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15 years ago I was part of the team sent by Guildhall to perform at The Globe in what was then called The William Poel Festival. For Scott and I (and Matt in a silent role) it allowed us a first chance to see what it was to perform on that stage. Many of us from that event across some 20 drama schools are still going in this industry. More have quit. 15 years later and there are still a few golden geeks rattling around in the crucible. We still bump into each other from time to time.

As it happened I was working there today. Not on the mainstage dammit, or underneath in the cavernous party room, but a wee corporate gig up in the little Balcony Room – entertaining some exhausted Australians while the sun set behind St Paul’s. They had just flown non stop from Perth to London in 17 hours. An historic fight with no stop overs. Ultra long haul. Better than sitting in a sterile room in Abu Dhabi for 5 hours changing planes. Visit-London was wining and dining all the confused Aussies before they turn around and go back home on Tuesday.

We got called in to do some tasty little vignettes between courses. A perfect evening for it, and what with the clocks changing, everyone in London is confused about what time it is too. The atmosphere was electric in the building with all the drama students – all that youthful vigor helping keep our Aussies awake. That and our dynamite charisma and mastery, of course. They had a lovely time upstairs with us. It’s always a happy gig up there.

The William Poel Festival has changed its name to the Sam Wanamaker Festival. It was happening today and 19 drama schools including one from America were in attendance. The pit was like a mosh pit, capable of nothing but inexplicable dumbshow and noise. On that vast stage, a rotation of two young actors were learning how to keep the energy and focus with a house that will howl for twenty seconds if you say the word “bum”. I remember the energy of that home crowd. They’re all around you. They’re behind you. And this lot were going completely mental.

I was sneaking in and out at the back of The Pit, catching as many as I could. It’s a real test, an audience like that. You can do anything and get loads of validation. You have to work much harder to be spare. There were some lovely simple moments. And there were some milky eggy pancakes and face pulls. But they were undeniably having fun up there, every one of them.

It got me to thinking back to that sunny day in my life 15 years ago. How I felt at the time and afterwards. How it went. Where life has taken many of us since that day. Life’s rich tapestry.

I caught as much as I could of this year before I had to go meet the client. l was sad to have to leave before Guildhall performed – I’d like to have seen theirs and connected with the old place. I stayed for Bristol Old Vic which I was glad of as it was directed by an acquaintance, and they held the space. RADA were conspicuous by their absence. 15 years ago it was Freddie Stephenson and Sian Brooke.

15 years!!? Where did the time go? I ran into Patrick Spottiswoode after work, in the bar. He heads up Globe Education. He was there front and centre when I did that event, and he’s still there now, smiling. “15 years, mate” I muse, looking at all the shiny kids in the bar. “Tell me about it.” He says with an air of incomprehension. “Closer to 35 for me. 35 years. 35.”

I go home intending an early bed. And then I stay up past one talking dreaming and reading. Then “oh shit, my blog.”

Maybe that’s where the time went. Into dreaming. And maybe that’s okay.

My Liverpool Airbnb last night was a little room in The Albany – an old meeting place in the cotton trade (and likely the slave trade too – you’re not going one way with an empty ship). It was on Old Hall Street – originally called Whiteacre Street in King John’s 1207 charter for the city. One of only five roads that made the original town. Right in the ancient heart of Liverpool.

My host Nicholas was very concerned for my comfort. I’m a pretty relaxed guest, so I’d have been happy with a lot worse, but he took good care of me. I only hosted once, almost a year ago, and understand his concern. The room was booked by a pair of French interior designers and they were bastards. At the end of their stay Brian said “that’s the first time I’ve not felt that this place is my home.” I haven’t listed it again because if I don’t get five stars in my next booking then I’ll get delisted entirely.

