I've spent the day today scoring music for a Brass medley in the forthcoming National Youth Music Theatre gala concert, which, for the record, takes place on October 30th. They're celebrating 40 years of existence. The orchestra for the concert is larger than the pit orchestra for Brass, so I'm expanding the orchestrations to include a wind section. Friends, colleagues and regular readers of this blog will know how much I hate wind instruments. They make such a ghastly noise. I'm literally forcing myself to add them to the sonic equation. The problem with wind instruments is that, whatever you do with them, they end up sounding like 1970s sitcoms or cruddy Broadway shows. They are so unbelievably lacking in versatility. A bassoon will always remind you of Ivor the Engine, an oboe will always sound like the moment the barricade revolves in Les Mis, piccolos are Frank Spencer and a wind ensemble is either the music to that dreadful show with Hyacinth Bouquet or Peter And the Wolf - which isn't, admittedly, a 1970s theme tune. Wind instruments provide nothing but comedy sounds, or, in the case of the oboe, fake mournfulness. Even the word wind is silly. The instruments even effect the way that people look. Players often have odd lips. Flautists are genetic predisposed to have long blonde hair. I could go on...
I realise this is all deeply subjective and I very much appreciate that I'm the one with he problem. I should probably go into therapy. But by adding wind to the Brass orchestrations, I am attempting to tackle my intolerance head on. Perhaps the players will make such a glorious noise that I'll instantly be converted. Or maybe the fact that I simply can't think of anything to do with them will mean, if they do sound rubbish, it will all be my fault. Maybe I need a one on one session with a bassoonist to see if they make anything other than duck or train noises. Pah pa pah. That's my impression of a bassoon.
I worked through til 7pm when I decided to do a load of cooking in time for the Great British Bake Off. I had it all planned. I'd cook some biscuits, make some pasta, and everything would be ready for 8pm. At about 7.55 all hell broke loose. The pasta wasn't ready, the biscuits were still dough and the Halloumi on the pan was starting to curl up. I sat back down at my computer to send one email, "what the hell's that smell?" Asked Nathan. He threw open the oven door and acrid black smoke filled the room. The biscuits had gone from anaemic to charcoal in a matter of seconds. I tried to photograph them and the carbon shimmered in the flash like stars in the night sky. Straight into the bin they went, like one of Fiona's experimental wheat-free loaves. Moments later the pasta turned soggy and started to fry. It was a culinary disaster of epic proportions and we ended up having to watch Bake Off on catch up, with a fresh batch of biscuits, huge, wet lumps of pasta and rock hard Halloumi. The bake off was good though. Bread week. I'd love to bake bread but I think we need a new oven before I'll consider making anything but biscuits.
Thursday, 8 September 2016
Tuesday, 6 September 2016
Mr Vaz
I read with a sigh about Keith Vaz today. I am so profoundly bored of the press thinking it's somehow their duty to talk about (homo)sexuality in a titivating manner. Ask yourself one simple question: is British politics a safer place now that Vaz has resigned from being the chair of the home affairs select committee? It it worth ignoring all the good he's done for the sake of a quick fix of moral indignation and a few giggles? Is a man who grapples with his sexuality on the occasional Saturday night really unable to govern? Frankly, the only people who should even venture to give a stuff about Vaz' "sordid" sex life are his family, and they certainly don't need to have his indiscretions listed in minute detail. No one should care. We all play the mock shock card, muttering how much we feel for his poor wife and children, but if we really felt for them, we wouldn't be writing about the situation in the papers. His wife and children are probably as humiliated as Vaz himself. How about we protect the innocent people here? This is a painful business which surely needs to be sorted out in private. If we really cared about Maria Fernandez, the headlines would talk about her pain, but instead they lead with what Vaz was meant to have said to the rent boy: "don't forget to bring the poppers..."
The whole business of creating honey traps for the purpose of column inches makes my blood boil. It's so very 1980s and really needs to be stamped out. No one is perfect. People have affairs all the time. None of us would stand up to scrutiny, no matter how holier than thou we all feel we are. We need colourful characters in politics. We need leaders, and by their very nature, leaders have flaws. By all means sack him for arsing up the economy, or for fiddling the books, or for breaking the law, but we absolutely need to move on from this nonsense or else the politicians who govern us will be boring, bland and ultimately ineffectual. I hope Keith, Maria and their family can sort their problems out and that he can continue to do what he does best: Govern this country.
