AlBarclay

The van is parked in a loading bay outside Gatsby. It starts being regulated at 8am so I have to make sure I’m there on the dot. I’m leaving it there partly because until the interior is built it’s tricky to move it without collapsing everything inside, and partly because moving it in regulated hours would mean I’d have to pay congestion charge. Gatsby has accessible power. If there’s someone there…

Nobody got into Gatsby until 3pm though, which meant 7 hours in the van with no power and no loo. It’s telling that on a cold day like today I was happier by far sitting in the cab with the blowers on than I was working in the “comfortable” back section. It didn’t matter what it looked like in there, I was looking at my breath when I was in there. It was like working in a walk in fridge.

I really want people to feel comfortable in the van. We’ll need more than lights. We’ll need more heaters and more cushions, and more time, to warm the thing up before we start if the weather stays like this. If we can make it a haven then we can catch walk-ups. If it’s a cold metal case then we could be PT Barnum in there and it’d go for nothing.

The magic of Facebook though. I’m asking for a lot on there at the moment. I’m very aware that I am. I guess it’s an inevitability when you’re making something and the budget is zero. Whatever the hell I make next is going to have a budget. But this doesn’t, so I’m having to borrow a great deal of stuff – and people keep coming up trumps. An old friend is dropping round an oil radiator tomorrow on the way to the gym. We have staple guns and ladders in the van that don’t belong to us, as well as miles of material, some large items of furniture, some pictures, some shelves, an urn, a lectern and a weird old book. At heart it’s a truck where you get a proper tarot reading. But we are running interference. We are throwing lots of other things at it. Come if you like random. Don’t come expecting a scripted monologue. If that’s your groove you’ve doubtless got hundreds to choose from, right next door. But I’m confident we will find our groove, and with it the find the right people. And if I can solve the heating thing it’ll be a cosy little den and that’s super important. I want “oooh” and not “brrrr”.

But that’s been my day. Man vs cold. Mel had to teach a workshop so it was me muttering to myself and badly sticking pins into things, dragging things up and down stairs, banging my head on metal corners, going back into the cab to warm up periodically, wishing I could make a fire in the middle of the van and have done with it.

I’m excited and scared to get the experience/thingthing/show/truck on the literal road. Obligatory ticket link this sentence.

I’ve written this whole thing in the bath. Warming up before bed…

Biscuits.

LAST TWO YEARS

Headshots and getting over myself

A day of get-outs and break-ups

It is now inevitable. I’m doing a show at Vault. It’s in a van outside the door in Leake Street. Always on the fringes. Both involved and separate. A comfortable area for me.

I have no objection to sitting on my own in a van with my friend Mel, but I think It’ll be far more pleasant if there are people who have bought tickets and are sitting in the van with us. Then we can go some way towards making back some of the cash we’ve blown so far building it, while giving people a little mad slice of the inside of our heads. I’m on the look out for records of classical music laid down over fifty years ago, so we can have a bit of music as we go, because if not it’ll be generic copyright free music, plus whatever I can persuade friends to play live when they have a moment. We are under contract, tickets are live, and what’s that noise I can hear faintly at the edge of hearing…? The creak of the treadmill in the poorhouse. The crack of the orcish whips…

The fabulous Pantechnicon will be parked out front Wednesday to Sunday. Doors open at 7 and close at 10. We take up to 4 people every half an hour. Stuff will happen. Maybe you’ll save the world. Maybe you’ll save yourself. Book now. Book now. Now book. I’m good at marketing. Buy buy buy buy buy. Money money money. Spend yes spend yes click click click. That’s how it’s done, eh?

Here’s the TICKET LINK

One thing I’ve noticed today: My friends are great. The unofficial union of friendly theatre types. I was trying to rent some stairs for the back of the van, so audience people can get in without skinning their shins. I went to the first hit on Google. They saw me coming. “Yeah mate you need an 8 foot steel deck under them for stability (like where do we keep that overnight?) and then a handrail and the stairs – will you be building yourself?” “Yes” “Well the decking is £27 times four weeks and then there’s the…” etc etc. I hung up when it was clear he was going to come in at £200 and then add VAT. Go boil your head, sir.

I put one of those posts up on Facebook – the speculative posts you see from time to time. “Anyone got stairs?” It’s not such a long shot despite how it looks to people outside the industry. I know so many theatre geeks and some of them even have garages.

