A day for poets

Today's been rather productive. I've done a solid eight hours' work and finished another orchestration; a five-minute epic scene and song called "Letters" where every cast member has an individual line and every melody from the show is reprised in some form. I suppose in it's simplest form, it's a little like One Day More from Les Miserables, except a little more up-tempo with even more countermelodies floating about. I played the whole thing through just before leaving the cafe in Tufnell Park, a heavy book propped up against my headphones cable, which is the only way I can get the thing to play in stereo!

I'm pleased with what I've written, although I shall need another pass in a few week's time to thin the orchestrations out. I think a healthy-looking score is one filled with empty bars. Nothing should be wasted, although that's a more challenging concept than you might think.

I walked home again, up Dartmouth Park Hill and through Waterlow Park, which looked a picture in the early evening sunshine. The birds were going crazy, there was a ripe scent of May blossom in the air and midges danced like specks of silver in the hazy shafts of light between trees.

There are a lot of homeless people in Waterlow Park, which I find hopelessly sad. The same trio sit in the same little shelter every day; an elderly lady with a boxer dog and two young men. It might be my romantic sensitivities but I always feel like she's somehow looking after them. Whenever I pass, she's holding court. Today she was telling the lads about childhood trips to Trafalgar Square, and I wondered what sort of upbringing she had, and at what point, and indeed why she ended up living in a park.

There could not be a bigger contrast between this trio and the wealthy folk of Highgate, who walk their dogs, lounge about and play tennis in the park, taking loudly about the things that seem to fascinate the wealthy.

The walk from Tufnell Park becomes easier the more often I do it, and, one assumes, the more weight I lose.

Highgate Village was a similarly glorious sight, bathed in sunshine. There was an antiques fair being held in the Highgate Society building. A young lad was sitting outside, strumming a guitar. The pace up here is always slower than in the rest of London. People mill. No one rushes. Particularly on a day like this. The sort of day that poets write about.