AlBarclay

I’m back at the 02. Oh hell.

Stationary traffic all the way to the dome. I’m in the unofficial taxi queue. Ubers in front, Ubers behind. I’m inside a line of cones. No camera that I can see… I’m gonna stay here if I can. I’ve sent Lou a pin.

The Brit Awards are over and now everybody wants to get the heck away from here. Right now the coppers are too busy with crowd control to tell us to move. I’m hoping that Lou will successfully extricate herself and find her way here to my pin with her sewing machine before the rush finishes and the guys in Hi-Vis have the headspace to come and tell us all that we aren’t allowed to be here. This is very much as close as I’m likely to easily be able to get and once I’m back in the flow of traffic it’ll be a lottery with no way to control pick-up location. I should have brought my chauffeur hat. Makes me look more authentic.

It’s 11pm. Two hours drive to Brighton. I’m already pretty tired although I let myself have late coffee and today was not particularly strenuous. I went to Hampstead and looked at a mattress. I decided it was too heavy to take without help. I went for a little walk and then drove home again. And scene.

Writing this now is a break with tradition but I have a feeling I’ll be exhausted by the time I get to Brighton and the other option is to sit here fretting about getting fined and listening to Ash Sarkar getting angry about capitalism on Radio 4. It was an interesting programme, but in the end I just started getting pissed off about the fact that I’m still in a position where two day’s work cold calling is something I say yes to.

I’m still waiting on the confirmation deposit for the Majorca drive later this month. Something I can’t afford to look forward to until I’m certain. There has been a great deal of disappointment recently. I’m learning to hold my hopes lightly.

Five past eleven and Lou just messaged… Hopefully soon. I’m gonna get my head back into driving mode. I am hungry. Should’ve thought of that…

I finished work at lunchtime in Barking. Lou was at the O2 doing wardrobe for The Brits so I figured I’d chance it and drive over there in case she got a lunch break. Down through the Blackwall Tunnel and up through the roadworks and barriers, past the angry looking men in hard hats, to the vast dead alien maggot with its little spiky yellow legs. The roof blew off when someone coughed last winter but they’ve stuck it back on with sellotape. It’s all still functional. Six pounds in the car park for two hours and it’ll take you that long to find the pedestrian exit. Then you get to walk hours through flattened concrete bullshit. On your left a faceless and characterless commercial establishment. On your right a faceless and characterless commercial establishment.

I went to Wagamama’s which is basically Macdonald’s for noodles. Lou was chained to the sewing machine which I half expected, so I ordered a ginger chicken udon and gyoza on my own. I put them into my face with chopsticks while looking out over that concrete hellscape at all the sad looking people stumping through the gray. I felt like the woman with the egg sandwich at the start of Withnail and I. For a while I contemplated staying in the area until she finished work, but then I remembered that we are only alive for a limited amount of time. Added to that, the car park continues to charge you for being there. Honestly, they should pay us by the minute to be there. I decided to pour no more of my precious life into that hole.

I got in the car and gave them money to let me go. All the car exits had been secured with chains though and blocked with bollards. Once you’re in there they don’t want you to leave. Something of the millennium that perhaps should have been left there, like Robbie. It is still desperate. “We’re praying it’s not too late, but we know we’ve fallen from grace”. The Millennium Dome. Just over the cable car from the Olympic Park and all the things that are definitely working brilliantly and well worth the investment. Eventually I found a barrier that was functioning and would allow me to get out with my car. I escaped onto the terrible boulevards of North Greenwich, and from thence an hour through that spiky South East London traffic. To home. I put the heating back on. We are up to £55 now this week. I watched crap telly and ate meat.

Lou didn’t get home until late. Tomorrow she’ll finish even later and I’ll have to go back there and pick her up as we are both gonna sleep in Brighton. It’s the whole Brits ceremony tomorrow. I haven’t got a ticket. All the dancers. All the showbiz. All the personality. I’ll likely get to that awful car park at about ten pm and eventually we will all bundle into Bergman and hightail it to the seaside. Maybe by then she’ll have made friends with Harry Styles.

“You can start with those boxes. None of them are heavy. Apart from the one with HEAVY written on it.”

I’m out of town. It’s late morning. In the driveway of this beautiful home is my rented Luton van, still cooling down from a long journey, loaded up already with dead insects from Braintree.

