AlBarclay

Brighton again, being scrutinised by Tessy as I attempt to get this blog started before the end of the day. It’s only a snatch of time with Lou so it’s an opportunity to write a bit while she switches into her evening wear. We are off to see the Scottish play – she was on wardrobe and some of my costumes will be on stage.

“Are you ready to go?” So much for that plan.

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We had dinner at Botanica on Lou. Food this week, good God. I’ve been spoilt but it’s my birthday week so its allowed. It’s in a great big old stately grounds that is now all full of restaurants and Botanica is the affordable one and it is still posh, dairy free and healthy, £26 for pork but it was excellent and it was on Lou this time so tasted even sweeter.

Then to Macbeth. I got to watch some of my costumes on stage. We were in a tiny little theatre in Horsham so the last person I expected to sit next to me was Ffion. “Get the fuck out,” I said almost by mistake as I saw her. We got to sit next to each other and watch Shakespeare. I think that’s the first time I’ve seen the play live with both the big Macs played by Scottish actors. It was nice to see it done well on a low budget, and considering it was so deep into a van tour and they’ve only just come inside, it was in great nick.

They must be knackered. They’ve got the get out down to 28 minutes. I remember that being such a driver, the way we would hit a timer every night and celebrate when we beat the record but get it all loaded in tidyily. You come off stage, take off your costume, and go grab a wazzer, or start banging out the truss, or derig the lights. There’s a terrific connection to the whole business of show in a van tour. Exit stage right, wipe the tears from your eyes, grab a bit of tech, do tech things for the other actors, quick swig of water, chuck a cape on, listen at a door, come on as someone else, repeat and then it all goes in a van every night and you put it there and you don’t know what your bed is gonna look like until you collapse into it. And at the end of the week your agent puts in about enough money for a week’s worth of food and … that’s your summer. “I think I’ve been to Horsham. I can’t remember for sure…”

Lou and I said goodbye to the cast and producer. What a delightful gig – similar vibe to AFTLS but you’re really on top of each other. If it’s harmonious it is really harmonious. One squeaky wheel starts to magnify and magnify. These guys had a cast change early in the run, perhaps for that reason. It felt harmonious. They all still had the light in their eyes. And that little theatre was packed in the first half and no less packed in the second half, and this is Shakespeare. Excellent stuff. That’s what I like to see.

Up at 6:30. Coffee. A moment to relax.

By eight o’clock I’m back looking for forklifts. You’d think it’d be easy. One company wasn’t responding so I hounded them and eventually I got a link where I could sign up my company to their website. No quote without the sign up. They wanted to run credit checks too. I filled in all the forms. I think my credit is ok. I get sent letters offering the company credit cards.

Meanwhile tipper vans. A place in Loughton had conjured huge numbers for one. A place in Upminster showed up slightly better and a really friendly saffer on the phone who thinks Siwan and I are siblings. I left her on that while I chased forks. Ended up on the phone while driving across town. I even dragged Maddy into it.

At half twelve I gave a security guard my passport and totally switched my head. Musical Theatre, baby! A workshop with one of the silicon valley tech giants. No photos inside, NDA up the wazoo, escorted everywhere. About fifty of them. Each one of them worth more than the four of us combined. Jazz Hands! We got them all singing about tuna. It was curious and strange. I have never had a client as highly strung as the one who met us at the door. “Can you break down, minute by minute, what you will be doing and when?” “No.” Say it with certainty, kids. Say it with meaning. “No. We can’t.” The workshop went down a treat because it was responsive and alive and unfamiliar, like they wanted.

Finish that and back onto the phone and the company who made me sign up for a quote eventually get chased down by me and announce that they had no forklifts to begin with. Fucking oooh I want to post to their website. Absolutely fuming. I should have stopped at the point when I spoke to the AI assistant on their website that was pretending to have a name and actually making you wait for the reply as if someone was typing it. That’s absolutely demonic, to give you all the impersonality of an AI and then deliberately make it fucking annoyingly slow so you might think it’s human. What the fuck is the point of that? Whoever invented that needs to go to the same circle of hell as the guy who made up public benches you can’t sleep on. They wasted loads of my time to behave like they didn’t give a fuck about custom.

Thank God I found Lamar on my third call to another big old company. He got it. He’s helping. I want to give him love. He can have nice things please. We’ve got a forklift to be delivered on Monday at about noon. This is enough. Otherwise we all would have been standing round looking at wood. Week rental minimum but it doesn’t break the bank. They get you with the delivery charge. Something might go wrong but it seems we are one step closer to where we need to be. Fuck I’m tired from the stress of the unfamiliar. Everything hard is learning.

