Bumbling

My eyes feel like they're closing as I walk through Victoria Station. It's been a long day and I'm almost in a panic to get home. Sadly my tired feet won't carry me any faster than I'm going, despite the fact that everyone around me seems to be running like bridesmaids in a rain storm. I suppose at this time of night no one wants to miss their last train home. Returning to London after the relative calm of Hove is always a shock to the system. I'm sure I'll soon be running everywhere myself, but for a few blissful hours I'm operating at a slower speed.

There must have been some sort of storm in the night, because when I woke up this morning, the pavements in Hove were shimmering with rain water, and the sea was a yellow raging tiger.

PK and I worked our way through the last of the songs from Brass. We ended with Scared - or Sacred as Paul misread it. It's the big love song in Brass, the moment that the four protagonists realise they've fallen for each other. And of course they do so in song. Why else would I write a musical? I get sick and tired of people who don't understand the one basic rule of musical theatre. When the stakes are too high to speak, sing. And when singing isn't enough, dance. If your drama doesn't happen in music, then you've written a play and you won't have to get the MU involved!

At the end of the day, PK showed me some of the tracks he'd been working on, including I Make the Shells, which is so epic and symphonic that I secretly burst into tears!

I treated PK for lunch at a greasy spoon. The plan had been to take PK's wife, Olivia, with us, as a thank you for always cooking such lovely food when I'm working there, but she has such an astonishingly healthy diet, that the idea of fried and processed food entirely freaked her out. She genuinely couldn't imagine what anyone would manage to eat in a greasy spoon, so stayed at home and ate hummus in pitta. Meanwhile, we returned stinking of fried bacon. I suddenly saw her point!

To save money, I booked my train tickets in advance, but due to filming commitments, had to keep cancelling tickets and buying new ones. By the time I'd travelled to West Worthing and back, twice, I had exactly twenty extra tickets and receipts in my wallet. So many, in fact, that the wallet wouldn't close!

The cheapest tickets were for the latest trains, and, because we finished work at six, I sauntered back to Hove and met Fiona for tea whilst waiting for the train. We sat in Hove Station for a while, which is peopled by the most bewildered assortment of misfits I've possibly witnessed under one roof. An announcement came over the tannoy at one point about delayed trains and cancellations, which no one could hear. I went to the ticket desk to ask what the announcement was all about. "I dunno" said the man, "I couldn't hear it. I should think it was just routine..." "But it featured the word cancellation," I said, "surely that's a little more than routine..." "Oh.." He said. And that seemed to be the end of our conversation.

Another staff member just giggled nervously whilst a third, somewhere on the autistic spectrum, barked something. She looked at me: "Did you get any of that? Me neither..." Her face said it all; "we're a bit rubbish aren't we?" In fact, I think she may even have said words to that effect, prompting Fiona to comment on what a typically English thing it is to wear ones uselessness on ones sleeve. It sort of ties in with the whole supporting the under dog thing. It's okay to be rubbish, if you're bumbling and being charming at the same time.