Tickly

The temperatures have plummeted in London and I've developed another tickly cough. I think I have to acknowledge that this is my body's weakness. Some people get headaches, some get tummy aches, I get pathetic coughs. I hope it's not going to turn into a cold.

I spent the day at the kitchen table creating a piano/ vocal score for a song in Em called The Cavern, which, unsurprisingly, features the central characters on a night out at Liverpool's premier club. The show is set in 1965, so there's more than a whiff of the Mersey Beats surrounding the song. It's funny writing a pop-based score. There's always a curious little voice in the back of your mind which says the music isn't somehow as serious or even as good as a more classically-inspired work like Brass. With a tiny pit band, you have to be incredibly inventive and really think out of the box to generate sonic variety.

I went to see Llio tonight and I helped her to structure a song she's been working on. It's an excellent piece: she simply needed an outsider's eye to polish the individual components and get them all in the right order. Structure and form is everything in music. It's only taken me 30 years to realise that!

There's not much else to say. I got a phone call from the manager of Toddington services today who informed me that there was no reason why the petrol pumps should have been closed for approaching half an hour on Tuesday night. Staff are "allowed" to close the garage whilst they cash up at the end of a shift, but this should take no more than five minutes and it's not allowed to take over ten. I don't get a great deal of enjoyment out of potentially getting two staff members in trouble, but if they're shirking, I refuse to feel too guilty. Had they been apologetic or empathetic instead of completely ignoring me, I might have felt a bit more sympathy.