AlBarclay

It’s like I predicted what was to come when I called yesterday’s blog “Nice Warm Flat”. I booked a boiler service through the insurance. The boiler is the only thing I’ve got insured in this flat, remembering the long cold winter three years ago when I was Scrooging in a freezing warehouse and then coming home to a freezing flat. The guy came round, took the face off the boiler and swore. I got out of the way and let him work. I wasn’t going to give him any excuse to duck it. He cursed and spat and replaced a load of parts. But then he realised the gas intake was rusted at which point he lost his shit and condemned the boiler. “I should’ve called it at the start. I’m in too far now. You can’t switch it on. Someone will be back tomorrow. Sign this.” “Thank you.”

Again this culture of not doing it if there’s a way out. It’s to his credit that he persisted, and replaced all the parts that needed replacing until he hit a wall as he didn’t have a gas intake in his van. He’s a goodie.

He says he’s coming back tomorrow to fix it. Half of me believes him and half of me is expecting someone else to come around, tell me my insurance isn’t valid for whatever reason and plunge me back into freezing Hel for the rest of winter. It’s down to the individual, and that guy was a good guy. I suspect he’s in the minority.

I can’t wash tonight, but I’ve got an electric heater in my room so I can stay toasty. You don’t miss these things until you need them. I hope I don’t get one of those negative lazy bastards tomorrow like the oven guys who fucked my back.

Tomorrow I’ve got the guy from Bulb Energy installing a smart meter, and to double down I also bought a Nest Learning Thermostat on Amazon, so with any luck once tomorrow is over the whole heating situation in Barclay Towers will be more energy efficient, cheaper and sexier. Either that or it’ll be more than everybody’s job’s worth and I’ll end up installing my own boiler without blowing up the house, carrying the old one out of the flat and dying of apoplexy surrounded by expensive intelligent machinery.

Today was a big day. I woke up before the pain woke me. I held off taking painkillers and as it happened I got to hold off all day. There’s a persistent mild discomfort but the shocking laser of hard constant pain didn’t rear its head today. Perhaps bodies mend themselves after all. Perhaps I’ll just get better now. I’m still going to go to my doctor’s appointment on Wednesday and ask for a referral to a physio as I don’t want this shit recurring, but FUCK YEAH.

As if in celebration, Flavia came over this evening and we watched Kiss Kiss Bang Bang curled up under a blanket on the sofa. Old friends…

 

I’ve been very aware of the darkness today. This is the hardest month, and I’m glad there’s been distraction in the shape of this filming and various other projects on the horizon. I’m back at home and tired much earlier than usual. I’ve got an appointment with my GP on Wednesday morning, but part of me is tempted to just pay a physiotherapist. I really want to know what’s wrong. The mornings are still stark with pain and the over the counter drugs have stopped working so well now. My body has got used to them.

Today I was turning a friend’s flat over in North London. It looks likely I’ll be shifting my base to Hampstead for a month or so to flatsit for her. It’ll mean I can go for long walks on the heath on bright winter mornings, which can only help with the January blues. She had some guests over the New Year who trashed the place and ended up being so egregious that she’s not allowed to have anyone stay but me from now on – I’m ok in that I’m known to the landlord, and he understands that I’ve got my own place and am just there for maintenance purposes. So be it. It’s a lovely thing for me, to be able to kick around in Hampstead for a few weeks and see London from a different point of view, at the cost of occasionally changing a fuse or collecting mail. This city changes it’s shape geographically and socially depending on where you lay your head in the evenings. It’ll be good to see it North-headed for a change. I’ll probably end up seeing friends I don’t see so often living in the South West. London is basically lots of little self contained cities under one big umbrella, with excellent if expensive transport links connecting them together.

I’m back in Chelsea for now, again. Back in my warm flat and finding it much more like home than it felt when I got back from America and the cat was gone. Incense burning, bath running and I’ve booted up the laptop for a game of Half Life 2 just for the nostalgia while I work out where the fuck I put my Christmas book tokens after finishing my novel.