When I eventually woke up he had coffee and eggs ready. We sat and had breakfast. He’s had a rough ride, our Nick. He carries a great big generous heart and he’s happy to show it to you. But people and circumstances have been kicking it about. The dominos have been falling, as they can. Three of his friends, all by their own hand, gone. He’s moving to Spain to be a paraglide instructor. “It was either stop living in Liverpool, or stop living. In Liverpool.” he tells me with characteristic open hearted candour and hurting eyes. I find myself giving him advice that people have given me: “You’re allowed to take care of your own needs too, you know.” His focus is firmly set on other people. And his mind is going twenty to the dozen as his language struggles to keep up. At one point he tells me “I’m a bit of an entrepreneur” which elicits a loud bark of laughter from his flatmate upstairs. He flushes as I raise my eyebrows. “Well yes, of course right now I haven’t got any money, but I can be. I will be.”

I like him. I hope he finds the change he seeks when he goes to Spain. When I ask him about paragliding his body changes and grows immediately less physically frenetic – more solid. I suddenly notice what good shape he’s in. He clearly loves it. He’s good at it. He’s at home in it. I think he’s right to seek this shift.

Spain might be just a chapter for him. Life is wide and strange and full. Big hearts can keep rolling a long way before they find a resting place. Or so I keep telling myself.

I take my leave of a Nick, who even runs after me with a handful of fruit. I spend a few hours walking the stone streets. Huge buildings. Warehouses. Majestic temples of commerce. This place was a hub of the Atlantic slave and cotton trade. No wonder the energy is strange – no wonder it’s affecting sensitive Nick. Last night my dreams were dark and muddy. All these monoliths built out of tears and greed. It’ll take more than the constant rain to wash it clean.

I end up at Albert Dock, right by the megabus stand, messing about on a 1938 Swedish Brigantine called Zebu. She’s a restoration project. No sails. She sank two years ago and so needs some serious work. For a quid I got to be attacked by 5 year old swabbers with plastic cutlasses, and took this photo at the helm.

Here’s me at the wheel of an impractical but strangely beautiful vessel, out of its natural time and that was almost damaged beyond repair, but now well on the road to recovery. Arrrrr.

 

 

 

 

I slept last night on the couch in the room of the groom. This morning I was propelled into organisational madness after a 15 quid breakfast. There are parallels between weddings and theatre. Both involve a lot of love. Both involve huge amounts of work for a fleeting unrepeatable moment. Both, it seems, involve me getting covered in wax.

Two hours before Robin and Amy tied the knot I was sitting in my jeans and a T-shirt sticking candles into Christmas Carol candleabras for the ceremony. “I want it to look like a Meatloaf video” was the art direction. Waxy candleabras. Check. I was willing to believe the whole experience was an acid flashback, but it was caught on camera so it definitely happened.

Candles stuck, I graduated to decorations and hats and pocket squares, and spoke about the order of things and was just extremely busy doing whatever for a few hours. Finally I put on a top hat and told everyone to come upstairs. I went upstairs too, sat down in a room full of candles and exhaled. Amy walked down the aisle. Rob was there. Brian was lord of the rings. A room full of adults cried pretty much constantly for 20 minutes as they made their vows. It was beautiful.

I was given a tissue by Holly. “You went before I did,” she told me. But everyone went. Apart from Cal who is a tree. And he went on the inside. I could feel him vibrating.

Their vows were beautiful. There’s love, respect and friendship there in heaps. They’re both brilliant people.

The aisle was lined with candles and plastic ivy, and nobody caught on fire – even if we did have some near misses. Just after the last guest left, a bit of ivy took light.

Now I’m in the slow time between lunch and party. I just dropped my bag at reception in case I have to ghost and hit the Airbnb. I’m sick as a dog you see, and still drinking, because you know – oh constant reader – how atrocious I am at taking care of myself. I feel like I’m wearing a space helmet. I jumped up and down and cheered for a photo and it brought on a coughing fit and a splitting headache. But I’ll be here as long as I can because I want to be in this place with these people. They’re great. And sometimes you can drink through the pain and out the other side.

