AlBarclay

A quick look on Google Maps tells me that it would take me just over three days to drive to Dubai. Lou is out there and it really isn’t her kind of place. Not mine either by the sound of it. Hubris personified. I like it much more when people integrate with nature rather than trying to supercede it. There’s nothing natural anywhere near that place that hasn’t been brought there and then manicured to within an inch of its life. Apart from the insects. They are out eating the rich and poor alike, indiscriminate.

It would be quite a drive. Through Belgium, Germany, Austria, Hungary and Serbia, then through Bulgaria to finally get to the coast in Turkey. Skirting the north of Syria then South through Mosul and past Baghdad until the speed cameras seem to return around Kuwait and Bahrain as you come down the isthmus to the UAE. “What the hell are you doing driving here from the UK sir?” “I’m visiting my girlfriend.”

Twelve days of driving at just 6 hours a day so there is time to look at the places. I’d do it if I had to or if I was paid to, but obviously not just for a jolly. Nice to look at it though. I’m still envious of Lou as there is loads of world still to see and the particularly varied Extreme E work seems to have dried up for now, more’s the pity.

I’m back on the invigilating train momentarily. Best remember to invoice. They still owe me from some training in November. My admin white out has been all encompassing. I could organise a drive to Dubai and back with accommodation and routes and boats etc and have it done in an hour or so. I can’t seem to do my tax or send an invoice.

Lou will be back in two days. I’ll probably see her early Feb. And if things go according to plan there will be hot springs in Hungary.

Burns Night, and a casual invitation to Frank to pop over snowballed into me buying half a smoked haddock and reminding myself how to cook Cullen Skink while the wee pudding chieftains poached away in the oven. I used to do this one big, Burns Night. Scottish father, love of poetry and whisky. Recent years have pushed it off the list but this new drive to start entertaining people at home again – it is a good thing. Helps build friendships and communities.

Some friends shared some beautiful things. I felt lucky and happy. Also a bit of light in the darkness and as I said yesterday I’ve been finding it hard to remember that the last few days. Admin is always like cold water down my back. I have to find a way to frame it more positively for myself. It leads to good things, and the way I’m looking at my future I will need to start the old funding application train before long. If I freak out at something as simple as tax returns then I’m gonna need a workaround.

Meanwhile this evening a very small group of friends fought off the darkness with poems and songs and a moderate and restrained amount of whisky. Glad we were careful. It is helpful to know that we can be.

Now it is bedtime, ahead of early invigilating tomorrow. Back to the dayjob, and I need to get my payslips in for that as well. I’ll bring in my pad, and should the opportunity present itself in that concentrated room, I will make a list of all the admin things that are backed up so I can work through it by the end of the month.

Tonight though a happy warm sleep with friends either side, Tom and Brian once more, good hearts. For a night we fought the dark and won. And… February is coming.

I’ve been in a funk today. I think I’ll pull out. It’s about admin. I’ve dropped the ball on a few things and they’ve got out of hand and I’m trying to work out how to deal with having had the book thrown at me by mail while I was in Jersey playing Scrooge and having oh such a jolly time. Now everything feels cold and hard and weird and I think I’m going to be taken to court for being awful at admin.

Tomorrow I’ll be getting stuck in properly trying to dig my way out. Even the basic task of sending invoices for expenses and work completed has been out of my reach of late… The cold doesn’t help. I also need to go outside and walk around. Work time. Ach.

Lou is sending me mad videos of Dubai where they seem to be pointedly trying to maintain the false narrative that we can defeat nature and control everything. Fountains and lights and ridiculousness. Huge buildings and so much pollution. It looks like a very odd place. I’m not sure it would be my jam over there, frankly. But more and more there’s theatre and culture being brought over. I might end up there before too long and I’m sure I’ll find things to like even though the air pollution is off the charts and nature doesn’t exist.

Early bed if I can. Snoozetime after a good read. I am already feeling a bit sick about all the things I’m going to try to work out tomorrow. I’ve never had a court summons before. Very odd.

I’m surrounded by friends at home as well. It’s not like I’m isolated. Tom is on the sofa, Brian is next door. I’m just freaking out. Things will look easier in the morning and I just need to break it down into manageable chunks.

One of the compound words that surely needs to be murdered horribly is “Bloganuary”. WordPress, aka Jetpack, is trumpeting that mess of language at me right now. Absolutely vile. They are too expensive anyway for what I’m doing with them. They seem to think that blogs are a way of coining it.

