Peckham is a very Christian area. There are several shops in the area which blare out religious songs on tannoy systems and there’s a newsagent with a banner on it which says “Jesus is Lord, Phil. 2:1.” I’m not sure who Phil is, but, then again, I often feel that Christians talk in code to feel like part of an exclusive club. There’s all sort of stuff about the Lamb of God and phrases like “accepting Jesus into your life” which I find very bizarre.
That said, I quite like being able to travel across London and find myself in an area which feels so very other worldly. The deep, rich aromas of Caribbean and African cuisine fill the streets. People sit in little kiosks selling off-cuts of fabric, hair weaves and curious fruit and vegetables. I’m not sure the area is quite ready for the high octane energy of a musical theatre drama school! The Mountview students stand out. You can smell them a mile off!
The area is obviously changing rapidly, and it’s rather sad to think that, in a few years’ time, a lot of its quirkiness will have been swept aside by rising rents. They’re already building stacks of fancy-looking flats along the high road, and the area around Queens Road station is full of artisan bakeries and fancy bars selling micro brewery beer.
It’s probably about time. I remember going to Julie’s house on the train about fifteen years ago, and passing through Queens Road Peckham and being absolutely horrified by the state of the station, which was covered in graffiti and metal grills. It felt like something from the Bronx in the 1970s: the sort of thing which would periodically turn up on an episode of Cagney and Lacy when a homeless man gets murdered in a cardboard box.
The production of Brass at the Union Theatre was announced yesterday, which means I can now talk openly about something which has been brewing for the last month or so. I was in a production meeting for the Mountview version of the show when my publisher got in touch to say that the rights had been requested and, as ever with these things, you smile and wave, thinking that it’s entirely unlikely anything will ever get off the ground. Particularly with such a short lead time.
But in fairness to them, they’ve got it together, and rehearsals for their version started on Monday with, I’m rather pleased to say, young Jack Reitman in the cast.
It is entirely surreal to not have anything to do with this particular production. I just have to trust that they’ll get on with it, work hard, be truthful to the characters and play them with love, great affection and a huge dose of Yorkshire wit, grit and pride.
The fact that there are two productions running simultaneously in London is, of course, more than a little exciting. Add to this the news that a choir in Red Hill are singing three songs from the show in a major concert down there and it starts to feel like this precious child of mine, which I’ve nurtured for four years, is finally learning to walk unaided. The path I’ve chosen for myself in life has often felt like a brutal, uphill climb, but, just occasionally, it all seems worth it. Perhaps most gratifying of all is the sheer number of people who are coming forward to say what a profound effect Brass had on them when they saw it, or performed in it before.
Thursday, 11 October 2018
Tuesday, 9 October 2018
Wounded soldier
I injured my head yesterday. We were part way through our customary Monday morning run of the show and I realised I was desperate for the loo, so bolted upstairs to the staff toilets. I’m not entirely sure I know what happened, but as I pushed the door to the staff corridor open, my forehead was greeted by something hard, sharp and wooden. I immediately realised I had done something silly because I could see blood on the doorpost. I did the thing they do on movies and brought my hand up to my face to realise I was, indeed, bleeding, just above my left eye.
It’s funny the things that go through your head when you injure yourself and go into slight shock. I took myself first to a loo cubical. I wanted to hide away whilst I worked out what was wrong. It’s an animal instinct. What you don’t want in these instances is someone fussing or panicking. I had my wee, but suddenly noticed I’d started to wee on my foot, which made me realise I wasn’t entirely firing on all cylinders!
I remember pressing loo paper against my head and realising there was a fair amount of blood, but that it wasn’t gushing from me, so I decided the best thing to do was to make a cup of sweet tea whilst I formulated a plan which didn’t involve staggering into a rehearsal room and freaking out my cast.
As I walked away from the kitchen and into the giant fancy atrium at Mountview, I was hugely relieved to see our company manager. I pointed at my head and told him I’d hurt myself, and he instantly whisked me into the staff room to apply first aid. It turns out that he’s a designated first aider.