I have to go downstairs in a second and do the old charming top hat ringmaster stuff to bring the guests upstairs. It’s party time.

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And what a party. I’m catching an ending while I have the capacity. I think my duties ended with the first dance. Now I’m a free agent. So I’ve drunk an inordinate amount of merlot and I’m thinking I might experiment with dancing and see if wine trumps sickness.

A teenage bridesmaid had seen West Side Story and recognised me from it. She was totally swept up in it, talking to me about Maria, the music, the whole thing. She’s going to go into politics. Good luck to her I say. She has kindness. Many politicians are crayfish.

I brought the costume for the photo booth. Every time I walked past people were in it laughing while wearing my mother’s old wedding hat, her tie dye poncho, her Peruvian shawl, one of her brighter blouses or scarves… I kept many of her more outlandish clothes in a dressing up box. It was lovely to see them bringing such joy. She’d have had a big birthday this year – I’m happy to have allowed her spirit to bring joy to my friends’ wedding.

The first time I came to Liverpool, I was 9. We were on the way home to the Isle of Man and stayed over in The Adelphi hotel. Back then it was crumbling, faded, a memory of majesty. Max and I shared a room, and I remember us standing in the huge double window, pale in our pyjamas staring down with innocent lust and wonder at this ancient living city. “I want to go out there,” I thought, looking at the lights on the corner. “People look like they’re having so much fun.”

Well, I just walked half an hour in the rain to get to the hotel. It’s come down with Britannia cancer now, so the hotel crumble has been stopped by homogeneity, bingo and indifference. “Britannia hotels: Reliably bland despite having once been interesting.” I should be in marketing.

Now I’m sitting on my own having a miserable pint of Blue Moon in “The Celtic Corner.” – these are the lights I’d been drawn to from my hotel room aged 9. It’s the worst place in the world, 9 year old Al. You’re a dick.

I swear I’m not exaggerating when I tell you that the music is so loud I felt physically sick and now I actually have the corners of my scarf pushed into my ears but it still feels like there are dinosaurs. I think I might be jolting into a different universe with each thump. And it’s Robin Thicke playing. (If that means nothing to you, do no research and go to your grave happier). It has to be this volume though, the crap they’re playing, because the few people who can stand it in here are pensioners. Why they want to dance to this crap at their age is beyond me but they’re deaf so it’s not hurting them, and they’re definitely doing something something with their bodies. Maybe they’ve been colonised by insects who are trying to puppet them, or maybe it’s dancing. I’m terrified they might suddenly shatter into millions of bees on a heavy bass beat and attack me. It’s hell in here. And I’m allergic to bees. Oh God help me no no no there’s a live act starting up. It’s a silver haired crooner in a waistcoat. The disco lights are spinning. The bass is now intolerable. “How long has this been going on?” he starts singing with his electric band. Too long. About ten minutes. But 10 seconds was enough. This place is like an even worse version of Yates’s Wine Lodge. I will never take your advice about places to go for a drink in Liverpool again nine year old Al. You’re worse than teenage Al! I’m getting out of here before it kills me. “The Sensations.”? I have no sensation left but abject horror.

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I was hoping for a journey of the soul there. I thought maybe I’d commune with my 9 year old self and reach an understanding. I ended up deafened and unwell. That place – I’m not being precious. I’m pretty deaf myself and I’m no stranger to loud music. I still sometimes dance in front of the soundstage at festivals. That place was actively trying to kill me.

Nine year old Al was an idiot. But his tyranny is still working on me. When we are kids and we know nothing we make all these badly thought through plans for future versions of us. Somewhere there’s a scrawled picture of me in the year 2000. Nine year old Al drew me with a hovercar parked in the garden of my big house holding hands with my smiling wife, two happy kids and a dog.

We are all being held accountable by our childhood plans. But the version of you that made them was an actual child. We are making ourselves answerable to a bunch of children. We’re older now. And hopefully we have a better handle on what makes us happy…?

