Shaking Hands

We’re driving back to Leeds in the most stunning, almost unnatural sunset. Bruised grey and maroon clouds are floating in front of strips of peachy orange and iridescent light blue. Today was all about York and started on the train station with singer, Steve Cassidy, who has a haunting voice that somehow reminds me of my Mother, perhaps because it’s reminiscent of those early 60s pop crooners she used to play to me as a child. His shot was the modern day version of our steam train thundering into Pickering station and I hope it will prove to be just as impressive.


We had a brief, slightly rainy sojourn on the York City walls before heading to the Minster to record and film the carillon. It was rather fun to see Hazel and Simon from the recording studio rubbing shoulders with my film crew and I took a picture of them all standing on the roof looking over the city.

There are few words to describe how thrilling it was to hear my music being performed by the carillon. It's such a grand, beautiful instrument, especially when played by John Ridgeway-Wood, who is an extraordinary musician. The whole experience became almost overwhelming and at the end of the first take, I had a little cry, which predictably was captured by the “making of” cameras, who by now must be rubbing their hands together with glee at my erratic and eccentric behaviour. After we'd finished recording, John, too confessed to having felt hugely emotional. There truly is something magical about all these musicians, from so many places and backgrounds, coming together and really giving it their absolute best. At the end of the day, John presented me with a beautiful book about the Minster Bells, which he’d signed with a charming message. It's the perfect momento of a perfect moment.

And the day just got better... In the middle of the afternoon, I fulfilled another one of my life’s ambitions by getting the chance to stick my hand out of an upstairs window on The Shambles and shake it with the person on the opposite side of the street. For readers who don’t know the significance of this slightly bizarre act, The Shambles is a medieval street in York, where the houses are so crooked, the two sides of the street bow towards one another and almost touch in the middle. I think I saw people shaking hands on Blue Peter or Watch as a child and always wanted to give it a go; hence my deciding to do a shot involving two trumpeters there.

In the early evening we went back to the Minster to film the Shepherd’s Brass Band and we finished with the most beautiful shot looking down on the band from the roof of the Minster, and then drifting off into a biblical looking sky.

July 7th 1660, and Pepys went to the Change and bought himself two prints of works by Rubens. The rest of the day was spent in the Navy Office, starting the lengthy process of creating an inventory of almost everything that existed in the building; goods, books, papers etc.

Wuthering Heights

Today was a testing day to say the least. The weather wasn’t exactly kind. It spitted with rain and the wind was strong. I guess on the bright side, there were no mudslides and no 'cellists floating away in freak flash floods, but there was a fair amount of hard-feeling and one or two little arguments bubbled up.

The morning started well, with one of my favourite performers, the harpist Fiona Katie Roberts, who I’ve said on many occasions feels like the heart and soul of this project. She appeared looking radiant in a big blue dress, with heather in her hair. We filmed her in her stomping ground, namely the bleak moors above Haworth, and for the occasion I wore amber flowers behind my ear and made myself a dandelion chain. I don’t really know why, but it felt somehow appropriate for the Wuthering Heights. It was a bit overcast, and some of the shots were looking slightly drab but it was here that I'd decided to film the symphony's final shot, so it became vital that we pulled out all the stops and found something remarkable. We used steady-cam and then set up a jib which enabled us to have the camera pull further and further away from Fiona until she was just little speck on a rugged hillside. It felt like an appropriately moving way to end the film; the sounds of the wind howling through her harp strings still echoing in our ears.

We transferred, rather late, to Howarth, where we filmed all sorts of seemingly random musicians, on the steep and picturesque high street in the middle of the town. We sat down in a pub for lunch but I detected that Alison was getting a bit anxious about time. As we walked back to the car park she pointed out that we absolutely HAD to keep on time so that we weren’t late for the Yorkshire Wind Ensemble, who’d suffered so much from our poor time-keeping in the recording studio process.

Unfortunately, when we reached the car park, we realised to our horror that we’d been clamped; both of our vehicles. We were about ten minutes late and the bastards had moved in like vultures. The car park in Haworth is famous for it. The BBC have even done pieces about it. The residents don’t like it. There are two red-faced men who sit in a little hut and they don’t care what anyone thinks about them. According to the people in the pub, they’ve even clamped the local district nurse! They know they’re skating on very thin ice and this makes them defensive and abusive, and when I tried to argue with them, I found myself subjected to a torrent of hideous homophobic remarks, the like of which I’ve not heard since the 1980s. Bizarrely, I think they were saying these things precisely because they thought I wasn't gay, which somehow made it even worse. They soon started to back down when I got right into one of their nasty red-faces and said; "are you being homophobic to a homosexual? Are you? Are you?" "No mate" he replied "I know lots of gays"... The use of gay as a noun implied this was probably not the case...

