Wimblehuntingdon

We've been in Huntingdon all day, at Lisa and Mark's house, celebrating Poppy's 7 1/2th birthday party. The poor little lass' actual birthday is on December 31st, which makes parties, particularly wonderful garden parties like this, next to impossible. 

The Murray-Djokovic match occupied many of us for the first part of the afternoon. I very much enjoyed seeing it with a large group of people and we were rewarded with something very special. Watching a British man winning Wimbledon for the first time in well over 70 years was definitely a "where were you when...?" moment, and my heart swelled with pride. A number of kids were watching the match with us, obviously with very little idea quite how remarkable the occasion was. 

The searing heat of the day meant that the party very quickly descended into a water fight with water bombs flying all over the place and excited children running in circles in the garden. When the special balloons had all been thrown, we started lobbing jugs of water, and then pretty much anything we could get our hands on. I emptied a plastic cup over Mark's head, and he spun around to reveal that it wasn't actually Mark at all, but one of the other Dads to whom I'd not yet been introduced. Mortifying, really. He looked rather shocked and didn't seem to think it was very funny! 

Later in the day, I talked to Lisa about her new baby's godparents and discovered, to my great joy, that I had been named as Baby George's godfather. George died just a few hours before being born in 2011, and I dedicated the London Requiem to him. Lisa seemed genuinely surprised that I didn't know the honour had been bestowed on me. I feel deeply proud to be looking after his memory on earth. 

Just after we had this conversation, my mother called to say that Janet, the woman in my life who probably most closely fulfils the role of my own godmother, had gone into hospital with cancer, for a second time. All very worrying. 

It's been a day of ups and downs. We stopped off on the way back to London at a service station to use the loo. I pushed a closed cubical door and it immediately swung off its hinge and cracked me hard against my knee. It was quite some thump and I felt it was rather important to report the incident in an accident book in case I woke up the next day with massive swelling. 

The situation become something of a disaster when it transpired that the man who'd been cleaning the loos had also been left in charge of the whole service station. To make matters worse, he was obviously getting himself into something of a panic, wondering if my reporting the incident would get him into trouble for not properly sealing off the door, which he'd obviously known was broken. I could see panic growing in his eyes as his story repeatedly changed. As he walked away, I started to feel guilty and then upset. There was me, the white middle-class man, getting all pompous and "health and safety" with a middle-aged bloke who didn't exactly have the best job in the world, but was obviously more than keen to keep it. I felt like a hideous gorgon and as the man walked away, I'm afraid, I started crying! It was all a bit embarrassing with my Macdonalds meal in front of me. I ran after the man and told him that I was sure my knee was absolutely fine and that I certainly wouldn't be complaining to anyone else. He seemed very relieved and I hope I've saved him from a troubled night. 

Heatwave

We woke up in Thaxted this morning. My parents were having breakfast in the garden with their friends Cootie and Andrew and they seemed to be having wonderful fun. By the time we'd drifted off to sleep and woken up again, my parents' friends had gone, apparently in search of medieval ditches in Saffron Walden, which feels like quite a fun expedition.

Breakfast in the garden wasn't an option for Nathan and me. Nathan's hay-fever reached terrifying levels in the grass meadows around my grandmother's house yesterday evening, and he went to bed with bloodshot, puffy eyes which were streaming with tears, feeling very sorry for himself. 

Still, a heatwave seems to have descended on the country and I'm not complaining for a second. The air is still. The sun is baking down. Everything feels somewhat Spanish. 

We went to Craft and Cake this afternoon and basked in Julie's garden with the next door neighbour's cat, who surely has one paw in the hereafter! I've seldom seen a sadder-looking, mangier, more ancient feline specimen. At one point the poor mite started scratching himself and huge clumps of hair were floating into the ether. He spent most of the afternoon hiding in the long grass. "What's he hiding from?" Asked Julie. "Death!" Said Nathan. 

Nathan vanished at 4pm to do a corporate singing gig in Surrey in a place I seem entirely incapable of remembering. I think it's probably a place called Dorking, but I have no concept of the geography of Surrey and not a great deal of interest in the type of people who live there! 

