AlBarclay

Back in London, and I’ll be here a good week now. The cat I’m looking after has bonded to Frank but he’s got his own life going on so I’ve chosen to actively take the cat-care now. I’ve finished the doc and spent a bit of time with Lou. I need to start my duties. Domestic cats can’t feed themselves more than they can find, and we haven’t had mice here for a long time, so it’s currently this expensive gastro stuff until I can work out what he’s used to. Katkin, I’m told. Maybe I can get round her flat and see. I keep expecting her to get out of hospital and relieve me of my responsibility, but it might be a while yet.

Still warm in London just, in this early October. I haven’t missed the heating, or my electric blanket. Tomorrow is an early start, and I’m gonna try and make it into an admin day. I’ve got so much stuff backed up.

Today I had Chris round my flat to try on costumes. He ended up with a black surplice and a stupid hat, and my magic flouncy shirt. I’ll get them back. It’s for the Halloween walk, and we are concocting plans. It’s never high art but it’s a friendship group doing stuff around their lives and it’s fun. If we sell out it kinda just about makes financial sense for us.

Then we drove to Highgate. We persuaded The Flask in Highgate to let us store our dead chicken in an old kitchen. They were awesome about it. We’ve been wanting to start there for ages, and this is why. Very haunted, well located, friendly staff. If only it was less than £7 for a pint of Asahi.

I’ve got free a bottle of Cardamom Gin to experiment with. Apparently it needs ginger. Not tonight though. Tonight I’m about to get into a bath and then crash. Early start. Long day. Send positive vibes.

“It’s just a tree,” some people are saying, and yes it is, this 300 year old sycamore senselessly felled in the Scottish borders. This is true. It is only 300 years old, and whoever cut it down did it simply because they are cabbage.

In the Northern Americas you can’t call a tree “old growth” until it’s over 150 years old. Loggers are taking down trees in Canada close to the age of the gap tree all the time, as they push it up to 250. Recently there were a few at 500 or more gone. Then look in the rainforests. God alone knows the age of some trees logged to make space for meat and palm oil, or burnt in arson designed to clear the land there for the same purposes. It is said that some trees lost recently in Brazil were over 5000, but … hard to get to and not as photogenic. They were cut down because societally we blind ourselves to the consequences of our short termism.

Idiots are mimics, so we are likely to see a few more well loved trees going down in the next few weeks, especially if the papers give some twit a platform out of the sycamore. Comfortingly idiots are also idiots so we are likely to see them lose an arm or drop the tree on themselves.

Why should we care about these trees more than the idiots who cut them? They bring more joy to more people. They are more pleasant to look at. They help make things nicer for humans. I don’t want to know the reason, or to pillory the idiot. Let’s use it to try to deepen the conversation.

This is not mine. It is referring to a much older protest rhyme, older than writing but written down and thus preserved in the 17th Century as

“They hang the man and flog the woman
Who steals the goose from off the common
Yet let the greater villain loose
That steals the common from the goose.”

Forever it has been thus. I was upset about that tree but I guarantee the pitchforks will be handed out by the Daily Mail. They’ll be the ones to run with a bad picture of someone and incitements to cut him down.

If we were upset by this tree, particularly those like me who have never seen it and never knew of it existing until it was felled, perhaps our focus needs to be on why we were so upset and what habits we are clinging on to that make the same thing happen to millions of older less photogenic trees. The higher up the chain we are the more we can do. Check your stuff for Palm Oil. Watch that meat…

I ate roast lamb for lunch. It was great and I didn’t feel guilty. These shifts are hard and societal and slow to effect. My lamb was well sourced – The Sussex Ox is very good for that – but it was still meat. Beef is the biggest bastard. But we all have to change things completely and we need to do it much faster than we have. It has started to catch up to Rishi now, but big shifts are hard to manage and can be enough to make people angry enough to do fucking dumb things with chainsaws.

