AlBarclay

“We are outlasted by our telephone bills…”

Funny to think so. But I know it now. From my uncle. From my mum. There’s still things of dad’s to be sorted as I’m so rarely in The Isle of Man.

This morning I took myself over the river to Battersea on the request of one of my oldest friends. His mother died recently. She had been ill for some time.

I remember her well. I remember her imperious and poised, baffling the other adults with her perfect manners. I never saw her through the course of the long illness that eventually helped her off, so I will always remember her as that. Vigorous. Beautiful. Tough. And kind to me. She always supported my friendship with her son.

He lives far away, but the probate office needs certain documents. I had to look for them. “While you’re there, have a look for things that we might be able to take to Lots Road Auctions.” “One thing at a time,” I tell him. I can’t be flooded in this sort of thing. Looking through documents is a very intimate thing, and no matter how close we were in life she would never have imagined it would be me in there doing it.

I have a very quick eye in reading. Despite trying to switch off my curiosity, I knew one of the documents was handwritten so I was having to cast my eye over much of her correspondence. All this life. All these conflicts and victories. Much of it so carefully stored, but now with no real purpose – with no hand at the tiller. Stories with a vanished hero. Artifacts connected to a lost culture that I was part of.

A wax impression of a key in an envelope. Letters to loved ones and ones not so loved anymore. I’ve done this enough now that I’m better at it, but all the triggers still fire and I think of the inevitable march of time and the ones that are gone from my life. And I worry about the state of my flat if I were to vanish tomorrow. Somebody would have a hell of a job. I don’t even really know what’s in here myself and I’m the one that orchestrated this bazaar.

I was careful and thoughtful, and inevitably happened on some items that might fetch a price as I rummaged. I restrained myself from photographing things though, or starting on the route that often leads to disappointment. Value shifts with the generations and your grandparents best crockery is usually only good for a Greek wedding. But on a first visit it was enough – too much – to confront the reality of yet another death of an energy I coincided with. Fare forward, brittle bright forthright light.

The morning having been spent in contemplative rummaging for my old friend, I rushed to the Southbank for a production meeting near Blackfriars. A little story we are making. A new creative partnership and one that I think might bear fruit. A few hours were spent in bandying ideas and remembering that I also make theatre. Then I picked up a van in New Cross. While I’m in this life thing I’m gonna keep it varied. Off to Stratford tomorrow. I’m sure I’ll be back at that sad flat again before long, as there’s much to do and I might just be the correct energy to do it honestly and kindly. I took a photo of her empty chair, address book next to it of course and an unopened delivery box of flowers. I’m sad. We don’t get long.

Familiarity is making these workshops easier, and today flew by in the sun. It started well too, with a short chant with my friend who was staying. Damn its good to have somebody stay. I remember when there was always somebody on the sofa and somebody else in the spare room. These years have not been convivial.

The work was in Twickenham alongside a salt of the earth from Huddersfield – he’s an engineer and not reliably engaging if given his rein – “they’re 600 metres wide and 100 metres long with a surface area of… …” but reliably amusing when he tries to be. He’s a dad. Very much a dad. He has his dad jokes. He’s cute. We truck along nicely together and it passed the time over a long wait between our two sessions today. The best part of working in schools is that it finishes so early. After a brief visit to the post office to send the huge parcels of feedback to the office – unchecked – I was sitting in a garden in the spring sunshine by 4pm. Helpful that the school was only ten minutes from Tristan and Tanya’s. We had a cup of tea before deciding that a pint of Guinness would be more topical for St Patrick’s Day. Early evening pint and a good old springtime actor’s rant, and then we joined Tanya for a dog -walk. Their neighbor has tested positive for Covid and doesn’t want to leave the house so we all took her delightful pudding of a mongrel on a wander around the lawns and riverside pathways of Twickenham. I can really taste the beginning of spring now. Considering I’ve been in the desert, it’s surprising how much I’m hankering for sun. The red sand has blown over again, and hopefully brought with it the desert heat for a spot.

