AlBarclay

I’m glad I didn’t realise my mistake until it was too late.

Midnight on Thursday means Wednesday night. Not Thursday night. Fuck.

I woke up in Yorkshire thinking I had a whole day before official lockdown start. I found out over breakfast I was already late. Oops. Yorkshire to London. If I could prove I was a politician and that I was actively infectious I would be able to travel. But I couldn’t do either. And my car is pretty … visible.

Last night I had Harry look at the old Nissan and he reckons it’ll be cheaper to do the work it needs for an MOT than it will be to just jettison it and get a new car. This is good news. Better than I thought. I’ve grown fond of the old girl so I’m going to give it a try despite London prices being much higher than Yorkshire ones. Before I began the journey I booked an MOT near mine in London so I had a destination. I also decided that, come hell or high water, I was going to buy some pot plants before I had to hole up in my flat or risk getting fined. It was good having Hex for March, but I think having more green around me will make me less inclined to obliterate myself. I started drinking way too early in the day in March. Now I’m completely sober. I want nice things to look at as I’ll be seeing much more clearly.

The roads were as crowded as ever which surprised me. I took the smaller roads on purpose. It was a beautiful day to drive  I kept stopping at garden centres with woeful selections of indoor plants – but all of them were open. Everybody in Yorkshire has an actual garden, and all the garden centres consider themselves essential, but don’t have indoor plants. No good for me and my quest for. Eventually I decided to ask the internet. “Best place to buy indoor plants” turned up just one shop that was loosely on my route. I put pedal to metal.

Hertford, and the city centre is still full of cars. Shoppers out on the streets. Vans buzzing around. I pull into a loading bay opposite what looks like the holy grail to me after all the garden centres. A pretty little shop full of house plants.

They’re cashing up, perhaps. They’re not expecting customers. I think they’ve left the door unlocked by mistake. The proprietor comes up to me fast as I enter, with the look people have when they’re about to tell a stranger to leave. I derail it by speaking first. “I’ve come all the way from Yorkshire to buy lots of house plants from you so I have some green in lockdown.” They allow it (I tried to make an audible kerching sound) and we improvise a way for me to be shown and purchase plants without contact.

Now I have lots of lovely things in my flat. I’m glad to have brought the couple that run it some business just before they close up again into this madness. They seemed like a lovely pair and they have unusual plants, many of which are now in my flat, sitting on unusual antique trays that got rejected by Tennants. If these things are still alive next time I make the journey to Yorkshire, I’ll likely stop by Bedford to buy some more, and some paraphernalia too, and pick up another expensive habit. Looking after plants can be one more thing to add to the huge list of things I need to do in the flat. Circumstances have conspired to perfectly allocate windows to sort my shit out. March was the beginning, to enable, to see what’s possible, to get the ball rolling for the summer. Now November to consolidate, surrounded by plant life, with a much better understanding of the extent of the job.

Onwards. Happy lockdown lovelies. Call me if you like. I’m here.

I haven’t been inside The Boar’s Head since the last night of Midsummer Night’s Dream, maybe six years ago. I didn’t expect to be back here just before we lock down for the second time during a global pandemic.

I was driving from Leyburn to Harrogate this beautiful day, and I hit a very familiar roundabout. I impulse pulled my wheel into an empty parking space. Now I’m having an expensive fake beer in one of the places we would all spill to after a show in the grounds of the castle. A decade of shows at Sprite. A decade of wages direct to Lord and Lady Ingleby by way of this establishment. Warm happy memories of fellowship, positivity and financial recklessness. The life of an actor on tour. One third sleeping, one third shouting, one third drinking. Maybe a bit of exploring instead of the drinking and sleeping, but doing so in monkish silence because all the drinking and shouting isn’t great for the old vocal folds.

God’s Own Country. The rolling dales. Hell of a place to work outdoors in summer. It’s where my mission took me, once more, just before we lock down. It’s my fourth journey to Tennant’s Auctioneers. I’m catching the last opportunity to jettison bulk and make it easier to organise the contents of my flat once I’m confined to it in the cold dark fearful winter.

