AlBarclay

I should’ve brought my book with me. I arrived to pick up two keyboards at 11am and didn’t actually get them into my car until just after 3pm.

I went and had a coffee in The Railway Tavern next to West Hampstead, and then spent much of the early afternoon enjoying the late summer heat up in north London. Picking up so late I figured I’d wait until after six to drop off as then I could avoid paying Congestion Charge, so the whole deal took most of the day. Eventually I pulled up in a motorcycle bay opposite The Arts and had Maddy and Brian on hand to sling everything into the theatre. Home at half six and feeling the worse for wear. Not that I’ve had a busy day, I’m just tired at the moment. I think I’ll have to do that thing where I go through my diet. This isn’t getting any better and I don’t want to shuffle off from neglect at 50. I’ve had this programmed in by my health nut dad. “So long as you start really caring about your health at 50 you can live your life until then.” I’ve hit the magic number.

It’s hot in the flat tonight. Boo is hunting flies. Last night I dreamt she learnt how to clone herself so she was probably running all over me. It is the Lions Gate. 8/8 and the moon is high behind my head as I write. A good time to be making pledges to myself about a healthier existence going forward. I don’t HAVE to eat so badly. I just do.

Let’s have some good work coming up. Let’s get healthy and fit and make some money too, eh? Two little auditions came in today, both due by Tuesday. I see no reason why I can’t get both of them. And tomorrow I’m off to connect with my Alma Mater and throw around a spot of Shakespeare. Despite recent setbacks I’m gathering again. There’s still fight left in the old dog, I’m gearing up for another round.

This moon is big and bright tonight, right behind my head. It’s making me feel weird. Brian got an early bed and is convinced he’s got something contagious. I feel heavy and slow and I’m coughing again, but I’m convinced I’ve got advancing decrepitude. One of us might be right. Early bed will help, especially as it is hot and the cats are active in the moonlight. I can’t imagine myself sleeping like a log but I’ll try.

Thinking about fitness and money. I need to get some acting work soon. Day job stuff is a little thin on the ground suddenly. This might be my favourite time of year but that’s partly due to a history being lucky at this time of year, so I’ll need to get lucky, eh?

Right now it’s just me and the cats. I went and booted up Skyrim on the Steamdeck today just as it felt like things were slow enough that I could do it for a while. Skyrim takes weeks and weeks but it is the definition of a classic game, and I’ve never given it the time as I know how much time it needs. I’ll work my way slowly through this Nordic tale. One of my old friends saw on my Steam activity that I was playing it and sent me a message “I used to be an adventurer like you. Then I took an arrow in the knee.” That’s a decent enough in joke… It’s a very strange game. This evening my character went on a bender and sold somebody’s goat to a giant and now I’m trying to make things better. There are plenty of moral choices in the game but very few moral consequences. It was made at a time before people with agendas started making videos of one option as if it was the only option and putting them on YouTube: “This game forces everyone to sell goats to giants, look here is me doing it, it must be the only option.”

They’ve just released a simplified broken version of Disco Elysium on mobile, stolen from the devs and with all the interest removed. It’s one of the most fascinating titles from the last decade if you get the Final Cut, but for mobile they’ve cut the teeth out. It needs to have those teeth to be the challenging sad weird piece of story that was released some years ago by excellent developers none of whom will get a penny from the mobile port as the studio has gone full Sugarman.

Games are fascinating and broken right now. I’m happy to either play none or play old ones. There’s more character and style in most of the old ones. BG3 excepted.

But this is why I need to get fit. Games don’t build body. I’m talking to some personal trainer type human tomorrow who works in the park over the road. I’m gonna try to start going to yoga classes with Lou. Time to remember the old bod.

And time to try and make some money. The things are connected loosely. Nobody is gonna pay me to gather nirnroot and kill dragons (Skyrim), or overcome the conflicting voices in my head and my own self loathing and try and work out who I am (Disco Elysium).

A spot of driving tomorrow and I do have some lines to learn. All is well.

