AlBarclay

Brighton again. It took me a bit longer than I expected to get my stuff together in the morning. Living with Frank, I didn’t want to leave mess all over the place. A quick clear up. Then that familiar two hour drive. I’m here now. I can really feel the difference.

The window is open in the bedroom. This Indian Summer is still clinging on and I’m loving it. Just a counterpane for cover, and I’ll sleep beautifully. In London I’m on a main road and the noise is constant. I can tune the road out after a while of course, but here by the sea it is more peaceful and expansive, and the road is much less packed.

I’m here for the little cat of course, but it is always weird being here without Lou. Tessy is relieved to see me though. She was on her own last night. She just seems to prefer it knowing someone is there. I get that. There’s an empty bit of bed to my left. I’m not gonna see her until the end of the month.

Her energy is pervasive here though. It’s much earlier than I would normally be winding down, but the low light and soft furniture are both conducive to getting sleepy when the light goes, and Indian Summer or not it is still September. Every morning Bergman is covered in fallen leaves. The dark is closing in. The wheel is turning again. Before we even know it we will meet the cold again. Heaven help us all.

I’m gonna have a cup of chamomile tea, read for a while and pass out in the knowledge that the little cat will have me up with the dawn. I’m happy to be here. A few days of calm.

A bright start to the week. Well rested and awake before my alarm but still hooked just enough on pushing snooze that I had to rush my coffee into a takeaway cup. Into Bergman for a quick shot out to Harlesden where we were making this radio drama in an old fish packaging factory. It’s a brilliantly odd place with pastel walls and lots of rooms available for different soundscapes. The morning flew by and I was glad of my prep work as you don’t get lots of do-overs. I’m not sure how much I can say about the project, so even though I haven’t signed an NDA I’m going to say only a little and wait for it to air. It’s an interesting and quite eccentric true story of some arty London types intersecting with Moscow just as the iron curtain lifted. The man at the heart of the tale was with us this morning to hear the read-through – it’s a true story. My character sadly died some time ago. The protagonist signed a copy of his book for me and I only bloody went and left it in the studio when I finished. He seems to have led an interesting life, but so have we all, darling.

Radio drama is an interesting and fun medium to work in. We sent it up in Fitzrovia Radio Hour to great effect, as there’s something delightful in the intersection between doing the thing in the script for real and making a Foley that works. The tragic climax of one of our tales at Fitzrovia involved a fan being switched on, a card inserted into the fan, and someone vigorously squelching the inside of a melon with a plunger, dead pan, while the character used a giant lathe to kill themselves. “I should’ve known me place!” That was purposeful anarchy. This was, of course, much more measured.

Still, we walked into a room with a load of strangers and had to play with them immediately. We had to mock up a car driving to Moscow and an airport security gate. The hardest bit was the background noise for the party. First thing on a Monday morning and it had to be raucous. We sounded like a load of yahoos, but they’ll tweak the levels and make it work I expect. It was a pleasant group, surprisingly sausage-heavy for this day and age but I’m not gonna complain when I’m one of the sausages. I’m thrilled to have had the chance to work on something a little unusual with such a friendly lot. I’ll let you know when it airs, unless I forget.

Now I’m home, baking in the glorious late summer flatoven, running a bath before I decant to Brighton for a few days to look after the little cat. More little jobs like this thankyouplease. What a delight.

It might be possible too. I walked out of the studio to find my agent has landed me another nice tape for another part I can see myself playing. I immediately went to the barber for a trim and to take the beard off. Nice to be shorn in this heat, frankly.

An early bed is in order today. I woke up at about ten and drank a litre of water and still felt awful. Frank and I sorted some books and filled some bags with unwanted things. I had three cups of coffee and two cans of lucozade. Sitting on the kitchen table was a script and a pencil. Occasionally I looked at it guiltily before going through another pile of books.

The sorting is beginning to feel therapeutic even though it’s difficult. In this heat and hungover it was particularly hard to do. Still, progress happened. There’s too many books but a smaller amount of too many now. I still find throwing them away hard but practice makes perfect.

The dump is huge and has lots of categories. I took my time there. I really like to try to make sure things are sent back round in some way. I took a big old lamp there that originally came from The Sloane Club. They put it out on the street so it ended up by my bed. I put it in the place where you put things that work. I’m trying to reverse the stuffflow. The stuff … it has gathered around me. Now it must leave and continue to leave. I can streamline more and more, until I become sleek and tight and fit like a racehorse, able to respond at a moment’s notice.

Dump stuff dumped, I felt a little lighter. Time to attend to that script. Oh but the mackerel.

