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I’m watching Brian play Fallout 4 on the PlayStation. It’s a fantasy game set in a universe where the world got nuked during a dysfunctional alternative robotic 1950’s. It’s a world where Nuclear Bunkers were a luxury item, and the soft communies that have been sheltered in them for hundreds of years are emerging to see what has been happening in the hardened ruins of the world above.

They frequently use The Inkspots as their soundtrack so I just put them on. “Into each life some rain must fall,” they sing as Brian shoots radioactive zombies in the head with a two-shot western revolver. It’s strange how we escape on a Friday night into these worlds where everything is trying to kill us. I suppose we can become terribly powerful in these games. They trigger our reward mechanisms.

This means of entertainment has been created in my lifetime, and it has become very involved since “Breakout” “Adventure”, “Air Sea Battle” “Thrust” “Repton” etc. A multi million pound industry now and you can spend your life playing these games, and make your living designing or now even voicing them. There are still tremendous voiceover cockups. I heard an actor tell me that a defeated army had been “routed” to rhyme with “booted” in a multimillion pound release only a few years ago at Christmas. I can play a bit when I’m in consistent employment. Mostly these tricky days I don’t play them, sadly. They aren’t a place for the hungry. So it’s nice to watch Brian shooting a “Super Mutant Skirmisher” and remember how as a teenager I could wake up in the morning, switch a screen on and not move until my eyes were almost bleeding at midnight. “Eye of the Beholder.” “Pools of Darkness.” “The Secret of Monkey Island.” “Betrayal at Krondor”. “Realms of the Haunted” where they used real actors and had incredibly hammy video sequences including one where you lose and the baddie destroys the world. Joyful stupid geeky storytelling, and coming out of the “there’ll never be any money in that shit” generation, it’s amazing to see how my best friend from school has gone from strength to strength designing them. The stories are so big now. Nobody has time to play them all in all their detail. You just have to stumble through. But the studios are vast now as well and the smart people are going back to making them in the attic.

The industry has gone from a couple of geeky kids in an attic to a multistorey building where every so often the less scrupulous studios announce they’re having “a crunch” which means that everyone that works there either gives up all their spare time or is ostracised from the group. So, more and more frequently, the working environments for the people who are making these escapist entertainment products are as horrible as the worlds that are being conceived by the people that work there.

Still there’s good work to be had in that industry. If I was more organised I could make use of my spare time in my home studio drawing up a good demo reel rather than invigilating exams like I have been today. In fact, what am I waiting for? I’ve got the equipment. That’s next week sorted. So long as I don’t get nuked.

Another double blog day today. I wrote one a few hours ago. But I have to write it in the live blog because I have no notepad app and no room on the phone from hell. Just now the whole thing just loaded up blank. So here we go again.

Remember the days when this was easy? “The technology. She no worky.” Those days will come again. I will force them to. Somehow.

I’m on the tube so I run the risk of losing it all again if I let my phone go to sleep, so I’ve just got to keep writing which I’m not too concerned about because I want to go to sleep now here right now on the tube. This writingness willmay stop that from happening.

Stuff happened today and that’s what this is supposed to be about, isn’t it, this writing thing blog thing thing.

People rehearsed in my flat while I waited on hold to energy companies trying to organise payment plans. I’m auditioning for a job in America soon and the last adventure I need is a county court ruling when/if it comes to magical visa-time at the new embassy that tinyhand hates so much.

They make you listen to the most offensive selection of inoffensive music, these megaliths, before you get to their human phone-being. I spoke to the humans though. And mostly the humans were understanding. So long as there’s money at the end of it for them I guess.

I think I’m in control of things now as far as possible. But damn I’m beginning to miss consistent or well paid proper employment (acting) financially and I’m very deeply aware that since I started this blog about a year and a half ago I also started the longest run I’ve ever had without it. It’s karma banking. That’s all. And the stuff I’m making in collaboration is ticking over. Generally it’s just an expression of the universal human aspiration. “I want more.” “You’ve got stuff.” “I want more.” “Look at that person. They have less than you and they’re fine.” “More.” “Run for office.”

I’ve got a photo about the rush hour because I went on the tube in the rush hour. It’s more relevant to the last lost blog than this one but you’re getting it. People jostling together, sharing diseases, shoving, tutting, and barely breathing.

