Easter Saturday, and could I find a decent Cadbury’s Easter egg in the centre of town? Could I heck! You can get a fancy schmantsy one pretty much anywhere, but the next most well-stocked variety seem to be the hideous ones made by Nestle. Rolo. Smarties. You know, the disappointing ones that taste like gritty pastic. Since the death of Woolworths, where on earth are we all meant to go for a nice big Cadbury’s Cream Egg? Woolworths didn't get much right, but they had pick 'n mix, the Greatest Hits of Dolly Parton and a brilliant selection of cheap Easter Eggs.
I therefore spent the afternoon with Fiona in town trudging around in enormous, smelly crowds of people until our feet nearly fell off. In a rather tragic moment, probably because I was knackered and was trying to escape someone who smelled like biscuits and wee-wee, I brought almost everything I was looking for in Marks and Spencers. One pair of linen trousers, check. Some pyjama bottoms I’m going to wear outdoors in the summer, check. A little brown scarf to match my bruised soul, check. And 20 pairs of socks. This will be music to the ears of anyone who knows me. I’ve always put-up with, and in fact been hugely grateful to my brother’s socky hand-me-downs, but I no longer own a pair without a massive hole in either the heel or the toe. I also tend to only wear odd socks, often because they arrived from my brother as lone rangers but also because I tend to just grab the first two socks that come out of the drawer. Most of the ones I bought today are either brown or black, so maybe no one will notice from now on... unless I wear the orange and green ones I slipped into the basket at the last moment, except I didn't have a basket, so was holding everything in the style of someone in Crackerjack. Cabbage!
On the way home, we walked past PC World on Tottenham Court Road. Rather randomly it now carries a massive advert for the Apple Store all the way along one window. Christ! If PC World customers are even being diverted to the futuristic joys of the Mac, it might be time to acknowledge the death of the PC...
Pepys was sleeping like the dead when a messenger arrived at his cabin door at 3am and rather over-excitedly tried to wake him up. He rose to discover the messenger was simply there to deliver a package for Montagu, which Pepys decided could wait until morning and went back to bed, probably feeling incredibly grumpy. This was the second time mail had arrived on the boat in the middle of the night and Pepys had been woken up to receive it on both occasions. Perhaps the Royal Mail could learn a thing or two about the importance of going out of one’s way to deliver letters on time.
Later in the day, Pepys attempted to go to shore but after getting into some kind of rowboat, had to turn round for fear of being stranded in the Thames at low tide. Not a laughing matter in those days. Probably not much of a laughing matter today...
Later on, Mr Pearse the surgeon came on board to start his job as the official doctor on the Nazeby. Being an old friend of Pepys, they snuck off and shared a bottle of wine late into the night. Pepys went to bed with a heavy heart, having heard nothing from his wife since he left for sea; "indeed I do not remember that ever my heart was so apprehensive of her absence as at this very time."
Personally, I don’t like it when I can’t get in touch with Nathan for just a few hours. Heaven knows what it must feel like to be weeks without hearing from your loved one. I can’t imagine receiving a letter and not knowing what had happened since it was sent; hearing that someone was very sick for example, and not knowing if they’d died by the time you received it.
Saturday, 3 April 2010
Friday, 2 April 2010
Good evening from Osaka
We’re in a car heading to Thaxted. It’s Good Friday, the rain has cleared, a watery sun is casting long shadows down the Holloway Road and we’re going to pay a visit to my parents. We’re taking Fiona and an apple pie. Nathan has bronchitis, which means the poor guy can barely talk and certainly can’t do his show tonight.
Today hasn’t really felt like a bank holiday. I went to the gym and found it closed. Similarly the bakery in Highgate Village. Just as well, really, as loaves of bread there now cost £2.50. £2.50? In my day you could buy a loaf of bread, a cinema ticket and a small village and still have change for a fiver. I did a bit of work at Cafe Nero and then had lunch at Cafe Rouge. Yes, I seem to spend a lot of my time in cafes at the moment, trying to make single mugs of peppermint tea last for hours! Despite all the work I’ve lined up for the year ahead, I’ve still not earned a penny in 2010. The perilous existence of a freelance creative...