The dog was fun. Terribly badly trained. I think if I were to ever get a dog I’d invest in a trainer at the start and then try and stick to it. There’s something satisfying about a dog that tries to get good at things. This was was delightful but just totally indolent. Nevertheless we had a good old wander and looked at a few balls.

Back home now, winding down, looking forward to a day without early start tomorrow. I’m probably up later than I should be as a result. I’m gonna try to wind out with a cup of chamomile. I’ll probably put some whisky in it…

Man it’s rainy in London today. I fought my way onto the tube this morning with my laptop in a bag. My job was pretty simple – to sit next to a friend when she ran an online training, and to be calm and unruffled. She’s been doing this sort of thing for ages but just felt she wanted an extra body in the room with her. I provided the extra body and changed my name on Zoom to “tech support”. I watched her being amazing for two hours, and helping a bunch of corporate people halfway across Europe. She never ran out of useful insight and material. She was at Guildhall with me but now she trains people and she’s worth every penny of her high price tag.

We went for Pho afterwards for lunch, and then I slogged back across rainy London and into my flat. Finishing earlier than usual, I was finally motivated to give the fish the great big old clean-up they have been needing for ages. They are now visible again. And it was while I was living in a world of slime and buckets that the doorbell rang and I remembered that I have a friend to stay.

It’s March 16th today. My friend is the person who switched my interest back into what I thought of as the weird chanting thing that my ex girlfriend used to make me do sometimes. It’s a simplified Buddhism. It fits my busy lifestyle very well. And March 16th is Kosen Rufu day. It’s when we all angle towards world peace. I mean, we are angling towards it constantly. But, you know … Today we do it more. She and I just sat and practiced together and it’s a powerful thing for any of us who have any sort of practice, to occasionally do it with somebody else. I’m feeling a bit more grounded and a bit more connected. Call it what you like, shared breathing, spiritual connection, it doesn’t matter. I’m pretty open today after having drowned myself in vino yesterday. And it was a really really good idea to have a moment’s chant together on a day like this. I’m in bed now listening to the rain outside and glad of my expensive heating and happy to think that we might be coming out of winter at last.

I’ve been burning things obsessively all day. Tons of frankincense. It’s like I’m trying to burn out the end of winter. “It smells like a ceremony in here,” my friend said when she walked in. It kinda has been like that. I’m banishing winter. It’ll work eventually…

Hard long day. Another one. I was once offered the shot at being a teacher years ago. A decent shot at it. A serious chance. I often think about that chance I deliberately didn’t take. And I look at days like today when I went into a school and worked with the students…

I reckon I would have shot my entire heart out in the first week and then tried to shoot out my blood and veins and bones and marrow until I was trying to keep firing the bits of toenail and hair I had left until I just ended up totally empty of anything. Then I’d have reformed. Then I’d have done it again until I eventually lost structural integrity and just became a wobbly mess.

The school asked for my personal number today, bless them. I told them I would only go there if I was sent by the company. She had been asked to get my number though and it was important to her not to fail in her task. I gave it, and told her she’s better booking me through the company.

It was flattering. I hit a vein of something that morning. I had no choice, but it was noticed.

Inner city school. I’m there on my own talking about engineering first thing in the morning. I’m in a massive hall – it’s the assembly hall. They are still moving tables and chairs around when I’m due to start. Somebody hands me a microphone…

I ignore the microphone and take the ten minutes they are using to set up to go around and talk to individuals. I try to use my short term memory to remember ALL of their names. I try to use my charm to get them to give those names to me and enjoy my attempts to remember them all. I cannot get to everybody in the room. But I connect and connect and connect. And then when I stand up there and I start doing a workshop with the microphone, I’m mobile and they all somehow just engage. I don’t have to shut them down at all. For an hour or two, at the start of the day, I’ve got a difficult class in a difficult room and I know they are behaving surprisingly well because I can see the teachers are surprised. The day continues with high engagement.