After lunch I went to see my favourite tree in the area. It’s a 1600 year old yew that people have propped up with wooden supports. It has a face. It is covered in berries – don’t eat the stone or you’ll die. It is gorgeous and there is comforting evidence of generations of people trying to stop it collapsing under its own weight. Sometimes we can be such dicks. Sometimes we can be heroes. I guess it is about trying to weight it away from the negative as best we can.

It is largely considered to be foolish to go to Brighton on a weekend, particularly if the weather is good. It becomes a puddle of Londoners lining the Airbnb coffers of anyone fortunate enough to have bought something here more than a decade ago.

Still, I came down. There’s a reason they all like it here with the big skies. And I can’t really pretend I’m anything other than a Londoner, having been part of the citymix for my whole adult life and most of my adolescence.

This weekend is rare chance for Lou and I to be in this flat at the same time. Now I’ve got two cats to think about, one down here and the other up at mine. If Lou was off on tour tomorrow then chances are I’d end up here for a few days. Thank the lord that Frank is brilliant with Boy. They already hang with one another all day and sleep at the same time. I don’t feel at all concerned leaving them together at mine so I can come down here.

Lou was supposed to be off to Bedford tomorrow to start rehearsals but the whole beginning of her tour has been postponed because of that disintegrating concrete nonsense. It means we can spend a tiny bit more time together than we expected. Hooray.

I’m relaxing. It’s nine and I’m in bed. Nothing I want to do other than stop. I dropped the tech van off this afternoon finally, and I’m happy to see the back of it as the adblue sensors were refusing to accept that it was refilled, plus it drove like a shoe. We got it back to Enterprise completely empty and in time. It’s done and I’m worn out. I couldn’t even eat my breakfast today so I’ve mostly existed on coffee and nerves. Now I can sleep in a puddle with Lou and Tessy.

Handing over from one job world to another today. The director of our doc is surrounded with people who care about spreadsheets. This is necessary, because he shoots out of a suitcase and a plastic bag. And then he hands his things to anyone who will take them. The lightwands, his reflector, filters… They were all nobody’s concern. He carried much of his crucial kit in a bag for life, much like all the food for the set. It came with him from his hotel room on the first day on set so didn’t get logged when I did the van pack the day before. I just assumed it was food so left it in the office until someone started losing their shit that they couldn’t find the reflector. Multiple workarounds available, totally not an issue. We never missed a beat on this set artistically despite all the howling. The producer was anticipating potential issues, sure. We got him his reflector.

He left bits with the gaffer whose job it was to light things. He rarely needed anything in that checkered bag for life, it was the bag of someone who isn’t used to filming with an actual team of dedicated lighting professionals. Sure we had two portable light wands in the van, and some basic stands in case there was nobody to hold them. I got them back. But the checkered bag… it was his crap in there. It was the bane of my life. And this morning, knowing he would be flying back soon, I had to try and reunite some of the scattered contents with him. I dropped it at reception at a hotel in Soho.

This morning I had a zoom meeting about some MC and charity auction work. Very much my skillset. Very happy to be involved. It’s an important charity but I don’t know how much I can say so I’ll say nothing.

Then this afternoon into evening I’ve been thinking about my artistic collaborations. It’s something I can’t overlook. I’m an artist as frequently as I’m an actor these days, working alongside all sorts of madness and bringing life to it.

Tomorrow I’m gonna spend one more morning helping with an unload and taking a van back. Then it is done and I’m gonna let some time pass. Time is a healer. I’m fucking proud of the ones I added to the roster in the end. Dan and the gaffer did great. Marco was totally pro as I knew. Mark showed up casual for driving work and it was like it was the end of the world. And I heard the comment that is at the heart of a lot of the shit I’ve had this week. “He’s a fucking actor. He thinks it’s all about him.” Basic ignorance, sadly. Directed at one of us who doesn’t double as an actor.

