Professor Sands

I sat and worked in the cafe all morning, speeding my way towards the interval of Brass on draft two of the script. It's still not right - particularly when it comes to the lyrics (which are very much still just thoughts) - but it's slowly improving .

I was surrounded, as ever, by the great and the good of Highgate. A slew of yummy mummies were lowing, and then I became aware of a ghastly script meeting going on at the next door table, which ended up making me rather depressed. Bullshit was very definitely the order of the day. A very strange and edgy bloke about my age was telling a girl he might be interested in her script for a short film. Half way through the meeting, just after the director had said he could think of a number of Hollywood actors who might like to play the script's central role, she uttered the dreaded words, "can I be honest with you? It's just, I'd quite like to play the main role myself. I've got experience, you see, I studied performing arts at college and I've done a fringe play..." Painful! Any self-respecting director would have given the girl the important "don't run before you can walk" lecture. One look at her told me she didn't have the allure of a film actress. She screamed deluded ambition. I wanted to take her aside and say "if you're a decent writer you'll want this script performed well, and that might mean letting go of your desire to be a star!" But she stuck to her guns and I could see the director backing off...

I went into town to meet Nathan for lunch and stumbled across our resident Highgate homeless man on my way down the steep footpath to the tube. He's taken to sitting underneath one of the railings down there and seems to devour books. There's always a pile of paperbacks next to him. Today he had a rather sad little sign, written on cardboard, which advertised himself as a a painter or cleaner, "or whatever you need, just think of me..." A stark reminder, if one were needed, that we're still not quite out of the woods.

I didn't realise that I'd put myself on a Bank Branch train, and was so engrossed in the world of Brass that I was in King's Cross before I'd noticed my error. I threw my belongings together and leapt onto the empty platform. An eerie woman's voice echoed through the corridors; "Would Inspector Sands please go to the operations room immediately." Round and round her announcement went. Quite why they persist in using these "codes," I'm not sure. Everyone knows that Mr Sands means there's a suspected fire somewhere in the building!

So I tried to look cool and walked as quickly as I could to the Piccadilly line platform. Eventually the announcements stopped, but obviously, I'd spent all my time on the platform in a state of terror, smelling the air for smoke and trying to make sense of the other smells drifting through the station which including a whiff of some sort of petro-chemical, which made me wonder whether "Inspector Sands" was actually the code for "every body run, the terrorists have released poison gas!"

We had lunch in Wagamama. It felt a little fancy, but I didn't feel like I was knocking back the calories, which is important for a man who is now officially losing weight. I've been running every day this week so far.

Nathan is back on stage this Christmas, playing Ghastly Gordon in the pantomime at Wakefield Theatre Royal. I for one am very excited to see him, and further excited at the opportunity to spend a little more time in my beloved Yorkshire. If anyone fancies a trip up there, tickets are selling fast!

Sops away!

Another day in the studio, and the Pepys Motet is now three-quarters recorded. Only the tenors remain an unknown entity, so I'm keeping my fingers firmly crossed for a smooth Sunday. Fifteen voices down. Five to go.

I hear there's no tube on Sunday, which will, of course, become the next hurdle. You can warn people till you're blue in the face about London travel chaos, but the fact remains that, on a Sunday morning, people will always stay in bed as late as they possibly can! And who can blame them?

The sopranos did well. There were a few hairy moments, but they absolutely excelled in Movement One, which seems to have been everyone else's Achilles Heal, or "athletes foot" as Nathan's Mum once called it!

It seems that each of the movements has particularly or specifically appealed to one of the voice groups. The altos, for example, went a bundle for Movement Five, and every time I heard a snippet of them coming through the desk today they were absolutely note-perfect in that particular movement.

We over ran by half an hour. Not terrible, I suppose, but not quite ideal.

I'm looking forward to getting home tonight, taking my shoes off and closing the door on the world. I may take myself for a run, as I've done very well this week on the health and fitness front, but ate a couple of three chocolate digestives biscuits in the studio. I'm going to become a calorie counting bore, I can sense it in my bones. You might as well stop reading this blog now. It's bound to turn into something like Bridget Jones' diary. Present weight: 29 stones. Calories consumed today: 901,457. General mood: panicky. Thought of the week: I am my own rainbow!