It took about five minutes to clean me up and stick a couple of plasters on my face. The wounds are fairly superficial. I’ve taken a chunk of skin off in a few places but I didn’t feel woozy, so probably didn’t have concussion of any sort. As the adrenaline drained from my body, I started to feel a little shaky and the wounds started to sting a bit, but I consider myself to be rather lucky not to have taken a considerably bigger hit.
I took the plaster off this morning, and it’s not the most attractive sight. A flap of skin is hanging off which I don’t want to pull at. I equally feel the wound needs to dry out in the air rather than fester behind a plaster.
So, the wounded soldier limps on. And so I should. In a show with a body count as high as the one in Brass, I merely count my lucky stars not to have been born 100 years earlier.
It’s funny the things that go through your head when you injure yourself and go into slight shock. I took myself first to a loo cubical. I wanted to hide away whilst I worked out what was wrong. It’s an animal instinct. What you don’t want in these instances is someone fussing or panicking. I had my wee, but suddenly noticed I’d started to wee on my foot, which made me realise I wasn’t entirely firing on all cylinders!
I remember pressing loo paper against my head and realising there was a fair amount of blood, but that it wasn’t gushing from me, so I decided the best thing to do was to make a cup of sweet tea whilst I formulated a plan which didn’t involve staggering into a rehearsal room and freaking out my cast.
As I walked away from the kitchen and into the giant fancy atrium at Mountview, I was hugely relieved to see our company manager. I pointed at my head and told him I’d hurt myself, and he instantly whisked me into the staff room to apply first aid. It turns out that he’s a designated first aider.
It took about five minutes to clean me up and stick a couple of plasters on my face. The wounds are fairly superficial. I’ve taken a chunk of skin off in a few places but I didn’t feel woozy, so probably didn’t have concussion of any sort. As the adrenaline drained from my body, I started to feel a little shaky and the wounds started to sting a bit, but I consider myself to be rather lucky not to have taken a considerably bigger hit.
I took the plaster off this morning, and it’s not the most attractive sight. A flap of skin is hanging off which I don’t want to pull at. I equally feel the wound needs to dry out in the air rather than fester behind a plaster.
So, the wounded soldier limps on. And so I should. In a show with a body count as high as the one in Brass, I merely count my lucky stars not to have been born 100 years earlier.
Monday, 8 October 2018
Country air
The tubes were all broken when I reached the underground this morning. There’s a horrible moment, as the tube doors open, when you realise you’re in for a rough journey. A haze of sweat rolls out of the carriage and it becomes obvious that the group of individuals within have become an amorphous mass, with faces and arms crammed into every single corner. It’s a terribly depressing way to start the week.
The weekend was rather relaxing. It kicked off with a synagogue service. Michael is away in Italy at the moment, so we were without a conductor, but it was an experienced bunch of singers and we blended well. We always have such wonderfully erudite conversations whilst we’re on our tea break. We regularly talk about religion, culture, politics and the murky world of gender and sexuality. On Saturday, we discussed generational divides in the way that people perceive, and respond to, mental health issues. There is a Jewish tradition of debating in synagogues. We may not be discussing the finer points of the Torah, but we always do our bit when it comes to talking about the big issues.
I went home for a while and entered a sort of reverie, staring at the television, wondering if I should have a sleep. Nathan was due to arrive back from Northern Ireland on a late night flight into Stansted, so I called the parents to see if they were free to take a visitor whilst I waited to pick him up. As it happened, they weren’t, but they were planning to go to a quiz, and didn’t have enough people on their team, so I jumped into a car and joined them at the Thaxted bowls club, which is actually in the middle of a darkened field with no discernible front door.
The quiz itself was aimed at a different demographic, with the music round dedicated to songs from the 50s and 60s.
Despite not being a massively useful team member, it was hugely gratifying to look around and see that I was the youngest person in the room. That doesn’t happen very often these days! The quiz master was somewhat lacking in charisma, and showed such personal bias in his questions, that the team with his wife on ended up winning, but it’s easy to underestimate how difficult and thankless writing and running a quiz can be. Simply for getting off his harris and doing it, he deserved a hearty round of applause.
