AlBarclay

Down to Brighton. That’ll be a good place for me this weekend. Lou is sick as a dog still but reckons she’s not contagious. I’m still being ginger around her and she’s still coughing, but it’s been a long time and we are starting to get busy again. Weekend time. I’ve missed seeing her. It’ll definitely help my mood.

Her friend January has released a new album, as she often does in the month she was named for. It’s her way of bringing some light in the darkest month. She was playing to the home crowd at Alphabet.

Alphabet used to be The Crypt, the goth club. There’s a bar deep inside, no windows, you don’t know what time it is. Tall people flare cocktails unselfconsciously and the beers are called things like Frog Licker. It could be wanky but somehow it avoids it. But in that bar you don’t know what time it is, it could be 4am it could be noon. It was evening when we arrived. I had a lemon thing that is beery and non alcoholic and pretty moreish. I sat and chatted to various Brighton folk and friends of Lou. I know some people do this with me, but I’m counting the number of times a particular person introduces themself to me as if we’ve never met. I’d call everyone ‘darling’ like my mother used to if it wasn’t a luvvie thing. As it is I just occasionally fuck up, usually with good looking buff blonde men for some reason. They all look the same to me them good looking actor blondies…

Last time I went to a gig in Brighton it was full of douchey people and you couldn’t see a damn thing. We left that one almost immediately. This one was lovely, and there was a good mix of deep support for the artist and audience. She has a great sound, and there were some bangers. Last year I was tasked with taking photos. Lou helped her get ready. This year I could just enjoy the look and the mastery. And there are a few people down here now in this circle that I’m starting to read as friends. Makes up for the social anxiety. I managed okay without crutches until right at the end when one good lad got me a single shot of whisky and it went down a treat. Good to see him. Good to be sociable.

That’s all we have to do really, is connect. We can do it without numbing too, it’s actually better, if we can get past the noise in our heads. I’ve got some calm and light from going into two shared spaces recently and witnessing two very different radiators.

Weekend time. Some calm. Some warmth. Some Lou.

On balance, for mental health, it is definitely better to do things than to not do things. My two days could not have been more different.

I woke up and welcomed Rhys, who has got magic cards to flog. They have been a ball and chain for him as he doesn’t play Magic the Gathering anymore but remembers the time when he did with great fondness. He’s asked me to help get rid of them, and I knew full well that his coming over was part of the process of letting go, but also with that comes a reconnection. I had it similar when I flogged the best of my old ones, thankfully before the crackhead decided I was some idiot sitting on a pile of Moxes. His cards are from the period in the game after all the cards that mustn’t be reprinted were put out, but before it settled into the cynical machine of addiction that it is now. None of them are big. None of mine were big, even if mine were bigger than his. My biggest card sold for maybe £225. It was a dual land. His biggest card is about £30.

I’m happy to sell these things, good at selling these things, my eBay is full of these things that I’ve sold and feedback from selling these things. Occasionally I go to a tournament in real life, if it’s Limited. I open my packs, build my deck, win something, then flog all the value from what I opened and what I won. Usually I make much more than the entry cos I don’t want the cards and I’m quick to list them which is powerful if it’s a new set.

We both had our nostalgia. The decent ones are all listed. If they were mine they’d all be at 0.99p starting price and let them find their level, but I could tell Rhys needs them not to go for fuck all, which is the risk with that strategy. I tried to put their starting bid north of mid range. They won’t get so much interest and they might go round a few times, but it’s done now. We will both have money dripping in as a result of today, but not all of them will sell next Sunday.

Then I went to the theatre, to see Colin Hurley in his one man show Lear’s Shadow.

I have such incredibly talented mates, and often there’s a bit of Shakespeare in the middle of the things they end up doing. This a very live show, a clown show, and a show about deterioration. It’s Lear, but it’s more personal, more relatable, less “impressive”. It made me want to see Colin as either Lear or his fool, but also made me know that it would break my heart to do so. Break.  Heart. That’s how he opened it. Written on his chest.

Being a bit sad about a damaged friendship and the fact it’s dark is thrown into sharp relief by the shit that happens to the folk in Lear. I’m alright. I’ll be fine. I’ve still got my eyes and haven’t given everything away to two sociopaths yet. And I get to see Lou tomorrow which is a huge tonic even if she’s been dying of bronchitis which I desperately want to avoid being exposed to as it’s the one thing that fucks me for months. My tubes have history. When I’ve got a cough people almost always threaten to call an ambulance.

She’s not contagious anymore, I reckon. Let’s see.

