We've been in Cambridge all day today celebrating my birthday, which, incidentally, is on Monday. It always feels a little fraudulent and previous to celebrate one's birthday before the actual event, but I felt like doing something with a bit of a crowd, and today was the nearest Saturday.
We went there by train, and met at King's Cross just before 10 this morning. The whole of the Northern Line was down, and, by the time Nathan and I had got our acts together, there wasn't enough time to get a rail replacement bus. We booked an Uber car, which felt incredibly decadent. Nathan and I are not taxi users. They're far too costly. But sometimes needs must. Sadly our driver was awful. He kept ignoring the sat nav and making us later and later as a result. Sitting in laborious queues of traffic at the start of a day which is meant to be relaxing is not a lot of fun. But we got there. Just.
My travel companions today were Tina, Sam, Matt, Abbie, Ian, Ted Thornhill, Nathan and Julie Clare. We met up with Brother Edward, Sascha and my parents in Cambridge itself.
These days are always fairly formulaic. We've been doing the same thing, pretty much every year since my 13th birthday. We walk from the train station to Marks and Spencer on the market square to buy a picnic lunch. We stroll around the market itself and buy strawberries, sun glasses and all the things we suddenly think we might need for the rest of the day. At that stage, half of us disappear with my brother to King's College, where we hire a punt. My brother was a student at this particular college, and alumni here get huge privileges, including being able to hire college-owned punts at very special rates.
We went through the college, showing Tina and the gang the amazing dining hall where the students eat decadently (in the style of Harry Potter) and then punted along the backs towards the rest of the group, who were waiting at Scudamore's, the official punt hire place. It's rather nice to be able to punt along the backs in Cambridge. Our trip always takes us up the river and away from the city towards the village of Grantchester, so a few glimpses of some of those iconic sights, like the sublime King's College chapel and the wooden mathematical bridge, is always a bit of a treat. I'm not sure Tina quite felt it was a treat. She'd never been punting before and has a pathological fear of water. She spent most of the first part of the journey clinging to the sides of the boat, expecting the whole thing to capsize.
The Cam in the direction of Grantchester is on a higher elevation, so the punts need to be dragged over rollers by the side of a weir. Whilst the others got on with heaving our punt up the hill, I joined the other group at Scudmore's and we set off down the river in tandem.
Sascha greeted us with the news that he'd seen Stephen Hawkins rolling along the side of the river whilst he'd sat waiting for us. The two gays from Gogglebox were apparently also in the vicinity. They'll almost certainly have caused more of a splash!
The trip up to Grantchester was as it always is. The sun was hot. People swam in the rivers. Young people swung from trees. We were visited by an inquisitive swan. Nathan climbed out of the punt and over a footbridge and plonked himself back inside the boat on the other side. He always does that. There's something pleasingly predictable about the trip to Grantchester. The only difference was the high number of canoeists on the river. Those little bastards can be incredibly irritating. There's a tendency for them to travel in packs, and, whilst they ought to have been fairly nimble and able to navigate the meanders of the river with ease, most were completely incapable of steering, and simply got in the way of the punts. One woman had a right go at us, suggesting we "stopped to let her pass." She'd already crashed into us about nine times, and, on one occasion caused a major pile up of several punts, about nine canoeists and an inflatable dinghy!
We picnicked with my parents in a field half way between Cambridge and Grantchester. We ate too much. We always do.
Upon arriving in Grantchester, we took ourselves to the Orchard cafe, where people eat cream trees under apple, pear and plum trees. It's an iconic location. Virginia Wolf, TS Elliot, Keynes, Brooke and Wittgenstein were all regular customers there in the early 20th Century. One assumes the deck chairs are some of the only things which have changed since those heady days. We bumped into Helen Acton. It was so lovely to see her. I shared a cream tea with Nathan. The sun was incredibly hot. I could feel my forehead burning to a crisp.
We returned to our punts at about 6pm. It's really rather lovely that you can simply leave a punt moored up against the river bank with all of your possessions inside without any fear of things being stolen or trashed. The light was glorious. There wasn't a cloud in the sky. We threw ourselves into the river and had a lovely swim in the reed-infused waters. People have been swimming in Grantchester Meadows for years and years. People have swum on my birthday trips to Cambridge for as long as I can remember. I love tradition.
We sang as we punted back to Cambridge. We always do. We sing in multipart harmony. We sang rounds. We sang folk songs. We sang ABBA, The Beatles, The Mammas and the Papas and loads of show tunes. People seemed rather thrilled to hear a boat load of people singing whilst drifting down the river. It's certainly a somewhat eccentric sight.