So then I picked up a ladder in Old Street, drove it to Holborn, drove it back to Old Street, and drove myself and Siwan to The Tamil Prince on Hemingford Road. “Something hot and a Lucky Saint please.” It came quickly. The lamb curry. Jesus I’ve had some excellent Indian food this week.

I have no idea if the vehicles I’ve got are up to scratch. I think you tippers will be very small. I guess they’ll have to do or I’m gonna have a very tough Monday and an endless Tuesday. I need to sit down and do some maths. Maybe I pitched this one right, maybe not, but next time I’m getting a deposit too. Kes knew it. “When are they paying you?” “When it’s finished.” He has offered to help me out with a loan if there’s a shortfall. That’ll come down to the tip. £75 a tonne for wood, £150 for mixed. I’ll have to sort things carefully. The next few days are gonna be logistics. My favourite thing oh yes oh yes yes. And the occasional musical workshop perhaps. And prepping an audio book read. Self tapes? Halloween rehearsal on Sunday? Fuck. Who am I?

Tomorrow I will stop a moment. All of the things can wait till Sunday and Lou and I can be. I am falling over but I’m happy I’ve put myself in the way of opportunity and seized it, even if it isn’t necessarily the opportunity I would hope for. This time last year etc etc

We were both working yesterday so Lou came up today. Just before she arrived I had a great big quote I sent in accepted about two weeks after I would have preferred to have had the news. Now I’m frantically playing catch-up as I’ve got a whole load of vehicles to book at short notice. Lou and I met up and I was worrying about forklifts.

Birthday Lou day plans went ahead though with lunch at Kutir and then a surprise trip to the theatre. Kutir is an extraordinary lunch – we are both obsessed with the jaggery sea bass. There are other things on the menu but there needn’t be.

A moment to pop into the V&A and look at Marie Antoinette things. A sad strange story, hers. Antonia Fraser’s wildly popular book made her alive to me, and seeing her clothes was a strange sad thing. The Austrian. The ostrichbitch. Propaganda is a terrible thing, as we are remembering worldwide. They even had the guillotine blade that dropped into that narrow long and delicate neck. Good God they corseted people until they were impractical back then. Some of her dresses look like torture devices for the average human.

Lou is about to go on tour for months with Wicked. I told her I’d never seen it. I’ve always been curious, it has felt like something of a cultural touchpoint having been to drama school on the millennium. Every time I’ve looked for tickets the numbers have put me off. So this evening that was my surprise present.

It’s such a lavish show. I loved every second of it. Her eye was on the quick changes and which costumes would likely need lots of maintenance, what they are wearing for the curtain call so what can start to be turned around etc. My eye was on the “Wow!” of it. A really strong piece of musical theatre, and such a great production, no wonder they can still pack it out on a random Thursday evening, and no wonder it is so hard to find tickets for actorprices. I don’t hang out with enough twirlies, I guess.

Walking home I felt thoroughly entertained. I haven’t seen the wizards of oz since I was a child so my child mind connected to the connections they drew. What a delight. For a few hours I stopped worrying about forklifts. I really need that IPAF licence and I need it yesterday.

That was a lovely day. A strange day. A lovely day.

Amy has a big studio absolutely full to bursting with stuff. She has endless amounts of insane knick-knacks that she has hoarded over years since her decision that she’s gonna be your average bonkers artist. “My friends are usually reasonably extreme personalities,” I tell her. “I’m not though, of course,” she says with the conviction of someone who hasn’t caught on yet.

She sits me in an armchair in a vast pink set, and a young woman who used to work for a shopping channel comes in and starts busily setting up a camera.

We both got sent a script, the camera lady and I. We both ignored it after a brief perusal. I felt bad about it at the time, but …

The script was generic and empty, with loads of familiar sounding phrases and well used thought-flips. It read clever but nothing to get the imagination round. “I’m not learning that,” was my first thought before I told her I’d need an autocue, or considering I’ll have a mascot head on and my mouth won’t be visible, if she wanted me to say exactly what she’d written I could do it in ADR.

I imagined her up all night with pro-plus and fags scribbling that stuff down, no filter, no time to refine it, so wired that she did another one, another one, too many, all the same but slightly different. Like when I was writing poems as a teenager instead of revising.

How did I not notice it was Chat GPT? Of course it was. Thank fuck I didn’t try to learn it. Because I thought it was written by her I wanted to give it the time of day but honestly it was generic dross dross dross. It would have made me actively stupider learning it.

