Skint

I've never been so unhappy to be forced to work on a Bank Holiday Monday in all my life! The sun literally shone all day and I was forced to watch it from my living room window. I could smell the barbecues and see everyone in shorts drinking in the garden of the pub opposite, and there I was, feeling fat and pasty, staring at a broken computer screen whilst the smell of ancient rat urine drifted up from behind the sofa. 

The highlight of my day was undoubtedly pulling out said sofa to discover a series of cocooned wasps and bumblebees that had been parcelled up by one of our resident spiders. I was a bit saddened to see the bee, but thrilled to see the wasps had met a suitably untimely end. I hate wasps and love spiders and this particular episode has done nothing to change these views.  

I'm still working on the dance sequence from White City and suspect there's another couple of hours in me tonight once I've gobbled down a couple of dippy eggs. Is it wrong to eat dippy eggs at midnight? Frankly, I don't care any more. The house is a tip, all my clothes have holes in them and I've neither the time nor the money to do anything about it. I watched a trailer for a new Channel 4 documentary about poor people, called "Skint" and thought I could probably give the lot of them a run for their money. I filled in a BBC class survey the other week and discovered, to my absolute horror, that I'm officially in the bottom 10% of earners in this country! And that's before tax! On the other hand I'm apparently on the 100th percentile when it comes to the breadth and depth of my cultural knowledge! Nothing if not consistent! I'm an enigma! Fan me gently! 

Even more enigmatically, Nathan would appear to be in Calais! Our mate Dan called him at 5pm and said "how quickly can you get to Calais? I need a favour!" Nathan, always up for new experiences, immediately said yes, and within half an hour was in the car and on his way. 

Dan wanted some kind of object picking up which was too heavy for the Eurostar. It all sounds a bit dodgy if you ask me. No doubt it will end up being stuffed full of cocaine and someone will tell him the other end that it's nothing but a giant flour shaker. 

Right, time to go. I've just dropped an egg on my computer, so now it's even more broken than it was before! I'd scream like a girl but I don't have the time! 

Dawn chorus dusk chorus

I woke up in our little chalet this morning to the overwhelming sound of the most impressive of dawn choruses. Led by an assiduous little family of black birds, it sounded like the most complex work of minimalism ever written. Repeated, ornate semi-quaver patterns in the foreground darted up and down a full octave whilst harsh, percussive figures from the crows punctuated a gentle drone from a distant wood pigeon which was augmented by the gentle wind. I listened, entranced, for some minutes. I even recorded the sound on my iPhone before drifting off to sleep again.  

We had more rehearsals for Much Ado About Nothing today. I was feeling particularly pleased with myself after becoming the only person to score a full strike on the skittles alley the night before.

I've felt very well looked after by the good people of RAFTA this weekend. They're such a lovely, friendly bunch and I feel so thrilled to be working with them. 

We travelled back to London cross- country, through a series of beautiful Wiltshire villages on and around the A4. I'd travelled the same route a month before, and the banks of daffodils by the road sides had been replaced by dandelions, cowslips and carpets of bluebells which glowed like purple mist underneath the trees.

We stopped off in Avebury and wandered around the standing stones in the extraordinary spring sunshine. The aged hippies were out and about. I've seldom seen so much tie dye, cheese cloth and pony tails on men who are old enough to know better! One of them was standing next to a stone beating a djembe. I'm never really sure why people bang drums in public. It's a horrid, intrusive sound, and there really isn't a lot of skill involved. We can all bang a drum whilst flicking our dreadlocks around. If he can switch effortlessly from a djembe to a xylophone and play the Flight of the Bumblebee without skipping a beat, THEN I'll applaud. 

Talking of astonishing percussionists, I've just been to the Royal Albert Hall to see our close friend Ian singing in A Night of a Thousand Stars; a tremendous evening of show tunes. We sat next to the organ, behind the orchestra, and had a bird's eye view over the players. One of the percussionists was absolutely electrifying to watch, particularly in the Bernstein sequences and the song from Jason Robert Brown's Parade. There's something about a virtuoso percussionist which can stir... well pretty much any part of the body it's capable to stir! For the record his name is Daniel Ellis and he made the djembe-basher in Avebury look like a proper pillock! 

Much ado

I am back at the RAF base in Corsham, rehearsing Much Ado About Nothing with members of the RAF theatre association. 