Turns out that all I needed to do was go to the loo. I’ve been building outside the Gatsby space so I can say to the stage manager “Golfo, can I borrow your staple-gun / wazzer / gaffer tape / practical brain / finger?” My mate Ethan is a chippy and he was building some stuff for Gatsby. He said “Hey, Al, I saw on Facebook you need stairs. I’ll knock some up for you for cheap if you have any wood.” Next thing I know, I have someone else offering me the timber we need. By Friday, thanks to two friends and the time I’ve spent in the industry getting stuck in and not being an egomaniac, I have some stairs being custom built for a fraction of what it would take to rent them. And we can keep them against future shows. Or try to rent them for ‘undreds of pahnds to unsuspecting theatremakers. (I wouldn’t. You can borrow them for free. Just put a question up on Facebook.)

LAST TWO YEARS

Running around LA dodging the bus fare

Feeling unfit in January

In just over a week we’re opening a show and the tickets aren’t on sale yet. They need proof of the PLI insurance that we get through our union but the person we need to speak to at Equity is on annual leave, probably so she can dodge all the inquiries that must come at this time of year. This whole business of putting on a show is swamped in red tape. We’re almost there though. I still resent losing my budget to better guttering on the outside of my block. It makes everything matter a whole lot more when you’ve got something to lose though. It’s both galvanising and restricting.

Today I parked a van in Borough and then tried out a load of random furniture in various configurations inside it. There’s no designer and we can’t buy anything, but thankfully we have generous friends and random stuff we can borrow for a month or so. We are gradually throwing things together. The two of us who are making it are getting stressed with each other. We work very well together, and have made delightful things on a shoestring, but there are still so many unknowns on this one. We are going in cycles where one of us is okay with that and the other one is freaking out with the “what if” crap. The major one at the moment is “What if nobody buys a ticket,” which seems likely with 0 time of ticket sales online or anywhere else, 0 marketing and 0 social media. We are gonna have to be the word-of-mouth show of the century. Or I’m going to have to be outside huxtering.

It’s going to be fun once we’ve got the groundwork finished, but this is the stage in the process where the endless possibilities become concrete realities that are different to how we imagined them, and because it’s just the two of us there’s nobody we can proxy blame to when the dream changes shape. It’s like when you watch the movie of your favourite book and that whining prettyboy has no correlation with the great hero in your mind.

In the early stages of creation ANYTHING is possible, and nothing is off limits, but the problem is that reality is never quite like ImaginationLand, and there’s always going to be some degree of compromise, dictated by things like budget, gravity and the fact that magic is hard. The next few days we have to go from blue sky thinking to the realities of a load of bits of wood and fabric inside a big dark cold metal monster on wheels. We have to think about how we will move it on site every night before six when I’m in rehearsal until six in the centre of town. Fun things like that. It’ll all make sense somehow. Probably.

I’m off to bed. Got to move the van in the morning as I still haven’t sorted out parking. Also there’s the spectre of tax return looming over me. Much to be done. No time to do it. Thank God I’m not drinking.

Bloodbath. The opening scene of Blade. It’s a celebrity party and I’m part of the atmosphere. I’m in a white boiler suit and a skintight string vest. My home is a perspex box with a shower head. I have excellent fangs stuck on. I’m absolutely covered in blood. As the guests come in I’m showered in more lukewarm blood. It trickles down my back and eventually puddles in my shoes. The only solution is to dance harder. It’s a cold night. The boilersuit is cotton. It’s a two hour gig. I like dancing. I tell myself it’s perfectly justifiable to go mental to keep myself warm, as people take selfies with me for Instagram or whatever. One man comes and stands in front of me for a while, looking. I hiss at him, and at the time they’re playing drum and bass so I’m dancing hard in my little box. “He’s fucking crazy,” is his considered review to my friend. Yep, to be honest I probably am a little. But it’s fun, huh? I can think of worse ways than this to earn a living while I wait for the real jobs. Despite exposure it’s actually relatively anonymous. They’re looking at the costume and the blood. The character. The mask. Not the actor. So I felt at liberty to go mental, and I did. A good dance really gets the endorphins flowing. Two hours flew by. Now I’m in an uber home, covered in fake blood and starving. But happy from dancing. Stupid work is still work.

