Voting

I rather grumpily cast my vote first thing this morning. I went into Jackson's Lane Community Centre, half expecting to have been disenfranchised by Haringey Council for the third time, after we discovered last night that we hadn't been sent a polling card. I don't know how many times one can be expected to register oneself to vote at the same address before something officially sticks, but plainly it's more times than one would assume!

Anyway, as it happened I was on their list and the woman was able to get her ruler and pencil out and put a line through my name. I wasn't asked for ID. I could have looked over her shoulder and claimed to be the first name on her list that I could read without a line through it. Turn-out is likely to be so low on this election that I doubt anyone would actually have noticed. It demonstrates how genuinely easy it is to commit election fraud in this manner. It seems we spend all our time trying to prevent online fraud, and yet, when it comes to voting in person, there's a woman with a pencil asking for your address!

For the record, I voted Lib Dem, really as a thank you to Lynne Featherstone, who was a great constituency MP and was almost single-handedly responsible for the LGBT marriage act. I didn't much care for the campaign the Labour woman Catherine West ran to oust Lynne from office. It felt underhand and cynical and she's turned out to be a very crummy MP who hasn't bothered to respond to any emails I've sent her about either Brexit or Corbyn. So it was middle for diddle for me.

I was hugely unimpressed by both the Workers' Revolutionary Party and the Women's Equality Party for forwarding candidates who didn't even have addresses in the constituency. Also, my constituency has been exclusively represented by women MPs since Barbara Roche in 1992. I have to believe that they will be fighting for women's equality where they see it's necessary. The Lib Dem person I voted for was also a woman. Actually, so was the Tory!

As I came out of the polling station a woman was literally doing cartwheels. "I've voted for the first time!" She was yelling to a friend the other side of the street. "I've voted for the first time in this country!" She was so excited. One assumes she'd recent been granted full citizenship or something, because she didn't look far off my age. And at that moment I understood the importance of the vote.

Rain and more rain

Rain poured through the roof throughout the night yesterday. We could hear it steadily dripping into a bucket through one of the skylights in the loft. It was a hollow, surprisingly rhythmic sound. Our landlord is aware of the problem. Men keep coming round to "fix it", but none have so far had any impact on the problem. They arrive during dry periods, crawl out on the roof for a few minutes, spend hours telling us the nature of the problem as they see it, and then, when the rain returns, we're back to square one. It's a curiously depressing do-si-do. We have a wonderfully reasonable rent, and a great relationship with our landlord, and just don't want to be the people who whine about this sort of thing. So it's catch 22.

The walk to the tube yesterday morning in driving rain was supremely bizarre. It was falling at an angle which meant the tiny umbrella I'd found in our kitchen drawer was only actually able to keep my head dry. My trousers were damp. My back was soaked. Then it was so muggy and warm on the tube that I started sweating profusely, so then everything was wet, and I smelt like a wet dog and felt profoundly sorry for myself.

Nothing could top my walk in Camden, however, where, on top of the rain, there was some sort of profound gale going on which instantly turned my umbrella inside out and made me want to weep. My shoes at that point started taking in water. It was happening to everyone. Everywhere I looked, people were being buffeted about. Branches of trees were scattered on the pavements. June it wasn't!

News seems to be filtering in rather slowly from London Bridge. The headline story is that quite a lot of the injured and dead are foreign nationals. It's hardly surprising. London is an international city, and wears its love for outsiders on its sleeve. Stab London through the heart and the ripples reverberate across the world. The other major story appears to be that a huge amount of the bravery and heroism in the face of the attackers came from people born in mainland European countries. A Romanian, called Florin Morariu, threw crates at the attacker's head. Giovanni Sagristani and his partner, Carlos Pinto, a nurse, fought the man out of a cafe and delivered crucial first aid to one of the wounded. None of this to me is reading particularly like a reason to throw all the Europeans out of our country. And yet, almost immediately after the attack, a rush of people took to Twitter demanding a swifter and harsher Brexit. Back off. This is a London thing. And Londoners overwhelmingly voted to remain.

We did a minute's silence in the rehearsal room at 11am. People across London were marking the moment and it felt hugely appropriate to do the same thing.

Other than this my day was spent under headphones orchestrating. Right up against it. Panicking wildly. I'm now so tired that I have deep black lines under my eyes. I didn't notice them until the head of musical theatre (who hasn't seen me for a bit) pointed them out. I immediately went to a mirror and couldn't quite believe what I was seeing!