Last night I went to watch Matt in conversation with Scott Capuro at the Royal Vauxhall Tavern, which is a pub for hairy men who wear leather and like to dance to Kylie Minogue. It was a funny sort of format; a sort of live chat show with no cameras. They sat on comfy chairs perched on that famous little cabaret stage, surrounded by the ghosts of all the greats who have performed there; Lily Savage, Bette Rince, Lola Lasagne, Wilma Fingadoo and that strange woman who sits in a giant bath singing show tunes. (I don’t mean Lady Gaga.) Matt was very candid and amusing and I was extremely proud of him.
On the way back, Philip Sallon (that wonderful doyenne of British fashion) and I walked from Buckingham Palace to Leicester Square, whilst talking about 16th and 17th Century monarchs. Philip knows an astonishing amount about history and about everything. I’m not sure why that should surprise me, but it does. I must remember to invite him to the next quiz.
And if you've never seen Philip Sallon... he looks like this:
Today was the day that Pepys, Motagu and various hangers-on boarded the Nazeby and bedded down for the next stage of their journey. Pepys was pleased with his new cabin. It was small, but it had two windows; one looking out to sea and one over-looking the deck. It also had “a good bed”, which must have been a great relief. Pepys was also thrilled to discover that his main rival, the Puritan, Mr. Creed, had been barred from joining the motley crew, despite having brought all his belongings onto the boat. Hugely embarrassing and to make matters worse, he was ejected by someone whom he considered to be an inferior. His grip on Montagu was definitely loosening and Pepys was moving in!
I leave you with the contents of a letter that Fiona has just pulled out of her violin case. She is currently touring the world with the band Placebo, playing violin and keyboards and has suddenly gained a set of rather special fans. One of them left her a note at a venue in Japan. Fiona's surname is Brice. This is what the letter says:
"Dear Brice. Good evening. Live of you was seen in Osaka. It was the highest. Moreover, it was possible to see terribly in the vicinity. It was instinctively surprised the visit to Japan by a full member surely. I was able to listen to your performance and was happy. Thank you for your wonderful live and the night!!"
Today hasn’t really felt like a bank holiday. I went to the gym and found it closed. Similarly the bakery in Highgate Village. Just as well, really, as loaves of bread there now cost £2.50. £2.50? In my day you could buy a loaf of bread, a cinema ticket and a small village and still have change for a fiver. I did a bit of work at Cafe Nero and then had lunch at Cafe Rouge. Yes, I seem to spend a lot of my time in cafes at the moment, trying to make single mugs of peppermint tea last for hours! Despite all the work I’ve lined up for the year ahead, I’ve still not earned a penny in 2010. The perilous existence of a freelance creative...
Last night I went to watch Matt in conversation with Scott Capuro at the Royal Vauxhall Tavern, which is a pub for hairy men who wear leather and like to dance to Kylie Minogue. It was a funny sort of format; a sort of live chat show with no cameras. They sat on comfy chairs perched on that famous little cabaret stage, surrounded by the ghosts of all the greats who have performed there; Lily Savage, Bette Rince, Lola Lasagne, Wilma Fingadoo and that strange woman who sits in a giant bath singing show tunes. (I don’t mean Lady Gaga.) Matt was very candid and amusing and I was extremely proud of him.
On the way back, Philip Sallon (that wonderful doyenne of British fashion) and I walked from Buckingham Palace to Leicester Square, whilst talking about 16th and 17th Century monarchs. Philip knows an astonishing amount about history and about everything. I’m not sure why that should surprise me, but it does. I must remember to invite him to the next quiz.
And if you've never seen Philip Sallon... he looks like this:
Today was the day that Pepys, Motagu and various hangers-on boarded the Nazeby and bedded down for the next stage of their journey. Pepys was pleased with his new cabin. It was small, but it had two windows; one looking out to sea and one over-looking the deck. It also had “a good bed”, which must have been a great relief. Pepys was also thrilled to discover that his main rival, the Puritan, Mr. Creed, had been barred from joining the motley crew, despite having brought all his belongings onto the boat. Hugely embarrassing and to make matters worse, he was ejected by someone whom he considered to be an inferior. His grip on Montagu was definitely loosening and Pepys was moving in!
