AlBarclay

I couldn’t really remember the Alamo so it was nice to swing in again.

Jono was as excited as I had been the first time. We were both reared on various ethically questionable swashbuckling tales and films and so the mission where Davy Crockett met his bear had always featured in our imaginations as a significant place. A borderland problem between Mexico and Texas, borne out horribly in blood on both sides. Crockett and his companions holding out impossibly until the last. A glorious defeat that helped towards a more lasting victory.

“Remember the Alamo,” said the signs in the Texas Lone Star restaurant in Gloucester Road when I was 12. “Do you remember?” my dad would ask with a glint in his eye. “Remember what?” He’d point at the plaque on the wall. “Remember the Alamo.” I’d forget by the time we went there again. That was my dad’s sense of humour. Year after year. Until one day, 16 year old “over it” Al mumbled “Yeah dad, the Alamo,” at which point he immediately pointed at another sign I hadn’t even noticed saying “Remember Sabine Pass,” rolled his eyes and said “You kids never remember Sabine Pass, all you care about is The Alamo,” and in so doing won my begrudging teenage respect for a joke many years in the making.

I had a bit of chauffeur work to do in the morning getting people back and forth to classes, so even though I’d booked a day off I lost the morning. The afternoon saw Jono and I trundling around exploring San Antonio with no set plan whatsover. We fell into The Esquire just in time for Happy Hour, and as a result had an extremely tasty American style tapas for next to nothing.

Sometimes stumbling really is the best way to find a new place. The Esquire overlooks the Riverwalk and is full of taxidermy. We enjoyed our food. I just worried for the poor lynxes.

I booked a table tonight at a restaurant I found on the internet. Bliss, it’s called. I don’t want to get my hopes up, but the menu looks fab and I want a good birthday meal with plenty of wine. I’m driving in to UTSA at 8am tomorrow to get a bunch of young men and women to engage with a poem about slavery. I don’t want to be too vulnerable in the morning, although if I have to demonstrate emotionally available work those tears are very close when I’m hungover

---

Ok so it’s before midnight and I’m in my room. That’s a win, yes? Sure I blew about $300 on high class alcohol and tasty bits. But that’s nothing in the scheme of things. I had a lovely night. I also had foie gras in a room with two right headed vegetarians – people who are denying themselves nice things on purpose because someone has to bellwether. I used my birthday as an excuse. And I had a yummy meal with them 

Bollocks I’ve got to get up early tomorrow, and be coherent and inspiring. Plus it’s past midnight here which means blog time. Morning, uk. 🙂

 

 

It’s the autumn equinox and I’m lying under palm trees by a pool in San Antonio thinking about home. This business with Thomas Cook. Shape of things to come? Millions of British people stuck in foreign countries. Millions more stuck in their own country and upset about being unable to get out?

“We moved over here a year ago,” I’m told by one of the people I’ll be working with in San Antonio. She’s from the UK. I’m going in to a class of hers to help her literature students understand how to bring out emotion through language in poetry recital. She’s chosen a Hannah More poem about slavery. It looks like an interesting session.

She used to work at a university in Bristol before here, hence perhaps her choice of a Bristolian bluestocking writing iambic pentameter about the slave trade. “I loved my home life in Bristol, but the state of Humanities Education in the UK…” Her eyes finish the sentence. It’s not in a good state according to those eyes, people. Newsflash.

“My husband can’t work yet, but I’m happier in my work over here,” she continues. “We live as well here on my wage as we did in Bristol on combined wages…” She hasn’t found her crowd yet though. Her eyes are hungry for company. It must be strange relocating completely like that. San Antonio is very unlike Bristol. Especially right now, when it seems the UK is on fire. I miss London a bit now despite the impending car crash. I miss my friends, Pickle and a plate of food in a restaurant that has vegetables and leaves you hungry.

I’m reasonably sheltered from UK news over here as we aren’t really that important to the USA, even though they kinda like the English in the same way they kinda like chipmunks. They occasionally find themselves engaged: “awww look at that ancient half blind chipmunk. It wants both of the nuts and it can only have one. It’s smashing them both and hurting itself. Stoopid little critter. It’s gnawed off its own leg now! Shall we help it? Nah. Let nature take its course.”

