We're following the piper!

We're in Hackney, where we've just taken delivery of three lady rats who are coming for a holiday in Highgate.

It's nothing sinister; we're not trying to breed them or anything, we're simply looking after them for three friends who are going on holiday in Slovakia. The guest rats are the mother, sister and the aunt of our Tyndarids, and they're absolutely tiny, which makes me wonder if we've been feeding our two rather too much "Reggie Rat." One of the lady rats is very old and frail. She's called McCann - named after Maddie - and she's not expected to last the two weeks she's with us. If she dies we're under strict instructions to put her in the freezer, so that they can bury her somewhere nicer than Hampstead Heath, or Highgate Woods, though quite why they think this is going to be possible in Hackney, I'm not sure.

It's very important that our rats are kept away from the girls... They may be related, but that won't stop them from doing naughty things, and having seen the way that Pol is with the back of my hand, I wouldn't wish that on anyone or anything.
 
It rained heavily in the night 350 years ago, Pepys' guttering became blocked, and he woke up to find all of his ceilings completely ruined. 

He spent the day with Captain Holmes, walking around London and generally putting the world to rights. Pepys liked Holmes. He was loyal to Sandwich, and cunning, which was a compliment. "Two-faced" (which feels like a very modern phrase) was also used as a term of endearment. I think Holmes simply knew how to keep his enemies close, and Pepys didn't want to get on the wrong side of him.

what has become of my painting?

I woke up this morning with the mother of all writer’s blocks. It was ever likely to appear at some point during this requiem project, but to happen when I’ve sailed effortlessly all the way to the last movement feels a bit like a slap in the face! It’s utterly predictable, as well. The London Road business slightly dented my confidence, and last night we went to see Parade at the Southwark Playhouse, which has got to be one of the greatest musicals written in the last 20 years. I saw the show at the Donmar Warehouse about five years ago and was left distinctly cold. It can’t have been a very good production, or perhaps my head wanted something different from new musicals in those days. I went with my friend Matt, who’d gone on and on about it and I really couldn’t understand why. Maybe it’s one of those shows which mellows when you see it for a second time, because I now fully understand why people love it. It is brilliant, and I recommend anyone who likes their musicals on the dark side to go and see it before the run ends.

Of course when you see something as well-written as Parade, it can inspire, but it also has the potential to niggle. Will I ever match it with something of my own? Will people ever mention my name in the same breath as Jason Robert Brown? Will I achieve what I want to achieve as a writer? Will I ever be described as great? I’m certainly taking my time!

I went back to what I’d written for the Dies Irae sequence in my requiem and immediately discarded the lot and started again... and then after lunch, ripped up everything I’d written in the morning and started a third draft. I suspect I’m considerably closer now, but I'm still in this sort of weird, hazy, formless, messy place, which I don’t really recognise. Nathan suggested I take a break, but psychologically I need to get to the end of the work. It’s been going on too long now. It just needs to be done, so that I can put it away as a complete work, and return to it afresh, after a time away.

Anyway, that’s pretty much been my day. Slightly dull. Unusually frustrating. I  went to the gym and ran about a bit, then drove into town to pick Nathan up, who is working front of house at the Shaftesbury Theatre, where Rock of Ages has just started playing. I saw the piece in New York (get me) and can't imagine it will have the same resonance over here.

I also can’t believe it’s the last day of August. Where has this year gone? The slow march towards Christmas is upon us...

350 years ago, Pepys went with his old friend Luellin to the famous Bartholomew Fair. Luellin convinced Pepys to accompany him to a dodgy pub, “a pitiful alehouse”, which was filled with all kinds of undesirables, “where we had a dirty slut or two come up that were whores, but my very heart went against them, so that I took no pleasure but a great deal of trouble in being there and getting from thence for fear of being seen.”

After sensibly ditching Luellin, Pepys went back to the fair with two of Montagu’s daughters and they saw monkeys dancing on ropes, which didn’t impress Pepys at all, not just because the monkeys were fairly stubborn, but also because he found himself surrounded by such terrible people. On the way home, he bought all the women in his company a glass bauble, which seemed to please them a great deal.

He used the end of August as an opportunity to sum up his life, which was troubling him somewhat, because, amongst other things, he felt he was seeing too many plays. He was also worried about politics, his brother Tom, a lack of money, and, of course, the business of the will, which was still dragging on. His entry ends with the most chilling sentence: “The season very sickly everywhere of strange and fatal fevers.”

See how that building there is nearly built

I've come to London Bridge to watch Parade at the Southwark Playhouse. The idea had been to find a quiet coffee shop to do an hour's work, but this place is a living hell! Everywhere I turn there's building work, or huge queues of traffic, or trains rumbling and screeching and whistling over bridges, or closed shops, or motorbikes, or road works, or drills, or car horns, or oceans of people shuffling along like their feet are made of lead, or those irritating charity workers with their branded macs, silly clip boards and fake smiles. There's some kind of machine outside the London Dungeons which is belching out the most hideous high-pitched noise, which sounds like a cross between a bagpipe and a death rattle, and it would seem there's absolutely nowhere to escape! I've seldom felt less comfortable in my own city and must remember to avoid this place like the plague in future! Still, The Shard of Glass is an impressive building close-up and it's very nearly complete, so there are small mercies! 