We're staying on the base overnight in curious little wooden chalets; single beds, the works. The whole place reminds me of a scene from Hi-de-hi. All we need now is a tragic bubble-permed maid with bright orange plastic glasses to burst into song. "We're starting together..." 

This particular complex is in the middle of a wood, and the grounds are littered with squirrels, rabbits, blossom trees, flowers and all sorts of rural loveliness. It's apparently almost deathly silent and pitch black at night. Hugely atmospheric. I can't wait.

The amazing hall in the middle of the camp is straight from the 1950s, with a beautifully equipped stage (complete with old-fashioned footlights)  and a pop-up skittles alley which emerges from the wooden floor.

We've just had a mini-sports day on the green outside which included obstacle and space hopper races. Many of the company dressed up in school uniforms and luminous "118-118" sports kits. (I am surrounded by absolute nutters!) The sun was setting and everything was like a scene straight out of my childhood. It was 1983 again and I was in 

Badby Woods, some time around my birthday. It may even have been the evening of my birthday. There was a similar light, a soft, dusty smell, and I was proudly wearing luminous socks. One pink. One yellow. 

I feel rather privileged to be here. We're now back in the hall playing all sorts of wooden board games. I think the people around me are going to get very pissed indeed! I just won the furry darts competition.

I've written two songs for the production we're rehearsing; a setting of Sigh No More and a choral sequence for the lament at the end of the play. I'm particularly proud of Sigh No More, which came alive when sung by the cast. It sounded so lovely, in fact, that it made the director cry. Hurrah! 

This month would appear to be the month of my music; Pepys, Four Colours, Much Ado, White City... By the end of the month I'll have recorded over an hour's worth of music, which is an extraordinary thought. 

Dope

I've spent the day in a mild panic trying to write a dance sequence for the White City project, without really knowing what type of dancers are going to be in performing. It's one of those slightly tricky sequences involving school children singing and communities dancing  which ticks all the right boxes in terms of involvement, but often ends up being mercilessly torn apart by critics, who think the sequences somehow feel a little fake. It's something I've become very conscious of ever since the mauling my Metro film got on YouTube. As it happens it's a mauling I've become rather proud of, as much because for every negative comment there's someone who gets in touch to say it's one of their favourite internet films.  I even had an email a few weeks ago from  someone who was writing about it in her dissertation! The lesson I learnt from the experience was that  however firmly your tongue remains in your cheek when putting these sequences together, the majority of people are quick to get the cheese-ometers out, which can be humbling. 

So there's my dilemma. The other sequences in the film have dignity and integrity, so how can I inject a bit of this into this particular number? Slightly more worryingly, how can I do this in the three days I have to finish this if I'm going to stay on schedule? One day into my dreaded May and everything's already coming to a head!

Still, the weather is dramatically wonderful. I went and wrote for half an hour in Highgate Woods in the late afternoon and sat on the grass next to a group of grungy types who were smoking the strongest dope I've ever smelt. I personally don't have a huge problem with cannabis, it's never really appealed personally, but I support anyone's right to smoke it. I do wonder, however, what possesses people to do it so astonishingly flagrantly. I mean, any passing policeman smelling that would have had that lot banged up in seconds!!

Dope

I've spent the day in a mild panic trying to write a dance sequence for the White City project, without really knowing what type of dancers are going to be in performing. It's one of those slightly tricky sequences involving school children singing and communities dancing  which ticks all the right boxes in terms of involvement, but often ends up being mercilessly torn apart by critics, who think the sequences somehow feel a little fake. It's something I've become very conscious of ever since the mauling my Metro film got on YouTube. As it happens it's a mauling I've become rather proud of, as much because for every negative comment there's someone who gets in touch to say it's one of their favourite internet films.  I even had an email a few weeks ago from  someone who was writing about it in her dissertation! The lesson I learnt from the experience was that  however firmly your tongue remains in your cheek when putting these sequences together, the majority of people are quick to get the cheese-ometers out, which can be humbling. 

So there's my dilemma. The other sequences in the film have dignity and integrity, so how can I inject a bit of this into this particular number? Slightly more worryingly, how can I do this in the three days I have to finish this if I'm going to stay on schedule? One day into my dreaded May and everything's already coming to a head!

Still, the weather is dramatically wonderful. I went and wrote for half an hour in Highgate Woods in the late afternoon and sat on the grass next to a group of grungy types who were smoking the strongest dope I've ever smelt. I personally don't have a huge problem with cannabis, it's never really appealed personally, but I support anyone's right to smoke it. I do wonder, however, what possesses people to do it so astonishingly flagrantly. I mean, any passing policeman smelling that would have had that lot banged up in seconds!!