We arrived back in Cambridge at about 8pm and had a drink outside the Mill pub whilst watching a group of fully-clothed nutters launching themselves into the Cam from the bridge by Queens College.
The train journey home was accompanied by a glorious sunset which seemed to fill a great swathe of the fenland sky before melting into a ribbon of tangerine-coloured fire on the horizon.
The only thing which was less than perfect was the rail replacement bus ride from kings Cross back to Highgate which took far longer than it should have done, threw us about and then deposited us unceremoniously and without reason at Archway. London can be very boring sometimes!
Saturday, 6 August 2016
Somerset
We drove down to Somerset yesterday to attend Nathan's cousin's wedding. It was actually quite a stressful journey from about Bristol onwards on the M5. The traffic got heavy and we suddenly realised that the journey to Taunton was considerably longer than we'd thought it was. Nathan got so anxious at one point that I couldn't even calm him down with ABBA!
As it happened the wedding kicked off a little late, so we made it with five minutes to spare. The bride looked radiant. The groom looked handsome. The bride's brother sang beautifully. No one could hear the registrar. The happy couple's very cute daughter read The Owl and the Pussy Cat, and taught the registrar a thing or two about projection!
The ceremony took place outside, which was really very lovely. The grounds of the "castle" where the wedding took place were decked out to resemble a church fete. There was a bouncy castle, a giant Connect Four, a "splat the rat" and all manner of things like ice cream stalls.
It was a rather charming day all in all. The bride's father delivered a very moving speech. The food was a Greek barbecue as a result of the groom being Greek Cypriot. Lots of his family seemed highly perplexed by Brexit. I felt embarrassed all over again.
We slipped out early so that we could get back to London at a decent time. Today is a big day. We're celebrating my birthday!
As it happened the wedding kicked off a little late, so we made it with five minutes to spare. The bride looked radiant. The groom looked handsome. The bride's brother sang beautifully. No one could hear the registrar. The happy couple's very cute daughter read The Owl and the Pussy Cat, and taught the registrar a thing or two about projection!
The ceremony took place outside, which was really very lovely. The grounds of the "castle" where the wedding took place were decked out to resemble a church fete. There was a bouncy castle, a giant Connect Four, a "splat the rat" and all manner of things like ice cream stalls.
It was a rather charming day all in all. The bride's father delivered a very moving speech. The food was a Greek barbecue as a result of the groom being Greek Cypriot. Lots of his family seemed highly perplexed by Brexit. I felt embarrassed all over again.
We slipped out early so that we could get back to London at a decent time. Today is a big day. We're celebrating my birthday!
Friday, 5 August 2016
Godfathered
I had a classic anxiety dream last night. I think it was a response to all the admin I'm doing at the moment, and the fact that we go into rehearsals for Brass and I feel there's a ludicrously tall mountain to climb before any of that can happen. There's also anxiety attached to not being in work and needing to be in work. Call it a post-holiday come down.
The dream was very bizarre. I'd gone back to visit my old music department at the University of York and was trying to find my composition tutor because I wanted to give him a copy of the Pepys album. When I found him, I realised I'd forgotten to bring any copies of the album with me and asked if I could send it through the post. He sucked his teeth and looked embarrassed. "Thing is" he said, "I'm not really that interested in hearing it. You were a fairly promising composer, but your laziness has stopped you from amounting to anything." I tried to remonstrate and was about to tell him that Our Gay Wedding had been BAFTA nominated but then a weird woman came into the space. She started talking over the top of me about the fact that she'd bought a lovely pair of shoes because she was so miserable in her marriage. My tutor stopped looking at me and started to sympathise with her plight. I stood there for a while and then started to feel like a bit of a gooseberry; "I ought to be going..." I said to my tutor. "Okay" he said, "great to see you..." And then I left.
This morning I went to see Philippa and my two god daughters, who were having a play date with Lily and Jack, who live around the corner. I think it's fairly safe to say that I was well and truly godfathered.
Godfathered (verb): Possessing a weakness not present in actual parents or professional carers which tolerates (and encourages) a level of bad behaviour in children to the detriment of the godfather's appearance, health or dignity.
I got covered from head to toe in face paint. I got swung in a basket until I nearly chundered. I got embroiled in a plot to lock Philippa out of the house and then was prevented by force from opening the front door to let Philippa back in. It was a lot of fun!
We ate at the Hackney City farm, which is a charmingly ramshackle place in which to have lunch. Much or most of the food is vegetarian. I had the most delicious plate of food: Scrambled eggs on sour dough bread with avocado and Halloumi. The kids ate pasta with pesto.