The whole business of creating honey traps for the purpose of column inches makes my blood boil. It's so very 1980s and really needs to be stamped out. No one is perfect. People have affairs all the time. None of us would stand up to scrutiny, no matter how holier than thou we all feel we are. We need colourful characters in politics. We need leaders, and by their very nature, leaders have flaws. By all means sack him for arsing up the economy, or for fiddling the books, or for breaking the law, but we absolutely need to move on from this nonsense or else the politicians who govern us will be boring, bland and ultimately ineffectual. I hope Keith, Maria and their family can sort their problems out and that he can continue to do what he does best: Govern this country.
Birmingham
I forgot to blog last night. It's hardly surprising, I got home at about 1am having, several times, nearly fallen asleep at the wheel. I was in Birmingham, doing some quiz work, which is something I enjoy enormously.
The day was very much one of thirds. I spent the morning working and then met my parents at Tottenham Hale station. They were down in London for the day to see the Daniel Barenboim prom (which apparently was magnificent.) I was trying to think of something to do with them they'd not done before. They are, without question, the most enthusiastic and appreciative people I know, so showing them new places is a real treat.
I took them for a walk into Highgate Woods and we ate lunch in the lovely cafe in the clearing there. We strolled up to Muswell Hill via the Parkland Walk with its stunning views across London. You can see as far as (and further than) the Olympic park. The houses, parks and buildings in between stretch out in mauves, greys and greens like a giant pointillist painting.
We came back via the woods, and marvelled at quite how green north London is. Great swathes of forest and woodland cut through the concrete and red brick buildings. The very lungs of our city.
The journey to Birmingham was terrifying. I used my satnav and, despite travelling at around the speed limit for much of the early part of the trip, the predicted arrival time got later and later with messages flashing up telling me that traffic was "getting considerably worse." My predicted arrival time went from 6.18 to 6.30 to 6.50 to 7.30. My blood ran cold. Then the estimated arrival started randomly and wildly oscillating and flashing like a cheap set of Christmas lights. I had no idea what was going on, I just knew I didn't like it.
Fortunately, a sneaky last-minute decision to drive through Coventry meant that I arrived on time. Birmingham never impresses me. As I was walking to the hotel from the car park, an ear-splitting message was shouted over a loud hayler. It sounded like something from the third Reich. I instantly froze, assuming it was aimed at me, or that it was police yelling at me to hit the deck because some sort of mad gunman was on the loose. I couldn't work out what the voice was saying but deduced it was something to do with the man weeing behind a concrete wall, who started aggressively shouting back. It was all very weird, and more than a little unsettling.
The quiz went well though. That was fun. I was the helper, which means I mark papers, generate little stats and generally do everything the quiz master is too busy to do himself. I was horrified upon arrival, when one of the clients walked into me with a full wine glass. She had lightning fast reactions and managed to avoid spilling the contents of the glass, but wasn't at all interested in seeing the funny side, which basically turned me into a bumbling Hugh Grant, all apologies and embarrassed streams of nonsense words.
It takes a while to get into the mind set of very speedily marking quiz sheets. It's actually all about looking at the answer sheet in peripheral vision. The wrong answers kind of ping out. At least they do for me.
The journey home was uneventful, which made it dangerous for my tired eyes. There were definitely a few occasions when I suddenly found myself veering slightly into another lane before getting one of those adrenaline bolts these situations generate. It had been a very long day.
The day was very much one of thirds. I spent the morning working and then met my parents at Tottenham Hale station. They were down in London for the day to see the Daniel Barenboim prom (which apparently was magnificent.) I was trying to think of something to do with them they'd not done before. They are, without question, the most enthusiastic and appreciative people I know, so showing them new places is a real treat.
I took them for a walk into Highgate Woods and we ate lunch in the lovely cafe in the clearing there. We strolled up to Muswell Hill via the Parkland Walk with its stunning views across London. You can see as far as (and further than) the Olympic park. The houses, parks and buildings in between stretch out in mauves, greys and greens like a giant pointillist painting.
We came back via the woods, and marvelled at quite how green north London is. Great swathes of forest and woodland cut through the concrete and red brick buildings. The very lungs of our city.
The journey to Birmingham was terrifying. I used my satnav and, despite travelling at around the speed limit for much of the early part of the trip, the predicted arrival time got later and later with messages flashing up telling me that traffic was "getting considerably worse." My predicted arrival time went from 6.18 to 6.30 to 6.50 to 7.30. My blood ran cold. Then the estimated arrival started randomly and wildly oscillating and flashing like a cheap set of Christmas lights. I had no idea what was going on, I just knew I didn't like it.