350 years ago, Pepys and Elizabeth went to see a French farce at the Drury Lane Theatre. Pepys didn't enjoy the experience and wrote that  "the scenes and company and every thing else so nasty and out of order and poor, that I was sick all the while in my mind to be there." I know the feeling...

Elizabeth bumped into one of Lord Somerset's sons at the theatre. She'd known him as a child, when she lived in France and I'm sure was very pleased to see him. Perhaps Pepys was jealous, for he described him as "a pretty man" before adding, "I showed him no great countenance, to avoyd further acquaintance." And that was that for the day. "That done, there being nothing pleasant but the foolery of the farce, we went home." Spoil sport!  Still, if you insist on going to see French farce, you only have yourself to blame.

I can be driving, driving home

It's our 9th anniversary today. 9 years! It's astonishing how these things can suddenly come upon you, and how old they can make you feel! My 20's now seem like a very long time ago and I feel like I've known Nathan my entire life.

We've just been to Jem and Ian's, who are the other two monks in Nathan's Brother Act cabaret. I was lucky enough to be the first person to see and hear a collation of their material, and it's really very impressive. Brilliant songs, immaculately performed. I felt immensely proud. Jem is also a pretty amazing cook, and made us a quiche, which is, after all, heaven for all gay vegetarians!

The rest of the day was spent sitting in various cafes. It's a bank holiday, so my favourite place was closed. I went instead up to the village, and worked in Costa. 

It's funny how little significance bank holidays can have to freelancers within creative industries. Theatre shows don't get cancelled on bank holidays - far from it - and people like me are just as likely to spend the day writing as any other day, unless, I suppose they have kids who are off school for the day, or a partner with a proper job!  When I worked in the corporate field, we were actually forced to take time off on bank holidays and not paid for the privilege, which used to annoy me rather spectacularly! Surely the point of a bank holiday is that you get paid to do nothing?

Incidentally, if any one reading this blog likes baking, do take an hour out of your life to see The Great British Bake Off, which started again two weeks ago. It's basically Delia Smith meets the X Factor, and is, without doubt, my favourite programme on telly at the moment. Bakers are such lovely people! Catch it on iplayer. You will not he disappointed.

350 years ago, Pepys was entertaining various family members including his Aunt Wight, who'd never seen his house before. He spent the afternoon with a bookseller - no doubt adding copious books to his ever-growing library - and the evening with his father, who was off to his country cottage in Huntingdonshire the following day. Conversation, as usual, was about the will. When would it ever not be, I wonder? 

The sun coming out

It's been a cold, miserable sort of day, and we've spent much of it lazing around whilst trying to avoid the rain showers. We went to my new favourite cafe this afternoon, to drink hot chocolate and do a bit of work in a sort of "it doesn't matter if we don't actually do any work" sort of way.

Throughout the day we've been receiving regular updates from various friends in New York. The much-anticipated hurricane seems to have become something of a damp squib. In fact, when we spoke to Christopher last night, he simply said; "yeah, it's raining a bit... no wait, it's stopped..." Sharon told us the sun was shining and that they'd managed to escape with just a few heavy gusts of wind. Thank God. Sometimes I wonder why the media makes such a big deal about these things. When they start to count the cost of this hurricane, it'll surely not be in damaged buildings, but in revenue lost when half of New York was evacuated, and all the shops, theatres and businesses were closed unnecessarily.

Whilst sitting in the cafe, I stuck a hand into my computer bag to find a pair of headphones and immediately felt my entire body engulfed by a searing pain. I looked down to see a wasp hanging from my finger. I can't remember when I was last stung by a wasp, enough, one assumes, to forget what an unplesant experience it can be! Five hours later, and I'm still feeling a bit sore, although thankfully I'm not one of those people who swells up when bitten or stung. There were no dramatic high-speed trips to A and E for injections of anti-histamines!

We went to see the film One Day tonight, and I enjoyed it thoroughly. Nathan was considerably less impressed, describing the piece as "dismal." The only slightly irksome aspect from my perspective was Anne Hathaway's Yorkshire accent, which I genuinely would describe as, at least approaching, dismal.

The other dismal aspect of our evening was the cinema itself. Screen One at the Odeon in Muswell Hill is a barn of a room; a 1930s haven, which is beautiful to look at, but both freezing cold, and incredibly unclean. When I got up to leave, I realised my feet were stuck to the floor, and heaven knows what was lurking in the darkness under the seats! The screening room has also become hugely impractical as a space. For some reason people are no longer allowed to watch from the stalls, so the entire audience now sits in the circle, which, at its closest point, is at least 20 meters away from the (relatively small) screen.