I’ve got no skin in the game here. That’s always the trick. You can’t manufacture it… If I get somebody who doesn’t like me – as happened with the boat guiding – I’m totally fine with that. I’ll do this job as well as I can for as long as I can, and I’m old and hoary enough now that if I sense anything even approaching the poison of the boat company, I’ll jump. With them – that was my mistake. I fell in love with a dayjob. Mum, dying, pointed her finger at one of the boats. “So and so is working on one of those boats. Why don’t you see if you can get a job there.” I was in “Hey mum, look at me, I’m doing the thing you said. You don’t need to be dead anymore,” right up until I met the blunt end of a very very bad HR department.

But yeah. Today was good. Long. But good. Once again I’m knackered. I’m getting everybody to think about their kilowatt use every day so I might have a low bath. It’s nice to know I can still pull in the Yoot. It might be because I’m interested in them. The last time I did this particular dayjob with any degree of consistency, they were all getting me to dab. That’s like ancient history now. I’m trying to work out what’s current these days. I might be able to report back. Lots of schools though. Am I gonna get COVID again? Hopefully not. I’m bored of it. I’ll try not to.

Well, that was lovely. I’m battered.

Part of what I was doing today was getting Year 9 students to start thinking about their individual power consumption. Now I’m running a bath. Right there – that’s the disconnect.

If I had some sort of device that captured all the energy I expend stomping needlessly from room to room in order to forget why I came there in the first place, I could use the energy from that device to heat my huge evening baths. No such device exists though. Shame. This evening it’s just going to be guilty bathtime as normal. I’ll perhaps be a little bit more mindful than usual as to how many kilowatts I’m burning. I won’t leave the kitchen light on all night. And perhaps by writing this, I’ll inspire some of you to be a little less profligate in your electricity use for a short time before we both forget again. It’s all I can do, really. It’s all any of us can do. But anything is something. The biggest deadener is the voice that says “There’s no point me doing anything.” That’s all we have to avoid really.

It’ll be another early start tomorrow. Then more. A week of the buggers. Compared to some of the things I get up to, it’s not much of an adventure anymore,  getting up early in order to help small humans think. But … it can still be elucidating in short bursts. I hesitate to say I enjoy it. But it’s certainly revealing. It was a good school today so I don’t feel like I’ve had my heart torn out by wolves. I got home and found myself looking longingly at my shelf full of playtexts. I’m bone tired and it’s only just gone seven. I’ll be dead to the world in two hours. About once a week I need to sleep for twelve hours to reset. I haven’t managed that long for a long long time and I’m starting to feel the deficit.

All of this could be academic before long. We won’t need to worry so much about global warming in a nuclear winter, and the shells are falling closer and closer to the Polish border, provoking NATO. Mutually assured destruction has never looked like a deterrent when insanity is in play – this is why it’s been important to stop all the countries depleting uranium. If you’re bonkers then you’re immune to consequence and there have been lots of world leaders over the years who are six hedgehogs short of a hatbox. At least there’s only a few countries where the damage can go global. The Russian Bear is mad though, suddenly. It has had a nasty little backwards thorn Put into its head. I can’t see a clean end to this, with the combination of war crimes, pride and a lifetime of being unquestioned.

I can’t use the possibility of imminent global war to stop me from getting out and talking about climate change to the Yoot, though. Life just marches inevitably on and on. The Yoot are the Fewtcha! And a lot of them are very angry with everything. I don’t blame them. We’ve made a horrible mess of everything financial, then we voted in a load of blithering meanies because they were familiar, then we just let them get too busy lying and getting rich to care about anything local or global until it was too late to do anything but stammer, delay and hope. Boris is our Neville. He’ll never be our Winston. Although we just have to hope that this war won’t spread. In 1939 we didn’t have nukes. I would argue that the existence of nukes is the only reason we haven’t been widely conscripted. Those young women I met today might have a lot more to contend with than where to charge their electric vehicle.

Oh, and my laptop fixed itself. I just had to leave it on all night so it could finally download the update it was queueing. I assumed it had been hacked so switched it off at every chance as I figured it was mining bitcoin or something like that. I can’t even solve tech anymore. Leave it to the Yoot? Or will they be too busy fighting?

