Prang!

It was Nathan's best friend's father's funeral today in Oxfordshire. It's horrible to think that this has become the era of parental misfortune. So many of my friends' parents are getting ill, or having falls, or losing loved ones. It's just awful...

The funeral happened in Carterton, the town where Nathan grew up. It was hugely well-attended, and a really very lovely send off.

Sadly we missed most of it. The first half of our journey west had been absolutely wonderful. The sun was shining and scores of red kites were filling the skies. We counted 44 between Stokenchurch and the Oxford turn off on the M40. The introduction of red kites in Oxfordshire has been the most extraordinary success story.

There are lots of theories as to why so many kites are spotted from motorways. The first is obvious. Many more people drive along the motorways than hang about in the fields and hillsides around them, so there are more people to spot the birds from the roads.

Other theories revolve around the idea that overgrown motorway verges are full of tasty treats for kites, but my favourite theory is that the birds are actually using roads as navigational tools.

Anyway, that's all by the by, and none of it explains why we missed half of our dear friend's father's funeral.

We needed to leave the M40 at the junction with the A40, but got rather stuck in the outside lane due to lorries crawling along on our inside. In the end we had to pull into the inside lane between two lorries. The space between them was smallish, but not ludicrous, so we changed lanes, and, for twenty seconds or so the articulated lorry behind us travelled as the same speed.

We pulled off onto the A40 slip road, and the lorry behind us pulled closer and started driving threateningly. I assume he was angry with us for pulling into his path. Nathan gently slowed up by maybe five miles per hour as a warning to the lorry to pull back and to show him that he was welcome to over take us if he wanted to go faster.

Horrified, I watched in the wing mirror as the lorry got closer and closer before ramming into the back of our car. It was terrifying. There was a crunch and a bang, and our car was shunted forwards.

We pulled into the hard shoulder and the lorry pulled in behind us. I instantly panicked. We didn't know whether to get out of the car to survey the damage or wait to see what he was going to do. We thought perhaps he was mad.

I decided I needed to film the scene, but, in my panic, couldn't find my phone. I tried to write the lorry's number plate on the back of a cardboard box, but my hands started shaking.

Nathan got out of the car in the end, and I filmed him as he approached the lorry driver, who casually wound up his window and refused to swap insurance details.

In the end, because he was refusing to cooperate, we were forced to call the police. Of course the driver switched on the charm as soon as the police arrived. He hadn't seen us, he said, although he made it clear he HAD seen us cutting into the gap in front of him before we pulled onto the A40 slip road. He spouted a mass of contradictions, but the police seemed to buy it, and basically accused Nathan of dangerous driving. Apparently we ought to have started to accelerate on the slip road rather than slightly slowing down. It was all very strange, and when I tried to explain what had actually happened, the policeman told me not to interrupt. I felt like I'd felt when the judge summed up his evidence the time I lost my court case. My face must have glowed red with a similar sense of injustice. I have to say, the majority of my brushes with the law makers of this country have been somewhat unsatisfactory. I always feel judged for some reason. A little helpless.

In the end, insurance details were swapped, and we were sent on our merry way. Heaven knows how everything will pan out. I'm pretty convinced the driver rammed us deliberately. If he hadn't seen us, he would have rushed out of his car to check if we were okay rather than sat aggressively in his cab refusing to acknowledge us. It was all horrible. My back still hurts because I tensed myself ready for the impact as I saw the lorry slowly moving closer and closer.


Anyway, that's enough of that. Today was all about looking after Philip. The "wake", which was far more appropriately labelled "a celebration of the life of Leon." It took place in a golf club on the outskirts of Carterton. There were red tulips on a window ledge which caught the late afternoon sun and glowed like rubies.


We spent the night chatting and laughing in a pub in the town itself. Carterton is a funny, rather "non" town, which grew up around the airbase at Brize Norton. It's nothing but a cross roads, really, covered in buildings which seem a little hastily thrown-up and somewhat transient. Rather American, I suppose. I think Brize Norton was once an American airbase, so maybe there's a link there. Who knows.


Anyway. We're home now. Nathan is struggling with his knitting. He's making a hat. It's not going too well. Or at least it wasn't until he started saying "aha." He may well have solved his problem.