We are basically a bizarre ancient nation of narrow people with bad teeth and funny accents dismantling themselves in some sort of sad inevitable international grand guignol clown-show. Slowly slicing our noses down the middle with razors, pulling our tongues out through holes dug in our throats with our filthy desperate fingers, popping out our shining hopeful eyes whilst rasping the word “sovereign” until we lose so much blood that we can rasp no more.

And I’m just sitting by the pool letting it unfold and observing it. At least we’ll get that money for the NHS I guess.

All five of us are tired after travel day, even though it’s been a light journey. It’s a lovely fellowship. We just get on with it but stick together. Katherine is planning an early morning lesson. Kaffe and I are both blogging. He’s writing the official showblog, which is infinitely harder as you can’t just indulge in ridiculous Brexit similes. Claire and Jono are working out details of the cars tomorrow. Claire is looking out for my interests as she knows I’ll want the car tomorrow for my birthday for a few hours just to do my usual thing of jiggling around and looking at stuff. Without wheels we are trapped in this hotel. But this whole unit of five is remarkable. We all fit well around each other. We all bring something to the table. And we all have fun when we can. And sit in a circle working if it seems the right thing to do. Feels like a true fellowship. And there’s a lot of ground to cover yet.

It’s a festival atmosphere on sixth Street today in the roasting sunshine. Rolling live music competes with the hum of the crowd. Bouncy castles bang up against face painting stalls. We paid ten bucks to park for two hours. We tried not to buy expensive souvenirs. I was designated driver for the day and ended up with the best kombucha I’ve ever had. Austin is like that. There are two vegetarians in the company and they haven’t starved. San Antonio will be the wildlands for them.
Last day in this amazing town. Our day off. Time passes as we spin around from place to place, trying to take it all in, exhausting ourselves in the process. I hived off from the group for a bit to get some meat in Franklin Barbeque. Melt in the mouth brisket. I’ve eaten so much meat in this town, despite the vegetarian options being more robust than usual. It just seemed to be the right thing to do.
Early evening saw us camped out under Congress Bridge trying to see the bats. They deliberately made the bridge to hold a roost for millions of bats, and in the summer months to early fall they all come out like they’re trying to remind Bruce Wayne he’s neglecting his duty. They’re a good thing to have around. They can eat so many mosquitos in such a short space of time. The most efficient and clean means possible of making sure that people are happy to stay up all night on the hot streets around the river. Those bats contribute to the success of Rainey Street.

It’s not much of a spectacle really though. Certainly not one to photograph without a very good lens. It took us ages to adjust our eyes to see the bloody things. Eventually as we wandered home we found a crack in the bridge further up the track where they were pouring out, but my Uber was coming and people were waiting for us in the restaurant so we only had a few minutes to see them. It was definitely a thing. I would be disappointed not to have done it.
Ditto The Continental Club, where I write this to you. Claire just came to check up on me. I’m fine. I’ve just got half an hour before this publishes and I’m planning on doing some dancing.

I have no idea who the band are, but they’re playing what they describe as genuine bona-fide Texas music, and they’re wearing ten gallon hats so they must be legit. The pianist is British though. I’m enjoying it from my little perch in the corner of the room but I look like the guy who goes to the gig and checks Facebook. So far nobody has “come up to help out that lonely guy in the corner” thank God, but I’m just motoring out words to the rythmn of the band until the little number in the corner starts with a five. Then I’m dancing y’all.

The Winedale Historical Centre operates a programme every year where kids do a Shakespeare Summer Camp. They do three or four plays and they have about a week to work on each. They put the kids through rep with Shakespeare, performing in the evenings and rehearsing a different play in the daytime. It’s hot here – really hot. So they start early in the morning. They then stay up late laughing and bonding. A beautiful way to make lifelong friends. The programme is over for the year now, but we were invited to bring our Twelfth Night to play to a full house in the barn. Right here! In the barn.

Over 90 degree heat. We arrive at about 2pm and we have to completely reblock the show. We have multiple entrances and exits and levels and windows. We want to respond to the space, not teleport our show in there despite the space. So we are thinking and working in the heat together, the five of us, supported by the team. Incredibly supported, using the windows and the levels and the entrances. Experimenting.

“I love that we feed off adrenaline,” I remark to Kaffe just before the show. Both of us are smiling through a huge hit of the stuff, getting ready for the first half, recalibrating our heads, getting into the zone, managing the potential for white noise, surfing the wave of the unknown.