I’ve got plans for the flat now which I think I might finally be able to achieve in a month or so. I’ve been researching companies that could come in and sort out the bathroom. A shower, tiles, new carpets, new doors and a bit of work on the electricity and a bit of sorting in the kitchen and I can start to feel I’m living in a grown up flat instead of student digs full of antiques. Oh and a big push on eBay to get the rest of the random junk moved on. If I go to Hampstead I’ll make sure my room is tenanted and I can use it as practice for potentially lucrative Airbnb fun at significant times of the year, such as the Chelsea Flower Show, or if I book a tour…

I spent most of the day sitting in a perfectly realistic living room. Furniture and lovely ornaments, including some Wedgwood Jasperware pots and ornate antique vases. Big decorative pictures on the walls. Daylight outside the windows. A chandelier. It was only when you look up that the cracks begin to appear. The ceiling is torn to allow the cable for the chandelier, which runs up thirty feet in the air and more to the REAL ceiling. It’s only then that you might start to realise that the daylight outside the windows is burnt in by arrays of halogen bulbs. The walls are just flats. Outside it’s a box in a huge empty space. Inside there’s smoke blowing, heaters burning, cameras and microphones and so many people and all the paraphernalia of a set in full work mode. The other actors and I are milling around, coming in and out, doing this, doing that, talking and walking and sitting and fretting. The work of today will translate to just seconds on screen. I might see three of the many words I spoke make the edit. I might see none. It’s happened before. I’m not going to rule it out. But it’s a good gig for me right now. I’m thrilled to have booked it even if I can’t name it and don’t speculate publicly please. I’m up to my knees in non-disclosure agreements and leaky actors don’t get re-employed.

After the wrap I walked back to my trailer and was startled by the reality of darkness. It was DARK. After all the artificial light, I’ll probably end up with jetlag.

Now I’m in Mike’s Audi, driving across London to Shoreditch to see my best friend. I love how you get a driver for the day you’re on set. All the VIP treatment just for remembering words and doing a voice. Reality again tomorrow for a while. Boo hiss.

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Now I’m installed in a booth at Busaba Shoreditch waiting for Minnie. Good on the driver for being okay with changing my drop-off to accommodate my need to see my best friend. If he’d taken me back home it would’ve been too late by the time I got back out here. I owe him one. I’ll have to get him a present for next time I’m on set. He’s a Manchester United fan. I’ll think of something.

This set is very much a community and I’m glad to meet it. Lovely people working together for a common goal. There is some wonderful work going on.

I’ve just resisted the temptation to get some celebratory alcohol, and I’m making do with an Appley minty ginger thing, which is nice enough and won’t make me feel like shit in the morning. Roll in another photo of my drink.

I’ve learnt a lot today by observing. I want to be on as many sets as possible with people of the caliber I’ve just been on with. There’s so much to learn from watching people who have had loads of screentime. I remember observing an old Trojan years ago for just a couple of days in Bangkok and stealing the way he behaved on set. You always grow through working. This has already been a learning experience for me.

Yesterday evening I got a call from the second AD on my upcoming shoot. “You know that long bit that was divided up among six people? How about you learn it all for Saturday morning?”

I’m always game for a quick learn, and I have been known to describe myself as spongebrain. The gamble is, do I allocate the time? Or do I sabotage myself utterly, keep on putting it off, try to cram it just before I sleep, dream about it and wake up fretting? Well, it’s a friend of mine’s birthday party in Soho. Old Al would have four glasses of red wine in him before “oh hell, my lips, I’m filming tomorrow – oh shit the learn!” Shiny new Al still made a showing having got to a stage of relative fluency already. I got a present, had one non alcoholic stout and I was out.

