AlBarclay

Saturdays are perhaps supposed to be for resting. I’m always slightly disappointed in myself when I do the thing that everyone is supposed to do, but I needed a stop so I stopped. All these events with late hours and strange requirements, meeting all sorts of people and throwing energy at big crowds. Staying alert and present late at night when everyone else is relaxing…

I crashed a bit this morning and didn’t really try to turn it around. Late lie in and then a desultory potter around the flat looking for things last minute that I can take and sell in bulk tomorrow at the Battersea Car Boot Sale. I’m going back. More frantic jumble sale nonsense. I’m not so well prepared this week though. Haven’t charged up my speaker. I could maybe go do it before sleep but I won’t. I’m naked in bed and it’s in my car.

What have I done today? Made a box of stuff to sell. Eaten toast and marmite. Read a bit. Had a pie. Dozed… Not productive. But it’s a Saturday and I’m not ashamed. Now I’m in bed post bath, and it’s early. And I’m gonna go to sleep even as the light fades from the sky. There’s plenty to do before the boot sale and I’m gonna do it all in the morning so long as I don’t sleep through my alarm.

Lou has been at Glyndebourne all day again doing the work that makes it possible for us to go and see lovely opera. Brian got home this evening as I was munching on pie. I have a feeling he is as knackered as I am. We are both in our respective bedrooms.

I can’t have too many lazy days like this with summer on the way. I want the sun on my face and the wind in my hair. But occasionally one is allowed to recuperate. Hopefully I’ll bounce up tomorrow recharged and ready for the car boot sale.

Twenty years of Al Rayan bank, and like I said to the client I’m on brand, being another Al.

A gala dinner and award ceremony at Banking Hall on Cornhill, just opposite the old lady of Threadneedle Street – aka The Bank of England. The Banking Hall is where they shot the bank scenes in Harry Potter and Mary Poppins.

My job this evening was MC. My first award ceremony was about ten years ago for The Steel Industry, and the client caught me just beforehand and took me by the hand. “The last guy was really slow,” he said. “They’re here for the party and there are a lot of awards. Give them weight but do them as quickly as you can, overlap when possible, push through.” I got a bottle of water and rattled through them. He was thrilled and got me back the next year. An early learn.

I wanted the script in advance on this one so I could get the names sorted and work out where the accelerator could be gently applied. “There’s an autocue,” said the Event Runner on the night. “You don’t need a script.” “Can you send it anyway please?” An eyeroll, but they do.

Halfway through the event the podium got taken out. No podium, no autocue. I had to introduce the band in detail. Half a page of build up. No autocue. I don’t like the autocue much anyway but it does make for a lighter workload. But nobody building the script had realised it would affect me if it was taken away.

It’s nice when you notice you’re good at something. I braved the eye roll and had the script at the start of the night because experience taught me that I might need it. I caught on just in time that I was gonna introduce the band from memory, and crammed it into my head through a hole in my ear, as is somehow possible still despite all the rubbish I keep stored up there. It took me ten minutes and I splurged it all back out in the right order and now I’ve forgotten it again. I don’t think many people noticed my heroics but for the autocue lady who looked surprised. But… I left the event happy to have added value.

Next time I’m gonna try to get into the script conversation earlier, as there were a few points of timing and follow-on that weren’t clearly thought through, and people structuring these things might benefit from an eye on practicality.

A good company though, Al Rayan, and both the chairman and the CEO were very pleasant people. I think they have a right to feel the event went well.

The Electro-Swing Project brought the thunder in terms of entertainment, and they put on a tight and fast show after the awards, really stepping into some beautifully thought through material. Excellent musicians and dancers combined. Sexy entertainment. But, you know … not TOO sexy.

A sharia bank tonight. I’ve never done one of these evenings where everyone in the audience is sober. Non alcoholic cocktails on arrival, or a lead free prosecco. A sober crowd at the end of the night, although a crowd determined to get selfies on the staircase. I got some chicken, but barely had time to eat it. When I was done I grabbed my bag and walked to Cannon Street. Then I got changed on the empty tube, out of my DJ and back into my comfy clothes for this balmy summer evening. Another nice event, and it’s really time I built a website cos I’m very good at this MC business now. A place where my natural overexcited nature fits right in.

