Bad beer

Mary Byrne – or Tesco Mary from X-Factor fame – appeared on This Morning today singing what she described as “Shirley Bassey’s version of As Long As He Needs Me.” How astonishing to be so incapable of taking a song and making it your own, that you have to acknowledge another performer instead of being able to say, “I’m performing my own take on As Long As He Needs Me... from Oliver."  It’s bad enough that her album is nothing but covers, but doing a cover version of a cover version is like releasing something that was recorded in a karaoke booth at bowling alley.  It just goes to show how fast these pieces of shit are generated and thrown out to make a fast buck. Frankly, I would be ashamed to be Mary Byrne. A few hours in a rehearsal space with a decent MD and I'm sure they could have come up with something much more interesting. For the sake of a little bit more time, and a few extra pennies. It makes me sick. This is exactly the sort of nonsense that needs to stop being made.

I ache all over and need to stop working. I'm writing at a speed which is almost making my head explode. I need to stop and take stock but don’t have this luxury. Even if I manage to write as much as a minute of musical material on the Fleet Singers composition every day, I will still not have enough material to hand over in a month and a half’s time. It’s a sobering thought.

My friend Abby texted me this afternoon to tell me some very bad news. Sam Hiller, the young man who sang counter tenor in the early music choir on The Pepys Motet, died in the early hours of yesterday morning. No one yet knows what happened to him, but I’m told he was out with friends the night before, having a lovely time and making plans for the future. The man had a very beautiful voice and the world will miss him very badly.

March the 16^th, 1662 was a Sunday, and Pepys spent the morning “going from one church to another and hearing a bit here and a bit there," which seems a very bizarre thing to have done. He spent the afternoon walking around St James’ Park, which he said was now “very pleasant.” The King and Duke of York were also present, having, apparently come to see their “fowl play.” One assumes they kept fancy geese and things on the lake there. The Duke was civil towards Pepys, which made him feel very good about himself.

Pepys and Elizabeth went to Sir William Penn’s house for supper. Pepys felt there was something wrong with Sir William and his family, who were obviously putting on a show, but looked “discontentedly.” Pepys knew “not what ail(ed) them”. He had a small cold beer, which made him ill, and he was forced to go outside to vomit. Perhaps the Penn household was being slowly poisoned by bad beer!?