We’ve had very little time to make sense of the show in this amazing space, and we’ve watched some local kids speak beautiful Shakespeare as well when perhaps we should’ve been preparing. Before the show they presented their scene work to a crowd of their parents and us. It was really moving to see their diligence and straightforward understanding of the scenes. The kids were in the audience for us, stage right. We wanted to make a good show for them.

I have never sweated so much in my life. Belch is a muscular part to work through in that heat. By the end of the first half I was drenched in sweat. I changed my T-shirt. The whole show landed beautifully though, in that beautiful place. In the curtain call we invited the kids onto the stage to bow with us. They were thrilled.

Then, in a pool of light, beer in hand, we packed up the case again. San Antonio next week, and we will be driven there, so weight is not such an issue with the showcase. People came and joined us in our little pool of light. Happy parents and kids. Happy audience members and ex Winedale kids and current ones.

The programme hits its fiftieth year next year and I know I would have loved it. Hard work, early mornings, Shakespeare boot camp. It’s a beautiful thing. All the kids were there, with their Shakespeare bandanas, Shakespeare T-Shirts, Shakespeare Denim shirts. Reader, I bought them all. I’m covered in images of Shakespeare in a stetson. Last time I just bought the flask and had it for a year before I left it on a train in the Peak District. This year I went full merch and I’m shameless about it. I love this place.

After the bag pack we all lay out under the stars. “One year there was a kid whose dad was an astronaut” says Clayton. We all lay out here and we could see the space station passing by with his dad on it and he had his dad on speakerphone while we could watch him go over.” Astronomical.

As we loaded into the car we heard the coyotes cry from the darkness outside our circle of light. We all came together in the darkness, the five of us. Here we are, this tiny group, a long way from home, guided and encouraged through unfamiliar places. Given a platform on which we can shine together, channeling these five hundred year old messages of love and laughter, of kindness and duty, of play and work, of life and death. Making something we believe in and trusting that our audiences will come with us.

Now I’m being driven back into town. Jazz on the radio. Accordion to my right and a whole box of beer that we can’t drink as it’s illegal.

“You’ll sleep well tonight,” they told us as they saw our bodies shift into shutdown after the show. I’ll certainly fall asleep well. From there, who knows? The dreams are busy on this tour, as busy as the inside of my head. But today, at Winedale, at the end of this long long summer, I found one of those moments I can forever hold. In the dark times we look to the light if we can. Today was a time of the light, as the stars shone down on our little troupe.

I’m lying on a grassy knoll alongside half the population of Austin. Barton Springs. Not really wild wild swimming. A strip of cool water. Very specific places where you can jump in without someone shouting at you. $9 on the door. Well laid turf and selected trees. Laughter, chat, birds, wind and the irregular bang of the diving board as repeating lines of young men succeed or fail at ephemeral experimental aerobatics. “Did you see that?” “Nah I was thinking about what I’d do, man.”

I jumped in but not from the board. Signs everywhere saying not to but it was definitely deep enough for a shallow dive. I just had to wait for the dude not to be looking. I didn’t get shouted at but hellfire it was colder than I anticipated. It took my breath away for a moment. Then I had a good swim. Glad of the exercise, and the break. My last workshop was this morning so now it’s just the show until next week in San Antonio.

You can just about tell that these springs were once natural. As with so much in America they have been snipped and trimmed and landscaped and controlled. We are safe here. Very very safe. Our safety is important and we are having our safe interests safely attended to by safety trained safeguards in safety.

Claire’s with me getting noshed on by black ants. The guards can’t protect us from ants. They don’t like me for some reason, but they’re loving munching her legs. I think we might have to go soon as I don’t want to do the show with sunstroke. It’s really hot. Plus I’m starving.

---

Not anymore. We went to Terry Black’s Barbeque and had all the meat. After all, we’re in Texas. And they really do know their barbeques out here. I’m sitting here in the wind and the sun now, reveling in the fact that I feel completely full and rested and warm and well. Last night my point of focus was how hard I can push into the physicality of my characters. It left me exhausted. Today I’m going to focus on relaxing into them and only spamming energy when absolutely needed. No time for a siesta today and tomorrow will be a long day at Winedale…

---

Backstage at the theatre now pre-show and Heather has just offered to drive us all into Rainey Street in her pick-up after the show. We will have to pack up the show case again tonight to take it all down to Winedale for tomorrow, so God knows what time we will get to Rainey Street on this hot Football Friday. Hopefully it won’t be too crazy out there.