Why was I on the tube in rush hour? Well I’m sick and I forgot that I had a Factory show in bloody damned Archway. I lucked out finally in casting in that I needed peace and I got it. I only had to cover Macduff’s son and Menteith so I could sit out a lot and just play when needed. Normally I’d be frustrated but it was just what the doctor would’ve ordered if I’d had the sense to go to the doctor.

Now I’m still standing, walking in fact, back through the mercifully mild evening to Sloane Square, feeling like death. Tomorrow, of course, I’m dayjobbing. Oh the delight of an early start. It better not be raining in the morning.

All of the team at Al’s blog want you to be happy. You matter to us, personally, as direct individuals. We are the blog that cares. About you. Personally. You. Yeah you. With the face.

So with the rainy days of summer fast approaching, how will you get by on just one blog per day? We understand your fear because we can look into your soul. We even know what you did that day.

Despite that – (or because of it?) – we have chosen to share how it all works. After this short course you will be able to write your own Al blogs as the darkness of summer falls, so if you need an extra one you can just write it yourself.

1: “The technology. She no worky.” Identify an item of technology. Ideally an unnecessary luxury item. A dishwasher, mobile phone, boiler, furby, computer programme etc. Specify how important it is for you and how something normal is impossible to do without it. “I can’t leave the house if the furby isn’t working. It’ll scare the cat.” Now specify something about it that isn’t quite right but is easy to fix. “Needs a new battery.” Now complain about it a bit. Imply that you could’ve fixed it but you spent the money on booze or eggs or socks. Make jokes in an attempt to win people’s loyalty and try to get them to forgive the fact you just haven’t fixed the damn thing. Try to distract them from the truth, which is that you’re putting obstacles in your own way out of masochistic habit. Then throw your arms up in resignation and say “Well, it’s the life I’ve chosen.” Never ever fix it. Eventually replace it. Pretend like you’re a martyr.

2: “It’s all futile. Life is a spiral towards inevitable death. Look at the shiny thing! There are other dimensions.” This one is easy. Start with something irrefutable but hugely dark about the human condition. Then find something beautiful about the darkness. Then get all mystic and say things designed to needle orthodox thinkers. End with a maxim of your own invention. It doesn’t have to be good. If they’ve got that far they’re sold anyway. “A teddy bear might be full of nothing but fluff, but who’s to say that fluff can’t store, hold and return love just as it can with warmth?” Tick. Have a beer.

3: “Look mummy look, I’m acting I’m acting!” This is the one that costs in car insurance premiums. Talk about how you’ve been eaten by your own stubborn choices as if you’re bound upon a wheel of fire. Get weird and technical about some detail and use jargon. “This space can support great intimacy if you bust yourself for pushing and keep driving for the target despite the devil.” Try to alienate everyone who isn’t an actor. Try to annoy everyone who is. Sign off with something mawkishly sincere so nobody can attack you. “God I’ve never felt more complete than I did as I was licking flour off the blackboard dressed as a goblin. Somewhere to my left, I saw a tear trickling down an old man’s cheek. Or was it just rheum? Who cares. I was happy. Tickety-boo.”

4: “I’m on holiday and I’m punching this terrorist.” Go somewhere dangerous and do the worst possible thing can do in the circumstances. Get away with it. Write it in the present tense as if you’re just … inevitably happening to the world.

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So there you are. Now you know the secrets.

Occasionally you can mix themes. “Look mummy look I fixed the technology.” “I’m on holiday and it’s all futile.” Keep on doing it until you punch the wrong terrorist and wind up in hospital. Then write one perfect piece about the shreds of the NHS. Fail to click publish. Leave on a gurney. No worries though – there are other dimen

 

You might have gathered that I’m not a creature of habit. I’m closer to a creature of havok. But every year for about a decade I’ve had the same diary. Wildlife photographer of the year. I love the pictures.

Today I think I tried to take it with me in my pocket when I went out to work with the kids for my volunteer after school club with Scene and Heard. I just spent the last hour ransacking my flat in search of the thing to no avail. I think I put it into the big pocket of my ski jacket and it fell out on the tube without my noticing. Either way it’s surely lost.

It highlights an operational problem with my existence. I genuinely don’t know what I’m doing tomorrow, ever, until about 10pm when I consult the oracle. That’s how it’s been for years, obviously with alarm bells installed in my head for times when I have to get planes etc. I don’t miss vehicles. That’s all rooted into what I consider to be my professionalism. I always know if there’s something coming related to the acting because acting > everything, sadly, and so it must continue until the shift (when when?) I have no pension. I can’t relax unless I know that if my body fails they’ll get me in to the occasional telly sitting in a chair. I’m not there yet.

