Belligerence

There's a sort of arsey belligerence filtering through the air today. I was awoken at about 9am by the home phone ringing. For some reason I decided to answer, a decision I immediately regretted. It's always the same. You say hello, and then there's that little 2 second pause; just enough to make you realise that the person you're about to speak to is 'phoning from a call centre in New Delhi. "Hello, may I speak to Mr David Teel?" The script never changes. This is always the moment I realise for certain I'm talking to a cold-caller. No one calls me by my real name, David, unless I'm at the doctors, the dentist, the job centre or pass port control. "Brace yourself for questions about broadband", I thought


I usually ask if I can put them on hold. I then sit down at the piano and play something weird until they get bored and hang up. Sometimes they're still there 3 minutes later, so I'm forced to put them back on "hold" again. I enjoy playing these little games, it's so much more entertaining than saying no politely.

Today's caller caught me in bed, however, so I decided simply to repeat everything she said to me. It's the perfect outlet for my echolalia!

"Hello, may I speak to Mr. David Teel?"
"Hello, may I speak to Mr. David Teel?" I responded.

There was a stunned pause

"Is that Mr. David Teel?" she asked
"Is that Mr. David Teel?" I replied

Now, I've done this before, and I tell you it can go on for some time. Today's caller, however, was obviously already having a bit of a bad day, and wasn't interested in my hysterical goading. "Maybe that's Mr F*#k You!" she said, before hanging up. Belligerence, I tell you...

I then went to Highgate Tube. No one was at the ticket office and two out of the three ticket machines were broken. A huge queue of people was standing behind a poor woman who couldn't get her ten pound note to go into the machine properly. A gaggle of LU staff stood watching. No sense of urgency. No one rushed over to help her. It was obviously not their job's worth.

After buying my ticket, I went up to the gaggle, and asked why the ticket office was closed, why two out of three machines were broken, and why a cluster of LU staff were merely watching the mayhem. "It's the cuts" the woman said, belligerently, "the ticket office at Highgate now closes at 11am. We don't have the staff." "I'm sorry to hear that," I said "I used to like the staff." She smiled like a mother whose child has just loudly shat its pants, so I continued, "surely this places the emphasis on your trying to keep the machines in good nick?" "I'm sure someone will come and fix them at some point" came the belligerent response. I smiled like a mother whose child had just loudly shat its pants.

As I walked down the escalators, I wondered if this really is the way we want the cuts to affect us? Instead of taking it out on the government, we're punishing each other. Not a single person in that queue today wants Highgate station to be understaffed. No one wants LU staff to go without work, but if our discomfort is met by arsey belligerence, then a vicious cycle begins. We start to notice the little clusters of LU staff deliberately refusing to help. We get frustrated with the people who we feel are being jobsworths. We lash out. We shout. We get people sacked. I see it everywhere. I'm guilty of it myself. In the gym, phoning councils, in the queue for the job centre, even with my dealings with the London Pride charity. The first absolute casualty of this recession is politeness.

Having given up with people for today, I turned my attention to our little bee. Tash sent me a text last night, which correctly identified the creature as a Mason Bee. These fairly rare, solitary creatures apparently make perfect "garden pets" for children because they only sting when actually squeezed. A little more research, plus a 'phone call to a lovely beekeeper indicated that I had something of a problem, which put me in something of a quandary. It seems my little friend is actually a young queen, who has, by all accounts, already laid about 15 eggs in my television set.

The bee keeper was laughing hysterically when I started to explain what had happened. He'd never heard of a bee nesting in a telly before. I'd shut the window and the poor creature was getting rather frantic on the other side of the glass. It was breaking my heart.

He said he was pleased that I cared about the creature's well-being and reminded that bees are a protected species, and that my only option was to try and get the nest out of the telly and onto my window ledge. The bee's ferociously accurate sense of smell would guide her to the new location, where her family-rearing would hopefully continue.

I tried to ease the muddy, mulchy mess out of the two holes in the telly, but it immediately started to crumble. First dusty mud, then wax, then piles of perfect Easter yellow honeycomb. I felt like a murderer and 'phoned my Mum, who suggested I pour all the detritus into the clean canister of a large felt tip pen, which I did. I then put the pen onto the window ledge under a brick, and I hope to God the bee will return, tidy up the proper mess I've made, and get on with raising her children on the other side of the kitchen window!

