AlBarclay

More walkies. More food. No wine. I’m happy and replete and warm and well.

Last night at 2.45am I was pulled out of dream by a high pitched and loud beeping noise, growing more and more frequent until I had no choice but to pull myself from sleep entirely to investigate. I quickly ascertained it was coming from outside our door, as if someone was hitting a button repeatedly with incredible patience. In a state of readiness I threw open the door, but there was nobody there. It’s the battery on the lock. It’s an alarm to say that the battery on the lock is running out.

Theodorus of Samos is the name that history has chosen to attribute the first key to. Pliny named him, so evidently the first that Pliny had come across and we all know how these inventions often get credited to the loudest copycat or the one who was best at business. Theodorus was putting his stuff about some six thousand years before the clocks were reset into AD with the Nazarene prophet. Theo still gets a mention.

Keys were, of course, around much longer than that. They work. They work really well. Archaeologists found a clever little wooden one in Mesopotamia excavating the ruins of Nineveh. The Egyptians were at it too. Everybody for as long as we have been people with things that other people might want to make theirs – they’ve all been at that business of making and honing and making and honing keys and locks and mechanisms to open and close and seal and lock.

1778 London and Robert Barton the locksmith almost certainly didn’t invent the tumbler lock but by God he patented it in good old blighty the heart of the empire and so he has won the internet about who made tumbler locks. He didn’t I’m sure. But he ticked the box and somebody else probably died in poverty.

Over to Norway now and Tor Sørnes born in 1925 started having clever thoughts in the seventies. They say that we have passed a tipping point. That all the great inventions have been invented and now it’s just people making things worse. At fifty years of age, Tor patented a keycard lock that was taken over to Atlanta a few years later and became the basis for the complete fuckery that woke me up last night. It was recodable. Secure for hotels you see, where maybe I could stay one night, get a copy cut, and rob all the future guests. Arsehole prevention. Necessary? You tell me. Maybe…

My lock was running out of battery. It doesn’t know what time it is. But if it is running out of battery it starts shouting and it has no idea if everybody is sleeping or not. (I suspect there was a lot of life left in it – these things are all about creating a dependency). At 3am I find myself walking across this mountaintop complex shivering in a bathrobe in order to try and find the night porter.

I had to wake him up. I played him a video of a beeping lock. He came with a new lock and a tool box. With me holding his phone torch, he took the screaming lock off the door and replaced it with a brand new one. My Spanish is terrible, as is his English. But we are two men grumbling. “Key. Forever. Now this shit.”

We do insist on fucking with things we really don’t need to fuck with. We think we are so clever as we ruin everything. Look at what’s going on in AI. Just because we can we are once more going into a technology too hard and too fast. It will grow exponentially. We can’t predict how it is going to get out of hand, but these language models are not going anywhere healthy for us long term. In quest to prove what we can do, we are making things that will ultimately do the equivalent of waking us up at 3am. Or something much worse.

Anyway, theres a new lock now and we can only operate it with a code.

I still slept well, and today was relaxing and calm and happy. One more night here. Hopefully an uninterrupted sleep and joy abundantly before I hit the boat and gradually pick my way home.

“We aren’t going anywhere in the car tomorrow.” That was the only real plan we had. We are here on the top of a mountain. A little enclave of buildings. Most of them want more per night than ours does.

Huge and involved breakfast, and after that we walked. We walked and walked. We shouted with sheep and spoke softly with mules. Dogs rowfed and cats examined. We found a church with Tantony and his pig, vast and high ceilinged. Acoustically fascinating. Cold empty and resonant. Come to me my children and I will make you whole and give you pigs.

There was rain and sun and coffee and cakes. We continued until we had covered some good ground and could justify an afternoon of lounging around. They have a sauna here. It’s new and people don’t seem to know about it, so we went and sat in it for ages. Sauna shower sauna shower. That was essentially the rest of the afternoon. Incredibly restful, man made heat when God is being reluctant to provide. By the time I got back to the room my steaming skin was soft as putty and then I got into the jacuzzi bath. The road is well and truly washed off.