Thankfully my occasional dayjobs, despite deliberately being jobs I can’t live off, have an email chain, and my short term memory can hold a fair amount. So I think I know where I have to be at 9 tomorrow, and I think I know what’s happening for the rest of the week. But after that I’ll have to dig around the email chains which isn’t easy with catastrophe phone and broken iPad and so forth. If it’s a social engagement you’ll definitely have to remind me.

The loss of my diary has caused a big lump in my throat though. It’s terribly important to the way things operate for me. I can’t hold all the organisational stuff in my head. Just this morning I was asked “What would you say to someone who is considering embarking on a peripatetic existence like yours?” My response was “Are you completely fucking insane?” I meant it.

I’m lucky not to be driven by other people’s targets – only by my own. I’m lucky to know that hierarchy is bullshit. I’m lucky to be able to see outside of the reward mechanisms that keep people eating shit until they die.

But I’m not lucky that after digging around fruitlessly for ages for the concrete extension of my memory, my arsehole phone crashed forcing me to rejig the whole pile of words I’d spewed into it and now it’s past midnight and I’ve still got fifteen words to write despite having written this whole mess twice and I’ll have to try and take a photo of last year’s diary with this bastard awful phone and then watch as it repeatedly crashes on the upload.

The very fact that you’re reading this is testament to human stubbornness…

Go out to the New Cross Road, my child. Near to the college of the goldsmiths. Seek deep, between kebab shops and charity shops, past the William Hill where men still go to look unhappy and lose what little they have left in the desperate quest for what they had when they started. The rain is falling, my child. Don’t slip. The buses drive wild here. The cars drive wilder. Be smart. It is there if you look. Nestled among the many train stations.

Look in the windows. Not where the man in sandals digs in the sofa for change. Not that window. Go to the east. Further. Past the angry family. Yes, my child, do you see it now? Do you see it reflecting, glinting, glowing, flowing? That is where you must go, my little one. Through the door at the sign of the Prangsta. Tinkle the bell. Tinklytink. Go in. In, and swiftly. Speak to the creatures within. There you will find the transformation you seek.

The floors are varnished wood. Hanging on the walls are feather headdresses, antlered masks, Valkyrie wigs, the helmets of gods, the wings of angels. If you cross their palm with silver they will make you fabulous.

I went there today, my beloved. They dressed me in hose and a shirt of great beauty. And also a pink crinoline, a bustle, voluminous skirts and a necklace to die for. A hat with a feather. A fine silken mantle. They offered a wig of fine ginger hair but I knew it was too much, too much, too much. I have now a fine transformation awaiting. I need to get lashes. And maybe some make-up. But I’m a happy bunny, my beauty. Oh yes.

Meanwhile the creatures of Prangsta sew and sew. They make clothes from the things we throw away. They make them rich and bright and strange, like you, my beloved, like you. They also know that they provide things of beauty, and price themselves accordingly. As we all must remember to do.

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I have worked at events where all the waiters are dressed from there, and they look beautiful, powerful, woodland, strong and mysterious. Their work steps the whole event up a peg or two. They are the ultimate hipster costume service. But they are good creative people doing it for love, and they’ve got it all so right. I’m thrilled with my costume. Last time they made me a bondage Henry VIII. This time I’m steampunk drag Thisbe. And it’s great. And that was my day. Dayjob morning. A magical journey to New Cross in the afternoon. And then returning home to THAT email. Two jobs. Same company. Both drowned. They keep getting me in. They keep not using me. It’s getting so frustrating, and it’s punctured a hole in my hopes for the summer. I was buoyed up on my lovely costume fitting but then I got blindsided by a very lovely email with precisely 0 bananas.

So rather than prowl round my flat spitting the word “idiots” with clockwork regularity every five minutes, I went for a half price rump steak that I can’t really afford, accompanied by Brian and Mel. Now I’m home with the cat, and the firm resolution that I will find something to do in that period that will make me say “Thank God that gig fell through.”