How much mess can come from one bee?!

The rest of my day was spent in the City of London. I went to Postman's Park to read and photograph the peculiar inscriptions there. Pure Victorian sentimentality; ceramic odes to people who'd died during acts of bravery, which make hysterical reading for 21st Century cynics.

"Sarah Smith, Pantomime artiste at Prince's Theatre, died of terrible injuries received when attempting, in her inflammable dress, to extinguish the flames which had engulfed her companion, January 24th, 1863."

Someone had scrawled something in felt tip pen on the bench below, which felt rather more heartfelt;

"Eddie was here. Gone but not forgotten. Died trying to save a woman trapped in the Thames. Couldn't swim himself."

Or was it a joke? Remember that I don't tend to understand jokes!

I went from Postman's Park to St Olave's, Pepys' Church, to see if there were any plaques or gravestones worth setting to music there, before heading, via Bunhill Burial Ground in Old Street, to my friend, Nicky's house, where I met her delightful son, Oscar for the first time. We had tea and biscuits, and she seemed embarrassed that he was crying a little bit, but babies cry! I suppose it's the mother's prerogative to want their's to be the well-behaved angel.

On the way home, I found out that the Pride London people no longer think I have the time to make a film for them. Interesting that my own opinion on this matter seems so irrelevant! Slightly angry, I went for a run, and didn't stop until I'd run around the circumference of the entire Heath. A first for me... about 6 miles.

Friday 3rd March, 1661, and Pepys was still in Portsmouth. He started the day with an early morning walk around the town. The toads that he took with him decided it would be a great idea to attempt to get him the freedom of the town, but the Mayor, Richard Lardner, was unsurprisingly, having none of it.

Pepys then oversaw the payment of various sailors, before taking a coach to Petersfield. The day, from Pepys’ perspective was rather spoilt by the arsey belligerence of Mr Creed, who’d accompanied him on the journey. Pepys’ insult is worthy of Shakespeare referring to; “the exceeding unmannerly and most epicure-like palate of Mr Creed.” Ouch!

Fallen Tree

This morning I discovered that my resident bee has completely filled the hole in the side of the telly with a weird mulch and moved on to a corresponding hole at the back. I am bemused.


I decided to visit Kensal Rise Cemetery this afternoon. It took me 45 minutes to get there, but it was shut. Apparently, they close at 1pm on bank holidays, which must be incredibly frustrating for those with loved ones buried there. It is still a functioning graveyard, so surely a bank holiday afternoon is exactly the sort of time that someone might want to pay a visit. The parking regulations around the cemetery are also extremely unsatisfactory. Despite it being a bank holiday, quite a number of cars parked in residents only bays had been given tickets.

Still, en route to the graveyard, two astonishing things happened. Firstly, Radio 4 informed me that Osama Bin Laden had been killed by a swift and highly effective American military operation. The world seems to be celebrating, but I'm not sure it's exactly good news. Capture the bastard, sure. Subject him to the humiliation of a Western prison, but I find myself feeling slightly suspicious when I hear that the man was conveniently "buried at sea." We've all seen the pictures of a dead Saddam Hussein. Perhaps the shots of Bin Laden are just too gruesome. I don't exactly doubt that the man is dead. I'm just not convinced he's only just been killed. Obviously, I also fear retaliation. I worry about Nathan getting home from New York but I also envy his being there. Thousands of people were apparently on the streets of the city celebrating last night, which must have been a very interesting sight. The English, of course, despite 7/7, remain decorous and understated to the last.

The other strange occurrence came in the form of a massive lime tree which had come down, smashed into a parked car, and entirely blocked Southwood Lane. Heaven knows what ripped it from its roots. It's blustery in London at the moment, but not gale-like. A group of bemused Highgate Residents was standing around the fallen tree, some filming it on their mobile phones, all saying they didn't know who they should be telling about this on a bank holiday. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it fell to me to call the police. There is a frightening tendency for people nowadays to simply film events without thinking to tell the relevant authorities. I was horrified to learn, for example, that someone filmed Ian Baynham's murder on Trafalgar Square, but didn't go to the police because he "just thought it was someone getting beaten up."