The shoot ended on Ovenden Moor, underneath the huge wind turbines. The Yorkshire Wind Ensemble were wonderfully well prepared, which made what could have been an awful end to the day, a great deal more bearable. The light was disappearing at a fast rate of knots, and I had to scrap just about every one of the shots I’d so carefully planned. We were thinking off the tops of our heads and creating shots based entirely on limited set-up times. Fortunately Keith the cameraman was on great form so we ended up with a few corkers; a stunning silhouette of the entire ensemble and a brilliant shot of the bassoonist against a bruised-looking sky. We were literally running from shot to shot, however and I'm sure every single member of the team is knackered tonight.

Pepys was also making music on this date 350 years ago. At the end of a busy day, he sat with William Howe in Montagu’s residence and the two of them extemporised songs in darkness; which feels very reminiscent of what Keith and I were doing tonight! And there was another striking similarity between my day and our hero's. Pepys went for a drink in the Half Moon pub, and the place was so rammed he couldn’t get served for half an hour. I spent a similar amount of time waiting to be served in a pub in Haworth. I’d like to say it was because the place was full, but sadly, for quite the opposite reason, the bargirl had gone outside for a fag... and probably done the weekly shop at the same time!

Go That Extra Mile

It’s been another day of unbroken sunshine. I’m getting browner and browner and keep wondering when all this good luck is going to run out. I suppose the only thing we're suffering from is slightly higher than average winds. This morning, the area around the Humber Bridge was particularly blustery; our poor pianist looked like she'd been fiddling with a Van de Graf generator. I made the same joke several times; "you'd pay thousands of pounds" I said "to get this effect at the Eurovision Song Contest" but sadly no one laughed. It was at that moment I realised for the first time in my life that Eurovision isn't neccessarily the cultural and political trendsetter that I'd always reckoned it to be.

We had a very unpleasant period today on the Hessle foreshore, just up from the Humber Bridge. We were trying to film the kids from the percussion section of Hull Youth Orchestra, but first health and safety, and then a series of technical disasters meant we slid way behind schedule, and shot a fair amount of unusable material. Unfortunately we were left without any form of playback and I was forced to conduct the players, with an ipod in my ear, instead of focussing on watching the pictures, or noticing what the players were doing. No doubt I’ll get into the edit and see a series of shots wrecked by people playing out of time, looking bored, or doing that crazy thing of flicking their eyes towards the camera self-consciously.

I wound myself into something of a tizzy, which wasn’t helped by a rather strange woman from BBC Humberside who seemed to be filming everything we were doing and kept appearing in our shots, and then asking me for interviews like the world was revoling around her work. The film crew from BBC4 were also milling about. They're following me wherever I go for a “making of” documentary. I think the director of said piece was rather hoping I'd have a full-on tantrum, but I find shouting embarrassing, so instead he had to make do with shots of me pathetically sitting on a beach eating a Macdonald’s Veggie burger which Alison thrust in my direction because she knows a lack of food makes me grumpy. After interviewing me about how despondent I was feeling, I caught them filming the Macdonald’s bag on my lap and noticed the slogan daubed across it; “go that extra mile...” So I went that extra mile, all the way to a shop in fact, to buy some extra water because Macdonald chips are saltier than the Dead Sea.

It’s very strange have a film crew popping up everywhere. I’m permanently wired for sound, so forget they’re there, until I’m swearing, or weeing, or buying orange squash in Scarborough...

Anyway, the negativity of the morning soon drifted away and we got stuck in to some really decent filming which culminated at Spurn Head in the late afternoon, where every shot seemed to get more beautiful. The sky went a shade of royal blue, the sun turned to golden syrup and every musician seemed somehow more prepared than the last. We filmed one sequence whilst paddling in the sea. It was what I call “point and shoot” filming. Stick the camera anywhere and the results are astonishing. I was hugely disappointed that we’d not managed to fit the boys from Circus Envy into the day as originally planned. As we left the area, the sea was beginning to shimmer and the light was turning a shade of amber. Sadly the lads are on holiday, and we have to wait until Saturday morning to revisit Spurn Head and discover weather God truly is smiling down on us. There were moments today when I felt as though something utterly unique, and truly wonderful was finally becoming possible. Perhaps if it chucks it down on Saturday, it’ll be because someone up there feels a few rainy shots would make the film even more magical.