I was planning on taking in some culture this evening but ended up sinking into myself for various reasons. Partly to do with the weather, partly life. I’ve had to start to learn, very late, that I can and need to draw boundaries occasionally. Problem is, if the boundaries are new they feel willful to people who habitually crossed the line before you started monitoring it. Yesterday I had a difficult chat with someone I’ve had to put at arm’s length. I stupidly invited them to share a show tonight, thinking maybe we could be theatre buddies or something. Turns out not yet, it immediately kicked off a thing where I found myself having to express something I just instinctively know. Problem with instinct is that it doesn’t elocute itself very well.

I’m happy to start drawing boundaries. There are aspects of myself that aren’t helpful and need to be shifted. Growing up is hard. But we all have to do it or we end up Michael Jacksoning our way out of this mad glory. I have a kind of freedom here. I’ve avoided breeders, apart from as friends. Haven’t accidentally made progeny. I can still pretend to be 19, but I don’t want to cos in reality I’m a hoary old oak tree and actually can find more use and satisfaction by stepping into my roots, not pretending I’m still a sapling. There are plenty of good people much older than me, still in the struggle. There are plenty of good people much younger than me struggling too. We can all do it together but we serve ourselves better if we fully accept who we are within it. This involves some hard decisions.

Still enough vagueness. I’m home alone, it’s dark and cold and I’ve stopped playing Baldur’s Gate for about a week now as I was clocking up too many hours and not looking at the things I needed to. Like tax. That’s in for this year.

I’m sure there are bright and optimistic things to talk about but I can’t find them. Maybe I should’ve just used one of the two tickets I bought for the theatre. It’s hard to be cheerful right now.

It got late without me noticing. I was with Min having pizza, which is a tonic and long overdue. I took her home and picked up some boxes of magic cards. Rhys her man has had them since childhood, they’ve grown complicated for him. Some have value, most don’t. I know these things pretty well – I flogged all my best ones just before the crackhead got wind that I had them and nicked the best of the rest. 50/50 I told him as these days it ain’t worth the rigmarole for a worse deal than that. We’ll list the lot on Thursday.

Darkness happens so early that I’m used to it so by the time I was home my body thought it was early evening, so I took it slow, ran a bath, read a bit of my silly Terry Pratchett book, played with Boo and just looked at my clock and it’s past 1. Bedtime.

Apparently yesterday is meant to be the saddest day of the year. The bullshit of Christmas is a memory, the blossoms of spring an impossible dream. The light goes before the day ends and it is cold. Cats and blankets and friends and fires, snuggles and hot drinks. I helped a friend with a self tape this afternoon, got an offer through for a short but lovely job that might grow longer. I’m looking for the light but the fingers of winter have been in my heart today. I’m very glad of Minnie and the pizza. Glad of Boo and her fluffy affection and buzzing warmth. She’s taking to sniffing my nose as I sleep. It’s a good snoring monitor.

I bought daffodils. They haven’t opened yet. I finished my first loaf baked from scratch and it wasn’t shite. I’ll have more tomorrow morning and I made it and that’s satisfying. The last one was a copro with Brian.

Bed is warm. Too tired to read now, I’m just gonna flop until a hairy face wakes me up at dawn. Hopefully some sunlight tomorrow. I’m sad. Bring Spring…

January January January.

It’s cold in the world.

A mate of mine sent me their website and cheered me right up by making a brand that is bang on disobedient irreverent and funny. I’ve been doing this life shit for long enough that I’ve managed to discover humans that make me forget things like tiny dick rapeylips walking into the office on a global stage and giving his list to Santa in a speech. My dad would often say “You can’t argue with stupid.”

I made bread. The first time from scratch. Brian still held my hand a bit.

There’s been a starter in the kitchen for months. When Brian was here the kitchen would occasionally be carnage for a bit, following which there would be a loaf of bread.

The starter is a living organism. Needs to be fed and watered. I’ve been looking after it. But a man gets hungry. I’ve cut out all delivered and fast foods, so I’m getting through the kitchen stock and bread will help as it’s great with so much.

This evening though I’ve got the Marmite in the oven, heating up one of the cheap cans of cassoulet I bought in the south of France. They have these incredible places where you can get them to can up fucking good quality stuff in a great big can. I got one of them and then a pack of three shitty cheap ones from a supermarket for emergencies. Tonight was the time for the quality one, I thought, but the can was so big it has been put somewhere awkward or chucked. Fuck it. That’ll teach me not to hoard food.

The bread will be baked in time for breakfast tomorrow. I’ve just realised I’ve run out of eggs but the shop ain’t far. I’ve been really enjoying remembering how I was an obsessive cook for decades before I got really lazy. Budget tells me it is past time to remember that passion.