Fortunately, a sneaky last-minute decision to drive through Coventry meant that I arrived on time. Birmingham never impresses me. As I was walking to the hotel from the car park, an ear-splitting message was shouted over a loud hayler. It sounded like something from the third Reich. I instantly froze, assuming it was aimed at me, or that it was police yelling at me to hit the deck because some sort of mad gunman was on the loose. I couldn't work out what the voice was saying but deduced it was something to do with the man weeing behind a concrete wall, who started aggressively shouting back. It was all very weird, and more than a little unsettling.
The quiz went well though. That was fun. I was the helper, which means I mark papers, generate little stats and generally do everything the quiz master is too busy to do himself. I was horrified upon arrival, when one of the clients walked into me with a full wine glass. She had lightning fast reactions and managed to avoid spilling the contents of the glass, but wasn't at all interested in seeing the funny side, which basically turned me into a bumbling Hugh Grant, all apologies and embarrassed streams of nonsense words.
It takes a while to get into the mind set of very speedily marking quiz sheets. It's actually all about looking at the answer sheet in peripheral vision. The wrong answers kind of ping out. At least they do for me.
The journey home was uneventful, which made it dangerous for my tired eyes. There were definitely a few occasions when I suddenly found myself veering slightly into another lane before getting one of those adrenaline bolts these situations generate. It had been a very long day.
Sunday, 4 September 2016
Burning lavender
Well what a very charming day we've had! This morning Abbie and Tina came up to Highgate and, after grabbing a few takeaway cups of tea from the little orange-fronted cafe below our house, we jumped in a car and sailed up the M1 to Hitchin.
We picked Julie up from the train station there and drove to the neighbouring village of Ickleford where there is a lavender farm. We caught it on the last day of the season, which has apparently been quite a bad one this year due to a very wet May.
The joy of the Hitchin Lavender Farm is that you pay £4.50, they hand you a bag and some scissors, and you can go along the rows of lavender in an enormous field picking as much as you want. It's a really rather pleasurable and peaceful experience. The smell of the flowers fills your lungs, and you walk through clouds of very happy bees looking out across the Hertfordshire countryside. When the season is at its height the aroma is apparently overwhelming, and everything is purple as far as the eye can see. It wasn't quite like that today, but there was certainly enough lavender to more than fill our bags.
Nathan also managed to fill his beard with lavender stems! He looked rather fetching, and the flowers stayed put in his beard all day. They're still there now. I think flowers work rather well in a big bushy beard. It sounds rather eccentric, and it probably is, but I think he looks very cool and bohemian, particularly now that he's just finished knitting a big slouchy hat, which came off the needles and went onto his bonce as I was driving there this morning.
After we'd filled our bags with flowers, we sat outside the lovely on-site cafe and gorged ourselves on delicious tea and cakes before buying some pots of lavender which I'm hoping to plant under the tree in our garden to encourage bees. I want bees in abundance.
We dropped Julie off at the station and drove back into town, parking by the British museum, where we said goodbye to Tina. Abbie, Nathan and I walked along Endell Street specifically to get bags of chips from the legendary Rock and Sole Plaice (see what they did there?) I still maintain these chips are the best chips in London. They're enormously fat - almost an inch across and a good half-centimetre thick. They're a great treat to have whilst walking through Covent Garden.
We met Jack Reitman from the first cast of Brass on Waterloo Bridge and wandered down to the Embankment directly opposite the OXO building, where the crowning glory of the Great Fire of London anniversary celebrations was taking place. I don't know who comes up with these ideas, but this one was every bit as exciting as the poppies at the Tower of London.
Someone, God knows whom, had built a 400 ft long replica of the City of London as it looked before the fire in 1666. The replica city was placed on an industrial barge in the middle of the Thames and, at 8.30pm, they set fire to it. For the next forty five glorious minutes we stood and watched London burn. It was an astonishing sight. Little explosions saw building after building burst into flames. Churches. Town houses. Halls. The fire spread West and then back East again, just as the real fire had traveled. The crowd sang London's Burning and cheered as steeples became engulfed and collapsed into the flames. The old St Paul's went up like a Christmas tree. The air filled with little specks of flame, which Pepys would have called "fire drops." It was a deeply moving experience and I was instantly reminded of Pepys' account of his trip to a tavern on the south side of the Thames where he sat and watched London burn: "in corners and upon steeples and between churches and houses as far as we could see up the hill of the City. Horrid and malicious bloody flame."
Pepys wrote about great arcs of fire and we saw them tonight. We heard the snapping of the flames "a horrid noise the flames made and the crackle of the houses at their ruine" and felt the heat of the fire, "all over the Thames with your face in the wind you were almost burned with a shower of fire drops." I can't begin to explain how impressive it all was and how grateful I was to Abbie for suggesting that we went.
