Wonderful wonderful Normanton

The sun has been shining all day, and I've been feeling very happy as a result. I spent much of my time in Leicestershire with my mother. We bumped into some old friends in Melton Mowbray. It was lovely to see them, and they looked very well. Melton Mowbray is a particularly dull place, although as we drove there, through the beautiful Leicestershire countryside, my Mother reminded me that the town was the original home of my Great Grandmother, who started a pork pie business there, after her husband had drunk them out of house and home!

I chatted to my brother, Tim on the phone, who'd just taken his driving test in Bangor of all places. That's Bangor in Wales, which is, I assume, the place where they had the lovely in the song. Sadly, Tim forgot to take the paperwork with him which proved he'd passed his practical test, so the whole thing was rendered null and void. More frustratingly, it seems the test was near perfect, and he would have passed with flying colours! Now he has to wait a full month until he can take another one! Poor bloke.

We went home via Rutland Water, which looked utterly serene underneath the cornflower blue sky. We walked to the strange little church at Normanton, which sits at the end of a causeway which juts out into the reservoir. The church used to belong to a village, which was flooded to make way for the lake. When there's a drought, I'm told you can sometimes see the roofs of scores of drowned houses. It's all a bit spooky, but it's one of the most magical places I've ever visited.

The sand stone they use in Rutland is almost white and it shimmers and glows when the sun shines. The reflection of the church on the water was utterly insane, and really quite moving. It looked like an Italianate version of the old Thames TV logo!

...But which is which?

There was a slight glitch in my blog yesterday. I wrote about Pepys' activities on March 7th, 1661, so today I will write about what he was doing on March 6th 1661, which wasn't much, as it happens! There had been a lot of rain, and a huge amount of flooding. Lady Sandwich had tried to follow her husband into the country, but been prevented by the waters, which were very high.

Pepys and Elizabeth ate a good “Lenten” dinner with Sir William Batten. In the evening, Pepys contemplated asking the Battens back to his house to share a “wigg” – a sort of early sandwich that was particularly popular in Lent, but Lady Jemima’s sudden return to the City put paid to the idea.

My Mummy

Script reading

Rather surreally, we've just hosted the reading of a screenplay in our flat in Highgate! 20 actors crammed themselves into our front room, ate several tonnes of cake, and read through Mentalo by Terry Newman and my good mate, Marinella.

The screenplay was wonderful; incredibly atmospheric and highly original, although the occasion itself was all a bit Christopher-Guest-meets-Mike-Leigh. Actors can be very odd!

There's now a rather pretentious dissection of the piece taking place over cups of tea, glasses of port... And more cake! I think we could all be here until very late!

Marinella instructs the readers...

March 7th 1661, and Pepys went to Woolwich, once again, to watch some old Navy stock being sold off to the highest bidders. There was much drinking in the City, where Pepys went in search of a beautiful barmaid he'd been tipped off about by his mate Llewellyn.

Better late than never!

Crumbs! It's the first time I've ever failed to post a blog before midnight! I feel utterly ashamed. I wish I had an excuse for my tardiness, but the truth is that by the time I'd slept in, had lunch, gone to the gym, tidied the house and spent the evening watching rubbish telly with Julie, Nathan and Sam, midnight had come and gone. 

We're currently underneath the Thames, whizzing through the Blackwall Tunnel on our way back to Highgate.

It was lovely to see Julie and Sam; a fact which is rather bailed out by our having stayed there for five hours. We're obviously getting old, though. Sam spent the evening knitting socks, Julie was making some kind of wrap and Nathan was crocheting a rather intricate doily! Rock and roll! I am not a crafty type, but was very happy to simply watch hours of Victoria Wood sketches, whilst eating a cup of Julie's chocolate mouse; the densest and most delicious pudding I think I've ever eaten. Diet recommences tomorrow!

We talked a great deal about the recession. Both Julie and Sam have been directly affected. Sam, who works for various music services in the South of London, doesn't actually know whether he'll have a peripatetic teaching job to go to next year. Sure, he'll always be able to find private pupils; the wealthy will always be able to take their kids to music lessons, but gone are the days when all kids have the right to make music, which makes sick to the stomach. Without the astonishing Northamptonshire Music Service, which provided me with free cello lessons, and a plethora of orchestras, choirs and chamber ensembles to perform in, I have no idea what I would have become. People need to start fighting for the future of music in this country. 

Pepys had a very busy day 350 years ago, but did very little of any interest! He ate a barrel of oysters with a few friends, and called in on Lady Sandwich. When her husband was out of town, Pepys took it upon himself to act as her unofficial guardian. 

He went back to the Navy office and sat up until 10pm with the two Sir Williams, working out exactly how much every sailor in the Navy earned. No one could say he wasn't utterly meticulous! 