I go to pick up a box. In front of my nose, easy to shift, is a shelf full of ceramics. Small pieces, mostly. My eye goes immediately to a saucer in a similar handdrawn design as some very early Chinese porcelain that passed through my hands a while back. “That’s old,” I observe and I track down the line with my eyes and yep there’s some really really old stuff there. Is that Ming? Yep I think it is. I think I can spot a replica. Oh fuck. I shiver a little and handle the box I’m picking up more carefully. “No banging THIS shelving unit,” I think to myself, and turn round. My eyes are switched on now. Idols. Gorgeous statuaries. A collection of weapons and head dresses that would make the Wellcome Trust replace their whole website with an apology for at least a week and cause all their tour guides to become shivering nervous wrecks. Beautiful ancient things cross culturally collected from hither and yon and all likely to be going to various museums now, or shortly, to sadly sit in furious basements for a generation or two. Such beauty and history in private hands. The only true horror would be if someone got the builders in and all that heritage ended up in a skip, as has happened over and over and over again the world around, taking chunk after chunk from preserved histories and understanding of ancient religions and cultures. Better for it to be apologetically mothballed until we are all a bit more evolved at making sense of the damage of history regarding culture, and enough generations have passed that we don’t strongly identify as having been on any particular side of the cultural disgraces of history.

There art there too! Surely that can’t be an original Dali sketch? Is that Degas? STOP LOOKING AT THE SIGNATURES. Be respectful. This is a home.

I love old things. You know that. If I could I would live in my own stately home where everything was beautifully laid out, the heating was always on full and the doors wide open and people were trusted to come and go as they please, making parts of it their home and parts of it their workshop or performance space or whatever and life and possibility and artistry and hopefully plant and animal husbandry and response to nature and headspace and sanity. I loved that old couple for the fact I was part of a team collecting things to go to a public sector museum. They are trying, where so few try. This incredible stuff won’t be wasted.

We load the van. It’s hard work and there’ll be another trip. I drive it all back to London and we haul it all into quarantine. “Where shall I put his box?” “Anywhere but on top of the legs.” The only other thing in quarantine at the moment is a collection of Victorian race horse legs just … bagged up and awaiting sorting. Like you do. Granddad’s horseleg collection? Oh yeah we donated it.

Flooded with weird I drop the van off and go home. I put the heating on. Tom is on the sofa, Lou is in my bed. Too many people to be freezing our asses off. So far about £25 and I’m ok with it. Warmth.

I’ve just tried to absorb my day jobbery for tomorrow. It looks like a headfuck, but it’s well paid. Oh the schizophrenia. It’s ten past eleven. I had steak pie. Lou put it in the oven when I dropped off the van so it was READY when I got home. In my stately home there would always be food ready in the aga for all the residents.

I’m going to bed in my stately flat so Tom can get his head down and I don’t feel muzzy tomorrow teaching this ill-thought through adjustment to something that was working perfectly well without being adjusted. Yep it’s those people in offices again!!

Night night. Fuck I have to remember to take photos from time to time when I’m not with Lou. I either thought it was an imposition or I was too tired.

I’m tempted to put the heat back on.

It’s so incredibly hard to swallow when we read in the news almost daily how the different energy giants are all posting record profits and most of us literally can’t afford to put the heating on, even the privileged toffos like me. The prices went up for the energy companies so yeah they put the prices up for the customers plus a bit more cos hey that’s business. The boneless Westminster adultchildren can’t even countenance taxing them properly because John Maynard Keynes had that fucking idea back at Cambridge that doesn’t work. And all the people who were rich a generation ago get richer and warmer and happier and emptier.

I’m too cold to use more than the little bit of my flat that is covered in soft material and underheated. “Buy Lakeland heated throws,” the internet tells me because apparently the solution always has to be spending money. I’m really starting to think that the solution might be fire. Burn them all! We can warm up while we do it.

Lou is here. “Can we go to bed now, I’ve realised I’m exhausted just from trying to keep warm,” she said after her second cup of chamomile tea. It’s lovely having her in London but I want to be able to host her properly here. I just don’t like the cold. Surely Spring soon now? They’ve started selling daffodils in Marks and Spencers. That’s a sign. Spring and two months of rain and then there’ll be a day and a half of sun in August and everybody will be too busy working to notice.

I stood in a huge great big hall in Walworth and pumped out energy like a great big mushroom pumping spores. About 100 young adults all had something different for a couple of hours and I lost my voice a bit but it was good and positive and often funny and I’m ok about that and I was warm while I was working. I was talking about sustainable energy and getting them to talk about electric vehicles and I was enthusing about Extreme-e and getting them enthused about that and I finished work and just wanted to jump in the Thames but instead I went and got Lou and we cooked a lovely meal. She’s on the clock, being paid well, not needed yet. Tomorrow she will likely be working late in North London and I’ll be driving all over the place. All will be well. I’m not that pissed off I’m just writing raw and in a rush so I can put this down and get on with the business of not having the light on.