I bought two fresh mackerel on my way out of Brighton five days ago. That’s about as long as you can leave it. Fifteen minutes to whack it up in the oven. Longer to eat than cook. Fresh fish, it’s lavverley. Even five days old.

Work? Work.

Radio. You don’t need to learn it, but it is very helpful to beat it out, think about actions and intentions, work out where you’ll be chinking glass and so forth. I like an annotated script. You don’t get lots of do overs, so you want to be easy. In the hot flat my external sorting subtly changed to thoughtwork as I tried to structure a way through the character I’m playing tomorrow. I also watched a lovely interview with him – he’s a real guy, and absolutely loved textiles from the Caucasus. Listening to him talk about tattoos and dialects and the contents of his very clever head I warmed to him hugely. It’s always pleasant to play good people occasionally. I get to play a lot of dicks.

As darkness fell an old friend came over and gave me some stuff to hold for the shoot next week. It’s only coming in temporarily. By now my hangover is just a memory of sugar. We laughed lots, the warm evening closed in. Now I’m in bed and it isn’t even ten. I’m making sure I sleep long and well tonight. You’ve had two drunkblogs in a row. That’ll do, pig. That’ll do.

Just another barbeque, I guess. But with waste.

James had this smokeless BBQ thing going on. “It’s like being DJ but with no records.”

I’m flat.

I hung out with someone I think is powerful. Got two for the price of one. One of us made the single most powerful anti-capitalist gesture of the modern world. He burnt a million quid on Jura. Apparently he regrets it now? I give no fucks. He can be all the noise now. I wasn’t going to talk to him about it as I detest people who are talking to my character and not to me. Still there’s desperate poetry in the avoidance. Nobody ever pulled shit like Jimmy and I childishly worshipped him. Everyone got angry that he did his thing. “It shouldn’t have been burnt, think of this charity and that charity.” Finally, it would have gone to a nice car and house for the CEO of ‘We pretend to put your money in the right placeFAM” I totally loved that I had a CD with a load of sheep on it called “Last train to Trancentral”. I loved that I had a mess of sound about a white room. And I loved that we could find the right place to be, even down in London. We could find a friend with a car, we could get to the edge of things. Well meaning people. Wide open.

However we look at the meaning of the noise today it was fun. I got flirted with by a brilliant woman. I totally agreed with numerous childhood idols. They didn’t know Lou though, so they didn’t have full context on my mojo. You can be as famous as you like, but if you miss what Lou brings you are just making noise. There’s no place like home.

Still, it was interesting meeting people who have had to live well known. It’s hard to give a fuck about personal noise. I wanted to give this couple the space. A tough kiwi lady taking zero shit, and a calm and benign man who gives no fucks. Together they made it all easy. Not new friends yet as I’m still a little starstruck.

Bed.

I’m sharing this lovely thing with a friend. I’ll try and call him tomorrow. x

Today I took a bunch of books I’ll never miss to a charity shop in New Malden.

I was supposed to be seeing a friend of mine but he was asleep and his phone was off. So instead I kept myself busy until he got his shit together and we went for food.

New Malden is the equivalent of K-Town. but with less ping pong. You can get Korean food everywhere there. Back in the day the ambassador bought property there and then there was an influx. Last time we went to a super cheap family run place and I burnt my knee horribly on the underside “cook at table” thing. Today is was a more established place and it was quiet (and better cladded). I even got a bit annoyed that the waitress insisted on trying to cook it for us and all at the same time. Maybe I would have been happier getting burnt.

Then we walked the summer streets and observed the abundance of Catholic crosses in the doorways. I remember Han when I was on Camino. A beautiful wise Korean Catholic who thought it was absurd that I was chanting “Nam myo ho renge kyo” by the path every day. I agreed with him wholeheartedly that it WAS absurd, but followed up with my certainty that ANY framework made by humans about belief is inevitably going to be both nuts and wrong, so all we can do is make something interesting up and pursue it if it works for us. I like the deliberately anarchic simplicity with which Nichiren burnt thousands of years of men writing about how Buddhists should believe and decided “Fuck it. All you have to do is this bit. You don’t really even need to know what it means.” And thus he was excommunicated and thus SGI is a society and thus I am happy to open the little doors in my butsudan and create value by saying a few words lots of times. Vibration. I’m part of the value making! Yay? What does value mean? Fucknose. Ask yourself. I know what it means to me.

I’m home. Frank is testing his ACDC act based on starlight express and I really want to see it but I knew I’d be knackered and it’s across London. Next time, he says hopefully… Bed.