Season's Greetings

I’m on a tube train, winging my way through Central London towards Highgate. I’ve just been to watch Season’s Greetings by Alan Ayckbourn at the National Theatre. It strikes me that I don’t go to the theatre often enough these days. I suppose I’ve always felt that the art-form rather rejected me about ten years ago. The work simply dried up. I went from being Resident Director on Taboo, to being turned down for theatre in education jobs. It was a bit like being jilted by a lover who I’d sworn to spend the rest of my life with, and out of sheer sour grapes I suppose I managed to convince myself that I’d never really enjoyed the time we spent together. And theatre can be really ghastly; particularly when it’s Shakespeare and it’s being barked by a group of actors who seem to be in on a joke that they don’t want to share with the “uneducated” members of the audience... I'm horribly low brow, aren't I?


Perhaps for this very reason, I thought that tonight’s show was a real treat. The Olivier Theatre is brilliant both acoustically and in terms of sight lines, and the acting in the show, particularly Mark Gatiss, Katherine Parkinson and Catherine Tate, was second to none.

It wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea. I watched the show with 7 others, including Matt Lucas, Barbara Windsor and her wonderful husband, Scott. (Imagine the looks we were getting all evening!) I think many felt the whole “slow-bubbling farce” thing was the stuff of yesteryear. I, however, was genuinely amused, and I don’t say that very often. I've always had a soft spot for Ayckbourn for two reasons. Firstly, because he wrote an incredibly encouraging letter to me when I’d only just started my career in the theatre and secondly, because his plays were the staple diet of the Royal Theatre in Northampton when I was growing up. More often than not, I’d watch his plays sitting on an uncomfortable wooden bench in the Gods with a big box of Malteesers on my lap, which I’d suck until the honeycomb made my tongue hurt. I remember opening a box once, and all the contents spewing all over the cheap seats and down onto the slightly more expensive seats below. Fortunately, everyone in the theatre seemed to find the episode amusing – and I remember watching one man as he ate the chocolate that had landed on his lap. Those were the days...

So, we finished editing the Metro film today. The last day of the edit is always a bit of a trial, because it has to be about the technical side of things. Everything has to be rendered, and then run through a bewildering number of tests to make sure that the film is legal and fit for broadcast. My favourite test is the Harding test. I say it’s my favourite test, but it’s actually the one that freaks me out most of all. Harding is there to stop people from having epileptic fits due to images flashing on screen. It tends not to like the following things:

1. Cars
2. Fires
3. Trains
4. Anything red

For some reason, these four things seem to feature rather prominently in my films, and predictably we failed the first test due to a flashing yellow and red Metro train rushing into a station at one stage. It’s easily enough fixed and we passed the second time with flying colours. My A1 film, by contrast, failed on about 93 counts. Every time a red car flashed through a shot, we went down, and it took forever to fix!

Monday 4th March 1661, and Sandwich left London for his country estate, where he was having some major alterations done. Before leaving, he gave Pepys some jewellery to look after; which Pepys later learnt had come from the King of Sweden. He was obviously thrilled to be put in charge of such important and valuable things, particularly as they were handed over to him with “the greatest expressions of love and confidence that I could imagine or hope for.” Bless...

Theo

I'm heading back from Soho, where I had a meeting with a lovely lady from the BBC Olympic Committee. I had a gin and tonic. She had a wine. It's the first alcohol I've had this year, so I felt rather naughty. It went straight to my head, obviously... no doubt assisted by my cold, which has now turned into a hacking cough. Anyway, I liked the lady I was meeting very much. She seemed to understand me on a creative level, which is always nice. Sometimes I view the BBC as a sort of number-crunching, faceless robot. I'm often not at the meetings where important decisions are taken, so it feels rather nice to meet one of these decision makers, and know that she gets where I'm coming from. 

Very often, within institutions, displays of emotion can be greeted with suspicion and intolerance. This can start to get a bit tricky when you do the sort of thing that I do. Perhaps I'm just making excuses for my periodic, hot-headed, hirarchy-shunning theatrical displays, but I suspect my all-too easily accessible emotions add at least a certain something to the films that I make.
What am I trying to say, I wonder? I've no idea. I'm drunk and knackered. I suppose, in simple terms, I don't know how to think like an exec, or a journalist, or someone whose been on lots of courses in people management, so it's always a relief when someone winks at me and says "that's okay..."

I dropped my beloved iPod in the bath this morning - don't ask- and it's completely dead. Sadly, I can't actually afford to replace it at the moment, so until there's some good news, financially speaking, I'm gonna be running to the music in my head, which is incredibly dangerous. Doing all these fabulous films may be extraordinarily rewarding, but it will never make me rich. Radiantly happy, but poor as a church mouse. And too old to be poor!

I was watching the news earlier on and one story hit me like an iron bar. It's this business with L/Cpl Liam Tasker, killed in action with his sniffer dog, Theo. Initial reports suggested that they were both shot on the battle field, but it's transpired that the dog simply curled up and died the following day. I am normally extremely hard-line when it comes to soldiers dying in action. Part of me believes that if you live by the sword, you kind of need to be prepared to die by it. But the idea of man and dog having such a close bond is utterly moving to me. Like those old people who can't live without one another, and literally die of a broken heart.