I am going to let myself off the hook. 9 year old Al would’ve been equally fascinated and terrified by the strange man. While my parents pulled me away from him he would’ve been looking backwards. Good on you little Al. Pat on the head. You’ll learn, you lucky little idealistic sheltered shitbag.

Meantime stand there in your pyjamas and dream. Some of them will serve you. And some will turn out to be visions of hell. Good luck deciphering. Oh and get some shares in Microsoft…

I’m watching Netflix and chilling. I didn’t really think that was in my repertoire. But my friend, my cat and my ass – the three of us are watching Homelands. Or two of us are, if you count Pickle who is mostly indifferent. Yeah okay it’s just one of us, since my ass is blind… But it gives me time to write this.

I’ve been helping build the next generation of lawyers as a day job. Then I’ve been helping dream the next generation of theatre as an evening job.

For three years I’ve gone to a major law firm and helped them select people who will go on to shining things. It’s a day long. It’s always lovely. You see people come out of their shells. You help a major employer to employ lovely smart people. At grass roots, it feels like a chance to use empathy and general understanding of heart to help guide employers to good kids. We are not the only eye in the room. But our eye is valued. And as actors we know the difference between genuinely smart people and obedient people with no agency.

Over half of the 7 actor/tutors I worked with today trained at GSA. The Guildford School of Acting. And I discovered today that this school for actors has recently imposed an AAB minimum at A level for entry into their acting course.

As an actor, nobody has ever asked me my A level grades. I’d find the question laughably irrelevant and a road to disrespect if it was asked of me. But by imposing this entry criterion, this so called “acting” school is passing on the best portion of its potential intake, and feeding the middle class bias in the industry. Yes there are academic high achievers that turn out to be good actors too – by chance. But in my experience many of the best actors are not book-smart, not obedient, not AAB or anything close. And our job is to represent all parts of society. Not just gradesy McGradeson’s obedient yesno chums.

It’s left me feeling conflicted. I would never recommend GSA to anyone now. There are too many echo chambers available to us. I was lucky to be broken out of my sense of privilege by Guildhall – in many ways the opposite of Guildford despite the similarity of name. I saw how people in my year with no book learning whatsoever could understand things deeper and clearer than I could with all my inherited self importance. The very reason we are there at the law firm is to assess the human nature of these kids. If someone gave me a list of all the candidates ranked entirely in order of their academic achievements, I’d consider it totally irrelevant to my assessment and leave it on the side.

After work I went to the Arts Theatre and stood with about 20 people who are unbelievably talented makers and movers and shakers in the industry. We had a creative brainstorm about a massive new upcoming project. If more than an eighth of those people got AAB at A level I’ll eat my hat. These are people who are making things without fetters, without obedience, without the entrenched belief in a binary answer. They’re my people. And they make my life better by existing, even if they didn’t quite gel with school . Or perhaps because they didn’t.

 

I should’ve been a lawyer. Over 500 quid per hour, the one I’m talking to. I’ve been trying to make progress on something that has eluded me for over 15 years. My dad rather optimistically allowed himself to believe that everyone wouldn’t start dropping like flies when he died. When they all did, it left my brother Max and I in total confusion and grieving. It’s many years though now since the dominos started falling. I’m over it now mostly, even if this is a tricky week. But I still didn’t really know where to start untangling a mess that has lain dormant for so long.

So, after looking at it from all angles, I just … started somewhere. And after a while I engaged an expensive lawyer because there’s too much I don’t understand and it was her firm that my dad was working with. It’s a move which I’m hoping I don’t come to regret as it turns out she doesn’t understand either – or she’s pretending not to for profit. She just sent me a very expensive three page email. Her email asks all the questions I couldn’t answer that led to me engaging them in the first place. It ends with “our fees will be higher than we originally estimated.” And her original estimate blew the doors off so there goes my kidney. I’m hoping this doesn’t turn into Jarndyce Vs Jarndyce or I’m going to have to sell Pickle for glue.

