AlBarclay

I’m lying on the heath thinking about words.

Some people can get very exercised over the names we have chosen to give things, as if accuracy was more important than intention and meaning. It’s strange. As Shakespeare observed, “that which we call a rose / by any other name would smell as sweet.” If the intended meaning is conveyed, then the word has done it’s work, surely?

As a kid I wrote a long form essay, terrible from beginning to end, attempting to talk about the whole history of the world from beginning to us. “Primeval soup” was a phrase I used, and one of my teachers said “technically you should have said primordial soup”. I asked him “to mean what?” and he said “all the mess of matter and liquid at the earliest point in history,” and I thought “well he knew what I meant so what’s the issue?”

Sometimes language becomes about ownership. The in-crowd.

Arrogant ugliness. “I know the jargon better than you ipso facto I am better than you.” How many of you have been momentarily excluded from a conversation because some statusarse corrected your jargon?

I did a Latin in the last paragraph. You didn’t have to know precisely what it meant because the sentence and the context – hopefully – told you. So that’s fine. It’s when you use your specialist knowledge to deliberately exclude others that you should have your nose shaved off with a cheesegrater.

At the Buddhist meeting the other night we were talking about “Nam myo ho renge kyo,” which we chant. Nam is Sanskrit, the rest is Japanese. There’s a lovely mischief at the heart of Nichiren’s practice that says it doesn’t even matter if people don’t know what it means, it’s just about the chanting it.

“If the meaning doesn’t matter, what if we just chant it all in Sanskrit?” asks one of us. And yeah, why not try it? But I guess some of these words and phrases, these sounds and these praises – we’ve arrived at them after years of hunting and perhaps the time spent securing them has deepened their usability. Nam myo ho renge kyo is a choice. It could have been Plip plop bingle bungle boop, but it isn’t, and if you start chanting that one you’re likely on your own, even if it might be fun for a bit. If you chant Nam myo go renge kyo you’re inevitably doing it simultaneously with loads of people all over the world, and plugging in a little bit to that huge web of connection and resonance that shoots through every living creature in every time and every version of reality in this mess of space we’re stuck in.

It’s rife in the spiritual community, this linguistic one-upmanship. It’s a useful way of seeding out the true practitioners from the frauds who do it for ego and money. If somebody slaps you down for getting it wrong they’re probably male and definitely arses.

I was talking with Louise the other day. “Nobody was using the phrase ‘holding space’ ten years ago,” she observed – “but it’s very helpful and we know exactly what it means. I wonder where it came from.” She’s right. It is helpful – and sounds American to me… So we use it. And as long as you don’t correct somebody for saying “running the experience” or “being in charge of the ceremony” then I won’t get the cheesegrater.

Yesterday afternoon I was driven back from the woods, and started trying to plug myself back in to reality. I hadn’t slept at all the night before. I wrote the most sense I could, left a few incomprehensible messages on people’s phones and joined a Buddhist meeting on Zoom where I probably came across as batshit crazy. Even the blog yesterday was bulked up with a poem.

Today I’m still screen averse. I want to be alone with nature to properly try and break down what I might have learnt over the course of the healing. Eternity is a lot to sift through, and it feels like we went round a number of times. Having been in the woods a few days I was wide open, and trusting Jethro totally I let him work on me and opened myself wide.

If souls go round and round then lots of us have been doing it since the dawn of creation. The splintering from silence to reality. The word, or the thought, or the explosion that bust us from nothingness into everythingness. Then the splintering of consciousness over time to form all these worlds and all these times existing simultaneously a fingers breadth away from one another, filled with exchangeable opposites – light and darkness, death and life, creation and destruction – it has carried a lot of shards of awareness.

I completely lost track of who I was quite early in the process. My personal consciousness got whacked out of me and replaced by webs of connection and thoughts coming at a speed and frequency that defied time. We went deep into a journey through spacetime connecting with aspects of possible past lives and things totally outside my comprehension that somehow made some sort of sense. At one point I believe I was speaking an ancient version of Chinese, at another a dead language, but my recollection of these moments involve a totally different place and shape to me, and vocal placements and sounds that I didn’t know I could make, coming easily. It’s nice to use the word “I” now, as that seemed ludicrous for a while. I’m going to use it, although “this one,” or “we” makes a lot more sense.

