Gale-tastic

So apparently we’re now waiting for some kind of gale to ravage the south coast. We’re doing our first day of filming for the London Requiem tomorrow, in Abney Park cemetery, and word on the town is that if the gales happen, the cemetery will be closed down because of a risk of falling trees! Can I remind Mother Nature that this is June. June! I should be picking strawberries and sunbathing in Highgate Wood but instead I'm on a text super highway to Fiona in Brighton, who will very soon be having a one-woman hurricane party.

My other news is that the most recent addition to our choir emailed today – that’ll be two days before the first rehearsal – to say that he could no longer be part of the choir. His Great Aunt has died in Australia and he needs to go home at the end of the month to sort out her estate. Surely Great Aunts are the relatives that tend to die when you need an excuse and you don’t want to tempt fate by saying it’s your Grannie or your Mum, or am I just being unkind? I was never comfortable going with death as an excuse, but God knows, my Grannie was in and out of hospital like MRSA when I used to sign on.

I think what's genuinely bugged me is that most professional musicians would find a dep if they had to pull out of a project at the last minute. I can't really blame him. He's at music college at the moment which is a bubble at the best of times, but I genuinely think the etiquette of dealing with job opportunities is something which music colleges should really try to instil in their students. There are fewer and fewer jobs floating around in the Arts at the moment, and if you get yourself a reputation for being a flake, or demanding, or grand, there's always someone who will take great delight in dancing on your grave.  

I guess we all need to remember that we're playing a game. What I always try and explain to musical theatre students is that they should be writing to living composers all the time. We're all human, and we like to know that people are enjoying what we do. If you write to a composer saying how much you'd like to sing one of his or her songs - particularly if he or she is at the start of his or her career - you instantly go up the pecking order when his or her first West End show is staged! It's a simple formula really. Get yourself known for being a hard worker. Always do a good job... and remember, if it weren't for the writers, you'd have nothing to sing!

Quite how I'm going to audition and replace a tenor at such short notice when I have a 12 hour shoot tomorrow followed by a rehearsal for the Fleet Singers, I've no idea. We’ll get there... one hurdle at a time. Next week there'll be another set of problems and this evening's problems will be but a distant memory.

350 years ago, and Pepys’ father went AWOL. No one knew whether he’d gone back to Huntingdonshire, possibly to attend to Pepys’ mother, who’d been ill, or whether he’d gone West to pay homage to the new Queen. Fascinating that someone could simply disappear in those days.

Golden showers

Hands up if you're beginning to find the rain a tad depressing? I walked behind a woman today who was wearing little summer slip-on ballet-type shoes. She walked through a puddle without realising and instantly became water-logged. The sound of squelching was almost deafening as she walked away... swearing to herself. Tomorrow she'll have trench foot and her life will officially have been ruined. 

I got rained on by an altogether different form of liquid on the train from London Bridge to Catford today. Some irresponsible piss-head had left two almost-empty bottles of beer on the seat next to me, which a brainless commuter decided to move so that he could sit down. Obviously it was his prerogative to move the bottles, but how many people in his situation would have tried to balance the offending items on the overhead luggage rack? As he did it, I thought; "well they're plainly going to roll off the moment the train starts to move," what I didn't expect was the cascade of beer which came from one of the bottles, through the holes in the racks, straight onto my computer and the bloke's lap sitting opposite. 

Of course we both did the typically English thing of saying it didn't matter, whilst dusting ourselves down with bits of half-used tissue paper. Obviously both of us were  seething inside and wondering if the man who'd caused the bother was a wealthy banker who regularly destroys other people's property by being foolish. What we weren't expecting was for him to start cracking jokes, "just don't blame me when you go home to the Mrs stinking of beer!" I managed a fake chuckle, but the other man remained stony-faced.

My rat has chewed through the cable to my speakers. He's also chewed through some headphones. The sitting room smells of wee-wee and damp because all this rain has created some kind of leek above the window. I don't think I'm going to be able to spend much time in there until the place dries out, or the rat stops weeing like an incontinent old lady. 

