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I’m back in London. It’s hot. It’s about to break, dammit. Dan came by in an open top car and dropped his driving licence. I’ll be picking up a van tomorrow. I’m going into the production office tomorrow. It’s my first day.

Ha. My “first” day.

I’ve been building this team for over a decade, but tomorrow is the first day I’m officially on the payroll. I’ll know half the team. As ever I’ve been balancing ability and personality with the recommendations I’ve made. Once on one of these jobs, CrapDuncan the location manager who literally thought I had made my life up said “You’ve just employed loads of your friends,” and it really disappointed me that he thought that. I mean he was a bumwinnet of a human being but it still hit home, as he wanted it to. I barely knew half the people I had employed, and didn’t know some others. He was totally wrong, just as he was totally useless. But it made me question it – I got one broke friend in because they were broke, and they were the only one to let me down. They showed up steaming hungover. Lesson learnt. The rest I got in based on my knowledge of what they bring, but loads of them I had only met once or twice and was rolling on instinct. My instinct was borne out. I had lots of conversations with people – the first conversation is always theoretical – and wrote them off based on their approach to the theory. For the hardest ones (6″5′ actual policeman willing to act) I went to Funemployed. I have had some very tricky things to source over the years. Funny to realise that just by living my life wide I’m good at a thing that others aren’t. I’m good at diverse team building on a large scale. I have an absurdly wide life and a very varied and full address book, even though I mostly haven’t contacted you for ages. I’m not the guy who phones through everyone once a month. But I get to meet a very wide variety of people.

I’ll start work tomorrow on this shoot and see loads of people I’ve known for ages. Competent professionals. Some will be driving, others will be behind the camera or lights. One of them will be doing the job I usually do. I won’t see her tomorrow as she’s suddenly got COVID and is staying in Aberdeen until we get there.

Yeah which is FLASHBACK CITY! Remember when we had to send a lateral flow test before we could go to work?

I did one day of work once when we had to register the fucking test before they let us in the building. Ahhh the sweet nostalgia. Horrible craptimes. We all have to do it… Tomorrow morning I’ll send a photo of a bit of plastic before they let me in. I’m going through my old photos as I threw all the tests I had away some time ago. This is SO 2021 dude but I’m game. It’s worth it for the fact we are making something that isn’t shit, with interesting people. I’ve been looking forward to getting started and yeah, loads of crew are doing the “oh I’m sick but you still have to pay me” lark. It’s abject. I thought we were past that sort of thing.

Yay. New job. Should’ve started a week ago. But yay anyway.

I came down to Sealanes, just below Lou’s flat. My last evening in Brighton this time and the cat was asleep. It’s absolutely terrible here but there are seats and they cooked me a sausage. Right now we are being subjected to No One (Will Love You Like I Do) by Flakes and yes it really is as bad as it sounds. It’s a constant diet of this stuff that I think you can describe as Atlantic Funk?

Here by the pebbly beach they have Volks Electric Railway carrying baffled citizens through the sun. They have this brand new outdoor freshwater pool competing with the sea. And they have this complex of custom built woodenish huts.

You find a seat and nobody talks to you. As soon as a glass is emptied or a plate is cleaned someone takes it away. But you mostly are expected to order everything by QR Code. This is one of the downsides of that lovely summer two years ago when we were all supposed to be terrified of each other. Now everyone is meant to be able to order and pay for things without human contact, and enough people worked out how to do it that this place runs pretty well. There IS still a window where you can go and ask nicely for the sausage please. But they don’t want you to do it that way. It’ll go eventually. If they could bus glasses with robots they would. Maybe it’s just a matter of time.

So why am I here? Bad music, digital ordering…? I’m here because my body got tired of lying on the stones and I wanted some of that tasty merguez. I’m here because, to put it in Lou’s words, ‘you love the people”. I’m here because the sunset looks gorgeous from here. I’m here because how many more days do we have like this before February? I’m here because it is funny waving like a child at all the people coming by on the electric railway and getting them to wave back.