I have a door I can close again. I’m back in my old room. It’s temporary. Frank needed a safe landing point and I’m hardly home. He’s got the big bed while I make this room habitable once more. Needs a new carpet, needs a load of stuff ripped out, and plastering. Needs a lick of paint and some thought about the electrics. But on balance it’s a nice room in this happy flat and I’ve spent many odd years in it.

Last night I slept in the living room next to an open window, and I use the word “slept” advisedly. It was mostly swearing and rolling over. Occasionally having a vivid dream about leaving my bag in a pub in York. I had been drinking, which cuts my lucidity right down. Calm sober Al can navigate pretty well through Dreamland. Bottle of rioja Al is subject to the whim of the impossible dream haggis and his fiery minions. If I did get into a sleep state, it ended with a jump.

Frank is a revelation in the flat. He helps me hugely. He’s much better at seeing things through than I am and he’s being sheriff k sensitive to my resistance while we are trying to reverse the flow of stuff. Things are starting to move out of the flat. Some things are breaking in the process, and I’m beginning to notice that I’m not missing the things we throw.

I went with an early girlfriend to visit her father in Wales. Three out of six rooms were uninhabitable as they were full of boxes of clutter. One night we made home made pasta after he triumphantly produced a pasta roller from one of the boxes. “You see!” he announced, as if that was justification for clinging onto all that gubbins. On the drive back to Reading she was livid. “He could have so much more space…” At the time I agreed with her wholeheartedly. Now look what I’ve done.

“You should go on that programme,” my agent jokes. They find a hoarder and then put all their stuff on display in a warehouse. Sounds horrendous. No. But I’m gonna have to try a bit harder than I am. After a bad sleep last night, moving the mattress was about all we managed, and mostly I was just sad because I had had all that wine and delightfully poisoned myself.

This is my joyful thing. This has been my joyful thing for years and years. Sometimes it is worth looking at what we have got. I’ve worked hard for this. It has rewarded me.

Ffion and I did a thing. I provided my own costume.

The boots are the latest purchase. Last event we rented the same boots for £35 plus VAT. I went online and bought those ones. A hundred smackers. Two more events and they are paid for. They zip up the back. Easy and effective. The coat is regency. Corporate actors weren’t allowed to wear Elizabethan here at the start. That works to my advantage as Regency is what I have and a costume is a costume. I remember barking for a sideshow once, maybe a decade ago, on the south bank. In my lunch break a very carny lady from the hot dog stand came up: I’ve been listening to you. You’ve got the gab. Your vary it. You’re quick. My dad was a ringmaster. But it goes for nothing without a costume. Get something showy to wear.” “They provided nothing, I’ve got nothing. They ain’t paying me enough”. I was on tuppence an hour back then for long and exposing hours of “roll up roll up ladies and gentlemen” I didn’t have the cornucopia of regency wear I have now. I often wonder how the hell I landed with so much gorgeous stuff. Lou, in short. Magical Lou and the Opera House.

So much use. Mister Kirkaldy and the audience. Halloween ghosts. Benedick, Capulet, school reunion… Some things are yet to find their times. I’m slowly assembling it all into outfits. I wore Benedick for the first time tonight and it fits perfectly. Another rig that can be bagged and labelled.

There’s plenty that fits me like that but then there are duplicates that don’t but might fit someone else. I might have to make some sort of burlesque with it all, or open myself up as a cheap but very specific men’s regency costume hire shop.

All I had to do tonight was a bit of Benedick and then a concatenation of Shakespearesn insults. Ffion and I have it down nicely now. There’s a sense of rightness working in this building and this energy. I like to be able to see the audience while they see me… to be able to incorporate things that happen, like that pigeon in Dream last month when we were watching. Even when I’m not on the main stage, I can feel the history of craft worked into the wood here. There are pictures of my friends all down the stairs. And it is a powerful and rare place. With all my woowoo stuff I feel I’m in the right place when I’m walking through the back rooms, changing into costume in the hallways, being charming and fabulous for some of the people who provide the budget. I know from Brian’s stuff that the bar is a big part of the revenue, and even if I often find the music too loud and the rioja too pricey, it’s ok as lots of it goes back to the glorious art on the main Globe stage. And I’ll pay for that expensive rioja. It is just delightful.

Dream was rare this season and brave and strange. I need to see Maccers before it finishes as it also has a good selection of people I love being gainfully employed and I feel that the ethos in the building is aligned with the needs of the wood it is made from. There’s no other theatre building like The Globe in this country. It is the only commercial one shaped around and for the active theatre that developed in the UK and for our audience. The geek in me adores the thought and care that went into every aspect of it. And I’m lucky to be a cog in a wheel.