I suspect the man opposite me on the train is going to beat me up. He's got that look about him. Every time I glance over, he'a staring back, trying, I suspect, to prompt some kind of reaction. I assume I'm meant to ask in a middle-class voice if I can help him, which will entitle him to pull out a knife and request my iPhone because I'm a privileged racist. Something like that. Deeply tedious. 

350 years ago and the Navy office was being audited. The news sent Pepys into something of a pickle and he vowed not to make any more journeys on expenses, which potentially included a trip to Hampton Court to toady around the future Queen. A deeply unnecessary expense by my reckoning! 

Belsen

Today was about slowly making our way south from the village of Marxem to the tiny airport in Hannover.  We drove through the Luneburger Heide, learning in the process that Heide means both heather and heath in German. Bizarrely, it also means heathen - reminding us that all three words have the same derivation. Heaven knows where the heathen/ heath thing emerged. One assumes that heathens were originally forced to live on the outskirts of communities. Anyone got a dictionary of etymology? 

We visited a strange little stone garden in one particular village, which was filled with various stone sculptures with slightly pretentious titles designed to provoke thought. I didn't do a great deal of thinking, but I did enjoy watching a deer skipping about in the sunshine in the corn fields behind.  ...On through the Heide and deep into the forests around the curiously-named village of Celle. Curiously-named, because there are so few German words beginning with the letter C; just 2 pages in my Mum's mini-dictionary and most of them are foreign words.

Lurking like a terrible shadow in the forests near Celle is Bergen-Belsen concentration camp; a dark, sad, windswept place. Unlike Auschwitz there's nothing left of the original buildings, just a few monuments, one or two latter-day gravestones and huge mounds of earth marking the spot where several mass-burials took place. Here a thousand corpses, there eight hundred, there five thousand. Bewildering numbers, one of whom, of course, was Anne Frank, who died of Typhoid there in 1945. We walked around in silence, not even attempting to comprehend. I can't begin to explain why a thoroughly decent race of people would be complicit, or at least turn a blind eye to that level of barbarity. I suppose we can only really view the place as a warning to us all. One moment we're complaining about inflation, high taxes and immigration and then a politician comes along who seems to have all the answers... Begging the question; how far would you take things if you thought what you were doing was legitimate? If you were only obeying orders?

It's a weird spot, which felt at least partially at peace. Each monument is piled high with an infinite number of tiny stones, each signifying another  visitor, another tiny chink of love sprinkled helplessly onto the horror. Many tears must have fallen onto that ground. Many notes of apology must have been shoved into cracks between monuments and written in silver pen onto stones. Ultimately, it's a place where words aren't enough to express the enormity of the emotions which are inevitably stirred.  
There's an large army camp somewhere close to the site and our journey between the monuments was accompanied by the eerie sounds of machine guns in the distance, carried to us on a light breeze. It was a curiously chilling addition to a curiously chilling occasion. 

We went from Belsen into Hannover city centre, which is a deeply horrible place. Shops. Shops. More shops. Men wearing yellow jumpers selling bratwurst from little plastic tables. Every shop you'd expect to find in any city centre, anywhere in the world, including, I'm saddened to say, Claire's Accessories. But for the tragic Bratwurst seller under his multicoloured umbrella hat and holding a bottle of mustard, I could have been standing in Milton Keynes. There were no old buildings - or parks; just a heap of well-polished concrete, steel and glass. This is a town with no soul.  We based ourselves in a department store. We even ate in the department store. Hannover is where our royal family comes from... And it's horrid. Truly ghastly. If anyone offers you a free trip there, run like a crazy thing in the opposite direction! 

350 years ago, Pepys spent the day weighing the crusedos which Lord Sandwich had collected during his time in Portugal. A crusedo was a Portuguese coin, and in those days, the only way a currency could be converted was by weighing it.  3000 crucedos was apparently equivalent to about 550l. So there!

Reeperbahn!

The rain, which we seem to have successfully dodged for the last few days, finally caught up with us this evening. It's now raining rather heavily, and my bones are damp and aching. There's a curious orange light coming from the West, so I'm hoping tomorrow will yield a bit more sunshine.