And even that brief moment was a joy. I caught up with a few good friends, and even had a rare chance to catch up with Brian when he’s not working. He’s got a PA now. I think it’ll help immeasurably, and it doesn’t surprise me. He’s been non-stop for so long I’m amazed he hasn’t fallen over. He probably has, in fact. I’ve seen his migraines and they have names and speak in capital letters. We need another job like the one in Milan where we could eat truffles and drink prosecco and call it a work outing. He happened to have the spare keys on his person which is revolutionary. I’ve been gagging for them. Campbell and Tom and I have been working off one keyset, and hiding them in flowerpots when we go out. It’s neither ideal nor secure, but nobody can cut a new key for the upstairs lock as all the remaining ones are copies of copies of copies and they no longer copy properly – like mice that have interbred for too many generations and have legs on their heads.

I’m not cooking this evening. I stopped in Bodeans Soho to sit on my own with a 0 alcohol Brooklyn lager and consume flesh. Then it’s an Uber home, a few more times round with fluency and connections for the lines, bath, painkillers and an early bed.

I booked a doctor’s appointment at long last. It’s on Wednesday morning. My clinic is busy. The good news is it’s early so I can grit my teeth and go in painkiller free for full assessment. I’m not going to do my usual thing of talking it down and being stoic as I want a fucking referral and I want this fixed. It’s too much, to wake up like that every morning, never mind that it gets me out of bed. I have the broken rib to compare it to, and it is actually somehow worse, even though I can’t imagine anything is broken in there. My movent range is good or I’d be guessing a partial dislocation. I think either an X-Ray or an X-pert is the only logical move.

A very dear friend of mine lost their mum recently. I knew her a little, and liked her more. It was very sudden. It was a huge shock. I found out about the illness while I was in America. The funeral was last week.

The dad wanted to immediately throw away all her clothes, and I ended up volunteering to get a car and get myself to Uxbridge in order to fill it with clothing and other important things. I certainly know the value of a clothing inheritance. I was dressed up in a smart suit for my casting in the morning, and the shoes and shirt were both my uncle’s. The scarf I wore was my mum’s. I often wear my dad’s hat.

I never wear these lovely things without a thought to the departed ones.

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First problem is, no car…

At Christmas I joined Zipcar before I realised that every single Zipcar in London had been reserved for the whole day already. I’ve sat on the membership ever since, thinking it might come in handy. Today it did. Up to Middlesex through angry roads full of shouty boys. Into a little roadway and up into the house where two old friends were sorting clothes into suitcases.

Mum died a long time ago now, and I’ll often tell you that my grief is “understood” or “processed” so I can avoid talking about it. Can we ever really recalibrate after the first contact that we ever have had with the material world took place inside their body? There was never a world without mum until there was always a world without mum.

I helped package the things and then I sat next to my friend in the car and we drove and talked. Only after the car was loaded and we were on the road did the rain start to fall. Torrential rain, battering London, flooding the roads, hammering onto the windscreen. Huge, hard, driving, cleansing rain. The Zipcar was excellent. Clever wipers keeping visibility good, tyres feeling solid and safe on suddenly nasty roads. It’s an argument against buying another £300 disaster-cart on Gumtree. We made the drop-offs and took the Zipcar back to Mornington Crescent where it sleeps. I had booked way too many hours, as I didn’t know you can extend your hours if you need to and I didn’t want time pressure to be involved in the process. Still it only cost me about £60 all in, despite driving into the Congestion Charge Zone, and up to Uxbridge and back. I think I’ll start to make more use of them what with temporary sober-Al.

Ending the day in North London, I decided to stay at my friend’s place as I’m taking care of it up in Hampstead by the heath. I stopped at Marks and Spencer’s in South End Green, and they are selling daffodils at the checkout. Daffodils. In January. And suddenly I’m crying at the checkout.

The last conversation I had with mum was about daffodils.

I don’t normally have to look at the things until late February and I know to get ready.

The wave passes very quickly as it can now. I don’t buy the daffodils, and I walk back to the flat simultaneously swearing and wondering at a world where they’re having to push daffs in January, likely because they came up too early and there’ll be another frost.

