The requi-o-meter

I was amused this morning by the behaviour of one of those slightly nutty people who often seem to gravitate towards crowded tubes. Every time the train stopped, in those few seconds of silence you get before it pulls out of the station again, an angry voice would pipe up, ranting about bankers and our "right-wing" government. The strong smell of ammonia accompanied his journey through the carriage and he handed Metro newspapers to everyone who would take one. Each paper had been carefully ripped in half."It's a Tory paper," he yelled, "Happy new year!"

Tube carnage! Ripped Metros

I spent the day in Clapham at Sonica studios recording backing tracks for the Hattersley songs. It all went past in something of a blur. I hadn't slept a great deal, I didn't eat very much, and I drank too many cups of tea, which, coupled with regular surges of adrenaline made me very jittery.

To save money, I played the piano; a decision I instantly regretted because I wasn't able to sit back and hear the music objectively. I also think that people weren't as tough on me as they might have been because they assumed that, as the composer, the music I was playing was meant to sound the way it did; slightly out of time...

By the afternoon, things had calmed down considerably and I was able to sit back and enjoy the session with the string quartet. Everyone played beautifully and I think the music I've written is good, although for some reason, I left with very little sense of the bigger picture.

I think the musicians very much enjoyed themselves, which is always a good sign. Adrian the violinist was highly complimentary. I guess, after playing my music for the best part of 20 years, he's in a good place to be able to judge one work against another. He made me laugh a lot with talk of the "Till 9th" referring to my tendency to add a lot of 9th notes to the chords I write - usually unresolved, just hanging there like tiny sad clouds...

The studio owner is a massive ABBA fan and owns a few gadgets from the old Polar studios in Stockholm. He got very excited to hear that my favourite song was "Summer Night City," which is also his favourite ABBA song. A man with impeccable taste.

Good news: we had our first investment in the Requiem today, so we're now £1000 towards our target of £25,000. A long way to go, of course, but an amazing start. It is therefore time to unveil the Requi-o-meter! Drum roll, please...

More more drums...

And more...

Thank you...

Ta dah! (And if you know of any wealthy lovers of death, music, me, graveyards, or Barbara Windsor, please ask them to get in touch for one of my lovely investment packs!)

Ikea

We spent most of today with our friends Ian and Jem. They’re the couple who made London their home because draconian homophobic laws in their own countries (the USA and Australia respectively) made it impossible for them to live together legally anywhere else. There are many things that frustrate me about this country, but we lead the English-speaking world when it comes to basic human rights. Thank God Ian’s mother is British...

They were buying furniture for their lovely new flat in Friern Barnet, so we took them to an Ikea, somewhere East of London on the North Circular. It’s very important, when heading to an Ikea on a Sunday, to do lots of deep breathing exercises before you leave the house. The experience can be a bit like being thrown into a sheep dip. You get herded through the building into ever-decreasing spaces. Periodically a flock of lambs trips you over and a grumpy shepherd prods you in the back because you’re not moving quickly enough. There were an astonishing number of lambs running, unchaperoned, around the building. Two particularly fluffy ones were having a terrible fight with two soft toys, which was quite amusing until it turned into a major turf war and hair started flying...

I don’t really like Ikea. You have to pay quite good money to find anything decent in there, and there’s a hell of a lot of cheap crap knocking about; lamps made out of strands of paper, uncomfortable-looking sofas hanging off dangerous metal frames, storage solutions which fall apart as soon as you put something inside. Everything in the place has been stuck down with glue, or screwed into the floor to stop potential thieves. The whole place smells of Swedish meatballs and the staff members don’t seem to give a damn about anyone.

350 years ago, and Pepys went with Elizabeth to the painter’s studio to have her portrait altered – for about the 400^th time. They stayed there until late, and Pepys was pleased with the results (as he usually was until he showed the work to a more discerning eye.) He decided that the painter, Mr Savill, was an honest man but “silly” to the point of distraction when it came to the concept of shadows... which begs the question, why commission a painter based on his previous work, if you think he’s not very good? Maybe he was cheap...

Sore throat!

