Category: Uncategorized

Digging Cars

“Lovely day in Jersey”, I said. “Old friend of my grandparents”, I said. “Nice walk on the beach”, I said. “Perfect weather”, I said.

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People, you were about to get one smug bastard of a blog. You were going to get me being all sentimental about Jersey, the rock where I spent my first decade. Ahhh Jersey. The scent of the sea. The taste of the food. “Happy highways where I went.”

I went through the happy highways in a Dacia. (Don’t worry, I didn’t crash it. It’s something else.) The happy highways in Jersey are very very narrow. It’s a tiny little island. And as the old friend of my grandfather told me “There’s 50,000 more people than when you were here.” Business concluded, grave visited and flowered, and Max and I went to El Tico for “local” crab linguini. Being Max he saw a claw and said “it’s local in that it’s local to South East Asia. It’s a swimming crab.” Tasty though. We used to go to El Tico when it just sold coffee and cake and had a mynah bird out back in a cave that could swear like a sailor. The bird is long gone but they’ve made it great there. We were having so much fun. Oh such joy. But it was dark, and two hours until the flight. “May as well go to the airport early”, I said. “Then I can have a beer.”

Brmmmmmmm brmmmmmmm

“Oh. I think we’ve taken a wrong turn. Look it says ‘Private Road’”

“It’s too narrow to turn. We might as well go down and turn at the end.”

“No it’s a big Private sign – they obviously don’t like it. I’ll just turn here…”

Oh Al. Al Al Al. Oh oh oh Al. You fool. You mad fool. Reverse up the steep verge? Sure. Now turn the wheel. Roll down and … *bump*. A drop. Oh. Oh shit.

Max and I find ourselves looking at a little white Dacia utterly jammed between two steep verges, completely blocking the road, right in the mud front and back. Driving it is impossible. After burning the engine a bit we give it up as a hiding to nothing. We have no movement whatsoever. We need a crane. 1 hour 45 minutes to departure.

Thankfully there’s a breakdown service on the island. He’s still in the office, just. It’s almost 7pm. I describe the situation. He doesn’t have a crane but he knows a man that does. He’ll call me back.

Phone down. Assess the situation. 1 hour 40. The verge at the front is lower than the one at the back. Explore explore. Ok there’s loads of rocks. The front of the car is wedged up against a huge bit of shale embedded in the bank. *Dig dig dig* This job feels impossibly big. We’ve got no tools. Hands. Nails. Dig dig dig. We are digging into the side of a big mud bank with our fingers. I’m shaking with nerves. The car stinks of rubber. 1 hour 20. He hasn’t rung. We’ve made little visible progress. Both of our hands are bleeding. My shoulders hurt. I grab my phone. *Ring ring* “Oh hi – yeah I’ve got Damian’s number. He’s my boss. He’s got a crane.” “Can you text it to me?” “Um… no. Just … just take it down. It’s easy.” “Okay. Fine. I’ll remember it.” “Great. It’s 07855cvjxxxxxcthuluFTAGN0999.” “I think I’ve got it can you just repeat to be sure.” He repeats and then keeps talking. “Mate, you’ll have to give me that number again and then I’ll immediately hang up.” He does. I ring it. “Narrow lane you say? We’ll have nowhere to put the crane supports. I could come and tow you?” “You won’t be able…” “I’ll come anyway. Maybe I can tow you sideways. Where are you? … … Oh I’m the opposite side of the island. It’ll be a while “ 1 hour 10 to departure. Dig dig dig. Dig dig dig. Breaking shale with other rocks. Levering with sticks. Dig dig pant pant pant dig dig dig. 1 hour until flight time. “We’ve dug round it but it’s not moving. Let’s kick the rock.” Kick kick kick. Ow. Kick kick smash. “That knocked a little chunk out. Dig dig kick kick dig. 55 minutes. Pant pant pant kick kick FUCK pant pant pant kick kick dig dig MOVEMENT. “It moved it fucking moved it moved.” Digdigdigdigdigdigkickkickkickkick pant pant aaaargh KICK. Finally. Loose. No room to get it out past the front of the car though. We have to dig room for it. For God’s sake. I’m a mole with bleeding fingers. We both are. We are both covered in mud. We don’t care. We have to do this. Thank God it’s Max I’m with. We are both as stubborn as mules. Neither of us talking about what should have been done. Neither of us waiting for daddy-breakdown to fix it for us as daddy is long dead and the buck stops here. Dig dig try try dig dig try dig dig dig. We get the rock out! It’s HUGE. Weighs a ton. All my muscles are spent. Glad we ate that linguini. 45 minutes left. Tick tock. All that work for about an inch of room. Easier to point the car the way it was facing before. One inch forward. Handbrake. One inch back. Handbrake. Repeat ad nauseam with fear sweat and bleeding filthy hands on the wheel mumbling “nam myo ho renge kyo” to myself like a crazyman. Eventually eventually eventually we are back where we started. Hooray. Max gets in. We drive down the private road. No choice. There’s a turning space at the end. A man comes out of his house. “Sorry,” says Max. “We got lost.” “There’s a sign. It says private road.” says the man. Max keeps his cool: “Yes. Yes – we saw that.”

