The sun again but the world will never

 Unlike almost exactly twenty-seven years previously, there wasn't a cloud in the sky when I clicked publish on my previous post with a still-weirdly-minstrel-adjacent white kid glove – (or is it a butler's hand? Is the cursor meant to be my servant's hand rather than an extension of my own? And should I still be using yellow-handed emojis even though everyone else seems now to have switched to their own flesh tone, just because yellow's the colour of the emoji's faces and I'd always assumed the hands belonged to the same guy? Did Harvey Ball ever stop to think what a storm of care he was seeding when he invented the smiley?

 

It looks like he might. Close brackets) – and so when I did indeed leave the laptop and race off to Brixton for the solar rematch, there was no filter this time to shield our glimpses. I use the first person plural because it felt so obviously communal, as it had in '99. And Iceland was still there, and Boots. And I realised as I revisited that intersection of Electric Avenue and Brixton Road where Fin and Jeremy had filmed each other at the last darkening, that this is also where I had Gabbie meet Martin in Time Spanner in 2016. Here's the trip to that spot as I try to desmear my phone.

 

 

 The sun had moved of course, it does that, and was now directly at the end of the road at almost eye level. At the end of every road facing west in fact, and the bus stop opposite Brighton Terrace at the stroke of seven gave you a dangerously uninterrupted view. I shielded my face with the phone, but the eclipse would only show up on my screen as a green crescent glare (see the thumbnail below). Those without special glasses also tried our luck with a reflection in the window of H&M. I wonder if the guy inside knew what we were doing, why so many of us were just standing there, staring into his shop, our backs to an event that wouldn't happen again for another sixty-four years. As I said, really the event was us looking at it though, so that's what I've cut together below.

 In other news, it is midnight in Highbury and finally raining.

 

The safest way to watch the eclipse

Is probably just to watch the last one, so here it is. I was ushering at the BFI on August the 11th 1999, and watched the solar eclipse from Waterloo Bridge, but had given my camera to Jeremy and Fin to film it where they were. That's them, Fin with the glasses, Jeremy without. Fin's also made his own cooler cut here. I moved in with him the following year. Brixon, which is where we came in. Actually, I might revisit Electric Avenue for today's. It's crept up on me; I think the next one is in 2090. I won't look directly at it though because I don't have the special glasses. I haven't seen Jeremy in years. (The image above is sort of from here.)

A Bad Idea I Had, and How It's Going

  I'm not going to soul search here. I'm just going to report the facts. I bought Mondo and Sky Blue when I lived at Clapham Junction, to serve as a surrogate couple we could take with us on holiday and photograph in case we didn't work out as a couple ourselves. Mondo had one eye, and a goofy grin across his belly. Sky Blue's face was clear apart from the sun. These two vinyl figures came with us everywhere for six and a half years, and they stayed with me in the flat in Forest Hill when the time came for me to live there on my own. That's them, above. The night before my first night alone, I wrote the following in the notes app on my phone at 3am:

Those go there.

Mondo and Sky Blue.

Except they don't go there any more

Because there are more gaps now.

But you can't just move stuff, because then it's just things in a room and it's cold outside and that's all you have when this was going to be a home.

And you've made nothing that can be hung on a wall in fifteen years.

 I wrote more than that too. 

 They came with me when I moved to Mornington Crescent a year later, and they came with me to Notting Hill. I didn't know what to do with them, all my ideas seemed stupid, but here's the one I finally went with: near where we used to live in Loughborough Junction, there's a small, unexplained indentation in the wall where a brick has been slightly knocked in.