Muted

It felt incredibly muted on the tubes today. Everyone seemed a bit low energy. A bit sad, perhaps. Maybe I was imagining things. But even the buskers seemed to be playing rather gentle, mournful, respectful music. I travelled to Oval this afternoon for a meeting of the Musicians Union's Writers' Committee and a quirk of fate meant I ended up on the wrong branch of the Northern Line, having to change lines at London Bridge, which was deathly silent.

The LU staff were highly chipper. I think perhaps they'd all decided to be as jovial and upbeat as possible. A woman speaking into one of those hand-held speaker things, said "stand clear of the closing doors. Beep. Beep. Beep..." Bless her soul.

We've moved rehearsal venue from Borough up to Central School itself in Swiss Cottage, so the commute is a little shorter. If I were driving it would be considerably shorter still, but Highgate to Swiss Cottage is a bit of a faff on public transport because it involves taking a tube to Camden and then a "31 bus to White City." Obviously I don't go all the way to White City. That would be silly. Although I'm always amused by the bus announcements which report only the final destination.

A child had a tantrum on the bus today. A major, major tantrum. His mother, in desperation, plonked him down on the nearest empty seat, which happened to be next to me, and for the next few minutes my ears were ringing from the sound of high-pitched screaming. The child eventually yelled himself into a torpor, slowly deflating, like a burst beach ball, into a corner of the bus where he shivered like an addict, his sallow eyes peering at me. Spent.

No words

There are no real words to describe how I felt when I heard about the terrorist attack on London Bridge last night. Philippa texted me: "You're not near London Bridge are you?" I'd gone for an evening stroll on the Heath. I'd heard a few sirens and a couple of helicopters, but nothing particularly untoward.

I instantly texted Brother Edward - who is more likely to be in that part of town - and then emailed my Mum to say I was okay. There's very little else you can do.

Nathan was out for the evening, with friends in East London, but I couldn't get through to him. Instinctively I knew he'd be fine. As he was. But I kept thinking "what if he went off piste? What if he ended up in Borough Market for some reason?"

There's nothing else to say. London will carry on like nothing's happened. War time spirit, and all that...

Diva strops

It was so humid yesterday. I'm told there was a giant thunder storm whilst we were in rehearsals. Hannah got caught in it. Emerging from the building was like stepping into a shower cubical. Absolutely no breeze. It was bizarre.

The opera company continue to rehearse in the space next to us. I have to say, I find the performers a funny old bunch to say the least. One of the performers wafted into the green room yesterday morning and, instead of talking to the person behind the desk about the possibility of turning the air conditioning on, she decided instead to stand in the middle of the room asking everyone who caught her eye if they were feeling hot as well. It was a dramatic display of somewhat desperate passive aggression. You'd think she was being boiled alive. Eventually she sat down and started chowing down on some kind of herbal tea. A few minutes later a stage manager popped into the room and asked if she'd mind stepping into the rehearsal space. She looked appalled: "You want me ten minutes early? I'm not called for ten minutes..." "Well, we thought we'd crack on." "Well if I'm coming in now, I'll have to leave the rehearsal ten minutes early. No, I mean it. I need my rest." Poor love.

Over the course of the morning, I heard a veritable litany of complaints from the opera singers. None of them seemed to want to actually rehearse. I'm sure they're simply happy to park and bark centre stage, thinking only about their vocal projection without any of the pesky extra hassle of actually acting. It was almost as though they were wearing their diva behaviour as a badge of honour: As though stroppiness was part and parcel of being taken seriously as an artist. The shirtier you are, the better singer they'll think you are.

Later still I overheard one of the male singers chewing the ear off one of the stage managers; "the director can't do that. He really can't. For my sanity." He wasn't joking.

Of course I remember all this nonsense from my time in opera in the late '90s. I remember working on a production of Madam Butterfly and rehearsing in deepest, darkest East London on a Saturday. We had two tin pot Asian divas alternating the title role, and they used to compete for the spotlight. On one occasion, we were auditioning children to play the role of Sorrow, Madam Butterfly's son. The children were aged about five and the audition entailed Butterfly singing to them full out so that we could tell if the loud noises were going to freak them out. One poor lad arrived on set only to be told that the Butterfly wasn't prepared to sing to him. "He's too ugly to be my child" she shouted. Then she stormed away.

The stage manager asked if she'd like a sandwich for lunch. "I want sushi" she demanded. Let's bear in mind that this was 1998, and Sushi wasn't exactly the sort of thing you'd expect to buy in a sandwich shop in the East End on a Saturday. "I'm not sure I'll be able to find any sushi around here" said the stage manager, "then I go home" said the tin pot diva. He sighed, and went up to the other Madam Butterfly to ask if she was hungry. She said she wasn't. So he trekked off to Liverpool Street station, and, an hour later, reappeared with sushi for the soprano. She barely thanked him. At that moment, the other Butterfly appeared. "I am hungry now." The stage manager smiled politely, "okay, what can I get you?" "Sushi..." So off he trudged to Liverpool Street... Again.