Last night, after I helped him load his bar in, I persuaded S to leave the stock for the team. He was gonna take it but he agreed, as it made no odds to him. Rather than stash it I decided to be open and tell the whole team about it, so they could grab whatever they could carry. “I’m worried about the venue thinking this is rubbish,” said Mark. “Don’t worry,” I said, knowing that he would read the subtext. “I’ll get my car in the morning and make sure it is possible for us to take whatever people don’t want. I’m running a bar in summer for a show if things go according to plan, so the mixers and the zero stuff will be really helpful as cost saving. Plus the booze of course. I’ll gladly take as much of that as you like free of charge!” Jokes of course, he knows I want some of it. Och.

That particular pile wouldn’t have been there at all without Marlon’s relationship with S and my cheeky opportunism, so I kinda thought it was legit for me to hope to benefit after the team had picked.

So I left it all out in our room, in a pile in the middle of the floor. Nobody questioned how it got there, that pile. In the morning people grabbed what they wanted, as I had hoped. And then when it was mostly mixers and zero alcohol, Fiona announced that everything else was coming back to theirs in their van anyway and told me publicly I was greedy for wanting any of it and “no Al it doesn’t work like that”, and got it all loaded into bins for the van and suddenly she forensically monitored what I came away with and I was made to feel like a villain for having negotiated all this stock for them.

Still a lovely event, and a lovely team. I was happy to be able to get something for the London team. Marlon is a great guy and I offered to drive him home. I had to stealthily load a case of beer into my car for him. I saw Fiona looking daggers at it as she left with everything else. Marlon worked hard. We all did. It didn’t all have to go to Hereford for the back end team, surely?Even if I totally know that the events only run smoothly because the back end is good. There is also genuinely a strength in responsive live people who don’t dissolve into howling stress monsters when things aren’t exactly as planned. A good event needs both. I’m not back end. I’m front. And there were plenty of fires I put out before they caught last night. I registered back end surprise when I said goodbye to all the suppliers by name and they reciprocated. It takes different strengths to make a team.

I was a bit too unsubtle trying to get some things for the team though, knowing how hard they had been working. I had just been proceeding as normal, full open, asking people openly, wide and stupid, easy to throw things at. Memorable. People with guile often compile my behaviour incorrectly based on their constructions. I was just being a big helpful face. I had a passive aggressive public drop of a mojito mixer bottle from the Diageo guys, that I don’t think was deserved. I said “If there’s any open black label left at the end of the night, send it our way.” He then staged a drop of a bottle of mixer when everyone from the team was round the back but me. “Your guy asked for a bottle so here it is.” Cunt. Sure he’s done lots of events but that wasn’t called for, especially since I spent about four hours crushing their ice while they were talking about TV shows, and I was never asking for myself and made literally everything available to the team first and me second. I even “won” some sort of beach bag for giving my number to Asahi. Not a bad bag, but I put it in the pile and someone wanted it. Plus a hat. I don’t miss any of this stuff, I was working for the team. I’m angry though because I worked to get nice things for everyone, and ended up being made to feel like I had done something wrong for including myself in that everyone. I think that was correct and fair.

I have to examine my behaviour, or I wouldn’t be me. I tried too hard to bag things for the team, so that’s a learn. They are obviously fed up of it at such events or the guy wouldn’t have staged the mojito mix thing. I’ll call him a cunt again just to shunt a little more bad energy his way. Cunt. He deserves it. I hope a bird shits on his head.

We all worked hard though and I was completely transparent about sharing everything I was given. I was given more than most because I built relationships to help the event. I was willing to let the team take everything as my relationships on the night are only possible because of the work done in the run up. I was just being me, being present, responsive and cheeky.

I got unexpectedly slapped from a familiar slap hand just when I thought we were past that. I think it’s reflexive with her. Hey ho.

Still, a lovely job. And I’ve got some alcohol-free tiny rebel and a case of real beer and some mixers.

“I suppose you can have those mixers. They taste disgusting.”