I’m still dealing with binmen and rats. Apparently a form needed to be lodged after I spoke to Freddie the rodent man. I have to lodge it not him. Technically my block caretaker has to lodge it but he’s on annual leave. So I had a go today.

The bins go out tomorrow and the guys aren’t going there unless they have to. Path of least resistance. The room is full again. I went off up RBKC to try and talk to someone, ended up on a dedicated internal phone line inside the town hall for half an hour. I was watching the interesting folk of the borough coming and going with their problems. One lovely old guy who was homeless for two years and is now having to do so much admin to keep the place he’s been housed in that he is almost done with it. The guy I spoke to was helpful when I eventually spoke to him. He was probably upstairs when I was down.

I’ve given loads of time to this problem that is only mine because of the habit I have of making things my problem when I know that otherwise they have been disguised by a “Somebody Else’s Problem field”. (“An SEP is something we can’t see, or don’t see, or our brain doesn’t let us see, because we think that it’s somebody else’s problem. That’s what SEP means. Somebody Else’s Problem. The brain just edits it out, it’s like a blind spot.”) Douglas Adams put it well, but I’m immune to them. Much of what I do on events – the stuff that makes people call me back – that’s because I make it my problem. “The Somebody Else’s Problem field… relies on people’s natural predisposition not to see anything they don’t want to, weren’t expecting, or can’t explain.” That’s never been me. Apart from my own mess.

I don’t want to see this rubbish problem in my block, but I can, so I’m fixing it. The flies come in through my window and they wouldn’t be breeding here if the bin men were taking the bags out.

I am paying a huge amount per month in service charge, and I’m doing most of the work right now. There’s some serious fuckery taking place here… But that’s another blog.

Glorious night this evening, with Brian and Maddy, finally seeing The Play that goes Wrong. It went wrongwrong tonight, there was a genuine understudy takeover halfway through. But it’s a glory too. It has run and run and spawned copies and with good reason.

I wonder how long that actor might have held the “ledger” thing until what happened happened. There are some really smart moments of durational comedy. This is something that has run and run now, the chaos looks chaotic but it’s tightly practiced. It still feels fresh enough. I enjoyed myself and it was a lovely way for the three of us to be social in The West End. I love this city. There’s so much variety, even if people are lazy and entitled and slow and noisy. A plumber came and serviced my boiler and he wanted to buy some of my random statues… I pointed out to him they were resin not bronze.

It is much quicker to get to Smithfield Market from mine if you go by an ebike rental than any other means. It’s summer, the first of August, high summer, the month named after the emperor who was in charge when Jesus popped up. He was another Libra/Virgo cusp. Like him, this is my favourite month.

“Everything dries up in August,” is received information.

Back when it was in person auditions, I would finally start to get seen for things in August because they needed a me type and the ones with the major agents were all up at Edinburgh so they couldn’t go to Soho and do something humiliating for the possibility of money. Now it’s self tapes, so I guess the same old same old is more possible. But I’m still hopeful. It has always been a lucky month, August. I tried to ignore the poster for Cumbers and Coleman once again reinforcing the idea that there are only about twelve actors. I’m here, there are jobs, something is going to give. Yes it’s the same the same the same forever forever forever. But we hope.

I have finally auditioned for a theatre that you’ve heard of. For over twenty years, and now having worked at the RSC, I have never auditioned for a theatre you have heard of. Last month I did. I’ve got a recall too, yay. Hopefully there’ll be some work at the end of it. Thank fuck. This industry is cruel, casual and arbitrary. I graduated in 2002. I’ve worked loads and with excellent practitioners. Something’s rotten in the state of Denmark. But …! A good theatre up north put me on the list for an actual audition. Normally it’s a straight offer or nothing. Maybe I’ll be able to go through a process and fit into a company and do the thing I am here for. That’s what I dreamed when I left Guildhall, but the auditions never ever came. Let’s see how this first one goes, twenty years too late. I’m used to disappointment as there’s been plenty of film stuff which is tricky. That was my first job, a film. Is the industry really that short sighted that film people can’t audition for theatre? I can report back with confidence: “YES.”