Anybody that does this sort of thing recreationally is a fuckwit. I almost jumped into the fire at one point and I’ve got a history of lucid dreaming. And the fact I didn’t put my shoes in the fire thinking they were logs is testament to the fact that even in one of the most cosmic states of being I’ve ever experienced I can still occasionally look out for myself. Base level self preservation. It’s a skill.

There was a moment where I grounded for a second and thought with perfect clarity: “this is the DMT release from the pineal gland at the point of death, slowing time and providing strange visions. I’m dead. How unusual that I’m hallucinating three nights in the woods. Or did I just have a heart attack? Damn. There’s still so much left to do!”

There were three moments where I was wiped out violently – assassinated by cosmic beings. I came back because I had a scratched up two pence piece in my back pocket that I didn’t even know I had that somehow came to represent the secret spark of life. “Didn’t know about that did you you fucker!” They did, of course. They had let me back. It felt like I was playing out a reflection of some ancient moment – Prometheus stealing fire, perhaps. It was hellish. Temporarily saved by mischief, and all of creation in a mangled 2p piece.

I wanted to go back into life. So clearly I’m enjoying whatever this is. And clearly there’s stuff I need to do or they wouldn’t have let me.

It feels like I trod a fine line between life and death for a while but I’ve got a chance to do things better going forward. After they killed me a few times they took everything out and put most of it back but it was a hard thing to experience. It seems to have changed some things inside me though. Quite a lot didn’t go back in and I don’t think I’ll miss it.

I don’t want booze right now. It was my weapon of choice against myself and now it feels I’ve been given a sense of where I was heading with that relationship. I also don’t want to eat meat, which is a very unusual sensation, having sat by the fire gorging rare ribeye steaks with my hands just two days previously. In fact I’ve been vegan since I got back although I doubt that’ll last but it’s worth a try for a while.

Considering I got out of the cosmic tribunal literally by the skin of my teeth, I need to make sure I make some use of this chance to go back and pretend I’m called Al Barclay and that I have meaty arms and legs and am subject to time.

It took me a long time to find myself again in the morning. “I’ve got my wife and kids,” says Jethro. “They’re a strong draw to life. I worried about you as you haven’t got so much to pull you back”. Ow. Yes. But somehow my call to life is strong. My friends. My joy. My calling.

Dawn had broken. I refused to sleep though – I couldn’t sleep – the threat of oblivion hung too close for me to risk sleep until I was sure it wouldn’t stealthily bring death.

Instead I wandered in the woods mumbling to myself. I knew my name but my memory was clouded to the point of being totally unapproachable. I was a few unfamiliar people simultaneously. We sat beneath an oak and chanted, trying to use this empty-headedness as an opportunity channel the Shakyamuni who we blearily understood found Nirvana under a tree.

I started to remember pieces, but in the back of the car I was still about as useful in conversation as a Furby. I then went on a mission back to Hampstead, partly to make sure the snake was watered, and partly because if I’d wandered into my Chelsea block as I was, covered with mud from head to toe, the gossip would’ve been inevitable and dull. So I got a cross town Uber to Mel’s.

“Excuse the mud,” I said to the driver. “I’ve been gardening. Digging around, cutting off the bad stuff. I’m exhausted. It’s hard work, gardening.” True on one level. True enough not to be a lie. “What’s it like, being a gardener?” “You get dirty. But if you cut the right bits off then you can make something beautiful. So long as you keep maintaining it. It’s the maintenance that’s key.”

Miles and miles… Here we go.

It’s a poem, of course, by Robert Frost. I started quoting it in yesterday’s blog when I don’t think any of us could have anticipated how many times we’d have to go round and round to come out the other side.

I woke in the dead of night as the fire was dying. Body full of sleep in the deep deep dark, alone. Strange noises on the wind. This used to be a deer park. I know bucks drag their antlers on the side of trees at night and make a heck of a sound. Maybe that? The trees seemed like they were communicating too. Even the shrew – or rat – in the logs near my head was emboldened by the darkness, shuffling and hoffling indignantly.