We were supposed to go from Dorking to Corsham in Wiltshire to rehearse Much Ado About Nothing, but we're also due in Huntingdon tomorrow at 2pm, and the thought of travelling 100 miles to spend 30 minutes rehearsing before driving for two hours again started to make us both panic. Furthermore, I was going to have to drive to Dorking with Nathan this evening and hang around for four hours waiting for Nathan's  corporate event to finish so that we could drive onto Wiltshire together.  Everything started to feel rather ridiculous, so, with heavy heart, we decided we'd have to skip Corsham and promised the director we'd rehearse everyone at a later stage. 

There are some moments when going home and shutting the door on life feel like the only option, and I haven't had any time on my own since my illness last Sunday. Literally, not one second, other than long journeys to the East End and back on the tube, during which time I was surrounded by strangers. I literally feel like I've talked non-stop, and when I've not been talking, conversations have almost perpetually been floating around me. My ears have been raped by useless pieces of information about edit formats, Harding tests, policy decisions and the points of view of people whom I don't know. Even at my Grandmother's grave yesterday, I had to take a lengthy phone call which I'm not sure was that important. As a result of all this, I just want to sit down, throw my shoes off, watch telly and fall asleep knowing I don't have to work, think about White City or even wake up until at least 11am.  

Happy Birthday Grannie Garner

We spent the day today in Warwickshire with my extended family, celebrating the 100th anniversary of the birth of my Grandmother. 

A huge number of my family gathered at her grave in the beautiful village of Stoneleigh to lay flowers, drink warm sweet sherry, eat cherries and play games in the meadow behind the house where she used to live. It was a perfect day. The sun shone constantly. It was a moment in time; a memory unfolding in real time. 

It was so wonderful to think that at least 14 of us had my Grandmother's blood coursing through their veins. That's a very powerful thing. The youngest of the children, Matt's son, Ned, had very little recollection of his Great Grandmother; a milky, misty image of someone which I'm sure could have been triggered or reinforced by a photograph. 

We went to look at High Beams, the house where Grannie lived, and peered through the windows: the same house undoubtedly, but somehow entirely different. I felt like a living cypher as I drifted past the windows. An echo from a bygone cry.

I recorded some of the sounds of the village. The familiar squeak of the gate into the churchyard, the sound of the family playing lawn darts, the sound of the bells chiming 7pm, whilst a single-engine plane buzzed in the sky, making its way from Coventry airport.

We ate at the Harvester for old times' sake. 18 of us around a table with someone representing every decade from teenagers to those in their sixties. 

A prefect, sun-drenched, nostalgic  day. Happy Birthday, Grannie. Gone but never forgotten. 

Grading

We edited until 11.30 last night and finished our day today at just gone 10pm. We have been violently riding the edit roller-coaster today. We go up, we go down. The ancient computer we're using sputters and stammers and periodically crashes. We navigate around problems only to find more. 

"Picture lock", which is the moment when the visuals for a film are locked into place, came about 8 hours late at 4pm. This is effectively the stage at which my work on any project, give or take the odd glance or approving look, is done. 

From then on in, the process of grading begins. Each shot is painstakingly coloured to make everything look shiny and consistent. Louise carefully worked her way through the opening sequence, but when we came to view it back, it became apparent that we'd made the shots look aspirational rather than real. The whites were really zingy and the colours glowed and flowed like jewels in a Victorian tiara. The estate looked glorious; like a set of beautiful terraced dolls houses, but it wasn't the White City Estate. It was no longer real. 

I immediately panicked, and started demanding that colour and contrast were removed from all the shots, and slowly the estate, as I know it, began to return. It was a curious sensation. Suddenly Louise understood what I was trying to communicate; "you want a look don't you? You need this film to look bleak, don't you?" And she was right. 

It's actually rather brave to spend time grading a film in order for it to look only subtly different from the rushes, but in this instance the process is more about matching shots so that a muted, sadder, earthy look flows from one location to the next. 

As the film develops, we can probably afford to warm things up a little, particularly for some of the dance sequences, and the section in Mostafa's Egyptian cafe, but I am absolutely convinced that we've made the right decision. 

What I'm less sure about is the BBC  Editorial Policy's feelings that the sequence in our film which features two Somalian women talking about the issue of female genital mutilation, should be censored from any screenings with children in the audience and have effectively asked us to make two edits of the film; one with the sequence and one without. 