We then went plum-scrumping in Haggerston Park. I have no idea why that participle park is filled with plum trees. I can only assume there was some kind of post war initiative to bring fruit to inner city kids. The trees are simply laden with fruit, and there aren't any wasps about at the moment to make a mess of them. We were mostly picking up windfalls, but I also got a big stick and gently encouraged a few more down from the trees. Philippa regularly goes searching for plums in the park, with which she makes lovely crumbles and beautiful tarts.
When I arrived at the house, the kids were all under the conservatory table searching for dead insects. They found a cricket, a wasp and a bluebottle, prompting one of the visiting kids to say, "oh my God, this house is so creepy!" Deia looked at her friend and agreed, "they fall down from the spiders' webs in the roof."
I had to come home with my face and hair covered in pink, blue and purple face paint. No one on the tube seemed to find it remotely funny, although I could see everyone staring. The assumption in London is often that a person who looks a little eccentric is extremely mad and must be avoided at all cost. Someone came up to the person sitting next to me on a bench at Old Street to ask a question about the Northern Line. When I answered instead, she refused to make eye contact with me. Maybe she saw the bright purple nose and immediately assumed I was an alcoholic?
This evening we drove into central London and parked up on the South Bank somewhere near Lambeth Palace. We were filming yet another set of sequences for the Pepys video, this time with Trevor, a Canadian opera singer with one of my favourite voices in the world and Abbie, who hugely generously came along to record a few more sequences which would have been done by members of the Rebel Chorus who are out of the country at the moment.
We filmed opposite Big Ben, realising in the process quite how much of the beauty of Central London we take for granted. It's a stunning city and we are incredibly lucky to live here. As ever, with this film, we had a riot playing around with fire, and the four of us made a rather brilliant crew. We all performed in front of the camera, Trevor and Nathan did lighting, Trevor, Abbie and Nathan did sound. Nathan managed the pyrotechnics. Who needs a gaffer and a dolly grip when you have four musicians?!
We filmed Abbie near the London Eye, and were somewhat astonished when, mid way through her shot, a fox appeared from the bushes, found a half eaten ice cream, and sat, very happily tucking into it no more than a metre away from us. Nathan shone a torch on the little fella, and he seemed more than happy to let me film him for a while. He may well appear in the film!
The day ended on Leake Street, that fabulous graffiti-lined street behind Waterloo which basically runs underneath a series of railway arches. It's open day and night, and is always full of rather edgy looking people, but the place provides a lovely looking backdrop for any film you might want to look a bit urban and gritty. I was particularly pleased with a shot we did of Abbie there, walking along with a lantern in her hand, Nathan creating a pool of light on the floor in front of her with a torch. Very beautiful. I hope they all edit together well because I'm very pleased with a lot of what we've shot.
I have three more people left to film...
The dream was very bizarre. I'd gone back to visit my old music department at the University of York and was trying to find my composition tutor because I wanted to give him a copy of the Pepys album. When I found him, I realised I'd forgotten to bring any copies of the album with me and asked if I could send it through the post. He sucked his teeth and looked embarrassed. "Thing is" he said, "I'm not really that interested in hearing it. You were a fairly promising composer, but your laziness has stopped you from amounting to anything." I tried to remonstrate and was about to tell him that Our Gay Wedding had been BAFTA nominated but then a weird woman came into the space. She started talking over the top of me about the fact that she'd bought a lovely pair of shoes because she was so miserable in her marriage. My tutor stopped looking at me and started to sympathise with her plight. I stood there for a while and then started to feel like a bit of a gooseberry; "I ought to be going..." I said to my tutor. "Okay" he said, "great to see you..." And then I left.
This morning I went to see Philippa and my two god daughters, who were having a play date with Lily and Jack, who live around the corner. I think it's fairly safe to say that I was well and truly godfathered.
Godfathered (verb): Possessing a weakness not present in actual parents or professional carers which tolerates (and encourages) a level of bad behaviour in children to the detriment of the godfather's appearance, health or dignity.
I got covered from head to toe in face paint. I got swung in a basket until I nearly chundered. I got embroiled in a plot to lock Philippa out of the house and then was prevented by force from opening the front door to let Philippa back in. It was a lot of fun!
We ate at the Hackney City farm, which is a charmingly ramshackle place in which to have lunch. Much or most of the food is vegetarian. I had the most delicious plate of food: Scrambled eggs on sour dough bread with avocado and Halloumi. The kids ate pasta with pesto.
We then went plum-scrumping in Haggerston Park. I have no idea why that participle park is filled with plum trees. I can only assume there was some kind of post war initiative to bring fruit to inner city kids. The trees are simply laden with fruit, and there aren't any wasps about at the moment to make a mess of them. We were mostly picking up windfalls, but I also got a big stick and gently encouraged a few more down from the trees. Philippa regularly goes searching for plums in the park, with which she makes lovely crumbles and beautiful tarts.