Brrrrmmmmm . 40 minutes to departure. Twelve minutes to the airport. We are there in ten, looking at the front. I take my shirt off, squirt the last of my water into it, wipe the mud off the hire car. “There’s scratches.” “Nothing we can do. Let’s go.”

They let us through security despite the mud. There’s nobody at the airport – we are the only visible passengers in security. We make the flight just as it’s boarding. All the staff are laughing at us. I wash my slashed hands. We made it.

I’m writing this on the plane. I just bought a £4.50 can of Punk IPA. My fingers hurt. I’m still shaking from sour adrenaline. I wonder what the car hire charges us for the scratches? Maybe they’ll be nice. Also I wonder what the mardy guy will think in the morning when he sees we’ve tunneled a huge hole out of his verge and thrown bits of shale all over the place.

They say that unexpected obstacles come just before breakthroughs. Max and I need a breakthrough. And after that experience, I reckon it’s a shoe-in. God. I feel sick, and thrilled that Max and I dug the car out. I rang Damian from the breakdown and told him we were out. I apologised for wasting his time. I said “You’ve got my number. If you feel I’ve wasted your time just message me. We’ll sort something out.” “Nah mate, you’ve given me a good laugh.” he said. Bastard.

Year One – It Never Rains in Southern California

Grey River and Stream of Consciousness

I’m off early tomorrow morning to go to Jersey. The island of my birth. It’s a little granite rock in the English channel. I spent my childhood there in a house on top of a hill. Usually I only go back for funerals but tomorrow I’m going back to see an old friend of my grandfather’s. His brilliant eccentric chain-smoking wife was my godmother but she’s been dead of emphysema for twenty years or so. He’s still going, but he’s slowing down. He might be able to help me with some stuff I don’t understand. Here’s hoping.

Today has been another day where I’ve stayed at home with the cat and the central heating and entertained myself for free. I’m writing this uncommonly early. It’s just gone six. I’ve cracked open a can of beer and I’m looking out at the grey streets and thanking the gods that the snow didn’t settle. The flight is out of Gatwick tomorrow morning, and if a single snowflake falls in this city then everything shuts down at once and there’s panic in the streets, fire, screaming, death and pain.

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Hopefully it won’t snow in the night. I wanted to go by boat in my brother’s car. But a ferry was going to be about £250 before petrol, and the journey would take the best part of a day. Last minute flights for two plus car rental and a train to Gatwick – it’s much cheaper than the ferry all in plus we can do it without sleeping over. And the flight is an hour long.