There are many different personality types drawn to the craft of acting. “Mummy look at me” is a tiny percentage, even if people assume it’s the only demographic. Sure I know how to be big, and when. I’m an extroverted introvert. It is my job to know when to walk into my size and when not to. I deliberately sent myself up with a big dumb funny pointless speech on my birthday.

I think someone got bitten by a rabid actor as a child.

By the look of it, a 16 year old boy took a chainsaw to this iconic sycamore tree at Hadrian’s Wall.

Something older and more nuanced than he will ever be has been destroyed forever by him. I wonder who planted it, and when.Was it blown there? What did it see?

We all know the tendency of the ignorant to break things that threaten their little worldview. My initial worry is that this is along those lines. All the environmental stuff. “I’m more better than this tree!” Felling a tree like that is not easy. Likely he would need a chainsaw, and maybe a generator… Even some skill or some help. Plus he would have had to get the kit up to the tree to fell it. It is all very very weird, and I find it upsetting because it speaks of both catastrophic ignorance, and planning.

How lovely though, for me to be able to wonder about such things instead of being spoken to like I’m a recalcitrant ten year old. I am OUT of the bubble. Hooray!!!

I dropped the substitute gaffer van off in Watford. Then I went home. Now I’m looking at the next gig. I’ve got a meeting online tomorrow morning. My various collaborations have started to click back in. I’ll have things to do between now and December…

Home has a friendly cat in it. I’ve been getting photos from Frank the whole time I’ve been up in Aberdeen being belittled and now I’m back I get to actually hang out with the cat and be treated like a normal human being.

He’s a beautiful heart, Boy. Frank and he are clearly already bonded, and now I’ve artived he seems delighted to have two slaves. I’m glad he’s had the time to get to know Frank before I came back. It seems like he might be with us a bit longer. He’s had quite a runaround, poor Boy. I think it’ll be good for him to have some peace, and it’s exceptionally chilled here these days.

It is so nice to be out of the bubble. I was entrusted a Pleo card last night to return to my manager and almost drove out of Aberdeen before I realised I still had it. Even that final interaction was a mire of passive aggressive fuckery. I’m really really disappointed. It’s a lovely thing damaged for no discernable advantage.

But this is what we do. For short term things we sometimes break long term things. I don’t know what that 16 year old thought as he chopped down that tree, no more than I know what my friend was thinking as they repeatedly talked to me like I was a moron. That beautiful ancient tree won’t grow back. That heavy handed idiot has ruined it forever. Short term foolishness.

Maybe my friendships will slowly grow back over time. I really hope so. Right now I am fed up and angry and don’t want to initiate conversation with them. But … tonight I get to sleep in my own bed and maybe get jumped by a friendly fluffy cat at some point.

Home sweet home. Phew.

God I’m strung out now. Happy but done. They are unloading the tech van in the rain up in Aberdeen. I’m not there.

This tiny wee crew and everyone is overlapping jobs. There’s way too much eye rolling and finger pointing for my taste, but it is all sharpening to a point and the footage is excellent. I’m sure I’m involved in something that will be a strong result. Artistically the team is really buzzing, and THE SLIDERS GOT USED TWICE. Today they even used the two little lighting stands that got slung in for the Godox light wands – “panels” as the Americans like to say. We had borrowed a little nubbin from the gaffer so nobody asked for them until I was off site and driving with the returned nubbin in the back. I was pleased I could remember their number and rough location. The job ended just as I was becoming a ninja. Not that you’d know it by the way people have been speaking to me.

Before I arrived in Aberdeen, a projector was delivered to the office. It was tidied up under a table and nobody worked out it was there when it was needed. The only person who had already seen it described it as huge. “Have you seen a huge thing?” “No.” They had to rent another one.

This morning I could feel the usual pointless blame game. They had found it under a table I didn’t set up, but that I had been using to charge the walkies. Blame first, solve second – that’s been the culture. Suddenly there was a pointed “somebody” who had tidied up the projector. It made me chuckle bitterly.

You know me, oh constant reader. When have I EVER tidied anything up?? Also, and yeah I’m in this question, how did nobody look under the tables?

