Missing you already

Just after I wrote yesterday's blog entry, we took little Cas the rat to his appointment with the vet. He was very subdued and his little eyes, which are usually like two shiny black currents, were glazed over and sad-looking. 

The vet diagnosed kidney failure and told us it was time to let him go, so the little tyke was carried out of the room in his cage, and returned to us, still warm, and looking terribly handsome, but no longer with us. 

It's something that sits so uncomfortably with me: the idea that we as humans get to choose whether an animal lives or dies. It's basically the reason why I'm vegetarian.  Was Cas ready to go? Who gave us the right to make that decision on his behalf? 

Any way, we carried him home, and made him a little bed out of the box which had been his shelter ever since his brother, Pol had died. Usually rats will chew anything made of cardboard into pieces within weeks, and we always thought it was rather lovely that he seemed to be hanging on to the one thing that still smelt of his brother.  

We wrapped the box in a little blanket and took it to Highgate Woods to the spot where Pol was buried, under a tree covered in green lichen. 

We lit a candle and Nathan played the In Paradisum from the London Requiem. The words were astonishingly apt; "always in our hearts little man." And as the last lines struck up, "you weathered the storm, reached harbour safely", an enormous gust of wind rattled through the woods getting more and more powerful, and then disappearing with the last chord. It felt like the little chap was passing by somehow. Like the wind had come to collect him. I imagined Pol coming to collect his brother, saying "you took your time" and the two of them dancing off into the wind to share a new adventure.

Of course, as we walked away, leaving the candle to keep Cas company, we realised we'd buried him under a different tree to his brother. It didn't matter. The wind had carried his soul away. 

It's astonishing how much impact one tiny fella can have on a life, but I guess he was with us for 2 1/2 years, which is a long time by anyone's standard. Cas, mate, you did brilliantly well. Thank you for joining us on our journey. 

Equality?

We're in Camden at the animal hospital. Cas the rat is in for his post-operative check-up. He's still incredibly unsteady and doesn't seem to be cleaning himself very well; neither of which bodes well for the long term, but we're doing our best. Why on earth do people have pets? 

Today has been about condensing the Pepys Motet for twenty voices whilst simultaneously ticking admin jobs off an ever-growing list. They say if you want something doing properly it's best to ask a busy man, and I've been like an efficiency machine all day. 

The Commons voted heavily in favour of introducing gay marriage in the UK last night, which felt like a mini-victory against bigotry. Our local MP, the wonderful Lynne Featherstone was very active in bringing the bill to parliament and seemed to be on an absolute high last night. The majority was 225, which is high by pretty much any standard. 

Sadly, there are still 175 (apparently) intelligent MPs who plainly still believe that society will collapse if same sex couples are allowed to express their love in the same way as heterosexuals, which begs a single question; has society collapsed in Holland or Sweden where gay marriage has been legal for some time?

Let's turn our attentions now to the countries who treat their gay people really badly. Russia. Uganda. Sri Lanka. Iran. Fabulously well-ordered, peaceful countries. Thank God they're keeping the gays in check.

The only Labour MP who voted against the bill in London was Stephen Pound, who I genuinely thought was dead. It's good to know the old git's still with us. I'm sure God will now welcome him with open arms when he finally shuffles into the proverbial subset. 

Richard the Turd

I'm in White City, in a residents' association meeting, at the end of a freezing cold day which has found me popping up in all manner of corners of London. 

I stood directly underneath the Shard of Glass this morning. It's an awe-inspiring building close up, which I found almost impossible to look up at whilst walking along. The clouds were moving at high speed and created such a peculiar optical illusion that I lost my balance and ended up bumping into a rather unimpressed communter. 

Bermondsey is an impressive part of town. In the shadow of the Shard, a network of Victorian buildings and railway arches house art galleries, cafes, little theatres and some rather funky-looking shops. The area is full of media types and creative people and reminded me of parts of the East Village in New York. 

I watched the programme about the discovery of Richard III's body last night, glued to the telly like a child watching Scooby Doo. For those people reading this who've been living in a barn for the last few days, the body of England's most controversial king has been found underneath a car park in Leicester. He was previously thought to have been unceremoniously dumped in a river after being slain at Bosworth and his remains were considered lost. Their discovery is historically important and deeply fascinating. 

Last night's Channel 4 documentary featured an astonishing  woman from the Richard III society who had almost single-handedly peddled the search for his remains. Her combination of pig-headedness, belief in omens and seemingly endless capacity to be led by her emotions  left the scientists embarrassed and angry but her instincts were remarkable. Her decision to start the dig underneath a painted letter R on the car park Tarmac, prompted much mickey-taking, but the architects humoured her and immediately struck gold: proof positive that luck and portents are often as likely to succeed as science itself when searching for a needle in a haystack! 

40th plans

I'm currently feeling a bit itchy, achey, glandy, bilious and ratty. The cold is rattling around at a low level and I'm about ready for it to go. I have woken up two nights running with a dreadful tickly cough which has forced me to get out of bed in the wee smalls to prevent any unneccesary discomfort for Nathan. 