I leave you with the contents of a letter that Fiona has just pulled out of her violin case. She is currently touring the world with the band Placebo, playing violin and keyboards and has suddenly gained a set of rather special fans. One of them left her a note at a venue in Japan. Fiona's surname is Brice. This is what the letter says:
"Dear Brice. Good evening. Live of you was seen in Osaka. It was the highest. Moreover, it was possible to see terribly in the vicinity. It was instinctively surprised the visit to Japan by a full member surely. I was able to listen to your performance and was happy. Thank you for your wonderful live and the night!!"
Thursday, 1 April 2010
Tirade
Oh my god, the noise!
I have sat in Cafe Nero for 5 hours straight and with the exception of a short break when Fiona popped in for a coffee and a chat, I have been writing all that time. The great news is that I have now cracked the fifth movement of the motet. The dreadful news is that I seem to have spent the entire day surrounded by children from Highgate School. I don’t like privileged children at the best of times but the volume levels have been rising and rising for what seems like the last two hours... When one shouts, they all shout and before you know it, you want to throttle the living adenoids out of one of them; “oh my god, oh my god, totes mcgotes, oh my god, daddy, daddy, horse, daddy, oh my god, Easter, ya, ya, daddy, horse...” Pinch, punch the first of the month!
A creepy regionalist has launched a tirade against me on You Tube and all over the Internet. He seems to think that a symphony for Yorkshire shouldn’t be written by a card carrying Midlander. I sympathise with him. I didn’t think that someone from Surrey should be running the Northampton Derngate but I have to acknowledge that he’s doing a good job; probably a lot better than the one I would have done. He’s not from Northampton but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t understand the Northamptonshire folk. I love Yorkshire. I spent three magical and incredibly formative years living there and fell in love with everything to do with the place. One of the regionalist’s arguments against the BBC project seems to be that we don’t need a new Yorkshire anthem. We have Scarborough Fair and Ilkley Moor Baht ‘At. Both, of course are untouchable, beautiful, stirring songs, but Ilkley Moor was written by a shoemaker from Canterbury and Scarborough Fair is a bastardised Scottish Folk tune. Oh the irony...
Sunday 1st April, 1660, and the boats continued to be anchored off Gravesend. Pepys made another 30 shillings for putting in a good word for someone, heard a pretty decent sermon on board ship, supped in the Captain’s cabin and then went to bed!
I have sat in Cafe Nero for 5 hours straight and with the exception of a short break when Fiona popped in for a coffee and a chat, I have been writing all that time. The great news is that I have now cracked the fifth movement of the motet. The dreadful news is that I seem to have spent the entire day surrounded by children from Highgate School. I don’t like privileged children at the best of times but the volume levels have been rising and rising for what seems like the last two hours... When one shouts, they all shout and before you know it, you want to throttle the living adenoids out of one of them; “oh my god, oh my god, totes mcgotes, oh my god, daddy, daddy, horse, daddy, oh my god, Easter, ya, ya, daddy, horse...” Pinch, punch the first of the month!
A creepy regionalist has launched a tirade against me on You Tube and all over the Internet. He seems to think that a symphony for Yorkshire shouldn’t be written by a card carrying Midlander. I sympathise with him. I didn’t think that someone from Surrey should be running the Northampton Derngate but I have to acknowledge that he’s doing a good job; probably a lot better than the one I would have done. He’s not from Northampton but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t understand the Northamptonshire folk. I love Yorkshire. I spent three magical and incredibly formative years living there and fell in love with everything to do with the place. One of the regionalist’s arguments against the BBC project seems to be that we don’t need a new Yorkshire anthem. We have Scarborough Fair and Ilkley Moor Baht ‘At. Both, of course are untouchable, beautiful, stirring songs, but Ilkley Moor was written by a shoemaker from Canterbury and Scarborough Fair is a bastardised Scottish Folk tune. Oh the irony...