When I arrived at the house, the kids were all under the conservatory table searching for dead insects. They found a cricket, a wasp and a bluebottle, prompting one of the visiting kids to say, "oh my God, this house is so creepy!" Deia looked at her friend and agreed, "they fall down from the spiders' webs in the roof."
I had to come home with my face and hair covered in pink, blue and purple face paint. No one on the tube seemed to find it remotely funny, although I could see everyone staring. The assumption in London is often that a person who looks a little eccentric is extremely mad and must be avoided at all cost. Someone came up to the person sitting next to me on a bench at Old Street to ask a question about the Northern Line. When I answered instead, she refused to make eye contact with me. Maybe she saw the bright purple nose and immediately assumed I was an alcoholic?
This evening we drove into central London and parked up on the South Bank somewhere near Lambeth Palace. We were filming yet another set of sequences for the Pepys video, this time with Trevor, a Canadian opera singer with one of my favourite voices in the world and Abbie, who hugely generously came along to record a few more sequences which would have been done by members of the Rebel Chorus who are out of the country at the moment.
We filmed opposite Big Ben, realising in the process quite how much of the beauty of Central London we take for granted. It's a stunning city and we are incredibly lucky to live here. As ever, with this film, we had a riot playing around with fire, and the four of us made a rather brilliant crew. We all performed in front of the camera, Trevor and Nathan did lighting, Trevor, Abbie and Nathan did sound. Nathan managed the pyrotechnics. Who needs a gaffer and a dolly grip when you have four musicians?!
We filmed Abbie near the London Eye, and were somewhat astonished when, mid way through her shot, a fox appeared from the bushes, found a half eaten ice cream, and sat, very happily tucking into it no more than a metre away from us. Nathan shone a torch on the little fella, and he seemed more than happy to let me film him for a while. He may well appear in the film!
The day ended on Leake Street, that fabulous graffiti-lined street behind Waterloo which basically runs underneath a series of railway arches. It's open day and night, and is always full of rather edgy looking people, but the place provides a lovely looking backdrop for any film you might want to look a bit urban and gritty. I was particularly pleased with a shot we did of Abbie there, walking along with a lantern in her hand, Nathan creating a pool of light on the floor in front of her with a torch. Very beautiful. I hope they all edit together well because I'm very pleased with a lot of what we've shot.
I have three more people left to film...
Wednesday, 3 August 2016
Impervious
Another day of non-stop admin, except today I was exhausted because I hadn't slept very well, so I'm not sure I achieved as much as I could have done! There's not much else to say about the day other than that Nathan came back from his trip on a Latvian ferry. It seems like he's had the most amazing time. He was literally buzzing. Born to cruise, that one!
I drove to Heathrow to pick him up. The weather was very odd and went from hot sun to weird tropical gales to heavy rain to that sort of bright orange, very clean light you sometimes get on summer evenings after rain.
We had pizza for tea to celebrate Nathan's home-coming... And watched Ru Paul.
There's still a big pile of human poo in our alleyway, which still smells four days after it was deposited. Two days of solid rain has not managed to shift it. Typical, eh? The rain was forceful enough to come through our roof in three places, and yet that steaming turd was impervious to it.
I better go to bed.
I drove to Heathrow to pick him up. The weather was very odd and went from hot sun to weird tropical gales to heavy rain to that sort of bright orange, very clean light you sometimes get on summer evenings after rain.
We had pizza for tea to celebrate Nathan's home-coming... And watched Ru Paul.
There's still a big pile of human poo in our alleyway, which still smells four days after it was deposited. Two days of solid rain has not managed to shift it. Typical, eh? The rain was forceful enough to come through our roof in three places, and yet that steaming turd was impervious to it.
I better go to bed.
Tuesday, 2 August 2016
The rain, the blinkin rain
Oh my God the weather today has been shitty! It has rained almost constantly. It's the sort of hot rain which gets under your skin and there comes a point at which you think you might be sweating as well as wet, but there's no way of knowing where one type of moisture finishes and the other starts. There was no breeze to cool me down, my moustache started drooping, so I've simply spent the entire day feeling utterly sorry for myself and trying not to expend any unnecessary energy. Then of course, in the street, you have to deal with the umbrellas everywhere. No one seems to want to look where they're going under an umbrella. They simply plough on. Unaware. Umbrellas pointing in front of them like polyester battering rams.
I had my hair cut earlier and the barber had to dry my face and hair with a paper towel before he could start cutting. The shame of it! Everywhere I went, I looked around me to see if anyone else was showing the signs of melting. Apparently not!