It’ll warm up. And Majorca is about to confirm and it’ll be warm there. All is well. Bedtime.

Ahhhhh

I’m very very happily tired at the end of the day.

Today wasn’t a particularly hard day. Today wasn’t in any way a standout day either. Just a day. Nevertheless I’m tired at the end of it. I’m happy it’s over and I get to lie in my radiatorbed and decompress.

The dark makes me tired. I don’t like it when it isn’t summer. Just being able to slow myself down is pleasant. I’m in Walworth tomorrow doing workshops.

I set my biological clock to an early sleep because I was expecting to have a Lou with me in London today. She is being paid a decent daily rate to be on a job in London but the costumes are still in transit so there’s no point in her being here. Tomorrow she’ll be on the clock to do nothing at she’s gonna stay one more night with the invalid cat and then we get to hang tomorrow instead. I only discovered she wasn’t coming a couple of hours ago. I celebrated by eating a stinky meal of garlic sausages and beans. Now I’m gonna shamelessly starfish across my whole damn bed.

Tom just got home after his first night at Vault. He’s directing a work in progress one person show with someone a little bit starry and by the sound of things the first tester went well and the crucial agent gave it enough seal of approval to be soliciting for those all important casting humans to come. God the degrees of separation between actor and job!! I know why it has happened. I’ve met those people who tell you how they are aCtORs immediately when you meet them. I have tried to work with some of them as they flinch and shout and lie. Obviously this human he is directing can do the job, she’s already got the credits, but still the agent has to check things out before bringing anyone… I did years of Carol before any of my agents came. When they did they loved it but came too late in the run to bring anyone. We are sadly only really allowed to do what people have seen us do already. I hate to think of the years of weird wonderful stuff I’ve done that even I can’t remember. Sometimes I see photos of myself on stage and can’t remember what it even was that I was doing. I was learning. That’s enough. I was growing.

And right now I’m about to start dozing. Lovely garlicky dinner. I might go get a shot of brandy and talk with Tom in more detail about the show tonight. Either way, I’m signing off.

Another day of cold calling, sitting in my little patch of light coming across the Thames. Tom is staying for a night or two, directing a monologue at Vault. By the time evening was falling I was looking forward to him coming home. Nice to share space a bit in these dark months. He has a signature pasta Arrabiata that he has banged out in the past, and it came out again this evening just as I noticed I was hungry. We just spent the last few hours talking in detail about all the things. The state of the country, the state of the world, the state of the theatre industry. Which leaders in all three spheres are mad or foolish or brilliant or quitting.

Turkey and Syria have had terrible quakes today, reminding those of us who don’t live on a fault line how incredibly fortunate we are. Liz Truss is blaming those Marxists at the Bank of England for her inability to function as a leader. Rishi is having to reshuffle to try and scrabble for any remaining scraps of credibility. They’ve pulled the rug out from under wonderful Hampstead Theatre. Who is gonna take over The Royal Court? We didn’t get onto Putin. Horrible situation over there in The Ukraine. There IS light, but strangely the darkness is more visible right now. At least the sun shone today on me and my notepad as we worked our way through the list.

I’m done with the cold calling. That’s that forever. If I’m asked to do it again I’ll be too busy doing anything else. It’s nice to say yes to things and saying yes has made a very interesting existence for decades but I’m having to forge boundaries now and that work didn’t feed me at all. I dreaded it beforehand, hated it during and needed to decompress from it after. No more. I’m definitely worth more than that.

Tom’s in the bath and I’m moving the piles of unaddressed boxes that have snuck into my bedroom out again and into the spare room. I can’t welcome Lou into clutterbedroom. I don’t see these things – almost a blind spot to the white noise of stuff – but I know that others do and I want Lou to be happy in my space like I am in hers. I’m looking forward to having some company in London, even if we are both gonna be busy busy busy.

Early-ish bed tonight and a hot bath to come just as soon as Tom is out of his one. Wash off the phone calls and the stinkiness. Epsom salts, warmth, expense, candles and Dr. Bronners hilariously packaged castille soap (rose variety).