It came through Lyndon, who was in LA with me coming up two years ago for a glorious couple of weeks. He’s building parties now when he isn’t acting, and providing work for actor friends that he trusts as he goes about it. It’s interesting to be part of the entertainment side, when more often in that context recently I’ve been the one wearing the smart suit checking the performers are on site when they’re supposed to be, and making sure nothing goes wrong. When I came off at the end of the gig and was thanked by a complete stranger in a black suit I had a momentary world shift when I saw myself as her and her as me. She’ll still be there at 4 supervising the get-out and probably taking down lights in her suit if she’s anything like me. I get to go home. Covered in blood. The only shower in this venue that we can access is the one that pissed lukewarm food colouring into my shoes.

I’m home now. I got an uber whilst horridly tricked with total gules. The driver took it in his stride and dropped me off. I got the fangs off my teeth successfully – (I’m always worried they’ll take my teeth off) – and I stuck myself into the shower, but the problem with food dye is that it dyes the skin. I’m going to look like I have a tan for a few days before it wears off. Still. Weird but fun way to earn a crust.

I’m in a club that costs something like two grand a year. It’s called an Arts Club, but I see precious little evidence of artists apart from the pictures on the walls. I see a lot of tired hardworking nine to fivers winding down in their smart clothes. Women in tall heels. Men in universally dark suits and white shirts. All of the men have product in their hair. The women adjust their makeup in mirrors around the dance floor. The band is essentially an extremely good karaoke. They’re singing pitch perfect versions of radio one singles from the last ten years, to a track. I think they’re occasionally miming.

The last conversation I had in this Arts Club was about different computer programming languages. The relative merits of Python vs MatLab. That’s likely as close to art as we’re going to get here. Nobody in The Arts Club seems to work in the arts.

We came here from Ecstatic Dance in a gym in Camden. Two hours of hard crazy wild dancing. I’m still wearing a tracksuit and trainers. So is my friend. We are both wet with sweat, with tired legs. The dancing that’s going on here in this self conscious club is about as far from ecstatic as you can get. Coketastic dance is perhaps the right moniker. It mostly involves moving your arms like a penguin and gurning. That’s probably why all the men are wearing penguin costumes. Women in crippling heels occasionally look my friend up and down and scowl. “You’re the coolest person here,” I tell her, and I mean it, tracksuit and all.

In the middle of the dance floor a couple doggedly tries to inhale one another, faces and bodies ground together amidst the writhing flock of penguins. Nobody bats an eyelid. I go to the bar. That’s my first mistake. A glass of prosecco and an alcohol free Becks. £22.70. No wonder there are no artists in evidence. Perhaps Damien Hirst should show up and get a round in. I doubt I’ll ever come here again though so may as well get the full experience, including the horror of seeing the bill.

I’m parked round the corner on a single yellow. I’m hoping I won’t get a ticket after that round. The advantages of not drinking are supposed to be that you save money. But at least I can drive home. I won’t have to wait at a freezing cold bus stop. Because somehow, 2am happened. Time to go.

I remember when I stayed sober for exactly a year and I was always driving people home. I quite liked it. And this evening I didn’t miss alcohol, even though I did have a placeebeer.

The atmosphere in the two dancing rooms today couldn’t have been more different. My first time at an Ecstatic Dance class and I was slightly dreading it would be a bit like organised fun, but it was very well run. Like a sober rave. People were ‘aving it. Nobody was self conscious. Drum and Bass, psytrance and a spot of garage mixed up with tribal dance and with brilliant projected visuals. Everyone was joyful at the end of it – beaming. We gathered round a table to sweatily eat fruit after the class and it tasted so good. We had all done accidental exercise, and lots of it. Dancing to keep fit. Joy.

Then the penguins, looking each other up and down and locking their jaws as the young musicians on stage earned their tutorial fees with their amped up karaoke hit parade. Identikit lonely hearts boosted by booze and fine tuned by cocaine, trying to focus on the room through the fug whilst automatically moving parts of their bodies in a staccato imitation of the thing formerly known as dance. Everyone with a drink in their hand, and the drinks so expensive. London. Oh London. Tomorrow there’ll be more dancing. And all I want to do is lie in a bubble bath and read my book on my new bamboo bath tray…

 

“I dunno how you do that mate. Drive for that long.” I’m sitting with a friend, knackered. He went on today’s mission with me. Another fantastical journey through the daytime. We saw dawn behind us as we struck out in the morning – putting the Soul Van through its paces. About two hours in we got wobbly, and I had to stop to check the torque on the wheel nuts. A lot of it is to do with the wind. The thing gets blown all over the place when it’s empty. I had only driven it ramjammed with furniture up until this morning, so it took me by surprise to be skittled about quite so much. Once I almost got blown into the next lane.