I've just been on a tour of the Western side of Highgate Cemetery, the bit the public aren’t allowed to visit unsupervised. It’s also the place where Alexander Litvineko is buried. They haven’t yet selected his headstone, so a rather eerie photograph of him stares out from behind a pile of earth and flowers.

The tour was incredible. That part of the cemetery clings to a hillside which is filled with tall trees and all sorts of bizarre monuments, mausoleums and megaliths. The most exciting part is the Egyptian Avenue, which looks like some kind of bazaar in Tangiers. It was magical. We shuffeld into cool catacombs and peered into ornate tombs with gold-leaf ceilings. At one point we were paid a visit by a beautiful baby fox, which darted out of a burrow and stared at us quite happily for some time. The tour guide was even gracious enough to point out some of her favourite inscriptions to help me with my research.

350 years ago, Pepys spent the day exploring Portsmouth. He walked along the city walls, met with Navy officers and visited a ship called The Mantagu, which he described as “fine”. In the evening, he paid a rather macabre visit to the room where George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham, was murdered by John Felton in 1628. Villiers was the favourite and possible lover of King James I of England, who rather weirdly described him as his “sweet child and wife.” He was one of the most rewarded courtiers in British history. John Felton was hanged in London later in the year and his body was returned to Portsmouth, where it became somewhat revered. Obviously Villiers wasn't as popular with the populace as he was with the monarch.

The West Cemetery

Jacqueline du Pre

The bee in our television continues to busy himself nesting, or making honey, or whatever he thinks he's doing. There's now a sort of brown waxy lattice work forming inside the hole. It looks a bit like ear wax. Heaven knows where this is going to end. A swarm of some sort? A scene from a Hitchcock film?


I'm currently in Muswell Hill having lunch in a "British" restaurant. Quite what is British about a chick pea burger, I'm not sure. Quite what is nice about said burger is also a question I struggle to answer! They're playing the greatest hits of Paul McCartney, which is making me feel a bit queezy. Ebony and Ivory. The only song ever to rhyme "keyboard" with "oh Lord." Ghastly!

I spent the morning in yet another cemetery in Hampstead Garden Suburb. This one is across the road from the crematorium I visited at the end of last week. It seems to be a primarily Jewish resting place and it was incredibly calming to wander through the graves in the sunshine - and at times very moving. Jewish culture seems to place a greater emphasis on the people left behind, rather than platitudes about being safe in the arms of Jesus etc. It feels much more personal to read "sadly missed father of x, brother of y and wife of z." Sometimes there are great long lists of names.

The shock today, however, was stumbling upon the grave of Jaqueline du Pre. I had no idea she was buried up there and found the experience of finding her purely by chance incredibly unsettling. Du Pre, in my opinion, remains by far the greatest 'cellist, if not one of the greatest musicians, of all time. She inspired me as a child and continues to inspire me. I cried as a teenager when she died and still have the press cuttings that I carefully stuck into a book. "Beloved wife of Daniel Barenboim" the grave said, and I'm sure at one time she was. The top of the grave was a bit mucky, and I'm not ashamed to say that I went to a tap, got some tissue paper, and washed and wiped it clean. I felt a little pathetic doing it, but it felt like the least I could do to thank her for her interpretation of the Elgar 'Cello Concerto.

May 1st, 1661, and Pepys and co continued their journey to Portsmouth, stopping off at Petersfield, by all accounts to play bowls. He doesn't say what time they reached Portsmouth, but described it as a "pleasant and strong" place. He was considerably less impressed by his lodgings at the Red Lion, ending the day's entry, "merry we were, but troubled to have no better lodgings." I know how that feels!

The little bee

Over breakfast this morning I watched a honey bee attempting to pollinate my television! It seemed perfectly happy to disappear every few minutes, find a flower, and return through the open window with more specks of yellow pollen, which it deposited in a little hole on the back of the telly, which I think might have been designed to wall mount the thing. It was a very curious sight and I'm at a loss as to what to do about it. Should I cover the hole and break his little bee heart, knowing it will be better for him in the long run? No wonder bees are dying out, if they try to make honey in plastic moulding!

