AlBarclay

The Ivy Asia really has got nonsense food down to a fine art. They gave me the most remarkable birthday meal. I hadn’t even really noticed how The The Ivy crept into my neighborhood, in the old Henry J Bean, where teenage Al might have been found dancing the night away opposite Pucci Pizza. Now they’ve tricked it all up in their unique way, even down to the extremely odd fake samurai standing at one of the urinals who says “konichiwa” when you stand next to him.

I didn’t really know what to expect but it all kept coming, with good company and good conversation and good red wine. Having been off that stuff it took me by surprise a little bit. I certainly enjoyed myself but I can’t quite remember getting home. Despite a full belly.

Cake had been made for me and this morning I noticed that almost half of it wasn’t there any more which means I must still have had an appetite, or at least wanted something to soak up the booze before bed.

Cape work in the morning was revelatory. Not just swishing, but some really helpful thoughts about what it might mean to be a senator, comportment etc. I love the luxury of work with time for this detail. Sure, I enjoy just making quick decisions, learning the lines and putting the show on. But there’s delight in mining. Tim doesn’t do table work, which can get out of hand. But he does build the imaginative world. The magic and the logic are coming together now, the literal and the non literal. We are telling a story while pretending to be other people. The deeper the thinking goes the more fleshed out it’ll all feel. I’m still very much game on to be part of this even if it’s not as big a part as I might be used to playing with smaller companies.

Still, I was hungover again. Reluctant on the rainy morning bike. Just a bit slower and gummier than usual. Serves me right, but it was a luxurious spoiling of a birthday meal. Soon I’ll lose my evenings, so let’s grab these moments while they are still possible. Yum. And there’s still some cake left for this evening. It really is quite something.

Oh I was so happy with myself for getting myself into an early scene. “Lodovico should surely be in the senate in Venice,” I expostulated, but I was needed for my singing. So I proposed a version of the scene live where Lodovico sings and then comes into the scene. And it worked. So now I’m at least going to be visible to those many friends of mine who have never seen a Shakespeare and are going to end up watching Othello to see what the fuck this guy they know who sorts out the screws is gonna do with iambic pentameter.

But it means I’ll be in rehearsal first thing tomorrow morning. For “cloak work”

When I auditioned for Guildhall I was asked about what theatre I’d been to recently. I had been to Hong Kong and watched a group of dancers rehearsing a cape dance in a shopping mall. It had fascinated me to the extent that I’d watched it for hours. The director was a tyrant. The dance was relatively simple but the precision demanded was nigh on impossible to the extent I felt it was much more about the ego of the person demanding the precision than it was about how possible the precision was.

Watching and then later in class with Wendy I tried to be amazing at cloak. Halloween walks in a riding cape for years added to my activation. I know cape work. I’m very good at it.

Tomorrow, the morning after my fiftieth birthday, because I got myself into the scene, I’m called first thing to do “cape work” with the movement director for an hour before I have nothing else for the rest of the day.

You make your own fucking bed.

Still I’m thrilled. I’m in a scene I wasn’t in. I didn’t want to just show up at the end and be in a totally different energetic place.

But it means I’m off to bed. Drinks and food with friends tonight who I won’t see on Saturday. Friends on Saturday. If you are reading this and are wondering why you haven’t been invited it’s because I’m avoiding social media. You ARE invited if you can text me and ask me where and when. x

The evening is closing down, past the equinox, here at the time of year I’ve always earmarked as the official end of summer. There was a glorious big Dartmoor Warrior spider webbed over the doorway at work this morning. Araneus diadematus with a cross on its back. Orb weaver. Garden spider. Excellent efficient hoover of late season mosquitos. It was still there when I left as testament to the grounded nature of the current acting company. Too many groups of actors have someone who starts running around looking for attention when there’s just a wasp. Spiders make the daddy thing even bigger for the “look at me, there’s a wasp” crowd until someone has to take it away or murder it just for sanity, and then there’ll still be twenty minutes of “look at me there was a spider”. Either that lot didn’t notice it or that lot aren’t in the rehearsal room. Phew.

Still, that spider, hovering in the centre of the window web, is one of the two heralds of autumn to me. The other is the crane fly. Usually I see one of them first but this year the spider won the race, and the day before my birthday – too early dammit. But the days are getting shorter than the nights now. Once more Persephone is in Hades, and the world will mourn her absence. Light will fade. Rain will come. The cold. The cold.

My Forest bike month has been a most excellent investment. 40 minutes to rehearsal by public transport. 25 by car before you’ve parked and that’ll be forever pounds because this is London. 15 minutes on a Forest, so long as you’re prepared to be ruthless and pull it out from under anyone you think might be planning on renting the one you’re after. 30 quid for all the days I’ve needed and I’ll still have a couple of minutes in the bank. Sometimes you get a fucked one, as again this morning when the back wheel was flat, but I still used it to get to the next one. And it is still warm enough that it works beautifully.