Nathan was kind enough to take an Uber from Stansted to the bowls club to enable me to keep quizzing, and when everything was over, and we’d come a miserable third out of five, we headed back to the parents’ house to watch Strictly. Obviously I’m still supporting the iconic Faye off of Steps, so it was pleasing to me that she did so well.
We ended up staying the night in Thaxted. I went out like a light and slept like the dead and we managed a Sunday pub lunch before heading back to London. I worked the entire afternoon and evening putting final touches to the new orchestrations for Brass, which I finally sent off at about midnight, feeling as relieved to have finished as I felt resentful that they’d taken so long!
The weekend was rather relaxing. It kicked off with a synagogue service. Michael is away in Italy at the moment, so we were without a conductor, but it was an experienced bunch of singers and we blended well. We always have such wonderfully erudite conversations whilst we’re on our tea break. We regularly talk about religion, culture, politics and the murky world of gender and sexuality. On Saturday, we discussed generational divides in the way that people perceive, and respond to, mental health issues. There is a Jewish tradition of debating in synagogues. We may not be discussing the finer points of the Torah, but we always do our bit when it comes to talking about the big issues.
I went home for a while and entered a sort of reverie, staring at the television, wondering if I should have a sleep. Nathan was due to arrive back from Northern Ireland on a late night flight into Stansted, so I called the parents to see if they were free to take a visitor whilst I waited to pick him up. As it happened, they weren’t, but they were planning to go to a quiz, and didn’t have enough people on their team, so I jumped into a car and joined them at the Thaxted bowls club, which is actually in the middle of a darkened field with no discernible front door.
The quiz itself was aimed at a different demographic, with the music round dedicated to songs from the 50s and 60s.
Despite not being a massively useful team member, it was hugely gratifying to look around and see that I was the youngest person in the room. That doesn’t happen very often these days! The quiz master was somewhat lacking in charisma, and showed such personal bias in his questions, that the team with his wife on ended up winning, but it’s easy to underestimate how difficult and thankless writing and running a quiz can be. Simply for getting off his harris and doing it, he deserved a hearty round of applause.
Nathan was kind enough to take an Uber from Stansted to the bowls club to enable me to keep quizzing, and when everything was over, and we’d come a miserable third out of five, we headed back to the parents’ house to watch Strictly. Obviously I’m still supporting the iconic Faye off of Steps, so it was pleasing to me that she did so well.
We ended up staying the night in Thaxted. I went out like a light and slept like the dead and we managed a Sunday pub lunch before heading back to London. I worked the entire afternoon and evening putting final touches to the new orchestrations for Brass, which I finally sent off at about midnight, feeling as relieved to have finished as I felt resentful that they’d taken so long!
Friday, 5 October 2018
Week two
It’s the end of the second week of rehearsals for Brass, and I am very pleased with the direction we’re heading in. There’s still a veritable mountain to climb, but we’ve put a lot of layers down. We’ve had a few little blips during the week, a few panics, a few people losing confidence, but I don’t think anyone is scared of the show any more, which, for a piece the size of Brass is fairly surprising. My task for next week is to slowly chip away at the unexplored edges, so, by the time we run the piece a week on Monday, everyone is aware of what they at least should be doing at every stage of their journey.
One of the slightly eccentric aspects of Brass is that most of the big production numbers are performed by the men, with the women baring the brunt of the solo work. Perhaps if I had my time again, I’d have shoved a big, upbeat showstopper into Act II for the girls to perform which mirrors Barnbow Lassies. And yes, I’m aware the show is plenty long enough already, so no one should feel the need to write in!
We have a dead rat in our kitchen. (There’s a rat in me kitchen what am I gonna do...) She is wrapped in a towel, bless her, and I basically need to work out how and where to bury her. She needs to have dignity in death, so I refuse to throw her casually into a dustbin. As a rat fancier, the irony hasn’t escaped me that we have chosen to kill this little lass, after sharing our lives very happily with similar-shaped creatures in the past.
