Rain and filming

I've had a bit of a headache today, which I sincerely hope is not me coming down with the dreaded lurgy that my godson and Meriel had on holiday!

Today has been spent travelling up and down London on tube trains. First up was the osteopath. After last time's less-than-satisfying session with a female osteopath, I had a chat with the receptionist and we decided it wasn't sexist or misogynist of me to request a male osteopath in future. When I said I needed someone who wasn't sacred to pummel me, she said she knew exactly who to suggest, and, today, I was greeted by a 6'6" Bulgarian man mountain who went by the name of Ivan. Ivan had hands like upholstered metal deckchairs, and a steely blue-eyed air of menace. You would not want to come across Ivan in a dark alley, or on a rugby pitch. I bet Ivan doesn't cook the meat he eats... Or hear the cries of his patients. Ivan is fabulous! I emerged from the session cross-eyed, with tears streaming down my face from giggling like an imbecile whilst he used his elbow to literally squeeze the air from my body. I walked past the receptionist on the way out and got the knowing look of someone who knew I'd been Ivan'd!

From Borough, I went back up to Kentish Town to visit the gym and then the dentist who told me she'd seldom seen teeth as good as mine. She said she felt it must be a good diet mixed with the fact that I neither drink nor smoke. They might be gargantuan in size, but they're apparently made of strong stuff. I felt pathetically proud as I walked to the tube and immediately texted my mate, Raily, who never misses an opportunity to tell me I eat too many sweeties!

I went from Kentish Town back to south London, this time to meet a lovely lady from the Lesbian and Gay switchboard. We met in an "Eat" by the side of the Thames. Eat, it turns out, has a very poor selection of vegetarian sandwiches. Had I not been so hungry, or busily talking to Nathan (who's in some Lithuanian town) I might have had a word with the staff. But then, what would they have been able to say? The meeting went well. It was really just a "hello" and a bit of an explorative chat. I've got an idea for a film which I'm tentatively trying to work up into a pitch. As with all of these things, it's unlikely to come to fruition, but if I thought this way about everything I did, I'd never achieve anything!

It started raining in the afternoon. Really horrid, non-stop pissy rain, which made the tubes hum and steam.

I had a few hours at home in Highgate to do some frantic admin, and then jumped in the car to drive through heavy rain down to Peckham where I met the lovely Jana from the Rebel Chorus. We were filming her singing a few lines from the Pepys Motet for the video we're making to accompany the album's release. She looked fabulous in a shiny, figure-hugging dress, but, by the time we'd started filming, the rain was bucketing down, so we filmed her in her coat! Candles, cameras, electronic equipment and rain on a dodgy street in Peckham late at night are not the best combination. Heaven knows what we've managed to capture! Rain is a double-edged sword on a film shoot. It can look incredibly atmospheric, and it reflects light in a magical way, but it means everything has to be done repeatedly, and, of course, you run the risk of destroying your kit!

Still we got there, and I was safely home before midnight.

It continued to rain long into the night and I fell asleep with the sound of water dripping into pans in the sitting room and loft...