Seeing the wood

Today started with a rather pleasurable walk along Parkland Walk to the studio in Crouch End. There were lots of Magpies around today, in unfeasibly large numbers. "One for sorrow, two for joy, three for a girl and four for a boy, five for silver, six for gold, seven a secret never told..." But then what? I was once told it was "eight for a letter, nine for something better." But we saw about twelve today.

Today we finished all the vocals we are expecting to record in this block of recording sessions. Irritatingly we've got a few extra vocals to drop in here and there, which makes the process of mixing considerably less exciting than it otherwise would have been because we're dealing with songs which are not quite complete.

We had four vocalists in today; all girls. We know a lot of girls; all impossibly glamorous and attractive. Straight men really ought to learn to flock to gay men!

Today's bevvie of talented, beautiful lassies consisted of Amy Bird (the other half of Nathan's double act in the pantomime), Lady V (who was in the Rocky Horror Show with Nathan), Nicola Harrison (who I met on a show at the Edinburgh Festival in 1995) and Ellie Mant (who I met on my very first day of university.) Two friends each... And all polished their solos off in seconds, which gave us slightly more time than we expected to get on with mixing.

There's much still to be done, but I think we're both finally beginning to glimpse the wood for the trees.

We walked home up Shepherd's Hill and I sent Nathan off to his knitting group so that I could get on with writing my vows. Now all the recorded music is in the can, we have to start focussing on the music we're going to be performing live. No rest for the wicked.