Hundreds and Thousands

It's been a very long day and I'm incredibly tired, thank you, please! I did a morning's work and then staggered off to the osteopath, who finally did some work on me which involved making my back crack, which I absolutely knew was what it was waiting for. I feel so much better as a result and sort of floated out of the building. Joy!

I did a few more hours on the Brass script in a cafe somewhere in Borough and then came home to work through sequences of the Pepys Motet with Llio. I was actually rather surprised at how quickly she seemed to pick things up. I've certainly never written a more complicated piece of music and had begun to think it was unperformable! There are some absolutely nightmarish rhythms in the first movement, which I'm not sure even I understand! Is that the sort of thing a composer ought to own up to?

Carmen yesterday said that her boyfriend, Joel, had listened to the practise MP3s I'd made for her and instantly said, "that's by Ben Till, isn't it?" "How do you know?" asked Carmen, "because his music is so dense, there's always so much going on!" That's it! The next thing I write is going to be absolutely minimal... Well apart from Brass, which has 17 musicians in the pit. Oh my God, I'm out of control. I'm like a rubbish version of Mahler! I'm the musical equivalent of trifle! In fact, I'm a trifle with hundreds and thousands and almonds on the top in a bowl with a piece of chocolate cake!

We had lovely chats with Lli after the rehearsal and put the world to rights before taking ourselves off to the kebab shop for a takeaway to eat in front of the final of The Great British Bake Off final, which I found a distinctly moving experience. I've stuck to that series like glue.

I'm pleased the winner won. Frances is a true creative and I can only applaud someone whose mind works the way that hers does. There was something she said very early in the episode which made me suddenly view her as something of a kindred spirit. And she's a Midlander. Nathan's supported her throughout, of course. He can pick a reality TV show winner at 20 paces,  but I've always been more of a Kimberley fan. I like the way she talks to the camera and I like the fact that she owns up when she feels confident rather than doing the pretend "gosh, I'm so rubbish at this, please let me be your underdog" nauseating British thing, which I'm as guilty of as the next person.

My enjoyment of the show was only slightly hindered by the fact that I already new the result. It's almost impossible not to find out the result of a reality show this days. You think you're doing well by going "la la la" when people are talking about it, and avoiding all day time television, but you take your eye of the ball for a split second and there's the winner's grinning face nestling at the bottom of some home page. I've also heard that some big cheffy type let the cat out of the bag even before it was screened. Now that's not cricket, is it?