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When Grenfell Tower burnt, I had just been working with the landlords in a little workshop space off Ladbroke Grove. We had been training them in “Customer Facing”. Essentially staff empathy training via role play and workshop, but called “theatre”.

It was literally excruciating. The level of awkwardness was off the scale. But I took the money and did the best I could. Can you teach a stone to sing? The management were perfectly convivial and perfectly clueless. The ground staff were just there as part of their job. A lot of money had been spent to create and propagate some sort of staff training acronym that was evidently no more than lip service to the idea of caring about stuff. I hated it at the time, and wrote as much. I wish I could remember the acronym but it was so insipid I almost immediately squared that portion of memory out of my head where it would have remained had it not been three days before the fire.

I woke up three days later to hear about that awful tower fire run by the TMO and just down the road from me. Volunteering was the only sensible thing to do and I was struck not least by the absence of the TMO but also the evasiveness when I tried to suggest we could use the big empty gym we had used for the training of 250 people for something that could benefit all those who had been displaced. I spent a few days trying to help coordinate the effects of people’s goodwill but that space sat empty and locked. The whole area became a nexus for donated clothes. Every hand was a good hand that hot summer and every inch of space was useful.

When my friend offered me tickets to the Grenfell verbatim show at The National, I knew what I was getting myself into, and steeled myself accordingly. So many years have passed now and so little has changed. The lazy flammable cladding is still on many blocks. The culture that residents raising concerns are somehow just willful and stupid – that’s still there it seems. The word land”lord” needs to be adjusted. Landbeneficiary, perhaps is more appropriate. Lord gives both the benefit and the notion of power, but these people deserve no power as they haven’t the scope to wield it with strength or compassion. It’s the language of serfdom and it silently allows an imbalance. “I’m their LORD.” Self constructed monoliths, and when you climb to the peak you usually find a frightened fool clinging on to an idea they’ve always held. And my borough, RBKC, much as I love it, does not have compassionately and well run estates. Up at World’s End, overlooking the river, posh end of Chelsea up against discontent. I did a weekend of street theatre five years ago and got stuck in and it’s lively, but not a liveliness borne of contentment. Knife amnesty bins, dogshit, drugs, carelessness. The sense of having been forgotten. Just across the road there are shops selling a bedframe for six grand, and you might well watch someone step back from you in wobblechinned fear as they walk out of thay expensive shop putting their gold card back in their wallet. All you were doing was taking the dog for a walk… Two worlds colliding, and the landlords are people who “just LOVE that bed shop, darling, despite where it is.”

Bed. That’s tempting. I think I’ll crash now but I’m filled with the images and thoughts of the families who made it and the ones who didn’t… It hit hard at the end and it was unhurried and structured and thoughtful and moving throughout. I often don’t see things that I know will be an emotional grind. But it’s important to really know that we have to activate across the board, and it HAS to be the people. If we wait for our representatives in parliament speak for us, we wait until we are dead, and I say that with absolute sincerity on a day when the only credible opposition to the emotional toddlers we have in power right now has just described the actions of one of the only protest groups to have really managed to get heard and known in his hostile environment as “contemptible”. Because he wants votes more than he cares about anything. Fuck.

Across London to Stokey. Jack and I have so much history now. We met in Yorkshire maybe fifteen years ago on a lawn outside a semi derelict farmhouse that had a drained swimming pool full of frogspawn out front. I brought the bed bugs from my huge and comfortable bed all the way back to London when the job was over. I had been oblivious to them but that’s surely the source of the infestation that convinced me I had eczema and finally made me have everything fumigated and throw away my bed when I woke suddenly from deep sleep to find them at their horrible work.

Richard put a plank in the pool so the frogs could escape. The aga was still working and was on. There was a faucet in the room next door to my head that I eventually learnt to silence but which interrupted my post show dreams more often than the bugs. We launched Twelfth Night from that house, down at Ripley Castle. He was Feste, I was Malvolio. Brilliant campaigner Lucy directed us.We had a right fleabag as Viola. Jo was Olivia and … a big and lovely cast… We were all dear friends together making something we cared about and living in Bohemian Arcadia. A truly joyful summer. My first of many with Jack at Sprite.