We are the firekeepers. With knowledge and care we can guide this primal thing to bring us light, to bring warmth, to transform one thing into another. If I’m to share this wood I need to do my job. Plus it was cold.

I banked up the fire but I wanted it to take quickly as I was still clinging onto sleep. Into the tent to get some cardboard from a packet. Then back out and was it a dream or did a little voice somewhere in the dark say “It’s coming back out!”?

Sleep until morning and blearily wake to find that a horsefly has come to my warmth. Buddhism or no Buddhism it wanted to eat me and I’ve already got some nasty welts from them or Lyme’s disease. Morning Al is going to kill this horsefly. They slow down as they seek a landing pad, so I hold myself still, standing arms and legs apart, coiled like a spring, watching it choose a spot. It will land on me, test for penetration, and move if it’s on clothing. I’ll have about a second to strike while it tests. A decisive whack, from directly above, and no more horsefly.

I’m not much good in the morning.

It lands on my balls.

Reader, the horsefly is dead. I struck fast and hard, unthinking as the spring I had coiled released. As I fell to the ground next to it, howling with something that was pain and something that was baffled laughter, I took comfort in the fact that right there – that’s the Buddhism in action. Kill a horsefly, punch yourself in the bollocks. Done and done.

Once the pain subsided, that fundamental pain, we went for a walk. Country lanes and coppices eventually give way to roads and then to Budgens, where you go for your plastic straws and microwave meals if you live out here by nature. I probably should have bought a plaster for the suppurating bite on my hand, but it’s on my right hand. I’ll only knock it off or set fire to it. For now I’ll just have to let the air work and pour Florida Water on it, which hurts like hell but probably stops infection since it’s basically just smelly alcohol. And understood pain can be medicinal, so long as our understanding is that it’s a warning signal for something minor.

Time is strange out here. I’ve been hunting mushrooms and gathering wood ahead of another night doing my job. Jethro will arrive at some point this evening though, and join the circle. One more night in the woods.

About two years ago, at this time of year, I fell out of a tree. I was lucky. Just a broken rib. I lay there for a moment wondering if this was it and wryly observing that my last strong sensation would likely be annoyance at the guy who kept on asking if I was ok when I was unable to speak.

Then the film didn’t go over my eyes and my breath struggled back.

Then I wiggled my toes and never has such a simple action elicited such a huge experience. I AM NOT PARALYSED. Then I got cocky and got someone to jam their elbow into my back “It’s nothing broken, trust me. It’s muscular. If you get in really really hard and deep it’ll help.” Oops.

Then I had a hot bath and accidentally flooded the bathroom.

Then I did Macbeth twice and decided maybe it was a broken rib after all, especially when Macbeth gave Banquo a hearty slap on the back and Banquo involuntarily screamed. Loudly. “Ooh how clever,” they thought. H”was injured in the fight against the merciless Macdonwald.”

Buy that was two years ago!

I haven’t been up a tree since until just now.

Glad to have finally broken the back of it (no pun intended). It’s like falling off a horse, I guess. An unmoving, tall wooden horse that’s shaped differently.

I also did a yoga headstand for the first time since ribday and got in and came out fairly tidily – which means that under all the beer there still might be the remains of stomach muscles. Who knew?

Now I’m sitting in the evening sun. Glory.

I was shocked awake in my bivvy by drops of rain on my face. Apart from bouts of snooze I’ve been awake mostly and just existing here since then.

The woods! The woods!

It’s just Helen and I now. She’s camping at the opposite end of the acreage, in the pines. I can sleep wherever the hell I want with my bivouac though. Even though Jack is gone there’s no way in hell I’m sleeping under canvas, although it makes sense to be near canvas in case it rains.

All the cars are gone, most recently Anna Helena and Cherry who were unexpectedly here as well. A mother with her 3 year old, making memories just before her 4th birthday. What a magical thing to be doing for her. Cherry is now convinced my name is Owl, which makes sense as we met in the woods.