Anyway, until tomorrow, my little pumpkins. Until tomorrow…

Lovely at The Globe today. The gate was full of roses. Must be Shakespeare’s birthday sonnet walks. There was Mark Rylance looking preoccupied with his bicycle. The sonnet walks are part of his legacy to that building. I always feel the urge to greet him like an old friend, because I’ve seen so much of his accessible human work. He’s stitched into the fabric of that building. His priorities and his spirit. His taste and his beliefs. They have helped recreate that well placed and powerful edifice, which has in turn kept me fed through the fallow seasons for a few years now.

I was working at a Drama teacher’s birthday party today. She didn’t really know what she wanted but she wanted something performative and Shakespearean. I didn’t really know what I was going to do but my head is full of stuff. There was a harpist playing. I did things that underscore nicely. Oberon. Some sonnets. Then a quick timeline and some other little attractive snippets.

In my break, an 11 year old girl bobbled up to me. “What’s your name,” she beamed. “I’m Al. What’s yours?” “If we shadows have offended think but this and all is mended,” she responded. She then did the whole of Puck’s epilogue from Dream, word perfect, marking the verse. Her favourite teacher, Vicky, made her learn it. Vicky is everyone’s favourite teacher, you see. She’s in Wood Green and she teaches drama. Everyone knows that bit. She gets us to do it when she points at us. “Do you want to share it with your auntie?” “Yes please. Not on my own though, I’d be scared.” “We can do it together. Let’s practice now.” She’s great. We speak the lines in unison. She speaks it forward and loud and enjoys it. “I have to get back to work but I’ll give you a thumbs up when it’s time and if you still want to do it just come and stand by me, ok?” “Ok.”

A spot of MC, introducing speakers etc, a showy silly bit stealing Henry V and Prospero, and then thumbs up and she springs over immediately. She’s raring to go. Highlight of my week, sharing those lines with that 11 year old. Particularly on the day that The Globe celebrates Shakespeare’s birthday. That was my energetic contribution to the festivities. Flowers in the fence. Sonnets in the surroundings. Barclay in the balcony room. Good things for the year to come.

If anyone knew energy and the power of language it was whoever wrote those plays. I’ve been blessed to work in so many different contexts and different parts of the world over the years with those human, healing words. Two nights ago I was writhing around in Hampstead with tights on my head in a silent scream playing Banquo’s ghost, and tonight I got sentimental, underscored by a harpist and in partnership with an 11 year old girl. I hope I didn’t just make another actor. She was fab. She had already made herself. I knew when I was 8.

Now I’m home early and taking myself off to bed ahead of another odd week, in which I’m hoping there’ll be some positive news. I’m waiting on 3 jobs. It’s unfamiliar. Something’s gotta stick. My hit rate is high. I want to keep it that way. Nam Myo Ho Renge Kyo.

 

Elena and Flavia both made cats out of play-doh today, and almost immediately they were destroyed by the four year old hurricane Ivo. He’s a pleasure, that kid. But why is destruction always so attractive to kids? I was the same, I think. Empathy takes time to learn.

One time when it snowed in April on a weekend I had a load of out of work actors staying in my flat. We made a snowwoman with a snowdog in Battersea Park. It took us hours because we had beer and made a day of it. We were surrounded by people making snowmen. At the end of the day, as the light was fading and most people had gone home, three kids came into the field. 16 years old perhaps. Over the course of half an hour they jumped into every single snowman, laughing. I remember thinking of the families that had made them. I even tried (and didn’t manage) to teach them empathy. They left ours because we were by it, although I have no doubt they jumped it as soon as we left. These snow beings had been made with care over hours by so many people. The field looked beautiful and strange in the fading light, populated momentarily by still silent white giants. They levelled it in less time than it takes to make one snowman. And I thought how familiar that is. How human. To unthinkingly destroy something because it exists.

If we haven’t made something ourselves we find it easy to smash it. Snowmen, belief systems, artworks. It’s easier to destroy than to build. It’s faster as well. And it satisfies some primal urge. Ivo is 4 and he didn’t think twice about smushing some play-doh someone else had made, even though he’d have shouted if we’d smashed his. It got me thinking of that upsetting video from a few years ago when grown men in Mosul with the brains of 4 year olds and sledgehammers that are marginally smarter than they are smashed up a load of ancient artefacts in order to show the world how ridiculously narrow minded their viewpoint is. A young critic will frequently write a hatchet job. The less we have experienced, the more we are inclined to just smush. It’s an odd feature of the human condition and maybe one which we should be aware of within ourselves.