Self tape club. It’s happening all over the world. So many tiny flats in big cities filled with personalities with big dreams. Little bubbles of friendship groups who help each other. The familiar phone call. “X casting director needs Z for Yday”. Usually it’s just a little scene, or two or three little scenes with a weekend turnaround. They come in on a Friday, they go out Monday morning. Fire and forget as often as not. It’s a chance to hang out with your friends.

I was in Camden today as the sun set over the HS2 station. I was in a flat with a very friendly cat. The room we used to use has been turned around and now has an occupant so we built into the living room. It’s involved. Two tripods to hold the screen, and then attach the screen. Two tripods to hold the lights and then open out the diffusers and screw in the bulbs, then adjust the “heat” of the light with white muslin and reflectors. One more tripod to hold the mobile phone. My friend is using a paid for apple app so can at least frame her own shot in the selfie camera. She’s learnt the lines, even though some friends of mine swear by paid for autocue apps (“It’s brilliant but it can be a shock if you get an in person recall!”) Three scenes. Short but learnt. The cat wanders as he pleases. Occasionally the new flatmate goes to the loo or talks loudly on the phone.

I find myself thinking back over the sheer volume of stuff I’ve learnt for these occasions. Scenes from all sorts of styles of story. Flashes of story from all over the world. Today we are in Scotland. My friend grew up there. My dad and most of my remaining family carry that idiom. I’m reading an ineffectual husband to my friends practical angry wife. “Let’s only do one or two takes per scene,” she says at the start which is a good shout as you can get unnecessarily mired in detail otherwise. Still it takes time. There are three scenes, one static, one mobile and one post coital. They need to feel different and the difference needs to feel considered, even if this is just a pitch. “Hi! I’m a human! I could be this human for you?!”

The sun goes down while we work. The end of the work blends with the beginning of conversation and reminiscence and gossip and friendship and I’m driving or we would likely share a bottle of wine but instead we find a local kebab shop and have it with chili sauce and I drive home hopeful that my friend will get the job, happy that I could help again, and ready once more to completely forget the whole experience just as the lines she learnt so well over the last few days will now slowly fall out of her memory unless she gets that happy daytime call from the agent…

It’s a strange thing, being mister pretendyface. It’s the best thing in the world when it works. The fellowship is extraordinary. Even last night as an example, to fit in to a 25 year old’s awesome house party without feeling like the creepy uncle. But… the unpredictability and the GAPS! Ugh. Something in March please, universe. Something in March would be really really nice.

Seven o’clock on a Saturday evening. I just got out of a hot bath and I’m tired. Bed feels warm and welcoming. The rest of the flat is cold.

In less than an hour I’m going to go to a party. I’m sure there were times where the prospect of such an endeavour would have filled me with anticipation. “What curious conversations will I find?” The party habit got smashed when we all splintered into solitary fearfulness. Now I am trying to marshal my energies so I can do this instead of just staying in the warm place switching the light off and snoozing until morning. I almost went to Vault Festival this evening but the thing was sold out and I think that didn’t help my mood. Plus it has been grey all day and now it’s dark. Dammit February, you’re letting me down.

My friend has started sending me selfies from Vault now. She’s tempting me out. Doesn’t want me to flake. Vault is a kooky lovely mix of theatrical strangeness. She’s all dressed up and is also going to the party after watching a show. “I was sad too but then I got dressed up.” Damn. She’s right though. Change the outside and the inside changes with it.

This party… it is gonna happen whether I feel like it or not. I might galvanise with a cup of coffee and then put something ostentatious like a frock coat and hat on and drive there with the last of the Christmas prosecco in shotgun. Then I can celebrate my friend and donate alcohol and it’s Sunday tomorrow so if I do end up getting sloshed I can come back to get the car in the morning, and if I’m restrained then I give myself a comfy ride home to warmth. And I’ll have a disguise which will allow me to be gregarious. Having the car will be an incentive to behave well as this place is the other side of town from me and it’ll either be multiple buses or too much money in an Uber, one of which I don’t fancy and the other I can’t justify.

London London London. Always the prospect of something to do, but the expense of it all and the crowds. Right. It’s twenty past. It is time to haul up and consider the bizarre and disorganised contents of my wardrobe.

—

Well that was easier than it could have been. Jacket and trousers courtesy of Os de las casas, hat courtesy of uncle Peter. Tie and waistcoat John Jones. Cravat by Lou. I feel a bit more like someone who goes out on the town. Now it’s just the business of doing it.

