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I’m home again home again jiggidy jig. Long old drive but podcasts make it go away. Million Dollar Lover, still on Intrigue with BBC SOUNDS. Back to catland and it’s warm here on my bed with the blanket on. Lou is still in Brecon. I miss it and her.

Pretty much every time I left the little house I was in someone engaged me in conversation. There’s interest in the place and I can feel why, it is a beautifully done holiday cottage now. But it is on a flight of steps that gives a useful shortcut. It’s busy. When I was recording my tape, people often lingered, seeing me in the window, curious.

It was derelict for some years, it transpires. The previous owner lived alone there until he was old, and kept ferrets. You sometimes still hear people on the way up say things like: “careful, the old man lives there, mustn’t let him see you”. I remember there were “haunted” houses and such when I was a kid and you had to hold your breath as you passed or pinch your nose or mutter something to protect you. This old guy with his ferrets clearly made an impression both positive and negative on the locals. He’s gone now and the likes of us have moved in, to buy our packs of artisan coffee on the high street and noisily record things in front of a tripod in the living room for a couple of hours on a Tuesday.

I wonder if he was the dynastic cathedral family ferreter, pre rentokil, keeping his working ferrets against the time they got called in for a rat infestation: “they’ll realise what they done wrong and call for us again darlings, just you wait, all these folk they don’t know that all that nasty poison, that ain’t the best way to get those rats anyway, they’re clever and that’s expensive and nasty that is, but us darlings? We’re cleverer then they aren’t we darlings? We’ll be like the pied piper won’t we? Begging us they’ll be, as the rats eat their lemon drizzle cake. And you’ll go in those holes and it’ll be like old days again and oh just think of darlings, just you wait…”

“They like to hide up trouser legs,” Lou remarked from apocryphal memory, and yes, I too have that memory. I wonder if anyone who wasn’t there a bit in the seventies has any memory of that. I wonder if anyone who was doesn’t. Ferretlegging in the country pub… how long can you keep the ferret in your trousers? Ferret racing. The guy with a beret on and a ferret in his pocket… A strange old world of familiar furry predators. And for thousands of years, maybe until they just got too hard to find, the ferret man was your solution for rats. Maybe until poison was everywhere and you can’t trust the client to be honest when you ask them “are they poisoned?” and you lose a ferret for eating bad rat. It’s not really a vocation you see these days. Anyone who has had rats, did you look for a ferret man? It’s smart, you know. A good ferret will even bring up all the bodies and then you don’t have weeks of horrible stink. I’m sure they still exist and I’ve just forgotten them being in London.

This old brecon ferret house is glorious now, with the most enviable bathroom I have ever sluiced myself in. A huge freestanding bath, an excellent shower, plenty of light but nobody looking in. Lou is like a ferret at finding good deals on accomodation. I’ve long ago realised she’s better and more persistent than I am. I had to come back to London to troubleshoot ahead of a live tester for an ongoing event tomorrow. But I wish I was going to sleep in the ferret house.

London is flexing its muscles, trying to get teeth into me, pulling on my attention. But I’m glad I’m here with Lou. It worked out very well.

24 hour turnaround on a commercial tape, and not an uninvolved one either. Three scenarios that I had to absorb with mood and product info. I only had the clothes I had, but with a tripod in the car and Lou taking driving lessons it was perfect. My flat is busy these days and there is often the TV and always random cats. It has never been an easy selftape zone, with sirens and traffic, helicopters and clutter. The process of clearing a wall can be time consuming.

This morning I rolled aside a glass table, stacked up some books and moved some lights. Then I read a load of mood boards and, took a test shot and realised I looked too spivvy. Went to Boots and got razors and hairspray. I have long hair at the mo, and there’s a tape out with long hair so I can’t cut it or “WE LIKE THE GUY WITH THE LONG HAIR!” I won’t cut it until all extant tapes are timed out or I book a job.

I spent a good hour amusing myself with various improvised scenarios around a particular brand. Kept myself pretty happy making things up. Just me and a tripod and the contents of my own head and the mood boards. I was picking takes and editing when Lou finished her day’s driving and we struck out to find some waterfalls in the evening light.