This weekend, after shul, is all about a) relaxing and b) tackling a veritable mountain of admin relating to Brass. I have to invite industry types to see the show. I have to invite my friends to see it. If you’re reading this blog, and you don’t yet have the dates and such, here’s the science:
https://www.mountview.org.uk/whats-on/show/brass/
Shows are all at the Bernie Grant theatre in Tottenham and I urge you to book because it WILL sell out.
One of the slightly eccentric aspects of Brass is that most of the big production numbers are performed by the men, with the women baring the brunt of the solo work. Perhaps if I had my time again, I’d have shoved a big, upbeat showstopper into Act II for the girls to perform which mirrors Barnbow Lassies. And yes, I’m aware the show is plenty long enough already, so no one should feel the need to write in!
We have a dead rat in our kitchen. (There’s a rat in me kitchen what am I gonna do...) She is wrapped in a towel, bless her, and I basically need to work out how and where to bury her. She needs to have dignity in death, so I refuse to throw her casually into a dustbin. As a rat fancier, the irony hasn’t escaped me that we have chosen to kill this little lass, after sharing our lives very happily with similar-shaped creatures in the past.
This weekend, after shul, is all about a) relaxing and b) tackling a veritable mountain of admin relating to Brass. I have to invite industry types to see the show. I have to invite my friends to see it. If you’re reading this blog, and you don’t yet have the dates and such, here’s the science:
https://www.mountview.org.uk/whats-on/show/brass/
Shows are all at the Bernie Grant theatre in Tottenham and I urge you to book because it WILL sell out.
Thursday, 4 October 2018
Murderer
The first mists of autumn were swirling this morning. It’s a strange old time of year. The evenings are closing in at a fast rate of knots. We get a little reprieve when the clocks go forward... or back... or whatever it is that happens in a few weeks’ time, and then it’s the slow march towards winter and we all wonder where on earth the year went and why we suddenly feel so cold. (Unless you’re a hairy old bear like me of course, when you start to feel an ordinary temperature!)
I find Autumn a very inspiring time, which almost certainly has its roots in going back to school and the fresh beginnings and opportunities a new term always promised.
But re-birth also carries the weight of death.
I had a rather distressing phone call from Nathan yesterday, who told me that he’d seen the rat. Actually, the news came in stages, over a series of phone calls. Firstly he’d seen a loaf of bread which looked like it had been gnawed at by a rat. Then he saw the rat scuttling about in the dustbins. Then he called to say that the rat wasn’t running away from him any more and that she’d started to get sluggish. It soon became clear that the rat had eaten the poison which the man from Rentakill had put down earlier in the week.
It is hugely distressing to see an animal suffering, particularly when you know it’s something you’ve sanctioned. Nathan decided to wrap the creature in a towel to make her as comfortable as possible in her last few hours. When I got back from rehearsals, her little head was poking out of the towel. She plainly couldn’t move, but her eyes were alert, staring up at me. It was awful.
I don’t think she made it through the night. She’d disappeared into the towel by the time I woke up. I could see a patch of her back, a little flash of her grey, silky coat, but it didn’t seem to be moving.
I am officially a murderer.
I find Autumn a very inspiring time, which almost certainly has its roots in going back to school and the fresh beginnings and opportunities a new term always promised.
But re-birth also carries the weight of death.
I had a rather distressing phone call from Nathan yesterday, who told me that he’d seen the rat. Actually, the news came in stages, over a series of phone calls. Firstly he’d seen a loaf of bread which looked like it had been gnawed at by a rat. Then he saw the rat scuttling about in the dustbins. Then he called to say that the rat wasn’t running away from him any more and that she’d started to get sluggish. It soon became clear that the rat had eaten the poison which the man from Rentakill had put down earlier in the week.