I’m here because I might have a beer later and I am not gonna have more than one. We don’t need a repeat of yesterday evening.

Meanwhile van hire madness in London. I have to be in town tomorrow I don’t have to be in town tomorrow everyone needs to give me driving licence nobody needs to give me aaargh. I like being immediate and responsive as it is my happy place and where I am best located, but if everyone is like that then things only get done last minute if at all.

I’m about to start another little run of work. I’ll look back on this version of myself waving at the railway people and I’ll miss him.

Now shall I have a beer or a coke with this sausage?

Another day spent in my mind. I went to Saltdean.

Just down the road from the wonderful blind veteran’s home that Brighton has already sold to the gammons we have a historic listed Lido that, despite huge amounts of funding, they can’t make safe enough to open to the public despite this being the perfect week for it. That suited me, as there’s a car park next to it which would be absolutely chocka if it was open. As was I could easily leave Bergie there for free and head to the beach. The spectacular incompetence of Brighton Council doesn’t need to be highlighted, it is evident everywhere. Sadly it aligns with the spectacular incompetence of The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. Running things is hard, even if you give a fuck. If it’s just a sinecure it is double hard. And, for generations, politics has been so overtaken by overprivileged ambitious toadies that it is a hostile environment for anyone who actually cares about anything. Occasionally there’s an Alexandra Ocasia-Cortez. Mostly it’s just another haw haw. Particularly over here where the media is so quick to sniff kindness and brand it weakness that there are still people who actually genuinely think Corbyn was a nazi.

I left all that thinking behind. I let my brain stop. I lay half naked by the sea at Saltdean, sucking in damage, giving cancer a bit of an advantage after all the care I’ve given to liver failure. Heart disease is currently hanging out with car crash hoping they can jump in unexpectedly.

It was glorious. Now I’m back at Lou’s with the pussycat. I’m having a glass from the bottle of 2020 St Emilion which is the best the CoOp had to offer, and which I’ve been ekeing out over the last few days. I’m enjoying the fact I taped today for a vicar who loves fine wine. There but for the grace of God go I. It would be a fascinating examination of one of the threads of life I might have followed had I not been eaten by the actingmonster.

It’s nice taping against a track. But wow, it forced me to go at a pace I wasn’t ready for first thing in the morning. If you’re doing a track for a friend, send 2 options, one of which you are leaving what feels like too long. I had to tape it in a rush and fuck me the pace of it forced me to be sharp.

I might get this one.

Meanwhile I’ll have a pointless squabble on the phone followed by an early bed.

EDIT: The lido has been open all summer. Just closed for seasonal reasons as the Indian summer kicked in. I was drunk blogging again. Sorry kids.

I went and lay on the stones at the edge of the world. Louring sky but the memory of warmth still in the world.

People are still swimming in this water. Climatically it’s the best time, although these days no water in this country is safe from companies greed-dumping chemicals way over any safe limits. Likely the sea in Brighton is chemical muck. BUT Sovrinntey!! Anyway, that’s my excuse for not swimming in the sea. Bite me.

Being here with the big sky and the relative peace helps with the noise. London in the heat is not a good place. The production I’m involved in has hit ructions and things are being rescheduled. COVID, apparently. Of all reasons to take a day off work, it’s COVID again. I’m told I won’t have to drop some stuff off tomorrow because things have been delayed by fecking COVID. A little bit of me hears that in the same light that I might hear it if I was told that the shoot was delayed because of a bout of scrofula. Surely we are done spannering our works with that one? Much as it was delightful to bugger around on Zoom with Creation, to meet Lou, to look after that snake, to have access to a flat in Hampstead Heath, to have time and space and breath, guiltless. Surely we are over that shit despite the guilt free time off we all had.

