Flagrant Harpies

I’m in deepest, darkest Shropshire at Nathan’s mother’s house. We just paid her a surprise visit, and were rewarded with a feast of cauliflower cheese, roast vegetables and a trifle. I’ve not eaten trifle for years, possibly decades, but every delicious mouthful made me wonder why I'd left it so long!

We spent the afternoon with Nathan’s sister and family, singing Eva Cassidy songs in 4-part harmony whilst trying to work out which pop/ rock album has the most iconic artwork on its sleeve. High on the list: ELO’s New World Record, The Happy Mondays Pills, Thrills and Bellyaches and almost anything by the Beatles. Feel free to add your thoughts to the bottom of this blog.

The visit has also re-kindled Nathan’s desire to have another pet rat, having met the wonderfully placid 'Cid (short for Acid, not placid), who belongs to his niece, Becky. I like rats. They get bad press but they’re highly intelligent, loving creatures. I just can’t bear the pain when they die, which they do rather too often!


Felt a bit like Elizabeth Pepys as we lay in bed this morning. We’ve been trying to learn Beauty Retire by heart, and Nathan seems to have been a great deal more successful than me! Pepys was constantly losing his temper with his wife because she seemed to have no discernable musical ear and Nathan got a tad frustrated with me as I tripped over the words for the 90th time! He had every right to make me feel like a tit. I was frankly shocked at my ineptitude!

A fascinating, high-octane diary entry for Pepys today, which starts with him attending St Paul’s school to see his brother, John, a student there, making a sort of graduation speech. St Paul’s was the school that Pepys himself attended, and he made regular donations to the establishment in his later, wealthier life. I must remember to contact the school as I feel some of their choristers would prove to be the obvious choice for the children's choir in my motet.

Pepys' brother, by all accounts, held his own in the ceremony and Pepys left feeling proud enough. He then raced back to Westminster Palace where he witnessed Monck’s soldiers abusing and attacking a group of Quakers. The Quakers at this point were just beginning to establish themselves as a religious group and as such were facing a great deal of persecution. Many were sent to jail; possibly because they regularly made rather bizarre statements like rushing naked through Westminster Hall crying; “Repent Repent.” (see Pepys' diary, 29th July, 1667.) On this occasion, however, General Monck heard about his soldier's thuggish behaviour and made the following order (dated March 9th 1660):

‘I do require all officers and soldiers to forbear to disturb peaceable meetings of the Quakers, they doing nothing prejudicial to the Parliament or the Commonwealth of England. George Monck'

Monk’s power was increasing daily. Pepys noted on the 7th February that he "hath now the absolute command and power to do any thing that he hath a mind to do." Cool!

Later in the day, Pepys spent time discussing bladder stones, and their removal; the most painful of operations, which involved being strapped to a bed with no form of painkiller (including alcohol). Pepys endured this particular misery in 1658 and the stone his physician cut out was the size of a ping pong ball.  He was incredibly lucky to survive and was well aware of the fact, celebrating its removal every year on March 26th.

On returning home, Pepys found his wife up to her usual tricks, steeling - or appropriating - more clothes. This time it was some ribbon and a pair of shoes that she found in a box in Montagu’s London house. Frankly, it’s a surprise the flagrant harpy wasn't arrested!

Hysterical whinging

Poor Nathan. After taking a look at his head today, I discovered yesterday's incident with the freezer had actually drawn blood and left a scar. To make matters worse, a few minutes later, whilst eating a consolatory toffee, his tooth fell out! Well, more fell apart. For about half an hour he was spitting out little pieces of decayed enamel. Charming.


I had a wonderful time with Hilary last night. We watched a bit of telly and talked about her forthcoming wedding. We then sat around the piano and sung through Beauty Retire for the first time. It felt like quite an important and magical moment. Pepys knew how to write a tune and one of his phrases, the one that accompanies the line "I break the hearts of half the world and she breaks mine" is particularly charming. I suppose it's not altogether surprising that these words would have resonated with and inspired the great lothario Pepys!