We went to Hamburg today. As we arrived in the outskirts of the city, I was suddenly aware that it felt like the first "real" place we'd visited on our little trip. The graffiti and bashed-up concrete tower blocks actually made me feel at home. Once an urbanite always an urbanite, I suppose... No, wait... I was born in the countryside...

Our visit to the city began with a trip to a ruined church, destroyed, rather uncomfortably, by the Brits, who carpet-bombed the city with devastating effect in the Second World War. I guess I've become rather used to talking about the Blitz in Coventry whilst conveniently forgetting that we destroyed Dresden and Hamburg in a sort of tit-for-tat retaliation.

That said, the reporting of the War over here is remarkably generous to the Brits. The line seems to be "yes, the Allies bombed us, but we must, at all times, remember that we created the problem by bringing Hitler to power." In the crypt of the former church, there was a display about Coventry with pictures that dissolved us all to tears. I imagined my Grandfather, who ran a soup kitchen in the city from the day after it was destroyed, stumbling through the rubble; my Grandmother at home wondering where he was. What I hadn't realised is that Goebbels had cynically coined the phrase "Coventrieren" meaning to obliterate.

We went down to the harbour and took a boat trip around the port. It started with little promise. The captain of the boat took us down a series of dark canals whilst droning on about carpets and trade routes. Then the sun came out, the boat went back into the grand harbour, we went out on deck, and suddenly it was a fascinating excursion, the highlight of which was going within spitting distance of an enormous cargo liner which was being loaded up for a trip, I think, to Greece.

On the boats

Sascha and I went from the harbour to the Reeperbahn, Hamburg's glorious red light and theatre district, which is definitely where I'd choose to live if I were a Hamburger. It's a fascinating place; a mish-mash of sex clubs, seedy shops, cinemas and tranny bars with art galleries, cafes, boutique museums, squats and crazy churches. On one street the words "Jesus Lebt" (Jesus Lives) had been painted onto a wall right next to a sign which screamed "Gay Cinema." We even took a trip down Herbert Strasse, the gated street, strictly for men only, which is filled with scores of women sitting behind windows selling their "wares." I’m told that, in the past, if a woman ventured down the street by mistake, the hookers would lob pots of piss at her. It’s almost worth taking a woman down there to see if the same thing would happen in this day and age.

The secretive Herbert Strasse... Behind every window...

We had proper German cakes in a wonderful cafe overlooking the Inner Alster; a body of water in the centre of the city, which my mother remembered regularly freezing over in the 1960s and being used as a massive skating rink. I think Fiona and I visited the very same cafe on my only other visit to the City during the winter of 2000.

350 years ago, Pepys went to Woolwich to see how much progress had been made on the timber frames that would form the extension on his house. They were being made in the navy timber yard – which was where, I suspect, the finest chippies in the land plied their trade. The extension to Pepys’ house – and Sir William Batten’s next door would give both properties an entire extra floor; 4 extra rooms, including a wainscoted dining room! Very fancy. And lots of flights of stairs!

Now if only this laundrette had been on the Reeperbahn!

Luneburger Heide

Today we drove into the Luneburger Heide; a famous heath which is North Germany’s equivalent to the New Forest. It’s all very picture perfect in this part of the world. The houses have these incredibly steep sloping roofs which almost reach the ground; little dormer windows with German-style shutters peek out from within the pantiles. One assumes they have a great deal of snow round here...

The heath itself is probably not as nice as the New Forest, although when the heather is in bloom, it’s meant to be stunning. We rolled into a village where the local speciality seems to be pony-and-trap rides to the top of the highest point in the national park, which, at about 100 meters is probably not that impressive. Much against our collective better judgement, we decided to commandeer one, and trip-trapped our way through a few rolling moors, past all manner of wooden summer houses and back to where we’d started via a deep forest. It was an enormously pleasurable experience, except when the horse farted, which it did rather regularly, emitting the most hideous, sharp stench about every 3 minutes which hit the back of our throats and almost made us gag. I've never really understood horses. How can you get so attached to a creature which smells so horrible?

On the pony and crap!

My Dad, who comes out in a rash when confronted by anything remotely touristy opted to take himself for a walk instead, but the pony-and-cart went so slowly that he managed to keep us in eyeshot for our entire journey.