The management is not pompous so I no longer feel like I need to hide my corporate work for them. Once upon a time I flinched when introduced to the artistic director with “This is my friend Al, he does lots of the events at The Swan.”

Things are shifting in the world now. Rolling. I’m moving on to another fresh thing tomorrow. Lou is embarking on a long tour very soon. Movement at last. And joy with it. For many people it will start to feel very very busy.

The key will be not to get lost in it all. Christmas schedule looks punishing. Maybe it’s time to pull back on the booze again, and see what things are like without it. Likely the amount of emo blogs that I wake and regret will drop. But what will replace them?

hmm we shall see

and so to tipsy happy bed

I was so chilled. I am back in London carrying the Brighton chill. It has been hard holding the chill. Little nasties have been biting at my heels. Friends who have hidden things from me in case I react the way anyone would react if something was hidden from them.

Currently I’m involved with a status game. My i-ching last night reminded me that they are my family, these people. A valuable reminder cos I was really really angry. But it’s true. They are. It reminded me I should stick by them. Conundrum.

I was looking at a lovely strong December doing something I’m good at and is well paid, and suddenly I have my theatre family who might need me to dump my plans and focus on theirs, for a job that is closer to my heart. But they literally won’t answer the phone to me. “You’re all a bunch of schoolgirls,” said my agent to me last night, when I spoke to them hot. I was wierded out about being kept out of the loop again by a close friend.

So now I’m tender because my friends have made me look like I’m being petulant in front of this wonderful agent I’ve managed to find. By keeping me out of the loop they have started to cause damage.

Is it professional to blog about this? No of course not. But we all need to be more open so the Weinsteins can’t continue to dominate. The “professional” label can be used as a bludgeon to keep artists and makers in “their place” – (the bottom). The strike at the moment in America is on this very knife edge. In a few years, if it bears no fruit, the studios would just make everything with memories of people. Yeah, all art is theft etc etc, and yeah one of my best mates is a commercial theatre producer, but I will continue to value friendship, graft and ART over cold hard cash. If that’s a flaw then so be it, I’ll die of it as millions have before while their producer ate their caviar.

I frequently get taken advantage of but I’ve noticed it so … it has become a loud trigger. I wear everything openly. I don’t expect people to be disingenuous.

“We need to see how ticket sales go before we know what to offer, but if you’re free it would be so much easier for us and we will obviously make it worth your while”… That would make me feel a bit less sidelined. Nobody said that. I’m trying to call my guy. Maybe I can do the rewrites that will obviously be needed if they TRIPLE the audience? Just so long as I’m cut in. That would be to my strength for sure. But I can do nothing without comms and I’m inches away from just burning the whole thing and taking the alternative offer on the table.

Anyway… I’m being as vague as I can be while putting down my rage. Maybe they will come back to me with an offer that beats or even matches the work I already have in place. Then I can mull it over and I know I prefer to prioritise my straight acting over my art installation stuff so if it matches it’ll still take precedence.

Difficult without talking though. But that’s the shit part of all this being an artist stuff. Getting your art seen needs moneyheads and they like money. Look at Searching for Sugarman (the documentary). ’twas ever thus. Sit in the producer’s office and you get to eat the artist, while he thanks you for eating him.

My first and only office job was at Ambassadors Theatre Group, Turnstyle. I was receptionist. One day I had to stop Jason Donovan from talking to one of the producers, as there was a dispute about pay. I can take some small comfort from the fact that I can still remember Donovan’s name but the name of the producer is lost to me. I would stake my life on it though that that producer is three times richer at least than Jason, who has worked for decades on his craft internationally in the public eye. Acting? It’s a hiding to nothing mate. Don’t put your daughter on the stage, Mrs Worthington.

You’d be surprised to hear that I’m actually in a happy mood. I’ve just accidentally written my negative again as it flowed better. I have to stop imitating the tabloids. In the end, I know for sure that an unprecedentedly generous offer would offset this malaise. Or a three way cut including a bar cut. And of course I’m saying that in the hopes that this gets read by the right person and knowing they won’t offer that. But looking at it machine gun schedule, I would be mad not to ask. It actually looks like literal hell. The avoidance of communication really worries me. I’m gonna sit tight for now and see…

EDIT: This is clearer now and also I was very very drunk when I wrote it hence taking it down. I’m happy to put it up unedited cuz that’s how this blog works etc.

And the summer.

For how long, who knows? It’s a Monday, so I can style it out as the actor’s day off.

Lou knew I was knackered from all that Joy. She had a load of skirts that needed making, but for today she let the work get backed up so we could chill out properly.