It hasn’t taken me long to go pretty feral. For me though I’m doing well. Just one burn, and I had brought ice for the food so I spent all night clutching something cold and it already doesn’t hurt – (not that feral then). Numerous gouges and scratches. Filth on every exposed surface, be it charcoal or grot. Horsefly took a chunk out of my neck. I’m terribly happy.

I love the fact we can’t get out except by walking until Jethro comes with his car. I’m thinking of things we can make here, in the way I couldn’t be me if I wasn’t.

A bird directly above me is insistently repeating the word “dick” at me, but if that’s the only darkness then I’ll take it. Now there are two of them both doing it. This is how they got the idea for Twitter.

Time passes. I’m by the fire again, under the stars. Wind in the trees. The settling woodland around me. Not even midnight yet but I’m knackered.

Right now I’m lying by a fire. Above me through a gap in the trees, the stars are bright. I’ve burnt some past, and built foundations for some future.

I’m somewhere in Kent, with two friends, ringing the changes. Apart from a sheep that seems to be going completely mental about something there’s no sound but the roar of the fire. I’ll be sleeping by that fire tonight, in my army surplus bivouac. Mosquitoes aren’t really a problem here tonight – there’s not much standing water nearby. It’s a hell of thing, being here though. In the woods. Under the stars.

Jack is with me as I’m writing, the other side of the fire. “I’ll do this later,” I attempt, knowing that I’m growing tired and the eclipse is early tomorrow for ceremonial purposes. “Write your blog. Get it done. I’m happy with that.”

More and more of my friends get it now. This unmonetised constant expression of my thoughts. Thank fuck for that. It’s hard wired. Even out here. And thanks. Without people engaging, as so many of you do unexpectedly through private message knowing how I’m actually pretty private, I’d have stopped ages ago.

But for now, I’m gonna hang out with Jack despite him making room for blogging. I can write this later.

Hello! This is me, later. I think I might have made the right decision with the bivvy by the fire. When I arrived I put my little area a distance from the pit.

That was misguided. It’s not a tent. It’s a canvas bag that’s a tiny bit more waterproof than a sleeping bag. I bought it from army surplus. Jack is in my emergency tent while my festival tent is at the doctor’s until I have new poles. It makes me understand how many weeks of the summer I habitually try to spend camping. But at Festivals – where my time and expenses are compensated. But where they would never let me build a fire like the one that’s just to my right. And if they did they certainly wouldn’t let me sleep by it like this.

I just wandered barefoot over to Jack’s tent after I realised he had left his music on as he slept. It was playing Don Giovanni, Procession. I really really didn’t want to be listening to  electronic music all night. Sure enough, he was dead to the world. I switched it off.

Now it’s just me and the crackle of the fire, the sound of the wind in the trees and the late late night. A little earlier we also had the drunk kids of Kent singing their way past us on the way home all too close. But now, the leaves, the fire, the air and the gently insistent voice of nature. I’ve never slept next to a fire like this, despite having done it a thousand times in books. There’s a patch of sky above that was clear before but now is clouded. I can hear the unfamiliar cries of animals, the road, the sheep, a small private airplane right now at 3am… But mostly I can trick myself into thinking I’m alone, and it can be about me and the wild. It’s better than anything else I could find so quickly. And it’s perfect.

I’m getting back to nature. I’ll lie here another hour as the fire dies and I’ll feel the world. Then I’ll probably catch a couple of hours nap, and back up early.

I spilt Florida water on my bivvy. If ever there was a way to remind myself of intentions set, it’s that smell as I lie here. Aho. Xx

I’m back in Chelsea – I had to come back briefly, to get my tent and my bivouac. I’m off to the woods for a long weekend.