I pretended not to notice that there was this pointless attribution of blame after the problem had arisen and been solved. It’s like the pointless release form posters that I didn’t know about and got hauled out for not bringing. Pressure does strange things to people, unfamiliar pressure doubly so. I don’t give a fuck who did anything or who forgot what or what this person’s job was or that person was supposed to have done. I give a fuck about the result, and honing a system that works under pressure without any eye rolling or status bullshit. Yes there was a very well known human involved, but they weren’t playing status. So why should anyone else?

I’ve enjoyed this. I thrive under pressure. But…

I rang Tristan today who has just come off a fortnight as Art Director elsewhere. “What the fuck are they getting mardy with you about batteries? How dare the gaffers track your speed in the van? You shouldn’t even be driving it! What sort of fucking outfit have you got yourself involved in? If they want you to drive slowly put in a fucking limiter… and they were on you for memory cards? And they talked to you like what? You actually should have walked mate. You should have got a taxi back to London on the company card…” was the beginning of a half hour conversation that ended with me having to persuade him not to fly up to Aberdeen to have a bloody word with someone. “You don’t take any shit from me whatsoever! You haul me out hard if I’m even slightly out of line. Why did you eat so much shit for them?” “Because if I try to hold my ground then we have to have a meeting about why I was wrong. I’ve got shit to do. Quicker and better to munch those turds.” “You need to have a word with them once it’s all over.” meh. It is what it is.

We’re all pulling in the same direction, and we all bring something different to the party. That’s the point. If we were all the same we wouldn’t need society. I’m a great big loud visible friendly clumsy Yang with an eidetic memory, no fear and an ease with making machinery move and with talking. I’m not pretending to be anything other than what I am. I have made friends on this job. Sound Matt is a sound guy. Ha ha but he is solid and started getting angry on my behalf cus he’s been on lots of sets and knows the roles. Wardrobe Olivia sees the me of me – she’s a northern Lou. I showed her JoybombLondon on Instagram. “I’m the panda. And most of the men.” “That woman is so fucking cool,” she says about Amy the artist. Yes she is. Twenty four years old and she gets my jam. Phew. I’ve artlessly liked everyone on this set and felt it reciprocated. Art dep. Producer. Even the chaperone mum. The hardest run I’ve had has been with my old mates. But ain’t that always the case? We can be very different creatures when we are at work. I’ve got old mates I know for absolute certain that I would NEVER want to work with. They’ll always be my mates though.

I just went to the local pub in Chorley for a terrible steak. They are playing eighties music. They just played Only You by Yazoo and it is it second time I’ve heard it in decades, the first time being 4 hours ago in the van. I’ve been in an eighties music hole. I’ve played through so much cheese as I’ve crawled home. I’ve eaten up the miles. I can’t wait to stop this though and get back home and then to Lou and to Boy and to friends and to no more eye-rolling. I’m going to miss it though. The early starts, everyone mucking in, working with old mates, life.

So yeah, in London I had Marlon, plus I was making sense of the kit. “We didn’t know what you were for in London,” says Page. “But you’ve been mister Aberdeen.” Phew But let’s see how they do tomorrow. It’ll be whatever. I’m ahead now. But weirdly I’ve been pulled off a job I could do.

One of my best friends has been having a terrible time in terms of internal monologue, and it peaked around the London dates of this job. I picked up her cat in the gaffer van to introduce to Frank. It’s fucked when your friends lose the plot. I’ve known it before. I’m waiting and hoping for balance again. I can’t talk about it without sadness or interpretation. But her cat just looks so ridiculously happy in temporary shelter with Frank. I’ve landed on a wonderful flatmate. And they have landed on an effortlessly delightful companion.

Little boyboy will be here a bit longer while my friend makes sense of the world. I am told by people I don’t know that she’s recovering. I hope she is.