Believe it or not, this is a photograph and not a painting. Nathan took it on his phone. How astounding is that?!
We picked Julie up from the train station there and drove to the neighbouring village of Ickleford where there is a lavender farm. We caught it on the last day of the season, which has apparently been quite a bad one this year due to a very wet May.
The joy of the Hitchin Lavender Farm is that you pay £4.50, they hand you a bag and some scissors, and you can go along the rows of lavender in an enormous field picking as much as you want. It's a really rather pleasurable and peaceful experience. The smell of the flowers fills your lungs, and you walk through clouds of very happy bees looking out across the Hertfordshire countryside. When the season is at its height the aroma is apparently overwhelming, and everything is purple as far as the eye can see. It wasn't quite like that today, but there was certainly enough lavender to more than fill our bags.
Nathan also managed to fill his beard with lavender stems! He looked rather fetching, and the flowers stayed put in his beard all day. They're still there now. I think flowers work rather well in a big bushy beard. It sounds rather eccentric, and it probably is, but I think he looks very cool and bohemian, particularly now that he's just finished knitting a big slouchy hat, which came off the needles and went onto his bonce as I was driving there this morning.
After we'd filled our bags with flowers, we sat outside the lovely on-site cafe and gorged ourselves on delicious tea and cakes before buying some pots of lavender which I'm hoping to plant under the tree in our garden to encourage bees. I want bees in abundance.
We dropped Julie off at the station and drove back into town, parking by the British museum, where we said goodbye to Tina. Abbie, Nathan and I walked along Endell Street specifically to get bags of chips from the legendary Rock and Sole Plaice (see what they did there?) I still maintain these chips are the best chips in London. They're enormously fat - almost an inch across and a good half-centimetre thick. They're a great treat to have whilst walking through Covent Garden.
We met Jack Reitman from the first cast of Brass on Waterloo Bridge and wandered down to the Embankment directly opposite the OXO building, where the crowning glory of the Great Fire of London anniversary celebrations was taking place. I don't know who comes up with these ideas, but this one was every bit as exciting as the poppies at the Tower of London.
Someone, God knows whom, had built a 400 ft long replica of the City of London as it looked before the fire in 1666. The replica city was placed on an industrial barge in the middle of the Thames and, at 8.30pm, they set fire to it. For the next forty five glorious minutes we stood and watched London burn. It was an astonishing sight. Little explosions saw building after building burst into flames. Churches. Town houses. Halls. The fire spread West and then back East again, just as the real fire had traveled. The crowd sang London's Burning and cheered as steeples became engulfed and collapsed into the flames. The old St Paul's went up like a Christmas tree. The air filled with little specks of flame, which Pepys would have called "fire drops." It was a deeply moving experience and I was instantly reminded of Pepys' account of his trip to a tavern on the south side of the Thames where he sat and watched London burn: "in corners and upon steeples and between churches and houses as far as we could see up the hill of the City. Horrid and malicious bloody flame."
Pepys wrote about great arcs of fire and we saw them tonight. We heard the snapping of the flames "a horrid noise the flames made and the crackle of the houses at their ruine" and felt the heat of the fire, "all over the Thames with your face in the wind you were almost burned with a shower of fire drops." I can't begin to explain how impressive it all was and how grateful I was to Abbie for suggesting that we went.
Will you vote for us?
We had one of the most awful car journeys in the history of car journeys today. We were trying to get to our friend Kate's house in Weybridge, and were already running late on account of our internet going down again, and my having to talk at length to someone from Talk Talk in an Indian call centre who read from a script and basically didn't have permission to help me in any way, shape or form. We went round in circles. She had a very thick accent and a grating voice which made me more and more uptight. She then passed me on to someone in the Philippines who was meant to be giving me a deal on a new plan, but she talked in riddles and seemed shady. Every time I asked her to clarify what she meant, she changed the details. Half way through the conversation she let it slip that I was only being offered the deal for a year, at which point I'd need to pay more, and then, later still, I realised I was being offered an 18 month contract. I was really angry. I'd asked her four or five times if there were any hidden costs that she wasn't mentioning, and she repeatedly said there weren't. In the end I told her I'd wait until Monday and speak to someone else. She got all shirty. True colours and all that.
We left the house and immediately got stuck in traffic on Holloway Road. There was an Arsenal match, and the streets were thronged with football fans. We literally crawled along. We stopped in Angel for Nathan to buy wool, and felt like the tides were perhaps turning because the wool was in stock, the lovely lady behind the counter gave Nathan a discount and I was able to buy a lovely (yet expensive) cup of tea from a chi-chi cafe opposite. £2.20 for a take away tea. I ask you!