Meanwhile Boo is behind me as I write, eating the same old dried chicken pellets, and I have to think about how lucky I am. Yeah ok so a can of the cheap cassoulet tonight ain’t the height of gastronomy, but I’ve got the Marmite and I’ve got the can so it’s gonna get eaten. Fuck waste, especially if I’m saving money which I am. I have tax approaching like a fucking steam train. Fines are worse than the tax. ADHD admin ostrich is gonna PAY.

It’s nice to get your hands sticky with dough. As I was folding it my brain immediately went to pizza and once I’ve got the basics squared off and made space in the cupboards by eating all the crap I’ve bought and never eaten then it’s time to learn to make expensive tomato cheesebread so I never have to have some unwilling guy on a bike drop me a cold circle of dispassion in exchange for my right eye.

Little Boo is lying contentedly next to me. She made the floor wet last night smashing stuff and that tends to make her spray all over the place so I’ve been drying myself in a room that whiffs of cat wee. I’ll sleep in Brian’s room tonight.

Last night I woke up in the middle of the night but got really active. I had a cup of tea,  sent some messages, and watched Max my brother on breakfast TV with the best showing I’ve seen of him so far. He usually gets distracted into the esoteric or forgets to breathe. He managed to hold the line. Back when we were teenagers we had the Durrell brothers and the Attenborough brothers as role models. “One of us will be a wonderful naturalist, one will be an outspoken media type.”

He’s a wonderful naturalist and he’s been speaking out about biodiversity for decades. Having grown up with him every day as a child and looked at the natural world and understood it through his remarkable scope, I think that’s why I’m immune to all these pernicious little anti-science narratives. They are universally borne out of ignorance. Max is a scientist doing scientific science and I love his face.

I’m already in my pajamas. It got dark early today. I cooked a pasta that was one of my favourites when I was a student. Comfort food now. It’s a sausage tomato spinach curry pasta type horror and I batch cook enough for at least three days. Money is getting tight. I haven’t worked for too long. Glad something is starting.

I’m scrubbed and sleepy, and hopefully will have more normal patterns tonight. I’ve got something in my throat, don’t want to say I’m sick but coughing is a part of it. It’ll pass. I’m not feeling too heavy. Pissed off with little Boo for making my bedroom into hostile territory again, but it’s ok cos Brian is on the other side of the world.

When I woke up last night I ended up feeding the sourdough starter. Did it again this afternoon. Tomorrow I’ll make bread. That’s a lovely meditation, creating life, then eating it with honey.

No reason not to go to bed. I sent pretty much all of my tax stuff for this year. Last year is still a car crash.

Warm in the flat with the heating on. Boo has been demanding much play and I’m mobile again so I can sort that out for her.

I went and got her some of her favourite chicken food. She’s fed automatically and litter is turned over by a robot that Brian bought. She gets her stimulus from zoomie.

—

Literally as I wrote that sentence she walloped into my bedroom, up across the bed, onto the windowsill, knocked over a brass ornament that knocked over the light that knocked over my favourite coffee mug that knocked over my sand gong for incense.  Ornament is fine. Light is fine. Mug is in a million pieces. I just hoovered up the sand from a place of power in the desert in Saudi.  I’m told you can’t train cats, but I’ve closed the door on her for a bit as I’m pissed off. She knew she had fucked up. She watched the carnage for my reaction. I love her to bits but I’m really sad about the mug. But this is the thing… I was told she was an indoor cat but she ain’t, she isn’t what we were told she is. She’s barely off being a kitten and if I could give her a garden I know she would love it. If she’s gonna stay happy here she needs constant play but then, on days like today when she gets the play she wants, it makes her think that THE WHOLE WORLD IS PLAY.

It was a big old King Edward mug and just this morning I thought you myself “This will dissolve one day, and if I’m drinking coffee in bed I will really regret it.” The dishwasher has been cracking the Staffordshire China for years. I loved it for the size, not the message. RIP King Edward and your marriage to whatever her name was. Your mug outlasted you. I’ve still got my Charles and Lady Di mug which amuses me as the only souvenir from that wedding that tells it how it was:

I’ve already let Boo back in. She was just zooming. She’s a cat. I need to tidy up after myself. I was playing hide and seek with her for ages, pretending to be an ogre.

Saturday night, eh?? It’s only a few years ago I would have been halfway up Nelson’s Column in a bikini singing Vera Lynn.

Sad news today just before bed. David Lynch as well. This winter is cruel. I am lucky to have this nest with this hat, and to be able to afford to have the heating on and to cook an incredible reduced shoulder of it lamb and survive for three days on it in various configurations.

