Interview in Highgate

I went up into Highgate village first thing this morning to meet a very charming journalist from the Camden New Journal. We were taking about The Man in the Straw Hat, but he asked me all sorts of questions about my entire career, and had done a great deal of research, for which I was very grateful to him.

He actually started crying when I talked about our wedding, which touched me enormously. I got a little tearful myself when talking about the terrible things LGBT people are still having to face in various corners of the globe. My thoughts have recently been occupied by the terrible plight of gay men in Syria. There was a time when Damascus was a relative safe haven for gay people. I can't imagine how terrifying it must be to live there with no option of escape. I sometimes wonder if LGBT people in some of these terrible counties find themselves trawling through the internet for images of gay people in places where gay people are free. Would they find the concept of two men getting married in a musical touching, or over the top in a deeply horrifying and sinister way?

Speaking of tears, I sent my Mother a photograph yesterday of the little silver elephant which I always wear around my neck sitting on the grave of my grandparents, her parents. I think she found the image, and the blog I wrote yesterday, fairly moving, and sent me a poem by Tennyson, which came to her mind and I thought was highly appropriate:

Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,
Tears from the depth of some divine despair
Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,
In looking on the happy autumn-fields,
And thinking of the days that are no more.

I made a start on the new draft of Brass today. It's a deeply daunting experience, not least because Nathan fundamentally disagrees with one aspect of the notes I went through with Philippa last week and Nathan can be fairly insistent and dogmatic when he gets the bone between his teeth! I guess I have to dive deep into my heart to find out what I myself really feel. Nevertheless, a start has been made on the new draft, which I guess is the most difficult part dealt with.