We got as far as the London Museum and suddenly found ourselves in road block hell. It seems the entire City of London has been sealed off for Great Fire of London celebrations. I read somewhere that they're doing a giant domino toppling event and all sorts of other ludicrous things. Clueless volunteers in stupid rain macs were standing at each of the blockades, completely unable to offer any suggestions as to how to get out of the area. We stopped many and they just pointed their hands in the direction we'd come from. The traffic was solid on the edges of the cordon, but there was no indication of how large the actual cordon was, so we'd veer off and then get trapped in another traffic jam heading back to the cordoned area. One way streets just added to the mayhem. There were no official diversions. There were no advance warning signs. It was every man for himself and the overarching sensation was one of complete hopelessness. It was as though the City of London people had entirely neglected to think about traffic chaos in their rush to organise lovely fun things for passers by to do on this wet, hideous Saturday. If only it had rained liked this 350 years ago, London might not have burned. We circled the area for an hour. Nathan got so stressed that he started thumping the steering wheel. It was an utterly horrifying situation.
On a more positive note, I can reveal that Beyond The Fence has been nominated for the West End Wilma award for Most Underrated West End Show. It was a ghastly experience from beginning to end, so it's genuinely nice to have some form of recognition for our efforts. Through most of those terrible months we certainly felt like the most underrated writers in the West End, so the nomination feels appropriate enough. We're up against Miss Henderson Presents, so I suspect we've not a hope in hell of winning. I say this because the awards are voted for by members of the public and I'm pretty sure a great many more people will have heard of the other shows in our category! I'm a little averse to awards which are voted for by the people because they instantly become popularity contests rather than a recognition of talent or hard graft. Nevertheless, I feel obliged to play the game, if for no other reason than so we don't end up looking like the poor cousins and make Dear Wilma feel ashamed for selecting us. I therefore urge you to go to the link below and vote for Beyond The Fence. Whilst you're at it, I suggest you also vote for CJ Johnson in the rising star award. CJ is being recognised for her work in playing the lead role of Mary in our show. She deserves to win more than anything. She's a fabulous performer and a wonderful, wonderful person.
When you vote it's worth remembering that you get asked to click on an "I am not a robot" button. You will then receive a confirmation email which you also have to click on. Go on, vote! You never know, the other shows might be too cool to ask people to vote!
Here's the link!
http://westendwilma.us9.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=6d3110b53f1ba37a2e1a6e337&id=7ed99e998e
It took us 2 1/2 hours in the end to get to Weybridge, and we almost gave up on several occasions. I'm so pleased we didn't, however, as we had the most lovely night at Kate's. We haven't seen her for far too long, but it felt like days rather than years and we were instantly back into banter and laughter. We spent the night playing games (it's her birthday today). It strikes me that I'm never happier than when sitting playing parlour games with a cup of tea in one hand. We were joined for the evening by Belinda, Karen, Mark and Adam (who's a Yorkshire man, so it obviously wasn't long before everyone started talking in cod Yorkshire accents.) We had a quiz about 80s pop music. I realised about half way through that the 80s are totally my era. I felt like an Egg Head, chirping in with my dull little additional factoids! Belinda had bought buzzers with her. Proper buzzers with comedy sound effects! We shot a puerile little video of her touching various body parts as we sounded the buzzers, which seemed utterly hilarious at the time. It's on my Facebook feed if anyone cares to have a watch.
Nighty night!
We left the house and immediately got stuck in traffic on Holloway Road. There was an Arsenal match, and the streets were thronged with football fans. We literally crawled along. We stopped in Angel for Nathan to buy wool, and felt like the tides were perhaps turning because the wool was in stock, the lovely lady behind the counter gave Nathan a discount and I was able to buy a lovely (yet expensive) cup of tea from a chi-chi cafe opposite. £2.20 for a take away tea. I ask you!
We got as far as the London Museum and suddenly found ourselves in road block hell. It seems the entire City of London has been sealed off for Great Fire of London celebrations. I read somewhere that they're doing a giant domino toppling event and all sorts of other ludicrous things. Clueless volunteers in stupid rain macs were standing at each of the blockades, completely unable to offer any suggestions as to how to get out of the area. We stopped many and they just pointed their hands in the direction we'd come from. The traffic was solid on the edges of the cordon, but there was no indication of how large the actual cordon was, so we'd veer off and then get trapped in another traffic jam heading back to the cordoned area. One way streets just added to the mayhem. There were no official diversions. There were no advance warning signs. It was every man for himself and the overarching sensation was one of complete hopelessness. It was as though the City of London people had entirely neglected to think about traffic chaos in their rush to organise lovely fun things for passers by to do on this wet, hideous Saturday. If only it had rained liked this 350 years ago, London might not have burned. We circled the area for an hour. Nathan got so stressed that he started thumping the steering wheel. It was an utterly horrifying situation.