Sunday 1st April, 1660, and the boats continued to be anchored off Gravesend. Pepys made another 30 shillings for putting in a good word for someone, heard a pretty decent sermon on board ship, supped in the Captain’s cabin and then went to bed!
Wednesday, 31 March 2010
How much is that tin of soup in the window?
I’m currently facing the horrible dilemma that I may have to change cafes. The music they play in Costa in Highgate is getting louder and louder and more and more predictable. It cuts through my headphones, ravaging my eardrums with easy listening mush and renders me incapable of writing anything useful. That said, I have somewhat loosened the writer’s block I’ve been fighting for the past week and am now moving forward, as my mentor Arnold Wesker would say, by killing my darlings. There are passages of text that it’s made me almost weep to cut out, but I need structure and they’re not helping. Just so I feel I’ve shared at least one of them, here’s a section of text I struck from the work this morning:
“Thence to Westminster, in the way meeting many milkmaids with their garlands upon their pails, dancing with a fiddler before them, and saw pretty Nelly standing at her lodgings door in Drury Lane in her smock sleeves and bodice... she seemed a mighty pretty creature”
Nelly, is of course Nel Gwynn and I love the thought that there was ever a time when milkmaids danced in the streets. I thought my life was one massive musical!
This afternoon I had my feet examined again. This time by a dashing Aussie who prodded around a bit before announcing that my carves were still too tight and that I needed to up the stretching regime. He also re-did my insoles and added about a centimetre to their height. I’ll be in callipers yet...
I celebrated the prospect of a yellow disabled badge by heading to the Corner Shop Deli on Highgate High Street because fancied a can of soup for dinner. My eyes were drawn to the Baxter’s “Luxury Range”. They’re usually about 50p more expensive than Heinz, but the quality wins through every time. One can looked particularly tasty; courgette and gruyere, so I took it down from the shelf and immediately gasped. £3.49. £3.49 for a tin of soup! The other soups in the range were £1.89. Expensive enough but £3.49! What were they going to do? Cook it for me? Throw in a loaf of bread. Make it from scratch and pour it into the tin themselves? We all know that the Corner Shop in Highgate is pricey. We doggedly put up with it because we hate the fact that Tesco has opened a branch half-way down the hill and being middle class we have to pretend its arrival didn’t excite us just a little bit. But £3.49 for a tin of soup? I took it with me to the counter and complained vociferously whilst the man smiled sweetly and said; “yes, expensive soup... customer like... customer buy”. Not this customer.
Being a great believer in human rights, I went home and immediately phoned the press office at Baxter’s. I often call the press offices; more gets done if you have a whiff of the documentary film-maker about you. I asked what the recommended retail price was for their courgette soup and was told £1.50. “Even with the gruyere?” I asked, not knowing the price of gruyere, or even what gruyere is. “Yes” she replied. I explained I was being asked to pay more than twice that amount and she was horrified, but pointed out eventually it wasn’t Baxter’s policy to police individual shops. Fair enough. Five minutes later, they called back. Someone more senior had heard about Gruyere Gate and they wanted to take action! I shopped the shop. So if anyone from Highgate Corner Shop is reading this blog, hurry up and re-price your goods, because the man From Baxter’s... he say no!
Very little happened to Pepys on this date 350 years ago. The ships were all still anchored at Gravesend and no one seemed to be in any great hurry to get anywhere. Pepys made a bit of money, for doing one Captain Jowles a favour, and later entertained one of his neighbours from Axe Yard, feeling very thrilled that he was respected enough to be allowed to make his friends welcome on the ship. Quite why his neighbour from Axe Yard happened to be passing a flotilla of ships on the Thames Estuary, I’ve no idea, but Pepys, I’m sure made him feel very welcome.
“Thence to Westminster, in the way meeting many milkmaids with their garlands upon their pails, dancing with a fiddler before them, and saw pretty Nelly standing at her lodgings door in Drury Lane in her smock sleeves and bodice... she seemed a mighty pretty creature”
Nelly, is of course Nel Gwynn and I love the thought that there was ever a time when milkmaids danced in the streets. I thought my life was one massive musical!