So we improvised. It was nothing like the script but we made stuff up and it feels like there’s something there but who knows what will come out of the edit. She and I are chaosmongers, despite the near AI intervention. The editor is perhaps a little more traditional in view. I’ve seen their work before and it is very much what one expects from the medium. It is obedient to form, and Amy is instinctively disobedient but wants to operate within the rules and thinks she does. Let’s see. It was fun and mad and there’s more to come.

Then I went to Ivy Asia with Brian and Maddy and Marie and munched on showy food and didn’t get boozy. A good day. A birthday. All the things.

Ladies, Gentlemen, People of Indeterminate Gender: By the time you read this, I will be older. So will you, technically, but I’ve got a number changing. Just like we all watched our screens with dread to see if everything blew up when the millennium turned, so tonight I will be watching myself in the mirror at the stroke of midnight to make sure I don’t ping out of existence.

Tomorrow I will be in my fifties, unavoidably. I will remain in that state for some time.

Brian has been an excellent friend, attempting to persuade me to arrange something like a dinner. I have made no choices. I have mostly quietly hoped it will pass like any other day. Sometimes I am in the mood for party. Other times it is just a quiet observation of the inevitable sickle of old time.

I ordered a copy of my birth certificate in Jersey once for it simple reason that I wanted to know the time of birth so I could do my natal chart. They didn’t fucking tell me.

I think it was about 1pm. That’s when I mark the turn. I’ve had fifty years to work out what the fuck it’s all about and you’d think that would be enough but nope.  Maybe it’ll all come to me in a flash in my dream as I turn the year again.

I had a Bone Daddy Tantanmen 2 with Cock Scratchings for lunch and I’m heating it up for dinner as it is generous. No harm in the same thing twice in a day, although I’ll need my aniseed suspension of Gaviscon cos it’s hot food late at night. This is what life starts to do when you get these bigger numbers in front of it. Forty years from now and if I’m still here I’ll be half robot. I’m trying to raise my chances, going to the doctor for checks and putting a pin in the oblivion juice. I’m trying to wake my body up with healthy vigorous walkies and better general choices. I’ll always be this slightly baffled friendly neighbourhood creative airhead, but there’s a body attached to the words and that body fought to exist fifty years ago, had tubes down the throat and got incubated until it worked out how to breathe. The obstetrician was an honorary godfather. I think it could have gone quite the other way right then, and can think of a few moments since, but I’m holding onto this experience for everything I’m worth.

It does mean I’ve invited nobody to anything cos there isn’t a thing going on and that’s fine.

I’m gonna put myself into hot water so I start the natal year clean. Then a good sleep and starting at a normal time for a change.

I’m having a nice cup of tea. Then I’ll have some aniseed suspended Gaviscon. Doctor Adamova prescribed it and I’m still feeling a bit coughy and bilious so I’ll drink up my chalk like a good little patient.

I’ve got my prescription note by Rawaz which reminds me of the quantities. Tomorrow morning I’m gonna start on the omeprazole just as it should be helpful for me to settle things now the worry is gone.

I can never understand the whole business that is growing so fast in the west of blaming all our problems on people who don’t look like us or had wildly different childhoods. All you need to do is go into a hospital to see the advantages, and if you think they’re taking jobs from good proper English Englandpeople from England then just wait until you get one of the English plumbers to fix your pipes or deliver an oven from Currys. Nobody workshy is left in the NHS. There’s nothing for them. The whole thing was supposed to fall flat a few years ago when the Tories did everything they could to collapse it so the wedge of paid healthcare could be driven in from America. The less we have to do with that place these days the better though sadly. The Jimmy Kimmel thing was closer to an open dictator thing than we’ve seen thus far, and there’s no way it’ll stop there. Twenty years from now there will be cautionary tales taught in schools, and people will tell you “I always knew he was a baddie”. Right now though, too many people have either persuaded themselves they are powerless or they’ve drunk the Kool Ade.

I’m just gonna have a nice time and prepare to do stupid fun shit with Amy dressed up as a Panda. Today has been admin-tastic. I barely left the house. The cats are bored of me. Tomorrow more of the same, and learning stuff. It’s a quiet time. My friends are either despairing of ever working again or they’ve just booked a massive job. Most of them the former. It’ll get better, art is needed when the world gets nasty, but it isn’t valued because it holds a mirror up, and when you get sucked up in hateful rhetoric and demagoguery it’s about how you feel and what you want. You mustn’t have perspective on what you look like, because it’s a nasty spoilt scared angry kid. Have a look at what Kimmel said, that got him suspended. It’s innocuous. It’s not even rude. It’s largely an observation of what is happening.

Terrifying. What is going to happen to America in the short term? I dread to think.

So yeah I’ll just stroke the cats, sing to myself, have a nice cup of tea.

