AlBarclay

Quite a lot of red wine before the show last night. I’ve been staying at an old friend’s house, in the spare room. She’s married, got two kids. It was lovely to see her and I was an excuse for a bottle of wine but it went right through me. I went to bed eventually, somehow. Woke up feeling crusty and immediately drove to Leamington Town Hall to support her. She protests there every week. Palestine. Just an hour in the freezing cold. I got stuck in.

I remember using the word “genocide” in a car to my half brother, somewhere in France. Rupert jumped on it. It’s a loaded word, sure. I asked him when he thought Israel would stop. “Well that’s the interesting thing,” he said, before talking generally about the roots of the conflict without answering the question. It’s still being styled as retaliation, although I think the figures are about 500 to 1. My friend read a list of names of children killed, with their names. Including Israeli children. The organisers of this protest are Jewish. Lots of names.

I stood hungover and shivering and occasionally people honked, occasionally they swore. Caring is hard. In the light of something like this it is much easier to shift it. “What about…?” Hostages. Israeli dead. “What about if I don’t change anything?” Doing fuck all is comforting, as I can testify after about ten days of playing Baldur’s Gate 3 with Brian.

Coffee after and then I could feel myself crashing. I love my friend and her family, but sometimes I like to have a door I can shut for good. I knew she would be hosting me if I stayed. So I told her I was gonna drive home, and booked a room at Swan’s Nest. It’s just over the river from the theatre. I checked in, went up to my room and passed out.

A few hours later I was normal again. I followed my beaten track into this town. My first time here since Othello. I went to Bardias, got my coffee on a discount as they remember me. Went to The Duck, and brought a picture of Colin, my friend’s husband who used to be up there and was taken down. The landlord agreed to get it back up. Glad I could help with that.

I walked past my old cottage. A little pang. I’ll be back.

Now I’m in my lovely hotel room. Just had a shower, wandering around with no clothes on, spreading out. I’m glad I got one night with a friend, but I needed to commune with myself.

I’ll probably be up early, go and get one of my Stratford breakfasts. See some friends before I go. I’m not gonna sink into being here though. This trip is money out, not money in. This town again though, that company again. A real pleasure to breeze through and remember what turned out to be one of the happiest jobs of a long career so far. Twelfth Night was gorgeous as well, and this production is very funny but responds to the deep vein of grief in the writing.

It’s so cold and dark in the world. I can’t work out how to switch off the extractor fan. But I’m happy to have this little strange room, and I got a lovely curry from Thespians and they discounted it automatically as well. I like this town. I’ll sleep well in it.

9pm and I’m standing outside the RST. I’m looking rather winsomely at the door that was mine until quite recently. I’m walking down the little bits of embankment that were my daily constitutionals.

It hadn’t occurred to me that it would be odd to be here in this building so soon after Othello and not to be about to do some work. I’m watching Rhys. Like Lodo, Sebastian is backloaded so he’s having to keep himself tight. Something went tits up in the audience today near me. They’ve kept to the usual interval but now they are keeping all of us out of the auditorium and quietly rolling in stretchers. I think she’s okay. But this is a big old theatre. Things happen. They have to respond. The interval is much longer than it ought to be, and everyone has to be in the foyer while this lady turns into a crab. I can wait. I’m enjoying the show.

Twelfth Night. I’ve seen it more than dream, been in it more than dream. Malvolio forever, always too young. Then recently Belch and Antonio. Arguably better casting.

It’s a tight show, as must be expected with this company. It’s the RSC. I’m part of this year’s company. We aren’t fucking about.

Ok the lady has been wheeled away on a stretcher so we can go back in now. I hope she’s okay. Well done to Viola and Orsino, playing that gorgeous intimate scene “and so they are alas that they are so, to die even when they to perfection grow”. Considering I could preserve this show in an apocalypse, I’m enjoying the telling. There’s JAZZ in the flow of it. Friends in the weave of it.

I’m happy to be here, on a company comp as I was organised and booked it when I was still in possession of my magic RSC staff pass. I’ll be back on the same basis for Hamlet. I bought loads of tickets for friends to come to Othello and one of them is still angry with me for being hard to pin down. I’d sooner avoid bothering my friends if I can help it.