They know me by now. One of owners greeted me by name immediately upon arrival. They took the lot, pretty much. Rejected a bag of uncle Peter’s fucked Hornby. Rejected a bag of mixed crap cameras. Took the rest. I can sleep easy in Harrogate tonight knowing that there’s nothing much to lose if somebody decides to have a rummage through the car by way of the broken window. The window is now plugged by a vintage pillowcase which is probably the most value in the whole vehicle. I’ll miss it but it’ll have to go. Might try and swap it at a dealership up here tomorrow.

I did find myself browsing the next Tennant’s sale, which they’ve rushed to get on display in order to give potential buyers a shot at eyeing up the merch before everybody has to shut the doors. It’s a strange experience, seeing things that used to be on my drinks cabinet looking shiny and tagged as part of thoughtful displays on other people’s antique furniture. They’ve laid it out very well. But looking at it all was a mistake, as now I’ve got my eyes on something in the sale. It’ll be an effort of will not to buy it if my stuff sells well before it. Although I don’t want Tennant’s to become a swinging door where I essentially just walk in with a box and walk out with a different box every few months. Freedom to move within my flat without stepping on something is a glorious dream that CAN be achieved…

There’s something about the circle of stuff that’s interesting to contemplate. I wonder the record number of times the same item has been sold by the same auctioneer to a different person over the years. I bet it’s higher than you’d think. Stuff goes round and round. Loads of my dad’s things have the tags still attached from previous auctions. Ditto the fire damaged stuff from different provenance. Even my uncle’s things. These auction houses can be habit forming and I’m sure the idle rich will spend ages and fortunes. I’m relying on it. But I’d advise caution. Like this blog, consume only as part of a balanced diet.

On which subject, I’ve finished my virtuous nonalcoholic bitter. I’m off to Harrogate for a peaceful night with a lovely friend and then back to London to pretend I’m a hermit until Christmas.

My quiet day at home didn’t work out. Construction work has started on the build for Brian’s Doctor Who show, and I’ve got a load of very heavy plates in his venue up against a wall that is going to be demolished during lockdown. An hour after the call I was in his warehouse surrounded by plates and empty boxes, on a video call to a bloke in the North if England. Half of the plates were destroyed when somebody stepped on a box in the warehouse, so I’m not tangled up about the value anymore. I can’t store them safely so best not to store them at all. Some of them I’ve earmarked for future Christmas Carol type shows once we can get strangers to serve food to each other again. I’ve left them against the threatened wall until I can get boxes to put them in. Most of them are now in the back of the Nissan. Seems it’ll have one last gasp. Tomorrow is the last day I can take them up to Tennant’s. Better by far to take them to Yorkshire than to carry them up the stairs and into my crowded flat.

Sorting them was an absolute headfuck. There was a Polish man literally screaming into his mobile phone for an entire hour just to my left. To my right, through the wall, almost continuous drilling. I cut my finger on one of the fucked plates. Loads of them are now baptised in my blood as it was a pretty persistent flow. In terms of infection control it’s not ideal to liberally spread blood on things you want to sell. Hand gel hurts now. But it’s done. They are sorted and many of them are in my car with a broken window overnight, and hopefully will still be there in the morning. I’m going to load up the rest with unwanted glassware and pictures and so forth. I’m gearing up for a long drive tomorrow.

It’s late now too. Max stays up later than me and we went through another box of things from the grandparents forensically, which I wasn’t expecting but it was a good idea. The curator in Max came to the fore and we found ourselves in a production line. I was sorting and categorising, he was documenting and rejecting some of my sorts as illogical and sending them back round. Eventually I got them all past him and he took exhaustive photographs and made an Excel sheet. There’s some interesting stuff there. Nice to go through it so thoroughly. 20 American Dollars in a coin from 1906! If there’s still an America tomorrow, I’m sure somebody will be interested.

Last time there was an election over there I stayed up and watched the result. We all know how that went. This time I’m going to sleep and see what sort of world I wake up in…

The queue outside the post office went round the block. I had two boxes to send for eBay. A Raynaud Ceralene “Morning Glory” butter dish – (ten quid) and a horrible Guernsey crested China cow creamer – (just three pounds). Thirteen quid. Half an hour in the queue. That’s still £26 an hour which is an acceptable rate for unskilled time. The sun was shining on the pavement, but everybody was hugging the wall, shivering in the shade. I shifted a foot and a half from the queue and into the sun. I turned around to face it and let it soak into my skin. This beautiful autumn weather, with the low light coming through the shedding trees.

