Thank you for the music

I woke up at about 10am and immediately set sail for Northampton. It ought to have been a fairly speedy journey, straight up the M1, but there are “road improvement works” at Luton which slowed me up considerably. There are always road improvement works at Luton. When they finish one section, I’m sure they simply dig it up and start all over again. The M1 is meant to be our flagship motorway; the speediest route to the North, yet for the last 5 years it’s been impossible to get beyond Luton in under an hour and a half. Grrr...

I reached Northampton just before lunchtime and had a bag of chips at Harry Ramsbottom’s whilst watching the world go by. It’s a troubled town. Northamptonians tend not to bother with their town centre these days and are far more likely to do their shopping down the road in Milton Keynes. The beautiful medieval market square, which used to house one of the biggest markets I’ve ever seen, has borne the brunt of years of council mismanagement. They’ve made parking difficult and expensive. They’ve made the streets complicated to drive around. There are weird one way systems. There are way too many concrete buildings. The place feels unloved. They’ve cleared half the market stalls in the square to create a “performance space” which no one ever performs in, and because half the market stalls have gone, the rest are struggling to attract customers so are closing at a great rate of knots. The area should be filled with street cafes, but instead, bored Somalian lads hang about in little clusters, intimidating anyone who has dared to venture into the badlands.

The people who were shuffling past me seemed inadequate and slightly pathetic. It actually became quite upsetting. I saw a toddler in a push chair wearing eye makeup. I’ve never seen so many ticks and limps and obviously troubled people. The busiest shop was the pawn-broker.

To make matters worse, The Jesus Army were out and about, stopping young people in the streets. They’d erected some kind of marquee and there were a group of chinless types playing some of those grotesquely chirpy Jesus songs on guitars and un-rhythmic bongos. I fail to see how any group of people could want to publically celebrate a) being so talentless b) being so ugly c) being so sinister d) being so smug e) being so unable to think for themselves f) being so fast to condemn and g) annoying the hell out of God! They’d set up a little pair of chairs and a table which had a big bowl of pretzels on it (oy vey) one assumes to attract hungry people and then clobber them with Jesus speak. I’m not sure it counts as an A-grade conversion if a group of homeless people move in to take advantage of free pretzels. A weird women in a fair-isle cardigan was telling them that Jesus loves everyone (obviously she was lying) but that he particularly loves the poor. The homeless people were out of their minds on crack. One of them didn’t seem to be aware of his own existence. A conversation about the existence of God was almost definitely one step too far. I bet the cardigan-beclad perm-headed cow handing out leaflets washed her hands very carefully at the end of the day, smug in the knowledge that she’d bought a few more souls for Jesus. Meanwhile, the crack head had stolen her wallet and used God’s money to buy himself another hit (or a multi-pack of pretzels) Ah, the delicious irony.

I sat in a cafe for a couple of hours writing music, before meeting Debbie outside Radio Northampton. Debbie is an old friend from Music School days. We sang in choirs together. She came punting with me on my 18^th birthday. We go back a long way. She looked fabulously cool in a pair of sunglasses.

Northampton was blisteringly hot. It was, in fact, the hottest October day on record, so we went to Abingdon Park and sat in a lovely cafe, before driving up to Kingsthorpe to pick up her lovely kids and deposit them at some kind of Beaver convention. The Beavers, I’m told, are miniature cubs. We were north of the town near Weston Favell shopping centre, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many children swarming around a single concrete courtyard. It was mayhem.

The purpose of my trip to Northampton was to see a memorial concert for a chap called Jack Zerfahs, who taught ‘cello at the music school back in the day. He must have lived to be very old indeed, because he’d semi-retired even back then. He always taught the ‘cellists who set at the front of the orchestras and as such I was always a little angry not to be one of his brood. He ran the auditions and made all the decisions about who sat where in what orchestra, and, I suppose, would be very fast to point out that one of his pupils hadn’t done his or her best if they’d had a bad audition day.

Anyway, the concert was performed by a huge number of people I knew; teachers, former pupils, many of whom I’d not seen for 20 years. Some, like my cello teacher, from the age of 7 to 17, didn’t seem to have changed whatsoever. It was delightful to see her. Others looked grey and wizened. The ensemble was essentially a string orchestra. Fiona was playing. Others from our era looked extremely well. Many had had children. Some were still pro musicians, others had successful city careers. Some of the older kids were there as well; the ones who were glamorous sixth formers when I was 14, and used to scare and excite me in equal measure. I actually struggled to speak to one of them afterwards – feeling that same-old child-like crippling embarrassment as he talked to me about his business restoring stringed instruments. Once a sixth former, always a sixth former!

The quote of the evening had to be from Mr Dyson, who used to run my string quartet. I went up to him, and shook his hand, “I doubt you’ll remember me...” I said. Hoping that he would. He looked hard, and then smiled. “Ben?” “Yes!” I said – thrilled to be remembered. And then he continued – rather proudly... “Benjamin Twigg,” he said. “Till” I said, “Benjamin Till...

Although it’s funny you should call me Twigg...” and then it dawned on me that it wasn’t funny at all. Those who know me well will remember that I was once the partner of a certain New Labour MP, who was elected in what many might think of as the defining moment of the 1997 election. His name was Stephen Twigg and it was the most surreal period of my life. We were plastered across a number of newspapers, and I suppose, as it all happened four or so years after I’d left Northamptonshire, people like Mr Dyson would have read the papers, seen my photograph, and been impressed/ horrified/ excited that I was moving in such impressive/horrifying/exciting circles. In his mind, I guess, I’ll always be associated with that moment in time. He later told Fiona how embarrassed he was about the “gaff.” She (correctly) told him that I’d found it hysterically funny, because it’s exactly the sort of thing that I’d have done myself.

Remember this?

Anyway – it was a fabulous concert and the orchestra played brilliantly.

I went home via Fiona’s parents’ in Collingtree where Fiona’s nephew was staying the night. In a particularly hysterical episode, he was awake when Barbara checked in on him, so she brought him out in his little sleeping bag to say hello and have a little night-time cuddle. He was smiling and gurning like a lunatic and didn’t seem to be at all receptive, even when people spoke directly to him. It was then we realised he wasn’t actually awake at all. His eyes were open, but Oskar was in the land of nod. I guess you really had to be there, but it was brilliantly amusing.

On my way home – at 1am – I got stuck in the mother of all traffic jams on the M1... Same area around Luton. I didn’t get back to Highgate until 3.

350 years ago, Pepys and his wife “lay long in bed” and amongst other things talked about music. Elizabeth wanted to learn how to sing. Co-incidentally, Pepys had booked himself in for a singing lesson with his teacher Mr Goodgroome, that morning, so Elizabeth tagged along. Pepys wasn’t the most tactful man. Elizabeth wasn’t a particularly musical lady. There may be trouble ahead...