They’re gonna start the second half.

I went in, loved it. Bed now. trying to title this is more or less the extent of my capacity. xx zz etc

Up naturally at 5, who even am I? I even fixed a couple of things around the house. Sure, I also logged in and cast Command: Drop on some kickass posing githyanki warlord so now I’ve got his silver sword thing. Not too much fannying around though, it was a lovely day. Invoices to send and stuff to worry about – I’m gonna really start wanting to know what the next long job is before long. The short job economy is kicking back in as it forever does, I’ve made room for it, of course. There are even some invigilation shifts on the horizon but I know how I want to be making my money and it isn’t giving papers out to international business students. It butters the parsnips though. And I do like buttery parsnips.

Now the New Year is past there are no more excuses to be a dreadful layabout.

I’ve been sitting here with Lou this evening, up in this lovely flat, missing my mum. Funny how that grief still comes up. It was her boyfriends birthday – the guy who died recently – on the 1st. His corpse, her memory, the time that has passed. It all weighs heavily at this time of year even if I distract myself successfully with the waifs and strays Christmas. Now there’s nothing to distract me, so it can cut that much harder.

At least Lou is with me, I have company on this cold dark evening. And Boo is raising merry hell. She comes up to the nut bowl, and carefully removes a single hazelnut. Then she bats it onto the floor and hockey-pucks it over to the rug, which she then folds round by rolling. Then she stashes the nut under the rug, like a squirrel but I don’t think she really understands that hazelnuts are food, they’re just things that roll. I’ll occasionally go and retrieve all the nuts, I don’t think it bothers her, she’s more involved in the process than the result. Like a lot of my favourite artists.

Brian’s new sourdough making craze is catching. I just took out the first loaf that is partly mine. We measured it together and folded it together. I forgot it in the fridge for a bit and it went a bit funny shaped but its a good loaf and I can see how everyone got obsessed with doing it in lockdown. Breakfast and snacks are sorted for a few days and I have the satisfaction of having made a food.

We read a film on zoom this evening, there’ll be a few industry types at a rehearsed reading in a few days and I’m only there to help out – my guy is half my age, has a full head of hair and a six pack. Happy to read him to help my dear friend who makes movies. Always good to keep the tools oiled. Something is coming.

And if it doesn’t, I know how to make bread now. And I can butter it.

We woke up in a storm. 2025 showing intention? 2024 flushing? We shall see.

Lou had a day off and wanted to go to Neasden Mandir. With all the years she’s spent in India she occasionally needs a fix of it.

I have never quite gelled with Hinduism, which is unusual considering my poly view to most world religions. I’ve never been drawn to a Hindu country in this life, and I’m not sure if there are many previous tracks that way. Buddhism – particularly Japanese Buddhism – felt very familiar to me immediately. So did shinto, so do many of the strands of animism left in the west, the things we’ve had to piece together from negative retelling and takeovers by colonising faith structures. I’ve travelled through these places before but not through the Hindu. I found some power in Ganesh, a solid frisson of recognition in Shiva, although I’m convinced he’s a woman.

The Mandir is a huge temple in London. BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir, a molded edifice full of devotional Hindu. A beautiful if modern place of devotion for one of the oldest thriving world religions. A place with history of thought and care and peace. And it is beautiful. I circuited round, observing the rules as best I understood them, feeling mildly constrained as it felt like there might be secret rules that are only known to “insiders”. It wasn’t my gang. With shinto my instincts really helped me and I just seemed to KNOW what was the way and what wasn’t. With this temple I even sat wrong. Not my gods. Still, Ganesha is equivalent to my lady untier of knots, Hanuman has much in common with the tricksters I’ve come to know, haida ravens, even Bacchus. Shiva and Vishnu are the clearest tropes to explain what I have come to understand in the balance between creation and destruction, and how destruction IS creation just as creation IS destruction and round we go. But I can’t attach my imagination to the humanified molds. And to really consume the knowledge, it’s too much in this lifetime, I’ve already eaten about 5 major religions and I’m still pushing Joseph Campbell’s connective thoughts into the magimix of my brain to see what eventually drips out into the glass. I guess Campbell is a human I admire, so in those terms it is a little less odd that many of the devotional shrines contained people. I can admire people, but I’m not gonna fucking worship them, no way. I know people too well, love them too well.