“Don’t know why we all aren’t doing that,” says the old guy behind me, indicating my sun-seeking. Nor do I. He doesn’t join me either. He wants to talk. Very much. He’s lonely. This coming time is going to go hard for him.

I didn’t catch his name. He was talking through a mask in the wind from a distance and he’s had an operation on his throat. Didn’t stop him from trying. There’s a thing that he is looking for. Normally it’s in Boots but it isn’t in the local Boots. He might have to go to the one in High Street Kensington. You know the one? Just opposite X road. You know X road?

He’s in AA. Has been for nineteen and a half years. “Will you be able to go to a meeting and get your twenty year badge?” I find myself asking. He harrumphs. His head shakes. I don’t tell him I’m almost at three months but not through AA. Mere necessity.

The time passes in the queue with him talking and me attempting to interpret a quiet voice masked in the wind. Then I get a call from Jacky – while I’m talking to the guy. “Sorry I’m going to take this.”

“Are you able to do another shop for me?” Jacky is the old gal I’ve become lockdown Ocado for. She’s taught me a great deal about the stock of Waitrose and how to shop frugally there. I’ll be off again tomorrow.

It must be shit being old at the best of times. “All my friends are getting married!” Cut to “All my friends are having kids.” Cut to “All my friends are retiring.” A few more cuts but eventually, if you’re one of the lucky ones, it’s “All my friends are dead.” And then the final cut.

If we are going back underwater we should look to the older people we barely know who are near us. The ones who are prickly like they don’t want our help. Give them a bunch of flowers or something next time you’re going shopping. “I bought too many”. Fuck knows it’s lonely enough for those of us who have lots of living people in the phonebook.

I’m getting Hex tomorrow and bringing him back to Chelsea. With lockdown coming it’s the only way I can feed him. He’ll be company of a sort. But fucking hell. Here we go again. Let’s look after each other.

I was going to sit calmly in the early evening by the river.

The day had been my own, and I allowed myself the freedom to momentarily forget all the jumbled things that are pulling for my attention. Just to breathe out for a second before breathing in again. It was necessary and helpful to do so. I have a feeling it will help propel me through to the end of the year, as the dark closes in.

I went to the shop before my intended calm evening sit. I bought some houmous and dips. I might be hungry, I argued to myself. “I might want a snack as I sit there in the sunset.” I also bought a Kinder surprise egg. It was at the counter. That’s how they get you. “I can build the toy as I’m sitting in the rays of evening light.” I reasoned to myself. (In reality I just wanted some of that tasty chocolatey plastic stuff they’ve somehow created.) But my imagination had me sprawled on a riverside bench, houmous and chocolate falling out of the sides of my mouth as I marveled at a sunset worthy of The Fighting Temeraire over the pagoda across the full and flowing river. From thence I would telephone my lady friend.

Nature will just do what it pleases, despite all of our plans.

I arrived at my bench in a windstorm. The rain, it seems, was spent. But the world was blowing past my face. Air from Cuba, from Greenland, from Ellis Island, St. Helena, Sierra Leone, from Iquitos.. All these places and more buffeting in seconds past my hat as I clung to it. Not to be put off, I sat on the bench anyway. The tide was out so I couldn’t see the reflections from the water. Rolling clouds obscured the sunset completely. It was windy and dark.

I took my houmous out and resolutely started munching as the dips almost blew away to Greenland. Car drivers shot by behind me as I munched, narrowly avoiding the puddle that would completely drench me if they didn’t avoid it. I realised very quickly that I wouldn’t be able to build the kinder surprise for wind, let alone the constant jeopardy from careless puddledrivers. I went to call Lou. I think by calling her I was hoping to cling one last time to the idea of the moment I had planned.

The wind was so wild we couldn’t hear each other at all. “I can’t hear you. I’ll speak to you tomorrow”.

I had to abandon the whole plan.

I sat instead and looked at the pagoda directly across the river from the bench. I felt the size of the wind and let myself be stationary within it. Leaves and branches everywhere (even if these trees are manicured obsessively by a council that could get sued). It was peaceful. It wasn’t what I’d planned. But it was something.

