AlBarclay

I only just arrived in Glasgow and here I go back again. Gordon drove me to the airport.

He lives by the botanic garden. He and Sue make up fifty percent of my Scottish cousin allocation and I got to see them both plus her partner – for Sunday lunch. My suggestion had been a roast in a pub but Gordon is an authentic Scot and that’ll cost far too much money. Richard cooks a mean Shepherd’s Pie, and in the tradition of my family it’s called a shepherd’s pie if it’s with beef mince as well as if it’s with lamb. That crosses the family. My mother had Shepherd’s Pie as her speciality, mince interchangeable, great big rounds of carrot, chunks of onion so fat they squeaked on your teeth, Cadbury’s Smash, a rime of burnt cheddar. Hearty warm and flavourless. Food for a hungry shepherd. I found one in the freezer a decade after she died. Cooked it. It was rancid. I still remember the disappointment of my first and only mouthful. Spat in the bin. Time had taken that pie. Time foiled my attempt at a physical memory of my mother. Screw you, time. But mayhap for the best. When I find mum’s perfume on clothes I sometimes have to cry a moment, just a moment, at the shattering. More than twenty years. I’ll be her final age soon. She was a good mum.

“Death is the context of life,” is Gordon’s opener. He’s never been one for smalltalk. I’m up for that though. His mother died recently. Dear aunt Sylvia. Again again and always the mother can hurt when she goes. Sure there’s the nurture, the teaching, the sense of solidarity and the feeling of being loved even though you’re a bit crap. But also just selfishly, the parents go and that’s the buffer zone fucked. That just leaves THIS TWAT vs THE VOID the void the void “Your turn next” the voooooooooooi

8

8

Gordon’s a therapist and curious about psychedelics applied in therapy. It’s an area I feel very strongly about. Some of my greatest shifts have come with mindful application of weapons grade psychedelics. Nothing gets you out of a hole like seeing the entire universe imploding. Nothing gives you perspective like unanchoring from linear time and fully comprehending that we are all splinters of universal consciousness where time is a trick to help us navigate infinity without madness and your finger hurts? Death is the context of life. Strong and true. If we forget we are just dancing through this colourful noise for a very very short time, we might forget to take it all in while we can. Glasgow was a glory today, crisp and bright, the best of Scottish winter. We find it where we can, that strange joy of presence, but it takes noticing or we are merely painting things with ourselves.

Sue puts me in touch her daughter’s boyfriend who is in Lewes and builds the Lewes bonfire. He might take the wood next week for next year. That’ll be an absolute coup… Sue’s daughter swims away from us perpetually on a picture she painted that I still have in my living room, bright and peaceful in blue and red. I would be very happy to help build a bonfire and save myself £75 a tonne plus VAT for wood and reconnect with family now based in Lewes. Which reminds me, I still haven’t found those tipper vans.

I’m in the pub where Begbie throws his pint off the balcony. Brew Haus, now. It’s directly opposite my hotel. Tonight was a masked celebration of Ellie and Janet. It was at the Oran Mor in Kelvinside – the old Kelvinside Parish Church. There’s a ballroom upstairs decorated by Alasdair Grey. My nephew recently got married there. I was dancing on the ghost of my father.

I remember as a child being driven around these streets. Dad had moved on but he left a bit of his heart here always. He was my age when I was born and a proud Scotsman through and through. My memory of this city is a sixty year old dad driving me through his old stomping grounds. I absorbed a few of his stories, with the indifference of a child who doesn’t know he’ll be clinging onto memories before long. The swimming baths. The place where he broke a window throwing an unwanted meatball. “Get thee gone and come back never,” she shouted, exactly like this. “Nobody speaks like her nowadays.” 1984.

His brother’s wife died just the other week. She was here, just here, near here. My uncle wrote me out of his will: “I did a bad thing”, but it was always tense between them and I was a late child. My cousins are all living around this way though. I’ll see them tomorrow. One of their exes is a dear friend. Another spent ages trying to persuade me: “You should come work in Glasgow, it’s a smaller pond.” “No. I want to crack London.” Oof.