I spent the morning doing some of the painstakingly dull admin associated with releasing an album. Every single performer attached to a CD has to be registered as part of PPL, which means, if the album goes mega (which of course it won't, but if it did) all the performers would be able to collect royalties associated with tracks being played on the radio and TV. The problem is that singers don't tend to be members of PPL, and of the thirty or so that I've registered today, only one was actually a member. And because you have to be a member to collect PPL royalties, my task felt both time-consuming and pointless... Of course it's not. Because I've registered the singers, if the album does well, the singers can join PPL and get a bit of money. But what a faff! There are a million processes similar to this one, some of which I've been trying to do simultaneously so that when one becomes too dull, I can switch screens and do something equally boring, but at least different! I phoned Fiona to have a good whinge and she was very sympathetic, reminding me that a record company would have a specific person whose job it was to input all this data. Self-releasing an album is a dull old game!
I got so obsessively engrossed in my mind-numbing tasks that I quite forgot I had a lunchtime meeting with a production company. Fortunately the bloke I was seeing texted me to change the venue, so I was shaken out of my reverie with enough time to hot-foot it into Soho.
We had lunch somewhere a bit fancy. I forget that some people do okay out of the arts and can afford to eat in nice places where the lighting is low and the waiters wear waistcoats and are overly attentive! I had some lovely soup and a bowl of macaroni cheese. For some reason the vegetarian menu was separate and I had to ask for the waiter to give me a copy. It made me feel a bit odd. Like a leper. I wondered if they were going to ask me to move tables and sit with the undesirables. Surely there are quite a few meat eaters out there who might fancy a bowl of macaroni cheese? The joy about vegetarian food is that it can be eaten by anyone. I know Nathan often chooses a vegetarian option...
Anyway, I found the meeting very inspiring. I'm never happier than when throwing ideas about with someone who understands how to make good telly and challenges me to think out of the box. My tendency when making documentaries is to want to create artistic "vignettes" without too much over-arching narrative. Good programme makers like the chap I met today will always encourage me to reappraise that particular desire.
I had my hair cut earlier and the barber had to dry my face and hair with a paper towel before he could start cutting. The shame of it! Everywhere I went, I looked around me to see if anyone else was showing the signs of melting. Apparently not!
I spent the morning doing some of the painstakingly dull admin associated with releasing an album. Every single performer attached to a CD has to be registered as part of PPL, which means, if the album goes mega (which of course it won't, but if it did) all the performers would be able to collect royalties associated with tracks being played on the radio and TV. The problem is that singers don't tend to be members of PPL, and of the thirty or so that I've registered today, only one was actually a member. And because you have to be a member to collect PPL royalties, my task felt both time-consuming and pointless... Of course it's not. Because I've registered the singers, if the album does well, the singers can join PPL and get a bit of money. But what a faff! There are a million processes similar to this one, some of which I've been trying to do simultaneously so that when one becomes too dull, I can switch screens and do something equally boring, but at least different! I phoned Fiona to have a good whinge and she was very sympathetic, reminding me that a record company would have a specific person whose job it was to input all this data. Self-releasing an album is a dull old game!
I got so obsessively engrossed in my mind-numbing tasks that I quite forgot I had a lunchtime meeting with a production company. Fortunately the bloke I was seeing texted me to change the venue, so I was shaken out of my reverie with enough time to hot-foot it into Soho.
We had lunch somewhere a bit fancy. I forget that some people do okay out of the arts and can afford to eat in nice places where the lighting is low and the waiters wear waistcoats and are overly attentive! I had some lovely soup and a bowl of macaroni cheese. For some reason the vegetarian menu was separate and I had to ask for the waiter to give me a copy. It made me feel a bit odd. Like a leper. I wondered if they were going to ask me to move tables and sit with the undesirables. Surely there are quite a few meat eaters out there who might fancy a bowl of macaroni cheese? The joy about vegetarian food is that it can be eaten by anyone. I know Nathan often chooses a vegetarian option...
Anyway, I found the meeting very inspiring. I'm never happier than when throwing ideas about with someone who understands how to make good telly and challenges me to think out of the box. My tendency when making documentaries is to want to create artistic "vignettes" without too much over-arching narrative. Good programme makers like the chap I met today will always encourage me to reappraise that particular desire.
Rain and filming
I've had a bit of a headache today, which I sincerely hope is not me coming down with the dreaded lurgy that my godson and Meriel had on holiday!