And now I’m gonna have a hot bath. I’m sad about my mug. Using the sand for incense meant I was already ready to lose it and I’ve got more. Bless Boo. She’s a cat. She just does.

Also that mug was the biggest one I had. She’s made space.

Aghhh. Tax. I’m really trying to line everything up properly and I’ve got a friend to help but good God I can’t do it for long stints. I remember my occasional temp jobs in offices, one time working for a man called Steve who wasn’t a natural hunchback but had transformed himself. His larynx was like a straw.

I’ve been making sure I move about, but I’ve been at the laptop when it lets me. I’m aware of how prolonged periods affect my back, which is thankfully easing every day. When it freezes I start talking to the (made up) guys in India in my head who have remotely commandeered access and are using it to mine bitcoin or try and take all the money I don’t have. How else can it be so slow?

I’ve had a number of issues recently. When I was in Stratford loads of people over a short space of time time started to receive calls that looked like they came from my phone. ‘Spoofing,” they call it. Now I’m getting loads of bullshit calls from India spoofed to look like Manchester or North London. I’m aware of Artificial Intelligence and how they need samples to make voices, so in my ridiculous way I’m answering all calls from unfamiliar numbers with a random and extreme pastiche of a regional accent. This afternoon it was Glaswegian. Twice. I’m certain something is up.

If I was one of those scrotes who makes money by stealing from the vulnerable, this is exactly how I would be building a database. Hack a phone. I fear that might have happened. Even if not, spoof the number and establish it works. Learn about the owner either through the hack or more likely, through calls to them. Over the course of this learning, employ your prototype software that captures the voice and starts to parse it into sounding like them. When you’re happy with it, you have a model where you can pass for the person. “Reception really bad. Can’t access bank. I’m going to be eaten by cannibals here in Utah unless you send me enough money to pay my hotel bill. I’ll pay it back. I’ll text you the details…”

It’s an old classic but with new tech it’ll start happening. So I’m giving them nothing to go on, plus there’s a freedom in being “other” when these fuckwits ring you. “What the fuck are you talking about, my accident? You’re talking absolute shite, how did you get this number? Can you take me off the list?” They sound like old scams, but these people evolve the whole time. I’ve been enjoying Pierogi for ages – he is a YouTuber so carries all that narcissist shit but … anything that raises awareness of this horrible industry of theft is absolutely worth flagging. He not only baits these guys but now is resourced enough and smart enough that he can hack them as they try to hack him. He’s learnt languages in the line of work so he can pick up background chatter. He’s incredible. I’ll look him up for a link... He calls himself Scammer Payback. It’s very entertaining but it’s also deeply frightening the extent to which the people he talks to don’t care at all about the person he’s pretending to be. These guys are pigs. I’ve been enjoying his content for years, but thought to share in case your aren’t an instinctive critical thinker. I fall foul of thinking people are my friend in person when they are the opposite, but I am good at spotting remote scams and thinking through how they work. I still might get fucked, we all might. When we were looking for a cat, Becky Holmes (@deathtospinach) helped me dodge a kitten fraud bot based on the model of romance fraud bots that she plays with. She fucks with romance fraudsters. This stuff is seeded through everything. These people don’t give a fuck but they are a literal industry because a successful hit pays well. I have always blithely thought that these things would be obvious. I’m very critical in my thinking online, I always examine the source and consider the motive, I look for edit jumps and cuts in videos and draw conclusions from them and where they are (you’ll get plenty in Pierogi, he’s crafting the narrative but I’ve seen enough of his over years to trust).

I’m sharing these things now thinking I should have done it years ago just in case someone needs to hear it. It is a lie if they put time pressure on you. Accident claims, bank fraud, distressed loved ones, family members on unknown numbers, your bank manager, the police, an authority figure… It can be very convincing I came SO CLOSE once with fucking Wizz Air customer service when I was fuming about a charge for printing out my boarding pass and tweeted them saying they were out of line. Scammers respond to their tweets with slightly adjusted user names, and Wizz Air doesn’t respond to their tweets at all ever forever until the heat death of the universe, so it’s a fertile ground.

There are buildings full of scammers doing this stuff. I know that I wouldn’t go to that level, even if I was desperate. You have to have hate in you. But plenty of people I know are very very good at “other”ing. All you have to do is convince yourself that your mark isn’t a real person that matters because of where they live, how they vote, whatever your bullshit is. That’s the slippery slope. Hold tight.

Lots of rolling definitely helped. I was feeling considerably less ginger this morning after a good sleep.

Bergman’s battery finally died a death, so I ordered a new one on eBay. Heavy great fucking thing, I found myself saying “lift with the legs” as I picked it up and carried it back downstairs this morning. Popped the bonnet and used a plug in charge pack. Click on the negative, click on the positive, key in the ignition and off we go.