Later in the evening, I read out my entire short list of potential texts for the Motet. I wanted to know how Nathan and Hilary would respond, and futher more how I'd feel when I read them out loud for the first time. They all fly off the page, but some felt more repetitious and less colourful than others. There were also sections I felt a great desire to skip over. Bizarrely, and most controversially, the whole sequence about the Dutch invasion in 1667, felt like the dampest squib; particularly when compared with the breath-taking vividness of other sequences. It's astonishing to think that within a ten year period Pepys lived through and wrote about so many events that are still remembered today.

Talking of which, on this day in 1660, Britain took one step closer to the Restoration. General Monk was still lording it in town, and today Pepys clapped eyes on him for the first time. He was swishing into Parliament, flanked by soldiers and judges, engulfed in a haze of pomp and circumstance. Pepys feasted with his father on a turkey from Zealand (Denmark) and had another row with Mrs Ann – the housekeeper of the daughter of Montagu - who seemed to be a rather tricky fish. She is regularly mentioned at this time, usually ill in bed with an "ague", or shouting viciously at Pepys for not helping her to get better. Pepys obviously felt indebted to the family of his great patron, but quite why this seemed to include putting up with the hysterical whingings of one of their servants, I'm not sure.

A face of frozen peas

I had a very interesting chat this morning with a chap from the Royal Navy. He seems to think there are at least three former choral scholars training to be officers at Dartmouth; and that he’s sure a choir of five singers can be found within the Navy. This is wonderful news, although I guess if they’re based in Dartmouth, there might be a whole set of financial considerations. Perhaps that’s something the Navy could help us with. The other interesting thing that the conversation threw up is the possibility that one of my 8 choirs might have to be men only. I realise there are women in the Navy, but my gut instinct is that we won't find any who sing!


I've spent much of the day so far working on piano reductions for the Choir Invisible. I’ve now done rough drafts for three of the songs, so will need to spend tomorrow on them in order to free up next week for Pepys.

We went shopping in Sainsburys (thrilling) because my friend Hilary is coming over for an evening in front of the telly tonight. I was hungry and got shirty. I'm hideous when hungry (something I share with Dear Sam.) I actually called one poor woman a "plonker" (where do these words come from?) Meanwhile, Nathan was almost knocked out by a man who decided to close the freezer lid on his head! Instead of doing anything practical to help the situation, he just stood there saying; "I can't believe I just did that..." again and again, whilst Nathan separated his face from a bag of frozen peas.

On February 5th, 1660, Pepys revealed that his wife was nothing but a common thief! It seems she found a black hood (very fashionable at the time) in Mrs Turner’s pew at church, and kept it for herself. And on the Lord's day! Scandalous! Perhaps it was also her who stole the bag of money that Mr Hawley lost. The poor chap came to see Pepys first thing, looking miserable, confessing he had no idea where the bag had gone and revealing there was 24l inside. We assume the money belonged to their boss, Mr Downing and that Mr Hawley would be in a huge amount of trouble unless he could find it. 24l was the equivalent of a quarter year’s salary for someone like Pepys. (Salaries were paid quarterly in those days).

Today’s entry has a rather perplexing and slightly spooky end;

"After supper home, and before going to bed I staid writing of this day its passages, while a drum came by, beating of a strange manner of beat, now and then a single stroke, which my wife and I wondered at, what the meaning of it should be"

We never find out what the drumming was all about. I love the image of the Pepyses listening to the beat and trying to work out if it was conveying a message. That there was a time when drumming might have been used for those purposes is fascinating. Apparently back then, the military had a vast array of calls and orders that could be relayed by complicated drum patterns. Perhaps it was one of these. I wonder what Pepys would have made of the hippy at Covent Garden tube who seems to be playing bongos every time I walk past!

Apparently we're due for another cold snap next week. I enclose this rather special photograph of buses on Muswell Hill Road just before Christmas. We've got all this to look forward to again!