Today has been spent travelling up and down London on tube trains. First up was the osteopath. After last time's less-than-satisfying session with a female osteopath, I had a chat with the receptionist and we decided it wasn't sexist or misogynist of me to request a male osteopath in future. When I said I needed someone who wasn't sacred to pummel me, she said she knew exactly who to suggest, and, today, I was greeted by a 6'6" Bulgarian man mountain who went by the name of Ivan. Ivan had hands like upholstered metal deckchairs, and a steely blue-eyed air of menace. You would not want to come across Ivan in a dark alley, or on a rugby pitch. I bet Ivan doesn't cook the meat he eats... Or hear the cries of his patients. Ivan is fabulous! I emerged from the session cross-eyed, with tears streaming down my face from giggling like an imbecile whilst he used his elbow to literally squeeze the air from my body. I walked past the receptionist on the way out and got the knowing look of someone who knew I'd been Ivan'd!
From Borough, I went back up to Kentish Town to visit the gym and then the dentist who told me she'd seldom seen teeth as good as mine. She said she felt it must be a good diet mixed with the fact that I neither drink nor smoke. They might be gargantuan in size, but they're apparently made of strong stuff. I felt pathetically proud as I walked to the tube and immediately texted my mate, Raily, who never misses an opportunity to tell me I eat too many sweeties!
I went from Kentish Town back to south London, this time to meet a lovely lady from the Lesbian and Gay switchboard. We met in an "Eat" by the side of the Thames. Eat, it turns out, has a very poor selection of vegetarian sandwiches. Had I not been so hungry, or busily talking to Nathan (who's in some Lithuanian town) I might have had a word with the staff. But then, what would they have been able to say? The meeting went well. It was really just a "hello" and a bit of an explorative chat. I've got an idea for a film which I'm tentatively trying to work up into a pitch. As with all of these things, it's unlikely to come to fruition, but if I thought this way about everything I did, I'd never achieve anything!
It started raining in the afternoon. Really horrid, non-stop pissy rain, which made the tubes hum and steam.
I had a few hours at home in Highgate to do some frantic admin, and then jumped in the car to drive through heavy rain down to Peckham where I met the lovely Jana from the Rebel Chorus. We were filming her singing a few lines from the Pepys Motet for the video we're making to accompany the album's release. She looked fabulous in a shiny, figure-hugging dress, but, by the time we'd started filming, the rain was bucketing down, so we filmed her in her coat! Candles, cameras, electronic equipment and rain on a dodgy street in Peckham late at night are not the best combination. Heaven knows what we've managed to capture! Rain is a double-edged sword on a film shoot. It can look incredibly atmospheric, and it reflects light in a magical way, but it means everything has to be done repeatedly, and, of course, you run the risk of destroying your kit!
Still we got there, and I was safely home before midnight.
It continued to rain long into the night and I fell asleep with the sound of water dripping into pans in the sitting room and loft...
Today has been spent travelling up and down London on tube trains. First up was the osteopath. After last time's less-than-satisfying session with a female osteopath, I had a chat with the receptionist and we decided it wasn't sexist or misogynist of me to request a male osteopath in future. When I said I needed someone who wasn't sacred to pummel me, she said she knew exactly who to suggest, and, today, I was greeted by a 6'6" Bulgarian man mountain who went by the name of Ivan. Ivan had hands like upholstered metal deckchairs, and a steely blue-eyed air of menace. You would not want to come across Ivan in a dark alley, or on a rugby pitch. I bet Ivan doesn't cook the meat he eats... Or hear the cries of his patients. Ivan is fabulous! I emerged from the session cross-eyed, with tears streaming down my face from giggling like an imbecile whilst he used his elbow to literally squeeze the air from my body. I walked past the receptionist on the way out and got the knowing look of someone who knew I'd been Ivan'd!
From Borough, I went back up to Kentish Town to visit the gym and then the dentist who told me she'd seldom seen teeth as good as mine. She said she felt it must be a good diet mixed with the fact that I neither drink nor smoke. They might be gargantuan in size, but they're apparently made of strong stuff. I felt pathetically proud as I walked to the tube and immediately texted my mate, Raily, who never misses an opportunity to tell me I eat too many sweeties!
I went from Kentish Town back to south London, this time to meet a lovely lady from the Lesbian and Gay switchboard. We met in an "Eat" by the side of the Thames. Eat, it turns out, has a very poor selection of vegetarian sandwiches. Had I not been so hungry, or busily talking to Nathan (who's in some Lithuanian town) I might have had a word with the staff. But then, what would they have been able to say? The meeting went well. It was really just a "hello" and a bit of an explorative chat. I've got an idea for a film which I'm tentatively trying to work up into a pitch. As with all of these things, it's unlikely to come to fruition, but if I thought this way about everything I did, I'd never achieve anything!
It started raining in the afternoon. Really horrid, non-stop pissy rain, which made the tubes hum and steam.