When I was at school we did a workshop day for a major law firm. My team did really well and afterwards I was asked to an assessment day. I didn’t want to go. I knew back then I was an actor. So I refused the opportunity and didn’t tell my mum, knowing that she’d have forced me. So that door closed leaving me free to dream the impossible dream. I’m still okay with that, teenage Al. But £545 an hour, teenage Al??? Just to have specialist knowledge, dress up smart and invent problems? Easy life.

Tomorrow I’ll be helping run one of those assessment days – at a major law firm – for about a quarter of an hour’s worth of that fee for my whole day. It’ll be the third year I’ve been involved, and it’s always a lovely day. But by now I reckon the kids from the first year that did well will be earning more per annum than I’ve seen in a decade. Still, they don’t get to sleep at the top of Carnaby Street in a caravan…

I’m going to get an early bed. Yesterday’s malaise – it turns out I was getting sick. My unconscious was trying to tell my conscious that something was wrong. So it gave me the screaming habdabs all day and sent me to bed thinking to world was ending. I woke up coughing and howling and Brian brought me a lemsip. Then I dayjobbed the morning and passed out all afternoon. I was meant to be doing Macbeth rehearsals but my body just needed to sleep. Now it’s half eight, I just cooked a lovely aubergine and white fish madras. I’m going to drug myself to sleep so I’m fresh for the lawyers tomorrow.

I struggle with this time of year. My thoughts always get pulled to dark places. The winter tries to keep its claws in. My parent’s death is in my mind, and my own inability to find the chances I so yearn for in work and in life. Reading this every day you might start to think that I am satisfied in the chaos, or that my relentless cheer is rooted through me to the extent that I am oblivious to pain. In the cards I always identify with The Fool. I can find peace in a maelstrom, but it doesn’t mean that I don’t feel the wind. Yes I will fall off a cliff and land in a pile of cushions. But as Alice’s card says: “The jester doffed his cap and bells, And stood the mocking court before; They could not see the bitter smile Behind the painted grin he wore. ” I’ll make you laugh. I’ll try to take away your cares. But that’s as much as anything else because I understand them.

There are gaping voids within all of us – and me as much as you. Thwarted hopes and missed expectations – for ourselves and for our friends. It’s about how we deal with them. I actively hate having to phone utility companies and beg forbearance every month, time after time – this juggling act I do before the bailiffs get instructions and I have to manage those obstructive and expensive humans too. But I am getting better at it through unhappy practice. Many of my friends fight tooth and nail to make rent, more have compromised into work they hate. I am surrounded by lovely people, despite not having that elusive partner in love – although admittedly I haven’t really been looking. And my beautiful talented friends – some are being bullied, some marginalised, some overworked, some undervalued and many are just as alone as I am if not much much more so. People with deep strange eloquent amazing voices are having those voices taken from them. Some of them are fighting tooth and nail. Others are resigning to it. I don’t know which upsets me more.

This time last year I felt I had turned a corner. To be honest, I had done. I had just got back from a changing time in America, and I felt the benefit of that change. I still feel it now. But damn it’s hard to hold the positive right now. Important to remember that tonight is the last night of the precedence of dark. On Tuesday the dark and the light are balanced evenly. And from then the days get longer than the nights. Too many of my friends are experiencing pain and obstruction today. It has been a long long winter and this cold is helping it linger in our hearts. But the light is coming. I suppose I need to think of this as the last tendrils of the darkness clinging to me as I wander aimlessly into whatever lighter place I find…

 

 

 

Hungover day, and the world is chilly again. My fixed boiler is chuntering away burning banknotes and making the flat feel like a cosy home. Last night drunk Al thought it clever to order late night pizza. Brian Mel and I waited an hour and a half as the guy tunneled through the snow with his overpriced dough. It eventually arrived so late and we all shoved it into our faces almost blindly. I didn’t get to pass out until 3, full of cheese, and at 5.15 my alarm went off and I blearily rang my friend in case she hadn’t set hers. She hadn’t. Once I was happy she was awake I crashed back down and stayed in bed all morning. She flew back to Poland from Stansted at something like half 8. With the amount we’d consumed it’s a miracle she even got to the bus stop.