This evening, the local restaurant has pretentions to Michelin without the prices to match. A very helpful sommelier, rich considered gorgeous food. Today has been the most effective day of absolute idle hot joy. We still did things but the doing to being ratio was adjusted subtly in favour of being. I’m sometimes a bit too pointed towards do do do but we would have no swing without the be be be. do be do be do. That’s life. I’ve been a puppet, a pauper, a pirate, a poet
A pawn and a king, I’ve been up and down and over and out, and I know one thing : Each time I find myself flat on my face,
I pick myself up and get back in the race.

I was flat on my face drooling into a pillow at 5pm. It’ll happen again shortly. But then before I know it I’ll be pushing back up through France and thinking about what to make of this and that and myself and the other and on and on we go.

It’s bedtime. Good God an idle day with Lou here in gorgeous snowy Majorca and I’m so happy for it. A true delight. I’m lighter and heavier all at the same time.

I think I had a spot of culture shock, going from France to Spain like that. The French just slump around and eat well. The Spanish are Catholics and they have this macho thing going on so all the men are up in your face but they want you to be obedient to a vast web of made up rules yeah!

I’m into it now but I’m knackered. Picked the wrong day to go to Majorca. There was a huge unprecedented dump of snow in the mountains. They’ve had to ship brand new ploughs over from Spain and some areas are totally cut off, with no power. Lower down there’s loads of localised flooding. But the snow – well it shut down our hotel entirely and because they had no power they had no internet and couldn’t warn us. First I heard was when I tried to drive there and kept running into roadblocks. I tried to message and ring asking if they knew how to get there short of hiking for three and a half hours. Eventually had a very brief explanation of what had happened over the guys 3g connection, so I asked for a refund. He hasn’t issued it yet … I hope he does though otherwise this will be an expensive day.

Lou lands shortly and then we will both get to actually relax for just a little while. A few days of very little. Nature and hopefully sunshine. Good company and hopefully good food. A moment to stop after the miles and miles of go. I need it. I’ve had no sleep and those long hours on the road do accumulate after a while. One last push while Lou gets through security and I try to get back to the hotel in the dark with some of the roads closed. Of course there’s only one person checking passports and all the flights get in at the same time. Of course. I’m gonna look at the route back on maps.

—

Back up at Finca Binibona, our last minute excellent backup plan. All the roads on the way up here are tiny little flooded pathways, both treacherous and unfamiliar at this time of night. By the time we were halfway home I was feeling extremely emotional. I cried a little bit about breaking a bird bath. I even wept momentarily at the idea of a cat. Everything is right up at the surface. Sleep will maybe help, although perhaps we are always supposed to be this sensitive.

I’m on my back in a vast bed. We are in a suite. Free upgrade baby. Chamomile is coming. I might not be awake for it. The Aircon keeps switching on and there’s no way to kill it. I’m so tired I barely mind.

Good God they actually employ potatoes to help you park cars on the Trasmed ferry from Barcelona to Palma. They put them in hi-vis and make them look like people but after listening to them and obeying their instructions, they are definitely potatoes.

A few of them became interested with me when I stopped to let someone open their door in front of me but behind them. They began actively patronising me about my line in the narrow ferry lane. “I know the size of my car,” I tried to tell them, “I just stopped to let that guy behind you unload!” but my potato is even worse than my Spanish. They were actively telling me what to do with my wheel. Eventually one of them was happy with where I was. Had I been driving on the other side of the car like everybody else then fine, but I literally couldn’t open my door in the line he put me in. He seemed happy with that outcome and finally fucked off whereupon I was able to go back to the line I originally had and get out of the car. The whole situation took AGES though. When you take into account that Trasmed are giving work to root vegetables that would otherwise be consumed in a wide variety of dishes, perhaps it’s acceptable that three of them spent so long making sure my vehicle was parked badly. The excitement of being a vegetable with a job would maybe forgive their otherwise unforgivably patrician tone too. Had they been people I would obviously dismiss them as ridiculous unforgivable proud morons.