It is hugely distressing to see an animal suffering, particularly when you know it’s something you’ve sanctioned. Nathan decided to wrap the creature in a towel to make her as comfortable as possible in her last few hours. When I got back from rehearsals, her little head was poking out of the towel. She plainly couldn’t move, but her eyes were alert, staring up at me. It was awful.
I don’t think she made it through the night. She’d disappeared into the towel by the time I woke up. I could see a patch of her back, a little flash of her grey, silky coat, but it didn’t seem to be moving.
I am officially a murderer.
Wednesday, 3 October 2018
Code 5!
I’ve really got too much going on at the moment. I should be coming home from rehearsals and getting on with an ever-growing list of non-Brass-related things, but life keeps getting in the way.
On Monday night, I just wanted to spend a bit of time with Nathan, watching Strictly and catching up on Bake Off. I feel everyone’s entitled to a night like that sometimes. We ordered pizza and I slowly drifted into a coma, truly knackered after my weekend in Belgium.
Last night I went for dinner with Michael in Liverpool Street. We caught up on everything relating to the world of 100 Faces, and I realised, with great horror, how many terrible clashes I have coming up in the next month or so. You know what they say about busses? Well, it’s that and some!
Rehearsals for Brass are ticking along nicely. For shits and giggles, I did a run of the show on Monday morning. We haven’t done any blocking, really, or very much choreography, but I wanted to stand the show on its feet to see how everything felt. They’ve done all the character work now, so the opportunity to put everything into context turned out to be rewarding for everyone, including me. I, personally, was able to see the areas of the show where energy starts to sag, and therefore where we’re going to need to work that bit harder to keep the audience engaged.
Six of the roles in the show are double cast so that everyone gets a fair crack at the Bosch (to use an appropriate metaphor.) For some time they’ve known which dates “cast 1” and “cast 2” are performing, they just haven’t know who is in which cast, which means their family and potential agents can’t book tickets. I’ve been watching them over the last week to see where the chemistry sits and have spent a long time thinking about the combinations which would best allow individual actors to shine. I hope I’ve got it right. I think I have.
A double-cast show is incredibly tiring to rehearse. You crack it with one cast, and then the work starts all over again with the other, just as you let your guard down and start to think you’re motoring forward.
The commute to Peckham is pretty full-on, and involves quite a lot of rush hour shenanigans, including a change from underground to overground at a highly-crowded London Bridge, which is the part I hate. They’ve obviously updated the “Mr Sloane” language they use over the tannoys to describe suspicious packages, suspected fires and the like. This morning I heard talk of one “Norman Gates” reporting to such-and-such a location “urgently.” Until the word urgently was used, I didn’t think anything of it, but the announcer sealed the deal by calmly adding, “this is a code 5.” Hysterical. I wonder how serious code 5 actually is...
On Monday night, I just wanted to spend a bit of time with Nathan, watching Strictly and catching up on Bake Off. I feel everyone’s entitled to a night like that sometimes. We ordered pizza and I slowly drifted into a coma, truly knackered after my weekend in Belgium.
Last night I went for dinner with Michael in Liverpool Street. We caught up on everything relating to the world of 100 Faces, and I realised, with great horror, how many terrible clashes I have coming up in the next month or so. You know what they say about busses? Well, it’s that and some!
Rehearsals for Brass are ticking along nicely. For shits and giggles, I did a run of the show on Monday morning. We haven’t done any blocking, really, or very much choreography, but I wanted to stand the show on its feet to see how everything felt. They’ve done all the character work now, so the opportunity to put everything into context turned out to be rewarding for everyone, including me. I, personally, was able to see the areas of the show where energy starts to sag, and therefore where we’re going to need to work that bit harder to keep the audience engaged.
Six of the roles in the show are double cast so that everyone gets a fair crack at the Bosch (to use an appropriate metaphor.) For some time they’ve known which dates “cast 1” and “cast 2” are performing, they just haven’t know who is in which cast, which means their family and potential agents can’t book tickets. I’ve been watching them over the last week to see where the chemistry sits and have spent a long time thinking about the combinations which would best allow individual actors to shine. I hope I’ve got it right. I think I have.