Jack has been driving towards building a show in these woods. It’s quite an ambitious project but he’s an ambitious guy. Had everything not ground to a halt, we might have been doing it right now. The plan was always around solstice weekend. So it makes sense to go out and see what’s what. That was the pitch, because it’s hard to get there without a car. Jack has access to a car and I don’t. Perhaps in a normal summertime I’d have just bought another banger for peanuts on gumtree with MOT until November and doomed to die in late August. But there’s no festival season, I wouldn’t get enough use to justify the punishing cost of the insurance. I’m in a high risk category. Probably shouldn’t have said “actor” back in the day. It’s on all the systems now. And with some of the bangers I’ve had over the years – perhaps they’ve got a point.

But Jack is up for going to the woods, another great friend is coming too, and Jethro’s uncle bought some woodland out in Kent back in the day. This promises to be a good weekend in nature, away from the normal swing of things, able to recalibrate and think clearly. Good for me to escape the city, especially in these days.

I have no idea what the internet situation will be. I’ll work that out when I’m there, but if I go dark for a short while then I’ll be back on Tuesday so don’t assume I’ve fallen in a hole. I’m hoping I’ll be able to post, but I’m not expecting to get much use out of my phone apart from that.

Lots of my friends have been making things. I saw some dear hearts this evening messing with tech to tell stories together alone. They made a greenscreen show in isolation live, and made it look like they were all in the same room. Fascinating silly use of technical wizardry running alongside live theatre skills.

And last night I watched three strangers playing a video game for over an hour. I’ve never done that before! It’s a teaser for a conversion of a board game called “The Captain is Dead” that will be launched on Steam before long and it looks brilliant. I’ve played the demo. It’s fiendishly hard and looks and sounds fab. It was also made by my best friend from school. If you’re a gamer, here’s the steam link. It was odd just watching people play a game and talk about it. That’s a thing that people actually do as a primary source of income now which I just find really weird. But I was proud to see the work he has put into this thing beginning to bear fruit.

Others of my friends have been resting, in the true sense of the word. I used to dislike how people would always ask me “Are you ‘resting’?” when I wasn’t working, and make the inverted commas too. But here we are, a world where there’s a whole lot of “resting” going on. And that feels ok. Who knows what dreams may come when we aren’t constantly throwing our energy against service industry day jobs and office temping and construction and events and driving and all the crazy things. Only time will tell…

I don’t think there’s ever been a time in my life where I’ve been more aware of astrology. This is partly because I’ve had time to fuck around and pick up charts and make sense of it all. And partly because as soon as you look at it you realise there’s some very unusual stuff going on right now compared to normal. There’s always this and that. But this … well, this – it’s a lot more about that than it is to do with this. This is lots of THAT. But what the fuck is THAT?

I’m as lost as you are. I did it on purpose. Ha.

But I promised you some sort of astrology… This is no expertise. This is an understanding, half received, half cobbled together. Nothing more. Don’t set fire to me.

There are five planets now in retrograde. Mercury just joined Venus, Jupiter, Saturn and Pluto. (If you count Pluto as a planet. I do. But I learnt the planets before 1986 so I still call Uranus to sound like “Your anus!” instead of “urine us!” which they literally did to try to stop children giggling, the fools.)

Today is day 1 of Mercury joining the retrograde, but it’s not all bad news, he says, and means it.

But hang on a second. Retrograde? What does that even mean? I hear that shit all the time.

Ok. Ok fine. Fuck. Fine. Put your planet head on.

So we are all careening around in space, in the gravitational pull of our small sun.

The way we perceive the planets around us is affected by our orbit in relation to their orbits.

(The moon is a different fish, of course, as that’s trapped by our field – don’t think it it for now).

With the planets (and with Pluto, fuck you) we are all turning circles in our orbit around Sol. We are all mirroring the rotation of the sun too, so in terms of what we’ve made up to make sense of stuff, we are all going anticlockwise – if we were using the sun as North Pole. I’m just dealing with the direction. today. We orbit in a direction. We also spin on an axis. Don’t go crazy thinking about the spin. Focus on the orbit. (Because hooooey there’s some crazyass spinning on the axis going on in our solar system. I’m not covering that for now – Venus and Uranus I’m looking at you.)

I’m on orbit. Annual rotation round the sun. That’s my jam. That’s where we get the whole retrograde thing. That’s what I’m trying to explain when I stop swearing.