I’ve had a lazy day today. Playing with the cat, reading and relaxing in the morning. Then hanging out with Flavia and Ivo in the evening. Now back at home, drunkenly teaching reading Tarot for our current sofa guest before winding to sleep beneath the cat. Happy Sunday everyone. I’m so tired I haven’t got it in me to write another word.

 

Once again I’m here in King Willy. The King William pub in Hampstead. Just a hop skip and jump to the West Heath. And as fabulous as you’d expect.

We’ve got a live act entertaining us. We’ve just been a live act entertaining other people.

It was my first Factory Lady Macduff tonight. Plus Banquo and Menteith. It’s beginning to make sense now, this strange beautiful difficult thing we are trying to simultaneously make and destroy. We learn by doing. Tonight it felt bullshit free, and we told it clearly.

This feels like the kick off, five shows in with this tight instinctive company of strange brave purists. I’m extremely proud to have been part of some of the work tonight. The irreverence but deep understanding running in tandem alongside the work ethic and our manifesto. I don’t like writing about The Factory. We make stuff that is deliberately unrepeatable. Sometimes it flies. Sometimes it doesn’t. So be it. Tonight I never felt disconnected from the work and I’m happy about how we played as a group. It was joyful, connected and artistic.

But this morning is where I made the money. My flat was rehearsal venue for a celebrity birthday party coming up at The Globe. It’ll be a lovely evening, and also joyful, in much the same way as the show tonight. There is a little company of actors who are all working together to make this corporate work interesting and fulfilling. There’s concrete money on the table too. Even if it’s not at all well thought of in the industry. It’s a means to an end. And these guys work with integrity, and I feel valued in the work.

I do a lot of corporate work. Money isn’t endless. I can sell my skills and my time. I also turn in adverts from time to time too, selling my face. If you can do that and keep integrity, then it’s legitimate, surely, I keep telling myself. There’s a level you can reach at which you become too recognisable to do commercials. Despite 15 years I’m not quite there yet. I remember on my first job I witnessed a household name being actively attacked by another household name for doing a series of adverts. “You don’t need that you idiot. Leave those jobs for the people that can’t pay their bills.” I think the animosity ran much deeper. The response was “They straight offered me over 500 thousand. What would you do?” I heard both points and my sympathy was with the (rich) man attacked – but partly because an early film of his made him my hero and then he was hanging out with me on set by choice.

I went to the wire for two 16k adverts in one year last year and having watched both of them heavy pencil and then go to *the other dude*, I’m sanguine that that dude needed it as much as I did, even if it hurts. 16k is the perfect figure, repeated, dangled in front of me and then withdrawn. I really want a reset button to kill the old debt. My kneecaps are not under direct threat though. Just my comfort.

A dude in the pub drew this of me. He’s got the shape of my face completely off, but the eyes are good. He proudly showed it to me as I was leaving and I thought it looked like my mate Jacob. I said “I wouldn’t like to get in a fight with that fucker.” I didn’t buy it.

I can’t imagine a world where I wouldn’t play a Factory show though. It’s my expression. My community. My friends. My challenge. When I get recognisable, what a joy to vanish into ensemble.

I’m at a school in Barnet talking to a bunch of kids. They’ve got a design for a kinetic energy recharging speaker-bed. The more you jump on the bed, the more energy you generate. They’re marketing it to 4-18 year olds. “Have you all agreed on the age range?” I ask them. “Yeah. Grown ups don’t play. Besides, my mum is 40 and she’s exhausted.”

I know how she feels. This time at least I got myself to the right place. But I can barely keep my eyes open and I’ve got to do Macbeth in a little over two hours. Grown ups don’t play? My hat.

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And there I was in another school this evening. I thought I had it easy but you never have it easy at The Factory. I should know that by now. I thought I was Lady “only one self contained scene” Macduff. But no. Banquo. And also, 1 hour before the show “Oh and you’ll also be Menteith.” Shit. I didn’t know Menteith. Now I sort of do. Playing to a bunch of tired kids, some teachers and a few visitors. I didn’t know it would be a school show. I’m schooled out. If I was sensible I’d go straight home. But I’m not. Pub.