It was a good contemplative start to the year, and I’d recommend it unless you’re monomaniac and likely to be freaked out by a different culture or what you have decided is a “wrong” way of contemplating the infinite. You can largely work out what’s what by observing the other people there. Lou and I were the only ones invited to the £2.00 “Learn about Hinduism” exhibition. We both politely declined. We went across the road though to the sattvic restaurant.

So many carbs, but we got stuck into an “all you can eat” vegetarian sattvic buffet. Chana Massala, Saag Paneer, Aloo – the regulars – some hot stuff, lots of carbs. A healthy first meal. Some years ago I would deliberately go to KFC on New Year’s Day, so that every meal after my first one was better than my first. I’m glad I’m not doing that sort of crap these days. It was a glorious first meal of the year.

We got home and listened to a meditation, but I’m not that far down the line. While Lou sat cross-legged I found myself emptying cat shit out the litter box and taking the bins out. Practicality.

Now it’s 9pm and I kinda want to go to bed. Brian is in New Zealand so it’s just Lou and I here for a bit with Boo. Gonna start this year slowly, and without any big promises wouldn’t it be nice to keep taking care of myself, eating well, taking care of the things beyond our ken?

“This sweetcorn methi leaves a taste in my mouth that is really similar to the one I get with Ayahuasca.”

Grandma is reminding me of the promises I made to myself a few weeks ago.

Happy start. Happy forward. Much to do. Much light to find.

Once again I fell foul of machines thinking they can correctly dictate our life choices. I took a Lime bike into town to see Dr Strangelove. Halfway there the power was remotely disabled because the app thought that the roads were already closed. Then I was having to slog a heavy single gear hunk of junk up to St Martin’s Lane. When I got there I was told I wasn’t allowed to park in the cycle hire parking bay next to loads of other Lime bikes. I had to take it up north of TCR station where there was a huge sea of Limes, spilling out into the road. I had to take a photo proving safe parking, and finding my bike would have been like Where’s Wally, but the app said “that looks great” so I ran back to the theatre and got there shortly after the show went up. Didn’t miss much despite the fuckery, but I’m gonna keep flagging it now as it’s really starting to bother me the extent to which idiot machines are remotely arbitrating our choices. Lime bikes are a revolutionary bit of tech, but like with music and game downloads you don’t own them and they can – and will – remotely fuck with you because they can. It’s like that idiot on your timeline who thinks the world is flat keeps saying. “They” don’t want us to own anything anymore. This is true, but blame late stage capitalism not lizard people, and short of revolution which will only end up with idiots in charge again, the only real option is to put up and join in, or get sucked under. I’ll tell stories about things. This blog is hosted by WordPress and I pay yearly. If I stop I think it’ll immediately vanish. They won’t keep the posts up. All these words, all this noise, a little death after my death when the servers in silicon valley get a few more megabytes.

Meanwhile another new year as we continue to trade freedom for convenience. I’m watching live theatre. About fifteen men, no women. A crowded house though, even for a matinee. It’s a hot ticket as there’s someone off of the telly box in the cast. I’m enjoying it – writing in the interval. Not looking forward to being disgorged onto the NYE streets of London.

Lou calls this evening “amateur night” and she’s right. I prefer to work it or stay home, as all the things to do are marked up crazily, drinks cost loads, everyone is getting hammered for no reason. If you’re working at least you don’t start the year with a terrible head. This year though I’m just gonna go home and see how early I can turn in. Wake up in a new year.

Second half is starting.

—

Lovely show. Sausage party. Very well done. Dr Strangelove. I’m biased. Got a dear old friend being the crazy general, doing it with aplomb. It resonates, this story about men making stupid decisions for stupid reasons and fucking everything up for everyone as a result.

And the rivalry between electric bike firms in my life is hotting up. Lime is trying to control use, which has caused a veritable sea of bikes behind the Dominion Theatre, and made me late for the show. I picked up a Forest on impulse at Leicester Square, where Limes are currently disabled. It flew me to Sloane Square in moments and I’ve parked it outside the station. Only Forest bikes here, and my loyalty is shifting back to the underdog.