My nice relaxed Sunday evening was completely ruined when I went onto the email to see what I was supposed to be doing for dayjobbery tomorrow and discovered that I’m booked to deliver three back to back workshops about electric cars in Isleworth and I’ve never even seen the workshop I’m delivering. The last few hours have been about finding the damn thing, and now I’ve found it I’m trying to get it into my head before I go to bed. I’m supposed to be there in eleven hours though, and I’m tired. I was just going to get an early bed. I might do that anyway, set the alarm for crack of dawn and do some cramming on the way into work.

My laptop has got something on it that makes it freeze and crash every ten minutes, and it takes about twenty minutes to log in. That hasn’t helped my mental state. I think it’s forcing an update in the background, but it just makes everything unworkable. It’s meant to be a good laptop, it’s only a couple of years old, but its been about as much use as a potato since I installed the latest version of Windows onto it. I think that might have been my mistake to be honest. Too late to roll back now. The last two paragraphs have been written as I’m waiting for the damn thing to boot up after it froze and I had to hard reset it. But frankly I think I’m just going to have to do painting by numbers tomorrow. It’s not like I’ve never done anything like it before. The laptop won’t be any use to me, that’s for absolute certain. It still hasn’t loaded in yet. I’m running a bath. I’ve got good mind to drop the thing into it.

I’m not supposed to be doing workshops on sustainable energy anyway. It’s a nice a way to pass the time and it pays the bills, but now the world really is waking up again I’m gonna have to get myself into a good long shoot or a rehearsal room. But I hate doing things by halves so meanwhile I’m gonna have to try to get this crap laptop working. It’s so bad I even installed antivirus into it (Spybot) – despite my feeling that antivirus software usually just further slows things down. It hasn’t improved the situation. Normally I’d just format the hard drive and reinstall Windows but nowadays you can’t even get Windows on CD. Plus, frankly, I think the latest Windows is the cause of the problem.

Anyway. I had a Sunday of sorts. Saw my friend who has sold her house. Tried to cast around for anything she might be throwing away that has value as I want to try to rehouse it and give them money. They’re keeping everything good though. Grabbed a picture to try and sell on eBay and some bottles of prosecco which they kindly gave me and which will eventually go into my gullet. Contemplated a nice evening seeing people and then … everything exploded with dayjob as documented.

The laptop has let me in. I’m reading the notes on the presenter view. I might just leave it on all night and then go swot in the morning. I’m too tired to take this in and the bath is ready. Better me in the water than the laptop. It’s one or the other right now.

Lou and I, as is our wont, found our way out into nature. Stanmer. Turns out we coincided with a Liverpool match against Brighton, and the stadium is right there. Nevertheless the crowds were in the stadium, not the park. We could hear their singing on the wind but they weren’t everywhere.

It’s good for you, singing, particularly as part of a group. Even if it’s just the vowels and howling open shared sounds of a football song it gets you breathing together as part of a group, and aligning thoughts with breath with action. Lou and I howled along with the Liverpool fans from our vantage point in amongst the ancient cedars. The Liverpool song is from Carousel the Musical. They rarely sing the whole thing through but it’s a good piece of noise and it’s fun to sing.

We had breakfast and we took advantage of the fact that the sun was warm even if nothing else was. We sat and observed the humans.

“What are they doing?” we asked after a while. A couple were stumping around the lawn with an instructor, and everybody had a pair of long sticks like ski sticks. Lou says: “It looks like cross country skiing, but without the skis…”

Growing up, my father identified Langlaufing as the single most pointless form of exercise he could identify. It’s the crap bit of skiing, when the lift deposits you miles from the slope, expanded into a whole day. Cross country skiing? Skiing with all the joy taken out. “There’s the view, still?”

“Nah it won’t be Langlaufing without skis, that’s ridiculous,” I said, watching them, bemused. “I reckon they’re in physio. They’ve broken their backs or something. This is part of their rehabilitation.” That’s the only basis on which I can picture myself there, walking around in circles with an instructor.