A double-cast show is incredibly tiring to rehearse. You crack it with one cast, and then the work starts all over again with the other, just as you let your guard down and start to think you’re motoring forward.
The commute to Peckham is pretty full-on, and involves quite a lot of rush hour shenanigans, including a change from underground to overground at a highly-crowded London Bridge, which is the part I hate. They’ve obviously updated the “Mr Sloane” language they use over the tannoys to describe suspicious packages, suspected fires and the like. This morning I heard talk of one “Norman Gates” reporting to such-and-such a location “urgently.” Until the word urgently was used, I didn’t think anything of it, but the announcer sealed the deal by calmly adding, “this is a code 5.” Hysterical. I wonder how serious code 5 actually is...
Monday, 1 October 2018
Broken infrastructure
As predicted, we arrived in the UK last night and were instantly subjected to the sort of travel chaos in which the Brits seem to absolutely specialise.
The plan had been for Fiona to drop me off, where she picked me up, at Maidstone East, but when I started looking into train times, it immediately became apparent that rail replacement services were being operated, that there didn’t seem much hope of my reaching the capital before 1am, and that I would be arriving at Victoria Station at said time, which isn’t exactly a breeze to get to Highgate from at shit o’clock in the morning. Yawn.
Anyway, one of the reasons that the rail replacement service was destined to take so long was that the busses were taking passengers in the opposite direction from London so that they could pick up Eurostar connections from Ashfield International.
Fiona and I therefore decided that the best option was to drop me off at Ashfield, in the process circumventing the need for a rail replacement bus and an extra two hours on my journey. Our Chunnel train got into Folkestone at 9.50pm, the last train to Kings Cross from Ashfield left at 10.43pm, the estimated journey time was 20 minutes. What could possibly go wrong?
I’ll tell you what could go wrong. The UK’s astoundingly shitty roads, and our government’s complete inability to outsource repair work to private companies who actually give a stuff about ordinary people.
So, about two miles shy of the M20 turn off for Ashfield, we got stuck in completely stationary traffic, and watched helplessly as the sat nav’s estimated time of arrival got later and later, and eventually went spinning off into the world of “ain’t never gonna happen.”
We investigated half a dozen plan Bs. Fiona could drive me to Croydon, perhaps? That journey would take 1 hour and 48 minutes, which would mean taking the last train from Croydon to Blackfriars, where I would find myself at 1am without any other option than to walk half an hour to a 43 night bus, or an Uber back to Highgate.
All the other potential options led us into a similar cul-de-sac of frustration. Our only option, genuinely, was for me to go back home to Hove with Fiona, and take an early train into London for rehearsals.
With all other options taken away, we hit that sort of calm space where you just have to accept the situation, so we stopped at a Motorway Service Station on the M25 for some late night food. Sadly the only food available was at MacDonalds.
We sat, eating our cardboard libations to multinationalism, trying to comprehend the ineptitude of the British transport network, wondering how the Brexiteers could blame this shit on Europe, and whether making Britain “great” again would include ploughing any extra money into transport, and furthermore, whether any of said extra money would be spent on anything other than lining the pockets of hopeless fat cats who run the ludicrous companies who couldn’t organise a piss up in a brewery.
MacDonald’s decided to add an extra layer of hideousness to the proceedings. I don’t know whether anyone reading this has ever sat in a MacDonald’s late at night, when the bustle of life subsides into relative silence, but behind the counters in a MacDonald’s all you can hear is beeping. One assumes the different beeps inform staff that various bits of inedible shite have finished “cooking.” Or maybe they’re designed simply to keep the members of staff awake, but the beeping never ends. High pitched beeps. Low pitched beeps. Beeps which change in pitch. Long beeps. Short beeps. Loud beeps. Quiet beeps. Beeps in rhythmical patterns. Fast. Slow. Fast again. It was, without a shadow of doubt, the most stressful attempt at unwinding I have ever embarked on. All because of the beeps...