More smoke

It's Mothering Sunday, which, when I was a child would signify a mad dash to Warwickshire to pay homage to my Grannie, who was rather particular about these things. I think my own mother always felt a slight sense of injustice about the fact that so much was expected of her on this particular day, so always told us not to make a big deal about it ourselves. She has even been known to say that she should be thanking us rather than vice versa. So kind. I have to say, I'm not a big fan of any date which allows someone to assuage their guilt for being a rubbish person for the rest of the year. In my view, every day should be Mother's Day!

Nevertheless, today we DID go to Thaxted to pay homage to the parents and it was an absolutely lovely day. Brother Edward and Sascha were there and we went down to Parishes in the village for a meal.

Edward has started a new job and is looking extremely well: unstressed, in shape and relaxed.

We called in on Stuart for a quick cuppa and a game of Jenga on the way home. He's one of my parents' neighbours and a member of our North Essex quiz team. He came to see our show yesterday with his wife, Sally, which made us incredibly happy.

We sat in front of an open fire back at Till Towers and Nathan fell asleep curled up on the sofa. It was the perfect end to a week of roller-coaster mayhem.

On our way home we smelt the smoke again at the crossroads outside Thaxted where they used to hang people. Keen readers of this blog will remember that Thaxtedonians have reported seeing ghostly wisps of smoke hovering over the road in that particular spot. Nathan and I saw it last year, and I always swore we'd park up and explore if we ever saw it again.

...So we parked up at the side of the road and crept along the dark country roads. It was really rather eerie. We could see a rather large spume of white smoke - almost like a bonfire - pouring into the dark night air from behind a wall. As we watched - literally as we watched - the smoke died and disappeared. Almost as though someone had thrown a bucket of water on it... Or turned off the smoke machine. Very odd.

We stumbled further down the road in the opposite direction and were astonished to find a second small fire, cracking gently in the wood by the side of the road, a long way away from where we'd seen the first one. But who would light a fire right there, by the side of the road, at 10pm on a Sunday night? There was no one sitting by the fire. And the fire itself wasn't contained by a pit or a brazier. It was all very strange.

So the mystery of the smoke is part-solved... But who's lighting the fires? And why? And why are they vanishing like that?

Last night

We've been watching a show called Grace and Frankie on Netflix. It's enjoyable, largely because the central performances by Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda are so extraordinary.

The premise of the show is simple. It's about two women of a certain age whose husbands walk out on them because they're gay. I would personally have left the gay characters in the sidelines but for some reason the show's creators feel the need to feature them every week. They're played by Sam Waterston and Martin Sheen (both straight men) which is the show's first mistake because nothing about the performances rings true in any way. It's almost as though they want viewers to know that they're not really gay. They seem to care a great deal more about their ex wives than they do each other!

The other issue seems to be with female writers writing their dialogue. In last night's episode everything was wrong, particularly the description of the men's first kissed. For the rest of the episode they bickered like old women, and got paranoid in a way that gay men simply don't. It was bordering on offensive, if honest.

I watched American Idol on the telly this morning. I haven't seen that show for years and it was utterly unrecognisable. I was struck by how unattractive LA men are when they have Botox and eye surgery. Their eyes seem to go all tiny and their foreheads stop moving properly which gives them a slightly alien vibe. I'm talking largely about Ryan Seacrest, who looks like he's made of wax these days, but also pretty much every wealthy man of a certain age I saw in LA when I was over there last year. I find wrinkles incredibly attractive. I think they show knowledge and a life lived.

I got very drunk earlier tonight but think I'm okay now. I'd like some chips. Maybe I'm still a bit pissed.

I'm in a terrible bar. It's incredibly noisy and I'm hiding because it's too noisy and I'm too old to be here.

The bar is Freedom. It used to be strictly gay. These days it's full of straight actors, all of whom are about five years old and utterly full of themselves.

The shows today were marvellous. The matinee had a particularly wonderful audience, who spontaneously stood - en masse - at the end of the show. Lisa, Mark, Sally and Kate were in the audience, along with the hugely influential critic, Mark Shenton, who described the show as "better than I ever expected." He took my hand at the end of the show and said, "it works." Tick.