He came back triumphant, having seen a cuckoo, some kind of finchy thing and... A PIECE OF LITTER. Genuinely the first piece of litter any of us had seen since we’ve been here. No word of a lie!

We had a picnic sitting on some logs in a forest by the side of the road. We pulled up next to a sign which pointed towards a “naturplatz”, which we hoped had nothing to do with naturism, but were further alarmed when we stumbled across a second sign which read “barfuss spielplatz” (barefoot playground.) I don’t think the Germans do the whole picnicking thing. I certainly don’t think they do it spontaneously. The few people who walked past us (fully clothed, thankfully) were looking at us rather strangely. “Guten appetite” one woman shouted. Odd. Maybe she was off to eat something entirely different...

It's in the trees...

We went ten pin bowling in the afternoon. My idea – and it was a jolly good one. It was fascinating to find ourselves off the tourist track in some out-of-town trading estate rubbing shoulders with real Germans. We had a blast. Even brother Edward, who is the least competitive man I reckon I know, had a fair crack.

From the kegelnplatz, we travelled east to Luneburg; a stunning medieval town with various impressive churches, and buildings which looked decidedly “Baltic”, architecturally speaking. It's difficult to explain what I mean. They have these sort of stepped, triangular gable ends which I've only ever seen in places like Hamburg and Gdeinsk. We had an Italian meal which has filled me up rather horrifically. It’s only about 9pm, and I’m already contemplating bed. I slept for ten hours last night – and think I might try and break my own record. Whatever virus I’ve had is still hanging about, deep inside my aching bones, and, though we’ve been hugely lucky with the weather here (it hasn’t rained once), it’s still quite cold when the sun goes in and the Germans tend to prefer showers over baths, so I can't have a long soak.

Those Baltic-style buildings...

We understand that the weather was hideous in London for the Queen’s Jubilee celebrations, which saddens me. I may not be a particular fan of the monarchy, but I am a massive fan of street parties and anything which gets us rubbing shoulders with our neighbours.

350 years ago, Pepys got a smithy to smash open a metal chest which had been locked in his office ever since he’d taken on his post. Curiously, the chest contained the model of a very fine ship. Pepys vowed to discover which one it was.

After lunch, he went with his father to his brother Tom’s house where they received a four-day old letter from their sister Pall in Huntingdonshire. Pepys' mother, who was with Pall, was dangerously ill, and possibly close to death. Such strange times. Pepys actually seemed quite lackadaisical about the news, probably because he realised there was nothing he could do if she had died, and probably assuming another letter would arrive the following day if the situation had got any worse. It must have been a very helpless feeling, that; having to make judgement calls about whether or not to drop everything and journey up north. Reading between the lines to work out if your presence was neccessary.

Gosh... I'm just watching pictures of people across the UK braving the most hideous weather to have street parties across the country. I am inexplicably moved. Sometimes it feels rather lovely to be British.

A day for M

So here I am in an odd little village called Marxem in Germany. I believe we’re somewhere between Hannover and Hamburg. There’s a lovely fresh breeze coming in through my open window, bringing with it a sort of petey smell mixed with the faint and almost Dutch aroma of waffles or crepes, or one of those types of fried foods which you don’t really get in England.

We're staying in a beautiful hotel. It's terrible, as you’d expect, for vegetarians, but the German’s simply don’t give a crap about that sort of thing, which is, at least, refreshingly honest!

We were, of course, up at shit o’clock this morning in order to make our flight. As we drove out of Thaxted towards Stansted Airport we noticed that they’re advertising a “Teddy Bear Parachute Jump” in the village. Apparently they’re going to be chucking soft toys attached to make-shift parachutes from the church tower, which I think sounds like great fun. I asked my Mum for more details; “so they’re chucking them off the spire?” I asked. It was early. My Mum was in a dream world; “of course they’re not setting them on fire” she said... She's been on good form ever since.

We sat in the airport, and for the want of something to read, she picked up a copy of the Daily Mail and spent the next 30 minutes laughing in disbelief at the sorts of stories they were reporting and the awful quality of the journalism inside, particularly the sub-editing. I’m proud to say that she’d never, in her life, picked up a copy of this particular newspaper. I’d always considered the Mail to be almost more evil than words; a hideous and dangerous bastion of right wing bigotry. Her genuine laughter reminded me that it’s really just a tragic little newspaper that can only appeal to people of limited mental capacity. I no longer fear it!