It would have been an interesting venture trying to change the thing myself, but I figured I’d take it over to the local garage and get my guy with the dead snake hanging from the ceiling to do it for me. “The trick is to do it quickly enough that you don’t lose the authentication on the radio,” he says. He’s right. I had a Nissan that had died once before I bought it. The radio is factory locked, in an early venture along the lines of the snake oil Musk sells where you basically rent the functionality of your vehicle and pay monthly to be able to reverse or whatever. Extra cash to let you out when it catches fire…

I let him change it. He asked for £30 cash. I gave him £40.

He’s located in a railway arch near a huge Deliveroo hub kitchen where they pour out branded meals from all sorts of places you’ve heard of, whipped up by short order chefs following lists and conveyored to guys with mopeds who are forever nipping back and forth under the little sensor-regulated one lane tunnel that leads back to the real world. When I came back to pick up the car it was totally boxed in with police vehicles. They weren’t after me thankfully. If you think the guys riding the bikes are dodgy, you should check out the chefs in that place.   That’s where you want to bring the cameras for your GB News article about how nobody speaks English in London anymore. Half those guys are still making sense of where they ended up. I expect the local cops just raid it out of habit from time to time so they look and feel busy.

My guy has been there decades now, attached to the estate, near where I go for Battersea Car Boot. It’s ten minutes from my flat and he’s honest and straightforward and charges what I think is right. I really like him and feel lucky to have found him. He was just local when an apoplectic neighbour put a spike in my wheel one afternoon cos he can’t get out of narrow places. “You seem to have a flat tyre,” he called down happily the next morning as I went to my car. Had I not fallen foul of the petty rich man I would have probably blown my money repeatedly on Kwik-Fit or similar. A good garage and relationship with them is absolutely golden.

Back now for fun with tax. Gotta be ready by the end of tomorrow. It fries my brain, it fucks my shoulder and then finally it takes all my money.

I recently reconnected with Wendy Alnutt. She’s 78. She taught us movement at Guildhall. I know her age because we fell into a conversation about agents that I’ve had a million times with actors much younger than me so I looked her up. She could be 60. That’s a daily practice. I’ve got some catching up to do.

The first time my back went like this I was about 23 and at Guildhall. I reached over to switch a light on in the morning and AGONY for a month.

It happened again in 2019 during a run of Christmas Carol. This time of year. For about a month I could only sleep on my left hand side. 

Wendy taught us all “movement”. Generally that means control and understanding of the body. When I first trapped this nerve I was in daily movement and wasn’t going to let pain stop me. I learnt that moving through it, rolling it etc is the best way. Plus heat.

This morning I could barely put my socks on. I put on laceless boots. Trousers and pants weren’t easy either. It wasn’t a lack of mobility, it was a pain spasm. I’ve got people who will bring me tramadol faster than a pizza if I want it, but I prefer with this sort of pain to know it and work through it, and get to the source and prevent it. Last time it was a tiny repeated action I was taking as Scrooge. This time, I think I might have given myself laptop injury with the tax stuff. Too many hours over a screen. Precious boy was never meant to work in an office.

So I carefully and gingerly got myself onto the floor and into Alexander Technique position. Stayed there ages. Tried turning my head, lifting feet. Gradually very gradually moved through the spasm side and then the other side. After hours I was able to swing my arms, roll my shoulders. The hardest position was child, usually the easiest. Eventually after some very careful dog I could get there so so slowly. I stayed there some time. Back to dog, back to child. Eventually I was on my feet again, still in agony and definitely not able to pick things up from the floor. The doorbell rang. DPS with a car battery for Bergman. The heaviest thing, just outside the front door, on the floor.

I practiced spinal rolls. “Let the weight of the head lead you, bend the knees, no tension in the back of the neck.” Impossible almost immediately, but with breathing and care after about half an hour I could bend down enough to push the battery into the flat. Couldn’t pick it up though. Couldn’t close the door. Eventually had to ask the caretaker to get it in enough that I could close the door around it.

I know my body now thank god. I’ve been rolling and moving it since I realised I fucked it. Gonna try for a sauna tomorrow. Just got out the bath. Blanket is on, gonna do some bed yoga. Then I’ll try and sleep in a safe manner. It’s only pain, thankfully. But these things respond best to quick attention and change of habit. I need my easy movement. Can’t spend my life on opiates. I’m too habitual.

Post bath I just sneezed and it wasn’t complete agony, so I’m gonna go back into child and then see where the pain has hidden so I can chase it before it sets.