The more I get days like these the more I like the freedom of self tapes, the fact I can be here, go see those waterfalls but not miss a last minute commercial casting. I’ve had to run from them in the past in Soho, when they are an hour behind and I’m supposed to be across town. It’s shit for all the studios in Soho I have no doubt, and all the sardonic actors who worked as receptionists and kinda hated you for getting the meeting – where are they working now? Loads of those old places must be gone, turned into Airbnb or Pret. But hey ho and the Brecon Beacons are amazing.

Lou and I walked up some hills, heading to waterfalls in the evening light, but it was all a bit too far to get there and back before dark so we made do with a yomp up halfway and a yomp back down. It’s quiet here and the air is good, the promise of rest and a hot bath outweighs the endorphins from a beautiful waterfall despite them having a purported “wow factor” of 3 out of 5, which sounds like pretty decent “wow” – depending on where they start and where they’re going. Middling-wow falls are better than low-wow falls. We made do with evening light, the golden hour, a bit of hillside. The wow will wait.

Then we went back to the cottage and had a curry. Gotta love curries. 💕

I feel like good things were achieved, set in motion, continued. An old friendly casting director contact, haven’t heard from them for a few years. Happy to set things moving via them. Happy to be able to take the time at short notice. Sometimes it works out.

Around the streets of Brecon today, no fixed agenda. I’ve told my agent I’m not gonna run off to any deserts in the near future just because it’s always good to be available. But the industry has changed. We all hated self tapes when they first started but with all the tech that’s sprung up around vapid people wibbling on about themselves on social meedja, it actually makes it possible to do things like be in Brecon and still respond positively when you get a commercial casting due the next day. I would have driven back to London first thing tomorrow in the old world, swearing all the way. As it is I think I have a little phone tripod in the car, so I can just set up and throw things around in the morning until I’m happy. Brave New World. I’m happy to have the casting – it’s a CD that I haven’t seen for a while, perhaps since I switched to my lovely agent, but some years ago they were a genuine lifeline and I’m always happy to turn up for them as I feel a kind of loyalty to the people who helped keep me going through the hardest years.

Today was calm. I didn’t know about the casting until just after 5pm so I could just enjoy the stoney streets of Wales. I pottered about, found good coffee, and stopped at the confluence of the river Usk and the Honddu. The sun was out, but not so many people. A man in a little booth at the top of the promenade sold me a generous portion of ‘Japanese style fried chicken” which I ate outside with a can of Lilt – Hot damn! Fanta bought it and call it Fanta Pineapple and Grapefruit, but it still exists. I was a happy sunny boy.

When Lou finished her driving we went to church, up at the cathedral, just to catch prayers. It was just Stephen the vicar, the two of us and an Irish lady with a bag of fish and chips. We did the collect for the day, we all read the magnificat cos she gets annunciaterised tomorrow, that Mary. Then Steveyboy read a bit of Galatians off of his phone cos we live in the modern world now. It was about working in mines. Getting in touch with the earth, working hard under a yoke, remembering to trust in the lord. I haven’t been to church since Christmas. I’m always happy to clock in for a bit though and do the thinkings. Can’t promise I go along with all of, can’t state I support how it often gets used, but monolithic and corrupt or not it is better to have some sort of spirituality in this mess of a world than to just worship money or yourself or some demagogue. None of them are right, all of them are right. Go pick a belief, pick three, pick ’em all, but don’t use them as the excuse you’ve been looking for to be a dick about things. Apart from the ones that required mass sacrifice, most of them came from a good place, and certainly now around the world some of the best places for calm peaceful contemplation in a world that is getting noisier and noisier – they come under the frame of these belief systems.

A lovely chilled day. Nice to have the structure of a tape tomorrow, but I’m happy it was tomorrow and not today. I was feeling pretty ropey yesterday, thrashing around all night, now the weight has fallen off a bit. Another quiet night or two here. Back to the fray on Wednesday.

Lou and I are in a little cottage halfway up the Charles I steps in Brecon. I’ve not been here before for any length of time. I think we came through here one time with Fitzrovia Radio Hour back in the day. But that was a whistle stop. I’m here for a few nights this time and I have no reason to be here other than as a chauffeur to Lou. She’s here on a crash driving course. I picked her up from Victoria at half ten and, dear reader, I got absolutely bollixed last night with Siwan. Lou found me mainlining coffee and pastry, still bilious, having woken up just an hour earlier and spent the whole morning looking for my spare keys before giving up, leaving and finding them in my car.