First proper stop was Macclesfield. My mate’s dad has a storage unit in an art space there full of his son’s old shows. He wants it emptied. I’ve met him a few times before, clambering over piles of stuff, looking for this box of candleabras or that specific flat and so forth. He also has a garage full of gargantuan flats up there. The flats are going to form the set of the new tour of Rotterdam, a love story with an unusual angle, coming back in April, starting at The Rose in Kingston and going all over the country. Someone is going to be doing a lot of hauling, looking at how many big flats there were up there. I’m sure the tour will go well. It’s a lovely piece of theatre.

I’ve done a few tours over the years, sometimes doubling as ASM, sometimes just being the prat that comes in and looks fabulous after all the work is finished. These flats though – they’re bigger than I’m used to hauling. Still, we got them all in the van.

Then to Cambridge. I’d been worrying about Cambridge. I’d been told it’s hard to get in to the storage unit. “People in the past have given up and gone” All I had was a post code. The satnav took us up a bridleway in the middle of nowhere, typically with the only vehicle in twenty miles on the same bridleway directly behind us. I stopped. “See if the van driver knows where this place is,” I tried, and pulled over to the side onto a nice patch of grass. He didn’t. He was delivering something.

My passengers both lit a fag, and I watched as someone came through a gate and walked towards us after the van left. “Can I help you?” said a voice reminiscent of adenoids and wallpaper. “Yes, you can I hope. We’re looking for a storage depot.” This robust sexagenerian gave us loose directions, and I thanked him. “Just as well you came out,” I said ingratiatingly as it was clear he wanted us to get the hell away from his home – this bearded twerp and the two reprobates smoking on his lawn. “I could see you very clearly on the CCTV.” He ground on, nose vibrating. “Two men and one woman,” he concluded proudly. “Yes that’s right,” I gushed, and got in the cab.

As we were turning round, we saw his house and understood a little more about why he was so anxious to vaunt his high-tech security. He lives in a house that’s straight off grand designs. Literally. My passengers both recognised it. A beautiful vast converted barn with so much glass, so much light. Not what we were looking for though.

We eventually located the storage when one of us used Google satellite and found a building that looked like a big barn. The bloke’s directions weren’t great. Roughly translated, “Get off my land and go sort of that way.” Technology saved the day.

We rang the night watchman something like two dozen times, until he caved in and realised it would be a more peaceful night if he let us in rather than just ignored us. He said either “I can’t let you in,” or “ok I’ll let you in.” The gate didn’t move for a few minutes so we started bothering his bell again and it worked eventually. Either he had a long way to go to push the button, or he got fed up.

Down a dark path to this night city of huge metal barns, looming up around us in the darkness. He didn’t come out, this mysterious mumbling watchman. We found the right barn through trial and error. We got in, unloaded – (phew) and missioned back to London via a service station for hideous unforgivable food. Job done.

But yes. I’m knackered. Partly because I’ve eaten so badly and partly because I’ve driven so long. Happy knackered though. It was good conversation in that van. The hours flew by.

Then I tried to do a practical thing. I just tried to put a duvet cover on.

It seems I have lost my basic motor skills after all the concentration. Still, I’m getting to know the van. And I’m learning to pay very close attention to diesel prices and avoid filling up on the motorway, the crooks.

I’m off to sleep. The foxes are banging outside, screaming as they go. I expect they won’t be able to keep me awake…

God I’m so tired. I think I might be about to write a whole blog about being tired because I can’t really see beyond it, guys. That’s where we’ve got to. Three hours sleep and then two jobs. Job 1: The least vigilant invigilator ever. They could’ve rolled in with a six foot neon sign with all the answers flashing on it and I might have missed it. They could’ve paid a seven foot dog to take their Business Economics paper and I wouldn’t have noticed until it came to the end of the exam and they’d eaten the questions. I made it to the end of the exam without falling over and then had lunch with my brother which was a lovely interlude and a much needed catch up. Although I can’t say I’m a fan of the new Pret “Lasagne Macaroni”. Worth a try though.