I went to Smithfield to hang out with James. James and I did theatre back in the day, for people you’ve never heard of. I turned down a ridiculously lucrative corporate training opportunity “you’ll never get this again” because of press night for a show where I was paid virtually nothing, up in Surbiton. Sliding doors, but I knew I wanted the performer life, I needed it. James was in that show. Now he does a proper job but he was there at the nexus even if he didn’t know about it. I turned down guaranteed big bucks for … for this and I’m still struggling.

Today we ate at St John’s though and I’m happy to be part of £200 for lunch as I’ve got so very good at dayjobberising. We had a whole crab and loads of good stuff and a bottle of wine. I am not broke at the moment but fuck, I feel the lack of that training job I turned down. Life, eh?

This evening I went to the press night of something that is part of the problem. This is the sort of thing I was swept up into, where people eat your heart and your work. Loads of wonderful clever and skillful actors who are probably on an hourly rate because it is technically facilitation, and their undeniable skill is being vampirised by production. It was incredibly well produced, for sure. It was glorious. The fault was in the execution, the creative side. Whoever is marshalling these underpaid workers hasn’t quite got their finger on what makes things interesting for actual real people. Ok, I asked lots of workers what their hourly was. The carnival people are on less than I thought anyone worked for these days. The bar aren’t on much more. It’s barely a living wage. I cannot cannot respect anyone, particularly in something trying to pretend to be theatre, when they don’t pay their workers properly, particularly when the ticket price is tiered. You get a special wristband if you pay more. That means the actors do more with you if you’re rich. No amount of enthusiasm will get you as an audience over that border it’s posh wristband or it’s steerage. That’s capitalism embedded in an industry that has always been free of hierarchy and has to be to work. It makes me sick to my stomach. And suddenly I see why this thing they still weirdly call “immersive” instead of “tiered” has appealed to all the various narcissists I’ve known over the years. It’s a new form of hierarchy: lords and serfs. It’s a fucked model and it came out of goodwill.

Burn it.

And I’m off to bed.

Home and up early to lay down a tape. Trying to keep it understated as I get the sense this one has been round and round and the notes ask for it to be understated. I was tired though. Got it in 2 minutes before the deadline and my agent downloaded it almost immediately. Just in time. Sad to miss the last night of the festival, but prioritising in person auditions have caused me far more inconvenience back in the day. I will still fly the flag for the self tape audition. I got most of the festival.

Then I had mistaken today for a bank holiday and having discovered it wasn’t, I saw no reason not to change my plans. So I watched all the highlights for the final test match at The Oval, England vs India. It has been an amazing series but the Indian team stepped up at the end of yesterday and today and they worked so incredibly hard to force the series into the third ever drawn test series in the history of test matches. They won game 5 by 8 runs. Sure, Chris Woakes came on with his arm in a sling and knew he couldn’t face a ball. It was nail biting stuff and if Woakes hadn’t taken that fall before his first innings he would easily have gotten the 8 runs over two innings that we needed, but that’s the game. Largely I’m happy to see a drawn series if I look at the quality of the matches throughout. Absolutely brilliant cricket, as it should be. I only like test cricket, I like it because it is an endurance game, and I respect both sides utterly in that match up.

To honour the Indian victory I bought a great big takeaway Dishoom for Brian Maddy and I. I ate until there was no room left and there’ll be stuff to heat up tomorrow. Even after just a couple of nights in a field it has been lovely having access to my soft comfy bed and the friendly weird cats.

Tomorrow back in the world. Today was recovery. Worst possible time for an audition, when you’re knackered, but I’m okay with what I sent – perhaps lacking in spark but these are unnamed characters, they don’t want spark, they are doing a job in the script that pushes the story. I made choices that hopefully reflected that.  I’m back to the drawing board now so I’ll take all comers.