That’s where we’re at. #Friends

Hayfever is runny but not blocked up today so I’m just occasionally having to blow my nose discreetly and hope that nobody thinks I’ve got COVID.

I’ve just crushed three bags of ice so that would make me a superspreader if I did.

This is a great big annual conference. There’s always something to do. Earlier I was on “You can’t park there” duty. Then “Where m/

…

4 hours. Dunno where that sentence was going. Back then I wasn’t even plugged into the borg, but now there’s this thing in my ear that tells me what to do. Being part of the network of walkie talkies mostly means I get to listen to other people talking about bins, but I also occasionally get to find the bell and bring it to Mark.

Lots of suppliers here and I’ve made friends with some of them which will mean a free tote bag and some interesting mixers and even the occasional bottle of something. One guy had a leaky crate of beer. One punctured can meant we got to keep the ones it sprayed. All of us will go home with what we can carry I expect.

I won’t be able to carry much though. The Club is very green and they were mowing the lawns when I got in this morning at 6, and I’ll still be blowing my nose at 2am, before coming back for 6.30. Everything has to be out of here by 8am and right now there are 300 people giving each other awards in the room next door, and it’s the time I went to bed yesterday. I’m gonna be walking wounded by tomorrow morning at 8am but I don’t have any work until Friday afternoon so I’ll have time to recover. I’ll let you know if I end up with buckets of swag.

I’m a lot better at crushing ice today than I was yesterday.

Oh God. The party has started. Two and a half hours of breaking down tables and picking up glasses. Hopefully some delegates will leave their goodie bags.

Purple Palace again. The Premier Inn on my side of Putney Bridge. It’s only an hour’s walk home from here, twelve minutes by car. But I’m staying here as the team is staying here and tomorrow we all leave at 5:45 to build this event then tear it down.

My hayfever chose today to go nuclear. I’ve been sitting in a meeting that involved food and booze, and I can’t breathe through my nose. I know it well enough just to be perplexed at the timing. I haven’t seen some of these people since the documentary in Aberdeen that sent me slightly bananas.

Now it’s twenty past nine and I’m taking advantage of the facilities. Once again I’m in the end room with an extra bed and a bath, just as I was in Jersey.

I’m sitting in the bath as it fills, hoping that an early bed will be the thing to fix the snot. I haven’t got an antihistamine but I’ve got Actifed. Steam will help too. It’s already helping. It was a year ago last time I did this job and I think I’d just got back from Uruguay. I have just been reminded that I had to record myself singing into my mobile at 4am after the main night, for an audition for Oliver! “One Boooooy, Booy for saaaale!” They recalled me. Might have got that job. Sliding door if I had. Not every job you want is the one you need.

This job is gonna be full on but surrounded by lovely people. Hopefully by the end of it the fractures between Fi and I will be filled in, cos neither of us liked the way the other one deals with stress. I think it’ll be a tonic.

Bath is run. Nose is already clearer. Only half nine and I reckon I’ll be out like a light in half an hour, ready for the morrow which will be lifting building cleaning fixing responding laughing solving breathing. The event is at The Hurlingham Club, where we had dad’s memorial dinner.

If there are leftover untapped barrels, I’m buying a pump ahead of a short term madness I have planned this summer. I’ve got two barrels that need drinking by July. Two more and sales should cover the pump.

Ahhh I feel so much better for the steam. I didn’t think my nose would ever stop being so bunged up.

On my way down to Brighton this time I didn’t think it through. There was no time to go home after pretending to be a goose. I was already in Beaconsfield so it just made so much more sense to go straight to Brighton on a Friday night. But I had no bag packed. In my car was a hat, a black velvet jacket and a jumper with more holes in it than the plot of a cheap romance novel. I stopped at my old staple, TK Maxx. Socks, pants and a couple of T-shirts. Thanks to a dozy assistant the pants weren’t rung through so I am now the proud owner of a box of extremely brief Calvin Kleins. I rather like them. I feel like Dolph Lungdren.

Lou doesn’t like the jacket which is fair enough – I last wore it at a funeral. The jumper though… I thought it was on its last legs. Cashmere but so worn and worn in with washing that the front had four holes in it. “Let me darn that,” she said, and two people I’ve run into since then have said “You look smart!” She’s a miracle worker. It only took her a few minutes and the thing has a new lease of life.