Here they are... I'm sad again



I had a very similar response to an episode of Futurama, the end of which you can see here.

March 3rd 1661 was a Sunday, and Pepys went to church before lunching with Sandwich, who was planning to go to the country the following day. Pepys also reported that an Franco-Italian politician, Mazarin, had died. I can't begin to get too excited by the idea of finding out about the man. Pepys seemed to think it was an important death. Mazarin liked diamonds and succeeded Cardinal Richelieu. French politics..? Whatever, really.

The backwards shot

This tube journey is hell on earth. We're crammed into the carriage like tinned tomatoes. I'm surrounded by drama students practicing vocal exercises and every time we pull into a station, people seem to mistake me for a turnstile. I'm spinning around like a little cog in a giant wheel of sweaty nastiness. 

The drama students remind me of me at a similar age. I'm ashamed to say that I was one of those ghastly people who thought it was amusing to do performance art on the Underground network. Me and my friend Jo regularly pretended to have screaming rows, which always ended with the threat of divorce, and on one occasion, a group of us attempted to get an entire carriage to join us in a rendition of Kum Bye Ah. I'm surprised we weren't immediately defenestrated by a group of angry commuters. These days we'd be more likely to be mistaken for Muslim extremists!

The Metro film was sent up to Newcastle today for approval. We were forced to send a horrid little version that was low enough resolution to be emailed without blocking anyone's inbox. You could barely see mouths moving for the pixilations! It was a necessary evil, of course. All the decision makers are 250 miles away and need to have their say. They've paid for the film, afterall, but I'd so much rather it was seen for the first time in full-resolution, beautifully graded and shining like a little beacon! Joey Beacon.

Still, the powers that be seemed to enjoy the film very much, but failed to spot the shot we'd deliberately put in backwards! Sometimes, if you leave a clanging error in a roughly assembled film, the execs will spend so long fixating on it, they run out of time to focus on the piddley little notes, which are usually much more irritating to change. We were obviously too subtle with our deliberate mistake, but in absolute fairness were only given two notes, which in my view demonstrates a wonderful line in exec-producing! I once made a film where the exec was thrown out of the sound edit; more for her own safety. She got so wound up she started throwing things! 

The cold continues, you'll no doubt be thrilled to read. Today I've been attacked by a ridiculously tickly cough, which even Covonia fails to deal with. My ears itch for some inexplicable reason. 

350 years ago, Pepys went to The King's Theatre, and was greatly perturbed to find an uncharacteristically tiny audience milling around in the foyer. It didn't occur to him that the play might simply stink, and assumed something much more sinister was going on! He immediately left, and went to another theatre, where he found the house 'as full as could be'. I'd love to go back to an era where an empty theatre was considered somehow apocalyptic! 

Animatronics

Despite my feeling like absolute crap, we’ve made very good progress in the edit suite today. Louise, the editor, is an incredibly hard worker, and it always feels like we’re on top of things when she’s around. She’s consistently in work before me, and I have to force her to leave at the end of a day. She’s brilliant company and fabulously gullible. I’ve already managed to convince her that our blind cast member, Christine, fell into the Tyne just after filming her sequence on the Shields Ferry, and been rescued by an 80 year-old woman. I’ve also told that the ferret that disco dances at Tyne Mouth station is actually animatronic! I’m not sure where these surreal flights of fancy come from in my head. I once convinced her that a building across the road was 2-dimensional, and that a 20 year-old girl in a film was really an 8 year-old boy who simply liked dressing up in his mother’s clothes. Gullibility issues aside, she’s an immensely talented editor with exceptional judgement. She keeps me in line (both online and offline) and we spend long periods of time literally doubled-over laughing.


Without wishing to sound too much like a stuck record, I feel horrid. At the moment I can feel the cold sitting rather heavily on my chest; a sensation I’m not particularly used to. On top of the heavy lungs, there’s a tickly cough, a sore throat and my voice has dropped an octave. I feel like I’ve been well and truly pinched and punched to celebrate the start of March! I’m hoping another night’s sleep will begin a process of recovery, although I’m certainly not looking forward to my journey into Old Street tomorrow morning.

Commuting in the direction of the City of London is hell on a stick in the early mornings. The tubes are rammed to the rafters with people feeling depressed and edgy. It’s obvious from their faces alone just how many of them hate the jobs they do. Add to all this misery the fact that there doesn’t seem to have been a day of sunshine this year, and it’s little wonder that everyone seems so blinkin’ depressed!

Friday 1st of March, 1661, and Pepys dined on fish. Was it tradition in those days to eat fish on a Friday, or was this simply another attempt to be a good Christian during Lent? After lunch he walked into London and saw Philip Massinger’s The Bondman acted in a theatre somewhere near the Temple. His last thoughts of the day were about the King’s impending coronation. People all over the City were setting up scaffolds to watch the associated parades and Pepys was wondering just how much money he’d have to lay out to join the pomp and ceremony of the society event of a generation. Royal wedding anyone?