A perfect afternoon on Hampstead Heath, even if the wind has started to blow colder. Bright and still warm enough to sit outside. We had the team in place, and Canice, my emergency replacement. I’ve got a gig on the 30th now and won’t be doing the Halloween walkies that night and it is peak season. Good to get a replacement in early. Canice and I took it in shifts to stand on a podium on the South Bank for a long hard summer carnival barking for absolute fucking peanuts. Producer was half man half cocaine. There was a sword swallower with great skill and no talk. Inside: “Right this is a sword. I’m gonna swallow it. Now this one this is bigger. Here I am gonna swallow that too. What about this one? It’s big isn’t it? Here I’ll swallow it. Great there we are. I swallowed all of them. Shall I do the first one again?” Outside: “Roll up roll up ladies and gentlemen for the sideshow of your dreams! Come one, come all and experience things you have never experienced before.” etc etc. Some of the other acts were better – Aleesha mistress of pain was a strong act. But my takeaway from that job was Canice, who costumed himself (they didn’t bother costuming us.) I love the fucker and he’s kind and sharp and motivated and funny. I’m always nervous about availablity on the Halloween walk so getting him in feels like a weight off cos I know it is gonna be covered and entertaining unless I’m there.

We started where the walk starts, at The Old Bull and Bush. I booked a table and had their trio of roasts which is still good but was better two years ago. I needed a coffee after it though, so it did the trick. We wandered out onto the Heath and staggered through the skits and the stops. It feels like it’ll be a fun year this year. Part of the joy of the whole thing is these afternoons and evenings planning it as we walk in the light from pub to pub.

I didn’t find it as hard as I might have not to drink. Didn’t really want to feel bilious and I’m getting used to feeling things again instead of avoiding them. It’s a month tomorrow I decided to fully pull out of that habit after I thought I was gonna die in my sleep.

Walkies and laughter and plans. And I’m home by then, feeling chipper.

Up in the morning and into costume. This is just stuff I had lying around. I had to be there at ten. I assembled it at nine.

Regency frock coat from Lou’s opera work. Ditto topper. Indian silk waistcoat courtesy of Emma’s dad. Tails trousers from my uncle Peter and I had to cinch the straps to the utmost because I had no braces and they’re big. The shoes are my least favourite pair of Gucci from my uncle. They’re out of shot. I have theories as to whose eBay the other pair of Guccis went on. If they ever show up in a forgotten corner of my flat along with various other comics and things that have quietly vanished over the years, I will feel naughty for thinking it.

The mask isn’t mine.

Captain Fantastic is a children’s entertainer. I have no idea how he does it, the energy and noise and control. I helped him unload his gazebos. “We met last year,” I tell him. “I don’t remember.” “You wouldn’t. I was Hello Kitty.” We get talking about the artist involved here. I tell him she likes to use me for things where I am in a mascot head. “You’re her muse,” concludes Captain Fantastic. And leaves me with that. Ha. I’m certainly glad to be part of the art, it has never been anything other than delightful collaborating with her. This one is just a birthday party though. Her daughter is seven. She likes birds.

So yeah I had a rubber pigeon head on. It is designed for children. The eye holes are in my neck. Either the pigeon is looking up in the air and has a human chin, or I am completely and utterly fucking blind. Not just mascot blind. I can handle that. I’ve danced as a unicorn in a club full of coked up Germans enough times that I don’t mind the world being reduced to a slot. But this one? You can see people’s shoes. I’m mostly doing echo location.

“Carry my pram up,” one of the mothers demands of us. Sara has to stay on the door so it’s me. She’s used to service and I AM a pigeon butler so its time to pull my weight. “How can you see through the mask?” That’s one of the kids. I’m not really in the mood to pretend to be a pigeon right now carrying this pram on my own up a narrow flight of stairs blind. “I literally can’t see anything,” I tell him. “I’m part pigeon part bat.”

There’s no hole in the top of it, and pigeon butler talks. If you talk in a rubber mask, it heats up really fast. Three times over a few hours I have to take it off, turn it inside out, and towel off the accumulated sweat. When I get my envelope of cash I feel like I’ve earned it. They’re out of a cash point, but one of the fifties is stuck to its neighbour with what is certainly a bit of dried blood. This city, I tell you, the coke and the ket situation is awful. We are in the middle of an epidemic. Yuk.

Still, pigeons deal in filth. Pigeon butler gets dirty money. He can still spend it on crisps.

I left in character. Bought a Big Issue for a tenner from a nice young guy whose pitch I had been queering. And off I went. Job done. Pigeon Butler.

