Euston, writing all the way, festooned with my crabby handwritten notes. I got off and volunteered at my regular Tuesday after-school club. It’s lovely now. I’m getting to know the kids. They’re coming out of their shells. We wrote a scene where a shop assistant arrested a giraffe for stealing a scarf.

Then I picked up Tom and Matt from Euston Station. They’re staying. They live together in Manchester and work together too. You wouldn’t believe it to see how they unthinking placed themselves when they were waiting for the tube.

Now I’m home, listening to Leonard and writing this while Matt cooks up a storm in the kitchen. When Tom and Matt come they bless the house by tidying. They haven’t cooked before so this is next level, and it lets me get this written. This week is generally extremely random. I’m beginning to feel brainfried. I’d love to be able to justify a holiday in the next few weeks. It would be nice to just have some consistent work again. It’s been so long. I love the jobbing life and I’m good at it. But from time to time it’s good to have a few months of knowing.