“What are you most proud of,” I was asked at my school reunion the other month, and I referenced those happy years of Yorkshire Shakespeare. I made deep long friendships and we tried to make things well. Every time I went I occasionally experienced that strange vast endorphin release of fulfillment and true joy that you only get when you are in the right place doing the right thing. It was summer, we loved each other, we were all doing what we love doing. We all came back with about what we started with in terms of money. Jack and I found a friendship that followed us though. That year I was trying hard not to go to the pub after every show for financial reasons. I had just given up smoking as it was too expensive a vice. I was happier to buy a case of beer and go to our eccentric digs. Jack was the same. We hung out in the living room many nights guitar noodling while everyone else was blowing their wages at The Boar’s Head, before they all rolled in and the night got longer.

Post Sprite we ended up doing a spot of filming, things here and there by coincidence until eventually he auditioned to replace John as Marley one year and got the part. That became our Christmas Carol, where we deepened a well formed creative partnership over many more years. We are very different, but we fly well together. There’s a shared mischief. He eventually signed with my wonderful agent, and this weekend he had a self tape and then a mutual friend’s birthday party near his gaff. So that was my day.

He’s done plenty of telly so the tape came easy. It’ll be great if he gets it, but it did feel that he was too young for it. These tapes cast a wider net, but they cost in hope what they make up in opportunity. Hope can hurt, but maybe it’s better to have the chance at nice work than to feel like the world has passed you by. I love it when my friends are working, as the weird little gap in them fills up and suddenly they are just imperceptibly more confident and robust – ironically the skills that help in the auditions…

We then were in a bar full of actors. Some I’ve known for 20 years and more. Others I met today. Nice lot. Enough partners there that the conversation wasn’t entirely about the trade, but there was plenty of reminiscing even so. We all trained roughly the same time. We’ve been running mates. Everything we do is so unpredictable and sporadic, but all of us have learnt to know joy when we have it available, and clutch tight hold of it. The collective memories of the people in that room will have been filled with strange colour given to us by this vocation we all pursue, often in gorgeous places doing strange things. “What are you up to right now?” “I’m collaborating with an artist in a 200 acre rewilding project down in Croydon. Here’s a video. I’m in a panda head.”

Fun. Joy. And thick skins on vulnerable people.

Can we celebrate idleness?

I think we ought to.

Certainly when, like me, our stuff is public.

Yes I’m not writing it all here by any means. I’m only writing flashes. Thank God for that because even everyday life is richer and more nuanced than anything I can try to capture here with words.

Still. This blog is a shadow of a life now. Many years now I’ve settled and at some point put these words down before sleeping. I am trying to look back over them but I haven’t the discipline. What a mess of life I’ve already made. What could be made of it? Edinburgh is starting. “Do you have any fringe recommendations?”. *DON’T GO THERE!!* But maybe there’s a comedy show that would eat this stuff. I’ve thought about going toe to toe with AI.

I rarely go to Edinburgh. Maybe again one day. The only show I’ve ever been in up there got 5 stars in Three Weeks yay hooray etc. But… being in London for August has usually been bank for me because Cunty McAgentsign is doing his show up there so the casting director he knew at school has to work down the list and get new humans. Nowadays Cunty can send a tape of course so it’s not as good as it was for me when he had to show up in Soho. But… I’m allowing myself to believe that I might get a meeting this month. It has happened before many times over. Maybe even a job at the end of it. Meanwhile I’m mister Panda for a few days at the end of the month, and your friendly punching bag elsewise.

Maybe if I hadn’t been celebrating idleness this lovely weekend. But I know how working too hard can damage things too. I tried to do letters at the start of my career and they honestly did more harm than good. I tried to be different and I think I ended up being weird. I tried to deliver into people’s hands and probably have myself written into lists as a stalker. Fuck. I really want to work. I’m so fed up of nothing. Aaaaargh

Bring it August.

The internet. The internet.

Back in the day it was much harder to spread disinformation but we still did it. A lot of it is about pattern matching. There are patterns in everything and just as we can look at a cloud or a flame to find faces and pixies so we can look at popular culture and politics and draw connecting lines.

Back in 1966, fans of The Beatles went mad for a theory that Paul was dead and replaced by a lookalike. Once the theory was voiced people started looking for corroboration and found it everywhere. “goo goo ga joob” is what Humpty says before falling off the wall in Finnegan’s Wake. The walrus is Paul and it’s Scandinavian for a corpse. He’s barefoot on the Abbey Road cover and his fag is in the wrong hand. If you played some tracks backwards then you could hear potential hints – “Turn me on dead man”… Who had blown their mind up in the car? This was a collective pattern matching game, played out pre internet and made possible by the astronomical fame of The Beatles. It was a fun version of the madness that eventually caused Mark David Chapman to shoot Lennon in the back because he didn’t appear to believe in God and because The Catcher in the Rye had told him to do it. Patterns. He had found what he was looking for.

