Spooky

Fiona is back in town, staying the night with us before we head to Cambridge tomorrow for a little birthday treat with the parents. We've just walked down to Tufnell Park for food in a pub, before walking home across a spooky, and very dark Hampstead Heath. At one stage, as we crept along the tree-lined pathway towards the Women's Bathing Pond, things got very creepy indeed. There were strange noises in the undergrowth, and shadows seemed to be creeping out of shadows! The police tape covering the entrance to the pond itself was a little frightening. We remembered then that a woman's body has recently been found dead in the water. I sincerely hope they don't suspect foul play. Or should that be fowl play?

We told each other ghost stories, which didn't exactly

help matters, and were pretty relieved to see the lights of Spaniard's Lane!

Fiona reminded me of an incident which shocked us both yesterday as we were walking along the Archway Road. A bus drew up in front of us and a largish woman decided to make a dash for it. She was wearing a little chiffony skirt which was leaping up and down as she ran, revealing the most hideous things, which I can only describe as flaps of skin. I've no idea if I was looking at arse cheek or clunge, but it was naked flesh and it was wobbling around like a jelly in a tumble drier. Inexcusable.

Taking of inexcusable, I went to the gym this afternoon and was quite surprised to find a rather short man standing behind the counter waiting to take my card. I guess I've become rather too used to tall, bronzed Adonises at that place. So shocked, was I, in fact, that the thought that went through my mind actually tumbled out of my mouth, much to Nathan's desperate chagrin. I took one look at the man behind the counter and said one word, "tiny." What on earth will I be like when I'm old and senile?

Trying to work

It feels like I've done pretty much everything but the work I needed to do today. Just as I sat down to transfer notes from the book I've just read onto a Word document, something else came up and I was distracted for an hour or so. And that was the pattern of the day.

Firstly, came the call from Nathan to roam the streets of Highgate taking photographs of his latest knitting projects. We got a little carried away and at one point I had him

sitting on the top of a very tall post box modelling his remarkable double-knit scarf. It struck me how important it is to have fabulous pictures of fabulous things! 

Speaking of which, Nathan is currently washing the little pieces of wool he found on gate posts and dry stone walls around Hadrian's Wall, which he's hoping to spin and turn into wool for another remarkable creation. 

We went to the cafe and I started to work again... Until Fiona arrived. We chatted for hours and then I walked her to Stroud Green via the Parkland Walk before jogging home in my little red shorts, bemoaning the fact that I've become so profoundly unfit that old men were overtaking me. I felt like a giant tomato. Still, Parkland Walk, a former railway line, looked glorious in the mid-summer sun. Enormous, juicy blackberries were already all over the bramble bushes. I've told everyone who'll listen that this is going to be an epic year for blackberries, raspberries and grapes... Not that we get many of them in the UK! 

I came home, started working, and then received a number of emails I had to deal with. And so it went on. I started working, then realised

I had two applications to fill in. A bit more work, then it was time to update my CV (which I've now rather grandly replaced with a biog, cus who cares what I did in 1997?!)

And now, after another five minutes' work, I realise it's blog time. 

Nathan is now "carding" his wool with two giant hair brushes with lethal-looking teeth that would surely rip any but the strongest wool to pieces.  Perhaps this is the point. Apparently before he can spin anything, all the strands have to be going in the same direction. Or something about knitting... It's my birthday on Thursday. 

One foot in each world

It rained heavily for a few hours this afternoon, and as the storm started to clear, the sky turned an extraordinary sickly colour, the like of which I'm not sure I've seen before. It had a sort of greeny, yellow hue, which made researching gas attacks at the Battle of the Somme particularly gruelling.

I've just finished reading Covenant with Death by John Harris, which is a loosely fictionalised account of what happened to the Leeds Pals regiment in the First World War. My previous assumption was that these Pals regiments (non-soldiers who signed up on a wave of patriotism at the start of the war) would have largely been made up of working-class lads, steel workers, miners and the like, but I'm fast discovering that they came from all walks of life; university lecturers, press men, the sons of families who'd made their fortune in the industrial revolution. Their only commonality was the town from which they came; towns which would struggle to recover if the regiment found itself in the wrong place at the wrong time. 

The Leeds Pals were in the first wave of attacks at the Somme and were mowed down in their thousands by machine guns. "Two years in the making. Ten minutes in the destroying," as Harris writes in the postscript of his book, which is one of the most brutal and detailed accounts of the war I've ever read. Utterly compelling and relentlessly upsetting. No book has ever touched me like this. 