It’s odd. I was only thinking yesterday how well I’ve been of late. The whooping cough is now just a bitter memory and the daily runs and healthy eating regime have been doing wonders for my energy levels. Nathan keeps getting colds and stomach bugs but I’ve been charging through, until late last night that is, when that all-too-familiar tickly sensation started to prickle in the back of my throat. At 6am, I woke up thinking someone had slit my throat in the night. I have seldom experienced a sore throat so ridiculously painful. I was forced to get out of bed and rifle through the little drawer of pills and potions in the kitchen to see if I could find something that might ease the pain. I was fairly horrified to discover that we’ve started keeping bird food in the same drawer, but in my rush to find something chemical, I let it pass. I settled on something green, foul-smelling and spray-like and went back to bed, waking up at 11am, disgusted at myself for lying-in so late.

I’ve worked all day. Yes, I know... even on a Saturday, but the latest draft of our spoken-word only Hattersley film came through from Paul in Worthing, and it was vital that I spent some quality time scoring it for strings in time for Monday. I’ve only just finished, but I’m very excited. I’ve pin-pointed some of the natural pitches and rhythms of the recorded spoken words and transcribed them musically. Yes, yes, very Steve Reich, I’m aware of this, but the effect is really interesting – and fairly avant garde, which is, let’s face it, new territory for me.  I always wanted to use the Hattersley films to take a massive leap into the unknown, and so far, so good...

I did various bits of admin whilst I was writing, including taking a trip to my favourite printers up in Finchley. I call them my favourite printers because the woman there is really friendly. She could sell lowland brogues to Ghandi. Sadly, she wasn’t there today, and in her place was a sour-faced slag who didn’t seem at all interested in talking to me, or taking me through various price and paper options. The end of the road came when she told me it would cost £1 per sheet to print an A4 page in colour. As we walked into the shop Nathan had asked why we weren’t printing the documents at home and I'd said it was because they might look a little nicer if done properly, but for £1 a sheet, I think I’d rather hand paint them with gold leaf. As I left the shop, I could hear Nathan telling the woman off for being surly. “It’s not good customer service” he said. “Thanks for your feedback” she replied, her sallow lips glistening with passive aggression, “I’ll bear it in mind.” I bet you will, darling... when you’re out of a freakin’ job, ‘cus all of your customers have gone elsewhere. Narky cow. She smelt like pickled herring.

Pepys returned to his house from Westminster Hall 350 years ago, to find his wife playing cards with a gaggle of women including the daughter of Sir William Penn (sister, therefore, of the father of America). Pepys decided to treat the ladies to a barrel of oysters and a nice bit of chicken, which he had specially prepared. Sadly, Penn’s daughter decided, just as food was being served, that she didn’t want to stay. Maybe she didn't like chicken. Maybe she was simply a spoilt, ungrateful little cow. Whatever the case, Pepys’ nose was very firmly put out of joint, and he walked her home fuming...

Brick Lane

I spent today in the East End near Brick Lane. It was a very beautiful sunny day and everyone seemed to be out on the streets. As I queued for beigels at lunchtime, it struck me what a peculiar and fabulous blend of different cultures hang out in that part of town; traditional white Eastenders, rubbing shoulders with yummy mummies pushing purple prams, Bengali lads with their diamond ear studs, media types with silly hairdos and the odd suited City Slicker venturing away from the shiny metal and bright lights of the square mile to slum it in a graffiti-covered caff. Travel much further in an Easterly direction and London becomes mono-cultural; impoverished ghettos populated by women hiding behind net-curtains and hijabs, and men with straggly beards looking shifty. Further still, and you're in the 1984 shimmering world of Canary Wharf, where there's no such thing as silence or privacy, and the only faces with colour are sitting behind the tills in the fancy Waitrose.

I was disappointed to discover that my favourite street, Sclater Street, once famous for its 200 foot-long wall of intricate graffiti, had been tidied up. The 200 foot-long wall was still there, but bizarrely, it had been painted grey. I was surprised that this act of albino carnage hadn’t proved to be an instant red rag to the graffiti fraternity’s bull, but there was nothing there but grey paint – not even a lonely tag from a 15 year-old boy with no discernable artistic ability.

Penny and I spent the day working at the BBC’s offices at Rich Mix. It’s a lonely place; a bit of a waste of BBC money. No one really works there anymore. There was a very suspicious smell hanging about as well, a sort of sweet, cheesy, poo-like aroma which I decided was the stench of dead mouse in the air-conditioning unit. It was all-pervading, so neither of us could work out where it actually came from. We wondered about, sniffing various dustbins, and I suspect it’s a smell which is only going to get worse.