Proximity to the sun affects time taken for an orbit around the sun, obviously. We are third from the sun, after Mercury and Venus.

On earth we make it round in 365 days and a bit – (hence leap years). Mercury only takes about 88 days. Venus about 250 – (we are close. Shame it’s made out of acid). Mars gets about two years for every one of ours. Jupiter takes about 12 years for 1 Earth year. Neptune takes over 150 years for one and Pluto staggers round in close to 250. So we are all spinning alongside one another, but sometimes in the spin, based on our comparative orbits, it looks like we are getting further away from each other, then closer, together, apart, together, apart. I’m hoping you can picture it.

This is the beginning of why we’ve probably heard of “Mercury retrograde”. With its close proximity to the sun, Mercury is the planet that goes goes in and out of “retrograde” the most frequently, which is annoying as it’s well named, after the swift-foot messenger – the giant killer – the communicator.  When it pulls away perhaps it pulls our communication skills away, if these ancient names came from ancient wisdom, as I’m happy to believe they did. Perhaps we communicate better when Mercury is running alongside us than when he appears to be pulling away.

Mercury and Venus retrograde are of course the most frequent and short lived, as they are closer to the sun than us. No surprises. Love and communication.

When you get further out then the in and out periods last much much much much longer and it’s very much either in or out. But for today both of the quick planets are retrograde, and so are Jupiter and Saturn and Pluto (and Neptune is trailing off soon as well) so the only planet running alongside us is Mars. The killer. The planet of cutting.

Communication has just got harder with Mercury. Love is going backwards with Venus. Old established systems have been in decline with Jupiter. Responsibilities are long waned with Saturn. But we still have innovation with Uranus. For now we have the huge power of instinct over time – the sea – from Neptune.

And we have Mars, very near, visible in the constellation of Pisces from our viewpoint. The warrior is fishing. Pulling interesting things out of flow. And cutting through a lot of the crap.

But next constellation is Ares. Mars’ll be there in ten days. Mars and Ares are basically the same force, but different aspects. The Ancient Roman will go into the Ancient Greek established power. And he’ll go in supported by creativity and instinct. And just like he has been in Pisces, he’s running with us at the moment and he will try and cut the stuff that isn’t helpful.

This could be a good fight coming, internal or external. But we have to be energetically ready.

A dear friend recently said he was worried one day I’ll just “go full Mad Max”.

If ever there was a time…

Can you spot the tiny little frog in the photo?

Many of the people walking around on the Heath today certainly couldn’t. And that photo is the best of many, taken in macro. The frog itself, one of many, is tiny. So tiny. Tiny tiny tiny.

First there was a storm. Huge flash storm. Bing bang wallop. “Hi there, it’s nature, remember me?” Great fat dollops of water like sacks of custard, splatting us. For the humans it meant “HIDE!”

For the tadpoles of Hampstead, the bugle was blown. “Amphibians! Transform! Now is the time to use your LEGS!”

Suddenly, after the storm, hundreds of miniscule frogs were wandering all over the place.

“We have legs and we must use them! No more will there be the oppression of the water. No more must we submit only to the swimminess. We amphibians must rise now and take our rightful place in the middleworld!”

“Great! I’m with you. But … where are we going?”

“We go to where the legs take us. We can go left, we can go right – look, I’m going left! Now I’m going right! With legs!”

“Up and down seems more restricted though, more so than it was in the down world? We were very good at up and down there. And we could do left and right…”

“SILENCE! We can jump, can we not? In which action we achieve both up AND down. And we have a whole new world to explore.”

“Yes, but… I mean the birds? They seem to want to eat us. And … the big clumpy boots … ?”

The paths of Hampstead Heath ran red today with the blood of tiny frogs. Trampled by heedless feet, picked up by magpies, rolled on by bicycles. Evolution in action. And where the hell where they going, with their new legs? Some seemed hellbent on escaping the pond, others hellbent on returning to it. All of them, tiny tiny animals, complete but so impossibly small. Just moving because they could move. Like all of us. Hacking it together with no real clue and hoping it lands well.