I think there’ll be a lot of that for the next month. Let’s try and find the light in the dark. Let’s try and be the light so others can find us. It’s going to be alright in the end. This dark time is fleeting, and even when you can’t see the sunset you can still find beauty and connection in the wind on your face. And if somebody soaks you with a puddle, it’ll be a story in the end.

I’ve missed Hex. He’s back in Hampstead these days so I only see him a couple of times a week. With another lockdown approaching I think I might have to go get him tomorrow and bring him back to Chelsea. He gets more cuddles if he’s with me here, but my downstairs neighbour will die of apoplexy and there’s no way I can move his vivarium on my own so he’d have to live in his travel box and he’s noticeably less happy there. I’m not sure how I’m going to deal with it. I’ll work it out when and if somebody gives me a hard time for crossing London in my own vehicle to look after a snake.

Although I might not have my own vehicle for a while. The Nissan – it should go tomorrow if possible. I’ve got a quote for scrap but the guy seems quite flaky. He wasn’t happy when I told him the window had been smashed by thieves. Such an unnecessary and stupid thing to do, to break a car window like that. Thank the lord it’s the worst I’ve had in terms of incursions into my space.

Can’t make much difference to the overall value, one small window, particularly if you’re just stripping it for parts. But he dropped his quote by £20 and started being cagey. He’ll get even more cagey when I tell him the thing isn’t in my name yet.

I might just drive it into a scrap merchant and see if I can get them to take it. I’ve never really liked selling to people who insist on picking the car up themselves when it runs perfectly well. It just feels like they’re exchanging time for less money, and if I’ve got time I want to be exchanging it for more.

I’m sad to lose the car. If our hastily assembled “Build your own Prime Minister” kit makes good on his lockdown announcement today it might be quite hard suddenly to get across town without wheels in order to put a mouse in the snake. I’m sure other people have considerably more pressing concerns, but that’s mine. Snake gotta eat.

I kid myself into thinking he was happy to see me today. He was certainly happy to see the mouse. But we had a good long play together and it made me realise the amount of time that has passed since we were working together in The Tempest, me and Hex. The world was warming up. Now the streets are full of leaves, and the light is fading.

Winter is coming. Cars are usually a summer thing for me, but this year I might have to go and get another one swiftly so I can properly minister to the snake, and get to Brighton etc. Anybody shifting one? I’ll likely start surfing Gumtree, my usual hunting ground.

As I write I’m lying under a newly wired up, cleaned and reconstructed chandelier.

I’ve got pretty good at it now, the basics of wiring. Confidence comes through experience and practice. There’s still no way I’m taking apart a junction box or wiring a thermostat like Tristan did, but one thing at a time. The flat will be in this transitional stage for some time yet, but every day a little better even if it doesn’t feel like it. Right now I’m bringing things in as quickly as I can send them out so the sense of progress is stunted. But things are certainly better than they were, and the shape of it is clear in my head. If money were no object I’d lay down the few thousand needed for a full job by experts on the cosmetic things, but I’ve got to be careful so I’m trying to prioritise. Carpets and shower are very high up now on the to do list. It’s tempting to try and find somebody handy to live in the spare room rent free in November and do the work that’s needed, but then I remember that I can be that person and I might as well continue to upskill myself. At the start of lockdown I’d never even changed a wall socket. Today I did another chandelier and didn’t electrocute myself. No matter how confident I feel I’m still gonna pay somebody with a certificate to do the shower. If I’m renting the room I don’t want to cook the guests. But movement is movement.

It’s a maximum one pound listing weekend on eBay so I’ve started queuing up ridiculous large items like granddad’s fucked Tanner Kroll suitcase and a modern boot rack. If I put it on for collection only at a low price somebody will come for it, and if they don’t it’ll go on Freecycle and stop taking up space. I want my space back so I can put more stuff into that space and then get that stuff out as well to make room for even more stuff. This breathing monster of memories is getting easier and easier to partition and sort. One day I’ll be able to see the floor in the living room. One day I might even find out what’s under the carpet. For now just keep on chipping away.