I still have ads switched off. Fuck that. I’m not here to make money. It is disgusting that the model looks at that. Why do you think so much content online these days is an advert every second.

You would never believe what this blogger told us!

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A blogger who didn’t even THINK he was a blogger learnt a thing.

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The thing he learnt would change EVERYTHING.

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Al Barclay is an actor and blogger based in London.

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He has a face. His face has features.

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When he speaks, words come out of his mouth, but when he writes they don’t, they just become visible online via HTML.

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When he dies, all his writing will vanish because it is with wordpress and there’s a Paywall.

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WordPress suck. He can’t even have a plugin unless he pays almost double for something that really should be free.

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Capitalism sucks.

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Buy this thing.

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I’m gonna have to get better at digital. I still own Albarclay.com. I just have to work out how to export it all and be free of wordpress. All my clever website friends won’t help. Fuck it.

Driving east in the morning for four hours turned out to be exhausting. After the storm and the clouds had cleared. The sun was in my face the whole damn way. There were times when I was totally dazzled.

All the roads were open and no crashes this time. Visible debris at the roadside all the way through Wales. Is this the last named storm of the season? Oh I hope so. The Wye was vast and rushing with flood. People are gonna be bailing out their homes.

In the morning I rose early and met Megan in the kitchen. She’s from Missouri, studying at Warwick Uni, and she is self-determined enough to have emailed The Willow Globe in order to ask if she could come see how they go about making their shows. She saw it at Wyeside yesterday, but had never been to the theatre itself. I wanted to go and connect with it as well so we were out and up there.

It is stark and skeletal without the leaves that block the view and provide the colour. I was happy to see it sleeping, stripped back. I’ve been talking with Phil and Sue about how they planted it. Strange plans are afoot with me and maybe before long I’ll be getting a load of rods from them. It grows so fast. It is such a special place.

Megan was beside me as I struggled through the glare. Her train was cancelled so I drove her to Reading. Stopped off at Sweeney and Todd’s for another dozen freezer pies, and got to London before two, in order to do my job for the day.

Mister Panda sat and talked to a load of children with Amy the brilliant mad artist. It was her daughter’s school and they do “meet the parents” mornings. The next one schedules trains. She builds installations and works with a guy dressed as a panda. “Why have you got feet?” As I sat there surrounded by strange colourful things in fashionable clothes with a Panda head on I wondered if perhaps I was actually completely insane in a hospital bed somewhere dreaming this life.

But now I’m back home to the familiar comfort of a hot bath and a long distance can from Lou who has just landed in Dubai. She’s been in airports six times already this year… It’s like COVID never happened.

This is ACE. We just had a power cut. The wind is howling against my window. Nature is busy helping us remember who is in charge.

Growing up in Jersey we all knew where the candles were. Now there’s a cable to French nuclear but back then it was just old smokey. They still occasionally stoke the fucker up, when the French start getting ornery. It’s a monolithic old cole station, but tiny in the scheme of things.

I thought I was going to drive home tonight after the show. That would’ve been two hours in darkness through this bastard storm. I decided yesterday with the theory of the storm that I’d sooner have an early start tomorrow and drive through the wreckage.

This afternoon we were at the Wyeside Arts Centre. They are providing cinema and theatre for a huge catchment area but some fool has withdrawn their funding. I know this area. Fuck, this building is needed. It wouldn’t have sprung up if it hadn’t been needed. These idiots who are judging arts by profit alone? They are killing light.

I’ve just plugged into the theatre community here, around Builth Wells. Yeah so I’m (currently) from the big London, but … I’ve come in and worked joyfully with all walks of life. Everything from ex barristers to ex army to those who might be excluded because of neurological differences. Powerful humans, in society, making something together. From the guy who thinks he doesn’t have to work to learn his lines to the gal who knows them backwards and doesn’t trust herself.

After the show, driving back, a tree went down right across the road. This is a big fast main road. It was a young pine, and it somehow managed to be exactly the width of the road. The car in front of me was closest to it and stopped in time. With our hazards on we all stopped, and some of us got out the car into the storm. Absolutely shitting it with rain, it was, and we all knew which cars were just sitting there watching us work.

The lady in the white Audi was in front of me. Together we ascertained it was impossible for the two of us to move it. Thankfully my “come on!” type gestures yielded Megan from a car behind, and joyfully three lads who could have been rugby players who were going in the other direction. We briefly made a community. The tree was rotated out of the road. Even a young pine on a pivot is heavy. We did it. We felt good.