350 years ago, and somewhere near Tower Hill, Pepys found a trio of sledges which were waiting to carry a number of Charles I’s regicides to the gallows and back again “with ropes about their necks.” They weren’t actually due to be hanged. These men had only been loosely involved in Charles’ death. They weren’t present at the execution and hadn’t signed the death warrant, but their involvement was enough for them to be ritually humiliated in this way. One assumes the baying crowd would pelt them with rotten fruit on their journey there and back. A pointless spectacle if you ask me...

The list shortens

It’s been a day of admin; mostly getting things ready for Monday’s recording session for the Hattersley songs. We’re recording string quartet, bass, guitar and piano. I’ve been putting final touches to the score and printing out parts on a lovely heavy buff-coloured paper, which makes everything look quite classy; a trick I learnt from Fiona.
 

I have a list of things to do which is steadily getting shorter, although today it felt like I was adding as much to bottom as I was striking from the top. The thought started to make my tummy feel a bit funny.  Like I was walking on an endless treadmill. I paid my tax; everything I owed for last year, and by decree, half of this year’s, based on last year's figures, which is irritating and pathetic, especially as it well-and-truly wiped me out. I now have less than a thousand pounds to my name, which is less than at any point since I worked as a barman at the Royal Court Theatre. Who says art pays?!

I’m juggling all manner of tasks. I have to learn the piano parts that I’ve blithely agreed to play to bring studio costs down on Monday. I have to make scores of copies of DVDs and CDs for potential investors for the recording of the Requiem. I have to find potential investors for the recording of the Requiem. I have to find the contact details for these potential investors and I have absolutely no idea where to start! The majority of my work has been in telly, which always funds itself. Some of the theatre luvvies I know have black books filled to the brim with the numbers of little old ladies with more money than sense. They guard their books with their lives, because once you find a wealthy patron, it’s foolish to let them go - and even more foolish to share them with someone equally deserving. I’ve never needed (or wanted) to go to the events where these patron types hang out, having never been one for schmoozing and having always kidded myself that my music does the talking.

I must keep telling myself that I’m not looking for handouts, however. This is a genuine opportunity to invest in something which could well make a whole heap of money. We’ve already got a couple of well-known people making cameo appearances on the recording, and I’m in talks with a number of other fascinating singers...

So if anyone reading this knows wealthy people who might like to invest a grand in the classical release of the decade, I would be more than happy to send them a pack which tells them everything they need to know.

Sunday 26^th January 1662 found Pepys in a contemplative mood. He says it so much better than I ever could:

It having been a very fine clear frosty day- God send us more of them - for the warm weather all this winter makes us fear a sick summer. But thanks be to God, since my leaving drinking of wine, I do find myself much better and do mind my business better, and do spend less money, and less time lost in idle company.

Incidentally, can anyone tell me what happened to the winter this year? I can’t remember a single cold day...

Wet windy Woking... Or Worthing

Sometimes being on a crowded tube becomes an almost existential experience. It is so wildly unpleasant that the only way to blot out the pain is to imagine you're somewhere or someone else. And this is how it was as I struggled from Victoria to Highgate in the middle of the rush hour tonight. The tube was so hot that I felt almost certain I was going to pass out. London's infrastructure simply isn't good enough.

I know, let's stage the Olympics...

Here's a question. How old does someone have to be to not be offended if you offer them your seat on a tube? There was a woman today, who I felt was  very much on the cusp. I resolutely refused to stand up for her simply because she was a woman - that's misogynistic, patronising bullshit - but I always stand for an elderly person. Problem was, she could have been as young as 50 and my standing up for her might have tipped her over the edge in a sort of "do I really look old and frail?" kind of way. I realise the first time someone stands for me is the day the rest of the world decides I'm no longer a sexual being!

Today found me traveling to a wet and windy Worthing to work with producer, PK, on the Hattersley songs. It was a wonderful experience ; a great meeting of minds. It transpires we're both huge Samuel Beckett fans and I get the sense that he really understands the nature of what we're trying to achieve.

He also seems to care about the performers. It is vital for me that everyone working on the project truly respects the people who have trusted us with their memories. They're not simply contributors, they're artists, and both Paul up in Manchester and PK understand this only too well.