This afternoon I had my feet examined again. This time by a dashing Aussie who prodded around a bit before announcing that my carves were still too tight and that I needed to up the stretching regime. He also re-did my insoles and added about a centimetre to their height. I’ll be in callipers yet...
I celebrated the prospect of a yellow disabled badge by heading to the Corner Shop Deli on Highgate High Street because fancied a can of soup for dinner. My eyes were drawn to the Baxter’s “Luxury Range”. They’re usually about 50p more expensive than Heinz, but the quality wins through every time. One can looked particularly tasty; courgette and gruyere, so I took it down from the shelf and immediately gasped. £3.49. £3.49 for a tin of soup! The other soups in the range were £1.89. Expensive enough but £3.49! What were they going to do? Cook it for me? Throw in a loaf of bread. Make it from scratch and pour it into the tin themselves? We all know that the Corner Shop in Highgate is pricey. We doggedly put up with it because we hate the fact that Tesco has opened a branch half-way down the hill and being middle class we have to pretend its arrival didn’t excite us just a little bit. But £3.49 for a tin of soup? I took it with me to the counter and complained vociferously whilst the man smiled sweetly and said; “yes, expensive soup... customer like... customer buy”. Not this customer.
Being a great believer in human rights, I went home and immediately phoned the press office at Baxter’s. I often call the press offices; more gets done if you have a whiff of the documentary film-maker about you. I asked what the recommended retail price was for their courgette soup and was told £1.50. “Even with the gruyere?” I asked, not knowing the price of gruyere, or even what gruyere is. “Yes” she replied. I explained I was being asked to pay more than twice that amount and she was horrified, but pointed out eventually it wasn’t Baxter’s policy to police individual shops. Fair enough. Five minutes later, they called back. Someone more senior had heard about Gruyere Gate and they wanted to take action! I shopped the shop. So if anyone from Highgate Corner Shop is reading this blog, hurry up and re-price your goods, because the man From Baxter’s... he say no!
Very little happened to Pepys on this date 350 years ago. The ships were all still anchored at Gravesend and no one seemed to be in any great hurry to get anywhere. Pepys made a bit of money, for doing one Captain Jowles a favour, and later entertained one of his neighbours from Axe Yard, feeling very thrilled that he was respected enough to be allowed to make his friends welcome on the ship. Quite why his neighbour from Axe Yard happened to be passing a flotilla of ships on the Thames Estuary, I’ve no idea, but Pepys, I’m sure made him feel very welcome.
Tuesday, 30 March 2010
Cabin Fever
I’ve just been on the phone to a lady in India, who wanted me to ask me some questions on behalf of a “leading UK brand”. I took pity on her. I once spent the most horrific week of my life conducting a survey on behalf of the Department of Work and Pensions. I was told to lie through my teeth and tell the person on the end of the phone that the questionnaire would only take 10 minutes. Unfortunately, I knew it was going to take close to an hour and after about 20 minutes I could hear the life draining out of the people I was speaking to. The questions I was forced to asked were ridiculous, they went round and round in circles and the whole enterprise was obviously a huge waste of public money. Anyway, the lady in India asked me to confirm my postcode and because I refused and said I didn’t want to be contacted in future, she simply sighed and hung up on me, which I thought was fairly rude. Part of me quite likes answering silly questions.
I’m not sure why so few businesses have learnt that nobody wants to talk to call centres in India, and furthermore, why we’re all forced to feel like such racists for making these kinds of statements. Frankly, if someone has to ask me how to spell the name Benjamin, we’re going to get into very deep water when I begin to explain the reason for my phonecall. And why do they always chose such cruddy “western” names to call themselves? Cindy, Frank, Gloria.