“Grown ups don’t play”… A person got me over to help her move her narrowboat last night. She’d have had to fight me to get my hand off the tiller. There I was grinning like The Joker and trying not to bang off the sides and we scooted down and found a mooring under the Westway. While I was lying on the towpath trying to force a rope through a gap someone shouted “Al Barclay.” I stand up covered in shit. It’s only another actor, a friend, someone who is doing good things. On the fucking towpath. I’ve been in this city too long.

Macbeth was lovely tonight as ever but my phone has now decided it’s roaming so it won’t connect to data. I’ve got just over a month before I can legitimately escape from those catastrophic Vodafone morons. But I’m now getting words written on the pub WiFi surrounded by beautiful bold crazy actors most of whom I’ve known for years. It’s odd to be in the room with these glories and be clocked out to my phone. But this blog has taken on its own momentum now and until I can afford better technology, every day is going to be stream of consciousness coping mechanisms.

Every few seconds I get a pop up I have to cancel about roaming. It’s absurd.

Anyway. Grown ups don’t play? I’m here with my friends. This is play time. I did a workshop this morning helping kids understand that innovation is personal, not regulated. Then I did a show where people work to be as honest as they can with ancient language. Now it’s coming up to closing time, and this “Managed Roaming” pop up on my shitawful handset will make things impossible as soon as I’m off WiFi. I’ve had enough of this shit. But that’s 500 words…

Here’s the lovelies.

This is why I keep a diary. It would help if I looked at the bloody thing.

I went to Barnet by mistake. Bugger. Don’t get me wrong, it’s alright in Barnet. I used to go up and stay in Chris’s room, and see the Big Chief. He would have musical jazz parties that would spill out onto the sunny streets. I miss those days. It’s always sunny when I’m in Barnet.

But I’m supposed to be in South Kensington. Barnet happens tomorrow and it’s a long way from where I should be. Bother. One day I’ll sort myself out (or not.) At least it means it’ll be sunny tomorrow too. Doesn’t it?

Now I’m cruising back on the endless Northern line with all the commuters. The tube announcer just said “Hyugyüt” in her cultivated ’50s accent. Highgate – where Harrie used to live.  Here to South Ken in half an hour? Hopefully I’ll get there before anyone misses me. My habit of being early is bearing fruit. This is more or less exactly why I cultivated the habit in the first place. It allows me to be an airhead but with fewer consequences and more time to look at the pretty things.

Right now though it’s just a load of sleepy people passively consuming fear through their free newspaper. “Toxic Arctic”. We are all going to die. Buy more stuff. It’s expensive as all hell, this little underground train, but it really does haul a lot of people around. And the culture of silence means you want something to read. Controlling the free paper of choice gives huge thought power. So often those headlines instigate a fear reaction, and it makes you grab the paper. But the paper’s not the spear, it’s the boar

I’m stuck in a tunnel outside Mornington Crescent now. Humphrey Lyttleton eat your heart out. He’s right. You always end up here one way or another. Fifteen minutes to go.

We are moving again. I’m sure you’re all thrilled. Euston already, where I was last night and had a bit too much wine. Then Warren Street, where I rehearsed Hamlet in the Croatian Embassy. Then Goodge Street. The RADA stop. Mum’s hospital. Tottenham Court Road. My old agent…

When I moved to London all these stations sounded strange, distant, unknown. Now the tube map is a complicated loom of associations. There are little bits of me sewn into the fabric of this town. Leicester Square. Brian’s work. Marie. Red paint stains on the wooden floor. Running in the streets in a nightie. I’m bolting onto the Piccadilly Line but I’m going to be late. 6 minutes left. The tube announcer promotes paranoia.”If you see anything suspicious, report it to the station staff. See it, say it, sorted.” We are in danger. Trust no-one.

Three minutes to the Rayner’s Lane train. I’m going to be late, but “There is a good service on all underground lines.” Aren’t we doing well!?

These prerecorded announcements are in constant chatter like a dystopian sci-fi film from the ’80s. We hear them but don’t hear them. Drink water. Stand behind the yellow line. There might be bombs. We are efficient. Serve the computer. The computer is your friend

Green Park. Where we did that treasure hunt. Three more stops. Three minutes late already. Bum.

We stitch ourselves into places. Every station has a story for me. Hyde Park Corner. Where I should’ve got in the taxi with her after Nick’s wedding even though she was a lawyer. Knightsbridge. That night shoot at Harrods. Better get ready now. South Ken is coming. Max’s work. My work too today. If I’m not too late… And … … run!