Reggae

Bravo to the Canadian pop singer Carly Rae Jepson and rock band Train for pulling out of the Boy Scouts of America Jamboree concert this summer after hearing about the organisation's draconian ban on openly gay people either joining the ranks or becoming leaders. Every little helps, and gestures like this may have more repercussions than anyone could imagine. If the organisers of the scout movement refuse to behave like decent adults then we need to remove their toys. 

I've been on the White City Estate again all day, and spent the morning hanging out at a stall which sells produce grown on the community farm. Amazing leeks. The highlight of the experience was undoubtedly watching an extraordinarily grumpy woman from the Ivory Coast, whinging about having diarrhoea whilst throwing apples from a distance of 3 meters into her shopping basket because she couldn't be bothered to move her sloppy arse over there. I've noticed a slight tendency for people of West African origin to reserve movement for special occasions! 

My day started, as routine dictates, at the Starbucks at the BBC in White City, where I have my morning cuppa whilst doing an hour's work on Four Colours. It's a bit of a hassle cheating myself out of an extra hour in bed every morning, but it's the only way to manage two projects simultaneously. I get really irritated by writers who moan about the fact that they never have time to write whilst maintaining full-time jobs to pay the rent. An hour a day is all you need to keep the forward momentum. Take it off the time you watch telly at night.

From White City, I sped along the Central Line, for a quick meeting with someone within the BBC docs department at New Broadcasting House. I very much liked the woman we met, but can't help thinking there's always going to be a point with any potential commission of this nature where what I bring to the table just seems a bit "out there" or arty to merit being taken seriously as documentary. I always manage to fall between about a dozen stalls. Still, it was nice to see New Broadcasting House again, even though I'm not sure how anyone manages to get work done in what is essentially just a massive open plan office. Media people sometimes need to make noise, and news people surely need a degree of privacy? On my way to the meeting I walked through the middle of several board meetings which were happening on funny little areas of soft seating. It seemed a bit wrong, somehow. 

I went back to White City for the late afternoon and evening, where I met a charming vicar and a reggae band who looked every bit like the Buena Vista Social Club. They want me to jam with them on the 'cello; a thought which I find curiously exciting.