Opera singers can be really quite horrible people!

Crashing into the Groucho

God I hate opera! They're rehearsing opera in the next door room to us, and whenever I pass, I get a chilly blast of what's going on. It's always slightly out of tune. Huge wavering vibrato covers up any sense of an actual pitch and there's a desperate over-the-topness about it. Terrible terrible acting: like in the silent movies, with performers papering their faces with emotion, showing their feelings rather than convincing me that they're feeling those feelings...

I went to Pam Gilby's funeral yesterday afternoon up at the beautiful crematorium in Hampstead Garden Suburb. I was very pleased to have gone. Lots of the Fleet Singers were there. I hadn't realised that she'd actually formed the choir, so I'm really hoping they'll be able to carry on in her absence. I was incredibly moved to be introduced to Pam's son, Robin. He gave me a big hug and said "Pam thought so highly of you." It was rather wonderful to be able to tell him that I'd thought just as highly of her.

After the service, as the doors opened, and we filed out into the gloriously beautiful garden behind the chapel, the wind whipped up and thousands of pieces of thistle down started dancing in the air, to the extent that I wondered for a spilt second if it was snowing. At the same moment, a fox sauntered its way across the lawn and sat, no more than fifteen meters away from us, happily minding its own business, seemingly completely unconcerned about the groups of people milling around near by.

I went home to continue to orchestrate, but the mother of all computer crashes meant I catastrophically and irreparably lost three hours work. Just like that. Bam. Under normal circumstances I'm almost obsessive about saving my work, but the system was glitchy, and I must have been so focussed on working around the problems I was encountering that I simply forgot. Just what you need.

I ended up at the Groucho Club last night with Philip Sallon, Michael and a truck-load of Jewish people. It's a long story, which would be way too boring to put in print but it was a fun night and a much-needed bit of time off.

I was a little perturbed to pass through Soho Square en route to find it teaming with straight people. The Edge is no longer a gay bar and the square itself no longer seems to be a place where gay folk sit on summer nights. It's not so much a shame as simply something this old man needs to get used to. Soho is just not a gay Mecca any more. With the advent of online chat rooms and the growth of social media, gay men no longer need to hang out in gay bars. It's probably also the case that young gay men no longer want to be pigeon-holed in this manner and would rather drink in mixed establishments. Fair play to them. The usualisation of homosexuality is, after all, the thing we all fought for and a bi-product of that has to be the loss of ghettoisation.

I suppose my sadness is associated with The Edge being the first gay bar I ever visited. I went there with Philippa and Moira in 1994 and met the curiously-named Maximilian William Flowers. The fact that I still remember the (albeit unusual) name of someone I met in passing on that particular night shows quite how much of an impact it had on me. It was profoundly exciting. I was in the legendary Soho. The place I'd read about. And I was surrounded by people like me! I could be myself without worrying about getting beaten up. Ah! The good old days!

Groundhog

It's all feeling a little like Groundhog Day at the moment. All the days are bleeding into one another. I'm in and out of pairs of headphones. Half my mind is on the task of orchestration, the other half is in the rehearsal room, trying to focus on what's going on there. I suspect I'm not doing either particularly well, but I chug onwards regardless. I have now completed twelve of the seventeen songs. Well, at least, I have done the first pass of twelve arrangements. I am excruciatingly bored of working until eleven most evenings. I think the first band call is in seven days, and, at the moment, I'm finishing one orchestration per day. I have five left. I'm right up to the wire!

The fact that the weather is so nice at the moment is making me feel a little like the world is sort of passing me by. I haven't seen friends for ages, or sat on the Heath. The little area where we work is full of cafes and lovely spots to while away the hours, but we're always indoors. And I'm always under headphones! It's a harsh old life!

I didn't watch the election TV debate last night. In general I've absolutely no interest in watching a bunch of bad actors posturing and squabbling. I don't have any interest in what any of them are saying, largely, I think, because they don't have any interest in what I or any of us have to say, unless it's going to have an effect on their electability. It's terrible. What is, of course, even more desperate is that Theresa May was too "busy" (read arrogant... or scared) to turn up and fight her corner. I genuinely don't know what kind of a message she's trying to send out, but I'm sure the baby boomers will find it in their hearts to forgive her. She reminds them all of Thatcher. Those good old days of divide and conquer where people could lord it over their own relatives and where the perverts, the poor and the scroungers got their just desserts. Yeah, let's called Corbyn "comrade" and tragically try to make everyone really scared of the left.