Two guys in the Japanese restaurant, both in business suits, one railing the other with rhetorical questions to help him make his point.

How does fiber function as an armour?
He asks, the other guys says nothing, picking at sashimi, waiting for his colleague to continue.
How does metal function as an armour?

In a bar two days later (think morning sunlight and filthy windows) the interactions are even less readable. Speaking languages you cant start to guess the meaning of, with a surfeit of gestures  that somehow remain opaque the guy in the Everlast sweatshirt confronts the woman drying glasses at the counter. If it’s a friendly conversation or not, you cannot tell. At some point in the undubbed movie he proffers a photograph – visible from where you are sitting – the face of a child. Bar-woman looks blank, goes back to her labour. The picture is his daughter, the presentation of it a simple uncalled for intimacy? Or the child is missing, a trail he follows with detective incompetence, a rudderless ship? You can’t know. Will never know. Leaving, the guy grins with cigarette in teeth, but his eyes are still probing the clientele, still looking for something, then he’s gone.

*

Final cast for Drama Queens at the Old Vic tomorrow (Sunday 12th at 7.30) was announced a few days ago – remember you can get all the old news here first. Joseph Fiennes, Jeremy Irons, Alex Jennings, and Lesley Manville join Kevin Spacey in the project of Michael and Ingar (Elmgreen and Dragset) with a text by me.

A sturdy guy but somehow unstable there’s some kind of random ungainly thing going on in him. Under the surface (or more like ‘all over it’) you check curious shifts of weight, dips in gait, semi-lunges, hidden twitches, the whole of this, a rough equilibrium, somehow contained in the general direction of his motion, deliberate moves mixed and matched with unpredictable impulses, the combination threaded round the axis of his spine, the bloke always steadfast and balanced somehow, moving forwards but rolling, only his facial expression letting slip, from time to time, his own surprise, by startled eyes, at the movements he makes, riding the frame of himself.

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Or on the street in London:

First thing I saw this morning when I looked out of the window was [inaudible]. I thought oh yeah, this is England. The sunny days are over.