We drove to her workshop briefly, loaded up with picnic, and then on to Carmen at Glyndebourne. I think his might be my eighth different show there in two years. It’s the final dress rehearsal most of the time but I wouldn’t have it any other way. Those gorgeous gardens wake up in the summer, and the whole place is steeped in the bright energy that can only come when so many creative people come together in one place and channel the thing they channel through their bodies and voices. On stage eighty odd dancers and singers working together to tell a strange tale.

A less traditional take on Carmen, and even if I miss the joy of the huge flamenco flounce and the real period twinkles, by bringing it into a slightly seedier and more grounded world it made the interplay between characters ring out in a way it might have have done had I been distracted by petticoats. Manipulative Carmen surrounded by people worse than she is. Beautiful familiar tunes. English people pretending to be French people pretending to be Spanish people. My mum loved this opera. I remember her once telling me the story of it. It was huge and romantic in her memory. This telling of it doesn’t lose the epic sense of a big world, but reminds us that the things that feel vast to us personally don’t transfer very far from the inside of our heads. Not a huge romance of an ending. An unnecessary idiocy played out in a big world. Powerful storytelling and world building. I drove home happy.

Back to the grind now until the end of the week. I’m picking out dinner jackets to wear for an MC gig on Friday. Got to send options to the client. Man in dinner jacket is just that, no? Heigh ho.

A day free of obligation. I have been using it to try and organise my household service providers better. But there are plenty of distractions.

I took Lou into work at Glyndebourne and then drove to Lewes to buy a picnic ahead of Monday’s open dress rehearsal there. The perfect early summer weekend weather, and perhaps the right time to go to Lewes. It was The Battle of Lewes. Scores and scores of hairy men about my age in armour banging drums and wearing scavenged chainmail. One of them even brought his duck.

They ambled through the streets of Lewes for our pleasure, occasionally becoming excited about something or announcing something else. Lewes is a town for this sort of thing. There’s a pub where they do Dwile Flonking, which involves throwing a cloth at people while dancing. Nobody really understands it but they still do it. It reeks of a joke that got out of hand, perhaps people trying to confuse Americans by pretending they all knew the game as they made it up.

Today everyone got the weird stuff out of the garage again and ran around all morning shouting. By now they’ll all be Morris dancing or sozzled on real ale or maybe they’ll even be flonking that dwile. I enjoyed the battle for the spectacle but I couldn’t help feel that they were having more fun than we were. That’s kinda the point with reenactment though I think – much like a lot of amateur dramatics. It’s for the participants more than the audience, but that’s why the audience pay so little.

I moved from bench to bench in the sun, settling and making calls until something moved me. I thought I’d found a lovely bench looking at the river but a very jolly and catastrophically awful busker set up next to me. Now I’m at The Juggs – a fifteenth century inn outside town. They’ve made me a pint of shandy and I’m trying to get the right balance of sun and shade for maximum summer and minimum sleepy. Still a few hours before I pick Lou up from work and I don’t want to be tired or tipsy.

I thought I’d write this now so I can focus on doing very little for the rest of the day but for staying awake. A couple of events coming up next week. This weekend I fully intend to charge up properly. A deck chair would just be the ticket right now…

Trying to keep myself asleep for my 4am wee backfired on me spectacularly when I actually fell asleep on my feet and woke up in the bath.

Early morning saw me haring up through the side streets of Chelsea, through Flower Show crowds determined to get squished. I parked at South Kensington. Queue at Pret. Queue at Starbucks. No queue at the little Italian Illy place that does far and away the best coffee of the three.

Exam started at ten. Went on until shortly before one. A very organised extra time student maximising her rest breaks. Back to Pret for a Crayfish and Rocket and then I’m on the go again up to Beaconsfield.

Some young makers have written a script about Scottish geese. Four actors who have never met before. We were in a very warm soundproof booth. They played some honking and then by God we all honked. Happy honking, sexy honking, scared honking, triumphant honking. My throat feels strange.