I’m on the boat. I hope that the boat isn’t being driven by a potato. I’ve found a bench type thing that I might be able to sleep in. I’m gonna explore the boat and make sure I can’t find a better option, before I take something that makes me sleep and just wink out until about 4.30 when it all starts shouting. Gotta say I’m surprised. My expectation was a totally packed ferry but there’s loads of room here. Maybe I’ll get lucky.

The roads south today in France were frozen, with snow on both sides. The beast from the east. There’s been snow in Majorca for the first time in years.

Getting into Spain was a relief. The evening sun was warmer. Things felt more like summer. I’m hoping it’ll be a warm few days in the Balearics. I’d hate to finish this big old drive with bad weather. The potatoes affected my mood getting on this boat. Now I’m on it I’m gonna see if I can find a sleepy place…

I’ve eaten well. Having done this before, I went and got tapas in the city, and enjoyed a bit of the liveliness of Barcelona. After France it is lovely to have been somewhere anglophone. This geographical stretch is okay for me as I’ve got enough French to fill the gap and as soon as you hit Spain everybody speaks English…

—

This ferry is evil. In the daytime, Lou and I found the doors to the VIP area etc open. Now people need to sleep it is very secure.

Here’s a standard bank of seats:

We are as full as we will ever get. Nobody is in this area at all. Six people will be upright in seats because of this fuck you design.

Up and out in the morning and considering the consumption of wine last night I was surprisingly alert as I got back in dear laden Bergman and spanked it down the toll roads to The Auvergne.

I was hungry and stopped at Bourges, only to discover that nothing in France is open on a Monday. Late last year Lou and I found lunch with vegetarian options on the cobbled streets by the cathedral. We sat on a bench in late autumn sunshine. We marveled at the buttresses. We goggled at the stained glass windows. We sighed at the iconography. It’s a gorgeous cathedral inside and out.

It was literally the only open door in town today though. Nothing to eat. And so unbelievably cold. I didn’t stay long. Just long enough to whistle stop the cathedral again and light a candle. Good old God, keeping the door open for us while he stands at our own door knocking.

Back on the road, hoping for better things from Issoire, stopping briefly for a three day old Croque Monsieur and a rubber coffee from one of the aires (which is what they call the service stations). They are less dominated by the fuck-you brands that turn everything to shit. You can still find MacDonalds and Pizza Hut and Starbucks etc, but there’s a bit more independence. Sometimes there’s a lovely one with actual food. I didn’t find it though so I was hungry as the dusk fell in Issoire.

There’s a little Indian restaurant in Issoire, Jasmine’s, which opens at 7pm even though it’s a Monday. I found it at ten to seven, and it was locked but the lights were on. Washed formica and strip lights. Generic curry and rice on the menu. We have the best curry in the world in London. This is only going to be disappointing, I think, as I try to work out what the hell is going on.

Inside was a concerned looking woman. Outside, possessive of his space, stood an uncommonly short man, faceblown by long days working outdoors. He was singing through the locked restaurant door in terrifying falsetto. Ten minutes later, when it was supposed to be open, I came back round and the situation had not changed, nor the tune. It creeped me out. She evidently didn’t want to open the door and I couldn’t blame her. I decided not to be a real customer and make her have to unlock to him. I went to a takeaway pizza place which, apart from Subway and the chemists was the only open door. I slung my disappointing pizza back into the car and hauled it back to my triannon.

The ice cold wind whistling down the ancient and modern streets in Issoire, the total lack of anything open – no bars, no restaurants, just pharmacies in their dozens – it didn’t endear me to the place. There was a restaurant in the square, lights on but shutters closed, lively conversation inside. I knocked: “What time do you open tonight?” “Ah no tonight we do not open.” In Issoire at 7 on a February Monday, either the staff are getting drunk without the punters or the singing gremlin is preparing his next victim to put in the curry. Hopefully tomorrow will be a little better. I’ve had enough cheese now thanks. Never thought I’d be saying that so quickly.