I just took a mouse out the freezer though, as I’m going to drive over to Hampstead tomorrow. The last gasp of the Nissan. It’s being collected on Sunday and off to the big scrap heap in the sky. I lose track of how many short term cars I’ve owned. More than you can imagine. Another one before long I imagine. But the final journey of the Nissan will be to hang out with a friendly snake in Hampstead Heath. Hopefully the weather will be good enough for walking…

This morning my plans got slightly out of whack after being slow. I had a webinar to attend on zoom – a rare occasion for, me using zoom as nature intended it. Normally I either use it with all greenscreen bells and whistles, like a child picking up a stick and flying it as if it’s a plane or I use it reluctantly where I’d sooner be in the room with people so I’ve got the camera pointing any old where. I don’t really like the meeting side of zoom. Zoom meetings about talking immediately wake up the ADHD part of me. Zoom meetings about creative potential wake up the Jackson Pollock bit.

It’s funny to remember : Zoom belongs in the world of corporations and meetings and all that silly stuff where we all have to play the game of pretending it’s important so as not to bruise the delicate egos of the personality vacuums that thrive in that world.

I think of Zoom almost entirely in the frame of a plaything. But then that’s how I think of most things. Half cat?

Last night, I was in the audience for Macbeth on zoom – it’s the latest Big Telly / Creation Theatre entity in this digital playground. Lou had made the dress for Lady Macbeth and a fair bit of extra costume as well.

She had a free ticket and I was with her. We sat in a dark room in Brighton and enjoyed Shakespeare together. Like a theatre date. Just without leaving the house.

We had a lovely time. I knocked a candle over and got wax on the Persian rug during perhaps the greatest verse scene in Shakespeare. (“That which hath made them drunk hath made me bold”). It didn’t take away from our enjoyment. (And thank fuck it comes out with an iron and brown paper – I didn’t do it though. I just got the photos this morning.)

Terrific use of the medium once again, Macbeth, and a very fun telling of the story. I like being allowed to laugh at tragedies, and then have the knife twisted. Once again they were pushing the boundaries of what I thought was possible in this live digital medium. I had a few “how the hell did you do that?” moments and a few “Oooh I see how they did that” moments. I have a feeling Sinead will evolve into an octopus in order to cope with the demands of her job behind the scenes. They cut frequently, fucked with colour, faded in and out, added silly digital touches, put multiple characters on screen at once in the same scene, integrated backgrounds, fiddled perspective. There’s much that’s still to be explored in this rather odd medium of digital live storytelling that I fell into at the start of lockdown, but zoom is at full stretch already due to the size of the PLAY in these makers. There’s something about showing the cracks and bringing the craic. There’s a sweet spot. In these days of HD it is useful to see that it doesn’t have to be highly produced to be successful and fun.

This is what the webinar was to be about. This new digital live medium.

My alarm went off somewhere near Kingston, flashing up as I was driving : “Webinar in ten minutes”. Glad I set the alarm.

It was pouring with rain. I pulled into Sainsbury’s car park. With the London driver’s instinctive fear of fines for technicalities I rushed into Sainsbury’s with only a minute or two to go and *purchased something* so I wouldn’t get a letter saying I had been seen on camera using their customer carpark without being a customer. Then I sat in the rainy car and listened to Lucy and Crissy talking about their wonderful crazy plans. By some miracle, The Arts Council has given them a decent grant to develop an online platform actually designed to make things like the beautiful crazy happysad fun Tempest thing we did. It’s a fine idea and could be really interesting. They’ll be looking for a small number of consistent collaborators next year. I’ll throw my hat into the ring. I’ll be up against the whole world but you gotta be in it to win it and this is interesting and edgy.

Now I’m back in London, happy and warm in my flat with the heating cranked higher than I should, and a comfy bed waiting.

Lashing rain blowing in from the sea reminds me what people really mean when they say “wet weather”. Going from the house to the car drenched me. Then it seemed the right idea to offload a whole pile of grandpa’s damp-spotted paperback thrillers into the recycling bin. I had already scanned all their ISBN numbers. Nothing. So recycle time. The process of binning them probably took less than a minute but I was wet through by the time I was done. Not to be deterred I got back in the car and we drove to Rottingdean.

All that area used to be deer parks. The dean where they were rutting with Roedean next door, full of roe. Now the roe and the bucks have been replaced with frustrated young women at boarding school. The rutting bucks are no longer there – just angry looking middle aged men in masks sitting in big shops full of wildly overpriced tut. They’d be no use for the intentions of the pupils of that blasted seaside private school.