Then I went to Borough in order to coordinate two people who were helping carry a ton of furniture upstairs into a tiny little low ceilinged space. The same ton of stuff I had just hauled through the night. It still needed to go upstairs and into a resemblance of organisation. Golfo Josh and I had beaten some order into it some time ago. It was time to see how well that days work had stayed the test of time.

Surprisingly well, it turns out. I arrived to find them baffled by a note from Golfo. “What’s chair city?” “Material town?” “Carol Corner?” These lads work the bar in Gatsby. This is a whole new world for them, created by three people in a similar state of exhaustion to mine now.

In delirium over the course of a hard day’s work bent double and repeatedly smashing our heads on the ceiling, we had built a whole theatrical storage city. I taught the alleyways of our wood and cloth metropolis to Josh and Harry, whilst occasionally pausing to almost pass out as I hoiked a bag of gravy boats up a cold flight of stairs in Gatsby’s Jazz Bar and physically understood how fucking tired I am.

We got it all beautifully loaded, and even had time for a photo shoot.

Now I’m home. I rushed home because a friend of mine hadn’t got the message that I was going to be there and was walking from Victoria to my house. I got home to discover that she had arrived at the place I rushed from. Now she’s coming back to mine on public transport, or at least I think she is. We’re cooking for her dietaries, and both Mel and I are almost incomprehensible with exhaustion. I want to be asleep in an hour if I can be. I’m hoping the doorbell rings but I’m worried she doesn’t even have my address. She’s a friend from the pilgrimage, with no phone and extremely limited internet access. Communication is not easy in these circumstances when you’re not exhausted.

I’m driving for at least ten hours tomorrow. I’m hoping the doorbell rings soon, so I can welcome her in and then vanish into Dreamland.

I thought I’d be just about to depart for London now. It’s almost 3pm. I’m still in the house I slept in, sending emails and bonding with the dog. It suddenly occurred to me that it would be smart to write this now as I think I’ll be unloading furniture into the small hours at this rate. And then I’ll be too tired to write.

The van went in for a service this morning. It needed 3 new tyres and they had to order them in. I hadn’t anticipated this at all. I just assumed it would be ready to go. So I’m paralysed. I’m being paid for today, so I can’t complain, but we are going to have to be extremely cunning and diligent to get all this stuff into this van anyway. It’s a big van. Bigger than the long wheel base transit I was going to have despite Dan trying to blarney me about square footage when I told him we’d dodged a bullet. There’s a huge amount of furniture here. We threw some of it in last night which was probably an exercise in futility as we’ll have to rearrange everything to get the rest packed in, especially as we loaded it in the dark. We can’t rearrange now as the van is jacked up. And the loading still to do makes up a fraction of the whole job.

It’s 4 hours drive to London in an unfamiliar vehicle whenever the heck we finally get to leave. Then just two people – one of us big and one very little – we two will have to unload all of this stuff into a warehouse in Borough under cover of darkness. I’m really feeling every second that ticks by as I sit here. The sun is already close to setting and I keep going and looking at it. Damn these short winter days.

It’s lovely here, don’t get me wrong. I’m just chewing my arm off with inaction. I’ve been wearing my outdoor coat for the last hour. I keep walking to the door as if I’m leaving. Not doing anything when there’s loads to do is the worst, especially when there’s nothing I CAN do but wait. These guys at the garage said they’d have the tyres by lunchtime. I am really really frustrated right now.

So I’ve been editing copy for a friend’s website. And earlier we took the dog for a walk. He’s a cutie, although I find that I prefer cats now I’ve got one. He’s just so dumb compared to Pickle. Still, he’s affectionate, and had his head on my lap despite me having just insulted his intelligence.

I’m going to stop writing for a bit and get back to pacing up and down, checking my WhatsApp every five seconds and swearing to myself.

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Ten to five in the morning. I just walked in the door. Up early tomorrow but thankfully Max has arranged it so I can park at the Natural History Museum tomorrow while I go a-dayjobbing. Then back to the furniture as it’s another half a day’s work to get it stored. Brush teeth. 3 hours sleep. Off again.