Grid lock

It was Fiona's birthday today and we sat around an open fire in an upstairs room above a beautiful pub on New Oxford Street.

We got stuck in appalling traffic on our way there; a proper gridlock which went from Holborn to Centre Point. There had been some kind of accident which meant all the one way streets around the British Museum became glorified car parks, with no one able to turn around and get the hell out of there!

The evening was wonderful, however, and was peopled by all sorts of people from Fiona's life. A number of the old guard were there - Ted Thornhill, Jim Fortune and Vic Benjamin - alongside a parade of people from Fiona's glamorous world of rock music. Ed and Gita, Vicky cello, and some of the members of Placebo and their mates. A good crowd, and a fun evening all round, although almost everyone there seemed to be called either Ed or Vic!

It was so nice to see James Fortune, who's had the most horrific issues with his voice over the last few years to the extent that he's now stopped performing and is writing music instead. He showed us pictures of his son, who's growing up fast. Is it me or does life seem to be rattling by at a rather alarming rate?

I'm having a lot of very vivid and slightly portentous dreams at the moment. I don't know what that's all about.

Blinking tenors!

Is it cold or have I recently turned into some kind of little old lady? I'm sort of wandering around the house looking for extra layers, terrified to turn the heating on because that would be acknowledging winter! This, I am aware, is very much the behaviour of a geriatric!

The sun has been shining all day, which probably explains the low temperatures; no cloud cover to keep the warmth in, and not enough heat in the sun to warm the ground. I went for a lovely jog up into Highgate village at about 3.30pm when the sun was really low in the sky and glinting on myriad windows. From Waterlow Park, the views were spectacular. The sky was blue and all the buildings were the colour of Nice biscuits!

I met up with an old friend at lunchtime. Dear Michelle Turkie. (Yes, that really is her surname!) She was one of the first people I spoke to at university, and she looks just the same, except her (once Easter-yellow-scarf-filled hair) is now greyish around the temples. Just like me.

We had a lot to catch up on. Five or so years of gossip and chat, but it felt so easy. So easy, in fact, that time flew past, and suddenly it was time for her to return to work. We immediately arranged to meet the following week.  There's no way I'm going to allow her to drift out of my life again! She's so much fun.

Whilst nattering away to Michelle, I took a phone call from the tenor we'd booked to replace the tenor we'd booked to replace Stephen! It all gets rather confusing...

Sadly, having told me he was free and thrilled to do the session, he now tells me he'd entirely forgotten about another rehearsal on the same day. He wondered if perhaps he could do just half of the session.  What am I meant to do? Chuck away half the cost of the studio whilst we wait for him to turn up, and send the other tenors down the pub. When I said that half a session wasn't an option he asked me to consider him
for future work and I thought "what kind of person messes someone about like this and still expects to be considered for work?" I'd spent an hour on Saturday night formatting files for him and changing music to suit his range! Why do people just not say no immediately?!

On the bright side, twitter went almost viral with pleas for a tenor, and this evening I find myself spoilt for choice trying to work out who to approach first! A lot of musical directors and composers have come forward, which is pleasing in a way; they'll know a lot about music and will also understand why it's often important to do someone a favour! The flip side, of course, is that there are never recordings on the internet which show them singing, because they don't tend to do it professionally. That said, MDs tend to be very fine singers indeed. I probably just need to take a punt!

Right, that's me! I need to do another half an hour on Brass before bed. I'm about to kill someone off in the script! Need to focus!

Reality bites

We're having an evening at Brother Edward's house watching the various results shows from various reality shows. Obviously I barely care about the results, but it's nice to see talentless people having the arrogant smiles wiped off their faces. I personally like it when they beg or look really shocked to be in the bottom two (Tamera.) Brilliantly lacking in dignity!

I love the cliches: more than 110% of acts this evening were literally singing for their lives.

The other cliche about British reality TV which I find a little distasteful is the tendency to bring out the white Grannie if the contestant is mixed race. It happens all the time. We've all seen it; the little film which gets played out before the act performs where we learn how close the contestant is to their (white) grandmother. Even Alesha Dixon on Strictly brought out her white Grannie. It's incredibly cynical and it makes me feel uncomfortable, almost as though the producers of the show want to remind viewers that the contestants are "one of us" lest they should think they're black, and therefore not worthy of a vote. Watch out for it. They did it with Leona Lewis as well.