A year ago I was at the Women’s March in LA. Hard to believe that it was a whole year. Such an optimistic event, and things have shifted in Hollywood since that day, even if not in The White House. There were people I connected with out there but never met – (too many people, not enough time, who’s this guy? I’m busy…) This evening I impulsively joined a writer’s group with two of them on Facebook. These are friends of a friend.  But I’ve always enjoyed reading/watching the stuff they put out there. It seemed like the right thing to do to muck in. The theme was “status quo” and what that means to us. At the end we had to write stream of consciousness for seven minutes and then share. Here is my unstructured rant related to status quo. In order for it to have full impact, just imagine you’re locked in a cave with me and I’m wearing nothing but a loincloth and covered in filth and woad. You have a weapon. This is what I’m shouting:

“STATUS QUO: I wish I could land into something familiar that repeats – the sense of a status quo seems almost impossible – beyond the possibilities of the frame that I have stumbled into for myself. Status Quo – it’s a band in the eighties that shouted with guitars, and it’s a conservative dream of the way things should be but for me is it anything other than an idea – that there is a platform to leap from… I keep leaping and finding out my feet are in suet. I don’t trust that there can be a kind status quo – I want there to be such a thing. We all want stability and a platform that isn’t made of suet. I want to stand on a stage like the hairy guitarists in the eighties and leap from it knowing that there will be people to catch me in the crowd but usually it’s just a faceplant on concrete. If my status quo has been chaos for so long what can it be for people who are less lucky than I am – I have a home and I have warmth and food. Is that my status quo> That and the cat and the friends I have picked up over the years? How can we be satisfied with the things that we disempower when we frame them as normal? Maybe the things that we take for granted are status quo, and maybe we must accept that we are all jumping from a stage made out of suet and work out how to cook the suet into a nice hard pudding that can take the impression of out wandering feet and guide us to whatever it is that we think we need to be happier. Status Quo. Stability. Ground. Footing. But also to me it speaks of the way things have always been, and is it not time for that to change? To revolutionise ourselves internally, so we are ready to bring our internal revolution out into the world and be avatars of a new shining personal status quo where people can be drawn to the possibility of personal change and see that it can lead to a possibility of global change where these ancient monsters that have always lurked at the edges of power can be overthrown by millions of people like us leaping from our beautifully cooked suet pudding spotted dick platforms of currants into the current. Why do we seek you, quo? Why do we use the language of an imperial culture that trampled on art and killed gladiators for fun to express an idea of stability – yes they built out of stone for posterity, but they crucified and tore and ripped and we use their words to speak of stability? I would sooner have a rock band.”

Let me know the nature of your weapon, and at which point you would have employed it. Good luck kids! There’s a prize for the correct answer. You get to live the experience!

 

 

Year One – Liberty and Trump

Rambo

It’s Saturday night and I’m sitting in my warm flat. I’ve barely left the place all day. I’m down to my last few pennies. The upside of spending all my money on a boiler is that now I have a comfortable home to lounge around in.  The downside is, no fun-budget so I have to stay home.

I just watched John Wick. That’s the  sort of mood I’m in. John Wick is a movie about Neo from The Matrix killing a cohort of people because Theon Greyjoy stole his car and killed his dog. It’s probably the stupidest film that I could possibly have found, and exactly what I was in the mood for. Although the first 12 people died so suddenly I still found myself wondering about their families and ambitions before I switched off the empathy. When I was a kid my dad let me watch Rambo 2. 

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Before the film he told me “don’t forget that all the people he shoots are just pretending to get shot. That’s their job. They’re just actors.” Considering he didn’t want me to be an actor that was perhaps a mistake. Rather than having that naive impressionable boy freaking out about “Rambo’s coming for me,” he instead had the same idiot child watching all those low paid maniacs throwing themselves backwards and thinking “That looks like fun! And that’s their job?!” Although to be honest I was already lost. That just confirmed it.

You get asked to do some strange things. I’ve touched on that before. Close friends of mine have turned down action movies because they glorify gun culture. But for me there’s such a breath between a story and an influence that I can’t make sense of that concern. I enjoy watching Keanu Reeves. He doesn’t interfere. His breath is in connection with his body, and he doesn’t try to telegraph anything. I watched him pretend to brutally kill 77 people (2 more than Rambo in that early “grown-up” VHS). It doesn’t make me wish I could go out and jump around with a gun, even if someone stole my car and killed my pet. If someone stole my car I’d be thrilled – I’m scrapping it in the next week and if it got nicked I’d get a bit more cash. It’s only worth about £300 anyway but I’ll get half that for scrap.