Now that sort of stuff is everywhere. We can all go looking. Most of us have got a friend who quietly or loudly believes in aliens. The internet lets us all prove anything we want to prove. If you look hard enough you’ll find patterns in anything.

I’m sad today though, as another thing the internet does is keep us right up to date on who has died, and Sinead O’Connor is another one of those voices I admired. I first noticed her when my parents were scandalised by her. We often get drawn to the ones our parents don’t like. What a voice she had. And what clear incisive rage. I had all her albums including one where she belted out a load of Jazz standards. It’s great. Am I Not Your Girl. I’ve been listening again today. A quiet day and time to think and listen to music. I just sent invoices and read and chilled. Now I’m in bed and the party boats are up and down the Thames. It’s Friday night. I’m listening to jazz and should be in bed by midnight.

Sometimes I’m too amenable.

Today I drove to Tadworth with a great big telly I had flogged on eBay. The guy gave me cash. Then I put most of it into a friend’s bank account as the thing wasn’t mine. Got a good price for it considering it is missing lots of the things that most people keep. I had a remote and I’d bought a power cable. Thinking about it, I forgot to deduct the cost of the cable from the money I transferred to my friend but it’ll all come out in the wash as I’ve still got lots of random things that I can tick over. My eBay mojo is pretty decent. I’ve sold over 400 things and still got 100% positive feedback. That’s enough of a history that I look like a safe bet to potential buyers, so it’s easier to flog things. But then I go and drive to Tadworth just to make sure he says nice things about me. Bah.

On the way back I picked up a mate and we caught up as I drove him into town, so the trip wasn’t entirely wasted. And I got to listen to a few episodes of Yeti on BBC Sounds which is perhaps a tiny bit more intellectual than I like things to be, but packed with enough curiosity and wonder to be good company while driving. Apparently even Attenborough is willing to give credence to the existence of something Yeti-ish, and the podcast is two very left brain enthusiasts going out to the Himalayas looking for evidence. The history of yeti hunting is fascinating to learn about, the Himalayan people are very attuned to the possibility of magic, but I’m sad every time they talk of people running DNA scans on yeti relics and finding them to be goat or human or polar bear… I kind of hope they find something. There’s plenty of photos of footprints. This one is from the Indian army and they were mostly just laughed at for posting it. Footprints in snow can melt to be larger, but maybe … just maybe…

Things like that though, I’m always happier to give credence to them. We all think we are terribly clever, and often that manifests in us closing ourselves off to the possibility of wondrous things. It’s why I like tarot, and think about the phase of the moon and all the oojie boojie stuff. It’s why I go on pilgrimages with Catholics, and chant nam-myo-ho-renge-kyo and think about Greek gods and earth magic in Shakespeare. Believing in things beyond our ken is generally going to bring nicer things into our lives than feeling all smart because we think we can prove the wondrous thing isn’t wondrous.

So I guess I’ve been moving energy around again. Now I’m home and it’s hot and getting late. I’m enjoying my long drives at the moment – even without the cricket they’re a great opportunity to plug into random lovely things on audio.

Once I had sobered up, I drove home. It was lovely to get absolutely hammered with an old friend, but I have to remember to try and write to you before I am incapable.

I was on a quick turnaround. Had to be at The Globe for half three, suited and booted. Another corporate gig.

This time it was an international conference of women lawyers. “We are looking forward to the tour,” they tell me right away. Tour?

After the matinee, muggins here suddenly found himself leading groups of hammered lawyers into The Globe. It was press night for Maccers and my friend Aaron is Macduff. By the end of it people were warming up on stage. Nevertheless I thought it was Dream and told my groups so. Totally misinformed them, likely in front of the cast. But … fuck it, I literally didn’t know I was doing tours until I was doing tours. I mostly talked about what Elizabethan theatre was and why it varied from post restoration, and what that means in performance. Factory stuff. Purist stuff. They seemed happy, but I’m eloquent and charismatic. Bite me.

Then we did the usual festival of scenes. That’s a thing I really know now – After Dinner Entertainment. Damn if only I could get into something that gave my name traction then my old age would be sorted. You can ask for a lot of money to do what I do easily, so long as you are Blokey off of Tellything. I just need the Tellything to be Blokey off.