Now I’m back in the bollocks. Every day I’m not working makes me feel guilty. I can frame some pretty eccentric things as work, of course. And I’ve got woowoo type “work” (unpaid) where I’m very very practiced. Things about eating negative energy and converting it to light. Demon munching. Sometimes that can be very tiring believe it or not, even if it IS just made up crap. Here by the sea I can do it harder and recover faster.

So. Seaside. Water. Expanse. Access to nature. Liminal space. A cat. All the things that help my woowoo. I’m here trying to field some pretty big stuff in London and in Georgia and it is totally right that the practical needs of a sickly cat and a pushed-out friend have thrown me to the edge of this country. Either I’m strongest at the edges or it’s all a load of made up crap. I’ll roll the dice thanks.

Plus it’s great here. I went for breakfast at Café Rust. Catsitting is a bit of a holiday really. This little part of Brighton is a very chilled village, without the monolithic pomposity of my little corner of Chelsea.

Brighton again. It took me a bit longer than I expected to get my stuff together in the morning. Living with Frank, I didn’t want to leave mess all over the place. A quick clear up. Then that familiar two hour drive. I’m here now. I can really feel the difference.

The window is open in the bedroom. This Indian Summer is still clinging on and I’m loving it. Just a counterpane for cover, and I’ll sleep beautifully. In London I’m on a main road and the noise is constant. I can tune the road out after a while of course, but here by the sea it is more peaceful and expansive, and the road is much less packed.

I’m here for the little cat of course, but it is always weird being here without Lou. Tessy is relieved to see me though. She was on her own last night. She just seems to prefer it knowing someone is there. I get that. There’s an empty bit of bed to my left. I’m not gonna see her until the end of the month.

Her energy is pervasive here though. It’s much earlier than I would normally be winding down, but the low light and soft furniture are both conducive to getting sleepy when the light goes, and Indian Summer or not it is still September. Every morning Bergman is covered in fallen leaves. The dark is closing in. The wheel is turning again. Before we even know it we will meet the cold again. Heaven help us all.

I’m gonna have a cup of chamomile tea, read for a while and pass out in the knowledge that the little cat will have me up with the dawn. I’m happy to be here. A few days of calm.

A bright start to the week. Well rested and awake before my alarm but still hooked just enough on pushing snooze that I had to rush my coffee into a takeaway cup. Into Bergman for a quick shot out to Harlesden where we were making this radio drama in an old fish packaging factory. It’s a brilliantly odd place with pastel walls and lots of rooms available for different soundscapes. The morning flew by and I was glad of my prep work as you don’t get lots of do-overs. I’m not sure how much I can say about the project, so even though I haven’t signed an NDA I’m going to say only a little and wait for it to air. It’s an interesting and quite eccentric true story of some arty London types intersecting with Moscow just as the iron curtain lifted. The man at the heart of the tale was with us this morning to hear the read-through – it’s a true story. My character sadly died some time ago. The protagonist signed a copy of his book for me and I only bloody went and left it in the studio when I finished. He seems to have led an interesting life, but so have we all, darling.

Radio drama is an interesting and fun medium to work in. We sent it up in Fitzrovia Radio Hour to great effect, as there’s something delightful in the intersection between doing the thing in the script for real and making a Foley that works. The tragic climax of one of our tales at Fitzrovia involved a fan being switched on, a card inserted into the fan, and someone vigorously squelching the inside of a melon with a plunger, dead pan, while the character used a giant lathe to kill themselves. “I should’ve known me place!” That was purposeful anarchy. This was, of course, much more measured.

Still, we walked into a room with a load of strangers and had to play with them immediately. We had to mock up a car driving to Moscow and an airport security gate. The hardest bit was the background noise for the party. First thing on a Monday morning and it had to be raucous. We sounded like a load of yahoos, but they’ll tweak the levels and make it work I expect. It was a pleasant group, surprisingly sausage-heavy for this day and age but I’m not gonna complain when I’m one of the sausages. I’m thrilled to have had the chance to work on something a little unusual with such a friendly lot. I’ll let you know when it airs, unless I forget.