I walk out of Hillhead station and in under a minute I hear a shout : “BARCLAY!” He can’t remember the first name immediately, goes with the surname…

There he is, the same cousin’s husband, divorced now. He is in my industry. He’s shouting my name and I am strangely glad to see him. I ignored him when he said I should move here. He always annoyed the fuck out of me but he might have been right back then. He also told me to set up a Vlog. In about 2006, long before this noise I’m making here. “Even a stopped clock gives the right time twice a day,” said Bruce Robinson through Paul McGann. I didn’t take his advice – you can’t take advice from someone that needs to see you take it. I’m still in the mix, but hey maybe that would have been the way to get the big spondoolicks quickly. I’ve always been about the long and winding road though. He put his daughter under so much pressure to be a singer that it killed the love. I saw it happening and tried to tell him. But she’ll make more money elsewhere.

It was wonderful to be here in this city for my friend Ellie. I’ve known her almost as long as my father has been dead, and she’s sewn into the Scottish arts scene. My understudy in Stratford this time last year was a gorgeous softly spoken man my age from around here, known to her. Maybe I could shift here, now, in this time of self tapes. The tyranny of London is cracked. Let’s see how it all pans out but … maybe maybe. For now, I’m gonna hit the hotel in Glasgow… See family tomorrow. Fly back to London. Glory. Lou is already in Dubai. This big world ain’t so big right now, at the end of the age of aviation. We should probably use it while we can. Generations to come will wonder how we justified wasting so much fuel. But it’s happening now, we can happen with it. I’m in Glasgow. Fuck it. Hi.

Quiet early evening. We watched what we could of the sunset from Lou’s sky cottage overlooking the sea. Just as the day drew to a close we had a flash of sun below the clouds before it fell into the sea. Just a few minutes of it.

“It’s gonna be like this for months,” says Lou, referencing the cloud cover and the grey skies, the light drizzle. “It’s 34 degrees in Riyadh.” I check the temperature in South Bend Indiana. 4 degrees. Lou is getting the hotter version of an adventure, that’s for sure.

We grabbed an amazing meal, you know how I love that. With no booze you can get out from under a place like The Ginger Fox pretty reasonably, and the food is amazing. Mushroom and Jerusalem Artichoke soup and a venison pie. I won’t be needing anything else today. The venison pie had one tiny tiny little shiver of a carrot in it. Other than that just meat meat meat and meat. I was very happy.

Now she’s packing and trying to take a call about work. We are both flying out tomorrow, I’m off to Scotland for a jolly. Booked it so I fly from Gatwick a bit before her. My single tiny little backpack would be nothing at all if I hadn’t slung in the script of As You Like It and my Steam Deck. Doubt there’ll be much time for either – I’m back in town on Sunday. Readthrough and photo shoot Monday and my oh my things are all starting to happen again. This time without Lou is gonna fly by with being busy. I’m also bringing a Glyndebourne frock coat rolled up in a plastic bag. When I get on the plane I’ll be wearing it, but then it’ll be back in the bag when I get to Glasgow, cos otherwise Begbie will beat the crap out of me in the toilet.

Gonna switch into the last evening. We are both gonna have a winter adventure. She’s excited. She’ll be doing shitloads of work. I’ll be ok once I’ve learnt my LINES. Hence bringing it on the plane. I just Facebook stalked the rest of the cast and I’M GONNA BE THE OLDEST WAAAAAAA. They better not all call me grandpa.

Ten past ten on a Thursday night. I’ve just driven through a rainstorm to find it clear and still by the sea. Stevie Wonder is singing “As”. Car headlights reflect on the tarmac. I’m writing to you in Bergie, parked by the entrance to Royal Crescent. It took ages to find this spot but it’ll do for tonight.

I’m done with current affairs for now. It’s just so unrelentingly depressing. So I’ve been listening to music instead. I found that my musical choices were coming from habit and I wanted a non-algorithmic way of finding things to listen to. I’ve had it up to here with machines pushing us into boxes. “Because you listened to x”. No. So I went for an arbitrary means of finding what to listen to that is at least curated by humans. This is gonna keep me busy for a long time. Rolling Stone Magazine’s 2023 list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.

It is slow going as I’m listening to them all more than once right now, educating myself and enjoying myself. Songs in the Key of Life is an absolute masterwork, good God I knew Stevie Wonder was well respected by musicians but I never actively listened to him until now. Joni Mitchell’s Blue at number three is closer to my jam. But… at this rate I’ll be working through this list until I’m dead. Not a bad way to go I guess. I’m still at #4 after over a week.