I've been in Cambridge all day with Helen. It's been a wonderful day, although my hay fever season has now started. We drove up from London, but due to a terrible accident on the M11, were diverted via Thaxted, which is where we had lunch.

The weather was stunning; not too hot, but a beautiful treacly orange sunlight all day. We walked around the centre of town and Helen showed me the room where she practices as a therapist in one of the colleges. It was a lovely room; very peaceful and comfortable. You could see an ornate sandstone clock tower out of the window.

As the sun set, we hired a punt, and drifted along the backs for an hour or so, periodically having to steer around massive pile-ups of tourists blocking the river. No one fell in. I was bitterly disappointed. Helen surprised me with her punting skills.

As we walked around the town, a series of childhood memories were triggered, and it struck me how, now my links to Warwickshire have been severed, Cambridge is now the town in Britain which holds the most continuity for me. On many occasions I was able to tell Helen what certain buildings used to house, and what others had been before they were rebuilt. Perhaps I'll end my days there. Who knows...

Helen in her college

April 30th, 1661, and Pepys took a carriage with Elizabeth, Creed and his clerk, Thomas Hater who also brought his wife. Pepys found Mrs Hater slightly amusing. She was wearing some kind of mask, one assumes to protect her skin during the journey to Portsmouth, but it was so peculiar, that Pepys originally mistook her for an old lady. He was pleasantly surprised to discover that she was instead an attractive "black" woman. Very dark haired, rather than of African descent.

After a full day travelling, they'd only made it as far as Godalming. Pepys ended the day feeling somewhat grumpy, his hat having blown off his head and fallen into a river. He was also upset to be missing the annual May 1st coach parade in Hyde Park, where the great and the good rode up and down to show how wealthy and wonderful they were!

My favourite flower...

Very merry we were

It rather pains me to admit that I’ve had a pretty splendid day, which is a direct consequence of the Royal Wedding. London has been a magical, magical place.

I went to Philippa’s at about 9.30 in the morning, and we sat and watched the footage on the big screen in her sitting room. I think we all made the decision to sort of throw caution to the wind, and simply enjoy and even invest in the spectacle. We found ourselves looking forward to seeing the dress, and then discussing how beautiful it looked. At one point Moira started taking pictures of the screen in an attempt to catch an image of Catherine in the coach making her way to Westminster Abbey. After about the ninth shot, she turned to me and said; “I don’t recognise the person I’ve become...”

I think the most charming aspect of the day was going out onto Columbia Road and seeing a street party in full swing. Love or hate the royal family, it’s a very beautiful thing to see an entire community meeting one another, sharing food, smiling, dancing and singing. It was actually really very moving. There were trestle tables and strips of bunting. People had dressed up. Everyone was taking photographs. Everything looked utterly timeless; even the way people were dressed. We could have been in the 1950s. The sun was shining, there were silly dogs dressed in little suits, people sitting on cushions on the pavements and everyone seemed relaxed and happy. The cynic in me stayed very firmly inside...

We walked from Columbia Road to Broadway Market, to attend Sophie’s Bridal Olympics, which seemed to involve a lot of women in wedding dresses doing egg and spoon races. I took some time out to visit London Fields with little Deia; the first extended period of time I’ve spent with her on my own... I felt very privileged that she trusted me enough to hang out with me, and she was wonderful company. We went on the swings and down a slide together. I very much enjoyed the fact that everyone assumed she was my daughter – but what a responsibility it is to have children! Every time she ran off to another corner of the playground, my heart skipped a beat.

I ended the day back at Philippa and Dylan’s with a delicious pasta dinner made from a fridge full of odds and ends. Nathan called a few times from New York to say hello. He’s been hanging out with Mike McShane and Sharon is taking a new set of head shots for him down in the West Village, probably as I'm writing this. Thank God today’s been so perfect, else I’d feel incredibly envious!