If they were to hurt Pickle though… Well then I might have to go rogue. “Chelsea based maniac in sustained rampage: Jobbing actor Al Barclay was finally apprehended whilst trying to wash a Barbour jacket with carbolic soap. He had been on a rampage in the Kings Road area, throwing wax into vintage fur, spraying cheap aftershave into people’s noses and, tragically, shouting the words ‘Jeremy Corbyn’ at a meeting for the PTA of Hill House School whilst tearing up a copy of the Daily Mail and wearing a black tie with a navy blue jacket. 77 people are known to be dead of outrage, and auntie Phyllis has been caught in a ‘…well I … well I … well I…’ loop for 29 hours with no sign of it abating. The police are patrolling the area with megaphones shouting “You can ignore him, he’s just an actor” but the damage is done. Reportedly a staff member in Peter Jones who had been in the vicinity at the time of the incident returned to work and knowingly oversold an electric kettle to a young couple from Bath. She will be executed by electrocution on BBC1 at noon on Sunday.”

Year One – Augurs and Antipodeans

VR and old schools

I went back to my old school today to see an old friend who used to teach me. It’s term time at the moment. I walked up the hill and past lots of awkward pasty looking young men standing very upright to balance those bloody expensive straw boaters we all had to wear. People used to steal mine all the time, and various arsehole teachers would punish you so severely for not having one that my poor parents would’ve taken out hat-insurance if such a thing existed. With my full forward open positive optimism I never expected it to get nicked again and again, and then it did. I still haven’t really learnt that some people are just dicks. I partly think they were doing it on purpose.

The word “school” conjures a very different image in my mind than it does for most people. There were 750 boys there when I arrived (and rather strangely one girl, Jessica). The school is on top of a Hill overlooking the panorama of the urban sprawl. The view is stunning. The architecture is ancient and beautiful. In the Christmas Carol script, Marley takes Scrooge back to school. He opens the magic with “The school was a mansion of dull red brick, with a little weathercock mounted on the cupola.” It’s a bastardisation of the Dickens. But it might as well be a description of my old school building. What a lucky bugger I was. Scrooge was always there in my imagination, reading Ali Baba in what they called the fourth form room. I hated the place and so did Scrooge. I was driven past it today on the way home and snatched a photo.

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Martin wanted to talk to me about Macbeth. I think he also wanted to introduce me to his friend because she’s in my industry. She was the Jessica equivalent a few years after I left the place. Strange to be the only girl at a place like that, I imagine. She seems to have come out of it reasonably intact.

She’s making VR, which is a fascinating if strange medium. With the goggles on, your brain starts to believe it’s happening to you. People have died of fright. Who knows, it might end up responsible for the end of procreation when everyone starts living virtually like the fucking matrix. I’m curious about it. You can do a lot with it and it feels like a medium I’d prefer to generate than to consume. And people like her are starting to push the form, which is always when I get excited.

The three of us sat in a cafe and geeked out about theatre, Shakespeare, audience response, technology and storytelling. I thought I was going to talk with Martin one on one about approaching Macbeth as a performance text. But that was derailed. The conversation went all over the place. At one point talking about sex robots in Barcelona, then a moment later Roman Catholicism, then ethics. “If someone slashes your bionic arm, is that GBH or property damage?” Martin fed us remarkable amounts of pizza, which we didn’t do well at eating, and wrote down all sorts of things we said. I have no idea what, if anything, we said that might be useful for his purposes. Still it’s always a delight to hang out with him, and his friend was excellent company and an interesting artist. Plus it’s the first time for a bit I haven’t felt rushed so I felt my shoulders drop. I’ve sat down so little recently that I discovered two long screws from Monday in my back pocket. I left them on the table prompting Martin to take the “he’s a couple of screws loose” shot. There’s some truth in that.

Year One – The calm before the storm

Every new beginning comes with some other beginning’s end

Yesterday I was all buoyed up by the thought of new beginnings. But we forget that wrapped up in new beginnings there are endings. This morning I had to go to my old agent. I thought about dressing up smart but decided it would be better if I was a bit scruff, so I came in my work clothes for the set building. She was pleased to see me – big smile – introducing me to all her new staff members, asking if I wanted coffee. I remembered as I sat down how fond I was of her. Then I immediately broke up with her and saw her face harden as she agreed. She’s brilliant, particularly for musical theatre, but it hadn’t been working for either of us. 1 year. 1 meeting. 1 recall. 0 jobs. Still, when you make an end like that you snip off the head of dreams. You kill potential.