I’m still struggling with the 5th movement of the Pepys Motet. It’s based on passages which deal with Pepys’ tempestuous affair with his maid, Deb Willet and I’m trying to make it a bit bluesy to give the musical theatre and gospel singers something to get their teeth into. But it’s all sounding a bit pompous and structure-less at the moment. It doesn’t help to hear it played back all 4-square and emotionless on the computer. It also doesn’t help that I’ve got cabin fever, so I’m going to go up into Highgate now to meet Fiona for a drink.
A very short entry from Pepys on this date 350 years ago. The most exciting news was that Pepys and Montagu, whilst having dinner, caught sight of the Nazeby for the first time; a giant ship, with 80 guns, which they watched slowly drifting towards them and then laying anchor close by. It seems they were destined to transfer to this ship for the next stage of their journey so they went on board to discover much work had been done on it. Montagu was particularly pleased to find a new chimney had been installed in his bedchamber. The concept of a chimney on a wooden boat almost beggars belief but these were strange times!
I’m not sure why so few businesses have learnt that nobody wants to talk to call centres in India, and furthermore, why we’re all forced to feel like such racists for making these kinds of statements. Frankly, if someone has to ask me how to spell the name Benjamin, we’re going to get into very deep water when I begin to explain the reason for my phonecall. And why do they always chose such cruddy “western” names to call themselves? Cindy, Frank, Gloria.
I’m still struggling with the 5th movement of the Pepys Motet. It’s based on passages which deal with Pepys’ tempestuous affair with his maid, Deb Willet and I’m trying to make it a bit bluesy to give the musical theatre and gospel singers something to get their teeth into. But it’s all sounding a bit pompous and structure-less at the moment. It doesn’t help to hear it played back all 4-square and emotionless on the computer. It also doesn’t help that I’ve got cabin fever, so I’m going to go up into Highgate now to meet Fiona for a drink.
A very short entry from Pepys on this date 350 years ago. The most exciting news was that Pepys and Montagu, whilst having dinner, caught sight of the Nazeby for the first time; a giant ship, with 80 guns, which they watched slowly drifting towards them and then laying anchor close by. It seems they were destined to transfer to this ship for the next stage of their journey so they went on board to discover much work had been done on it. Montagu was particularly pleased to find a new chimney had been installed in his bedchamber. The concept of a chimney on a wooden boat almost beggars belief but these were strange times!
Monday, 29 March 2010
Gullible romantics
We went to the quiz at the Curtain’s Up last night and came second by one point. A very badly worded question about Buckingham Palace did for us good and proper. Sometimes, having just that little bit too much knowledge about a subject means you get the answer wrong!
Today has been all about the motet. I was up early, dealing with a large number of emails from people who are interested in performing in it and it’s becoming rather apparent that there are still too few gospel and folk singers asking for more information. On the bright side, we already have a choir of five Magdalene College Cambridge graduates lined up, so that’s a great weight off my mind! I did an interview for an on-line magazine, ate spaghetti on toast and then went to the gym, where amongst other things, I skipped 1000 times, pretending to be a boxer, but probably looking like a little tiny girl!
Somewhere in all that, Philippa telephoned to say she was worried that her semi-feral cat was going to ravage little Deia. The other day it lashed out and scratched her perilously close to the eye, in response to having its tail pulled. Deia is 15 months old, and probably not yet aware that Dandelion the cat isn’t a soft toy, so Philippa is wondering whether she should try to re-house her. The cat, not her daughter. Initially I wondered if she was being a touch over-protective, until she told me that her Mum knew someone who was scarred for life by a childhood incident involving a cat.
We talked about Hilary’s wonderful wedding, laughed at the incident with the bouquet of flowers, and discussed the fact that she’d also been perturbed by the minister’s sermon, feeling that the story about little Ben and the blood transfusion was actually a plot line from an episode of The OC. She also reminded me that before that particular story, the vicar spoke about the importance of a wife being servile and keeping quiet, and that no one could work out if he was being ironic or not. We were probably all too busy taking photographs of the beautiful sunlight to give it much thought!