I so regularly find myself horrified by documentaries on the television, when it's clear those speaking on camera have been royally stitched-up or choice-edited by a set of producers riding rough-shod over feelings simply for a blast of good telly. I've moaned and bitched about reality TV, but am afraid it all comes down to second-rate commissioning editors who know nothing about the potential of genuine risk-taking and everything about the words "conflict" and "jeopardy" and how to manufacture them in a tired old format.

Two questions. 1) Why is this D list celebrity pretending to give a crap about Cornwall? She's never been here before and she plainly isn't listening to anything she's being told. 2) Why does she only have 2 days to travel across the county on a merry-go-round?

Are these examples too obtuse? Or am I making my point?

Pepys' day started 350 years ago with a walk in the Navy compound's garden. He met up with a gardener and discussed various things that might make the place look more "handsome."

Lunch happened at Trinity House in Deptford, and Pepys spoke to a man whose land (which he'd been awarded by the King) was due to be used (at the behest of the King) for some kind of man-made harbour. He wasn't a happy bunny.

The food was very good, but Pepys gorged himself on "a little too much beef which made me sick, and so after dinner we went to the office, and there in a garden I went in the dark and vomited, whereby I did much ease my stomach." The garden wasn't going to look any more handsome if all the borders were bedecked in boke!

Microfiche

I've got what Nathan calls "homework tummy". I'm off to Worthing or Woking or somewhere beginning with W tomorrow to work with Paul Kendall, who's producing the musical tracks for Hattersley. Before I arrive, I need to format all sorts of midi files to give to him, but have been so busy over the last few days that this has not yet happened.  The problem is that I don't know how long the process will take, so I could potentially be up all night. 

At the moment I'm trying hard to compartmentalise my existence. I'm juggling a number of projects and the only way I feel I can give them all an appropriate amount of attention is to dedicate whole days to them. Yesterday was the turn of the Requiem, today I worked on the Fleet Singers commission, tomorrow and Thursday are earmarked for Hattersley, Friday's all about the Requiem again, and so on... 

Today I sat in the Colindale Newspaper library all day. It's a fabulous building filled with grand reading rooms and intriguing darkened annexes where people dive into the archives of every known newspaper on giant wooden poles or microfiche. 

The Fleet Singers project, in true British style is all about the weather, or more appropriately, it continually returns to the subject of the weather. Alongside the very personal memories that the choir have provided, I'll be setting newspaper stories to music which focus on six key weather events that have affected Londoners in the 60 years since Queen Elizabeth came to the throne. Pea-soupers, big freezes, hurricanes, deluges, massive heat-waves and an almost total eclipse. 

I've been through countless local and national newspapers and my eyes are spinning from the constant sideways action of the clunky, whizzing, whirring microfiche machine, skimming from page to page.

It's astonishing, not just to read how these almost legendary events were reported at the time, but also to get a sense of the  other news stories that were doing the rounds. Celebrities I'd forgotten about. World events that I never knew about. One light-hearted story from 1963 attempted to show readers how to do a new dance craze which was a bit like a cross between the twist and something Bob Fosse might have enjoyed. 

Above all else, it was amazing to see how little the editorial style of many of the publications had changed over the years... Except the Evening Standard, which used to be dry as toast; filled with emotionless, un-embroidered facts and half-sentences which almost resembled bullet points.

Pepys was always a bit of a fly-by-night. 350 years ago, he went to pick up his portraits from Mr Savill, commenting on how thrilled he was with the way they both looked. He took them proudly to show to Lady Sandwich, who liked his, but claimed to be "offended" by the image of his wife. Pepys suddenly changed his mind, decided she was right, and vowed to have the picture altered for the umpteenth time. Poor Mr Savill. I suppose at least Pepys had already paid him for his time. That's what decent people do after all.

I'd be interested to know what it was about the picture which offended Lady Jemima. We know of the existence of a portrait of Elizabeth Pepys which history tells us was slashed into pieces by a prudish, and very religious, Victorian housemaid, who found the painting in a loft and was scandalised by the sheer amount of  skin  and plunging neckline on display. Perhaps this shocking image was once even more sensuous. 

On the way home, Pepys went to Pope's Head Alley and bought a set square and a pair of scissors. Decoupage anyone?