More Greenham women came to both performances, and, before the evening show, a massive group of us went to Pizza Express, including Raily, Iain and my two god children.

The cast went to the Ivy club afterwards where a cocktail pianist was playing show tunes. We sat on lovely sofas and drank gin and tonics and told each other how fabulous we all were. It was wonderful...

But then the Ivy closed, and we went on to the dreadful non-gay bar... And now I want to go home.

Sleep!

I managed to sleep until mid day today. I think I was finally sleeping the sleep of the just! I texted Philippa to say how confused I was that I'd managed to sleep in so late, and she replied: "That's nice. I went to bed at 12.30. Woke up at six thirty and was awake for two hours in the night with restless children and period pains. BUT I AM SO GLAD YOU SLEPT WELL." I think those with young children must sometimes wonder if they'll ever sleep properly again!

We didn't do much all day. Our landlord let himself into the house to sort out the roof. I stood in the hallway, but suddenly realised I was entirely naked, so ran like a girl in the opposite direction, hoping he'd not seen me, and disappeared under a blanket.

As we left the house we found a little shrine on the steps outside our door, which had been left there by our fabulous neighbour, Little Welsh Nathalie. She'd carefully laid out a vase with tulips and daffodils, a lovely congratulations card, a photograph of Nathan and me in front of the theatre and a cut-out sign of letters spelling the word "peace."

I feel very blessed to be surrounded by such extraordinarily beautiful people.

We drifted into town and had tea at the theatre with Llio, Frank and his friend JJ. CJ in the cast had emailed me a recording of her singing Baker Baker by Tori Amos and I pressed my phone to my ear to hear it. She knows I'm a massive Tori fan and thought I might enjoy her rendition which she'd recorded that afternoon. Which I did. In fact, it made me feel hugely emotional and then incredibly happy.

After an hour or so the audience started drifting in and the cafe filled with excited-looking people. There's a wonderful buzz which comes from an expectant audience...

I'm proud to say that another slew of Greenham women came to see the show again tonight, some of whom chatted to us in the bar beforehand. Two of them asked me to sign their programmes and all I could think to write was "thank you for saving the world" and "Greenham women are everywhere." I feel such an enormous sense of gratitude to them, and feel so sad that the world doesn't quite recognise them as the heroes they undoubtedly are. Emily, LJ and Robin from the NYMT came to see the show tonight and none of them knew anything about Greenham and what had happened there. They were extraordinarily moved by the story. I genuinely think that Greenham Common needs to taught in more history syllabuses.

It was the night of the cousins tonight. One of Nathan's was there (whom it turns out was a day visitor to Greenham, and took part in Embrace The Base) and my cousin Matt was there with his brood. His wife Boo, whom I've known since I was about 14, threw her arms around me afterwards and said, "I'm so proud of you. I always feel like this when you do anything. I see you as my little brother." And I realised I see her in the same sort of way... Like a big sister. She was, I recall, the first member of my family whom I came out to. The older I get the more important family becomes.

There was a partial standing ovation tonight, and, as I looked around, I saw a sea of people wearing CND badges, both men and women. Robin described the show as electrifying (one of my favourite words.) And one of the Greenham woman was weeping when she came up to me. "You got it spot on." She said. "Even with such a small cast you've managed to get all the characters." It is hugely gratifying. So many people who know nothing, or very little about Greenham have told us we'd got stuff wrong, but even Scratch The Itch, the bawdy heterosexual song which the knife hung over for so long, has become one of the, if not THE most popular numbers in the show, and had a seal of approval from Rebecca Johnson last night: "I remember a straight woman aggressively waltzing me around the camp fire. She was just like Ceridwen."

The man who runs the cafe in the theatre also saw the show tonight, and came up to me twice to shake my hand and tell me how great he thought the show was. "We've also loved having you here" he said, which made me feel proud. The company of this show, to a tee, have been polite, fun, friendly and very good to be around. I'll miss them all very much.

Validation

Sometimes you need a day like today. We spent much of the afternoon in a bit of a funk, Nathan particularly. We’re both aware that the journey we’ve been on over the last few months has been one of the steepest uphill climbs of our lives and the little voices in the back of our heads had started to wonder if the view from the top had been worth all the bother.