Home home home! I’m absolutely bushed. It was cold in that field at night.

I woke with the light cooking me out, trying to lie in, but out by about half eight. Looking up at the sky I could see it was about to rain. No more festivals this year, I didn’t want to pack up a damp tent for a season, so I took advantage of the window of dryness. Much activity in the campsite as everyone in our little band had the same idea.

We were loaded into the cars in record time. I’ve never had everyone so ready to leave so early on a Sunday. I’ve left on Sunday a few times over the years, it just becomes necessary if life things are happening. But this year we all did.

Gen is prosecuting tomorrow morning so she had to study the case, she set her laptop up in a sheltered area by the lake and worked all morning. Dedication. I got back onto the frankincense. I don’t know why that seemed the right thing to do but it really did. That was my festival thing this year, swinging a thurible full of incense. There were very few peaceful calm areas where I could set up and read tarot, so apart from a few very lovely readings for people it was largely just cleansing smoke. Next time I’ll bring bigger charcoal discs and a gauze, and I’ll have different cleansing smokes for different times. Sage on Friday, Palo Santo Saturday, Frankincense Sunday. That seems the right combination.

My fingers are a little tender now from poking hot things.

We watched a couple of acts today. Generally though the music isn’t the draw at Wilderness. If they get the big bands they attract the lager lot so they don’t get them. Let them go to Reading whilst we get the throwbacks and the kooky chilled trancey stuff. Sometimes it’s incredible. Bjork was off the scale a few years ago. Often there is something ethereal and delightful and weird, but this year if it was there I missed it. But I wasn’t in a very consuming mood. I wanted to kick back, but I also wanted to shift energy. No Wilderness Orchestra, which was a sadness. Another orchestra, and lots of people talking that perhaps we were supposed to know. I recognised some of them, and others could tell they were well known by the fact that they weren’t particularly trying to be engaging.

I’ve had a lovely few days and I do feel refreshed. I think the unexpected experience yesterday was net positive – even if at the time it was hard work. Good people. Still a lovely festival even despite the corporate takeover.

Everyone has gone on the ride. I thought I’d take the opportunity to write something. Supergrass is playing the end of their headline set. Much of the music has been a throwback this year, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. We weren’t feeling Supergrass though.

Today was a long long sunny day and I kinda called it a day of work even though I’m not officially on a walkabout this year. I spent the morning reading tarot for people and wafting a Frankincense censer around. Had some lovely interactions with strangers through those remarkable cards, and also saw some old friends. John Limb, bless his face, coming out at me when we were at the cricket.

I used to do the commentary at the horse racing here. The cricket is still going. It’s an attempt at making cricket more fun, largely by allowing people to streak. I think I’d have been fine if I hadn’t met lovely John, who crossed my palms with a mushroom. Sometimes they hit you hard. “It’s Hawaiian,” he told me. He didn’t say “It’s gonna blow your face off.”

I spent most of the afternoon lying on my back near the lake reading the messages in the trees and contemplating life the universe and everything. I think I’ve got it sorted now guys, if I only I could remember it…

It took me a long long time to come back, like weeks, 5 hours, forever? Eventually I walked back into my own skin and now they are all spinning in the air to the sound of Supergrass while I write to you here, oh constant reader.

Ride is coming to an end. Time to plug back into these glorious people in this happy place. Last night here until next time…

—

It’s very late, I thought I’d be asleep by now but there was good dancing that needed to be done and I had my glosticks and my Frankincense thurible. It’s amazing how comforting fucked people seem to find the smell of Frankincense. “It reminds me of childhood,” said many, which puts into perspective how much more secular we are becoming, generation to generation.

We are off into the festival.

We started an “overheard at the festival” group just as, from within the bubble, this festival and the clientele kinda puncture themselves on purpose.

“It’s funny cos the most hardcore place is the bubble tent” was one man this afternoon walking away from a slightly earnest we choir mistress.