Not a great deal was going on in Pepys’ life 350 years ago today. The fleet of ships remained anchored just short of Gravesend, whilst messengers from London came aboard to bring news of elections for Parliament and reports that various statues and portraits of King Charles I were being returned to prominent public places. Many had been destroyed by Cromwell, but a fair number had been hidden, some were even buried, and these were slowly re-appearing. There’s even a tale of a smith who bought a bronze statue of King Charles which he was meant to melt down, but made a fortune selling its pieces to Royalists. Imagine everyone’s surprise when, after the Restoration, the statue magically re-appeared, fully intact! I’m sure that 330 years later, many pieces of the Berlin Wall were similarly being sold to gullible romantics!
Today has been all about the motet. I was up early, dealing with a large number of emails from people who are interested in performing in it and it’s becoming rather apparent that there are still too few gospel and folk singers asking for more information. On the bright side, we already have a choir of five Magdalene College Cambridge graduates lined up, so that’s a great weight off my mind! I did an interview for an on-line magazine, ate spaghetti on toast and then went to the gym, where amongst other things, I skipped 1000 times, pretending to be a boxer, but probably looking like a little tiny girl!
Somewhere in all that, Philippa telephoned to say she was worried that her semi-feral cat was going to ravage little Deia. The other day it lashed out and scratched her perilously close to the eye, in response to having its tail pulled. Deia is 15 months old, and probably not yet aware that Dandelion the cat isn’t a soft toy, so Philippa is wondering whether she should try to re-house her. The cat, not her daughter. Initially I wondered if she was being a touch over-protective, until she told me that her Mum knew someone who was scarred for life by a childhood incident involving a cat.
We talked about Hilary’s wonderful wedding, laughed at the incident with the bouquet of flowers, and discussed the fact that she’d also been perturbed by the minister’s sermon, feeling that the story about little Ben and the blood transfusion was actually a plot line from an episode of The OC. She also reminded me that before that particular story, the vicar spoke about the importance of a wife being servile and keeping quiet, and that no one could work out if he was being ironic or not. We were probably all too busy taking photographs of the beautiful sunlight to give it much thought!
Not a great deal was going on in Pepys’ life 350 years ago today. The fleet of ships remained anchored just short of Gravesend, whilst messengers from London came aboard to bring news of elections for Parliament and reports that various statues and portraits of King Charles I were being returned to prominent public places. Many had been destroyed by Cromwell, but a fair number had been hidden, some were even buried, and these were slowly re-appearing. There’s even a tale of a smith who bought a bronze statue of King Charles which he was meant to melt down, but made a fortune selling its pieces to Royalists. Imagine everyone’s surprise when, after the Restoration, the statue magically re-appeared, fully intact! I’m sure that 330 years later, many pieces of the Berlin Wall were similarly being sold to gullible romantics!
Sunday, 28 March 2010
Marital Bliss
It’s been an incredibly eventful couple of days. Hilary’s wedding was a magical occasion. She was utterly radiant and sat in the church in a shaft of yellowy sunlight looking incredibly serene. The singing went well and it was a joy to perform Hilary’s father’s version of Panis Angelicus whilst he sat in the front pew with a big smile on his face.
The service wasn’t as long as I’d thought it would be. But even so there seemed to be a great lack of respect for its religious content from most of the guests. People were taking photographs with flashes, which I found embarrassing and inappropriate, not least because the light in the church was beautiful enough and would have been completely wrecked by a flash!
The vicar or whatever they call them in the Catholic church didn’t exactly endear himself to anyone during his sermon which was all about love. He rattled off some random story about a little boy called Ben from Yugoslavia who’d been asked if he loved his brother enough to donate a few pints of his blood for some form of live saving surgery. The boy had said yes and after the procedure had asked when he himself was going to die. He hadn’t realised that donating his blood wasn’t going to kill him. The wonderfully convenient point to the story was that this brave young solider had demonstrated true love for his brother to the extent that he was prepared to die for him. It’s this kind of nonsense that makes me proud to be an atheist. If someone had told that story on television, or in print, a huge numbers of complaints would have been registered and upheld. The story just doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. Why would a doctor or a parent not bother to tell a child that giving blood wouldn’t kill him? And more to the point, why on earth would someone in former Yugoslavia have a name like Ben? I’m sure the name was plucked out of thin air to make us feel the story was about a nice little Christian boy. The story wouldn’t have worked so well had it been a brave little Muslim lad from the area.