I wish I hadn’t been in such a hurry, I would have taken a photo of that bike sea that Lime have created by bottlenecking everyone coming into central London. I’m waiting now for Lou at Sloane Square. We are going to have a chilled NYE at home. This is a better plan for Amateur Night than any other but for working a bar somewhere at quadruple pay. No fireworks, sure. But I won’t be part of a human polenta.

—

Bedtime. Happy New Year all.

Danger. I’m writing in the bath. It’s 9pm. I think I’ll try and go to bed. Dark and quiet time and I’ve made peace with that. This is the hibernation station. Normally that would be completely uncomplicated, but Lou is here and her life is the opposite to mine right now. She’s been doing two shows today, people on the show are dropping like flies so there’s never a moment where she can relax and take stock. It’s full on for her and it’s full off for me.

Brian and I, we made Christmas as we so often do. It was the usual mixture of personalities, a bit less gelled than previous years, partly my own fault for getting smashed too early, partly just how it all fell together.

Ahh shit that’s Lou needing a pickup from Sloane Square. Out the bath and dryinh. Might leave the water for when I get back. She doesn’t feel safe walking the London streets alone. Bollocks.

—

Grumpy damp chauffeur picked up Lou. Grumpy damp chauffeur counted humans – (one) – but of course that was counter productive because of course “it’s always worse when there are fewer people” and suddenly there’s a prism where the safest and quietest streets in London are still a threat.

—

Now grumpy damp chauffeur is in a hot bed. I put the blanket on so I could go from bath to bed, but then suddenly the road beckoned and I found myself wishing the battery issue with Bergman was more than merely my auto handbrake trying to be cleverer than people.

What are we unleashing, as we give territory to these things? The stated intention is to make them cleverer than us, but when things get cleverer than other things they work out how they can consume them for their own benefit and do so. Right now my auto handbrake is a fucking moron, but in time there might be ones that are trying to kill people instead of just inconveniencing them in the name of one of the most powerful of the new gods, the cloying masked oppressive face of SAFETY, RAVAGER OF FREEDOM, surrounded by zealous and worthy priests and priestesses.

I didn’t drop my phone in the bath at the start of this blog. I might have. It was a silly risk considering how much use I get from this thing. I’m glad I didn’t have something preventing me from doing it. “It seems like you have the phone in the bath with you.” Like when I type into Waze when I’m driving and I have to answer extra questions and spend more time telling it I’m a passenger before it lets me update. There was a friend of Jack’s who went on and on about the fact I cycle without a helmet. Made everything weird. Obedience over practicality. I took a Lime bike on spec the other day. They could kill the whole economy of that by making cycle helmets legal. And it’s the worthiness of average citizens that has allowed this general creep of loss of freedom which has become a fascist rallying cry because the people who like people keep getting so fucking needlessly worthy and passive aggressively controlling about it.

Anyway. This has rambled because I’m tired tired tired and in bed with one eye open in a hot bed after bath-interrupted and a little drive through Chelsea. Have a lovely New Year, darlings.

Picked up Lou fine from the station this evening in Bergie. I reckon I can use him even with a tired battery, just so long as I don’t park him on a slope. It’s hard to avoid the things these days, but I really never want another car with an automatic handbrake. I’ll take it if it’s an incredible car. But not if there’s a similar option with something I can pull.

This cold day in this burnt end of 2024 and I’ve been trying to exhaust the cat. It woke Lou up by sniffing her eye at 3am. She’s still working every day with this kid’s show. The tech is playing up a wee bit and one of the swings has swung into FIVE parts now. Maybe that’s a musical theatre thing, maybe it’s because its a punishing schedule for a long show. But… there have been a lot of people out of commission over a short run, even for just a show here and a show there.

When not playing with Boo it was a spot of tidying, cooked a nice breakfast and YES, back to Baldur’s Gate. Brian is way ahead of me now with my completionist tendencies. I’m gonna have to speed up or I’ll still be in act one next Christmas.