“Would you mind stopping burning that next to the kids,” “It’s wood.”

“He told me he had a system with roulette and he kept on putting his arm around me and then he lost like sixty quid in a few minute.”

“I realised after I did it I thought oh God I’ve just given the ADHD kid caffeine and now I guess I’ve got to deal with it.”

“No she was the prime minister’s aide though so she was in a position to know…” (this mostly remarkable as it was a conversation at 4am walking past our tents.

“Yeah I wasn’t gonna do it and then I saw the twenny five k so I just … kissed everyone in the room.” “Everyone?” “Ya everyone.” There is no context in which this one makes sense…

“Oh these aren’t mushrooms these are fertility pills.”

These were just a few. It’s a fertile ground.

Tomorrow I’ll get to know people around the festival better doing my readings with Alice’s deck, just doing my way to add value, and find a connectivity at the same time. It’s a lovely practice, and well worn in these woods.

…

Trying to publish. Internet very choppy now. Send in the hounds.

I have slept very many nights in this particular field. In this vicinity. A country house grounds with high acreage. Every year it gets bigger. Wilderness Festival again. Usually I sleep in public camping despite my accreditation as the lakes are more accessible. This time I’m actually in performer. Which is weird as this year I’m really just an assistant with a free pass.

I’ve brought loads of woowoo stuff. My ADHD is off the scale, I can’t be here and not be adding value… I’ve already given loads of people glowsticks kinda irrespective of whether they were welcome. Just doing something. But I’ve got some serious kit with me.

Tonight I can write from my tent. Internet is gonna go to tits though tomorrow. If it doesn’t I’ll be very surprised. The bulk of people come tomorrow and it already feels crowded. The walled garden used to be a calm little spot, so now they call it “The Riddle” and some idiot sticks a sticker over your phone camera to try and make it feel special and it is a load of more of the same but with stoners working through the same old empty lines under the apple trees.

On a first night I’m a bit perplexed. It feels like the soul of this festival has been brutally consumed and regurgitated. So much alcohol branding. Shiny shiny BUY STUFF. I’m gonna reserve judgement. But lots of the woowoo stuff I brought is about cleansing, and it feels like there’s a parasitic infection here that needs some work. That’s how I can add value. Not the glowsticks. Just the glow.

Tomorrow I’ll stay straight and be there for my friend. Then I’ve got various mycological wonders that might have affected my thinking this evening in small quantities. Generators and electric noise and I know only too well how it all fits together. You don’t get the lights in the darkness without the fire and you can’t harness the fire without the artifice. And artifice comes in so many forms but it’s always artifice. Nature will win in the end, but some people make a lot of noise in this denial phase. This festival. I think we need festivals, living like we do. But I wonder if this is the festival we need now. There are QR codes on the wall of “The Riddle”. Everywhere I look there are hooks for the unwary. I brought cash but nobody takes it. “Isn’t it supposed to be cashless here?” “We’ll see how that works out when everything goes down.” Adapt or die. We need to adapt back to cash fast, generally. Japan never lost it and we can learn from them.

Anyway I’m likely not making any sense and that was a little one I grew myself years ago. Thanks pal.

5am and the Stratford upon Avon polyester pillow is nagging my face. I wake, snoozy. My brain switches on as I wander through the unfamiliar room for water. I remember I need to be in London by 8. I had totally forgotten. Fuck. So much for coffee with Jenny.

5.30 and I’m behind the wheel, no contact lenses, putting them in as I drive.

6.00 way too fast in the slow lane as I undertake all the reversed drivers hogging middle as they haven’t woken up yet on their way to work. Rush hour motorways are always reversed. A couple of people think I’m racing them personally so I let them win. Mostly I get home in remarkable time.

7.45 I pull into my parking spot and park atrociously. The caretaker’s daughter is there with a pair of marigolds and a bin bag looking worried.

8.00 and I’ve realised that José’s daughter is not a chip off the old block. I’ve known her dad for decades and he gets stuck in. She won’t come into the bin room at all. Spiders. I park the car better and steel myself.