Here’s the view from my bedroom, because as ever I took no photos. Until now.

A long January day with no designated work. I woke bright and early with the pain and decided to use it to be productive. It’s amazing what you can save if you phone up and ask.

I’ve been overspending on my broadband to the tune of £15 a month, so that’s sorted now. I’ve sent in some meter readings and ordered a smart meter for gas and electricity. I’ve booked a free service for the boiler to change the magnaclean and make sure it’s all running well. Maria the cleaner showed up at 3 and has helped expunge the last of the Christmas horrorshow. The hob is pristine. The fridge is in order and all the off stuff is thrown into binbags which are out of the house with separate ones for recycling. Freezer isn’t done yet but it will be.

I’ve ordered a new vacuum cleaner. The old one finally gave up. I’ve ordered a little directional light to click onto my butsudan. My rotary shaver came in the post today but of course it only has a shaver plug on it so I can’t charge it up. I’ve ordered a convertor and I’ll have to wet shave for my audition tomorrow despite my new toy. I’ve put a calendar up and a few pictures on the walls. I’ve thrown a few bags of complete junk away. I’ve ordered a kitchen mandoline like the one that I jammed both my thumbs into about five years ago, a potato peeler and plenty more incense. I’ve thrown away more stuff than I’ve ordered.

Despite the pain I managed to bang the window frame so I’m not getting a constant freezing cold wind from the river down my back as I sleep. I laid aside my suit for tomorrow, learnt my lines and thought about approach. I’ll wake up early and do some more of that so I can go in prepared and have the best shot. I cooked good breakfast and good dinner and no lunch, as ever. I bought a half price diary and marked it up properly, then emailed possible day jobs. I unpacked the stuff I brought back from Carol and put it away properly. I tried to work out where the spare keys are. I burnt a lot of incense, had a good long chant, booked a car to help a grieving friend, and put Pickle Rick on the table in a silver platter.

I spoke to a physiotherapist but didn’t book the appointment yet. It’ll be £65 and I’m a little leery but I have a feeling it’ll be worth it to have a shot at not being on constant painkillers.

My tummy feels weird, even though I’m mixing the meds, or maybe because… It tends to be wake up to tylenol, afternoon with ibuprofen and bedtime with cocodamol on a very full stomach. It’s just as well that I’m off the booze, but my poor poor liver is getting no rest for the meantime. 

I suspect it was the sobriety that catalysed the change, although pain turns out to be a very efficient alarm clock. I’d sooner have one of those lights that go on gradually and play birdsong or whatever. But pain’s what I got, and it works fine for now.

So much for a quiet one. I’d forgotten that I had a makeup test today so it was off across London to the studio and into a trailer where the fabulous Frankee made me look a little neater and shaved me. It doesn’t matter how hard you try, there will always be visible bits of stubble on my face. I’m the one-week-beard guy. An old QC used to try to make me shave at noon in my first job and at the time I thought it was because I was too hairy rather than that the old bastard couldn’t grow a beard himself. Today he’d have applauded me, the jumped up whey face. I went on Amazon and bought something I should’ve got years ago. A top quality rotary shaver that can be used wet or dry. They usually cost a small fortune but January worked its magic and it was £40.

I got home to find something I should’ve thought of ages ago. Outside of a long suffering girlfriend, which I’ve successfully avoided finding for over a decade, I’ve only got longer suffering friends to persuade to dig bits of their anatomy into my shoulder blade. Jack had his fingers in there, Tristan got his knuckles, Tanya got her fist in, and poor tiny Claire was using gravity and her whole body weight to get her elbows stuck in.

Now I’ve got a robot. It’s the future…

I found a Christmas present waiting downstairs. It had been delivered by Hermes, and as part of the service they run it over with a steamroller and then try to persuade the local crackhead to sleep on the box for a night before they actually deliver it. Thankfully it’s pretty robust so the inner package itself was fine, even though the outer box was audibly weeping as it caught sight of itself in the mirror.