Glass of water and then all sorts of words. Everything out of order, playfulness where possible, doing that thing that actors do at work where everyone is dropping anecdotes and bits of gossip. It all helps us stay healthy. We got it all in the can but with no time for Jammy Dodgers. I drank about three small bottles of water to combat the honking in heat. I look forward to hearing how that all hangs together. I only heard one person say “We’ll fix that in post”.

In years to come I’ll run into one of those actors again. Maybe an audition, who knows. “We’ve done something together, I’m sure of it.” That’s what we will say. We probably won’t track it all back to one strange hot afternoon pretending to be migrating Scottish geese. But who knows, maybe the shared hilarity of today’s work will get us both the job we are meeting for. If they ever start doing in person auditions again, that is.

We finished the geese and I hauled ass to Brighton. A bit more time with Lou. I’ve been looking forward to the catch up but we are both so busy. This is a window, even though she’s working all day tomorrow. We’ve got Sunday and Monday. Honk.

Beautiful weather. Shame about the noisy party somewhere nearby. But I’m so tired I’ll probably sleep through it.

I’m used to writing this in the morning from Japan. This whole time shift back to the old standard of doing it just before sleep? No thanks. Once again I’m buggered. They fed me, bless them. They fed us both. But was the client happy? Surely yes. I’m almost past caring but for the fact that this work has been crucial in the past. When the boats fucked me over I would have starved but for this. So it is precious work. Add to that the fact I’m extremely good at it now.

I’ve been on the South Bank again. I’ll happily play the game when it is my ability to pay the bills on the line. It’s been hard recently as the work has fallen off post COVID. Apart from the few months when I had to rebuild post boats, the boat thing taught me never to rely on anything dayjobby. I thought I was a valued member of the team with the boat company. They fucked me with no warning and notice, even though one blessed fool tried to pass off something I had genuinely taken to be neurotic raving as a “warning”. He came up to me in a corridor, so nervous he could barely speak, babbling something about nothing. Apparently that was my “warning”, where my concern was so strong for him I genuinely asked him if he was OK.

It still hurts, being randomly taken off that job. “It’s his first decision as head guide. We have to stand by it.” He was a tamagotchi-human. Totally dependent on the big people pushing the buttons. He’s absented himself from any responsibility for his life. “Head” guide = “most obedient guide”. Let’s make up job titles based on how useful you’ll be to us!!

I loved it too much, when it was just me and the passengers and the river. I was extremely good at it. Like properly excellent. I loved it and built a whole journey. I worked so hard to have facts and stories beyond the standard ones. It would have become my only focus if it hadn’t become poison. Everything in context, losing that job was a good thing for me. But it is so hard to properly understand that until you have the benefit of hindsight. I loved it. I’d still be doing it. Thank fuck.

On the way to work tonight I watched a few of their venomous boats plying their trade. The skippers can do what they like. The guides? Someone in that horrible office will turn on them.

I found myself with the usual conflicting emotions. In the end though, thank the lord I don’t have to work with people who aren’t honest with their employees. I wrote an angry blog after they took me off roster, which is like using a swear word in an argument as they found it and actuated it. That’ll be the moral high ground for them until we all die. Hurrah, fuckers. And it’s a fucking massive shame, as they don’t have that moral high ground in reality and they fuck people over from time to time. They were utterly awful to me and I have no doubt it was the same for others I know and don’t know. We could form a club. It’s a pattern. Mostly based on the fact they only have a few skippers and there was one super poison skipper.

“Never go into the office and you’ll be ok” one of the skippers warned me, and that’s the truth. It’s lions led by donkeys. But the donkeys think they’re lions. And they really aren’t.

Thank God I’ve got a good acting job coming. I spend too much time thinking about this validation nonsense and the pain of the past. I’m still bruised by that loss of a dayjob. Because I loved it and was excellent at it. The reasons for me being taken off it had no logic. Essentially it was just office politics via boats. Thank fuck. Thank the dear lord. Thank you universe. Through nonsense they lost an excellent worker. At the time, I felt I needed it. Had they understood me they would have absorbed me. It all went wrong. I still get to be this one.