That said, we just had the most delightful evening celebrating Philippa's birthday. What joy! Four lesbians, three bisexuals, two gay men, and a heterosexual. We glowed every colour of the equality rainbow! We sat around the big table in the conservatory eating curry and laughing hysterically whilst planning Moira and Philippa's joint 40th birthday party next year. It's very much at the brainstorming stage, but Philippa has written all the ideas which emerged today in a lovely book.  Thoughts so far include a beauty pageant, a hot tub, a midnight feast and a petting zoo featuring an actual Phoenix. You gotta aim high, but I guess the hope that the party might coincide with the rapture might be pushing it a bit! 

The rest of the day has been spent in something of a haze working on the Pepys Motet. Cas the rat still battles on, although he seems to have almost entirely lost the use of his back legs and is walking sideways like a crab as a result. I guess the next stage is to attach him to a little pair of wheels! Poor lad. 

Socks and rocks

Nathan and I went with Matt to Kingston this evening, to see the National Youth Music Theatre's performance of Howard Goodall's "Dreaming", which is a musical adaptation of A Midsummer Night's Dream, which Pepys once described as "a most insipid, ridiculous play." 

The music was utterly charming, the performances universally brilliant and I left with a strong sense of the importance of the NYMT. I also got a chance to meet Howard Goodall before the show, which was quite a thrill. We talked about requiems and he seemed genuinely fascinated by the concept of the London Requiem. I told him I was looking forward to hearing his and explained that I'd tried to avoid listening to other requiems whilst writing mine. 

We slept until noon today. I'm not quite sure how that happened. I think the cold, and my refusal to acknowledge it, has been taking its toll.  

By the time we left Highgate for South West London I'd only managed to do an hour's composing. I don't really know where the rest of the afternoon went, aside from the half hour we spent taking photos of Nathan's latest sock designs whilst standing on a rock on the corner of Muswell Hill Road. 

...It's a curious, eccentric life I lead! 

Spam off!

Am I the only one to have noticed a recent and rather worrying upturn in the number of spam emails in my inbox? In the last day, I've been offered viagra, kamagra, $500k from a lovely Christian in Nigeria with terminal cancer, jewellery from the Czech republic, a "gay loan," a short course in classical music, a great rate on home insurance by someone called Gaylord, an affordable walk-in bath, a "Keranique" free trial (for male paten baldness) and an "unexpected perk," which I initially read as an "unexpected perm," which would have been much more exciting - and probably more unexpected! 

But where's this shit suddenly coming from? Which fucker initially sold my email address to a Chinese industrialist or a Russian cyber geek? And more crucially, what can I do about the situation? I'm getting so much spam that I've started deleting legitimate emails because my eyes go all skewy every morning with all the rubbish that's sent when I'm asleep. 

But spam sending must work, mustn't it, or these freaks wouldn't send this random crap. There must be people, God knows who, who fall for the scams, and open up the attachments to see the time share holiday they've won or the  lovely pictures of Justin Timberlake naked.  We only have ourselves to blame. 

The spam email which makes my blood boil is the one which offers a "degree" for no work and a hell of a lot of money. I  got my degree the hard way. Of course these things come from the US where pretty much everything is for sale! 

I once met a woman who taught a choir once a week at an American university over here. She was able to call herself a professor because, apparently, any member of "teaching staff" in an American university gets to call themselves a professor - even in the UK, or so she said! My mate Migs, who has a doctorate and is head of music at City University STILL can't call himself professor. 

How does that work?

Am I the only one who worries that nothing is real anymore? One day soon, when everything I value has gone virtual or entirely evaporated, when everyone's forgotten how to write and speak, I'm going to wake up in a cave, and tell Nathan that I had a crazy dream which seemed to last a life time! 

Networking

I’ve just got back from an evening in Soho with Julie, Abbie and Tim who’d all been to see the new musical Lift at the Soho Theatre which was produced by our good friend, Jim. I was very jealous not to have been able to join them, but it was fun to meet them out of the show, and sit in a dingy all-night cafe on Old Compton Street eating wraps and drinking mugs of tea. Conversation kept drifting back to the recession. Everyone’s struggling at the moment. I was horrified to hear talk of people not being able to afford their NHS prescriptions. What on earth is the world coming to?

Earlier this evening I was at BBC Television Centre launching our White City musical project to a room full of the great and the good from the West of London at a drinks reception. I had to deliver a little speech about the project, which I did entirely on the hoof, but it was well received. In fact, a charming 13-year old Russian girl from one of the local schools who’d been playing the piano in a corner of the room all evening came up to me afterwards to say that my speech was “deeply inspiring.” Lots of people wanted to talk to me, in fact, and some shared really delightful memories with me. The crux of my speech was that no-one should ever feel that their stories are boring or irrelevant. I think the same about life in general. We learn so much by listening to others – particularly those with wisdom and age on their side. Furthermore, the most successful set pieces in the films I make have often come from the people who’ve prefaced talking to me by saying; “oh, I’m not interesting enough for your film.” June in Songs from Hattersley who sang Everything Replaces, and Janet, the “Upside Down” woman in my A1 film both thought their beautiful and inspiring tales were common place.

Anyway, as I chatted to the room, I realised how important networking is, and how I very rarely put myself in a position where it can happen. Perhaps if I was a better networker I wouldn’t have holes in all my clothes!