Killing turkeys

My mind is absolutely full of stuff at the moment. It has been for days. I keep drifting off whilst trying to solve little problems. I then re-emerge in the world and realise I've forgotten to do something important in the here and now. Today I left my trainers at the gym and then lost my wallet in the car like a forgetful old bat. In fairness, the trainer incident might have had something to do with the fact that I spent much of my time in the gym today floating around like a loon whilst listening to some really good music. Featuring prominently in my aural landscape was Paloma Faith’s Do You Want the Truth or Something Beautiful, a somewhat hypnotic wall of sound, which I discover to my joy, Fiona played the violin on. Listen to it and watch it here. Use headphones and you too might want to bounce around like a child on tartrazine.


I’ve just returned from Finsbury Park, where I’ve been assisting my tragically infirm friend Ellen, who has back problems at the moment. She's not actually infirm, but her back has been misbehaving for months, poor lamb. We had a good laugh about the fact that she was sitting on a special chair whilst I was wearing insoles in my shoes. We both did our stretches whilst whinging about the world. I wouldn't want to swap places with her, however. Bad backs are utterly debilitating. My mother seemed to spend most of 1982 in abject pain, lying on beds that were always too soft. I remember trying to help her climb a flight of stairs on one particularly horrific day. I think it took us 30 minutes; both of us sobbing miserably.

Aside from my stupid feet problems, I also seem to have developed some form of weird RSI in my right index finger, which I'm assuming is to do with too much computer work. Is this really what old age is all about?!

Incidentally, as an aside, I see on the news today that MPs are being forced to pay back many of the expenses they claimed last year. What I don't understand is why the people who allowed these expenses to go through in the first place are not the ones being forced to eat the public humble pie. We all play the game with expenses; claim for what we think we can get away with. Actors claim for haircuts and suits. I claim for books and CDs. But surely the person who approved the building of a duck house should be the one apologising?

Back in 1660, Pepys was having a lovely social day. After a spot of lute practise, he called in to see one Mrs Swan, who he describes as being in “very genteel mourning for her father,” which I think is a splendid turn of phrase! I am at this moment trying to picture how someone might mourn genteelly. Gentle sighs, I suppose. A tiny handkerchief dabbing at the corner of a doe-like eye. Perhaps a doleful song accompanied by a harpsichon. A pale consumptive face...

Pepys ate only bread and butter for the entire day. I first assumed he was suffering the ill effects of yesterday's mutton, but reading on, we discover it’s because his friends were discussing “Marriot the Great Eater”; famed across London for his gluttony. This had a rather unusual effect on Pepys who suddenly became ashamed to eat what he might normally have eaten. And for an inveterate trougher, that's no mean feat! A few minutes later, Pepys, who was a great collector of modern ballads, was handed a copy of a song “to the tune of Mardike” (see picture – and try to play at your peril) which he borrowed because it was so beautifully written out. On closer inspection he decided it was a silly song and not worth copying out for his own pleasure. So there.

On a slight tangent, I received a copy of Pepys’ Beauty Retire via email today from the secretary of the Pepys Club. It’s not the best copy and I may not be able to read all the notes, but it’s a start, and I'm very grateful to think that some of the doors I spoke of yesterday might be slowly opening. Or perhaps they were never there in the first place.

There’s a lovely little end piece to today’s entry, which is self explanatory and I leave you with it:

"This day my wife killed her turkeys that Mr. Sheply gave her... and could not get her maid Jane by no means at any time to kill anything"

Useless maid!

Orthopaedic Shoe

I’ve been working all morning on piano reductions for the Lincolnshire project. This is one part of the composing processes that can be extremely time-consuming. For this composition, a piano part is an absolute necessity because it’s not always going to be possible for the choir to perform with the full strings. Because of this, I need to make sure what I write is pianistic and works as a full accompaniment in its own right. But this takes time. I did five hours' work today and I've not yet finished the first song! Sorry, Samuel, you're gonna have to wait just a little bit longer!