8:15 and I’ve got her to help me rig a hose across the front of the front door. She’s worried it’s not a perfect seal on the tap. It’s summer.

I’m in a tiny little subterranean brick room that hasn’t been cleaned for so long there’s mold growing on the walls from old food items grown half sentient. I’ve carried up all the bags and bins in there and left them on the street. I’m spraying decades of crap out here. It’s empty but it’s no less vile for that. I’m not sure what half of the stuff I’m pressure washing into the drain is. I think some of it might well be rat poo. I need to make fucking sure there’s none of that left before the inspection, as I’m thinking it might be twenty years old. Those little nuggets are unmistakable though, like little shitbeans.

8:45 and I’m drenched in sweat and water vapour and Timon has been woken up by my exclamations. “Can you pick the stuff up that’s too big for the drain?” That was me to the benign but clueless daughter. No. No she won’t. Squeamish. Really not what I need. She won’t touch anything without marigolds. I get it. She’s working. I’m doing this for… Reasons. I explain to Timon what I’m doing and why, as far as I’m able. I don’t expand the complicated issues around entitlement, I just mean practically speaking. “They wouldn’t have seen the rat, those bin men.” Timon tells me. “I know its routine. It’s never there at that time of the morning.” Hmmm. “The rat.” Spoken of like an old friend.

So. There’s a rat. Fuck it. I thought it was just laziness. I’ve been in a wet room with rat crap for half an hour. I go up to my flat and very thoroughly wash my hands.

9am and we’ve taken the hose out and I’m using a broom and a dustpan to get the water and the stubborn bits out of there . I’m being very thorough. I’m wishing I had a mask now but it’s too late either way.

9.15 and I’m soaked to the skin mostly with sweat but also spray. Coffee. It’s as good as I’m gonna get it. Who knows when the inspector is gonna show. I put back the poison traps and send off José’s daughter. Couldn’t have done it without her, helping wind the hose, turning it on and off. She’s not a waste of space at all, just not a caretaker. I wait.

Man from the council comes at 11. “Definitely no rodents,” I tell him. “They just saw damage on the bags from the crows, honest guv.” He is not completely satisfied that the place is rodent proof but he’s good enough to see I’ve been working on it and he knows I’m gonna finish the job, cos I am and he sees the fire in my eyes. I’m gonna get some gauze and metal plating and my wazzer, block the clever fucker out even if I can’t trap him. José will be back by then too. Between the two of us we surely can trap a London river rat. They’re smart but we’ve got thumbs.

Council guy tells me he will give the bin guys the all clear. They’ll go back there until they find another excuse.

Timon lives opposite the bins. He’s renting. “I guess I got money off cos of the rat,” he says. He’s hard to judge, laconic. Writer. Does commercials and stuff. He’s plugged the drainpipe with glass bottles. “I heard it running up the drain pipe last night. Thought I’d try and trap it in there.”

I look up the length of the pipe against the wall. Rat is on the roof now then. From there it can access the whole block, so perhaps we are shot of the fucker… But they are creatures of habit. I’m gonna block that door.

11:30 and I start my day.

I haven’t packed for Wilderness but I’ve been pretty busy all day and now I just came from a lovely evening meeting. Creative ideas and potential involvement in a lovely thing.

I’m pooped. I’m running a bath. Don’t want to do anything else today but sleep so I’ll pack tomorrow. This day was over before it started. Made a lovely club sandwich for lunch and Brian cut me in on his dinner which is for the best as I’m virtually a zombie now.

I’ve googled the early symptoms of Weils Disease and I’ll bring one of my spare courses of antibiotics to Wilderness as I’m not planning on doing my liver any more harm than absolutely necessary what with all the acid reflux.

Wishy washy. Yuk. It’s funny the things I do without being paid. “Mother, Father, I am going to be an ACTOR.” And I got my wish, with all the trimmings.