Rolling Stone is evidently an American magazine based on this list, but that’s no bad thing. Breaks me further from my bubble and they aren’t ignoring British music. It just means Pet Sounds is at #2 and Abbey Road is at #5. (I have no idea what’s to come, I only look one ahead and I tend to listen to them multiple times). So far it has been wonderful, and likely extremely and hilariously triggering for the roundabout kids. Marvin Gaye. Joni Mitchell. Stevie Wonder. Get the brushes out lads.

I’d be here earlier if I hadn’t been running a late workshop. Last minute cover. Harder than it needed to be because of tech. We made it though. I think the client will be happy. I was happy, just sad it takes from Lou time. On which subject…

I’m writing this in my car so I don’t have anything distracting from Lou when I get up to hers. She’ll be sleeping I imagine. But nevertheless, she’s off to Saudi too soon, too soon. A precious few moments before I take her to the airport and adventure time! I’m gonna miss that brilliant heart…

I’ve finally got a bit of space in my head.

This morning at Imperial they absolutely had to choose today to throw the weirdest exam at me to invigilate. Half online with laptops where chat GPT is allowed, half on paper, closed book. Thankfully the students are, by definition, intelligent. Often they have no common sense, but today they all did, thank god, and even with no time to prepare adequately it was smooth as you like and I was home in plenty of time.

Then I had to totally shift my brain. Helping train a cohort of brilliant international youth on flipping ZOOM. I honestly can’t bear Zoom but I made it happen, largely. My fear was that we would run out of content but the opposite was the case. We were still going strong at the end.

My tech was all over the place. I had to buy a webcam even though my laptop is supposed to have a camera built in. Even then my laptop wouldn’t display the new camera through any natural hardware or software routes. Thank God for being the teenager I was, hacking and ripping. I worked around it by running a screengrab tool that captured the image. I made the tool my view and patched the sound through the camera so it would sync. Supernerd workaround. The only thing it would have changed from their perspective is that rather than being a reverse image it made it into a mirror image. And it ran my processor ragged and recorded countless gigabytes of unnecessary screen capture, but it looked like I had functioning hardware and the session was fine apart from the fact I couldn’t read my notes and capture my screen at the same time. Demonstrating tech while being old school with tech. Hi kids.

Good lord though. What a piece of software. I will certainly use it for my growing businesses and it will certainly make them better, and the free tier is good enough for now. Their model is to provide a free tier, get people into it, make it logical to pay for an upgrade.

It’s a free CRM. I didn’t know what such a thing was yesterday morning. Now I’ve done this I know that I’ve become deeply frustrated with CRMs as a customer many many times on many levels. There was one business that made me give them so much information before I got a quote out of them that I put in the final “comments” section “I just want a fucking quote ffs”. I then rang them five minutes later and was told by some bored human that they weren’t providing the sort of thing I was looking for anyway, after I gave them my life story and my credit card details and the location of my first kiss to within three meters.

Anyway, used better it’s the future, and it’s a familiar enough model for us customers now – we can and must go through these hubs before we speak to anyone. I used to always say “no” to data collection. But I noticed one of the people training me yesterday instinctively clicked “decline” on a cookie popup without considering it and I knew they were my people. Even though these days they’re trying to trap us. There are loads of websites I won’t use any more because of the new “data collection or pay” model. Even the Grauniad does it for some of its articles.

At least there’s no AI pretending to be human yet on this CRM. That’s the thing I hate the most. That would require me finding the precise location of their head office so I could go and fart in the lift after a curry.

Their CEO is pushing quotes about how humans are best at things because they’re human, which is important and great but of course it opens the door to thinking that there’s another possible route. Everything being automated. The coming storm? Or a bunch of nerds trying to sell the idea that these information aggregator LLMS are somehow genuinely gonna start to be able to understand context. I used to throw my phone down when the recorded lady said: “I’m sorry for the delay.” “NO YOU AREN’T! YOU DON’T KNOW ABOUT IT! YOU’RE JUST SAYING WORDS ON A SCRIPT!”

These LLMs will of course have better empathy than their creators, these oxen in silicone valley. But they won’t have better empathy than real people.

This afternoon I logged onto zoom with my new laptop and discovered that it doesn’t recognise its own built in camera. So I set up a phone on a tripod and used that instead, self tape stylee. Of course I’ve got corners of my flat full of tripods and lights. I can’t do phone tomorrow though. Tomorrow I’ll be sharing my screen with international young entrepreneurs and I’m gonna need to know what I’m doing and I’ll want my voice to come from the screen I’m sharing. This afternoon I just had a bit of training and then I watched Ben deliver today’s workshop.