Then I had to make an even harder cut. They say the first cut is the deepest but baby I’m not sure. My beautiful old friend who held my hand when I was ten and who has held it again hard this year, ran alongside me, and shown nothing but patience support and love – She’s my manager. In America many actors have an agent AND a manager, but my new agent comes with a team and therefore to keep hold of Iona for work in this country would be a conflict of interest as far as the new move is concerned. And I’m thoroughly excited about this move. I’m bad at breakups though. I have to remind myself of how this all started.

Unbeknownst to me, catalysed by excellent professional friends who seek nothing but the best for me, wheels were turning in the background. The first I heard about it was about three weeks ago when I was forwarded an email chain. I was in Euston Station, underground. I had been recommended, researched, and pronounced “interesting” by this established agent – all without my knowledge. Turns out she’d spoken to my old friend (and one time teacher) who described me as “a young Michael Hordern”. I passed that one to Tristan who immediately slapped his forehead and said “Fuck, yes, why didn’t I think of that?” I’ll take it. He did complicated intelligent people with clarity and truth, and he was a legend.

Then she randomly contacted a director friend of mine who I have a great deal of time for and who’s making waves in the industry. She also spoke well of me – (with the (entirely accurate) proviso that I say “yes” to stuff I probably shouldn’t.) This agent did her research, and the people she spoke to were all lovely. So, in Euston Station, on the Northern Line platform, I got the email chain. It came as a complete shock. Yet a lightning-bolt validation of all the years I’ve spent working hard, being kind, nurturing professional friendships, growing. I was floored. I collapsed into a bench and wept with complicated bitter joy. The trains came and went. I was there for a while. I’ve been clinging to the underside of the slippythrough net for years. Someone just threw me a rope. Fuck I’m blessed by my friendships…

Despite all this poncy emotional actor shit, as soon as I was done with saying farewell to my lovely ex-agent I went to a dusty underground lair and shovelled hideous zombie rubberchip for hours.

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Then, sweating muck, I built a tunnel with a carpenter, did a load of stuff with ladders, deconstructed and reconstructed a bar, hit some stuff with hammers, sweated, laughed, sweated more and learnt how to use a circular saw. Now I’m home, feeling conflicted, and running myself a bath to wash away the badness. As Lucy observed, I say “yes” too much. That’s primarily because I hate saying “no.” “No” kills potential. But “yes” kills time.

Year One Day 3 – How to cross town for cheap

Ferryman

Jerusalem is one of those plays that are universally acknowledged as being excellent. I caught it at The Royal Court for .10p standing, and managed to slip into an unoccupied seat by timing it right and keeping an eye out for latecomers. When these positive opinions are so universally upheld about a piece of art, I find myself wanting to fly in the face of them, knowing that all art is subjective: “Oh yeah, I saw Jerusalem. It didn’t do it for me.” It’s tempting, and I’ve heard people try it. But it’s bullshit as far as I’m concerned. I adored Jerusalem. There was depth and dimension in the work, there was terrific immediacy nuance and presence in the performances. I am part of the throng of people blithering on about how glad they are to have caught it. It was a tour de force. I still haven’t been blown away like Rylance managed to blow me (ooer missus, no he’s not Spacey) at the end, as he called on the old Gods, and made us all part of his summons.

I’ve been wary of going to Ferryman. It’s another long form play by the same author – Jez Butterworth – and this time the word of mouth is more complicated. “Too long” “Paddywhacking” etc are getting thrown about by actor friends. We’re a demanding lot. But I’d have been pissed off if I didn’t catch it, after loving Jerusalem so much. And my major stopping point was price. It’s the perfect opportunity tonight. Dean is in it and can get me house seats. Even if house seats are much more than my habitual maximum price, they’re still a bit cheaper, and well placed.