I had a few hours at home in Highgate to do some frantic admin, and then jumped in the car to drive through heavy rain down to Peckham where I met the lovely Jana from the Rebel Chorus. We were filming her singing a few lines from the Pepys Motet for the video we're making to accompany the album's release. She looked fabulous in a shiny, figure-hugging dress, but, by the time we'd started filming, the rain was bucketing down, so we filmed her in her coat! Candles, cameras, electronic equipment and rain on a dodgy street in Peckham late at night are not the best combination. Heaven knows what we've managed to capture! Rain is a double-edged sword on a film shoot. It can look incredibly atmospheric, and it reflects light in a magical way, but it means everything has to be done repeatedly, and, of course, you run the risk of destroying your kit!
Still we got there, and I was safely home before midnight.
It continued to rain long into the night and I fell asleep with the sound of water dripping into pans in the sitting room and loft...
Monday, 1 August 2016
Colsterdale Pals
Today started very early at the Youth Hostel. We knocked back a quick breakfast and then it was very much home James and don't spare the horses. A five and a half-hour drive is always tackled sooner rather than later.
On our way back down the A1, I managed to fulfil the ambition of visiting the beautiful Colsterdale Moor, home to the Leeds Pals monument, which marks where that particular battalion trained for a year and a half before heading off to France. It's the monument which the Pals themselves wanted, and attended on November 11th every year until there were none of them left. One assumes they weren't interested in a monument at the spot where many of them had died. They wanted to gather at the place where they'd lived: the last place they'd all been together. And it's really very moving to think about it in those terms.
The monument itself is very lovely. Gleaming and white and, today, stretching up into a sky so blue it looked almost purple. Colsterdale wraps itself around the monument in a most pleasing manner. The fields looked like a patchwork quilt, and I stood for sometime, somewhat transfixed by the shadows of clouds in the sky chasing sunlight across the fields.
More moving than the monument, however, were the ruins in the field opposite of the buildings the men had built and lived in. This is where the Pals slept, endlessly practiced military manoeuvres and bayonet drill, and transformed themselves from citizens into soldiers. It was the remnants of the old wash houses which Sam and I found most moving. The area is nothing but a few foundations these days, some broken porcelain pipework and a few ancient plug-holes with butterflies darting about, but it was somehow enough. I think we both imagined the men lined up in rows, quickly washing their faces in the bitter cold of winter. The moor is plainly not a place anyone would want to live in during heavy wind, rain or snow.
Our companion throughout most of the journeys this week has been the voice from Google Maps' satnav system. She can be really rather insistent bordering on irritating. Sam thought it might be nice to humanise her by giving her a name, so, somewhere on the Northumbrian cost, "Chlorrhoea" was born, and for the next few days she took us on many adventures and always delivered us safely... Until today.
Today Chlorrhoea failed us spectacularly! Chlorrhoea obviously thought we might like to end our lovely holiday by utterly trashing the car. She took us down a dirt track. It was terrifying. It got worse and worse, and then the bottom of the car started banging, scraping and sounding like a layer of metal was being peeled off. We had no option other than to turn back. Sam got out of the car so there was less weight inside and I reversed, constantly repeating a mantra to myself: "please let this be okay... Please let this be okay..." At one point I passed through a massive cloud of flies, many of which flew into the car. It was absolutely hideous.
Back on sturdy Tarmac we checked the car, and it looked okay, and got us back to London well enough. Just to add something surreal to the mayhem of the day, as we finally made it onto a proper country lane, a number of very fluffy black kittens ran across the road in front of the car. They looked like weird teddy bears. They must have been wild cats. There wasn't a house in sight.
As we passed through Bedfordshire, I noticed they were tearing down the caravan behind the "Adult Pit Stop" which I visited a number of times when I was making A1: The Road Musical. The caravan belonged to a 90 year old woman who had run the Happy Eater in the building where the roadside sex shop now stands. She was a brilliant old bird who told me that the cafe had once been a brothel for American soldiers in WW2, so she was not at all phased about the fact that it had become a sex shop. The knocking down of her home tells me that she must have finally shuffled off to the Happy Eater in the sky, and that there's another reason to assume that the A1 has become a shadow of its former eccentric self. Back in North Yorkshire we saw that they'd also knocked Quernhow Cafe down, which was a proper trucker stop with a great deal of character. It's where we filmed a lad called Wayne talking about the death of his brother Danny on the road. It's also where my cameraman went off to explore and found 100 dead rabbits strung up in a nearby barn!
I got home at about 5.30pm. It apparently took Sam a further 2 1/2 hours to get himself back to South London. He must have wanted to curl up and die.