Today, we learnt that it had. As soon as the show started we became aware that a group of women behind us were laughing at very specific Greenham references which had never caused a great deal of mirth in previous audiences. At a certain point, Nathan and I looked at one another, nodded sagely and said “Greenham women.”

At the interval I turned around and spoke to them; “excuse me. This may sound like a very odd question, but are you Greenham women?” “Yes” came the proud reply. My heart skipped a beat. In front of me was a whole line of the people I have been desperate to see this show, but simultaneously terrified of how they might react. More frighteningly, I suddenly realised that one of the women was Rebecca Johnson. THE Rebecca Johnson. She is perhaps the most famous Greenham woman of all time. She lived in the camps for 7 years. She was about at every major event. She danced on the silos. She was arrested and beaten up by police. She ripped the fences down after Reflect the Base. She is a legend. We based the role of Kim on her. There are lines in the show which I took verbatim from television interviews she’d given.

I am thrilled to report that she, and the rest of the women, loved the show. They cried. They laughed hysterically when Helen sailed across the stage on her roller-skates. They even accepted the central heterosexual love story. It was a truly magical moment. They were so gracious afterwards and thanked us for “absolutely capturing the spirit and characters of Greenham” and even thanked us for portraying all the arguments. Rebecca is a singer, and tells us that she used music all the time to change the mood of people. When everyone was downbeat, she’d sing rabble rousing songs. When they were angry, she’d sing soothing music. She found the music in our show moving. She even loved the rather campy song involving feather dusters, which we’d thought she might have had an issue with. She tells us there was a recent demonstration at Aldermaston, and, because the women protesters had recently been classified as “domestic extremists,” they staged a big dance routine outside the gates which involved dusters and marigolds! So we got it right. Phew! Validation.

To make matters even more delightful, Frank was in the audience from New York along with Fiona and Julian, Jill from Northern Ireland and Stef and David. Stef, who is a rock God from a well-know band, said he’d enjoyed it greatly, despite having “not seen a great number of musicals.”

After the show the women stayed in the bar and chatted to the cast for an hour. It was a genuinely magical moment. For the cast, and many of the audience, those women were instantly heroes. There was such a buzz.

On the way home, we came across a drunk trans person asleep on the tube. A man (who later turned out to be an ex-Marine) tried to wake her up at Archway, but she was unresponsive. We eventually managed to get her stirring as we approached Highgate, and, because she didn’t seem to know where she was going, we pulled her off the tube and tried to help her. We ascertained that her name was Lesley and eventually that she needed to go to East Finchley, so we all got back on the tube, Jill included, and wet there. Nathan (fiercely protective, primarily because she was trans and seemingly vulnerable) and the marine, then escorted her out of the station where I’m told she almost went under a bus and then completely flipped out. Eventually she got into a taxi and vanished in a haze. Meanwhile, I was escorting Jill back to Highgate. It was a most surreal end to the day.

Non communication

We stood at Highgate tube for twenty minutes this afternoon waiting for a train to arrive. We kept hearing the same message, namely that a "non-communicative train" at Finchley Central was causing delays. I wondered how a non-communicative train would manifest itself. An angry driver with all communication lines switched off, driving through countless stations at top speed whilst its passengers screamed and banged the windows in terror? Fortunately it turned out to be a storm in a teacup. Perhaps the faulty train was taken out of service. Or maybe the driver decided to start communicating again.

None of the Northern Line trains were going via Charing Cross, so we got a Bank train and changed at Camden where the tannoy announcements immediately sent us to the wrong platform. Huge swathes of confused-looking people were running up and down the steps doing the Camden hop like a scene from a comedy disaster movie. Meanwhile, LU Underground staff saw fit to run the somewhat incendiary message, "ladies and gentlemen, there is a good service operating on all London Underground lines" on a loop. We almost missed the start of the matinee!

The matinee audience was small but hugely vocal and laughed loudly at every joke. It was a friendly crowd as well. Mid week matinees are often the shows which industry people come to. Jake and Pippa were there. Abbie came for the second time. My friend Lisa from Chichester sat just behind us and chortled fondly. The joy about having mixed reviews is that people who have read them come in with low expectations which are then blown away!