In the wake of the Savile business, there's an almost terrifying  sense at the BBC that children need to be protected, even if it means shielding them from learning about something which could ultimately save their life.

Knowing that FGM is illegal could well mean a child voices concerns to a teacher if, say, at the age of 8, she hears she's going back to Africa for a "little procedure like Mummy had." 

Personally, and I stress that this is only my opinion, I think the benefits of screening the film in front of children far outweigh any potentially uncomfortable conversations or situations which it might generate. Children should be able to ask their parents what FGM is, particularly on an estate where it actually happens.  

As I film maker, I feel it is my duty to raise awareness. The sequence is in no way graphic and I'm proud to feature it as part of the film. Furthermore, I'm proud of the brave, strong Muslim women who are speaking out against the practice and are desperate for their message to be heard by young people. 

Obviously, the issue is by no means black and white. It's important for me to make my personal feelings on the issue clear, but equally important to remember that the Editorial Policy department at the BBC is filled with many people whose minds are far greater and less knee-jerk than my own. We have asked them to reconsider their decision and it is for them to weigh up the pros and cons of this particular argument. It's also

important for me to reiterate that they are not proposing we censor the film per se, just, that we give  it a sort of 18-rated "director's cut" alongside something a little more "universal". Their decision is final and will, of course, be respected. 

That place

I walked down the steep slope into Highgate Tube this morning and was confronted by scores of beautiful flowers which have been planted in beds by the tea and coffee stand. I thought, as I entered the tube itself, how genuinely thrilled I am to be living in a part of London where people care about these sorts of things. It really makes a difference.

And so the editing circus has moved to the far less convenient environs of Victoria Park in, well, really in the middle of effing nowhere. It's actually an area of the city I've come to despise. I've come to associate it with the ghastly smug generation, ten years older than me, who made a killing on property in the 90s and hold regular dinner parties to rub other people's noses in the fact!

Funnily enough, it's the first area I lived in in London. I did 3 months there, sharing a double bed with my mate Jo, whilst at drama school. It was a fairly untenable situation. I didn't have my own room, I had nowhere to put my stuff, and Jo and I both craved the privacy which the situation we'd entered into didn't allow. Victoria Park is in deepest, darkest Hackney and is only served by busses. It used to take me forever to get into drama school. 

In those days it was a very undesirable location. Tall, depressing, concrete council blocks peered out from behind every pleasant Victorian rambling town house, and the girls I lived with used to tell me not to venture any further East than the pub half way down the opposite street. It always felt rather dark and gloomy, but I guess I lived there in the winter and was generally quite frightened of London when I first moved here. 

Nevertheless, the bohemians had already started moving into the area, attracted by low prices, and big houses. The council blocks were renovated or knocked down and after I'd cleared out, the slow process of gentrification began. Cafes moved into the boarded-over shops, artisan bread shops replaced the chippies, and as the yummy mummies and their wealthy city executive husbands started to replace the artists, so came the expensive bookshops and ridiculous establishments selling wooden toys and designer baby wear.

These days if you go there,  it's impossible to buy even a sandwich without first taking out a mortgage. My £1.25 beigels and 30p doughnuts on Brick Lane have become roasted vegetables on a rye Swedish sandwich with a garnish of Wiltshire water cress for about £7. It'll be served to me by a glamourous student with a World War One haircut and a "ra-ra, ya-ya" accent who wants to be a writer but will settle for PR when daddy stops funding the boho lifestyle. 

To make matters worse, all trains have now been cancelled on that tragic little line which goes from Highbury to Stratford. The announcements were hysterical;

"We apologise that the 10.35 to Stratford has been cancelled due to, due to [sic] a currently unidentified reason which is under investigation. We apologise for the inconvenience which this may cause you."

So here I am in Dalston, trying to figure out how to get further East. I've actually given up and have stationed myself in a cafe for an hour. I'm having what would appear to be a low-fat vegetarian breakfast which comes with an eccentric single boiled potato. A boiled potato for breakfast, I ask you? It doesn't seem to have agreed with me very well. I'm not sure my system was quite ready for the stodginess of burnt bubble and squeak with runny baked beans and five grilled tomatoes! 