---

Show’s over. Case is packed. Instruments are in the pick-up to go to Winedale. I was still sweating like anything when we finished the show. I’m feeling a little more normal now. Lovely shows in this recital room, with a delightful Texas audience. We are starting to move now.

I’ve slipped into a good routine now for the tour. We usually have a duty in the morning of some description. Today I was teaching a bunch of 21 year old English Lit students how to sing a Shakespearean catch. So it’s wake up, plan, work a bit. Then I get coffee somewhere – this time with an enthusiastic lad who wanted to bounce his excellent idea for a Hamlet around with me in Medici. I love Medici: “Can you do a flat white?” “Yes we can.” None of this “What size?” bullshit. I talked to him a bit about his Henry IV monologue too – worked with him as much as it’s possible in a coffee shop. Nice way to spend some time.

Then a few hours of exploring before I reconnect with the guys, usually involving late lunch with carbs. Yesterday was Tetsu-ya for ramen – so good. Today I’ve gone Korean with bubble tea and spicy chicken at Koriente.

I’m taking recommendations wherever possible and using this tasty and peaceful afternoon time to regather my energy and generosity before the Belch explosion. And to write this down as I’m pretty useless after the show.

Yesterday I walked off the nervous energy but the others came with me. It wasn’t a popular choice with the rest of the company, although the destination was worth the walking. We just aren’t used to this heat. Ten minutes into a half hour walk and some of the others were in open mutiny. Thankfully I didn’t get keelhauled, and the place we were heading to was open, pleasant and had vegetarian food options. But from now on it’ll be an uber xl after the show as we almost invariably are starving and thirsty and walking is less popular than I could’ve imagined. There are no easy dives near to the venue this week, and parking is a nightmare so we can’t drive to work.

To illustrate the parking thing, as we were leaving last night we met two 17 year old girls who had seen the show. “We loved it! It was awesome! But my car got towed.” They were being picked up by their mum, who rolled her eyes at us. “It’s a life lesson,” she remarks. $200 on a Shakespeare show? I guess some people can blow that on a seat for that guy off the telly playing Hamlet. But I felt sorry for them. I’d have preferred it if their first time going out to see a play together hadn’t resulted in such a punitive fine. The private towing firms are a blight in the US. They are so quick, and charge way too much.

Now I’m in my pre-show post lunch siesta time. I reckon it’s shower and snooze. There has just been a tremendous thundercrack which might put paid to my plan to go to Barton Springs tomorrow and have a swim. If it rains too much they close them as they’re worried about runoff from the fields.

It’s consistently 95 degrees though. Maybe a spot of thunder will help.

 

Hot hot morning in Austin. I lay on my bed, one leg dangling, surrounded by poems. Incense smouldered sufficiently far away from the smoke detector. Occasional hot tears trailed down my cheeks, mostly of wonder at the way in which a thought had been expressed. Occasionally a little cough, a sip of water, a moment of stopping and gazing out of the window in wonder at the fact that life has taken me here like this. To an outside eye I might as well have been consumptive, like some of the writers I was embodying.

I didn’t really know where I’d be doing the recital, having not taken the time to scout ahead. I didn’t even know whether or not I’d have a microphone, or what order I’d do the poems in. Strangely I wasn’t concerned about those details. I just wanted to make sure my choices hung together.

Shroothi my guide picked me up at half eleven. I was nervously rearranging pieces of paper in the foyer. She took me to the recital venue – a courtyard where thankfully there was a microphone conveniently located in a patch of sun. I’d be visible then, just baked in my three piece. “Take your jacket off”, says Jono. “Poets wear waistcoats.” I didn’t need to be told twice.

I’d been arguing with myself as to whether or not to start with The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. It’s a risk. It’s 25 minutes long and if I lose them they’re lost for good. I don’t know it like I know Nightingale, Ozymandias, Kubla etc. Should I start with something I’m more confident with? No. This is me you’re talking about. Almost despite myself, at the lectern I tell them I’ll start with Rime. It’s pretty easy to understand apart from that overlong bit with the spirits.