I’m off to sleep. Sorry. can’t keep my eyes open

We are at a disused train station in the north of Scotland.. The lights I only just managed to get up here are in full use making things look pretty. The team is working tighter now and we are learning to anticipate one another’s ways. I was very very drunk last night. They kept buying me whisky on very little sleep. I noticed it this morning. My brain has been bleeding all day, but fortunately it hasn’t been a pressing long day at all. There were stormy teacups regarding batteries and cards, but we are all getting used to the occasional tornado. It is largely inevitable when we don’t know what the shots are.

Right now the moon is up and it’s peaceful here. The wind is in the trees. We are all getting excited at the possibility of some aurora activity this first night when the dark is longer than the light. Perhaps some of us will drive up and see it.

It’s a team of nice people making a thing. No dicks, unless it’s me. Some personality for sure. Occasionally temperatures run high but at no point is anyone being toxic. It’s hard work and long hours but I’ll miss it when it’s over. And the longer the team stays in place the better we get at anticipating each other.

My hangover has an effect on my memory though. This afternoon I gave the smoke machine to the gaffer and adjusted my runsheet to make note of the exchange. Then I completely and utterly forgot the whole exchange as if it had never happened and was utterly confused when the thing wasn’t in the Zarges. Must be getting old. “They’re on your head, grandad!” Well it WAS my birthday yesterday.

Everyone is looking at the stars. I’m gonna get out from under my little easy-up. I’m just sitting with the tech at the moment wondering if I’m gonna be needed, and writing this down now so I don’t have to hammer it out exhausted before bedtime.

—

Which is now. I had the mother and father of all bubble baths. Now I must sleep. Tomorrow morning it’ll all start again. Two venues. So long as the weather holds out we will be fine. Rain is a ruin. Nights like this are just a joy.

This morning we drove down a path to a cliff. The grass is high after a wet summer. No cars have gone that way this year but for Hannah and Fiona this morning. They are ahead of us in a light Range Rover.

I’m driving a transit van today, full of camera equipment. It’s heavy.

“The path is fine,” says Paul. A bit bumpy but fine. Keep a steady speed, stay in second gear.” He sends us off.

“Thanks mate,” I say, and then to Dan I say ; “Bless him, telling us all how to drive.” The truth is, with this van on this road, he’s right – it is better for us to go in fast but first gear manages the weight. We ride low. The grass will overheat or even bottom us. I’ve already lost one van on this job, through no fault of my own. I’m doing this properly, even though the grass fucks with us.

I push my momentum as instructed and as feels practical. I’m in driver head. My concern is for the vehicle. I’m driving very much to the needs of the situation.

The range rover ahead of us is floundering from driving too slow, I think. I have no ideas who is in it. It’s just an unusually hesitant bellwether. I push on, hoping my understanding in a trickier vehicle will help them gain the confidence they need in their offroader to stop risking swamping and get to the end of the field. This is uneven ground but it isn’t bad compared to Sardinia / Uruguay / Saudi and plenty of the other places I’ve had to throw around a front wheel drive when it is only 4×4 possible for these guys. Ha! You just need to understand momentum and know when to stop. To the cliffs is an easy drive if you are vigilant. You might get bogged or overheated, but you lower the chances massively if you use momentum.

But…  suddenly the car ahead of us stops. I stop too, at the top of a downward slope so I can continue. There’s a good 40 foot between us – I’ve been trying to slow down so they can solve what I’m assuming must be a problem with their car which has been making them crawl.

Fiona gets out. She yomps up to us.

“She looks angry,” I say to Dan. “Nah mate, it’ll be logistics. She needs to give us a permit.” “Actually yeah, that’s likely it. It’s not like we’ve done anything.”

Fiona arrives at my window and she’s shouting and not breathing at all. The most incredible invective. Horrible. How does she do it and not fall over? This is my friend and my boss. Literally the nastiest anyone has ever spoken to me in my entire life. It was everything I had not to say “Go fuck yourself”. Absolutely gobsmacking unprovoked RAGE. Looking back on it I guess that’s the trust thing. I trust her, and I trust Hannah. We are friends. Friends can be cunts to each other.