The wedding reception took place on the fringes of the Peak District with ridge of rolling hills in the distance, glowing majestically in the late afternoon sunshine. I’ve never been to a more grown up wedding and looking around, I realised with horror that all my university friends are now approaching middle age. There were laughter lines, pot bellies and flecks of grey hair almost everywhere I looked. And more worryingly, dirty teeth. It seems as we get older, the concept of stained teeth becomes more acceptable even though nothing makes us look more haggard than grimy gnashers! A lot of it, I guess, comes down to people being in long-term relationships. Marital bliss and a shed load of kids are often all it takes to make us forget to make an effort. And my God were there lots of kids! They talked and cooed and ran around during the speeches and whilst I was eating, one of them sat under the table and undid my shoelaces! The bright side was that my two godchildren finally got an opportunity to meet. One day, perhaps, they'll get married and I'll be the weird uncle with brown teeth sitting in the corner wearing wee-stained trousers!
Unfortunately, when Hilary threw the bouquet, everyone just stood and watched whilst it sailed through the air and hit the floor in a crumpled mess. I suppose marital bliss meant everyone decided someone else would gain more by catching it. The remnants of the bouquet were picked up by a gay bloke, so let’s hope he finds himself a nice man. I think he’s the marrying sort...
After the meal there was a little cabaret and a few people got up to show off a bit; the high point was undoubtedly the chief bridesmaid, Mez, reading Sassoon’s Everyone Sang; a more beautiful and appropriate poem, you’d struggle to find to celebrate the marriage of an opera singer.
Hilary came rushing over at one point and told me there’d been a mess-up with the first dance and that Nathan and I would have to sing Dancing Queen at the piano. NOW... And so with no notice, we got up and blagged our way through a sort of ballad version of the song, which went ridiculously well for a piece of pure improvisation!
Later on, us nearly middle aged people had a good dance to Rupert’s incredible selection of music, which started with Yes Sir I Can Boogie and didn’t really stop until ABBA sang Thank You For The Music. The highlight for me was jumping up and down like a maniac to Mr Blue Sky, and watching a room full of people doing expressive contemporary dance moves to Wuthering Heights. Philippa sent me a text this morning which read: “Abiding memory of you on the decks waving arms in air, ecstatic, during Wuthering Heights”. If Kate Bush and ELO can’t make you feel ecstasy, then you’re dead inside!
We stayed the night in a Travelodge family room, which seemed to involve a pull-out bed, and talking long into the night with sagacious Sam whilst Nathan slept beside us.
This morning we took ourselves to the Peak District, via the godforsaken slums of Stoke-On-Trent. What an unfortunate, confused, red-brick nightmare that place is! Young offenders institutes, shell suits, toothless BNP supporters smoking cigarettes in doorways, sallow-faced children with hollow cheekbones kicking footballs against windowless terraced houses, tall chimneys surging towards the sky… and yet within seconds you’re in the glorious Peaks, where the air smells of newly washed linen, and middle-class walkers in cagoules sit in coffee shops poring over Ordinance Survey maps.
The trip ended with a blustery walk in Dovedale; a rather charming place I'd remembered visiting as a child… and thankfully it hasn’t changed a bit.
On 28th March 1660, the fleet of boats had docked at Gravesend. No one seemed in any particular hurry to get anywhere and Pepys’ clerk, Mr Burr, went into the town to do a day of business. A curious incident took place. A chap, one Mr Banes, was hauled onto Pepys’ boat (from anther vessel) for drunkenly shouting “Vive le Roi”. I think it was his rowdy behaviour rather than the content of what he was yelling that got him into trouble for it seems that after convincing them all he was a gentleman, with a good grasp of Latin and French, and not one of the troublesome and obsessive Cavaliers, who had all recently been asked to leave London by Monck, he was allowed to go on his way. I bet he wouldn't have used his flash in church!
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