Pritt stick moustache

Fiona is here tonight, and we've just been up to the village, we hoped, to eat at Cafe Rouge, but it was closing early, so we went next door to Strada where we ate lovely food. Mushroom bruschetta? Not 'arf!

It's Eurovision week, so gay men across the world have stopped answering their emails and have gone into party mode. My brother and Sascha are out there in Stockholm, and we're hosting three parties for the two semi-finals and the final.

In the meantime I have a load of admin to do. More forms to fill in. More pots of money to identify and chase. Tomorrow we're cutting together a little video of the cast of Brass begging the BBC to allow us to perform the work in a site-specific Northern location later in the year.

I've also been composing, and finally have started to get my head around my composition for the London Gay Men's Chorus' "Shame" initiative.

I went to the gym just after lunch. It's been incredibly hot and muggy today which means I am permanently in a state of melting. I finished my work out, had a shower and literally couldn't dry myself. I even tried using a hair dryer to dry my body, but the sweat just kept on dripping. Quite extraordinary.

I also realise that I've been bitten by gnats, probably whilst Nathan and I lay in the parakeet field last night looking at a cloud formation which resembled Virginia Wolf and then morphed into the shape of a skull, which was, well, a little disconcerting. So disconcerting, in fact, that we plainly didn't notice we were being munched on.

I have started using Pritt Stick on the ends of my moustache! I was quite horrified yesterday to discover the handlebar sagging and looking like the legs of a tarantula, so I went online to see if I could find any suggestions. One guy seemed to spend hours primping his moustache with a home made cardboard invention and a load of hairspray, but someone else just suggested daubing the ends with Pritt Stick and wrapping them around a simple pencil for the curl. I did it. It worked. And it held all day!

It rained in the late afternoon. The sky went a very odd murky colour and, by seven o'clock I had to turn the lamps on in the sitting room. When Fiona arrived, and we walked up into the village there was a glorious smell in the air: a smell which was more than a little reminiscent of my childhood... It was a heady, rich, verdant sort of smell. The aroma of rain on a summer's day. The smell of hedgerows filled with cow's parsley, stinging nettles, dock leaves and cuckoo spit. You don't often get this smell in Highgate and I enjoyed every moment!

We spent the last hour of the day watching the section finals of the BBC Young Musician of the Year which boasted not one but two of the players from this year's Brass pit orchestra. Both Stephanie and Zach played astoundingly well. I felt proud to be associated with them and very excited to think that they'll be playing my music in the summer.