Wedding anniversary

Last night, at about midnight, I had a sudden flash of “what the fuck?” I realised that we are actually living through what, for so many years, has been the sort of thing which only happens in movies. Thirteen years ago, I worked as the acting coach on a film called 28 Weeks Later. The film was set in a post-apocalyptic London, 28 weeks after a weird virus had turned most of the population into rage-fuelled, blood-thirsty zombies. Actually, we weren’t allowed to call them zombies because they weren’t actually dead - they were known instead as the “infected.” We did a lot of filming in iconic London locations in the early hours of the morning. At the time it felt like quite a treat to be on Shaftesbury Avenue with all the theatre marquees turned off and no cars or pedestrians in sight. It gave us the opportunity to go down into abandoned tube stations, and strange tunnels and snickleways. One Sunday morning we did some filming in Finsbury Park. This particular sequence focussed on an upturned car on Stroud Green Road, positioned outside a bashed-up pizza restaurant. I think there were some corpses. To be honest, there were always corpses - it was a horror movies after all! I remember watching a night bus passing the scene, and a group of somewhat terrified clubbers, bleached-out from a night of partying, staring down at the scene, trying to compute what they were witnessing. 

And last night, I suddenly realised that I was living through the very thing which had seemed so far-fetched back in 2007!

I watched aerial footage of some of London’s key tourist destinations, all eerily empty. There was a shot of the pedestrian bridge over the Thames which runs from St Paul’s to the Tate Modern. We filmed sequences for 28 Weeks Later there as well - one early morning in October. The sunrise we witnessed on that day remains the most spectacular sunrise I’ve ever witnessed. The sky was initially filled with streaks of mauve and lavender and then, as the sun appeared, everything turned orange and yellow. Every window lit up - almost as though the whole city were on fire. 

I have another rather special memory attached to that bridge. Back in 1999, when it opened, Sam Becker and I were working at the New Ambassadors Theatre. The bridge had some sort of design flaw which none of its architects had predicted. If people walked on it, on masse, their footsteps would somehow align, and the whole bridge started to bounce - really quite dramatically. Sam and I, keen for new experiences, decided to walk from the theatre down to the bridge to experience the phenomenon for ourselves. I guess it was almost midnight when we finally got there, but the place was heaving with people having a fabulous time walking across the bridge. And it was the most bizarre, stomach-churning experience. Like a fairground ride. It was almost as though the floor were somehow rippling underneath our feet. It was how I imagine an earthquake must feel. 

Of course, the following day, the bridge was closed for an extended period whilst they figured out how to remedy the situation, so I am always very grateful that Sam and I had thought to be so spontaneous. 

I think I feel a little better every day. I’m not coughing anything like as much as I was, but my sense of smell still hasn’t returned. I thought I could smell the soap I was using in the bath this morning, but that might have been a memory of the good old days! I am having surreal dreams, which my father tells me is a symptom of a virus. I dreamed a few days ago that I’d learned how to play the flute. For me, this is about as random as anything I could ever have imagined. Hell would freeze over before I EVER took an interest in the devil’s pipe. Flutes are the coriander of the musical world.

It was our sixth wedding anniversary yesterday, and, in line with our once-yearly tradition, we strolled up to Alexandra Palace. Readers will remember that we got married - in song, and on the telly - in a disused Victorian theatre deep within the “Ally Pally” complex. 

Our yearly visit to the Palace gives us an opportunity to see whether spring has come early or late in any given year. In 2014 it came particularly early. We’d had weeks of wonderful, unbroken sunshine in the run-up to the wedding and this is very much captured in the filming we did for the show’s opening sequence. Meriel appears in shot at one point like Julie Andrews twirling in a sunny alpine meadow!

Nathan’s sister stayed with us the night before the big day, and we got a taxi up to the venue first thing. There are a number of photographs of me holding a bouquet of dusky pink roses which had been sent to us by the singer Katie Melua - a particularly wonderful surprise and it was the first thing we were handed as we arrived. I remember my brother arriving very early, and then Hilary, and the five of us walking, with our photographer Gaby, to a blossom tree where we spent a wonderful few minutes enjoying the sensation of the pink and white petals falling down on us like confetti. The view from Ally Pally over London is spectacular and I remember it looking very misty in the early morning sunshine. I also remember noticing that the rainbow flag was flying from a flagpole outside the complex and feeling incredibly moved, welcomed and accepted. It was amazing to think how far the gay rights movement had come in my lifetime. That frightened little child who didn’t dare to tell his Mum that he’d been spat at in the street because people had decided he was gay was now the poster boy for true equality. And that felt magical. 

Of course, a lot of people at the time were telling us that gay marriage was going to lead to the end of society as we know it. Back then, the Christians were convinced there would be a giant flood. God was really going to let us have it to show quite how much he hated the concept of same-sex marriage. In the end God sent weeks of sunshine - and ironically chose to break the glorious sunny spell, some three weeks after we’d got married… on Easter Sunday! I’m sure there were one or two very disappointed and confused Christians that year. I often wonder how these religious sects must feel; you know, the ones who sit on the edge of a cliff waiting for the rapture to come. At what stage must they think, “oh dear, we’ve given all of our worldly possessions to the people who told us the end of the world is nigh, and now we’ve got to re-enter society with our tails between our legs.”? I think, if I weren’t brain-washed, I might feel a bit of anger. 

The blossom wasn’t quite as advanced on the trees this year as it was back in 2014. It has been very sunny of late in London, but yesterday morning, maybe just as a little subtle warning from nature not to spend the weekend passing the virus around willy-nilly, it actually hailed. Proper hail. 

Ally Pally was, of course, next to empty. The weather didn’t help, but they’ve also closed the car parks to stop people from congregating there. They’ve also blocked most of it off, so you can’t go up to the building itself. We walked up to the boating lake. They have these wonderful pedalos shaped like flamingos and swans, but all are moored to the island in the middle of the lake. One wonders how long it will take for nature to start taking over. How long will it be until the boats are covered in mill-dew and algae? How long until weeds start to push up through the tarmac? One day, we may well know whether those set dressers on 28 Weeks Later got it right. 

If reading this blog has given you a sense that you might like to see our wedding again - or for the first time - we have a link which you can follow for a private viewing. Let me know if you enjoy... Happy times. 

www.nathantaylor.co.uk/ourgaywedding.m4v