Basses

We've been on the phone and sending furious emails to Paypal and Wefund pretty much all day today. Last night we realised we had to actively redeem the money which had been pledged to our Four Colours project. The process was like falling into a black hole. All sorts of conflicting information flashed across the screen. Certain names had "unsuccessful" daubed all over them. Others had strange messages attached. I subsequently found out that some of our donors had received up to six random emails, either from We Fund or PayPal, telling them their payments had failed and then seconds later that they'd been successful. WeFund were particularly slow to respond to my messages of panic. They don't offer a phone number on their website and resolutely refused to call me, insisting instead on a never-ending exchange of emails with useless information attached. Sometimes when you don't understand what's going on, it's good to simply talk to someone... 

It seems like such a shame that all of our kind donors have offered their money in good faith and yet the two organisations which are meant to keep everything fool-proof and user-friendly have made everything so confusing. Apparently it's our job now to follow up the payments which have gone wrong, which feels rich when you consider that between them, WeFund and PayPal are taking up to 20% of the money donated as "commission."

We've just finished our second session on the Pepys Motet at Sonica in Clapham. Today was the turn of the basses, and they very much matched the tenors in terms of absolute excellence. I can't tell you how excited I am by this recording and the prospect of just how good it's going to sound. We're really beginning to push sonic boundaries and the standard of singing is absolutely excellent. I had been worried that I'd hear the tenors again on the recording and find fault with everything they'd done but they were every bit as good as I'd hoped and remembered. 

We've welcomed a new bass into the fold; an opera singer called Trevor who has the sweetest, most beautiful, chocolatey voice. I sat behind the mixing desk listening to each of my five basses in the different vocal booths in different corners of the studio and felt an unbelievable sense of luck, pride and deep gratitude. 

We're now on the tube heading home and Nathan is sitting next to Trevor. They're both knitting. Nathan's doing a hat and Trevor's making some kind of baby cardigan. The middle-aged, lady sitting opposite, with a face like a haunted shoe, took one look at them, grabbed her ghastly pink coat, tutted and went and sat at the other end of the carriage. I do believe we may have just encountered a little slice of homophobia. Imagine being so small-minded that your world implodes when you see two blokes knitting! 

White City Blossom

I've been on the White City Estate all day, playing the songs I've written to each of the contributors. It's a terrifying experience, probably the most crucial of all the stages in our journey. When trying to encourage people to be brave enough, not just to take a massive leap out of their comfort zone and perform an original song in front of television cameras but to sing about their own lives, you, as the writer, are powerless to do anything if they don't like what you've done. Professional singers will put up with all manner of rubbish for the sake of earning a few pennies, but if one of the people I work with feels the song is too hard, or too emotionally complex, or unrepresentative, they simply won't turn up to rehearsals. 

When you do what I do, you realise very quickly that it's only the tragic wannabes who are desperate to be on telly at any cost. If you want more unusual or interesting people in the films then they will invariably call the shots. If they get a last minute hospital appointment, or a phone call from their daughter asking them to pick the grandchildren up from school, filming will have to wait. And so it should. 

So it was with a great amount of trepidation that I packed my computer bag this morning and headed West. 

So much nervousness in fact, that when I arrived in Shepherd's Bush I realised I'd forgotten to pack any of the CDs I was due to hand out, thereby making my journey entirely pointless. Penny therefore had to rearrange the day whilst I made the two-hour round-trip to Highgate and back to retrieve what I needed. Desperate! 

Still, I needn't have worried. Everyone seemed thrilled with what I'd written and there were tears and cries of "you've summed my entire life up in a song." One person told me he felt sure he'd be grateful to me for the rest of his life. 

If anyone wonders why I do what I do, they need look no further than this blog entry. 

The rest of the day was spent sourcing potential locations and judging a poetry competition where local kids had written lyrics for a song about White City which I'm going to be including in the film. About ten of us sat down to sift through the entries before each of us announced our top three. Rather predictably there was almost no repetition in what we'd selected, so we were forced to read a load of the poems out loud and do a show of hands. All very crude, but it worked. I now have a short list of five poems to choose from when I sit down in front of the piano.

It's been a beautiful day. The sun shone continually. There was blossom on all the trees in the estate. Everyone was out and about and smiling. Life doesn't get much better than this.