Now I’m home, baking in the glorious late summer flatoven, running a bath before I decant to Brighton for a few days to look after the little cat. More little jobs like this thankyouplease. What a delight.

It might be possible too. I walked out of the studio to find my agent has landed me another nice tape for another part I can see myself playing. I immediately went to the barber for a trim and to take the beard off. Nice to be shorn in this heat, frankly.

An early bed is in order today. I woke up at about ten and drank a litre of water and still felt awful. Frank and I sorted some books and filled some bags with unwanted things. I had three cups of coffee and two cans of lucozade. Sitting on the kitchen table was a script and a pencil. Occasionally I looked at it guiltily before going through another pile of books.

The sorting is beginning to feel therapeutic even though it’s difficult. In this heat and hungover it was particularly hard to do. Still, progress happened. There’s too many books but a smaller amount of too many now. I still find throwing them away hard but practice makes perfect.

The dump is huge and has lots of categories. I took my time there. I really like to try to make sure things are sent back round in some way. I took a big old lamp there that originally came from The Sloane Club. They put it out on the street so it ended up by my bed. I put it in the place where you put things that work. I’m trying to reverse the stuffflow. The stuff … it has gathered around me. Now it must leave and continue to leave. I can streamline more and more, until I become sleek and tight and fit like a racehorse, able to respond at a moment’s notice.

Dump stuff dumped, I felt a little lighter. Time to attend to that script. Oh but the mackerel.

I bought two fresh mackerel on my way out of Brighton five days ago. That’s about as long as you can leave it. Fifteen minutes to whack it up in the oven. Longer to eat than cook. Fresh fish, it’s lavverley. Even five days old.

Work? Work.

Radio. You don’t need to learn it, but it is very helpful to beat it out, think about actions and intentions, work out where you’ll be chinking glass and so forth. I like an annotated script. You don’t get lots of do overs, so you want to be easy. In the hot flat my external sorting subtly changed to thoughtwork as I tried to structure a way through the character I’m playing tomorrow. I also watched a lovely interview with him – he’s a real guy, and absolutely loved textiles from the Caucasus. Listening to him talk about tattoos and dialects and the contents of his very clever head I warmed to him hugely. It’s always pleasant to play good people occasionally. I get to play a lot of dicks.

As darkness fell an old friend came over and gave me some stuff to hold for the shoot next week. It’s only coming in temporarily. By now my hangover is just a memory of sugar. We laughed lots, the warm evening closed in. Now I’m in bed and it isn’t even ten. I’m making sure I sleep long and well tonight. You’ve had two drunkblogs in a row. That’ll do, pig. That’ll do.

Just another barbeque, I guess. But with waste.

James had this smokeless BBQ thing going on. “It’s like being DJ but with no records.”

I’m flat.

I hung out with someone I think is powerful. Got two for the price of one. One of us made the single most powerful anti-capitalist gesture of the modern world. He burnt a million quid on Jura. Apparently he regrets it now? I give no fucks. He can be all the noise now. I wasn’t going to talk to him about it as I detest people who are talking to my character and not to me. Still there’s desperate poetry in the avoidance. Nobody ever pulled shit like Jimmy and I childishly worshipped him. Everyone got angry that he did his thing. “It shouldn’t have been burnt, think of this charity and that charity.” Finally, it would have gone to a nice car and house for the CEO of ‘We pretend to put your money in the right placeFAM” I totally loved that I had a CD with a load of sheep on it called “Last train to Trancentral”. I loved that I had a mess of sound about a white room. And I loved that we could find the right place to be, even down in London. We could find a friend with a car, we could get to the edge of things. Well meaning people. Wide open.

However we look at the meaning of the noise today it was fun. I got flirted with by a brilliant woman. I totally agreed with numerous childhood idols. They didn’t know Lou though, so they didn’t have full context on my mojo. You can be as famous as you like, but if you miss what Lou brings you are just making noise. There’s no place like home.