That said, I did find a couple of hours to look through my shortlist of diary quotes and I'm beginning to get a sense of how some of the set pieces, like Pepys account of the Great Fire, could be spine-tinglingly exciting. I'm now desperate to get my hands on a copy of Pepys’ song, Beauty Retire but it seems no one's able to help me. I'm beginning to wonder whether certain Pepys fans might see themselves as the unofficial guardians of his legacy. I wonder if I've been banging at a few doors which hide some very private parties to which people like me aren't invited. An elitism, I'm sure dear Samuel would have adored!

Just been to the foot clinic, where I discovered that one of my legs is considerably longer than the other. This explains my life-long eccentric gait, and the fact that I am pigeon-toed in one foot. They provided me with a lovely pair of in-soles, which was a great relief, because on the window ledge in the consultancy room was a selection of the most hideous orthopaedic shoes, which would have been an utter embarrassment to wear. I had visions of leaving the hospital carrying a teddy bear and looking like the poor little girl in this picture. I had the dress lined up and everything...

I’m celebrating the end of a busy day with a bowl of potato soup and my favourite treat; fizzy tongues from the shop opposite Highgate tube.

So what was Pepys up to 350 years ago today?

Well, Monck finally arrived in London and although Pepys didn’t see him anywhere, he saw his soldiers, and was impressed. Pepys was hanging out with his cousin, Mrs Turner. She was one of the few relatives who wasn't an embarrassment to him, in fact he was incredibly fond of her. She’d married a lawyer and done alright for herself and she turns up in the diary frequently. After giving her a tour of Parliament, he wined and dined her at the Rhenish Wine-house, and then took her back to his dwellings to feed her some more; this time an under-cooked mutton stew. I bet she was thrilled!

Pepys and his wife then go to the park where Mrs Turner’s daughter, Theoph(ila) challenges Elizabeth and “another poor woman” to a running race. Theophilia, 8 at the time, wins, and the "poor women" seems to lose her bet, handing over a pot of ale as punishment! Racing in the park in February seems like an eccentric pastime even for the Pepyses. We know it was a bright sunny day, but surely it was still muddy. Were they racing in pattens, I wonder? Now that, I’d pay to see!!

Selling a horse for eggs and herrings

I'm feeling uneasy today. Weirdly anxious. I can feel my jaw clenching and I have a mild headache. At lunch with Fiona I had a funny turn, which put me off my food. If I'm stressed, I can't do anything about it because I don't know what's causing it. Perhaps it's simply that I lived life at too fast a pace in January. Perhaps it's my body telling me to slow down a bit, or get more sleep; I was up very early today in an attempt to increase my productivity. Maybe it was the two large cups of tea I consumed before lunch that made me jittery. Maybe I'll never know. Nathan’s been out of sorts as well today and my mother’s been worrying about her health so I assume there's some astrological fallout attached to that weird full moon we had. I also discovered tonight that a distant relative has been murdered in Australia, so it's not been a particularly good day.


That said, the lovely man from BBC Manchester has said the project up there looks likely now, so within a matter of days, my entire year seems to have been plotted out. That'll be the universe reading my blog! So depending on what the people in Leeds and Manchester want, it looks like the Pepys project will either need to crank into gear pretty speedily, or wait for November. Let's see how quickly it writes itself.

On that note, I'm now editing the short list of diary passages I might want to feature in the motet and have cut it down from 18,000 to 8,000 words. Still plainly too many, but it's a start. The big decision I need to make is whether to feature the passages sequentially or thematically. Too much theming could take away from the randomness and skittishness of Pepys' writing. Part of the joy of the diary is that it moves about as quickly as Pepys moved around London. Incredibly moving accounts of a city torn apart by fires and plagues are polka-dotted with talk of parties, farting, finances and f***ing. If Pepys ever expected his diaries to be read, he had an almost Brechtian desire to stop his readers from becoming emotionally complacent.

350 years ago he informs us that London was in a bit of an excitable mood anticipating the arrival of Monck. The scenes of chaos and confusion he witnessed from an upstairs window on the Strand could best be described as a sort of revolutionary street theatre (again, Brecht would have been proud). As no one was in charge of the government, it fell upon common soldiers to look after the country; something they chose to do by running around the streets, pointlessly firing guns and banging drums.