We got as far as Leigh Delamere before I had to stop for coffee. We got as far as Aberystwyth Waitrose before I knew that the only viable hotfix was to go into the disabled loo and perform the Ayahuasca detox shuffle.

We arrived in Brecon and immediately ate a glorious burger from Hills. Grease replacement. Now I’m just out of the bath. I feel nearly human. I’ll be in bed again soon though and then a few peaceful days in the Welsh spring.

Lou will be driving all day tomorrow so I’ll explore this little city, find the points of interest, switch into a different pace for a wee while. Unless something comes up I’m not going back to London until Wednesday. Four hours to get here but it feels peaceful and calm and different.

We are right opposite the cathedral. The doors were wide open when we tracked in from the graveyard and we were both taken with literal awe at that vast breathing building. It’s a good one, feels really alive but old, like some of the churches on Camino. I lit a candle for mum as is my way – she believed in purgatory so I’m doing what I can to speed things up for her. We both just looked at things. History and piety there. Sadly we had missed evensong but we might go to compline one day and hear that huge space lit up by the Welsh voices.

Now I’m gonna take an early bed, recover from my foolishness, and get ready to face a few calm days in a relaxed place. Another little Al and Lou cottage adventure…

I got sent an article again this morning about some cretin that has been making lots of noise about decolonising Shakespeare in relation to the birthplace trust etc. It’s all a load of amplified nonsense now of course, and my passenger observes “These people don’t realise it but they are responsible for Trump”. The remarks will have been taken out of context, amplified and drummed up into “THEY’RE TAKING OUR SHAKESPEARE! DURKA DURKSPEARE! DABURKSPEER! DAGRABAROOOO! COCKADOODLEDOOOO!” Which to be honest is most debate these days. These revisionist niche anti-how-it-was type thought-holes will always feel progressive when espoused but in the end will push the more instinctively conservative people closer and closer to populism – and so so many people are instinctively conservative. “MUMMY, HE TOOK MY LEGO!”. Look at Trump for crying out loud. Cunning like a fox, dumb as a blanket. Great at survival, crap at logic, null at nuance. Simplifying things so he can fit them into his frame, hacking all detail away, visually duped, utterly useless, loved by anyone who really just wants things to be as simple as he needs them to be.

“So come on, what does Woke actually mean?” I’m asked at dinner this evening. “It has no meaning,” I responded. “All meaning has been sucked out and now it just means ‘people we don’t like’ to a certain type of commentator. It used very briefly to mean to be aware of the different life experiences shared by people of colour in America, but as soon as people who didn’t give a fuck felt excluded by it they went hard to reduce it to a simple meaningless insult, which is reductive and ultimately empty of any true meaning but distaste.” You call somebody “woke” if they make you uncomfortable now. Or like me you avoid the word. It’s a weapon now, nothing more.

I’ve been driving lots, thinking too much, existing. Good to have a head day, recovery from yesterday, all that.

Went to Ipswich. I finally took some old reels I want digitised. Fuck knows what they are. One of them is called “Tragedy of a Nation”. I’m dreading that it’s someone’s video of something they think is wrong with the world now. “People don’t wear hats like they used to,” or “Why aren’t there trams?” “We should be allowed to have asbestos,” or “What’s wrong with a bit of good old fashioned hate?” Still, they were gonna rot in my attic, they might have something good on them, they might be of interest, who knows. I’ll find out in ten days with a download link. One of them might be something genuinely interesting.

I’ll get the films in ten days. Left that place, then we loaded the car with boxes and took them all back up to London. No breakfast. No lunch. I had a pint of beer before dinner and it came back up so quickly it was still fizzy. “I can’t think of any physiological problem that would cause that,” my brother says. “A pint of fizzy cold poison liquid on an empty stomach,” I reply. I’m really going towards Lou in this now. Why did I spend seven quid to hiccup into a drain? Who knows. I feel fine now, post dinner, in bed, off back around another sun and night cycle, ever onwards, somewhere at the end of it, stuff on the way, joy and sadness, life and death. Onwards.