Last night spoiled me. The sheets here feel like plastic, and the huge room feels like it is intended to feel – a generic room in a party house. This place is for getting smashed as part of a group of twelve. This place is for all night thumping music and for shouting your head off. No party here tonight thank God. It’s just me. At least it’ll be quiet.

Over 500km to Barcelona and then it’s a difficult sleep in a chair on a crowded boat. I’m over halfway through the journey though. The miles go by fast on those toll roads. Joseph Campbell still droning away on the radio, helping me frame and rethink journeys and identity and psychology and how we seek meaning. He’s a product of his time, but there’s always a moment or two to take home from his extrapolations about myth to religion to science, about how tales grow from needs until needs grow from tales. I’m enjoying the thoughtholes. The miles feel shorter with JoJo even if he wouldn’t stand up in the Twitter age.

Oh my God. I feel great.

I am just pumped full of endorphins.

I’m in bed. Tout ça change, but this bed is in France. It’s all natural fibre with beautifully reupholstered antique bedware in a little tiled nook in Champagne. Chez Fred et Cecile.

In season these guys are gonna be sold out, even at this price. Out of season this is still a luxury first stop on any journey south from London. It was an easy day driving. The later sunset helps, as Chartres was roughly equivalent and it was dark when I got there. This time I had a bit of light on arrival.

I’m on another mission to Barcelona and beyond. I decided to treat myself this time as last time I stayed in budget places and ended up spending loads on meals. Fred fed us. It was extra, but I was happy to pay. This journey is less stressful now I understand it. A working holiday, en effet. I choose whether or not to come home with profit, and I choose not to.

Leek and potato tart, pork entrecote, local 50% Armagnac and CHEESE.

Everything very well presented and very convivial. It was me, Fred, and an antique Polish couple who have lived a lifetime in France. We ate and mostly I tried to let conversation flow. I was perfectly happy but my ear is not so quick yet that I can immediately keep up. Add to that the fact that I hate small-talk in English. They were talking about jam for ages, then livestock. French landowners. After the cheese they got onto COVID and how it is scientifically impossible for the disease to have speciesjumped from pangolins in the protein form we first had it, so it must have been adjusted in a lab at some point and therefore was it released on purpose or by mistake? In this day and age that’s still small-talk, unless you’ve got a friend who has indoctrinated themselves one way or other and speaks in certainties. Still I hate the potential for smug in that conversation. “Do you understand us?” “Yes, I’ve got you well enough about pangolins and proteins etc but I’m not really sure if you’re saying it’s deliberate or accidental, but don’t worry on my account I’m happy with the cheese.”

Then the old fellow got onto Brexit. He wants something similar for France. My my this goats cheese is remarkable what is it again? I must message my girlfriend about it. If my French was better and I wanted a long night, yes, there’s material. But I was already tired out from live translating. I took myself into the shower and from thence to this bed and these endorphins.

We are in The Marne, where the trenches started. Occasionally I go past fields of white crosses. These quiet hills and plains carried so much death to so many. Now much of what is left is this – stone houses, beams, the smell of burning logs. Good wine. Light. Warmth. Happiness. Whatever those boys were fighting for, I hope their spirits are happy with this peace, here, far enough West for now from where the death is raining down once more.

I’m back in my wonderful warm room now, cosy in these excellent sheets after a good hot shower. I’ve eaten my fill of local produce. This is half a day’s drive from London and it feels like another world. Not as neurotic, nothing like as polluted. Good food, friendly people, heated houses, clean products to consume. Surprisingly though, the petrol prices here are worse than London – although that’s maybe on the exchange rate too. I filled up at Applegreen Vauxhall on the way out at £1.43 and again locally to here, between Reims and Paris at €2.08. Although I guess motorway stops in UK want £1.88 and Applegreen is the best in London.

Ahhh though. I’m so relaxed. Gonna sleep like a baby. I’d stay here again happily on the quality of the bedding alone. I want a duvet like this at home. And it is SILENT. Mmmmmm.