I met Dean last millennium, when 23 of us strode into the striplit cupboards of the old Guildhall School of Music and Drama and learnt how to not be so full of shit on stage. We learnt ensemble. Now with my grey beard, more depth, a bit less frantic energy, and a voice two octaves lower, I’m meeting up with some of the other bright eyed kids from that ensemble and we’re celebrating Deano in the West End, while catching each other and this interesting piece of work.

Too much time has passed since we were the kids from Fame. Life has pulled the 23 of us in all sorts of different directions, but those three years together were intense and they inevitably forge invisible strings. I’m worse than many at staying in touch, but I’ve always kept a loose sense of how people are doing. I’ve seen more of Dean than others because he’s still rattling around in the bottom of the crucible so we inevitably bang into one another, sometimes on purpose. I’m going to love watching him in this, just as I’m looking forward to getting a drink with him and Carla and Nick and Eva afterwards.

Yeah it’s great. I suspect it’ll run and run. It’s a bold and big web of humanity cast over a story, and there is an ensemble of powerhouses pushing in the same direction. Everyone gets a crack at the whip. There are two stories at the heart, but so many more stories in the evening. The supernatural is not so front and centre as it was in Jerusalem, but still runs through it and it’s about love and pain and time and family. It’s beautiful and sad and human. What a lovely night. Here’s a crap selfie of us all.

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Exhausted again

Brian got knocked off his motorbike last night. He’s better than he might have been. But that was a bit of a shock to the system, getting the news just before bed last night. I went to sleep not knowing whether or not his leg was broken. He was getting seen to by the lovely NHS and was okay enough to let me know he was hurt. I woke up relieved to the news that it was just badly squished – (just?), but I’m still feeling pretty worried for him. He almost cut his thumb off fixing some pipes at Carol. He literally almost stubbed it with a Stanley knife. That crazy thumb was just starting to behave like normal people’s thumbs might, plus a bit of pain, and then some idiot doesn’t check their blind spot and Brian’s on crutches and making out like he’s not in agony when he is. I need to feed him a lot of protein and red meat in order to rebuild that body. I wish there wasn’t an internal flight of stairs in my flat as he’ll have to get up and down them daily.

He’s in Croydon at Mel’s right now and I haven’t been able to hang out with him and laugh at his bruises because of dayjobbing. I was offered a week of day-job and after the boiler I need to make sure that some short-term money is coming in. So I worked the week, and kept trying to sort out the life-stuff around it, and have found myself at the end of it sitting in front of my terminal listening to the bath running in the background and wishing there was a way to sleep and write simultaneously. There probably is an app. But I don’t know it and I’m too fucked to look. I’m done for the week. Totally shattered.

Thank God Brian only fucked his leg. If you ride a motorbike you take your life into your own hands. I know this better than many considering most of my childhood was spent in a house that was on the TT course in The Isle of Man. Every year there would be multiple fatalities, spoken about almost as if they were just par for the course. Some of them were on Quarterbridge Road right outside my home. The first time I went on dad’s bike he was doing donuts in the back garden with 10 year old Al pillion and the bike slipped. I jumped clear being young and swift and surrounded by grass. Dad went down on his leg. Mum was angrier than I had ever seen her and dad was reflexively trying to pretend he wasn’t in pain but was in plenty. I never went on the back of dad’s bike again. But these memories and this early lesson that bikes are heavy and hot – it’s never going to deter my interest from the monstrous noisy lovely fuckers. If anything it’ll do the opposite. I love to poke a hornet’s nest. I just haven’t the spare cash for the bike I’d like.

If money was no object I’d have blown myself up by now somehow. I’d have been smiling all the way but I’d have got into a wingsuit and flown into a tree, or shot myself out of a cannon into the ocean or something. I still might manage it. I just need to get rich. I might prefer exploding into a tree in a laughing winged fireball than dripping my weeks into a day-job so I can have hot baths until I wake up and realise one day that my hips need replacing.

Brian’s accident has helped me remember that even the little journeys can be touch and go. I might as well put on the wingsuit if I know the route. Fuck I’d love to fly a wingsuit. But right now I’m totally battered. Put me in one right now and I’d be as agile as a coconut.