How much damage have these Americans done that I can drive correctly and with experience over rough terrain and my friend can literally verbally assault me with everything they’ve got for no reason? Limmy told me years ago: ‘These Americans – you can’t let them hurt your friendships.”

“If that had been me I would have walked off the job,” says Dan. She is mum of two boys. So was my poor mum. She defaulted to a tone that sees results with them. But… it is only effective if it is your children who owe their freedom to you.

I’m trying to eat the poison. I’m the bottom of the hierarchy on purpose. I’m the whipping boy. That’s the hope. I’ve got no ambition to be mister whoopywooface. But just because I set myself up as the whipping boy does not mean that my friends are free to flail me like that. Nobody should ever speak to anyone like that.

I’m generally just trying to make things nice when I work.  It’s something I’m extremely good at. It’s all I give a fuck about. I’ve got old friends on the shoot: Hannah, Fiona and Dan. Very different types but I care about them all very deeply and we have all pissed each other off on this job, but thankfully we all love each other. The material we were shooting will hopefully be lovely, even if it is getting harder by the day with the lack of a first AD. You have to tell people what you’re doing ahead of time or they’ll lose faith. Thank God we have a fantastically kind gaffer. I sent the drone guy to him as he was trying to balance interior to exterior. I’ve never seen anyone so amenable. Alongside that, I experimented when wardrobe and art were with me and I had the only walkie. “You have to ask Hannah if you want an answer. If I ask she’ll just be vague and slightly belittling.” “No she won’t,” said Dahlia and Olivia, and so we all shared my walkie and observed how they both got answers and I got fobbed off.

Friends, eh? That’s why some people pretend to be better than real. But I know she’s going though stress. And it is mostly glorious.

It’s a lovely lovely set. Tonight we managed to get everyone together in one place with the excuse of a late call tomorrow and my birthday. My heavily refined “Unthreatening Alien” routine allows everyone to be their best selves on jobs like this. I’ll go right out there and say that my special skill is to bring companies together without anyone realising I’m doing it. I know when to clown and when to shoot energy, and I give no fucks about your hierarchy nonsense.

But don’t be a cunt for no reason. Please.

Goodness me. It’s my birthday already. Midnight just happened.

It’s long hours. Too long when it keeps happening, particularly when I only slept an hour or two on the drive up. I’m not kicking off yet, but I’ve started standing in myself again.

Today was tight in terms of production. We overran but nothing to do with inefficiency. Just art. Art cares not for we nor time. Art be art. Alexis could just do it again forever but here, thankfully, we have multiple producers on set to tell him to hurry up.

I’ve been on some sets where a producer shows up just occasionally and everyone stands up straight. The day is slower and interrupted with ancient things that have been considered and pointed. Their individual taste might dominate an interpretation on a line or scene that happens to be underway. Then they leave and everything feels a little wider.

We have an abundance of producers on this shoot. It’s weird as we all have to be on our best behaviour. But… This evening one of them was with me after a long shoot where the location manager held up a short bit of wire and said, at half nine in the evening; “This is the length of the piano frame.” The keyboard is three times the length of it. “Nah mate you’ve measured the width,” I tell him. But the doubt is sewn. Suddenly I’m having to carry the piano frame with Tom, out of the van and into the office, where we build it and of course it’s fine. But it means I’m writing to you from the bath at half twelve, and because the hotel won’t reserve parking, we have to unload everything precious at the end of the day when their lot is full, and then load it all up again earlier than we want.

It’s my birthday. All I have to think about is logistics and production. There’s so much to do.

Last year I was pretending to be a bent town councillor. This time I’m ops. Next time? Who knows.

I’m knackered. This is all you’ll get from me. But it was beautiful today and efficient. If only I had the head to record it. We had to use a stately home to build a convincing tenement flat. With all the kit, and interiors only, we needed the space…