Ahhhhh. So I think I’m packed. Got my passport. Got chargers and three travel plugs and my Kindle. Kindle is a horrible way to read books, but it’s the only way to do it if you travel lots. For decades the bulk of my weight was books. Now I have this piece of plastic. It makes everything much much lighter. It’s bad for the book industry generally, as I am sure I’m not alone in noting what people are reading and trying the book. You can no longer see what people are engrossed in, and marketing algorithms really don’t understand people who don’t have patterns. They just try to sell you things like the things you consumed already as if we all just want to get stuck in a rut.

It’s much earlier than I’d normally be in bed, but I’m trying to start this long drive positively. I’m going another way through France this time, so first night will be in the Champagne region and then down from there. If I get up earlier, the sun is setting later, and I might be able to appreciate something about the places I’ll be sleeping in as I go. I’m not hammering myself on the way down, but I will be covering a lot of ground every day.

It’s not even ten and I’m exhausted. All I’ve done is admin and packing. I have no business being so tired. I think its just my body and mind preparing for the big adventure to come. Eurotunnel tomorrow and then out into the world. If last time is anything to go by, it isn’t as horrible as anyone could have expected post Brexit. I didn’t even get stamped on the way out last time though. Fingers crossed it’ll be as easy this time.

I needed time at home, and Lou wanted me to take her walking boots to Majorca and some heavy clothes as rain is forecast. She popped up to London as a return ticket from Brighton is cheaper than a checked bag. As if in a dream we spent a part of the early afternoon together today and then she went back and I got back to admin. Her stuff is already in the car. Bergie is downstairs packed to the gills. Barely room for my stuff. I’m looking forward to another little trip together, covering some ground, learning a thing or two. Down down down. Distance. A change. And surely before long some good news on a casting?

Speedy drive back to the smoke from Stoke. They’re a good lot, the students we are working with, but one of them found me on the internet and found my phone number published on an old website. Good to know it was there as I’ve taken it down now. But it was an odd moment to tracked down by a student. A little privacy shift. It was just their cleverness and expression, and in the end, no harm done. It had to be formally reported though. I gave just enough about myself away for him to find me. Safeguarding etc. I should remember to go by Alex in that context as then the crime writer blurs it.

I’ve mostly just been informally interviewing the students the last few days. Spending a bit of time with these young individuals starting a journey into this strange and worrying world, but picking up some skills that might just lift them. Lots of them are concerned about AI, of course they are thinking about climate change. War is back on the table and more young people are thinking themselves back into the arms race than a few years ago. It’ll be interesting to see how learning AI can augment the Russian propaganda machine around elections in every other country. A year now since he rolled into Ukraine and we all realised that he would just keep rolling until somebody resisted. I don’t like to think of it too much, but I suppose we must. There’s a land war in Europe. It’s been going on for over a year now. It really does feel like we might be moving slowly towards something irretrievable.

I’m home though, briefly, and safe for the moment. Very happy to be here, warm in my bed. It’s later than I wanted it to get. I lost track of time and did that thing of forgetting this blog until I was about to switch the light off. But… I know I’m gonna sleep well tonight. I’m shattered. Tomorrow I can do all the car admin and packing and invoices before I’m off again on another adventure. Life ain’t bad.

Nuts and bolts today. I’m too tired to do this properly. Good tired after doing work that might bring positive change. But tired is tired. Sleep time.

Now I get to be peaceful, just for a moment. Still no towel and I forgot my toothbrush until I wrote this sentence. It’s coming up to midnight and I barely slept last night. Bedtime.

I’m staying in this Airbnb in Stoke. Even though I’ve got no towel, it feels like I got lucky compared to some. Apparently half of our group were so pissed off that they dug their heels in and ended up in a Premier Inn after they felt unsafe. Bullet holes in the walls? Yuk.

I get it. I arrived here last night still wearing a suit and a dicky bow, after the corporate entertainment joy. I parked my car and immediately assessed the area and took off the bow tie. Cold or not, I didn’t want to be seen coming out of a car that would be sitting there overnight wearing a costume that makes one look like a legitimate after dinner entertainer in London and a target almost anywhere else. I covered my suit with my coat and shuffled in.