As we walked to the plane, we discussed that there had been a public holiday in Germany last week and tried to work out which religious occasion it might have been pinned to. Edward guessed Ascension Day. “What’s that in German?” I asked. “Christi Himmel Fahrt”. That kept me amused for at least another 30 minutes.

On arrival in Germany, the first shop I saw was called Kunterbunt, which I also found pretty funny. It's terrible; I even did A-level German, and am still amused by things which sound like English swear words.

This afternoon we were lucky enough to take my Mother back to the place she’d lived in for a year as a teenager; a charming little market town called Winsen Luhe. We worked out that it was exactly 50 years since she’d moved there and it was a real privilege to share the experience of rediscovering the town with her. We even managed to find the house, which once sat in an orchard, but was now part of a much larger development. We had a drink in the pub where they’d thrown her a leaving party. She was overwhelmed to begin with, but as little memories were stirred, so the jigsaw began to grow and the comic stories started to flow. She kept repeating; “I can’t believe I’m in Winsen.” Neither could we. It’s a place which had a massive impact on her and as a result, stories of Frau Sanna et all, took on an almost mythical status in our childhood.

350 years ago, Pepys and his wife called in on their friend Frances Clarke, who was apparently found in a dishabille (a state of undress – and what a fabulous word.) Pepys was all about the fashion reporting that day as he also commented on his wife’s new “slasht wastecoate” which was apparently very pretty. Do you think she'd slashed it herself?!

Sardines

We're crammed like sardines onto a Northern Line train. It's Friday. It's muggy. It's the rush hour. Can life get any more stench-ridden? The man next to me actually smells like dog food.  I have, if I'm lucky, 25 minutes back in Highgate, to send five important emails, pack my suitcase for Germany, squirt deodorant onto my arm pits and try to crawl down from the ceiling.  I've been to every corner of London today. I've delivered scores to print shops in corners of the city so far north they  might as well be in Birmingham. I've been to Crouch End and Dalston via Finsbury Park and latterly swealtered my life into a T-shirt in a boiling office in Shoreditch, where I've been attempting to print music for the choir rehearsals next week. It was here that the doors of hell opened up and threatened to drag me down...

Everything that could have gone wrong went wrong. The photocopier overheated five times, then started printing pages from one movement on the back of pages from another. Then it started routinely printing page 12 on the back of page 3. Systematic failure. It melted. I melted. Furthermore, I'd only eaten a little piece of flan for lunch which isn't enough for a growing lad.  I got more and more stressed and at one point found myself sitting on the floor, unable to do anything but stare at a pile of papers whilst making whimpering noises. At that moment someone walked past me and quipped, "I hope you're being charged for all of those copies." It was a joke but I lost it. "Yes I am!" I snapped, "but I shouldn't be because the f***ing photocopier's f***ed!"  

I knew immediately that I'd chosen the wrong person in the office to swear in front of, and as Fiona reminded me later on, swearing in any office is usually frowned upon! Fortunately, just as I found myself forced to throw half of an entire ream of paper into the dustbin,  an angel arrived in the shape of an education officer from Rich Mix who offered to help, and with razor-sharp effectiveness completed my task, whilst simultaneously calming me down and even managing to make me laugh. I'm afraid I don't know her name, but she is a radiantly wonderful creature who deserves only the best in life. In fact, all the staff at Rich Mix genuinely seem to be some of the most pleasant-natured people in the world.   I immediately sought out the girl I'd sworn in front of and apologised for my outburst. She graciously accepted my apology and thanked me for the gesture, which made me feel awful because I realised that I'd genuinely offended her. It's easy to forget when you're as potty-mouthed as I am, that some people really dislike rude words. I must try and temper my use of the F word! Lesson learnt. 

A typical Sunday for Pepys 350 years ago, which involved a visit to church during which he endured a "long, sad" sermon from a presbyterian, which made him angry. There's very little else to report. He spent the morning singing French psalms. Aren't they bad enough in English?