I haven’t changed out of my dressing gown yet. I’m not going to.

Yesterday was lovely, but I spent too much money. I think I’ll have to drop the booze again. Things are too damn slow. I need to get new photos for my new agent so she can get me some meetings so I can get me some money to get new photos in the first place. How do people manage this crap with rent to pay too? No booze is the wisest move for now. And avoidance of takeaways.

Brian and I chose this snowy weekend to get two takeaways. The drunken pizza and then this evening’s epic curry which also took hours to come through as the delivery driver battled the snow. We both think of ourselves as pretty good cooks but you wouldn’t know it if you’d watched us today. We were hurling good money at people in exchange for overpriced food delivered so slowly that we could’ve grown it.

The three of us remained cocooned in the living room with Pickle and watched The Wolf of Wall Street. We just consumed stuff all day. Pizza, Movies, terrible reality TV, psychology experiments, brainless tat.

Tomorrow I’m at Imperial again and we start an intensive week building towards Macbeth showings at The Factory. It’s going to get busy again, so I’m glad to have had a few days down being indulgent even if I’ll regret it when I see my bank balance.

Right now though I’ve got a cup of licorice and peppermint tea and a good book. Brian has gone to do the get-out for Neverland and to tear down all the steel mezzanines we built a month ago. I was asked to, but couldn’t because of work next week. So I don’t have to take my dressing gown off. “Have fun!” I just shouted down. It’s past 9pm. He won’t be home until 2 at least. He’s off to work extremely hard in the cold, lugging heavy things around and pulling up nails. Poor Brian. I think I’ll have some more chocolate and stroke the cat a bit.

Among the many belief structures and frames of thought that I consider to be beneficial to the thinker and to their environment, I rank Nichiren Buddhism very highly. It’s not the hierarchical Buddhism that can give rise to the genocide currently being perpetrated in Myanmar/Burma on the Rohingya. And it’s a long way from the teachings of the Nazarene prophet too, which were co-opted and twisted out of shape by Rome to the extent that they permit wholesale planet destruction. Monotheism was adopted by Rome as a better choice, because unlike pantheism – where there can be a god in everything and you must respect your environment – it describes a clear and limited chain of command. One God, one holy person, one holy ruler. Everyone else is down the chain of command and that is the outwardly imposed supernatural law. It happens to chime very well with the needs of an overextended empire that needed arbitrary laws and thought-control to even have a chance of uniting such a hugely disparate populace without the aid of TV. And even though the teachings at the heart of it are beautiful, humanist and important, the dissemination was to do with empire, and now we are entrenched as a society. We are either feeling very much like we are part of it and taking some notional moral high ground, or we are identifying against it and being smug in our majority informed oppositional conformity.

If it’s your opinion and you’ve won it by work, whichever corner of the theism question you stand in you’re very welcome and we will have a good conversation and both come out of it well. Parrots bore me utterly though. Generally. And particularly on this old grindstone.

And yet I’m happy to subscribe to a faith that, initially, asks people to chant “Nam Myo Ho Renge Kyo” for ages without really even knowing what it means.

Today I helped organise a youth event in Hammersmith. 6000 people across the UK gathered in three cities to connect with Nichiren Buddhism. The guy was a monk who came 700 years after the Shakyamuni Buddha. His teachings have catalysed a movement that calls itself a society, not a religion. With no priesthood and no real hierarchy it is seeking to encourage people to be the best version of themselves, while making everyone else the best version of themselves too. It’s like a benevolent form of The Borg. And I’ve been assimilated. Because I see nothing bad in it.