We finished the day on Hull’s pier with members of the hysterical Hull Ukulele orchestra and the immensely talented Mambo Jambo. We filmed the latter in a series of understated shots behind the bar of the Minerva pub. A few extra lights gave the whole sequence a sort of timeless beauty and Frankie and Pete from the band shone like little drops of fire.

July 5th 1660 was the day when the city of London formally entertained the King, the Privy Council and all the members of the combined houses of Lords and Commons. The event took place at the Guildhall. There was, in Pepys’ words, “much pomp” which involved processions and all manner of street music and theatre.  Sadly it rained, and “being at White Hall, I saw the King, the Dukes, and all their attendants go forth in the rain to the City, and it bedraggled many a fine suit of clothes.” Fortunately, we had sunshine all day!

Living the life

I fell asleep at 8.30pm last night and slept all the way through to the morning. I was so tired. I’m not sure I’ve ever fallen asleep that early. Perhaps it's a sign of my getting old.

Today was another successful day. The morning felt a bit stop-starty; rather long breaks followed by sequences that we were forced to shoot in limited time. The weather forecast predicted light rain all day but we were blessed with almost unbroken sunshine.

The day started at Hillsborough tram stop with the Yorkshire Saxophone choir who are a highly talented bunch and looked fabulous against the sandstone buildings behind them, saxophones of all shapes and sizes glinting marvellously in the clean, early-morning light.

We then transferred to the Park Hill estate, and for those of you who’ve been to Sheffield, it's the rather controversial set of buildinbgs which sit on the hillside behind the train station. Many people hate it. I find it beautiful in a slightly brutal sort of way. My first visit to Sheffield was as a teenager. I came up to interview for the university and I remember seeing the estate looming above me, and feeling a mixture of terror and awe. I was from a little town in Northamptonshire. I’d never seen anything so large and Orwellian. It looked like a castle and couldn’t imagine what it might be used for.

We filmed a string quartet, and then a rapper, who peered down on us from a stairwell as tiny pieces of paper floated from above. It was one of those shots that just worked.

The early afternoon was about the Sheffield trams and we ended the day in the hamlet of High Bradfield with the Stannington Brass Band, who were just superb. The shots we filmed of them up there are extraordinary. Despite ridiculous gusts of wind, we managed to set up a jib, and I think we were all incredibly pleased we went that extra mile. Once again the camera was able to simply drift about in space. Cameraman Keith is fast turning into a legend!

I have to say, I'm happier at the moment than I've been in a long time. This really is the life.

A busy day for Pepys 350 years ago. He took a boat from Westminster to London Bridge, dropping off his wife at the Whitefriars Stairs, which were just East of the Temple. After a meeting, he went to the Navy Office on Seething Lane to take a look at the dwellings that formed part of the complex. Pepys’ new job potentially carried a “grace and favour” residence in one of them, and he was thrilled at the prospect, chirping that even the worse houses were “very good”.

A very real slice of life

It was a fine day of filming today, which stayed on schedule and was blessed with beautiful sunshine. It started at dawn at Rievaulx Abbey with the wonderful Ebor singers. I was hugely impressed by their professionalism and the way with which they threw themselves into the slightly bizarre visual world of my symphony. Keith shot some extremely impressive material. We used a jib and allowed the camera to float around in the sky and dive down on the choir from the very top of the abbey ruins.

We returned to Leeds to film sequences in Hyde Park and at the indoor market. I suppose my favourite shot was on a back-to-back terraced street where people still hang their washing out over the road. We were lucky enough to catch an elderly lady putting out her sheets, and Miles the violinist played in front of her. It felt like a very real slice of life in that particular corner of the city and I felt very privileged to be able to include it in our film.

The day ended with Michael the pianist in a sort of piano restoration centre. It was filled to the brim with dusty pianos and pieces of keboard and it made the perfect location for Michael, who plays such wonderfully old-school music. As we were setting up the shot, he moved from one piano to another, treating us to several standards; The Man I Love and Don’t It Make Your Brown Eyes Blue; all played in his inimitable style. Fabulous. It also gave me a rather splendid idea for another composition; how does "Concerto for piano shop" sound? I'd write a piece of music that could be performed live by every piano in a piano shop...

Not a great deal happened in Pepys’ life 350 years ago. There was an extremely lengthy meeting at the Admiralty Office but Pepys still didn’t feel secure that the post he’d just been awarded would remain his in perpetuity. In fact, on this date, he paid someone L50, simply to go away and stop trying to claim the post for himself!

Electrocution

I’m currently in the Crown Spa Hotel in Scarborough, rocking backwards and forwards on a crazy contraption which seems to be a cross between a picnic table and a rocking chair. We’ve been filming since 7.30am and I ache in places I didn’t know existed.