 

 On the 29th of August I took Mondo, Sky Blue, and a small bottle of Loctite, and I set them there. Sky Blue was glued a little more firmly as I couldn't find as flat a base for Mondo, but both stuck, and I took a photo and then left them, feeling I'd done something actually quite self-indulgent and pointless:

 

 A week later, on the 5th of September, I returned to Brixton and decided to check up on them. They were still there, but I noticed that Mondo had come unstuck. Someone must have moved them to see if they were glued down, snapped Mondo off, but then left him there unacquired. I was touched by this. I wondered if anything like this would happen in Notting Hill, if anyone would just leave something standing. I took a photograph, and decided to check up on them whenever I was south. As I may have said before, I have no memory of ever experiencing closure on anything:

 

 I revisited them again, a week later, on the 12th of September. They were still there. Sky Blue glued in place. Mondo left loose: 

 I revisited again on the16th of September:

 

 And the 2nd of October:

 

 And the 20th of October:

 

 And the 29th of November:

Unposted Photographs of November 2022 in Chronological Order

 It's always fascinating to see who's worn your costume before you.

 

 First day of the tube strikes. Choreography starts outside while we wait for the person with keys.

 I see a lot of these signs around Marylebone. I'm forty-eight and I still don't know what American Express is. Is it a credit card? What is it?

 

 We prepare for the plinth. I'm pretty sure it's bigger than this.

 

 After finding out Pizza Express no longer does Veniziana, I start photographing barriers because they remind me of Keir Starmer.

Thoughtlessly shitty quick fixes, looking increasingly unreplaceable.

 We're in the space. We go crazy.

 I acquaint myself with the backstage of the Cockpit.

 

 Show report: I tripped. Where were the barriers?

 

 "Vibrating pockets can still be heard in a dramatic silence." Tickets here.

 

 The Elizabeth Line is not for trypophobes.

 I get lost in Hampstead, and find some cosy blocks with globes in the window.

 Walking home from shows now, I notice the night sky is often coloured in. 

 

 I can't tell by what.

 

  Loughborough Junction has new lights too, where they used to build sets.

 

 Coldharbour Lane is getting a tower block.

 That's not all that's gone up since I left.

 

 I don't remember this book nook. It has a copy of WHSmith's "Treasury of Children's Literature". I sit and read.

 Treasury is a good word for it, although I don't get far with C. S. Forester's "Poo-Poo Finds a Dragon". 

 

 I do consider what kind of brain comes up with protagonists named "Hornblower", and "Poo-Poo".

 

 "Eeyore's Birthday" is also included, the alpha and omega of great sitcom writing. I read it aloud to myself quietly in its entirety, marvelling again, and upon reaching "'Not mine,' said Eeyore proudly" actually get a little teary.

 

 I return to Notting Hill to find Christmas has started. A different vibe.

Unposted Photographs of September 2022 in Chronological Order

 I found the Powell Estate in Kennington but didn't recognise it because the trees were new.

 

It seems I location hunted quite a bit in early September. Here's Taskmaster.

 

  So I still drift south. 

 

You can now get lost in what they've built around Paddington.

 

 Or be at one with the scum in the Kyoto Peace Garden.

 

 Here Tom and Shim prepare Waterloo Farm for their second wedding of the day.

 

 Once Tom's changed into an apron to clear up after our pizzas.

 I couldn't find whose this was. Barry Letts'?

 

 Finding new walks for Faren.

 

 Filth.

 

 The Duke and Duchess with Jimmy Chipperfield and an unidentified lion.

 

 Forming a dart with my arms did help. (Best family outing since Eurodisney.)

 

But did I?

 A big walk home from drinks with John, and nearly all of London now wards off the low-flying.

 

 Catching a matinée of See How They Run.

 

 Yet another big face. The eyes follow you round.

 

 

 So do the gronking pelicans.

Notebookery 3 (2003ish)

 We're jumping around chronologically. I reckon this was a birthday present from 2002, (the opening inscripition is from my housemate Jamie Wood) and much of its filling comes from the following two years. I really wanted this one to be a thing. There are overlaps with Notebookery 1: more Dance Bear Dance notes and sketches, and more illustrations to Fish-head and the Sibyl, and some accounts of work in the Middle East and Cairo. I had a lot of fun in this book, it's one of the things that inspired me to start the blog, and bits of it have appeared on here from day one. I haven't bothered to read any of this through since. It might be shocking. (Click to enlarge.)