It’s a shiatsu massage machine. It’s a terrifying crawling monster.

You inflict it on yourself and then it wanders around on your back hurting you as much as you let it. You control the pressure by pulling on the straps. I’m not sure if it’s self-care or masochism but I let it get right into me today and there were two moments where something went *dink* and my whole arm went tingly. I rushed to the bath afterwards and now I’m letting it rest. I don’t think it’s fully worked out yet, although I’m at peak nurofen so it’s anybody’s guess. I’ll know at my usual wake up time which is about 5am when the drugs wear off and I don’t want any more as my stomach is empty so I writhe around in semi sleep semi rage until it seems reasonable to have a bowl of Tylenol and take two granola or oh shit the other way round oh well…

I’ve got high hopes for this monstrous device. If it helps me clear this trapped shoulder nerve I am tempted to worship it as a deity. I’ll definitely be thanking TnT who impulse bought it for me in the sales.

January is still feeling very quiet in town as I go through this recalibration process. I’m keeping myself busy though. Six people round my flat over the course of today. Four of them in the daytime. We had another D&D session because we’ve all just finished Christmas Carol and the last one was good craic. Now it’s Campbell, Tom and I. We had a healthy meal and I must’ve got through three non alcoholic beers and a carton of orange juice. Placebos all the way right now as I service my sugar addiction while ditching the booze part. One thing at a time. It’s only a month and it’s only going to get easier. Besides there’s plenty coming up.

I think I’ll be a monk for a couple of weeks now though. It feels like the right time of year for hibernation…

I’ll try to avoid spending money as much as possible. Go out just for good friends and work. Get back on the looking for short term day jobs train. Spend as little as I can get away with in this town and make my home as nice as I can while I’m here. I can even get back on the eBay listing. There’s plenty more to sell. Plenty more to find out about. What with flat sorting and eBay alone I’ve got enough stuff to do to take every hour of every non working day for many months to come. No time like the present, etc. Plus there’s walks in the park and moving my shoulder.

NHS online says two weeks is pretty normal for this sort of shoulder pain so despite the constant nature of it I’m a bit less worried now. I reckon it’s pretty much definitely a trapped nerve, brought on by doing lots of theatre but not warming up or warming down properly (sorry Wendy) and exacerbated by carrying a heavy greasy oven down 4 flights of stairs. I’ll probably end up joining the hordes of bright eyed men and women who will be queuing for yoga classes for next few weeks as they cling onto the scraps of their resolutions. I’m going to keep safely using my shoulder in the hopes that it suddenly goes “ping” and stops trying to murder me. The sooner I can stop mixing and matching the painkillers the better, as it’s weird trying to detox while putting God knows what into my stomach every 4-6 hours.

I might call some good friends tomorrow and see if I can get a moment with them. There are various people that I haven’t seen for months and months because of the wonderful long run of work I just had. It feels like this cold dark month might be a good time to try and chase people up for dinner parties in my flat, daytime walks in parks and family catch ups.

Right now though I’m off to sleep. I have to get a quote for a bathroom floor first thing tomorrow morning to send to my mate in New Zealand…

There’s an old railway line up in Crouch End that makes for a surprising and delightful walk. For want of anything else to do this mild show-free winter Sunday, I met my dear friend and we went for a stroll to blow the cobwebs. We were not by any means the only ones to have that idea, but that’s the obstruction that comes with living in this city. You rarely do anything alone here.

We strolled companionably through trees and mud and put the world to rights surrounded by dogwalkers and families and other people sorting out the world for each other too. Then we went for a very fine but expensive sunday roast in one of the many excellent pubs in Crouch End. I don’t think the conversation stopped for a second for the whole time we were together, which was a bloody long time. This is what friends are for. We pulled a lot of stuff out of ourselves, examined it together, and decided what to do with it. A lovely Sunday and much needed.

Unfortunately the tubes stop earlier than I anticipated in Finsbury Park. I missed the last southbound Victoria line train by a whisker and now I’m committed to the long slog on the nightbus.