As with the Pepys Motet, doing detailed research for this project has led to my feeling as though I've permanently got a foot in two worlds. I'm pretty sure historians must feel like this all the time. There's a little space in my head where an ever-growing battery of First World War images is being stored. Some are becoming so life-like they almost feel like memories. As the project begins to develop, so this particular area of my brain will grow. 

I'm certainly not making things easy on myself. At every twist and turn on this particular journey there's a tragedy lurking. There are no happy endings in the Great War. None that I've found anyway. Even the lads that came home physically unscathed left something of themselves behind in France. 

The rain has stopped, we've opened the window, and the glorious smell of pizza dough and garlic is drifting up from the restaurant next door. It's making us hungry. 

Yesterday!

...And suddenly he realises his life is so dull, he's forgotten to post a blog for yesterday, which was actually a thoroughly decent day!

Brother Edward came up from Canary Wharf and we had a glorious afternoon eating a Prix Fixe at Cafe Rouge, and then going for a long walk through Waterlow Park, down Swain's Lane and then back up to Highgate via the Heath, which looked absolutely glorious in the sunshine. 

We were all quite tickled to stumble upon the little patch of the Heath, just next to the male-only bathing pond, which seems to be almost exclusively peopled by gay sunbathers. Only on the Heath! 

I think this area also featured prominently in a rather bizarre 1960s film called Blow Up. I've seen the film a number of times and I'm pretty sure one of the sequences is shot there, or thereabouts. 

We came home and I played Edward a number of the films I made in the year I worked at HSBC, which seemed appropriate seeing as he works there these days. They all felt hysterically out of date, not just because the various programmes and projects the films were promoting seemed to come from a bygone era of pre-recession banking, but because the after effects and grading I'd used all looked so horribly corporate, gaudy and "naughties!" Not a single piece of text sailed across the screen without some kind of whooshing sound or thunder clap! Ah! The days when banking was sexy and money was no object! 

Bored and a little lonely!

I've been moping around all day today. The most exciting thing I did was go to Highgate Woods with a mug of tea to sit on a bench and read a book about the Leeds Pals. It felt rather decadent and eccentric to be carrying a mug of tea through the streets but better that than drink out of polystyrene!

It was rather lovely to be sitting in the woods, but something about the dappled light and the small typeface of the ancient book I was reading seemed to clash rather hideously and I ended up having to go home feeling slightly fuzzy-headed. 

The only other remotely exciting thing was a 9pm visit to the local kebab shop for my usual treat of halloumi and salad in pitta bread. I try very hard when I'm there not to think where the tongs - which the man behind the counter uses to turn the cheese over on his giant grill - have been. They look rather red and sticky. One day I'm sure I'll be horribly ill as a result of eating there. Or no longer be able to call myself vegetarian. 

The tally of shit telly I've watched today is astounding, and includes three episodes of How to Look Good Naked, a 2010 episode of a property show, and a curiously addictive low-budget programme called "Snog, Marry, Avoid," where lots of silly women mince about slagging each other off for not looking "natural" enough. It seems that "natural" means wearing exactly the same amount of make-up, just in more subtle shades. A variety of boyfriends would periodically pop-up to say how awful it was to wake up and find the bed covered in fake tan, and it struck me how strange that must be. I've always said that being straight is one of the gayest things in the world! You wouldn't find me lying in a bed covered in pink occasional cushions with lacy curtains hanging at the windows!

I was angry to see the BBC trolling out an ancient episode of Escape to the Country, particularly in light of the fact that it looks like there may not be a slot to broadcast the White City film, which is daring, extraordinary - and already paid for! And yet, they're happy to trot out something which was cheap, throw-away daytime telly three years ago! At one stage the presenter went to look at a field of newly-planted roses somewhere in Cambridgeshire and asked when they'd be ready to pick. "2011 or 12" came the reply, and the presenter looked surprised; "gosh, a long time away then." I assume she was also thinking about 2012 being the year of the Olympics and wondering how bizarre it would be to host such a mega-event! 

We haven't had any Internet for the last two days, which, on a day like today, when I'm a little bored and lonely, is like hell on earth! Damn Talk Talk and their uselessness. They tell me it might not be fixed before August 6th. What will I do?