Now I’m listening to the weather again here in my room with lovely bedding. I’m very happy to be here another night. There’s a tree across the driveway too, apparently. I’ll be leaving first thing tomorrow and hopefully be back in time to be Mister Panda tomorrow morning with whatever clearing I need. We shall see what the situation is. Largely I suspect that by half 8 tomorrow most of the trees on the roads will have been moved by similar committees if strangers to the one we found ourselves part of. I have a feeling that, no matter how big the tree, enough people on that main road would have eventually been involved that it would have been swung. It was astonishing how quickly something difficult became something easy with numbers. A remembrance for all the sad idiots who forget the existence of time and numbers when they try to refigure ancient works. “Only aliens could have done X”

We moved a fallen tree. We had never met each other. We worked together. It was quick.

As I turn off the main road and into the hills beyond Abergavenny, my podcast tells me that Wales is one of the only parts of the UK to have eschewed witch trials round about that time when 60000 harmless people – almost all women, none of them witches – were executed because God and the Devil and yada yada yada misogyny.

The roads are dark and very quickly I lose signal. Magical Wales can’t be bothered assisting technology. It means I can hear the wind as I’m driving through these big hills on these tiny roads. I know the views would be incredible if this were summer because I know these roads very well now. A decade, on and off, I’ve had a relationship with this little nexus, but in summer. It’s not summer now. It’s pitch black way too early. Rain, wind and cold.

Witchcraft is nothing more than individuality and a care for and understanding of the natural world. No wonder it was vilified. Even pre industrial revolution the bulk of people pictured humanity as existing in some plane above nature. Those who got into bed with nature got into bed with Satan as far as the twits who merged Lucifer and Pan are concerned. Even CS Lewis tried to reclaim the poor fawn from the Devil trope via Mister Tumnus. Heinrich Kramer was basically just an incel in 1486. Not much has changed when you look at the climate change idiots. “He’s wearing leather shoes so I can do NOTHING.” “He flew there in a plane so I can do NOTHING.” etc etc

I’m only doing one show tomorrow, a matinee. I haven’t done it since summer, none of us have. I’ve been mumbling to myself in the car but who knows how it’ll fall out tomorrow. I’ve got a cold. My nose is running, I’m weeping my lenses out. Last time I came up and did this I only asked for expenses as it was glorious summer and I could listen to The Ashes on the drive. This time I made sure they are paying me. They’re friends but this is work.

I’m in a gorgeous big room, silent but for the buffeting of the wind. Tomorrow morning I’ll get up whenever and I don’t have to be at the venue into noon. I’ll probably go hunting coffee. I’ll get in to work early anyway cos it’s me, but I’m happy to be out of London again, even for a while. That city normalises toxicity. More and more I have got to get the fuck out.

This winter is doing what winter is supposed to, I guess. Snow in many parts of the UK and apparently the wind will be up tomorrow as I’m driving to Wales.

I’ve been nesting, and thank God I can afford to keep the heating on for now. Talking to the wardrobe department for my next job and trying to plan ahead with the unsustainable situation of this flat vs my income. One show in Wales this weekend. One day of filming in early February. If these things were more frequent, more predictable, I would have less cause for concern. But I’ve got expensive tastes and not the means to indulge them. I don’t want to end up old and broke wondering why I didn’t make better use of what I had. So I’m trying to do that growing up thing at long last.

It’s hard though, especially when the habit isn’t there and the distractions are mighty. Very easy to do what I did the other night with Tristan and open five bottles of wine between three, see the dawn, lose much of the next day either to sleep or chemical mood. But that’s not new and it certainly isn’t sexy. It’s an old mode. It hasn’t served either of us with structure. An old trick of the mind to style the helpful things as dull. Life is bright and strange and colourful. The numbing is an interesting journey when new, but once it is old it is just old patterns again, the thing it pretends not to be, the same as a well worn thoughtless track in the sand.