—

I did it mummy I did it! Lovely people in a house all the way across time and even though I brought the average age up by about ten years I was happy to have made it and felt included. I also didn’t reflexively drink loads to try and stop myself from feeling awkward. I had a single prosecco and ended up taking some old friends home. It’s not quite 1am and I’m liable to be back in bed soon, although typically now I’ve been at the party I’m wired on company. I do like people and talking long hours about the nature of things. Didn’t that used to happen virtually every night?

“Your realise alcohol is a depressant so its the last thing you should go to if you’re sad…” Wisdom.

I woke up bright and early this morning somehow. Mostly the egregious tinkling of my alarm which hauled me out of a very interesting dream to fully awake in a moment. A few minutes trying to remember why I set it so early, as I half wanted to climb back into the dream and then I remembered. Cold calling. Arse.

Espresso in the aeropress and blearily looking at the script I’ve been given. It’s not an easy one, plus I rarely if ever do this sort of work. It isn’t sales at least. It’s just trying to get a list of names of sixth form students in Yorkshire who might want work experience. Problem is, a stranger ringing up a school and asking for information about their pupils isn’t a way to inspire confidence. “Is everybody at this company of yours DBS checked?” asks one receptionist. “I am… and it’s a global company so I’m sure safety will be a priority.”

I make notes in my very crowded notebook, and the hours tick by as I’m sitting in a patch of bright winter sun coming into my window from over the river. Thank heaven for the lack of clouds today. Vitamin D helped balance the fact that I really didn’t relish the work I had agreed to do. I learnt that lesson years ago – never commit to work you know you’ll hate. Hasn’t stopped me, but it’s only a day and a half and it won’t define me.

Those few teachers I do get through to are thoughtful and friendly, but my list is pretty weak. They’re a kind breed, teachers. I get why they’ve been striking too. I’ve seen how hard they work, and the care they take for every individual personality, rolling round year after year. The schools where I get through to someone almost all don’t HAVE a sixth form. They’ve all already left. The company want something like 150 names and I finish a whole days work with nowt but a few contact numbers and a lot of people who never got the original email. I’ll have to follow up on Monday now I’ve sent it to them. Now I’ve made my notes it’ll be much less frustrating. Demoralising though, but a friend of mine was having a similar experience with the other half of the list and we could communicate which took the edge off as we could corroborate the experience.

This week of work experience we are trying to fill could be really positive for the right candidates. A bit of a boost and a way to meet other proactive young people right at the start of their working life. Maybe even a route into a good first job. It was never the route for me, but for some … I’m trying to connect young adults to something that might shift them onto a fruitful and happy track. So at least I don’t encounter that bitter taste you sometimes hear in the unfortunates who call you unexpectedly to flog something they couldn’t care less about. I know this could be a valuable opportunity for some. I like to try to bring positivity, and … at least the sun was shining on me through my cold window while I went about it.

All that and trying to overlook the fact that, by drinking yesterday, I only made it harder today to be in a happy mood. Kinda managed it helped my a pint of apple and ginger juice, but the voice of BED is calling loud now and maybe it’s time to finally try and get back to that interesting dream I was having. If only I could remember what it was about…

I have been throwing my diary around and attempting to stitch possibilities together. A large chunk came out of one of my molars, adding to the narrative that I’m gonna have to go to Turkey and get them to make my ivories less dead. It’d be nice to have a meal and not have to dig it back out of my face. But if all of that was working…

Well. I’m not your posterboy. I just spoke with Lou and she could tell immediately that my line is squiffy. I was sad and so I opened a bottle of wine that I had brought back from Binissalem in Majorca. It made me momentarily happy, but in the long run it just made me slow. Maybe the slowness is what people pay for? All I know is that my state was not welcomed and now I’m attempting this writing. Nobody pays for my writing. This blog is just noise. It might even have contributed to the imagination-fail that means I’m actively looking for work in March instead of being central to the operations of a forward thinking and brave company.

Who knows? I’m just here… just me being me forever, but … discreet forever. So I found the perfect dayjob match, but the world energies closed in to remind me why I’m actually here.

I’m off to bed and thankfully it’s early as I’m not really sure who I am right now. I can only really open one eye at a time. Still, being asleep before nine? Excellent. Tomorrow I’ll be cold calling a load of schools in Leeds. I think the wine happened when I thought about the difference between what I want to be doing and what I’m doing. Life, eh?

I’m ok. I’ll go as far as to say I’m happy. But bed and sleep is needed… I’ve had a lot of wine. It’s barely 9pm and yesterday without any chemical augmentation I slept at 8, woke at midnight and slept again at 3am. I might try a similar pattern. Apparently it was a thing back in the day when we lived by the sun…