People hate them, and indeed hate cyclists in general. Drivers because the rules are different, pedestrians because other people are annoying when you are in a crowded city. “You should watch out for my children!” “I did watch out for your child!” “No you didn’t.” That’s some guy who crossed in front of me and I waited for Izzy his timid daughter to cross in front of me too before I carried on. I probably should have left it there really, as a dismissive smiling “Oh just … go and fuck yourself” kind of loses any argument there might have been. As I continued the journey, any number of wittier less sweary comebacks occurred to me. He probably felt like an idiot for putting his child in danger and his shout was a confused expression of gratitude for my care, but I swore so now he can think I’m a yob while I know he’s a douche. insha’Allah. “Daddy doesn’t like cyclists. He goes all red and shouty.”

I’ve got an hour or so left before I’ve officially been on the earth half a decade. Christ. I’ll likely be asleep as it comes in. And now the winter comes.

I’m in my pajamas. I never got out of my pajamas.

“We don’t cook in this household anymore,” Brian announces, correctly. Just two days ago my downstairs neighbour, who is broke, offered to cook for us. “You get a lot of takeaways. I could cook for you.” “We are both very capable cooks, Christine. We are just being extremely lazy.” I think she wants the company and the ingredients. We are entirely after the convenience and the fact we can spend all Sunday in our pants.

Meanwhile my accountant shows me the reality of my tax return and I’m gonna be broke again in no time so I’d better start battening down the hatches. Today I can temporarily justify spending every penny I made from Hello Kitty on a Dishoom, but when the lucre runs dry I’ll look at that decision in a very different light.

This morning, before the Dishoom, I considered paying someone to cook something I am perfectly capable of doing myself. Breakfast is an easy cook, and easy to do well if you can be bothered to go to the shop. In Brighton maybe it’s nice to go out because cooking meat at Lou’s is off the menu. But here, in the place I’ve attached all my bad habits to? No need.

I’ve got a week before I go to Stratford. Just a week. I might be able to sort my life admin out, feed myself cheaply, tidy up a bit… It’s not very likely though, is it. Someone might want to stay in my room. They can’t if it’s like this. Oh and there’s a cat coming on Tuesday. I’m sure she’ll add a degree of unknown to proceedings. Important to have cats around though. She’s a pedigree breeding mum that’s just been retired. Black as night. It’ll be good to have some company in dreams.

I had the day off I wanted. Nothing happened, I spent money, I consumed things. Now another week is about to happen and it’ll be a busy one.

Hello Kitty doesn’t have a mouth. Apparently that’s because she “speaks from the heart”. Or perhaps because then people can project their own feelings onto the kitty. It’s not trying to be a cat. It’s a cathuman hybrid thing. It’s not trying to be just a cat, or just a human. It is what it is.

“Apparently she likes friends,” says Siwan, seriously, as we have our morning hot drink on The Kings Road. “I’m not gonna talk,” I respond, just as seriously. “I’m just gonna make cat noises”. An actor prepares.

A party for a six year old. This is the daughter of the artist friend who employs me to be a panda. I’m just moonlighting as Hello Kitty and I’ve dragged Siwan into it. It’s only a few hours, but it’s a few hours when perhaps I would much sooner be lying face down grunting into my own weekend filth.

“I can see your beard!” “You’re not a cat!”

Not as much of that as I’ve had in the past. These are decent children. Still, about 36 of them. We are all in Caroline’s art space above the Kings Road. It has been laboriously turned into a Hello Kitty palace. “Keep it like this and I’ll do my fiftieth here,” I said, but they have to break it all down this evening.

“Meow meow meow”. That’s about it. If I try sentences in an American falsetto I sound like Michael Jackson. I’m wearing a blue top hat anyway. I’m clearly a boy Hello Kitty. But no mouth technically means no voice with mask work.

The lack of a mouth is troublesome. Mouth holes are very helpful. Windows to the world. With a great big head on, you have extremely limited visibility. I could see nothing below my nose, as the gauzed eye holes are tiny. It was a very disorienting few hours, trying not to kick children and trying to add value. Weird work or not, I’ve taken it so I’ll do it well. That’s the game I always play. Siwan and I found enough to do, and we did it. The hours passed. Now I’m home and I’m going to do double the relaxing I wanted to do today. Don’t expect me to rise before noon tomorrow.

I now have a Hello Kitty birthday balloon. It will be MY birthday balloon in a few days. And I’m knackered.