I went round my friend’s and they gave me cheese. I want to eat all of it because I feel sad tonight. Not for any logical reason. Just equinox and the last scratch of the dark. Plus I chose to open an old wound to send a little tape. I love playing complex people but it’s less fun being one. I’ve processed most of my ancient stuff but sometimes little memories of darkness creep in and my relationship with my dad was complicated and cut short. A touch of a memory of that in a simple little scene up in a tower block in Camden with Em.

We did the tape. I was gonna do it with my brother but… circumstances. My brother doesn’t have a backdrop and a bag full of cheese to give me anyway. Plus he’s not an actor. It’s only two lines but… better to have them delivered live. And cheese … cheese can’t wait. French cheese in particular. I once left a Mont d’Or in my car for two weeks in January. I still tried to eat it when I found it. It’s unpasteurised. It started singing to me in Danish. I had to get it out of my house. It tried to run but I tricked it with a riddle and got it out to the street. Now it lives three doors down and works in IT. Still stinks but nobody notices. Or was that a dream?

This cheese will be part of me long before such things happen. This cheese will go on Brian’s sourdough. Along with Bridget’s marmalade. I am doing very well for things that go on bread at the moment. I have excellent choices. If only I hadn’t worked my way through Alice’s honey. My friends are often skilled, often generous. Lucky me.

We went for Mexican food. Quesadillas. There’s a theme developing here. Quesa. Oh sweet comforter to the sad. In lockdown I used to eat my bodyweight in black bomber once a week.

This isn’t proper sad, I’ve already bounced out. This is just having to look at a shadow for a moment. I was tweaking a lot, sometimes I need to go and close the door for a while. Not often, but occasionally. I go walking round the block at parties if I think nobody will notice I’m gone. Used to anyway. Haven’t had a party like that for a while – cigarettes in the kitchen sink, sweat and make-up, someone you’ve never met puking on the carpet, who’s that in my bed?

I didn’t have time to sit in my sudden sadness cos the kitchen flooded. Then it flooded again. And then I flooded it. And then we realised that it wasn’t some random issue with the washing machine and then the dishwasher. The U-bend had popped undone. Any water out was gonna end up all over the floor. I’ll get a plumber in as it might have pressured itself out for some reason – there’s been a lot of weird pipey noise lately. Pressure build up or something perhaps. I’m no plumber. We fixed it for now. Bandaid? Or are Brian and I secretly the Super Mario Brothers? Time will tell.

And so I’m at the point of hunger where I could eat more but I’m pretty full. I ordered over £40 worth of pizza cos I had one of those one time codes where it immediately goes to 40% off. Also I’ve weirdly had this thing where I’ve been dreaming about pizza.  My personal dreamscape recently has done as much as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles did for pizza delivery in the nineties. Sorry, Hero Turtles. Most of you don’t remember this but some idiot exec decided that Ninjas weren’t establishment and it is important to indocrinate people into establishment thinking, so we can’t call the turtles Ninjas we have to call them Heroes. Apparently heroes maintain the status quo. Nobody cares. I always preferred the idea of being a ninja to that of being a hero. I’ve ordered a pizza for the first time in ages. It feels like a disobedient act. Ninja pizza.

I’m home and wild. I’m warm, it is spring now. I get to be warm in my own home. And yeah, fuck it, I’ve had all this expensive dough taken to my door and I am going to eat it like I deserve it even though I don’t.

Today I went to Prangsta and we had a fitting. There is nowhere like Prangsta. I’ve been many times. I almost certainly have been at a festival with whoever founded it. It provides powerfully expensive costumes to people who think that spend correlates with quality. It doesn’t mess about though. In terms of steampunk type hipster costume narratives they likely show up in parity with Angels in terms of cost. They specialise though. They fill that hipster niche better. I love them when I can afford them. I’ve seen so many trustafarians self consciously wearing one of their hats at Wilderness when we are all wondering if the bass is gonna drop in the valley. If the bass drops, we stop seeing the hats. It’s not practical, you can’t dance all night in this stuff (not that they ever drop the bass in the valley). But yeah, Curbet Richson-Generations likes their stuff, and so do I. It’s priced for Curbet though but the client wants it for this next event and it is always a deep and full costume. I’ve got a bag of old clock faces and gears. I’ve been thinking that I should just glue them to a top hat. I got the idea from Mel. “You should stick them to a hat and Prangsta it for a festival,” she said. You know you’ve arrived when you’ve become a verb.