Perhaps the most confusing line I’ve encountered in Pepys’ Diary, however, comes towards the end of today's entry; "After all this we went to a sport called, selling of a horse for a dish of eggs and herrings." We know Pepys is in a pub with his laddy mates, but what on earth is he on about? I assume he's referring to some kind of game. But what are the rules? And who wins the dish of eggs and herrings?! Or do you win a horse? I need to know. I love games and I'd love to win a horse! I'd ride it to the moon.

Royal Nancy

I woke up bright and early to start February as I mean to continue. It was a freezing, yet beautifully sunny morning and the streets of Highgate were covered with delicate flakes of ice which looked like snow. I ran my finger along the top of a wall and they danced like pieces of iron filing around a magnet. It was very bizarre. It's incredible what Mother Nature is capable of creating! It’s perhaps even colder tonight. Walking from St Olave’s Church to Bank Station was like wandering around Leningrad in February. I don’t think I’ve ever experienced such a prolonged cold snap; even in the early 80s, when my mother went through a stage of taking us to school on a little plastic sledge.


Today was the day I started proper work on the Pepys Motet. It’s still not fully funded, obviously, but I figured I might as well make a start whilst there’s time in my diary. It feels like a momentous occasion. I’ve not yet put pen to manuscript - there’s much to do before this can happen - specifically the process of selecting the diary entries that will feature in the work. This could, and probably should take me at least a week. At the moment I still have a short list of almost 18,000 words, which will never do. This is the text for a 15-minute composition, not a university dissertation.

I was emailed this morning by the lovely lady at BBC Leeds who says she wants to go ahead with the Yorkshire Symphony. Hugely exciting and more than a little scary! The moment one of my projects mutates from glorious concept into something inevitable I experience a few jitters. The same questions bubble up again and again. Am I capable of uniting hundreds of individual musicians across Yorkshire with a television symphony? (okay, perhaps that question is fairly unique to this project) Will I write something the Yorkshire folk can feel proud of? Will the good folk of Yorkshire mind a Midlander abseiling into their county telling them to get all patriotic? Will I embarrass myself by suddenly talking in a Brummie accent? A weird quirk, which tends to happen when I’m greeted by someone with a strong accent, usually a Midlands one, but the phenomenon has been known to occur when talking to Glaswegians or people from Durham. It’s part of the weird form of Tourettes I’ve had from childhood which sees me mimicking anyone with a slightly unusual voice. It happens directly to their faces and it's mortifying. I'm experiencing it a lot with Slavic waitresses at the moment.

I’ve just returned from another excellent lecture at St Olave’s Church; part of the Pepys 350 series given by the highly entertaining Graham Fawcett, who today was reading diary entries from January 1660 alongside newspaper cuttings from 2010. It’s fascinating to see how everything and yet nothing has changed. More lovely food and recorder music, which turned into bagpipe music, which had the potential to be the most excruciating musical experience, but somehow wasn't. The bagpipes that came out were wonderfully ancient and had an incredibly soft yet unusual timbre. She played music from Pepys’ time and I was transported into a different era...

350 years ago, Pepys ate pease porridge for lunch and nothing else. Quite why he mentions this, I’m not sure. Perhaps it caused a row with Elizabeth. Perhaps he thought she was being lazy. Perhaps they'd blown their food ration on the lavish party last week. Or maybe Pepys had put himself on some kind of 17th century detox programme. He doesn't mention eating anything else that day. And for those of you who don’t know what Pease Pudding or Porridge is, here’s a recipe

Much of the rest of the entry is dedicated to discussions about the expected arrival of General Monck in two days' time. It really was like waiting for Godot! Pepys spoke to soldiers who were threatening to mutiny for lack of pay, something which would happen with increasing regularity and severity in the future when he started working for the Royal Navy, (which for some reason I just typed as Royal Nancy! )

And by the way, here's the man himself. This is the John Hales painting from 1666. In it, Pepys is proudly holding up the manuscript of his beloved composition, Beauty Retire.