Still I had a lovely evening. A great friend came over and we helped fix each other’s heads. I feel looked after, loved and happy. Then my nephew got home. He’s off tomorrow. “It’s been great,” he said. “You’ve taught me that you can live well and happily without getting hung up on the little stuff.”

Caves

Last night I went to Flavia’s. She’s been a hugely positive force in my life for years. I first met her at a party when I was at Guildhall and she was very young. She wanted to be an actor. She was auditioning for drama schools. I helped her out by challenging her. In my experience that’s a good way of helping young artists, and artists generally. They either rise to the challenge, or take themselves out of the mix.

She tells me: “I’m auditioning for drama schools in two weeks.” “What speeches are you doing?” “No idea.” “If you come to Guildhall tomorrow evening with two speeches I can help you. If not I can’t. I’ll meet you out front at 7pm”

She showed up. She had some speeches. It’s a sad thing but monologues are still the backbone of the drama school acceptance process, despite being the least efficient way of getting a sense of an actor. I met Flavia after college and we snuck into a room and worked the ones she had chosen. It was lovely. She was hilarious and brave. I encouraged her to play and she played. She didn’t get into Guildhall dammit but she still went to a decent drama school and since then she’s been on a journey. She decided very quickly that she wasn’t an actor though.

Now she’s in theatre PR and has a brilliant bonkers son who has become a friend of mine. We play well together, Ivo and I. We always have. Back when he was a toddler we used to improvise games with each other and it seems that’ll never change. Yesterday the two of us spent a good long time improvising games. Here’s another photo of us, since I took none today. Ivo is in disguise as me. You might not be able to tell who is who.

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It was beautiful to hang out with Flavia. Friendships only deepen with time. We’ve had lots of time.

I hung out with her and Ivo last night, and then got home to find my brother Jeremy. His son Campbell is on my sofa this week, but I didn’t expect Jeremy. He’s been in Egypt teaching art, and before that in Hong Kong. Now he’s back, and looking towards making a habitation out of some troglodytic caves that he inexplicably bought in the Loire Valley many years ago. By the time I was home I was already smashed and suddenly I was having to think practically about how my brother could live in a cave. Of course my go-to was unhelpful from his perspective. “Make it a massive party venue. If you do it right there’ll be people from all the nearby villages that are desperate for somewhere cool to go.”

I spent the morning with him, mostly motivating action. The caves he owns are huge and beautiful. There’s not much room for audience or I’d be thinking of them as a performance venue. They’re a venue for happenings though. But Jeremy is terrifically demotivated regarding them. They just sit there. With work they could be a living space or a performance space or – anything you care to make of a big empty cave. But it’s got to be better than what they are now. Right now they’re just big damp caves in France.

Free work

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Someone emailed me yesterday asking me to work for free. This happens more frequently than you would credit in my industry. Sometimes I dismiss it immediately – usually when it’s evident that loads of money is being spent on production and they’ve just gone “ahh we can save by not paying the actors.” This time I haven’t said yes yet, but I haven’t said no yet either. It’s a very short time commitment. I might enjoy myself. All those treacherous little thoughts are swimming through my head.

I like my work. It’s a craft I’ve spent a lot of time and money honing, and for which I have made some quite significant sacrifices and life-choices. But there are plumbers out there that could likely say the same thing. Dean who fixed my boiler was learning on the job. He was enjoying his work, despite running into difficulty. He got shot with adrenaline when he overcame the problem, and he drove home smiling and probably about £700 richer. If I’d put an ad up saying I couldn’t pay but it would be a great opportunity to fix an interesting boiler, with as much coffee as you want and a friendly cat… well, at best I’d still be cold and at worst some idiot would’ve blown my flat up. Just because I like my work, it doesn’t follow that I am therefore happy to do it for nothing – (or in these circumstances, technically I’d be paying to work, factoring in tube fares etc.)

And yet, I haven’t said “no” yet. What’s that about?