I’ve had to do loads of admin though. The people who practice are divided up into districts. Any faith structure is going to draw people who are starved of community. So as a new person in my district, who has so much community already and doesn’t need more, I was not attending meetings. They asked me to be “District Champion” by way of giving me a job title and making me do a bit of work, connect to a sense of achievement and thereby feel more involved in the district. I knew this but I still did it. It’s good for me.

I did it, mummy. I did it etc etc…

The event was lovely and I WAS proud to be part of it. We flooded out Hammersmith Apollo. I’m glad it went so well.

And yes, I chant “Nam myo ho renge Kyo” daily. I know what it means. To me. It’s easy to get a notional understanding of what it means intellectually. But what it means to me personally is more important. Because that’s why I do it. It’s to do with resonance. Sound. Connection. The more people that are chanting the same mantra simultaneously, the greater the chance we will be vibrating together energetically afterwards. I love to swim in the sea because I feel connected to the whole world. I love to chant because I know I will be aligning with people across the globe.

I hope this event will bring more young people to this practice. Gods we are starved of spirituality. We need things beyond our ken. so we can get beyond our Barbie. The Tarot week just gone helped me see that. This has cemented it.

 

Even as my ability to dump thoughts into words improves, so the technology I’m dumping into devolves. When I started this I was writing two handed into an iPad Air. Oh those heady days. The screen is long smashed, and until I can pay the absurd repair fee it’ll stay that way. I taught myself to dump into a mobile phone screen instead. I never thought it was possible to express complicated thoughts into a mobile. Turns out it is, to an extent, so long as you don’t need to edit, and you have Google keyboard swipe function.

Editing on my last mobile was extremely fiddly. If I’d made a typo or I wanted to rejig a sentence it took time and work.

Now I’m writing on a horrible horrible brick phone that barely has the memory to attach photographs and takes half an hour to do anything. It’s designed for hitting people over the head. It’s a paperweight with a screen. There’s no editing here, kids. Well, there’s some. But if you try to insert text the text after it turns to gobbledygook so I just have to keep rolling forwards and trust that the finished product will make sense.

If I hit the end of the day and then try to play catch-up after a few beers it’s a disaster. So I’m getting this done before I meet my friend Helen in case we think that wine is a good idea.

So –  constant reader (thank you so much you maniac) – you can understand why recently I’ve been putting up unedited stream of consciousness. First world problems, eh? You get this crap fresh minted.

(Literally as I write this standing on the street in Waterloo the unassuming man that just walked past me has started vomiting loudly and angrily onto the pavement, perhaps in response to what I just wrote. It’s alcohol spew I think, despite it not being 9pm yet on a Friday. It’s like he’s trying to shout the word “kayak” underwater. Nonetheless I’m going to get a drink. Friday night etc)

If I will seek a lifestyle where I can gladly take a week of reading tarot in a caravan in central London, and then impulse into a pub on my own, I can’t complain when I can’t afford to fix my iPad. Especially considering I’m lucky enough to have the bloody thing in the first place (thank you Fitzrovia Radio Hour).

I’ve been visiting lovely people all day. I started with a friend who has recently been on a three day retreat with some Amazonian plant medicine. It was great to see her afterwards, as it feels like she’s turned a corner, which is exactly what the medicine is supposed to do. We had expensive lunch in Soho (she’s still on a very prescriptive vegan ++ diet) and damn it was good. We were upstairs in Neal’s Yard.

Now I’m in a Friday night pub. Men are shouting. Really really shouting. It’s only twenty past nine on a Friday. So many people so desperate for it all to be over, their shit week, so they can obliterate themselves and shout and puke and smash things and then start all over again.

I just wish it was easier to sit in public in this town when it’s cold and not spend money. The Siberian wind is blowing in. That man’s vomit is probably going to freeze overnight. I’m going to regret leaving the house in my leather jacket only. But my friend has just messaged to say she’s coming in a sec. Roll on a better telephone. (June, or September if I’m jumping ship from Vodafone)

Meanwhile, two espresso martinis in The Young Vic. Boom.