We went to see Jem and Ian this afternoon for a meal at the Pizza Express in Totteridge and Whetstone and then went for tea and chocolate back at theirs. This is my last day of decadence before my strict diet and health regime begins. I'm mentioning it in the blog so any readers who see me stuffing my face can remind me not to. I mean it!

There's very little else to write about. The traffic has been awful in London today. We got horribly stuck around the Old Street area. It's a terrible bottle neck round there, even in the middle of the night.

Home made crisps

We had a lie-in this morning. Blissful! I think we both slept until at least 11. Waking up of one's own accord is the most wonderful sensation.

Michelle came round at 1ish to run through her music for the soprano session on Pepys, which is the next up on Wednesday. We staggered our way through the music and had lunch in the greasy spoon half way through.

Delightfully, Michelle hung about afterwards and we watched Strictly and the X Factor live on telly for probably the first time in my life!

The evening was made very special by the firework display at Ali Pali which we could see behind the trees by the tube station. There was a mini display going on a little closer to us which felt even more impressive. The fireworks seemed to be bursting just in front of our window!

I threw together a plate of pasta for us all, with some hand made crisps which I was rather pleased with.

I've not touched Brass today, and I have to say it feels a little odd! I'm itching to get going on it again and am pleased to find myself with a couple of clear days to completely immerse myself in its world starting Monday. My aim is to make the language I use surprising. I'm not sure I even know what this means yet, but I think I could fall very quickly into a world of First World War cliche, which I somehow need to fight against. That said, there are certain cliches which an audience would feel disappointed not to see. It's an interesting dilemma!

Sit com

I've been rather dreading today; nervous all week that the Pepys altos session would go as badly as the bass one.

I hauled myself out of bed, bright and early, and took myself to the post office to send a letter to Arnold Wesker. Fiona's mother sent me an article from The Times about him last week which I'd found inexplicably moving, so thought I'd drop him a line to see how he was doing. It's always good to get a letter isn't it? My mother always used to say "if you feel lonely or sad, send a letter," although I seem to have almost completely lost the ability to write! My writing looked like a little spider had walked through a puddle of ink and then run across the page.

I did a couple of hours on Brass at the cafe. It's fairly addictive and I'm enjoying the process of writing in detail immensely rewarding. I also enjoy the environment of the cafe. It struck me today what an extraordinary sit com this particular cafe would make, filled with the eccentric characters who people the Archway Road.

I sat on the tube to Clapham opposite a ghastly fat, sly-eyed Eastern European woman, who was wearing a bag-like T-shirt with a tiger on it. She had a baby under one arm. An older girl, maybe eight, was sitting next to the woman. She had a sallow face and deep-set eyes and was plainly terrified of the older woman. Every time she tried to speak, the woman (probably her mother) told her, aggressively, to shut up. Every time the baby dropped something, the young girl  immediately picked it up with a look of terror on her face.

How awful to grow up frightened of your mother, having to learn life's lessons from a woman who doesn't smile, a woman who treats you like a slave, blames you for everything, and probably smacks you when you don't please her. I stared at them for some time trying to work out how a situation like that could have developed. And I felt really sad.

The session with the altos was a blinder. Thank God! We ended on time and by the evening had well and truly hit our stride. Everyone was listening to one another intently and it felt as though all five singers were breathing and thinking as one.

It got a bit hairy in the middle; Movement One took longer than expected - it always does - but everything else was marvellous. We had proper breaks and everything!

I'm shattered however, and can't wait to get home. Unfortunately we lost our umpteenth tenor today for next Sunday's session, annoyingly someone who initially said he was free and then seemed to change his mind, no doubt whey he decided he was far too important an artist to deign to do a session for love rather than hard cash! Obviously it's no skin off my nose if somebody can't do a session, what annoys me is the loss of three days of "finding tenor time" because no one thinks it's important enough to get back to the composer to say the person he's  been assured is happy to do the gig, for whatever reason suddenly can't! Ho hum. Just one reason why the life of a creative can be a little hard.