We sat with Llio and Abbie in the little coffee bar at the theatre in the break between shows and took it in turns to spill stuff. Llio managed to knock a whole glass of caramel-flavoured coffee onto the table which inexplicably ended up in her hair. The nice man behind the counter gave her a refill. We obviously instantly tried to set her up with him!

The second show was clean and had a large, respectful audience, who watched politely rather than riotously, and then applauded wildly at the end. My dear friend Penny, a former Greenham woman, was in the audience. I guess out of everyone who has been to see the show, I was keenest to impress her. She was full of praise and said the scenes with arguments in them took her right back to her days on the camps. She pulled us up on the use of the word "girl," however, which was such a taboo at Greenham, that, thirty years on, it still shocked her when it was used in the show.

She thought the cast was wonderful and only took issue with our decision to feature a rather maternal older lady character. In her experience, the middle class older women in the camps tended to shy away from the maternal stereotype even when the younger women tried to thrust that particular role upon them. I thought that was an incredibly interesting observation. Of course the irony is that this particular character is one of the most popular with audiences, so the authenticity vs theatricality argument continues...

Jeremy and Jordan from the NYMT came, as did my old friend, Ash and the lovely Rob from Nathan's Royal Airforce drama groups. He's a proper techno-geek, so was just about as perfect an audient as we could have hoped to have.

There was a Q and A after the show which was very well attended. One man put his hand up to say he'd stayed for the Q and A because he'd hugely enjoyed the show, and only realised that there was a computer aspect when the conversation began. That was really heartening because it tells us that the show potentially has an audience beyond the circus of the experiment.

And if you have Sky Arts, don't forget you can see the show on telly tomorrow night. Coverage starts at 8pm with Computer Says Show, the second part of the documentary series, followed at 9pm by the broadcast of the full show, which I'm told is looking just lovely.

Dope

We went into Muswell Hill today to buy lots of cleaning equipment. We went to the 99p store and exited laden with everything we need to thoroughly spring clean the house. We also bought a pair of dustbins. Haringey council has finally cottoned on to the concept of recycling and, a year after requesting them, we've been provided with the pink and green bin liners we need to segregate the different types of waste.

On our way back from the shops we drove down a street where all the trees were being pollarded. I hate seeing trees butchered in this way. They always look so pathetic: so humiliated. It's a funny old time of year to chop all the branches away. There's obviously an understanding that birds nests will be left untouched, so every so often there'd be a tall branch sticking out higher than the rest with a giant nest perched perilously on top. In one of them, a pair of bewildered magpies were plainly trying to work out what the heck was going on!

I came into central London for a meeting at a swanky hotel in Seven Dials. My pot of tea came with a pair of very strange, very small biscuits which had the most peculiar flavour which nestled somewhere between very tasty and inedible!

After the meeting I hot-footed it across to Borough for osteopathy before returning to Central London where I spent ages searching for daffodils. It's St David's Day today and I wanted to give a little bunch of flowers to the two Welshies in the cast, Llio and Steffan. I finally found a flower stall in Covent Garden, bought a couple of bunches and managed to slip into their dressing rooms like a ninja to deliver them whilst the cast were warming up on stage.

Steffan told me afterwards that he'd never been given flowers before. I think it's such a shame that men don't get given flowers very often. There's many a time that I've been handed a bottle of wine whilst the women around me cradle beautiful bunches of flowers and I've felt a little sad. Everyone deserves flowers. In fact, I know a married couple who argue all the time because one of them secretly longs for a bunch of flowers from the other...

The show was fabulous tonight, and the audience loved it. There were several returnees in the crowd. One of them saw it last night and instantly booked tickets to see it again. We had a legendary MD in from the West End who said the show was one of the best British new musicals he'd seen in recent years.

The man sitting opposite us on the tube on the way home stank to high heaven of dope! It's such a pungent smell. If I were a policeman and I cared two hoots about that sort of thing, I would instantly have searched him and no doubt have found vast quantities of illegal substance about his person. Dope smokers so often forget that the smell hangs around them like Pig Pen on Charlie Brown!