Still, it was interesting meeting people who have had to live well known. It’s hard to give a fuck about personal noise. I wanted to give this couple the space. A tough kiwi lady taking zero shit, and a calm and benign man who gives no fucks. Together they made it all easy. Not new friends yet as I’m still a little starstruck.

Bed.

I’m sharing this lovely thing with a friend. I’ll try and call him tomorrow. x

Today I took a bunch of books I’ll never miss to a charity shop in New Malden.

I was supposed to be seeing a friend of mine but he was asleep and his phone was off. So instead I kept myself busy until he got his shit together and we went for food.

New Malden is the equivalent of K-Town. but with less ping pong. You can get Korean food everywhere there. Back in the day the ambassador bought property there and then there was an influx. Last time we went to a super cheap family run place and I burnt my knee horribly on the underside “cook at table” thing. Today is was a more established place and it was quiet (and better cladded). I even got a bit annoyed that the waitress insisted on trying to cook it for us and all at the same time. Maybe I would have been happier getting burnt.

Then we walked the summer streets and observed the abundance of Catholic crosses in the doorways. I remember Han when I was on Camino. A beautiful wise Korean Catholic who thought it was absurd that I was chanting “Nam myo ho renge kyo” by the path every day. I agreed with him wholeheartedly that it WAS absurd, but followed up with my certainty that ANY framework made by humans about belief is inevitably going to be both nuts and wrong, so all we can do is make something interesting up and pursue it if it works for us. I like the deliberately anarchic simplicity with which Nichiren burnt thousands of years of men writing about how Buddhists should believe and decided “Fuck it. All you have to do is this bit. You don’t really even need to know what it means.” And thus he was excommunicated and thus SGI is a society and thus I am happy to open the little doors in my butsudan and create value by saying a few words lots of times. Vibration. I’m part of the value making! Yay? What does value mean? Fucknose. Ask yourself. I know what it means to me.

I’m home. Frank is testing his ACDC act based on starlight express and I really want to see it but I knew I’d be knackered and it’s across London. Next time, he says hopefully… Bed.

I have a door I can close again. I’m back in my old room. It’s temporary. Frank needed a safe landing point and I’m hardly home. He’s got the big bed while I make this room habitable once more. Needs a new carpet, needs a load of stuff ripped out, and plastering. Needs a lick of paint and some thought about the electrics. But on balance it’s a nice room in this happy flat and I’ve spent many odd years in it.

Last night I slept in the living room next to an open window, and I use the word “slept” advisedly. It was mostly swearing and rolling over. Occasionally having a vivid dream about leaving my bag in a pub in York. I had been drinking, which cuts my lucidity right down. Calm sober Al can navigate pretty well through Dreamland. Bottle of rioja Al is subject to the whim of the impossible dream haggis and his fiery minions. If I did get into a sleep state, it ended with a jump.

Frank is a revelation in the flat. He helps me hugely. He’s much better at seeing things through than I am and he’s being sheriff k sensitive to my resistance while we are trying to reverse the flow of stuff. Things are starting to move out of the flat. Some things are breaking in the process, and I’m beginning to notice that I’m not missing the things we throw.

I went with an early girlfriend to visit her father in Wales. Three out of six rooms were uninhabitable as they were full of boxes of clutter. One night we made home made pasta after he triumphantly produced a pasta roller from one of the boxes. “You see!” he announced, as if that was justification for clinging onto all that gubbins. On the drive back to Reading she was livid. “He could have so much more space…” At the time I agreed with her wholeheartedly. Now look what I’ve done.

“You should go on that programme,” my agent jokes. They find a hoarder and then put all their stuff on display in a warehouse. Sounds horrendous. No. But I’m gonna have to try a bit harder than I am. After a bad sleep last night, moving the mattress was about all we managed, and mostly I was just sad because I had had all that wine and delightfully poisoned myself.