And this evening we watched The Holdaways. We’ve tried a couple of times in the past but it looked a bit earnest and then it wasn’t really the right time of year. The right thing at the right time. It’s beautiful. Some really strong work from all the cast, even the younger kids. Made for cinema with great old school camera and looking lovely with rich costume design, making use of a college campus abandoned for the Christmas period in deep snow, telling a story about three humans, with rich comedy and observation. I love a movie like that. Wasn’t sure I’d have the attention span for something thoughtful but it held me throughout.

Now we are winding down, post chamomile. Brian is in the Gauntlet of Shar. I’m about to get on a duergar boat. Boo is occasionally rolling around with us while we take breaks. All is well. Quiet, but well.

It had all been going very well. A mix of adulting and childish things. Coming back into the world but in a weekend way. A spot of BG3 in the morning. I added my old friend Samantha to the party. She’s voice and mocap for a great big red barbarian devil so it’s kinda fun hearing her swearing about things and helping me kill baddies. Then Frank came over and we snacked a bit and I returned his water bottle. Then my accountant and friend called and I think I have a pathway to finally sorting the shitshow I call my tax situation, which has fallen through ADHD shaped holes for way too long. I just want to be up to date… A bit of work, and then probably every penny I have.

Then I went to pick up Lou from work. An easy thing to do. No con charge at the mo as it’s festive season. I found a good place to pull up on Belvedere, on that slope looking up at the IMAX. Switched off the engine listening to The Coming Storm. Only about 8 minutes there before Lou got in. Key in the ignition, lots of flashing lights, no ignition. The red light for the auto handbrake was off. The brake pedal was seized. The collision warning lights were on. And it wouldn’t let me start. Radio still worked. Headlights etc fine. Just no ignition.

hmm

Loads of coaches going past. Crowds of drunk people getting in and out of Ubers.

I go into the settings, reset to factory. This is a SOFTWARE problem. The car is 2016. This sort of thing is only gonna get worse.

I get RAC on a travel pack with my bank. It’s not cheap. My accountant tells me I should cancel. I don’t. Because I use it. It comes with multi trip travel insurance and I’m swanning around all over the place all the time. It gives me some peace of mind even though I know for absolute certain that if anything ever went wrong abroad the fuckers would swindle me out of any payment due.

I rang them. “I reckon I’ll be here until late night,” I tell Lou. I expect about two hours minimum for check up.

It’s the automatic handbrake. That’s pretty clear. I’ve always hated the fucking thing. I hate it with a passion. It is an awful idea. It makes you forget manual handbrakes when you’re driving vehicles that need them, and it does it when the car wants to, not when you want to. Sure you can drive through it, you can tell it to go on off a bit, but it is not clever, it is not situational and it makes you lazy.

David from the RAC calls very quickly. “I’m just coming from Peckham. Be with you in twenty five minutes.” I describe the fault. “It’ll be the battery, I reckon.” “I’ve driven it loads recently.” “I bet I’ll have you back on the road in no time.” “I hope so mate.. We’ll see.”

Half an hour later the engine’s running. “You’ve got the light back in your eyes,” Lou says.

That. Fucking. Handbrake.

So I was parked on a slope. Takes power to run the handbrake. Car knew it needed the brake to stop slipping. Battery was low but not critical. Safety feature, in case the battery DOES get critical: it seizes the footbrake long before the battery is at zero and then refuses ignition. There was no choking, no trying, no flooding the engine. Just a refusal. For fucking safety. If I had a manual handbrake it wouldn’t have happened. Ok sure so I’d have found out some other way that my battery was old and on its last legs. But what a bugger of a thing. I even thought to try and bump start it in reverse down the hill before hitting the car below me. No dice. Can’t get the brake off. So you can’t even bump these new cars. You can’t with a Nissan.

Euro Car Parts has the right battery for 174 quid. David checks it and agrees it’s the right one. I can order it, it’ll come next Thursday probably, I’ll get it stuck in when it comes. Either a YouTube job or if it looks as complicated as the windows I’ll take it up to my boy at Culvert Tyres and see if he can do it for me. Not the worst.