On the wind we hear the instructor’s voice. He’s telling them what to do with their shoulders and their core. The two people he is teaching seem interested enough in what they’re doing. They go walking around a bit more. It’s fascinating and odd. There must be something at stake here, I’m thinking.

The instructor has something written on the back of his shirt. “Use your new phone camera, get a photo and read it…”

Nordic walking for health.

It’s cross country skiing, without the skiing or the views. Or the snow. You walk around on lawns in straight lines.

Another thing dad said… “There are a lot of people in the world. Somebody out there will buy pretty much anything.”

It’s not for me. But … It’s good for you. Like singing a football song. We all like to have a thing we do. That’s his. And he’s been doing it for over a decade now. He’ll never walk alone…

Another concert this evening. I loaded the remaining sunflowers into Bergman and took them down to Brighton. Five minutes from Lou’s flat, January Thompson was doing a concert raising funds for endangered species and for International Animal Rescue.

I didn’t have to help dress the space this time, but I did a little bit anyway. I figured that the sunflowers would be attractive and topical, and I ended up backstage before it started, putting batteries into electric candles – more or less an exact mirror of what I was doing at the last minute at The Roundhouse. The amount of brand new electric candles I’ve handled in the last week make me look askance at the version of me that must have put a hundred of them into the electronics recycling bin at Park Royal dump about a month ago on the belief that keeping them would result in them sitting unused for a decade and leaking.

Then I spent much of the concert stalking around the edges trying to take good photographs with my sexy new phone camera. January is a complete musician – a singer songwriter, and surrounded by skillful artistic people who believe in her and want her supported. Her work is mystic and ethereal, but sewn through with a mercurial personality. She looks and sounds incredible. I haven’t seen her work until now. It’s often a sticky moment the first time you see another live artist work, when you know and like them socially. It can put you off people if the thing they do just doesn’t land at all with you. It’s happened to me before. The gig this evening landed with me very well. I was very happy to be helping document it. Photos might help with marketing and she really needs to be more widely known.

She was playing The Spire, which is a deconsecrated church in Brighton. It’s the sort of place we used to do Factory shows on on Sunday evenings. Freezing cold and old and strange and beautiful, seating about a hundred.

Last night at The Affordable Art Fair, I was being deliberately a little bit arch and I asked my nephew if there were any paintings of cats that I could look at. Tonight at The Spire, local Brighton stencil artist CassetteLord was selling a stencil of an endangered South East Asian Fishing Cat, sprayed onto a canvas background that reminded me somewhat of a Mao rally poster. I still miss Mao the cat, it was a picture of a cat and I had just asked for exactly that at the art fair, and it was affordable. It was up for silent auction. I put in £100, going up the animal rescue charity. Nobody bid more. Now I have a lovely bright picture of a cat. Nowhere to put it. But it’s mine and it’s signed and I like it. I’ve invested in art.

I’m back at Lou’s now. Bed approaches. A beautiful evening in a cold church in Brighton has not left me warm. I’m glad to have had such a good fix of live music lately, but seriously – it’s time for spring now. Too much cold despite heart warming music.

My kitchen is full of sunflowers. After we broke the gig, Tristan and I rolled home late in an uber XL and filled the boot with as many of the decorative garlands as we could carry. When he woke up this morning and left he only took a few. So I’ve been trying to find new homes for the ones left. Many of my neighbours now have a few stems. I took some across London with me when I met a friend in order to brainstorm some writing projects coming up. I’ll be taking the rest to Brighton with me tomorrow.

I was feeling pretty rough today. I haven’t had a hangover for a while, but that was definitely happening. I was dizzy all morning. I’m starting to feel normal again now and it’s one in the morning. Time for chamomile tea and bed.

This evening was spent looking at art. Just over the river from me, my nephew is directing The Affordable Art Fair in Battersea Park. Bloody well done him. I went to have a look around and see if I wanted to buy anything.