The audience is still there at the end, and I’ve gathered a crowd. I start to get swept up in the language and the arguments, bouncing through poem after poem, improvising links, changing styles, enjoying myself more and more. Claire is sat under a tree watching, Katherine and Kaffe are over on a wall to my right, Jono is hiding so he doesn’t throw me. The whole company is here to support me. If I ever fall off my energy I just need to look out and they’re all there radiating back at me. I have too much material, and a clock that marks the quarters so no need to consult my watch. Nonetheless I’m halfway through Tintern Abbey when the clock goes. I offer to stop but they’re having none of it so I click back in and then do I’ll go no more a’roving for the heck of it as a finisher. Lovely reaction. A gorgeous thing to have done, to share my love of C19th English Poetry with an audience of strangers and passers by in the heart of the Lone Star State.

Then I snuck off for ramen at Tetsu-ya. A good time for carbohydrates and nourishment. We are all going to have to do Twelfth Night again tonight and I’ll need to rebuild my energy before giving it all away again as Belch.

The show tomorrow is going to be in a recital hall. 23 rows of audience sharply raked down to five of us bouncing around on our big empty wooden stage. Behind us as we work looms a vast pipe organ. “Dammit,” says Claire. “Last time we were here we got to do it in a theatre”. Not that it matters though. The point is that we can do the show anywhere. This week turns out to be a recital hall in Austin.

We will carve out a little square of light and we will bring joy to a little spot in the heart of Texas. We’ve just spent a couple of hours working out the tech, such as it is. Heather is operating for us. She has a new baby but she’s enjoying being back on the job. This hall isn’t built for shows, so we only have six potential lighting states operated from a panel of buttons. She can see us on a monitor but she can’t hear us talking on stage. We are building in little visual cues for her so she can op the show deaf. I wonder how that pans out in performance. However it pans out, it’ll be a thing. Gotta love the live arts.

Tomorrow I’ve got to do an hour of poetry – and yeah I cheated a bit by throwing in The Rime of The Ancient Mariner to bolster up the time but I was obsessed with Coleridge as a kid so it’s fair. Tonight though I’m in my cowboy boots. We are going line dancing, baby. I thought I’d write half of this before we left knowing how likely it’ll be that my ability to write is negatively affected by my predilections.

---

Turns out it wasn’t line dancing. It was that waltzy shit they do. We went to The Broken Spoke. Claire and Katherine were in high demand when it became apparent that Kaffe and I were thoroughly incompetent. They got spun like no tomorrow by a couple of big galoots in ten gallon hats and then came back to share their findings with the group. “I think it’s ONE and two three ONE and two three. No it’s here, here, back and here and here here back and here.” I still have no idea, but I had good fun finding out I didn’t know, and when the base level is 0 any improvement feels like victory. The style of it was the thing I understood best. The more complicated the move, the less involved the man has to look, so long as he is competent. The best ones to watch were in the middle distance while the women were spinning like tops. I couldn’t do the indifferent skill without the skill but I began to appreciate the game of it.

And then I remembered why you have to either be in a relationship or get lucky when you put your cowboy boots on. Getting them off on your own requires a degree in engineering.

I managed it though, eventually. Now bed. Poems tomorrow… Joy? Joy.

 

I’ve lucked out. I’m in a tower room here in Austin. Top of the hotel. Balcony. I’m sitting here in the evening swelter watching the town go by. I’ve been reading poetry, choosing. I’ve got a wonderful opportunity. A chance to share my love of poetry. A one hour recital, poems of my choice, outdoors, day after tomorrow. High noon. I chose to do the Romantic era.

Problem is, all the poetry I learnt as a boy from that era was written by men. All the poetry I obsessed over and swore by came from amazing men. And it’s wonderful poetry. But the reason I don’t know the heartstopping poems by women is because people like me didn’t feature them in their recitals. It’s my job to address that discrepancy.

So here I am bathing in the work of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, of Christina Rossetti of Eliza Cook, of Anne Bronte. In the process, I’m discovering that the men used more words but often the point is closed in upon swifter by the women. But it means I need to perform more of these unfamiliar poems as they’re short, but also I’ve got to be able to smash reading them, so these big barnstorming male poems that I crammed as a youth will give me a structure and a safe launch point, and the women’s poems will be my bits where I’m basically sight-reading but doing it to the best of my ability. I’ll read the unfamiliar to educate myself and my audience. We have to strike towards balance. I’d hate myself to go out there and read nowt but men. Particularly considering the revelations I’ve had with these amazing unfamiliar poems. As with any great poem, they challenge my heart.