I’m back with our cohort of young engineers. It’s a brilliant group of people and it really feels like we can be part of building the future. I wish I was as focused as they are, these young women and men. I’ve been interviewing them all over the course of the day. That’s been my primary job.

I’m asking them about the things that matter to them. Poverty is a big thing in many of their concerns – there really is a yawning gap up here. These young men and women have been given this chance and it might be enough. Talking to them, their interests are so varied. Some are into designing fighter jets for war, others are trying to find models that stop greed and start to push towards societal models with less selfishness. All of them are excellent at maths and are very much involved in seeing how equations work out in the real world. This is an extraordinary group of young people to be working with.

Driving up last night was almost a bust, but getting here was worth it for being able to help these students grow. I’ve somehow managed to combine engineering with acting. It fell out randomly with me and was likely fuelled by the fact that my best friend at school was pulled into an engineering programme by IBM in Romsey and I made some great friends out of his contemporaries. I never wanted to be anything other than an actor, but my friends and family were scientists, so it probably infused my worldview. My brother is a scientist. There but for the grace of God… Either way, the world is big and life is long, and I’m very tired. Bedtime.

They let me park in the tiny little car park at The Globe this evening, which is a relief as I’m not on until about half nine and then I’m gonna have to drive to Stoke on Trent. I’m not gonna be in bed until 2am at the earliest, and it’ll be in a shared house so I’ll have the least appealing bedroom.

Right now I’m in The Swan with Ffion. About an hour to go before we are up. They fed me us with prawn brioche and have twice asked us if we want wine and twice been surprised we just want water. Professionals, dahling. Upstairs lots of nice rich people are having dinner and we will stride in shortly and be charming at them. Normally I’d be husbanding my energy for the show and then accepting the wine when it’s over. This time though I’m gonna make sure my energy can take me safely and swiftly up through the empty roads. It’ll be fine if they don’t do that late night bastard trick of theirs of closing all the roads for roadworks.

“Do you think we should go and lurk?” says Ffion. Maybe so. Maybe we should go and be available for the client…

Now we are in a tiny little corner of corridor between the cloakroom and the lift, next to a little adapted carpenter’s bench where I’ve spent hours of my working life now all told, waiting and listening to them eat and talk next door and holding on for someone to pop out and say “ok I think they’re ready now,” at which time we’ve got to go in and make them love us.

A new arrangement of lines and thoughts to remember this time and we might be on any moment so I’m gonna stop writing and blither lines until they give us the all clear…

—

Well that was lovely. A pleasant thing well received and then I was off onto the dark but mercifully open roads. With the help of Radio 4 and the world service, coupled with the fact I haven’t been keeping up with the news recently, the miles wore away quickly and now at just ten to 2 I am in bed and annoyed with myself for forgetting my toothbrush.

This has got to be one of the worst Airbnbs I’ve ever stayed in to be honest. It was booked by the company. Absolutely devoid of character, one tiny room with plastic sheets, a big telly and an IKEA print of a lion on the wall. All I have to do is sleep in it, and occasionally to to the loo. All the doors are closed with people sleeping. I found a tiny cubicle with a sink and loo, but I can’t open doors to see if there’s a shower behind one or a kitchen, as it is totally unclear which are the bedrooms and which are not. I was hoping for a kitchen for chamomile tea but I’ve already switched the lights on and off in someone’s room when trying to make light happen in the bathroom.

There’s a radiator switched on right next to my bed. I’ll need water. No cups or mugs though, and no towels! I’ve gone and got a plastic bottle from the car and bent it to fill from the tiny little sink in the loo that you can’t access until you’re inside and you’ve closed the door.

There are so many properties like this all over the world now, and a whole generation that can’t afford to buy a home.

I’m gonna try to sleep in it. I might get close to six hours if I can go down like a log. Fingers crossed. Ugh.