On a more positive note, I can reveal that Beyond The Fence has been nominated for the West End Wilma award for Most Underrated West End Show. It was a ghastly experience from beginning to end, so it's genuinely nice to have some form of recognition for our efforts. Through most of those terrible months we certainly felt like the most underrated writers in the West End, so the nomination feels appropriate enough. We're up against Miss Henderson Presents, so I suspect we've not a hope in hell of winning. I say this because the awards are voted for by members of the public and I'm pretty sure a great many more people will have heard of the other shows in our category! I'm a little averse to awards which are voted for by the people because they instantly become popularity contests rather than a recognition of talent or hard graft. Nevertheless, I feel obliged to play the game, if for no other reason than so we don't end up looking like the poor cousins and make Dear Wilma feel ashamed for selecting us. I therefore urge you to go to the link below and vote for Beyond The Fence. Whilst you're at it, I suggest you also vote for CJ Johnson in the rising star award. CJ is being recognised for her work in playing the lead role of Mary in our show. She deserves to win more than anything. She's a fabulous performer and a wonderful, wonderful person.
When you vote it's worth remembering that you get asked to click on an "I am not a robot" button. You will then receive a confirmation email which you also have to click on. Go on, vote! You never know, the other shows might be too cool to ask people to vote!
Here's the link!
http://westendwilma.us9.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=6d3110b53f1ba37a2e1a6e337&id=7ed99e998e
It took us 2 1/2 hours in the end to get to Weybridge, and we almost gave up on several occasions. I'm so pleased we didn't, however, as we had the most lovely night at Kate's. We haven't seen her for far too long, but it felt like days rather than years and we were instantly back into banter and laughter. We spent the night playing games (it's her birthday today). It strikes me that I'm never happier than when sitting playing parlour games with a cup of tea in one hand. We were joined for the evening by Belinda, Karen, Mark and Adam (who's a Yorkshire man, so it obviously wasn't long before everyone started talking in cod Yorkshire accents.) We had a quiz about 80s pop music. I realised about half way through that the 80s are totally my era. I felt like an Egg Head, chirping in with my dull little additional factoids! Belinda had bought buzzers with her. Proper buzzers with comedy sound effects! We shot a puerile little video of her touching various body parts as we sounded the buzzers, which seemed utterly hilarious at the time. It's on my Facebook feed if anyone cares to have a watch.
Nighty night!
Friday, 2 September 2016
Nice write up!
I sat in the cafe at Jackson's Lane community centre this morning. I was writing, but I kept getting distracted by the music they were playing which included a heck of a lot of ELO. How are you meant to write string music whilst the masters of iconic string writing are playing on the sound system?
At one point we were joined by a tramp. I don't know if "tramp" is the politically correct term. Probably not. "Homeless person" doesn't quite cut it. A homeless person could be someone living on his friend's sofa. This man was definitely in another bracket. This man was so grimy his face was brown of vagrancy. It was terribly sad. He wanted a drink and probably a sit down and plainly didn't have much money on him. He kept asking the woman behind the counter how much things costed and everything was obviously too expensive. He looked at her hopefully after exhausting the idea of being able to afford a can of pop: "how much for a tea?" "£1.30." He looked sad and shuffled away. Bizarrely, my focus went to the woman behind the counter, because I could tell she was embarrassed and I didn't want her to be. It didn't occur to me until the man had left that I should have leapt up and offered to buy him a nice cup of tea so that he could have had his sit down. I'm annoyed with myself for failing to do so. Acts of kindness are so astonishingly important in this day and age and if we can't even look after the poor of our country, how on earth will we ever be able to call ourselves a great nation again?
I spent the next few hours imagining sadness wherever I went! I have this ridiculous habit of sitting in a public place, looking at everyone around me, and creating back stories to match their faces and body language. Today everyone seemed to be alone. I'm sure they were all fabulously happy, but they seemed sad to me.
I faffed today. Sending emails to people about the release of Pepys and sending CDs through the post to those who brought the album from my website. It's worth keeping on top of that sort of thing or else the task becomes utterly daunting. I should be so lucky! I think we sold ten copies today. Obviously if I could sell ten copies every day until the end of time, it would be brilliant, but the sales tend to dwindle rather rapidly over time.