Facilitating is literally just about making things easier. Ben was delivering material and moving the speaking stick around and about, and taking it gracefully when it was dropped. The workshop is on zoom and most people aren’t sharing their screens because they’re brushing the dog or abseiling during or whatever – that was me in every Buddhist meeting in COVID, building a crane out of chips until “Al are you still there?” “Me, oh yes of course, Oh did I switch off my camera?”

Ben runs it well. “Any questions about that?” Resounding silence. “Excellent, it’s clear we all expressed ourselves very well indeed.”

The client is American. We are introducing business software to people who might well be able to use it to build their ideas into something that will fund their future. I’m thinking about my various businesses as I’m watching Ben deliver his content. All he has to do is speak the slide like it’s his language. It all makes a kind of sense anyway if you’re not an eejit. I can do this standing on my head, it’s why they often find actors for this work. We know presentation and we know how to embody text that isn’t ours. And yes I can brush my hair if I have to.

Often we mistake the presenter for being the one generating the content, because they’re delivering it. Frequently that’s not the case. Perhaps David Attenborough, a few others, but I can think of a well known world leader that gets up in the morning, goes into hair and make-up a few hours, and then just says what he’s told to say (with a few off piste riffs that make him entertaining). The content and the agenda isn’t really theirs. They’re the face.

I’ll be the face tomorrow. And I might learn something about what I’m teaching. I need to step up my various grifts so I’m not always  stressing about money. And boy oh boy have I got the software for you.

I went to the theatre tonight. A beautiful little theatre. Richmond Theatre. It opened in 1899 with a production of As You Like It – the play that will be my next job. It’s a beautiful play about many things including the hubris of mankind to think we are greater or separate from nature.

Frank Matcham the architect is remembered by plaque outside. He was a great theatrical architect. His design allows 840 audience members to sit in their seats and hear a play. He understood acoustics and catered brilliantly.

Richmond Theatre is a proscenium arch theatre, the chocolate box style that Charles II brought back with him from France. It’s a bit more framed than the theatres we were used to in this country when he restored the theatre, but it makes it less work for the actors – there’s a fourth wall and you know to address your eyes and voice out over the audience.

Tonight we saw a well put together play, tightly acted and charmingly written. Hanging off the proscenium arch on either side were big black speakers.

Every actor that spoke was miked with a little earpiece mic. Their sound was sent through the speakers and out through the beautifully designed auditorium in a homogeneous wash. Largely you could work out who was speaking when, but it was very easy to stop caring.

I care about voice very much. It was incontrovertibly the golden age of Guildhall voice training when I was there, and Michael McCallion, taken way too young, was the guy who helped with my audition speeches. Jeannette Nelson, Kate Godfrey, Annemette Verspeak, Patsy fucking Rodenberg. Heavyweights of theatre voice every one. Every actor in that theatre tonight could have been heard without the mics, could have sustained a run. Maybe they would have worked a bit harder for it. Maybe they would have risked vocal tiredness, vocal damage. Maybe they would have needed to get in early to warm up. They would have. And we would have had human directional voices.

Technology is eating our humanity at an alarming rate. I thought we might still have theatre. But even at the RST they had shotgun mics around the edges of the stage to subtly amp people.

What the fuck is going on? What the hell do they think we trained for? Is this so the instagrammers can start playing the parts without going hoarse after one week. Apparently “the theatres insist on it”. What, because some deaf old git moans about the fact they couldn’t hear the tellybox star? Fine. Send on the cover.

I didn’t hate this evening, but it put a bigger barrier up than any fourth wall. The only expression was the movement. This isn’t musical theatre, I get it if there are songs every night, that’s gonna be fucking exhausting. This was a play though. A play. A theatre play with talking. Come ON people. Hundreds of years of technique reduced to some guy in a box with knobs.

Urrrgh.

The bells at St Martin’s just rang 5pm. I’m sitting on the Portland stone at the North of Nelson’s Column, flanked by the lions, watching the fountains. It’s another mild autumn night and London is buzzing. It’s as crowded as I’ve ever known it. All that covidiousy is a distant and sickly memory. We are back in business as a city.

International politics and silly angry people want to try and sell the story that London is full of angry foreigners knifing people for being white. It couldn’t be further from the truth. There’s a good happy mix of people here, and plenty of people with poppies on that don’t look like they are suddenly going to go apoplectic and start painting roundabouts. Loads of tourists bringing money into town. They’ve built some kind of Christmas market up at the top of the square. It is buzzing and bright and positive.