 

It’s empty for now and we are already in Highbury, so maybe it won’t be the screaming hellzone that I associate with the night bus. And the roads are empty. It’s just before midnight on a Sunday. Everybody is in bed or working their way towards it. It’s actually rather lovely to see these ancient streets empty. Although the bins go out in Islington tomorrow morning, so there’s plenty of rubbish on the streets.

I remember the first time I was in New York there was a rubbish collector’s strike. It had not been long, and thankfully it was winter, but the piles of flyblown garbage were already astronomical by the standards of what we are used to. It’s so delicate, the mechanism of a city this big. The majority of people have to show up for work every day or the whole place will be uninhabitable in less than a week. Nobody has a clue how to feed themselves, warm themselves, find water, survive. It’s crazy to think how quickly the whole system might collapse.

Nevertheless, this late night bus driver is going to get me home almost as quickly as the underground train driver could have. He’s zooming through the city. We are already at Clerkenwell. It’s amazing, the consensus that makes all of this possible. If there were no more buses I could have found somebody who will pick me up in their own car and get me home for a premium. Even though the streets are empty the bulk of the remaining vehicles are arteries. Buses, cabs and private hire vehicles, seeking the few stragglers like me who just want to get to their destination quicksnap and are willing to pay top whack.

We are coming into The West End now, and I’m going to stop writing and start properly participating in this delightful spectacle of a mostly deserted city. It’s a rarity.

There are so many people in this town, but sometimes it can feel like there’s nobody. I’m glad to be reminded today that there are people who just fundamentally get me. What a lovely day of companionship.

 

Dungeons and Dragons. That’s been today’s distraction. I’m now winding down, running a bath and listening to John Coltrane. Earlier today I was visited by a motley bunch of adventurers. There was a speedy psychotic gnome ranger, the conflicted elven hero cleric of a terrible sea God, a strange beautiful man who entered into a pact with Asmodeus and a swift and extremely dangerous leatherworking dwarf turned thief.

I’m the dungeon master. This isn’t a sex thing. My job is essentially to facilitate a group of people telling a story together by deciding on a number of concrete elements to the story and then allowing their imaginations to take them through it. They can try to do whatever they want and I have to apply the odds and chance in the form of a wide selection of beautiful dice. The 20 sided one gets the most use, but there are 12 sided ones, and 10 and 8 and 4. It all provides a frame for a communal storytelling which is really rather delightful and where control is given over to the dice.

I used to do it at school, and had a brief return to it about two years ago. It’s a lovely way to spend an afternoon, but the downside is that it takes a lot of time and it only really works if the same group of people can meet up every time, to pick up where they left off. Everybody has to be available. As soon as one or two people are missing it starts to feel splintered. With my life being so unpredictable, and considering most of the players are in the same line of work as me, I can’t imagine we’ll have much time to develop a campaign before availability issues start to drive the wedge in. But today was delightful. And we are committed to picking up where we left off on Monday. Let’s see what becomes of this.

It was at my flat which is lovely as it means that I don’t have to travel home now. I’m still getting bothered by my shoulder. It is unlike anything I’ve encountered before. But it didn’t stop me having a glorious day of imagination and silliness with friends.

It hasn’t quite sunk in that the run of theatre work has finally come to an end. Thankfully I’ve got some filming lined up, but that was a heck of a run and one that I’m extremely grateful for. It’s a good time for recovery now, but this city keeps on grinding and I can’t spend too long playing Dungeons and Dragons or I’ll run out of rations and have to roll to see if I’m any good at foraging.

I forced a mini oven pizza down my gullet tonight after everybody had gone, mostly as a bedrock for the ibuprofen that I’m currently overusing. Once I’ve soaked for as long as I can justify, I’m going to aim for a good night’s sleep. It’s already later than I thought it was…

Here’s a sketch from one of the players. He nicked a crap crown from the bugbear king. Gotta love this game.