Speeding up the M11

You know when you get to the tube and narrowly miss the Bank

Branch train and realise that the next one is due in six minutes' time and you think "damn, I could have had another five minutes in bed?" That. 

At the moment I'm wondering if I'll ever get enough sleep. Still, on the slightly brighter side, I'm definitely feeling considerably better than I did yesterday. Still aching all over, but I can deal with that. 

I've changed tack when it comes to tubing into work in the rush hour. I now listen to music. Quite why doing this never occurred to me before, I've no idea. If you stand on a crowded platform whilst listening to Irene Cara's "What a Feeling" from Flashdance, you can easily convince yourself that you're in a film, and that the hundreds of people around you are all part of a celluloid musical world you ultimately control. One little click and anything troublesome to the eye can be edited out of sight! 

With the help of music, everyone looks more intriguing. I watched one woman with blonde hair and brown roots filing her nails whilst listening to The Winner Takes it All, and the whole episode became a mini soap opera in my head. She was filing her nails to take away the pain of a recent break-up. Today was the day she was going to shake her blonde locks free and face the world without crying. She became quite defiant as Agnetha sang those two epic phrases at the end of the song, but then, somehow, the pain returned. 

You should all try it one day. It's great fun. Hear the song. Find the person it's about and tell their story! The only issue I can see with me doing this every morning is that music tends to make me either want to dance or sing, and people tend to think that's a bit weird!

I wonder if there's money to be made from tube Callenetics? Real subtle weight-busting exercises that people can do whilst London crowds around them. I guess if nothing else, ladies, it's a good time to practise those pelvic floor exercises.  

Another day of editing. We worked til 8pm and Louise will carry on for another hour, just to get something in a format which can be sent for viewing by the BBC execs in Manchester. My father is out of hospital and apparently feeling perky. We're speeding up to Essex to pay homage with a box of chocolates. All is good.

Lurgy

I'm hoping that what I experienced yesterday was some kind of 24 hour gastric 'flu. Sometimes, when you're aching all over from fits of vomiting, it's hard to tell if you're actually feeling any better, but I haven't had any gripes in the last few hours and managed to keep down a dry beigel and a cuppa soup which I had at lunch time, so one assumes I'm on the mend. I'm still feeling clammy and a bit odd, but nothing compared to how I felt this morning when I sat on the tube weeping because I had no idea how I was going to get through the day. 

I got home yesterday at about 8.30pm, and effectively hallucinated and slept for 12 solid hours, my confused, obsessive mind repeatedly dragging me into one particular aspect of the edit; the need to make almost completely arrhythmic "vox pops" fit into strictly defined passages of music. We've spent more time doing this than anything else, and the process continued through the night. 

It was, of course, the worst day for me to be ill. My Dad's in hospital having an operation and obviously if there are complications I'll need to drop everything and jump in a car. 

To make matters more complicated, we've entered the second week of the edit, and have a new editor who needs to learn the piece. Hazel has become Louise, who specialises in post-effects like grading, but Louise isn't terribly happy with the set up in the edit suite.

At lunchtime I learned that our commissioner  at the BBC is wanting to get more involved in the project (a mere six months after it was signed off) and wants versions of the film sent to Manchester so that she can give feedback. This is, of course, her prerogative, but I worry that she's not going to understand the nature of these sorts of projects and will suggest lyric changes and all sorts of things which are impossible to remedy at this stage. I'd say a good 90% of shots are set in stone based on so many factors including convincing lip-synching. Editing these films is a complicated jigsaw: there's often only one solution. I sent an email in an attempt to manage her expectations and I hope she doesn't just think I'm being shirty. 

So, on top of everything, there has been much to juggle today. People to appease and people whose minds need to be put at rest, yet all the time I'm simply wishing I could get home. 

I have one more commitment tonight, which is a rehearsal with the wonderful Fleet Singers. Of course it would have to be tonight that their main conductor, James is away, so I'm rehearsing them on my own. I had hoped that Nathan would be able to come down for some moral support, but he's lost his voice so there's very little point. I genuinely just want to find out that my Dad's okay, make sure that the Fleet singers feel like they've had an inspiring and worthwhile rehearsal and then curl up in a little ball and fall asleep until I can wake up feeling alive!