We already have an astonishing number of shots in the can and have ticked the Yorkshire Moors, Pickering and Scarborough off the list. It took us a little time to find our feet and we started with one of the most ambitious set-ups of the entire 8-day shoot, which involved hauling a piano to the top of a hill which was covered in sheep poo... We went on to film a string quartet standing on a pile of logs and a drag queen sitting on a rock in a pair of laddered tights which we subsequently discovered were fresh on.

The turning point of the day came in Pickering, where, against all odds, we pulled off a major coup de theatre involving a steam train hurtling into a station behind a group of woodwind players. It was almost as though the train had been automated by click track; it timed itself to the music so perfectly. As the shot ended there were many hugs and even a few tears.

Other highlights include having an entire fairground in Scarborough closed for us and spending 20 minutes spinning round and round on a ferris wheel before a massive free-for-all on the dodgems. Less fun was being electrocuted, twice, by 230 volts. It was a very strange sensation and for a time I felt quite odd, but I guess there are very few people who can claim to have been almost killed a bumper car!

We filmed donkeys on the beach, and then went out to sea on a beautiful blue fishing boat, which bounced up and down on the waves beneath a sugary orange sky. Perfect.

No donkey rides or electric shocks for Pepys on this date 350 years ago. His maid, Jane, was getting better, and he was annoyed to have been invited out to dinner by a so-called friend who then expected him to pay his share of the bill. This was the height of roguish behaviour in Pepys’ eyes.

Bringing nothing to the table

I can barely open my eyes. I’m sitting outside Zizi opposite the Corn Exchange with Nathan. He’s also exhausted, having been in the studio all day. I’ve been at BBC Leeds, sitting in front of a computer screen, creating the mother of all shot lists, for a shoot which is now 8 days long! Tomorrow, I’m up at 5.30am and the mayhem officially begins...


I’ve not yet heard what Nathan, Hazel and Simon have been working on today. Nathan has lowered my expectations to the level where I’m assuming it will sound pretty awful. They still have a full day on it tomorrow, and apparently there’s a bewildering amount of tuning and fine-tuning to be done. (Will it ever end?) So I’ve been given the broad strokes version. Enough to shoot to, but not yet enough to make people gasp with excitement...

Today we lost Chad from the project. I'm fairly angry with him. He got in touch with me about 3 years ago wanting to be involved in the A1 project, and because there was no space for him in that, I sent him an email about this. He came to audition, I gave him a solo, he recorded the solo, and then subsequently dicked us about. First he wasn’t sure he could make the filming, then he could, and finally, at midday today, he texted us to say he couldn’t come... So right at the last moment I’m having to replace him; fortunately with Simon from the studio, who has worked so hard on this project, that I’m secretly thrilled he’ll finally get a chance to appear in front of the cameras. All we need now is a cameo for Hazel...

Believe it or not, we still don’t know if our teenage madam is going to show up to the filming. I called her up earlier to say how much belief I still had in her, and that I felt (in all seriousness) that the film would really benefit from her presence. I’ve given her a lot of grief in this blog because her attitude stinks, but she remains an interesting girl, with an intriguing face, a beautiful voice and the film will genuinely miss her... Hence why I’ve decided to keep her voice in the piece, even if she doesn’t show up.

So, by the time I write this blog tomorrow, I will have filmed my first few sequences... on the Yorkshire Moors, in Pickering train station and on Scarborough Beach. It’s set to tip it down with rain tonight, but it should clear in time for filming to begin. Fingers crossed.The news on the weather front isn’t great. A low pressure system is moving in and for the next two weeks the weather will be changeable. Bugger. I just pray for good weather on Tuesday when we film in a succession of locations which would frankly kill people in the rain.

Pepys took delivery of some very fine clothes on this day 350 years ago; “a fine camlett suit with gold buttons and a silk suit which cost me much money”. They were plainly very expensive: camlet was a much sought after blend of wool and silk, and Pepys added a footnote, “I pray God to make me able to pay for it”. He then brought a good joint of meat and dined on it with his wife at home. It was a Sunday, afterall... After church (well, whatever you call going to Westminster Abbey), Pepys called in on his neighbour, Mrs Crisp, the cipher who kindly put him up for a few days before he went to sea. There he met the formidably named Mynheer Roder, who Pepys was shocked to discovered was marrying a woman who was worth next to nothing. Perhaps Pepys spotted a kindred spirit. Elizabeth, afterall, had brought nothing to the table financially when they hooked up.