Now I’m home. It’s cold. I’m gonna crash and it feels like it has been a positive day. I’ve been helping ease people in. Youth. Three young’uns and me. When I finally explode they’ll be able to carry the after dinner torch. Today was a way for them to cut their teeth and gain confidence while I took the brunt of the last minute random stuff like unexpected tours.

I’m happy. And probably a bit tipsy too. The client gave us wine. I’m usually too “professional” to accept it as I never want a client to think I’m drinking their budget, but the young’uns had already helped themselves and I wasn’t gonna be a buzzkill so I let myself have yummy hair of the dog.

Now I’m home. Bed is happening. Hooray. zzzz

Tristan and I are sitting watching Test Match Special. All these cricketers. How did I start to care about this sport?

I’m catching up. Yes I know we drew the series, and yes had the rain not stopped over a day of play we would have won. But… we didn’t. So be it.

I’m watching Anderson and Broad batting for a few more points. These guys are bowlers. They can’t hit it well or safely. Broad just announced his retirement.

TONK.

There it goes. 6 runs. And the night hawk, this massive weirdo, Stuart Broad – he’s hit his last ball as a batsman and it’s a six.

Anderson is out shortly after.

I’m happy to have cared about this series. This ancient game, that is bigger in many other countries than it is here… I love how it responds to the wind, the earth, the ground. I was a bowler, so I hold out towards the likes of Broad, who will always be better at their job if they listen to the wind and the earth.

Tristan and I both know we drew the series. The aussies retain the ashes. I’ve very much enjoyed the hard work and play that took us to that.

I’m gonna watch it. You won’t get any remarkable insights from me right now so it’s silly to try. Be kind. Night night. A

Barbie is poking Box Office records all over the world. Of all the films. A movie about a toy. Oppenheimer is also pulling in huge crowds – nothing commensurate with Barbie but you can’t bring the kids and it’s much longer.

I am very happy about all of this. Cinema has been on its knees since COVID and now some of the bullshit humans running streaming platforms have started to believe they are gods in the industry. Numbers like this will be helpful in pulling them down a peg or two and maybe even helping them understand that this existential strike taking place currently mostly in LA is not just a load of wingeing lackeys – it is a necessary recalibration. This job is still a job. It is only a few who reach the massive paychecks that some assume we all get. The majority of us go from workshop to Panda to self-tape and back again and wonder what the hell they will do when they finally get too old to sustain the energy output. We haven’t got nest eggs. When our work is used we need to be paid. We have made many compromises. There’s passion, there’s joy, but the worse we are treated the harder it is to hold onto that, and we need to know there’s still somehow a shot at decent money and the chance of not being terrified of the cold in old age while our image is used to line somebody else’s pockets.

So yeah I’m glad that this dumb bright movie about toys has pulled people back to the cinemas. Lots of them have already closed. This might just be enough popcorn to ensure that the ones that survived don’t end up as Wetherspoons.

We were at The Dome in Worthing, and they didn’t know what had hit them. 2pm on a Monday and staff who are used to three people and a stray seagull are processing a crowded house for Barbie. The internet, more and more the haven for utter moronicism, has almost eaten itself over this movie – “Ken is not a good role model!” “My child asked me what a vagina is!” “Aqua had some weird lyrics!” “I am scared of women!” “Mattel are a vile megacorporation who only really care about the bottom line!” “Mummy I did a poo!” etc etc. I enjoyed it for the styling and the chance to just sink into some absolute colourful bollocks for a few hours on a disgusting July afternoon and now I’m writing about it on the internet too so nurrr.

I’ll see Oppenheimer soon, but the whole double bill thing would have been too much for me. The cinema as a place we can go to watch a film and enjoy it? Hell yeah, bring it on again. Where have you been? Let’s remember the joy of film while they are still being made bold and weird. So much community was murdered when we all had to be terrified of one another. Today we had kids running up and down the aisle, people throwing popcorn and blowing their noses… Loads of us had pink clothes on just to conform, and yeah it’s that same herd instinct that made us all shut the doors that is now sending people out to watch these films. Fine. Sometimes we can go baaaa. I just did. Baaaaarbie. The studios will get a shot of adrenaline when they see the numbers. Neither film is merely a moneygrab – both have some decent artists both on screen and behind the camera. So the buoyancy of the studios should lead to more money for bolder big screen movies. And that’ll be more jobs for the boys and ultimately might mean, if I’m lucky, that I can put the heating on for an hour or so on Christmas Day when I’m ninety.