“Mother, father, I’m going to be an actor!”

Ah shucks. It’s great fun.

Very sweet of Brian to come with me. We went to St Mary’s Hospital in Paddington. I drove, parking in my usual little square off Praed Street where there are almost always very narrow parking spots, if you can get your car into them. I got Bergie in and we made it to Outpatients with no time to spare.

I was booked right at the end of the clinic. The receptionist was perhaps Middle Eastern, and politely sent us to a waiting room where a nurse perhaps of Indian extraction in her scrubs kept on top of who was coming in and out. Lots of patients announcing lots of things with the expectation of “Everything Now.” I only got mildly concerned 45 minutes after my appointment time just as by then we were the only people there and I thought perhaps we had been forgotten about.

An hour of waiting in total though, for a free procedure, is not bad. And I only went to the doctor a couple of days ago.

The ENT Specialist was Eastern European extraction, blonde and still immaculately made up at the end of her long morning clinic. She wasn’t particularly interested in talking and nor was I so we got right down to business.

A little camera on the end of a tense wire, with a light for vision, and controllable. She sticks the end under my tongue for wetness, and then makes a verbal decision: “I think the left nostril,” she says. “Keep your head still.” And in it goes, all the way into my nostril and down my throat. “Say eeee” she says so I sing. She goes left, right and left. At one point I gag momentarily but largely it was much less unpleasant than I had expected. Perhaps in part because I kept my head very still.

My nostril feels a bit funny though.

A developing nodule. Nothing to worry about. I’m not Julie Andrews, my damage is part of my sound. And the knowledge that I produce much more than the average amount of mucus nasally, dripping back. I knew that. That’s partly why I had the lung problems. I have to clear my throat too much – probably a mild intolerance to milk or wheat or London.

So not today, old blackie. I get to keep my voicebox awhile longer. Memories of dad, who would be 100 this year. Dad had a tracheotomy and artificial voicebox back in the nineties. He had specially made silk cravats. Had to put his finger over it to talk. Couldn’t laugh, so would write “ha ha ha” on a piece of paper and hold it up. Yes I write things, but the bulk of my art generation is with presence. I like to change a space with sound (and movement but sound is my primary skill). I’m glad my fears are unjustified. I’ll sleep better going forward.

She prescribed me Gaviscon and Omeprazol for a bit. She reckons the reflux caused it – the coughing from that. Bad bad booze doing bad naughty things.

Now I can start thinking ahead again. Hurrah.

Sleep was not forthcoming last night. I felt tense and hot, my neck always at the incorrect angle. Light on, light off, light on, light off. Read book. Loo. Wee. Or just lie there with my eyes open and occasionally swear.

When I saw dawn I almost gave up entirely. I would often miss whole nights a few decades ago, I’d weather the fuzzy start the next day with coffee and have a long morning, do whatever it is I had to do, and then fade out. I need to take care of myself nowadays a bit more, so I had one last attempt and it worked. I woke at half eight with a splitting headache. About 3 hours sleep? Got some breakfast and took all my pills alongside some migraine relief and felt like the walking dead most of the morning. Brian nuked some bacon in the air fryer.

Lou was in town at lunch, buying fabrics in Goldhawk Road and Walthamstow. I spent a shot of time with her, but was really not feeling very much like a participant in the world today. I pulled out and drove home and cooked myself a hearty lunch. Max came over briefly in the evening and we had a short evening stroll. It’s mild again, the weather, for which I am grateful. Still about a week until my birthday and the weather has got to hold, that’s the rules. I’m getting even older. Days like this can’t become the norm, I need a blooming job please universe.

Looking for work, pitching for things, strategising about a few ideas here and there, keeping myself mostly capable and available for the nebulous *thing* that is definitely just around the corner but don’t look directly at it or it’ll vanish.

Misty is sprawled on me and I’m writing this on my back on my bed. She occasionally gently digs one sharp paw directly into the rose of my nipple, perfectly cutting through the T-Shirt and dragging. It’s an affection thing. She’s in her contact mode and everyone else is asleep. I suspect she will place herself at the foot of the bed and help me get to sleep tonight. She’s a sensitive soul. Didn’t show up last night, but I think I was working through some stuff as I lay there. Sometimes it comes up at night time.

Now she’s trying to burrow into my stomach. I’m glad I’m sharing space with these two affectionate idiots – the cats not Brian and Maddy. I can see how people who live on their own end up surrounded by the things. If I had a country estate there’d be a whole pantry dedicated to the buggers. “If I had a country estate.” A man can dream. And dream I shall, shortly. Gonna put this down, stroke Misty back a bit, and have a chamomile.