I’m walking now as I write, down Whitehall past horse guards parade. There’s ped barrier up on the sides of the road from yesterday. Yesterday there were some benign middle class people wandering around with banners and slogans. Seditious chanting. Perhaps it’s nice not to try and murder a whole people? Today there was remembrance at the cenotaph. Old geezers with all their medals on. I’m there now as I write. Where’s my fucking poppy? I’m wearing it. All the wreaths have been laid. It’s dark but people are still here, being respectful. I’m gonna stop a while too and think of my grandpa.

—

It’s guarded now and cordoned off. Didn’t someone get arrested for widdling on it a few years ago? Feels peaceful tonight though.

And the rain has started. I can’t walk and write anymore.

—

I got on the tube at Westminster. Heading home. Funny to think of those conflicts, almost forgotten now. We don’t know what the word fascism means now. We just throw it around to mean “people we don’t agree with”, so the people we don’t agree with have started to thicken their skins to the accusation and dig into the ideology. “I’m not a fascist, I’m just being logical and looking after my own.” Those dark times are almost forgotten and huge pockets of the western world risk getting sucked into the same fearful protective thinking holes that made it all possible the first time. More and more people just following orders and going with the majority, and then the idea that there’s some “globalist socialist” organisation with a specific name that is mobilised against “ordinary working people” or whatever. It’s madness. The wokerati have joined Antifa. Here we go again kids. Let’s not kill millions this time please.

—

I’m out the other end. Heading home. A lovely cup of tea with a friend and I’m feeling melancholy. It’s the darkness.

Lou is off back to Brighton. It’s actually been lovely having her here, even though we’ve been like ships in the night. Huge show she’s working on and it has been a big long week for her, up very early and home very late, in on the weekend. This’ll be the shape of it for her for quite some time. She’s already pulled some friends into her gravity with it and earned them some money too. One of them will be going off to Riyadh.

It’s pleasant being the person that gets your friends work. I’ve been enjoying that recently too. It’ll deepen her bond with them, and we all know that work breeds work.

Not always immediately though. This time last year I was still in Stratford. Now I’m gearing up for America but right now I still don’t know who I’m going with. It’ll only be five of us and the dynamic will be very important. I’m hoping it’ll be a lovely bunch. No wankers. They always say that if you’re on a job and you think there are no wankers in the cast it’s because it’s you.

It’s already late, I lost track of time. Now I don’t have Lou to help me time keep and go to bed it is already going to pot. For both of us. Brian slept all day, back on New Zealand time, and he’ll be up all night now.

I’m gonna keep this short and try and get my head down. I get the whole bed, but it feels empty …

It’s a strange pleasure having no work suddenly. Sure there are things I could be doing, should be doing, will be doing, but I can let myself off the hook at the moment so I am. I’m not going full teenager here, Lou leaves for work early so I’m up when she goes. Cup of coffee and I drag my laptop into the bedroom. I sit in bed with coffee once Lou is away and boot up the machine. The cats know the drill already, they lie either side of me essentially blocking me in on the bed and forcing me to stay there are lounge with them. So I do. Once my daily admin is done I can’t leave the officebed as I’m trapped by cats, trapped I tell you. So I might boot up a computer game for a bit, stream old episodes of South Park, or maybe read my book. I won’t be having a nap anymore as Halloween walk is over and I’m less likely to be in need of extra sleep as I’m not dousing my liver in neat booze five or six times a week. Feeling a little bit less shit.

Before lunch is time for my morning walk, probably up to Heidi in The Royal Hospital, combined with a stop at the post office should it be necessary. Some groceries if urgent, maybe something for lunch. Today though that was covered. I reopened my Nonna Tonda, which is not a cheap service sending easy cook yummy fresh pasta meals once a week. It’s not cheap but it’s a good meal ten minutes after you’ve thought about it and I’m grateful for it every single time.

Brian and I had lunch together, his day today was comfortingly similar to mine. Then the afternoon shot by and Lou was back from work, sitting in dusky Battersea Park beside me. Friday night and neither of us wanted to go out to eat, we had curry at home, now post prandial and she’s looking at luggage while I think about my day. “What the fuck am I gonna write about, I’ve done fuck all.”

My chamomile is at perfect drinking temperature. I’m very happy with things right now. Sad that Lou will be back home tomorrow and then both of us will be on our travels before long…