Out in the morning and I grabbed a quick beard trim from the cash-only Turkish barbers in Kemptown. Respect. They can take bank transfer too, but I love that they keep the cash economy going in this little pocket of Brighton. I bought a Big Issue with the change. Nice guy and I’ve always had no cash before. We really do have to use cash, to take cash with us, to try to pay with cash. It is another form of freedom from these insidious bastards.

I paid for my coffee with Amex. We drove to Ovingdean and parked by the incredible St Dunstans – a home for blind veterans with good grounds and wonderful facilities. They’ve got a sensory garden. They do archery for the blind. It is known for being the most kind and wonderful place. We are so lucky in this country to have places like this that still exist. Thoughtful people of the past, governments not riddled with corruption. That was then. “Fuck it, let’s turn it into flats and put the blind up in some modern place that isn’t prime real estate. We can say that the handrails are the wrong height or some crap like that.” That was the recent decision. It’ll be empty next year, and full of IKEA furniture and hipsters by 2025.

I didn’t let myself think too much about it. I just lay on a stretch of beach nearby with Lou. I went paddling. Worked on my aesthetic skin damage. Then drove back to Brighton and went to Beachbox for a summer sauna. Dips in the sea, heat and plunge. Cucumber water. Pampering post panda.

Fika flogged me a hot sandwich and we nipped over to the fresh fish place round the back of Fatboy Slims, and bought a Gilthead Bream and the obligatory samphire and scallops. Then I wandered over to the back of Hove Lagoon to see what the hell some people were doing:

Wakeboarding. Good God. I hadn’t heard of this one. It’s absolute bobbins. I’m gonna do it. I stood and watched for a while in a mixture of delight and abomination. Take the shittest bit of snowboarding – the T bar. Add to it an aspiration towards kitesurfing but without the elemental chaos and risk that makes it look so beautiful and appealing. Now remove the freedom and force everyone to wear helmets and wetsuits and probably fucking armbands. What have you got? £120 for three starter sessions. Wakeboarding. I’m going next week. I’m gonna love it. I’m thinking of it as a gateway drug to Kite surfing. As a long term adrenaline addict I’ve been lucky to keep myself intact so far, and I’m neither as young or as fit as I used to be so fuck it, let’s go do Thomas the Tank Engine of Watersports and get dragged around in circles for a while wrapped in cotton wool. I might inadvertently get a little bit fitter in the process. Accidental fitness is where it is at.

Not today though. Today we ate buttery bream, lounged around, did the i-ching about a decision I have to make, and now it’s time to snooze. I can break my ankles and drown myself next week.

At 3pm I lifted the Panda head for the last time in this iteration. It has been hot and Panda is strangely consuming. Very hard to think wide through such a narrow gap, and masks always bring a version of insanity.

As soon as the curtain was closed the process of deconstruction began. Ava let me go off to the lido though. She had allocated time to pile it all up. Stegosauruses in a row. All the cereal boxes nearly packed. Bucket cats arranged and stowed. Balloons popped.

We had a boy we wanted to give a balloon to. He had been a regular, full of personality and play and with a great fun mum. He had told Ava that he was off to the lido, so it made sense for me to grab some balloons and take them down to the pool to give him a memento.

Panda is a friendly animal with a chainsaw and a shop where nothing is for sale. Al is a bearded dude in a flatcap in his late forties. Walking from the installation to the pool the difference between Panda and Al began to settle on me.

The pool itself was child soup. I am surprised the water wasn’t bright yellow. For a moment I stood clutching my balloons trying to work out which one we wanted to give the potato to, but I realised that I would have been better off coming down with the head on. I abandoned the idea and just had a swim instead. My relaxing fantasy of a peaceful float was absolutely dashed though. Screaming urchins everywhere. The pool is shallow throughout. There is no escape from the thrashing monsters. After about half a length I called it quits and we dried up and went and zoned out on a quiet hammock instead. Much better. Gorgeous.

I would certainly join Birch Selsdon if I lived in Croydon. The place is incredible, with 200 acres of land as well as the gym, the coworking space etc. It’ll cap before long I reckon. Then it’ll be a sought after membership. I’ve had a glorious few days of surprisingly all consuming mask work. I have no idea what I’ve said a lot of the time. I’ve been in a room that feels like an extended psychedelic experience trying to make people smile and usually managing it. Everyone has their humour in a different place. But there’s usually time to find it.

Now I must remember who I am without Panda. Life as a human beckons once again. I will miss my cockroach friend. And Dixie the rat. Qui est l’homme? Qu’est-ce que panda? Pourquoi l’homme est-il panda? Pourquoi panda est-il l’homme? Faut-il le savoir?

At least I still have Captain MushroomFace in my car.