My day wasn't over, however, as I had a date to meet Christopher from the Rebel Chorus, down on the beach by the Tower of London to film him singing a sequence from the Pepys Motet for our little film. We were really very speedy. He was well prepared, and, because it was just me, him, a candle and a torch, there was a limit to what we could achieve. After he'd finished, I took myself on a little walk around the city of London, filming a few cutaways to represent what Pepys' London looks like today. I had a lot of fun at the sign for Pudding Lane...
I got back to find someone (a human being) had laid a steaming turd in our alleyway. A wholly unacceptable end to a throughly pleasant day.
On our way back down the A1, I managed to fulfil the ambition of visiting the beautiful Colsterdale Moor, home to the Leeds Pals monument, which marks where that particular battalion trained for a year and a half before heading off to France. It's the monument which the Pals themselves wanted, and attended on November 11th every year until there were none of them left. One assumes they weren't interested in a monument at the spot where many of them had died. They wanted to gather at the place where they'd lived: the last place they'd all been together. And it's really very moving to think about it in those terms.
The monument itself is very lovely. Gleaming and white and, today, stretching up into a sky so blue it looked almost purple. Colsterdale wraps itself around the monument in a most pleasing manner. The fields looked like a patchwork quilt, and I stood for sometime, somewhat transfixed by the shadows of clouds in the sky chasing sunlight across the fields.
More moving than the monument, however, were the ruins in the field opposite of the buildings the men had built and lived in. This is where the Pals slept, endlessly practiced military manoeuvres and bayonet drill, and transformed themselves from citizens into soldiers. It was the remnants of the old wash houses which Sam and I found most moving. The area is nothing but a few foundations these days, some broken porcelain pipework and a few ancient plug-holes with butterflies darting about, but it was somehow enough. I think we both imagined the men lined up in rows, quickly washing their faces in the bitter cold of winter. The moor is plainly not a place anyone would want to live in during heavy wind, rain or snow.
Our companion throughout most of the journeys this week has been the voice from Google Maps' satnav system. She can be really rather insistent bordering on irritating. Sam thought it might be nice to humanise her by giving her a name, so, somewhere on the Northumbrian cost, "Chlorrhoea" was born, and for the next few days she took us on many adventures and always delivered us safely... Until today.
Today Chlorrhoea failed us spectacularly! Chlorrhoea obviously thought we might like to end our lovely holiday by utterly trashing the car. She took us down a dirt track. It was terrifying. It got worse and worse, and then the bottom of the car started banging, scraping and sounding like a layer of metal was being peeled off. We had no option other than to turn back. Sam got out of the car so there was less weight inside and I reversed, constantly repeating a mantra to myself: "please let this be okay... Please let this be okay..." At one point I passed through a massive cloud of flies, many of which flew into the car. It was absolutely hideous.
Back on sturdy Tarmac we checked the car, and it looked okay, and got us back to London well enough. Just to add something surreal to the mayhem of the day, as we finally made it onto a proper country lane, a number of very fluffy black kittens ran across the road in front of the car. They looked like weird teddy bears. They must have been wild cats. There wasn't a house in sight.
As we passed through Bedfordshire, I noticed they were tearing down the caravan behind the "Adult Pit Stop" which I visited a number of times when I was making A1: The Road Musical. The caravan belonged to a 90 year old woman who had run the Happy Eater in the building where the roadside sex shop now stands. She was a brilliant old bird who told me that the cafe had once been a brothel for American soldiers in WW2, so she was not at all phased about the fact that it had become a sex shop. The knocking down of her home tells me that she must have finally shuffled off to the Happy Eater in the sky, and that there's another reason to assume that the A1 has become a shadow of its former eccentric self. Back in North Yorkshire we saw that they'd also knocked Quernhow Cafe down, which was a proper trucker stop with a great deal of character. It's where we filmed a lad called Wayne talking about the death of his brother Danny on the road. It's also where my cameraman went off to explore and found 100 dead rabbits strung up in a nearby barn!
I got home at about 5.30pm. It apparently took Sam a further 2 1/2 hours to get himself back to South London. He must have wanted to curl up and die.
My day wasn't over, however, as I had a date to meet Christopher from the Rebel Chorus, down on the beach by the Tower of London to film him singing a sequence from the Pepys Motet for our little film. We were really very speedy. He was well prepared, and, because it was just me, him, a candle and a torch, there was a limit to what we could achieve. After he'd finished, I took myself on a little walk around the city of London, filming a few cutaways to represent what Pepys' London looks like today. I had a lot of fun at the sign for Pudding Lane...
I got back to find someone (a human being) had laid a steaming turd in our alleyway. A wholly unacceptable end to a throughly pleasant day.
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