I partly think I should try and get something made for these events going forwards. This is an event that will go over the Christmas period. Multiple prangsta rentals will be way too much. Way better to make the stuff and even if Lou is too busy being serious and important in the West End she has a line I never had before to humans who know how to make the things we wear to look sexy. If the price is right, the thing can be brought into being from nothing. I love her world, so precise and measured, so different from mine but aligned. I’m a lucky boy.

Today I just went to a fitting for a client. Game on.

My car is once again full of other people’s crap.

The bulk of it is Vic. She’s ace, she’s put up with some serious shit, she’s mum and mum and mum and she’s also trying to keep a business afloat in changing times. I helped her chuck a load of crap out, I refused to chuck some of it, I sold bits and researched other bits. I gave her the value and then gave up on the absolute crap. I figured she’d never really mind about the fact I couldn’t be bothered to sell the rest of the stuff on her behalf when the hourly rate wouldn’t balance the profit. Turns out she was still holding attachment, so its just as well I didn’t just charity shop the lot. “Oh my God, you don’t know where that candle holder is? But it’s an ANTIQUE candle holder it could be worth loads.” It’s worth fuckedytuesday, sorry babes that’s the world, hi. I’ve told her sister I’ll donate £20 if she manages to sell it for more than £40, just as I know she won’t and I hope it’ll be some sort of a teaching moment.

I’ve given it all back, the stuff, apart from the couple of boxes I’ll drop off tomorrow, and now … I’ve got a bit more room in my home. The fewer random boxes the better. She’s found an eBay reseller who will definitely take more than I did and good luck to them, it wasn’t worth it for me to sell on the basis I was selling where I basically gave the entire value to Vic. I did it initially after she gave me some employment hauling junk. But I’m not a fucking charity.  I

Still I realised there were still some Nest Thermostats, about the only saleable bit of tech. The reseller will get something for them at least. Everything else is tits. There’s some slightly good bits of security equipment but they have no wires. Inexplicably she sorted all the gadgets into one pile and all the wires into another, long before I got involved, but effectively ruining the resale chances of most of her tech that isn’t standalone like the thermostats. The wires are lost for the rest. There’s no means of telling of they’re working or not.

That aside, I went to see an old mate of mum’s. She’s 80. That’s the way to do it. Still brilliant. I absolutely loved seeing her. It’s what might have been. How did mum go so soon? This fucking world.

It is Anna Maria’s fiftieth birthday today, her daughter. We were under parental pressure to like each other growing up. We both dealt with it differently, perhaps. Mum dying when I was young led me to a clarity about mum’s desires for me, and a happy understanding where I could follow my own needs but acknowledge where they differed from mum’s. I think with her mum still alive she’s still in “screw you mum I don’t like him” mode, which is hard when all I’m offering is friendship. Last I saw her she was at pains to make sure I knew her friends were more important. It was a temporary social thing, but spoke of something deeper and I just rolled with it. The bruise of a lost mother is painful all over and I know legacy matters so perhaps a friendship between us could be a legacy of sorts. I wish we could find that. I have fewer and fewer connections to that wonderful maniac mumfriend who brought me up and then died.

On we go though. And today some good news about work. Cessa.

Quite an excursion today around London, but at least I was spared a return trip to Brighton that I had tentatively promised. Lou needed ferrying around London. All the way up in Walthamstow in a street full of stolen phones for cheap there are fabric shops. She’s buying for a theatre maker friend, this is the best place on a theatre budget. Secondary is Goldhawk Road. Been there a few times with Lou already. They’ve caught on, being near The Bush Theatre and all. Range is still good but price is more than it should be now. I wonder where else in the country you can get things like that though? Even I knew about Goldhawk for fabric. They know they’re known.