My working fulcrum centres around the intellectual/emotional. I play the clever or the lost. The manipulator or the manipulated. Doctor Frankenstein or The Monster. I play a lot more than that obviously etc etc. But that’s an easy cross for me. Right now I’m playing the party fun, but the dark party fun. Belch is manipulator supreme, manipulated by his own addiction but charismatic and utterly alive. He’s larger than life but a bully. He’s on the posh side. Antonio just does what is needed. It’s already telling, in Q&A sessions, how many people are drawn to Belch. He’s a manipulator that thinks he deserves everything for free because he’s charismatic. He destroys the people around him without compassion or remorse. And ha ha ha isn’t it funny ha ha.

This is work! How is that possible? I’m in this amazing city. I’m in a group of five beautiful humans. We are all looking after each other.

We arrived here this evening and ended up going out for mescal and good company.  Now I’m back in my remarkable room and I’m thrilled to be here. We all had a night out and it was ace but until I’ve got my hour of poetry sorted I’ll not rest. Sure, I could do it with the poems I loved as a kid. But no. I’ve got to take in who I am now and what I care about. We shift, and our priorities shift as we do so.

Nevertheless, Wednesday at noon at the Harry Ransom Centre Courtyard in Austin Texas is gonna be the best lunch hour you can imagine.

Al Barclay blows his own mind and yours with beautiful poems, some of which he learnt as a teenager thinking it would get him girls and others that were so far out of his awkward understand because they were actually written by scary girls hundreds of years ago. You might see him show his dualistic nature. You might not. Wordy thinky men poems. Worky finishy feely female ones. I need more of the latter, even if I can’t get through the EB Browning poem without crying…

Luis works at a grill in the downtown loop. He is subcontracted in to run the car key station for the valet parking. I picked up his little fold up stool from the roadside, as he was in shock. “Careful you don’t get his blood on your hands.”

I return it to him, but he barely registers. He’s bust up. Shaky. There’s a fair amount of his blood on the stool. Has he been bludgeoned with it? Possibly. Little bastards.

He is in shock, insisting he’s alright but not alright. He cares about his work. He won’t leave his post. He’s bleeding badly and in shock but he still wants to do the best job he can do. I wonder why they attacked him, these shit young men. Why did they beat up this quiet man with his broken English and his work ethic, working a service job for peanuts and tips?

“They wanted my stool,” he tells us, but they didn’t. They dumped it when they ran off laughing.

We don’t know Luis from before, but we are close to him when it happens. We had first seen him across the road as they were kicking him in the head on this crowded sidewalk. The city just keeps moving round.

We go and get the duty manager. Luis is trying to tell us he’s ok, but he’s covered in blood. There’s blood on the pavement. They’ve done a job on him these dumb kids.

The duty manager is quick and honestly concerned. She cares for this quiet and pleasant man and we feel it. She is out the door at a sprint and approaching his injury with love and care. We leave him in her hands and go about our evening, but we carry the blanket of the memory over us. He was what you’d call “hispanic” in this country. Was he Mexican? I didn’t ask him.

Today is Mexican Independence Day, and the streets of Chicago this evening are an explosion of green red and white.

It’s a celebration, and with a hint of civil disobedience. People are gunning their engines and deliberately burning hard rubber at the foot of Trump tower. People are standing on the roof of moving cars in bikinis with flags. Police cars actively try to move the traffic, and to keep the epicentre from coagulating outside the narcissism monument where crowds keep trying to form. The cars get moved on, so they go round the block and come back again. Honking horns, shouting voices, laughter warmth and flags. It’s joy.

We are all swept up in this celebration, broadly smiling, happy to be part of it on our last night in the windy city that has turned out to be sunny.

I find myself worrying about Luis though. The guys who beat him up were not WASPs like most of the shooters that pop up in this country these days. I hope it was just about kids exercising power. I’m worried the division sewn at the top is becoming more and more nuanced.

I find myself trying not to draw a connection between four young men kicking the crap out of a kind sad “hispanic” working man and the surrounding streets shutting down in joyful celebration of Mexican Independence. I felt part of the party as I walked through their active fun and noise. It was truly delightful to witness and experience. Surely it wouldn’t make people who identify as something other than Mexican feel left out and polarise enough to justify opportunistically rolling over a soft target for nothing other than the feeling of power. Surely?

I’ll still miss this city. As cruel as London. Expensive, fast, silly and creative. I could live here in this mess.