One of the shops is trying to sell a small empty cardboard Gucci box for £3. It was an inspiration and a warning, seeing the bric-a-brac of Rottingdean, feeling how little of it they must move at that price, sensing the low energy of the proprietors. One shopfront by the beach in a lovely location was closed and completely unworkable. Every inside inch of the place was utterly crowded with absolute bollocks that had been salvaged over the years and not adequately moved on. Stuck on the inside of a window was a piece of paper : “not your ordinary white van man” and a number. He’s hauled in a load of stuff from clearances but he hasn’t sorted it and so he’s got no shopfront left to sell artisan coffee or monetise it somehow. There but for the grace of God. I’ve been looking into buying myself a van for when I scrap the Nissan, you see. Having wheels has been incredibly useful for me. If I do get a van I’d be well advised to move to somewhere with ground floor and get super efficient with my process of sorting and shifting, or I’ll end up with a fucked back from boxes and I’ll make the block so top-heavy with junk that it’ll fall in the Thames.

Today I’ve been learning fabric with the help of Lou. We hoiked a box of old linen into her place and piled it. Some of it will end up on my bed as it’s much nicer than the cheap polycotton I’ve bought. Some will end up in a skip. The rest I’m going to try on eBay. Fifties to seventies bed linen. Some table tops and lacy bits. Just another random bag of God knows what but where there’s muck there’s brass. More to come. If I don’t up my pace I’ll be rotting like the Rottingdean van man. But at least it keeps me occupied.

Speaking of which, Lou and I are about to go to the theatre! We’ll be zooming into Macbeth by Big Telly at Creation Theatre. I can’t wait. If it’s anything like The Tempest – (wonderful. I was in it) and Operation Elsewhere and Alice it’s going to be a real treat! I’ll likely gush about it tomorrow. It starts in ten minutes. I should get my hat.

I found another dusty mucky chandelier. Many years ago, drinking with friends up here, somebody said “why’ve you got chandelier hooks on all your light fittings?” At the time I hadn’t been aware of it. That’s when I was taught what a chandelier hook is. He took me round. He even did that thing people do here: “I can take them out for you if you don’t need them.” It’s like the army of plumbers who offer to change out my gorgeous antique brass taps for “some nice mixers”.

Now I’ve cleaned up three chandeliers and put them up on the nice old brass fittings that weren’t taken down. I have three fittings waiting and now there’s three more chandeliers. The one I just found is already in the dishwasher. (It’s the best way to clean those crystals – honest!) Soon it’ll be chandelier central round here. It’s only a matter of time before I can invite Erroll Flynn for six bottles of vodka and then provoke a fight between him and some chimps. I could video it.

Meanwhile there’s the sound of a circular saw in the room next door as the next stage of patching up the huge hole in the wall takes place. The more work I do the more work there is to be done at the moment it seems, but in the fullness of time it’ll all be worth it. I just have to keep revising my estimates both financially and in terms of time. The sensible thing would be to continue to treat the flat and nothing but the flat as my nine to five job and take the endorphins of finishing a section when they come. Life has other plans as ever. I’ve got the usual multitude of spinning plates. Looking for acting work, plenty of writing, sorting antiques – I have to sell the car in the next week, and be ready to cut a new showreel in a fortnight. I’m still going to go to Brighton tonight and stay over because I want to see Lou and the sea. I like having too much to do. I much prefer my brain to be flooded. If it’s not flooded it floods itself anyway, and I sleep much better when the flood is generated by spinning jobs and not by strange memories of other times. It’s a constant battle to remain in the present when the past is so active and the future so weird.

I think that’s why I’ve been a bit angsty lately. My bias towards the future is a defence against the puddle of the past. But I’m pretty well located in the now at the moment and still allowing the future bias to tilt me into the unknown. What will be will be in terms of the world. Sure I was considering (genuinely) finding a retrain grant and doing a course in politics in order to try to change from the inside on the basis that if you’re not involved there’s no point moaning about it. But then I’d be just another fucking middle aged public school boy who thinks he’s clever doing politics. And I might kid myself I’ve got perspective but that fallacy is why they’re such a problem.

Besides, I could get an acting job on set in Prague in a bubble tomorrow for a year making a series, and you know I’d drop everything immediately and bite off the hand with the plane tickets.

So I’ll just keep on waking up and doing and looking for the thing that makes me happy and pays the bills at the same time. And eventually this flat will be the palace it could be.