It’s tiring, driving through the suburbs. It’s easier on the circular where traffic has a predictable flow. Up towards Walthamstow they all look forwards only and there are no rules. It’s dog eat dog and if you try to be polite you probably cause a crash as it is so rare. It’s worse in South East London, that’s the shittest place to drive in this town. But it’s pretty grim up the ‘stow. We don’t call it Mordor for nothing.

We got all the things we needed, and stopped for vegetarian thali in Hammersmith. It was excellent and I came out stuffed. Lou got a train back home and I got to come home and wind out the traffic.

Apparently the weather is about to jump up. This freezing fucking arctic wind that has given the lie to all the sun we’ve had, it is gonna wind out for a bit and we’ll feel the difference. Thank the lord. My dreams have been scattered with old memories and friends. Last night was a particularly broken sleep though so even though I’m thinking of loads of old friends I dreamt of last night I’m not getting in touch as I’ve barely got the energy in this cold to move myself from A to B.

I’m trying to cook up my big plan. Make a screenplay? Or good god I would love to book a bit of theatre at the mo – even have an audition to be honest much as I hate the things. Nothing since the pretending to be a chauffeur gig which felt cosmically right enough that the universe had to blow it up to prove that nothing is ever that simple.

Time. Time. Time. I can still relax, and smile and say that my last two jobs were enough validation for a lifetime, but there’s parsnips needeth buttering. Plus I am more and more feeling the pull of the wild again. If I knew I had something coming up… …

Onwards.

The Affordable Art Fair is a relative thing. Cap was originally 3 grand and back then It was like “That’s not affordable.” Now they cap it at 10 but there are some smart galleries that bring their new artist. One place has sold 18 originals by a new artist, all miniatures of South West London things, all for under £600. Because people come there wanting to leave with art, but they don’t want to blow two grand plus. I certainly don’t want to blow more than a grand, and honestly less than that now I’ve learnt that art doesn’t resale like I’d been led to believe. I have written before about the myth that art appreciates in value. “Art is the safest investment you can make,” some friend of my dad said in the eighties and it stuck with child Al. It made sense of the prices. Maybe I’m selling through the wrong channels, but I’ve been knocked back too many times and by too much to even dream that there’s a smidgen of truth in that. And I’ve tried multiple channels. Art crashes as fast as a new car, as far as I’ve experienced. Get it if you like it. If it’s too much it’s too much. But for the fêted few, and you know who they are off the bat these days as the machine isn’t there to look after the practitioners, it just oils itself. And as a result they’ll all tank when the next generation comes in as everyone is just blowing bubbles. My friend’s grandpa had crazy prices on all of it. Slowly, perhaps, and with a gallery. But like antiques, you won’t get the price you want without your own shop and enough time for the right buyer to show up.

Nonetheless I enjoyed looking at what was a very good and wide selection of curious tactile works. I would have spewed money if I had it to spew. I’d have bought one of Damilola’s and one of Stephane Gautier’s.

Post fair I went home and bought a chicken instead. Practical spending. Roasted it.

—

I’ve had a bag of nuts in my pocket for the last week and I’m worried. I transfer it from coat to coat.

I’ve been looking after the local crows at this time of year for a while now. It’s not an easy time, the natural world breeds little food. There have been bold and brilliant crows here for longer than people, and they keep out the rats and mice while having strong personalities.

There’s a building site over the road. Also they can get into the bins if some idiot leaves them out overnight. The foxes will make the mess in the wee hours, but the crows will fearlessly take advantage of the mess in daylight hours when stupid people walk the world thinkingn it’s them filthy crows wot did it etc etc

I haven’t seen a crow for over a week. Coming on a fortnight. I know it cos the nuts never last this long in my pocket.

I dread to say it, but I think someone has exterminated the local crows. My army! I’m gonna go on a proper search in the next day or two, and I might get in touch with the RSPB if no sign. People in cities can be extremely dumb and short sighted.

I might make use of the lady who howls for her dachsund every morning. “ZOLTAN” she cries (although in fact it’s called Mocha and she’s Canadian and we misheard). She will have a good sense of the crows and their ways. I hope they’re okay. Nuts won’t be so relevant soon, coming into spring. But I’ll keep holding them in the hope they have just been foraging far from home. I miss the crows.