Let’s look at my history here. I did an unpaid gig in a pub theatre. I didn’t even like the script and I still did it. The journalists didn’t like the script either. More harm than good. But then I frequently volunteer for Scene and Heard. I help kids grow in confidence and I make good friends, and have fun being moles and bacteria and travel-cups. More good than harm. I accept an unpaid film and die ridiculously in a council block fire escape, killed by a terrible werewolf. I get soaked and ruin a shirt I love. The footage is never edited and the director vanishes. One day maybe it’ll show up on a clip show. “Do you remember doing THIS?” *facepalm* But then I do a short for a quid and it leads to good exposure and good friendships, and money down the line…

I’m going to sleep on it. And then I think I’m going to say “no”. She’s a young director, she’s not profiting, I’d like to help her out. It won’t be a huge amount of time. But there’s no point working if you’re not 100% sold, as my reputation stands on every choice I make. And now I take the time to write about it I realise that I’m not sold on the script either. It’s a single joke stretched into ten minutes, and it’s very much on the nose.

All that aside, I told myself I wouldn’t work for free outside of Scene and Heard and, circumstantially, The Factory, who have often been able to pay me and have always paid in challenge, love and friendship.

And yet still I’ll sleep on it. And then tomorrow like a sucker I’ll wake up all optimistic and say “Yes yes I’ll do it! I’m helpful Al! Hooray for helpful Al.”.

Punch me if I do.

Time passage

(I hung out with Ivo as per the photo.) I said no. But it was hard. Everything seemed predicated against me writing  tonight. All my WordPress apps crashed repeatedly. Done now. Sleep…

Dead Christmas Trees

Back when I worked on the boats, at this time of year there would be a huge number of Christmas trees floating in the river. I’d have to keep an eye out as they could foul the engines. Hilarious to throw them in the river if you’re a drunk idiot, bothersome as hell to navigate around them if you’ve got a twin engined RIB.

This time of year was my best time of work on those boats, because it’s bloody freezing. I’d get home sometimes and lie in a hot bath for hours, topping up all the time yet still shivering if I got out. Most of the guides were mysteriously unavailable in the cold months so weirdly I got more hours than in sunny times. I didn’t care. I was happy to enthusiastically freeze for money. I wanted to earn. Plus I loved working that river. There’s plenty to see. The skies are amazing. The tides are so huge that there’s always something sucked into the mix. I saw all sorts floating in there. Dead rats. Doors. Balloons. Footballs. Chemical toilets. Empty fuel cans. Stuffed toys. Inflatable sheep. Huge planks. Scum. Loads of buoys… I used to haul buoys out all the time. Thankfully no dead bodies although many of my colleagues had seen them. There’s a community among Thames workers. I still think about how I loved that job. But… Personalities…

The way in which Christmas trees are dumped is a good illustration of how many people are encouraged to go blithely from festival to festival and lose the periods in between to thankless repetitive work. They cost a load of money. They feel like an important thing to have. Then as soon as the season is over we have to throw them away because of Twelfth Night.

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And immediately the big supermarkets start hammering out Easter eggs in special deals. “Forget the periods in between, serf. Just work. Easter is coming! Buy chocolate and dream of your Easter bank holiday. Earn money! Swallow your pride! Buy chocolate things or whatever else we say you want, I dunno a pet rabbit? Rabbits are Easter! Buy stuff! Buy! Plus don’t forget Valentine’s Day! Make sure you can afford a big meal or some jewellery or something – anything – as long as it’s a little bit out of your budget otherwise you don’t love the person you say you love. Singles? We’ve got you covered! Horrible uncomfortable first date experiences!! Have a big mouth coming at you after a dull conversation! Just let it happen! Everyone else compromises! Compromise! Compromise!!”

I’ve got my nephew staying. He got a megabus from Aberdeen and then skateboarded from the coach station and arrived before I was awake, at about 6.50am. He’s 21. He went immediately this morning to the iconic skate park on the south bank, snapped his board, made some friends, replaced his snapped board cheaply, and got back to it. He came all the way down here in order to see the first ever large scale Jean-Michel Basquiat exhibition in the UK.

It’s brilliant to spend time with someone from my own family who prioritises things that other people don’t. Yes, come to London to see an art exhibition, and then spend all your money immediately on a new skateboard! Both of those things are a better long-term investment than a Christmas tree.