Exactly ten years ago today, Claire and I were together about to fly to Utah with AFTLS, alongside Jim Jack, Paul and Georgina. The five of us were on my first tour with Actors From The London Stage. It’s a lovely lovely job, and you get to not only make a crafty Shakespeare show but also go to all sorts of fascinating parts of the huge country that is the good old US of A, and meet a wide range of people. Students and professors, military personnel, prisoners, philanthropists…

The model has existed for decades now. The actors build a show that fits in a single suitcase. You have to delineate the stage somehow, as you never know where you’ll be asked to do it. The five of you then go out to institutions scattered all over the states. You work with students, often not arts students, and you very quickly learn how good you are at sharing.  There are company roles on the road. “Travel” deals with the office and how we are all getting to the airport etc. “Social” blogs and does the outreach stuff, “Education” organises which of the five do which workshop, and liaises with the uni staff, “Stage Management” sorts out the theatre spaces before we play and works out how it’ll happen and if there are chairs, etc. That’s a double role.

I’m thinking about them a lot at the moment. First because of Winedale Theatre Barn. They are spreading joy for Shakespeare in Texas, and were beautifully led by James Loehlin. He passed away a year ago, more or less to the day. A huge force for good gone from Texas. I wore my Shakespeare in a Stetson T-shirt the other day in his honour.

Today I wore my Wellesley College shirt, a gift from that remarkable institution. It’s a women’s college in Massachusetts. They’ve got a replica of Shakespeare’s birthplace in the grounds. Every time we go we end up being delightfully nerd-collared after the show by enthusiastic young American ladies who really know their Shakespeare.

We had a donor in the room, observing rehearsals. I was mildly concerned, feeling the pressure to “be good”. I took my jumper off, likely sweating from the pressure, and I noticed the donor lean forward in immediate recognition. Sure enough, she went to Wellesley back in the day. Of course she did. We spoke after rehearsal and she took a photo of me, and it was a lovely little moment of alignment. I could’ve worn any T-shirt…

Jobs like AFTLS have helped me keep my sanity, make friends and deepen my craft. I’m happy to see the souvenirs from them still bringing a bright moment. And it is remarkable to think that, from my most recent tour with them of Twelfth Night, three of the five of us are in Othello. Shame not to have the full house, frankly, they’re a lovely lot.

Today we all got an email about the businesses in Stratford that give discounts for RSC Company Members. It makes a lot of sense for them I guess. I know that I’ve been in Carluccios up there plenty more than other late night eateries and now I know why – there’s a discount. Same with the Dirty Duck.

It brings it home to me that I’m gonna be away again for a long time with this one. Sprite used to feel long and it was shorter than this even with rehearsals up in Yorkshire. The quilt from Lou is definitely going to be welcomed. I’ll want things that feel like home. I might take a leaf out of Lou’s travel book and start packing a long time before I leave, be exhaustive about it, bring some home comforts.

I’ll be driving up, and John Paul and Claire will come in the car. Good company and, brilliantly, John Paul has a parking permit that goes with his digs and he won’t be using it so that’s Bergman sorted for his time up in Stratford.

I’ve got to be organised tomorrow though and take him in for a service and an MOT around rehearsals. He’s not gonna pass with his tyres like they are so I’m expecting to bite the bullet, but I’ve got to get it done as I’m gonna get fucked by parking wardens soon without being able to renew my permit at home.

I’m home and feeling sleepy again, bath is running, a constant mix of humans coming in and out of the flat at all times. Tonight Tom is on the sofa while two friends of Brian are watching Johnny Flynn at The Apollo. I remember him in a play at The Globe forever ago. Funny where life can take you if you address it head on.

Another short but joyful rehearsal. Time to wind down now and the guests just got home so maybe I should be all sociable for a bit, but it’s late… I’m gonna have to switch up my sociability before I go. I’ll lose my evenings. Worth getting up the energy to go see friends, I reckon. I’ve got plenty of credit on the Forest bikes to use up.

At lunch time I went to the local dentist surgery and asked if they could fit me in to file the sharp bit that has been slashing into the root of my tongue every time I swallow. They had nobody until half three, and I was due in rehearsal at half three to be Lodovico. He speaks well, we are told. It hurt to speak well.

I’ve started chanting again because last time I spoke well I was chanting. All this stuff is linked weirdly. I’ll be driving up to Stratford and I’ve only just realised that I’ll carry my sodding butsodan up to Stratford with me, because it’s all very well mister Nichiren Buddha and whoever came after telling us that we need to be connected geographically with other people who practice… I love my “district” but I don’t feel at home when I’m at home, I’ve always been rooted nomad. The roots give an idea of something to come back to, but I’ve always felt I’d be fine rootless and trusting… Who knows, maybe I’d panic.