“We have legs now, so we must use them!” That’s the evolutionary signal that takes them to their deaths in droves. But some of them live. Some of them are lucky and go on to be big fat happy frogs with their very own pile of leaves.

“How did you survive the spawning?” “Oh I was better than all the ones right next to me who were picked off.” “Are you sure it wasn’t just you desperately and aimlessly banging around thinking of nothing but self preservation and just somehow … lucking out?” “No. I’m a special frog. My survival is down to frog-genetics. I’m a special frog.” “Great, so you must have some advice for the frogs coming after you as to how to survive the spawning?” “Yes! Just … put one webbed foot in front of the other! And if you come anywhere near my little froggy leaf hole then so help me I’ll eat you myself you little bastard. This is MINE! I got here first. Fuck you. Fuck. You. Fuck you.” “Ok, thanks Mister frog. That’s all.” “Fuck … oh sorry. I got carried away. Good, so you’ve got it all. You’ll cut the bit at the end though. And make more of how special I am, ok? Great. Thanks.”

Bless the little critters though, before they get fat and slow. It’s raining again so they won’t dry out. Statistically with low footfall on the Heath today and loads of rain, I reckon they chose a good day to come out in numbers. The ponds of Hampstead will be well stocked and croaky in late summer. And the herpetologist that heard me hungover yarking the other day and thought it was the rare Hampstead Shouting Frog will be so busy and happy finding interesting variants of real frog that the froglike noises I was making will slip from his memory. Unless I’m foolish enough to get drunk like that again.

Morning found me leaving the flat armed with a bag containing a mirror and an electric razor. I tried this the other day but was stymied by the shaver telling me it had 40 minutes of charge but actually only having 40 seconds. This time I had charged it all night. I hit the heath meaning business.

The light isn’t great in Mel’s bathroom. Small animals making nests on The Heath will likely be glad of copious amounts of shorn off beard blowing around. I don’t want to have to clean up the carnage from any indoor attempts to trim my beard – It’s made out of razor wire. And over the last few weeks I’ve been slowly transforming into that well loved figure Mister Razorbeard BadgerSanta.

With the summer heat it’s getting unbearable, and knowing as I do that it takes a fortnight of lack of attention for a new one to sprout I thought I’d trim the hedge. Then at least I can eat without having to wash my face afterwards. Here I am, at the beauty salon.

Tristan made himself a mohawk a few weeks ago. Lots of people have been experimenting with topiary. It’s a good time. I thought I’d follow the grey hair line and give myself mutton chops and a great big handlebar moustache. I thought it might be a look I could sport for a week or two just for fun. Maybe I’d look like some sort of theatrical impresario from the old days when they’d set animals on fire, cage weird looking people and accidentally kill themselves in great big yellow cannons.

I look like I should be wearing shorts and sandals, earnestly selling vegan Blancmange from the back of a tricycle in Shoreditch with my hair in a topknot.

Eventually I’ll end up clean shaven, but what’s the rush? I’m just as employable bearded as unbearded – so long as I know what my agent has pitched me for. In this magical time where nobody really gives a fuck about appearance I can experiment with looks, if for no other reason than that it’s fun to do so. Tomorrow if I get up in time it’ll be cavalry whiskers. But then I have to start buying razor blades again to keep them looking sharp, which is the whole reason I have a beard in the first place. There’s a reason why all the razor blades in supermarkets are in security tags, and the reason is that they’re MASSIVELY OVERPRICED.

Still. Maybe time to start thinking about cosmetic things. At some point in the not too distant future there’ll be acting to do that doesn’t just involve talking into a microphone.  Not just another Tempest, although that’s confirmed now. Lots of lovely stuff, yet to be known, yet to be understood, piling into my life just after solstice. I can smell it.

On which subject, The Hampstead Butcher took back and replaced my rancid rib-eye immediately. I would never normally have brought something back but it went off QUICK. Charlotte advised me to do it, and I’m bloody glad I did. Expensive things, Rib-eyes. And from next week I’m off meat for a bit so I’m having a frantic last hurrah with the lovely things I really care about in the meaty world. Steak and lamb chops. Omnomnom