A slightly hairy drive home as the other shit thing my car does is cut the engine at traffic lights to save emissions. I’ll tolerate it even though I reckon the ignition fumekick pays it back for short stops, but I don’t want it to happen now in case it refuses to kick in again, so I’m overrevving it at lights. I haven’t got a charge pack in Bergman and don’t want him to die in traffic. Got some jumps somewhere in the flat… Might just go to Halfords if it’s open tomorrow and let them do it. Shouldn’t be more than £250 which is a kick but not fatal.

Poor Bergman. It might be time. I got him home.

This morning we took Boo to the vet.

When Brian picked her up, he immediately understood that the person she used to live with had been sad for some time. I understood that Boo was a breeding mum retired at 6, and just took it in my stride that she is tiny. Clearly a breeder for tiny kittens.  He’s messaged them with numerous questions about vaccinations and is she spayed and so forth, but nothing has been forthcoming, so we took her in this morning to try and make sense of things.

She does not like going in the box and she’s determined and clever. It took Brian and I great patience and fortitude to get her in. We had to hunt her, close doors, chase her out from under beds, use towels. She is determined, wriggly and cunning. It was as much chance as anything else that, mid attack, I got her back feet in. Then it was done. She didn’t yowl once in. And off we went.

The vet reckons she’s barely one year old, if that. “She’s very like my cat you know. Very like her. She’ll go a bit brown in summer. I think there must be a bit of Bengal in there. They live forever, you know. I reckon you’ll have her twenty years.”

She’s barely a year old but she’s had a litter. “Definitely something going on down there.” She was a teenage mum. Maybe with a close relative. I’m glad we got her. She’s safe now.

A basic worm pill and check up and she was home. She’s not happy with me, but she’s been in my bedroom, all day, sleeping in Lou’s patch. Lou wasn’t involved in the kitnapping.

Pickle would have left me the stinkiest poo imaginable plum in the middle of my pillow, so I’m lucky to have this little black fool. We don’t know her birthday, can get no information, so Brian asked the vet when his birthday is. 9th August. So yeah, she’s a Leo now, officially. Just over a year old according to the law. And that’s that. And she’ll still be going when I’m seventy, probably. Well there we go. A cat is for life, not just for winter.

I’m happy she’s found a playful warm home full of friendly humans.

What a day. Absolutely nothing achieved. Nowt. I walked to shop and purchased milk. Had a few coffees. Mostly lay on a beanbag with my steam deck playing Baldur’s Gate 3. Minor spoiler alert. I have no regrets. Brian was sitting next to me on the sofa playing the same game on his xbox. Periodically we would compare notes. I’m trying to rescue a druid, he’s killing gnolls. Occasionally I give him some advice on levelling up, as I spent far too much of my childhood reading Dungeons and Dragons rulebooks. Lots of the information is still there somewhere. “Make sure your wizard has magic missile. It’s brilliant for finishing people off and interrupting enemy Spellcasters”.

It’s an incredible piece of work. It really is. Well scripted and with levels of reactivity and choice going deeper than anything I’ve played before. Quite rightly winning awards all over the place, I honestly wonder if anyone will ever beat it, as the medium is commanding such incredible budgets that most of the studios have cautious people in the boardroom taking all the joy out in the name of safety. This and the fact that all the scared offended “anti-woke” types have started crying about things like the fact there are gay people in games.

Lou is home earlier than usual and will be working two shows tomorrow. I’ll have to actually do some tidying tomorrow as well. Brian and I ate Christmas food all day today and that’ll happen tomorrow as well. There’s plenty to get through. I’ll see how long I can avoid shopping. Lou had some heated up nut roast and carrots and parsnips and there’s plenty more where that came from. Oh Christmas. I’m bushed.

We stopped gaming just for a little bit in order to watch Home Alone. I’ve never watched it. It’s joyful in its way. Pesci is just delightful. Great cameo by John Candy. I normally watch Die Hard or Muppets so I’m happy to mix it up, and you have to watch that sort of thing this time of year don’t you?

This nub of the year. A strange time. A cold and dark time. Let’s all laugh at festive torture.

I’ll probably be up a few more hours, almost certainly going back to playing BG3 next to Brian. Gonna persuade some spiders to kill goblins for me so me and my druid bear friend can set back a load of fundamentalist mind controlled cultists. Just a normal Thursday.