Last time I went to The Affordable Art Fair I was a little disappointed that the only things I could afford were the prints and they weren’t on display. I wondered about the name of the fair. Going there again I get it a bit more. You have to put a price tag on an artist’s work because the value is subjective. In any subjective medium, the value of the artist is partly determined by how highly the artist values themselves. Stated value largely determines perceived value.

Much of the affordable art I saw was a grand or more. I was still open to splashing out for something I liked, but even though they say that paintings hold their value, my experience of selling them second hand at auction doesn’t correlate. Most of my most disappointing sales have been of paintings. It has led me to a place where I’m definitely not going to buy a piece of art unless I really love it. This evening, on a brief foray, I saw lots of art that I liked, but nothing that grabbed me by the balls. Likely I’ll go back again on Sunday and I’m not out of the race. I’m cautious. I’m not gonna buy something because I think it’ll be an investment. But I remember a girlfriend of mine buying a painting that I bet she still loves, and I imagine it has held its value too. She had it over her bed. If something strikes me that much maybe I’ll have a punt. Although I have so many paintings still stacked under my kitchen table. Disappointing sales meant I stopped pushing them, either in auction houses or online. There’s no point working out the artist’s name and then researching them and writing a spiel and then ending up having to send an awkward package via Hermes because somebody snagged it for the minimum. If I hung them all up you wouldn’t be able to see the walls here. They can’t stay under my table forever. I don’t need any more art.

At least the sunflowers are ephemeral. They’re pretty for now. They’ll do.

The music has started and my work is done.

This is an unusual one for me. Normally show start is when I peak. But today I’m Art Department and I’m tired. We are at Camden Roundhouse. We have come together to build a charity concert. I’ve been here for twelve hours. Now I’m here for to enjoy the music. I might still need to fix something, but if I did my job earlier I won’t need to. And I did my job earlier. We all did.

Huge bolts of polyester silk in blue and yellow. We cut it and hung it. A superabundance of sunflowers. We scattered them artistically around the space, keeping back many to sell to the public as a symbolic donation focus. It’s a lovely feeling to have some ownership over a space. I’m particularly proud of my sunflower garlands on the pillars. They pick out beautifully in the light.

Yuri Yurchuk just sung some beautiful opera for us. The crowd is certainly not as spare as some crowds I’ve been part of here. It’ll likely fill out further as well. Considering how last minute this all was, it’s come together well. There was a thought that we might try and paint the centre of 1500 sunflowers blue. But this was announced shortly over 24 hours ago and there aren’t that many of us.

Franz Ferdinand isn’t even on the playlist and they agreed to join today. It’s an evening done with heart in the traditional London manner. This is why I have persisted with this city so long. I love last minute heart. Tom Baxter is giving just that as I write. I keep having to stop writing just to let it wash over me.

It’s not much for me to have done considering what’s happening over there. But we do what we can, and I’m an artist. Making stuff is part of how I express myself, and making ephemeral last minute stuff has always somehow been high on my list of things that make me feel like me. I was part of a hasty team today. Hasty team done good.

The programme is pretty full. Chrissy Hynde will be playing later – I saw her in soundcheck. I’m tired so I’m not sure how long I’ll last here but hopefully I’ll see her set. It helps that I was building things during sound check as I won’t get FOMO if I leave to go to sleep.

Jack Garratt is now playing. These lovely charismatic musicians are mostly here for just one or two songs. It’s a big ask at last minute to come and play what is shaping up to be a big crowd here at The Roundhouse. I haven’t stood in a crowd this big for years.

Text DONATE to 70150 says the banner. I’m likely going to go and pay a fiver each for two of the sunflowers I’ve been throwing around all day. I’m going to switch my phone off. Joseph Toonga just did a beautiful kinetic piece called “Born to Protest”. I am going full audience from now.

That was fab. Chrissy Hynde is a legend. Camden Council pulled the plug on Franz Ferdinand. They had a finale planned. Buggers. Nevertheless, a lovely thing to be part of. I’m totally exhausted. Props to the people who organised this. I was just part of the machine.