April 29th, 1661, and Pepys found out that he was going to be sent to Portsmouth, which meant he needed to spend the day organising things for his imminent departure, which included giving his workmen detailed instructions about what to do in the house whilst he was away. In the evening, he was invited to a “collacion” at Mrs. Turner’s house, which went on until midnight. Pepys was thrilled to announce that there was a gentlewoman there who played the harpsicon and sang beautifully, “very merry we were.” As we were...

We will never forget you

Another day of nonsense. I woke up and went for a 6 mile run, which involved Muswell Hill, Crouch End, Highgate Village and hundreds of ridiculous hills. My legs now feel like planks of wood.


In the early afternoon I had to go to Wood Green to sort out my housing benefit. Haringey Council, in their wisdom, have closed their Crouch End office, which means the residents of Highgate have to schlep their way across North London to the biggest hell hole on the planet. There’s neither a direct bus, or a tube that goes to Wood Green from where I live, so I decided to drive, which was a mistake, because it costs £4 to park outside the council offices for an hour. Little did I know that the council’s official line is that “it’s free to park in Somerfield for two hours,” which struck me as fairly shocking.
The housing benefits office is a horrible place. It smells of sweat and cheese. It’s dark, and there were people queuing everywhere. Periodically, a computerised voice calls out “could ticket 225 go to counter 15 etc” When the lady behind the first counter asked for my postcode, she raised her eyebrow when I said N6. I couldn’t work out if it was a raised eyebrow because N6 seems like miles away to someone in N22, or whether it was because N6 is posh, and people from posh postcodes don’t sign on.

The second bloke who dealt with me was shaking because his girlfriend kept phoning. She’d overslept and then fainted because she couldn’t get her medication for high blood pressure. He asked me to pray for her and I didn’t quite know where to put myself. He didn’t seem to want to take any of the documents I’d brought with me. I sincerely hope I won’t be called in again because he was so distracted.

As I walked out of the office, I was very nearly flattened by a 6 year-old lad riding one of those ubiquitous scooters. Now, I’m all for my god-daughter in her sweet little crash helmet going along the pavement on a scooter, but razzing down the pavement faster than a BMX is surely something that needs to be addressed?

I went home via the cemetery in Hampstead Garden Suburb. It’s a very calm and peaceful spot; the place where Julie’s father was cremated. It’s also the resting place of Marc Bolan and Ronnie Scott. Some of the inscriptions on the plaques in there almost broke my heart. It’s amazing the way that death levels people. I was far less impressed by the countless gaudy plaques put in place for the various anniversaries of Marc Bolan’s death, than I was with some of the more heartfelt inscriptions from ordinary people; “My darling, I miss you so much. I love you. Without you there is no life for me. I hope we will be together again very soon. Yours forever.” There was also a little wedding anniversary card attached to a bouquet of roses which read; “from your loving wife, Dolly.”

Sunday 28th April, 1661, and Pepys went to St Bride’s Church, which I think I’m right is saying was the church he was baptised in. He was joined by various relatives. They all went back to Pepys’ father’s, where an impromptu party took place. Pepys' father took him on one side and confessed to another altercation with his wife; "she would not let him come to bed to her out of jealousy of him and an ugly wench that lived there lately, the most ill-favoured slut that ever I saw in my life, which I was ashamed to hear that my mother should be become such a fool, and my father bid me to take notice of it to my mother, and to make peace between him and her. All which do trouble me very much."

The awkward turtle

I feel a bit strange. Nathan is in a cloud somewhere over the Northern Atlantic on a giant metal bird, and I'm on Old Compton Street eating a soggy Linzer biscuit whilst contemplating the meaning of life. It's funny how things work out. I'd be lying if I said I didn't feel a little sad that Nathan is on his way to New York without me. I suppose the reality of my current employment status is finally hitting home. I drove him to Heathrow and we talked about all the wonderful things he was going to do with his time over there. As I drove away, I got a bit tearful whilst watching him disappearing in the wing mirror.