Meantime I’m gonna go to sleep happy about the fact we did something we used to do all the time. Perfect environment for a summer blockbuster to take hold, when its basically fucking January out there.

We woke up this morning to sunshine and peace at Selsdon, in a bed so vast it has warring provinces. We wandered downstairs to an outdoor breakfast. I had sausage muffin. Lou had eggs. A quick cup of coffee and on went the Panda head as Lou went off exploring the acres.

Shortly thereafter I was pushing a shopping trolley. “Look mother, teddies!” shouted a little girl as Al Barclay with a head on pushed a lady artist in high heels across a stretch of colourful floor. “I think they’re having a photoshoot,” observed the mother, in the tone of voice of someone used to that sort of thing. Instagram has had its effect on us all now. If we saw something weird going on in the nineties we would approach with caution and curiosity. Now we look for the camera, and as soon as we see it we dismiss it as just another shoot.

I’m glad to have been part of it though. If they haven’t got some fun shots and stills from this morning I’ll be very surprised and, at heart, this stuff is about remembering to have fun. My connection to it all started in lockdown when I was dancing behind a pane of glass in Mayfair. We weren’t supposed to do anything so Marie and I announced that we were a “mental health bubble” and served Amy’s bonkers imagination by reminding people not to be scared and sad all the time. Mostly that involved dancing like idiots for hours and hours in a window but we had a selection of subversive messages we could hold up. It was mostly a winter thing. There was huge light in doing it. I’m glad she still thinks of me.

This weekend has been delightful, partly for the art but partly for the venue. Birch is a strong venture, and if I lived in Croydon I would hands down get a membership at Birch even though it’s £150 a month. There’s a gym. The pool is opening soon and will be beautiful. The building is spectacular and needs love to live. And there’s 200 acres of old land that is just gonna get nicer and nicer. The pigs and cows and ponies come next week. No wolves as it’s Croydon. Tamworth instead of boar. I suspect there are too many urban foxes for chickens.

I can’t remember the exact number but there’s over 200 rooms there. Whole wings have not yet come into play. They are still finding their feet, but it’ll turn into something remarkable, and I have no idea what deal they struck with Amy but I love that they have turned a room over to her glorious bright mind, and that she has trusted me to come and be me in it (with a panda head).

Lou and I are back at hers now and her bed feels like a matchbox compared to last night. The wind is hard against the window. As soon as I was out of the Panda the rain came. This weather needs to sort itself out please. Summer? I haven’t got a tan properly yet dammit.

It’s only early and I’m knackered again but it’s okay because I’m living where I work, and there are plenty of people out there who would question interpreting what I’ve done today as “work”.

“I don’t know how you keep it up,” said one grandfather today though, in a parting comment. Mister Panda, who was by then boiling in his head like a pot of moules, had been responsively playing with two very demanding small humans for far too long. At the time he was waving goodbye and very much looking forward to decapitating himself and panting like a hot dog. “I can do it cos there are no children at home,” I said. Little tykes can do their best when I’m being paid. I never have to worry about who is gonna deal with their crap in the morning. It won’t be me cos I never made them.

“This installation isn’t for children,” says the artist. It is huge and pink and full of toys. “PSYCHEDELIC CRÈCHE,” say all the young parents of Croydon who spent their teens going Badger Badger Badger Badger MUSHROOM MUSHROOM and are hoping they can leave the little tyke with the panda while they indulge in a remarkably good if pricey wine selection.

I’m at Birch (Selsdon). It’s great. I can’t afford to be a member but I would love to be. It is the latest of many lives that belong to this incredible house, longer than a train, lead windows and with some rooms still smellinh of tobacco smoke, squat against the weather and adapted by literally a thousand years of habitation and use into a creaking breathing mess of impracticality and hospitality. The staff are the most incredible asset they have here. Whoever selected this lot is a genius. Fun and diligent humorous humans, every one of them lively and sparky. It’s The House of St Barnabus again but out in Croydon. I’m very happy to be mister Panda with them. Amy says “We are gonna roll it out internationally!” I’ll take this madness to Korea. Mister Panda is a primal force. He knows things.

I’m knackered though. Lou is here. I had a long day in the head and then some wine. Quicker tomorrow. Then nothing for a few weeks. There are worse ways to earn a crust, believe me. It’s the perfect blend of hard and easy. And for the first time in a while I’m glad that the British summer has taken a temporary back foot. It means I’m only mildly poached, not pressure cooked.