Nothingness

A day of next-to-nothingness. We had a lie-in, read a few books, tried to work out why our Internet wasn't working... Again... And then tried to work out why Talk Talk didn't seem to want to call us back at the time agreed. Again.

By the time we'd defrosted the freezer, it was time for Nathan to hot-foot it to Wiltshire to rehearse Much Ado About Nothing and time for me to disappear into a world of crappy telly, wishing profusely that Nathan's gig tomorrow night hadn't made it difficult for me to go with him to rehearse. 

Still, having been surrounded by people day and night for the last week, it feels like it's time for some peace and quiet. Sometimes it's good to feel a bit lonely! 

Missing!

We're driving down the M1 on a beautiful summer evening. The corn fields by the side of the motorway are glowing bright orange. The sun is melting into the ground behind a dark forest. It's 8.30pm and it's still 30 degrees outside. This really has been the most splendid British summer. 

We spent our last day of camping in the familiar environment of Tynemouth, and stopped en route at the quayside in Newcastle. Neither Sam nor Meriel had ever visited the city, and I wanted to show it off a bit. We had a stroll along the river front, and I pointed out various bridges, buildings and spots where Keith and  I had filmed Metro: The Musical and some of the numbers we'd used in 100 Faces. 

We got back in the car and snaked our way along the river, through Byker, Walker, Wallsend and North  Shields to Tynemouth, where we parked down by the lighthouse. 

The rest of the troops arrived and we walked along the harbour wall-cum-pier to the lighthouse. It's quite a journey. It probably stretches half a mile into the sea, and by the time we'd reached the end, the wind was buffeting us all over the place. 

We walked up into Tynemouth village. Nathan, Sam and I went for some chips whilst the others went down to the beach to eat sandwiches. The queue for the chippie was long and seemed to be in a horribly claustrophobic corridor, which instantly started to make me panic. As we placed our order, Sam decided to head back to the beach without realising that the onion rings we'd asked for were going to take 15 minutes to arrive. As I waited with Nathan, I felt myself panicking and decided to leave him in the queue whilst I went to find a drink. 

I ended up stuck in another queue in the Co-op, waiting for a series of silly old ladies to fumble with the piles of loose change in their purses, all the time feeling increasingly anxious and rather tearful for some reason. 

Nathan finally emerged from the chip shop as my mobile came into signal and I noticed a number of missed calls from the others. Worrying, I thought... 

We walked down to the beach, but could see only Hilary with Jago and William and Jeanie playing quietly in the sand. We instantly realised something was wrong, but fortunately walked into the scene just as the panic was subsiding.

Little Lily, Tanya's 6 year-old daughter, had gone missing. They'd started walking down the steps to the beach and suddenly realised she wasn't there. When you're with a large group of friends, kids tend to glue themselves to any of the adults they know, so the initial thought was that she might have tried to find Nathan, Sam and me. Literally one moment she was there and the next she'd disappeared... 

It seems that all hell immediately broke loose, with Railey, Mez, Tanya, Paul and little Tomas running along the headland, calling for Lily and stopping passers-by to ask for their help. Within seconds an entire group of people were searching the streets. The good folk of Tynemouth had stepped right up to the mark. 

She turned up. Of course she turned up. She'd dawdled a foot behind everyone else in her own little world and simply not seen the group disappearing down the steps to the beach. Tanya realised within seconds, but by then Lily had walked onwards and of course everyone's instinct was to rush back the way we'd come. Lily had been very sensible; when she realised she was lost, she'd found a family and asked for their help. She'd been crying and was obviously a little frightened, but fortunately Iain had found her before the police (who had been called) turned up. 

There were tears from everyone. Tears of relief. Tears of what ifs. I'm sure my panic was as a result of a weirdly claustrophobic corridor couples with going low blood sugar before eating, but it seems rather odd that I'd got into such a state, whilst my very close friends, just down the street, were having a terrible, frightening time. 

We were all hugely relieved and spent a golden time this afternoon, like one giant, eccentric family on the beach, burying Will and Tomas in sand and swimming in the sea. We'd never admit it, but I'm sure none of us let Lily out of our sight... Not for a second.

4pm arrived and it was time to go home. I didn't want to leave. I could happily have done another night, but then again, we've left wanting more and not outstayed our welcome. Iain thanked us this morning for giving the kids such a magical time... That was the plan. Happy to oblige.