hot, dry gales

It would appear to be my birthday! Just. As of thirty minutes ago, I'm 42, which I'm told makes me the meaning of life, the universe and everything. I can think of worse things to be. My 43rd year had better be more productive than my 42nd year. Last year was brutal...

Today was all about a glorious lie-in. I haven't had a lie-in since before we went on holiday, and it was just wonderful to cuddle Nathan whilst drifting in and out of consciousness.

We had lunch in the greasy spoon and then went up to Friern Barnet to collect some props for a filming session I'd booked in for this evening. Who knew it could be so difficult to find flammable material in a B and Q? I wanted to create a miniature bonfire so needed the sort of thing you might throw onto a barbecue. I found nothing of the sort. Apparently the barbecue season is over... I would have thought that the barbecue season ran seamlessly into the bonfire season and that flame accelerants might therefore be an all-year-round essential product. Nope.

So I bought a metal dustbin and went to Tesco for a couple of throw-away barbecues. Bad choice. I needed fire, not smouldering coals.

Still, whilst we were up in those parts, we took a trip to a hand car wash place, and got all the sticky stuff that falls from lime trees around our house water-blasted from our roof and windscreen by a clutch of fabulous immigrants wearing wellies.

I came home and started editing together my little film. The majority of footage is now in, and it's good to get a bit of a shape. There's so so much admin to do before we start rehearsals at Sevenoaks on Friday, however, so heaven knows when I'm going to get it finished. I have pages and pages of admin to do. Email upon email to send. I picked up a speeding fine whilst driving home from Northumberland, which is £100 and three points on my license. This is, of course, bad enough, until we factor in the fact that I'm about the only person in the world who only has a paper driving license, which I've somehow lost. So tomorrow I've got to try to sort all that nonsense out. Is it even legal to only have a paper license?

The filming session this evening was with Llio in her garden. Llio has a solo in the fourth movement of the motet, which includes some of the most famous lines that Pepys ever wrote. In the midst of the mayhem of the Great Fire of London, Pepys rushed around his house throwing his most valuable possessions into a cart, and burying some of the others: "did dig a pit, and put our wine in it. And our Parmesan cheese!" As it happened, when Pepys returned to his house after the fire had finished raging, he found it still standing. The wind had changed direction at the last moment, which meant the far south-eastern corner of the city including the Tower of London was saved.

The weather today was very unusual. Hot and dry with high, rather tropical winds. Exactly the sort of weather, in fact, that caused the Great Fire of London!