Little Michelle came up to Highgate to see me in the early evening. It was so lovely to see her. For me, part of the experience of this new academic year is seeing friends more often that I don't see enough of. Michelle is high on my list, so today was an unexpected early honouring of my new (school) year's resolution.
We had a lovely write up about the Pepys project today from the journalist who interviewed me on Tuesday night. He plainly understood every aspect of the project and that felt really refreshing. He'd eked out every subtle nuance of what we were doing. So often sloppy journalism leads to massive mistakes, like the Telegraph journalist who once quoted me as saying that Greenham Common was in Cambridgeshire. It's always a privilege to read something by someone who has made it their business to understand your project. It feels polite more than anything else: like he cares about the album m, and values the idea of the rest of the world finding out about it.
If you want to see the article, follow this link... It's a good read.
https://429harrowroad.wordpress.com/2016/09/01/pepys-show-an-interview-with-benjamin-till/
And then, without wishing to sound too much like a broken record, go and buy the album. What's the worst that could happen? You could give it to your aunt for Christmas, or your mate that's into really esoteric weird shit! A physical copy of an album is a very beautiful thing. You get all the words. You get lots of lovely pictures. A little note from the composer... It's a no-brainer! Buy it!
At one point we were joined by a tramp. I don't know if "tramp" is the politically correct term. Probably not. "Homeless person" doesn't quite cut it. A homeless person could be someone living on his friend's sofa. This man was definitely in another bracket. This man was so grimy his face was brown of vagrancy. It was terribly sad. He wanted a drink and probably a sit down and plainly didn't have much money on him. He kept asking the woman behind the counter how much things costed and everything was obviously too expensive. He looked at her hopefully after exhausting the idea of being able to afford a can of pop: "how much for a tea?" "£1.30." He looked sad and shuffled away. Bizarrely, my focus went to the woman behind the counter, because I could tell she was embarrassed and I didn't want her to be. It didn't occur to me until the man had left that I should have leapt up and offered to buy him a nice cup of tea so that he could have had his sit down. I'm annoyed with myself for failing to do so. Acts of kindness are so astonishingly important in this day and age and if we can't even look after the poor of our country, how on earth will we ever be able to call ourselves a great nation again?
I spent the next few hours imagining sadness wherever I went! I have this ridiculous habit of sitting in a public place, looking at everyone around me, and creating back stories to match their faces and body language. Today everyone seemed to be alone. I'm sure they were all fabulously happy, but they seemed sad to me.
I faffed today. Sending emails to people about the release of Pepys and sending CDs through the post to those who brought the album from my website. It's worth keeping on top of that sort of thing or else the task becomes utterly daunting. I should be so lucky! I think we sold ten copies today. Obviously if I could sell ten copies every day until the end of time, it would be brilliant, but the sales tend to dwindle rather rapidly over time.
Little Michelle came up to Highgate to see me in the early evening. It was so lovely to see her. For me, part of the experience of this new academic year is seeing friends more often that I don't see enough of. Michelle is high on my list, so today was an unexpected early honouring of my new (school) year's resolution.
We had a lovely write up about the Pepys project today from the journalist who interviewed me on Tuesday night. He plainly understood every aspect of the project and that felt really refreshing. He'd eked out every subtle nuance of what we were doing. So often sloppy journalism leads to massive mistakes, like the Telegraph journalist who once quoted me as saying that Greenham Common was in Cambridgeshire. It's always a privilege to read something by someone who has made it their business to understand your project. It feels polite more than anything else: like he cares about the album m, and values the idea of the rest of the world finding out about it.
If you want to see the article, follow this link... It's a good read.
https://429harrowroad.wordpress.com/2016/09/01/pepys-show-an-interview-with-benjamin-till/
And then, without wishing to sound too much like a broken record, go and buy the album. What's the worst that could happen? You could give it to your aunt for Christmas, or your mate that's into really esoteric weird shit! A physical copy of an album is a very beautiful thing. You get all the words. You get lots of lovely pictures. A little note from the composer... It's a no-brainer! Buy it!
Thursday, 1 September 2016
The first day of the year
For me, September 1st is the first day of the year. I've always felt the same way. The metaphorical school year starts, and I suddenly feel one year older, ready to take on new challenges in a way that doesn't quite happen on January 1st.
So we ran around London today, systematically failing to achieve almost everything we needed to achieve. I had a list. It was long. I failed on most counts. I had to buy some speakers. We drove to the PC World in Friern Barnet and selected some. They didn't have them in stock. We went into central London to book a hotel for our holiday next year. The travel agent didn't have a hotel anywhere near where we need to be.