The oil light immediately started flashing on the dashboard of the car, and I had to pull over. I called my parents to have a little whinge and my Dad very sagely summed up the situation; “you're problem" he said "is that you have nothing on the horizon other than things that you're dreading...” And he was right. There's the court case, the operation on my vocal chords, another hospital appointment to examine a lump on my gum, various visits to the job centre, which will no doubt soon become attempts to get me selling curtains and doing all sorts of menial jobs that I don't have the qualifications to do...
Still, you gotta sink pretty low to realise you’re on the climb again. That's the best way to look at these things. I'm not the only one who's been wiped out by the economic climate and no one forced me to be a composer. I’ve therefore factored in a couple of days to mooch about before cranking the wheels back into motion in a big way, starting with a massive push to raise the £3,000 neccessary to make the film for Gay Pride. They want a disco anthem - and that's what they'll get; a celebration of all things LGBT, filmed on the streets of Soho. I think I’ve said before that it could well end up being the campest 5 minute film ever made. Camper than Disney. Camper than Christmas. Camper than my straight friend Alistair.

I’ve offered to write the song and make the film for nothing, but obviously can’t be so generous with other peoples' time! The money is needed to pay for a recording studio and session musicians for the track, and I suspect we’ll also need to have some help on the filming/ editing side of things. I basically have about a week to raise enough money for me to think it’s worth starting on the project, and only have two months to turn it around... So if any of you know anyone with a little bit of spare money in their back pockets, please let me know, or send them in my direction. Every penny counts. I feel almost sick approaching people for money yet again, but art aint gonna make itself in this climate, and Gay Pride are losing their official sponsors hand over fist right now.

I wondered about turning my quest for funds into one of those "Just Giving" things. How many times do I get requests to donate money, just so that a friend can take himself off to climb Kilimanjaro? I often suspect the idea of the enterprise is simply for said friend to have an adventurous holiday that he doesn't have to pay for, the pennies that are raised for charity after the costs of flights and accommodation have been met, barely featuring as an incentive.

Perhaps my being in a bit of a blue today has had something of a knock-on effect on everything around me. Despite checking Nathan’s travel agenda twice in the car today, I managed to take him to the wrong terminal at Heathrow. I was half way back to the motorway before he called to tell me he was in the wrong place. I went back to pick him up, and it was just as well. Terminal 4, where I dropped him, is about 5 miles from any of the other terminals. Dreadful.

The bizarreness continued in the gym. Whilst running, my iPod fell out of my pocket, hit the treadmill, and was propelled to the other side of the room within a second. I didn’t see where it landed so was forced to spend the next 20 minutes with a personal trainer called Daniel, lifting up all the treadmills one by one to look underneath them. 2 minutes after I’d got back on the treadmill, exactly the same thing happened to my bloomin’ keys! Fortunately, I found them a great deal more easily, but managed to lose them on two more occasions as I made my way around different machines in the gym.

Even more humiliatingly, I left them on the floor of my shower. By the time I’d returned, someone else was in there, and I had to go through the embarrassing ritual of knocking on the glass door, and asking a naked stranger to hand me back a set of keys that he’d managed to entirely cover in soapy bubbles. He didn't seem to want to help and it was ages before he responded. As he opened the door to hand me the keys, it became immediately clear that he was sporting a rather full-blooded erection! I was so shocked that I managed to knock his towel off its peg and in an attempt to pick it up again, my face came within about an inch of the very thing that I was trying to avoid. Mortifying! Ground, please swallow me up.

On a brighter note, Philippa says that she saw Philip Sallon today on a bus. I spoke to him yesterday, and knew he was out and about again, and I’m thrilled to have this independently verified. He told her he was feeling about 50% normal, and described it a bit like living underneath a cloud. I didn’t realise that this was the first time Philippa had met him. Bless her for coming on the march.

April 27th, 1661 was a Saturday, and Pepys dined with Lady Jemima of Sandwich. I appreciate that this was the family that gave its name to the food stuff, but imagine how cool it would be to be called Jemima Sandwich? After lunch, Pepys went with Captain Ferrers and John Creed to the theatre to see The Chances by John Fletcher, before heading off to the pub, where they were entertained by a harpist and a violinist. At the end of the day, Pepys called in on Sir William Batten, who asked rather too many times when Pepys expected the work on his house to be complete. I assume Lady Batten was bored of all the dust and banging. A moment for the awkward turtle to swim past, me thinks.