We reached Hove at about 12.30, I assume. The moment my head hit the pillow, I fell asleep. Deep sleep.
And actually, this morning, my journey into London was good. I had a seat. I did some work. I made my connections. Perhaps there is a travel God after all!
I did, however, have to jump the barriers at Queens Road Peckham, on account of my ticket not working and no members of staff being around to talk to. I felt a rush of adrenaline. I rather liked it. I might become the sort of old man who shop lifts for shits and giggles!
The plan had been for Fiona to drop me off, where she picked me up, at Maidstone East, but when I started looking into train times, it immediately became apparent that rail replacement services were being operated, that there didn’t seem much hope of my reaching the capital before 1am, and that I would be arriving at Victoria Station at said time, which isn’t exactly a breeze to get to Highgate from at shit o’clock in the morning. Yawn.
Anyway, one of the reasons that the rail replacement service was destined to take so long was that the busses were taking passengers in the opposite direction from London so that they could pick up Eurostar connections from Ashfield International.
Fiona and I therefore decided that the best option was to drop me off at Ashfield, in the process circumventing the need for a rail replacement bus and an extra two hours on my journey. Our Chunnel train got into Folkestone at 9.50pm, the last train to Kings Cross from Ashfield left at 10.43pm, the estimated journey time was 20 minutes. What could possibly go wrong?
I’ll tell you what could go wrong. The UK’s astoundingly shitty roads, and our government’s complete inability to outsource repair work to private companies who actually give a stuff about ordinary people.
So, about two miles shy of the M20 turn off for Ashfield, we got stuck in completely stationary traffic, and watched helplessly as the sat nav’s estimated time of arrival got later and later, and eventually went spinning off into the world of “ain’t never gonna happen.”
We investigated half a dozen plan Bs. Fiona could drive me to Croydon, perhaps? That journey would take 1 hour and 48 minutes, which would mean taking the last train from Croydon to Blackfriars, where I would find myself at 1am without any other option than to walk half an hour to a 43 night bus, or an Uber back to Highgate.
All the other potential options led us into a similar cul-de-sac of frustration. Our only option, genuinely, was for me to go back home to Hove with Fiona, and take an early train into London for rehearsals.
With all other options taken away, we hit that sort of calm space where you just have to accept the situation, so we stopped at a Motorway Service Station on the M25 for some late night food. Sadly the only food available was at MacDonalds.
We sat, eating our cardboard libations to multinationalism, trying to comprehend the ineptitude of the British transport network, wondering how the Brexiteers could blame this shit on Europe, and whether making Britain “great” again would include ploughing any extra money into transport, and furthermore, whether any of said extra money would be spent on anything other than lining the pockets of hopeless fat cats who run the ludicrous companies who couldn’t organise a piss up in a brewery.
MacDonald’s decided to add an extra layer of hideousness to the proceedings. I don’t know whether anyone reading this has ever sat in a MacDonald’s late at night, when the bustle of life subsides into relative silence, but behind the counters in a MacDonald’s all you can hear is beeping. One assumes the different beeps inform staff that various bits of inedible shite have finished “cooking.” Or maybe they’re designed simply to keep the members of staff awake, but the beeping never ends. High pitched beeps. Low pitched beeps. Beeps which change in pitch. Long beeps. Short beeps. Loud beeps. Quiet beeps. Beeps in rhythmical patterns. Fast. Slow. Fast again. It was, without a shadow of doubt, the most stressful attempt at unwinding I have ever embarked on. All because of the beeps...
We reached Hove at about 12.30, I assume. The moment my head hit the pillow, I fell asleep. Deep sleep.
And actually, this morning, my journey into London was good. I had a seat. I did some work. I made my connections. Perhaps there is a travel God after all!
I did, however, have to jump the barriers at Queens Road Peckham, on account of my ticket not working and no members of staff being around to talk to. I felt a rush of adrenaline. I rather liked it. I might become the sort of old man who shop lifts for shits and giggles!
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