But yeah, with cuts all down the muscle on one side of my tongue, and my job being to speak well, something had to be done.

“Your tongue will wear down the tooth eventually,” was one of the things someone said. Thankfully my fingernail and persistence is stronger than my tongue. A washed hand at lunchtime and about an hour and a half of thoughtful filing thereafter and I’m largely out of pain. I’ll still be sleeping on my left, but thank god for that. My whole face aches, but at least in the short term I’m good to not be in pain all the time. The next week or so my tongue root will be healing, but man our mouth is a quick healer. Why can’t the rest of us be so quick? I guess our mouth and our bum are the only open sores we have left, skinless, moving towards our insides. It’s why I am thrilled to still have my tonsils. Useless? Just because nobody knows what something’s for, doesn’t mean we don’t need it. Human arrogance is much younger than evolution. 

So I’ll wash my teeth in a moment and use mouthwash, and hopefully by tomorrow it won’t hurt to speak. The fact that every sound I made today cost me in pain though – it was useful. “You’ve unlocked something in your bass,” said James, the voice guy. I was in survival mode. Better to make a good sound than to be lazy, if it hurts either way.

Two weeks to go. Joy. Ow. But I think my fingernail filing hotfix was enough for now.

Since I’m approaching fifty I suppose it’s legit to be slightly falling apart. I ground a tooth in the night and it chipped and the jagged bit is cutting into the root of my tongue every time I swallow, which is making me much more mindful of eating, breathing, talking and so forth. In many ways it’s good to do things with awareness, but when the payoff for forgetting is a constant low level dull pain then it’s not so good. This didn’t stop me from going out for a lovely meal, but any excuse for that as you all know by now.

Lou came to town. Last time I’ll see her before my birthday as she’s off to Mumbai to tell actors what to wear for a week. So she brought me my birthday present early. It was quite emotional to receive just as she had evidently taken a lot of time and thought over it. She knows I like to have something heavy on me when I’m sleeping and she knows I don’t really have any decent blankets. So now I’ve got a quilt.

Being Lou the materials are all great, and it is patchwork. She spent ages thinking about the patches. Mushrooms, owls, seasons, insects, big cats… There are reflections in it of the patchwork of some of the curiosities I’ve built into my interests in this life. I’ve hacked things together for almost fifty years now and assembled a motley collection of interests. Some of them are built into this warm heavy linen quilt. It’s beautiful. We sat in Battersea Park, next to the pagoda I can see from my bedroom, on a little hill where I’ve had a birthday party before. A little bit of evening sun in the smoke by the river. She made a cushion for me too. Now I have comfy things to bring with me to Stratford in a few weeks. Personal and thought through things. Such a lovely present to receive. I’ll treasure it.

I’m worried my tooth isn’t going to get any better quickly – I might need to get a dentist to file off the sharp bits. For now I’ll likely have a very restless sleep and then find or make the time out of rehearsals to get someone to sort it out for me. If it’s nasty dental work I need then at least I have a lovely comforting quilt…

It’s my birthday soon and I’ve not really thought about it. I think I’m just gonna have a party in the flat on the weekend after, as it is just before I go to Stratford and I’ve got loads of wine that needs drinking.

It’s strange to think I’ll be living in Stratford for quite a long time soon. I know that small portion of it around the theatre pretty well now… Minnie was there loads over the years. Plenty of other friends too. These plays have big casts. Lots of jobs for lots of people.

This morning I poached a Forest bike out from under someone who was standing right by it.I saw them trying to use the QR code and booked it on the app. Instant karma. He was a bit put out by my “oh sorry were you trying to rent that? I just claimed it on the app”. As soon as I sat down though it became apparent that one of the pedals was totally fucked. I limped away from him and over the bridge, hooking my foot under the pedal to try and turn it, too proud to just give it up immediately. Found a better one just south of the bridge and swapped it. Served me right. My hamstring still feels funny. Thankfully the battery kicks in with a single downward push of the pedal. I’m surprised more of them don’t turn up fucked after the weekend, as for every guy like me who is using the things there’s at least three people getting drunk and kicking them around for fun, not too mention the guys who hate them on principle because they’re new, and are trying to mess them up and make the business unworkable. Unless the mayor takes against them they are here to stay I reckon – and they lip service environmental tick boxes so long as we don’t think about the diesel powered maintenance trucks and the air miles and precious minerals needed for the batteries. But everything is smoke and mirrors and until we start trying we don’t have any chance of success.

Tomorrow quite a light day in rehearsal so I want to homework it to really be able to be free with my lines. We are past script time now and those of us with small parts should certainly lead the charge…