It likely doesn’t help my mood that it is dark and cold. It likely doesn’t help my prose that I’m now playing an incredibly densely written and wildly mad RPG on my Steam Deck which is taking the place of books for the moment. It is more or less entirely a talking game. No twitch skills. No fighting. You just have conversations and skill checks but the themes go all over the place. My character’s most developed skills range from more familiar and predictable things like Empathy and Pain Threshold into “Inland Empire” which is about gut feelings and “Electro Chemistry” which seems to want my character to be constantly high on something. It’s beautifully written and largely well voiced, with the usual context related mistakes and mispronounciations you always get in low budget games. You play a cop who wakes up one morning with no clue who he is or what he’s doing or why. You can invent the answers, largely. It’s a well written world and a bold game. They did very well out of it too. It has been PC Gamer magazines top game two years running so I bet they’ve sold well. On paper it never appealed to me. But with the Steam Deck I can read it like a book.

Still this means I’m having to set strict times for my work. Got to be a good boy. Reward myself with games, but I’ve never been one to sit and wait for the phone to ring, even if recently it has rung a few times.

Not much more winter to weather, and since the winter has done the thing it is supposed to, maybe we can count on the same for summer…

I’ve been too busy to check on my downstairs neighbour for a day or so, but it seems she’s on the mend. Time the healer. I’m glad of it. I’m happy to help for while, but I’m not a full time carer and have no desire to be one.

She’s roped the block caretaker to get his wife to cook her packed lunches, and he brings them over in the morning. This is after a few days of her turning her nose up to the plates if boys food Brian and I were bringing. Chicken and veg went down fine but she wasn’t into the pies and steaks and I knew enough not to offer her the curry pasta sausage monstrosity that I made the other night. I love it, but it looks like it’ll murder you, and she’s one who has struggled with food over the years. She can get herself to the loo now without help which is progress. Horrible to be so frail.

She’s been listening to the news again. Apparently Charles is having his prostate worked on and wanted it to be known publically, which is actually a good call. Dad always said his cancer started there and he didn’t check it in time. I expect the GPs are gonna have to bulk buy rubber gloves to cope with the influx of worried men of about my age. I might even go and make myself one of them.

But not today. Today I tried to make sense of some clothes, tried to stay warm and cheerful, tried to think ahead a little.

Now I’m in bed. At nine. Brian is out in Soho and I’m thinking how easy that was every night for years. It’s all still there if we want it. I’m not ready to have a neighbour bring me pie yet.

Last night, post root canal, I went back to my flat and feverishly cooked a random pasta curry sausage thing. It was yummy, but I think I did it because it was easy. I was more tired than I was aware after the procedure.

Knowing I had an early start, I turned in early and set my alarm. I was meeting James at the archway in Waterloo at half 9 having already picked up a transit van from New Cross.

At 7 my alarm went off. I haven’t done this for years, but I incorporated it into my dream. I reset the alarm for something absurd like 2pm. I rolled over and into that sweet sweet terrible second sleep, and there I lay until 9:46 when the phone woke me up.

It was James. All the realisations happened at once. My first words this morning, into the phone, were “It’s bad, James.” James is the type to roll with it. “How bad?” “I slept through my alarm,” I remember myself saying. “Van in an hour.” “Do you mean you’ll be here with the van in an hour?” “Don’t know. Got to rush. Will tell you.”

At 9:50 I was out the door, in the clothes I wore yesterday. I had my car key. No coffee. No water. No breakfast.

By 10:33 I was in New Cross with all the paperwork done. Pace Van Hire are not in much of a hurry. The guy wasn’t there to show me the van, and when he finally showed up he wanted exhaustive photos of the van from all possible angles while I was absolutely losing my shit. I really really hate being late. With the chaotic life I’ve chosen, there are some boundaries I needed to set early, and one of them was to never be late. If you’re reliable you can get away with being a bit more chaotic.

I got to the arch by eleven, and we chucked a load in. We got the van to Kings Road. Caroline has a new space there, running studios and an events space. It’s cavernous. James and I hauled a huge leather sofa up the stairs. I was panting and drenched. We got the rest out. I ran for a coffee. Back to the arch.

Things settled. Thankfully everyone was very understanding. I’ve been reliable for them for long enough that I had one strike in the bag. But we had to work at a much faster rate than I was ready for, and come early evening I badly needed the egg and watercress sandwich I finally put into myself.

Three loads we took. I had to load the final one myself. Dropped off after dark and then had to get the van back through the early bits of rush hour, being seriously bullied by bus drivers on the Old Kent Road.

Home at last now, and wondering what happened to my body. I was lifting through the legs but that stuff was heavy. A good day though and I always like a solid graft. It just would have been possible to be kinder to myself if I hadn’t rolled over. I’m blaming the anesthetic. Pasta, bath, electric blanket, dreams.