Lunch was nice. We ate in a little trattoria on Berwick Street and had a set two-course meal for a tenner. I had filo pastry triangles stuffed with feta followed by a vegetarian moussaka. With the risk of sounding like Samuel Pepys, they were the best filo pastry triangles I've ever eaten.
We came home, I tidied the house and started cooking. A few members of the Rebel Chorus came over tonight to listen to the Pepys Motet album on the eve of its release. At 3am, exactly 350 years ago, the great fire of London started to rage its way through the city of London. There had been weeks and weeks of fine, dry weather and everything was tinder box dry. High winds fanned the flames across the city, and for three days London burned. It was a relatively slow moving fire, which explains why the death count was so low (around 6 deaths), but it engulfed and destroyed much of the city. People, realising their houses were at risk, would throw their belongings into carts and take them to houses across the city, which, themselves, would go up in flames. Pepys' house escaped the inferno. A last minute change in wind direction saved his part of town (which included the Tower of London.) Nevertheless Pepys had all his belongings shipped off to the village of Bethnal Green, and the things which he couldn't fit on the van were buried in the garden... Most famously his Parmesan cheese.
Llio, Abbie, Jana and Little Welsh Nathalie came to listen to the album and it was a really rather lovely occasion. I felt a mixture of pride and relief. Another project ticked off successfully. This time next year I wonder what else I'll have completed... It was nice to hear the track - an evocation of the streets of 17th Century London - with the sounds of the A1 roaring away in the background. The Pepys album is meant to be a blend of old and new, hence why the singers come from every conceivable modern singing tradition including gospel.
So, if you find time to have a watch of our lovely video about the Great Fire tomorrow, please do so, and remember what was gong on in London all those years ago.
Here it is: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=EKk8bnVO2u8
And then, if you feel moved to do so, buy the album. Please buy the album! It's four years' work, and a true labour of love. It's very weird. It won't be everyone's cup of tea, but it's innovative if nothing else!
If you fancy it, it will be available for download from all the usual places from tomorrow, or you can still buy it - and the London Requiem - from the shop on my website:
http://www.benjamintill.com/shop/
Go buy! Please.
So we ran around London today, systematically failing to achieve almost everything we needed to achieve. I had a list. It was long. I failed on most counts. I had to buy some speakers. We drove to the PC World in Friern Barnet and selected some. They didn't have them in stock. We went into central London to book a hotel for our holiday next year. The travel agent didn't have a hotel anywhere near where we need to be.
Lunch was nice. We ate in a little trattoria on Berwick Street and had a set two-course meal for a tenner. I had filo pastry triangles stuffed with feta followed by a vegetarian moussaka. With the risk of sounding like Samuel Pepys, they were the best filo pastry triangles I've ever eaten.
We came home, I tidied the house and started cooking. A few members of the Rebel Chorus came over tonight to listen to the Pepys Motet album on the eve of its release. At 3am, exactly 350 years ago, the great fire of London started to rage its way through the city of London. There had been weeks and weeks of fine, dry weather and everything was tinder box dry. High winds fanned the flames across the city, and for three days London burned. It was a relatively slow moving fire, which explains why the death count was so low (around 6 deaths), but it engulfed and destroyed much of the city. People, realising their houses were at risk, would throw their belongings into carts and take them to houses across the city, which, themselves, would go up in flames. Pepys' house escaped the inferno. A last minute change in wind direction saved his part of town (which included the Tower of London.) Nevertheless Pepys had all his belongings shipped off to the village of Bethnal Green, and the things which he couldn't fit on the van were buried in the garden... Most famously his Parmesan cheese.
Llio, Abbie, Jana and Little Welsh Nathalie came to listen to the album and it was a really rather lovely occasion. I felt a mixture of pride and relief. Another project ticked off successfully. This time next year I wonder what else I'll have completed... It was nice to hear the track - an evocation of the streets of 17th Century London - with the sounds of the A1 roaring away in the background. The Pepys album is meant to be a blend of old and new, hence why the singers come from every conceivable modern singing tradition including gospel.
So, if you find time to have a watch of our lovely video about the Great Fire tomorrow, please do so, and remember what was gong on in London all those years ago.
Here it is: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=EKk8bnVO2u8
And then, if you feel moved to do so, buy the album. Please buy the album! It's four years' work, and a true labour of love. It's very weird. It won't be everyone's cup of tea, but it's innovative if nothing else!
If you fancy it, it will be available for download from all the usual places from tomorrow, or you can still buy it - and the London Requiem - from the shop on my website:
http://www.benjamintill.com/shop/
Go buy! Please.
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