To add insult to injury, Odeon policy is now to flog "premium" seats, which means no one with an ordinary ticket can sit in the first 15 or so rows. This obviously leads to the entire audience sitting in a clump in the back ten rows, so far from the screen that the experience becomes a little like watching a computer screen from an arm chair the other side of your sitting room. Only two people in the entire auditorium had paid for premium seats, so I'd wager that it can't be hugely cost effective.

And don't get me started about the person who switched the house lights on before the film ended... In fact, just at its most moving point; and there we all were weeping into handkerchiefs and wiping snot from our chins. Not a good cinematic experience, and Odeon, as a company, should feel ashamed.

350 years ago, Pepys went to see the Sandwich clan at the Wardrobe, and found the two oldest children preparing to leave London for a trip to France, part of some kind of grand tour I suppose. There was lunch at Pepys' cousin, Thomas'. Everyone was very merry, but Pepys felt the food was sub-standard and decided his cousin was something of a miser. After lunch, there was yet another trip to the theatre, and Elizabeth Pepys was thrilled to see the King, Duke of York, and Pepys' pin up, Lady Castelmayne all present. One assumes she barely watched the play itself. In those days, theatres, like churches, were places to watch people and be seen watching people. I imagine fans and things and lots of fluttering eyes...

I don't want to say it

Nathan went to watch London Road at the National this afternoon, and enjoyed it hugely. People have been telling me to see it for months now. I think its brand of verbatim theatre is considered to be not a million miles away from the work I do in film, although Nathan says it's almost incomparable. Obviously I should be applauding vociferously. The truth is that I find myself feeling slightly envious, and whenever anyone mentions the work, I get a little flutter of weirdness in my stomach. I suppose the inoperable voice of doom in the back of my head warns me that people might start to say the work I do is simply a copy of London Road, or worse, that from now on, there will always be another composer in that tiny pool of people pitching for funds that does something similar to me... Somethig, maybe better. Instead of looking for the bloke who made A1: The Road Musical, they’ll look for the bloke who made London Road.

It’s funny how insecure creative people can be, and how wildly protective they can become of their patches. I talk about creative people. I mean me. I have no idea what goes through the minds of other people, but know the day will come, fairly soon, when I’ll watch a documentary on the telly which features “real people singing.” Obviously I’ll say it’s rubbish, but secretly I’ll be thinking how amazing it is, and wondering why those who made it didn’t approach me! That’s how my mind works! There are so few opportunities in my area of the arts that I end up not being able to feel pleased for anyone who even remotely treads on my toes and that's not a very nice thing to admit. It’s only untouchable success, I fear, that allows a person to be truly magnanimous.

I went to the South Bank this afternoon, to meet my parents, brother Edward and Sascha, who were off to see the James Cordon play, which seems to be the other work that's taking the country by storm. I've been told many times what the play is called but every time, have instantly forgotten. It was quite a coincidence that they were watching theatre at the National on the same day as Nathan, and it meant we could all sit down and eat together at Giraffe. Brother Edward very kindly paid for us all, and it wasn’t cheap.

I walked across the bridge to Charing Cross, with Nathan, and we sat in Starbucks for a while before Nathan disappeared to perform in Naked Boys Singing, which he does every Friday and Saturday night. I came home and worked on the Dies Irae sequence of my Requiem. It’s the final movement, and I’ve left the best til last – or rather, I’ve left what HAS to be the best til last. I think about Mozart’s Dies Irae... Verdi’s... Even Karl Jenkins’, and start to feel a little bit sick with nerves. All composers seem to raise their game for the Dies Irae. Maybe it's because this particular sequence of the Requiem comes from a poem written in the 13^th Century, and one has to have respect for something  that was written that long ago. Even to Pepys it would have seemed an ancient work. It’s quite a lengthy piece, however, and, unsurprisingly there are one or two passages that I’ve decided to omit. I'd like to say that this was purely to do with the practicality of not wanting one movement to be a great deal longer than the others... but there also are a couple of lines that I find offensive.

Wednesday August, 28^th, 1661, and Pepys was still busying himself with his Uncle’s Will, looking for various attorneys to give him advice about his Aunt Ann, and the £200 that she was expecting. When Pepys returned home in the evening, he set about writing a letter to Sir William Penn that purported to be from the thief who'd recently stolen his prized silver tankard. It was, one assumes, some kind of practical joke, but it doesn’t sound very funny to me!

Let me be weak, let me sleep

I’m watching a programme about bears in Minnesota, which I’m finding rather moving for some reason. Nathan thinks it’s because I’m recognising my own species! They really are the most beautiful creatures, and it surprises me that they’re so openly hunted in the States.

I slept in late this morning. In the wee smalls, just as we were arriving back from Cambridge last night, I received a text from Fiona, who’d found a mouse in her bedroom, which was freaking her out a bit. At one stage the little critter was sitting on the top of the curtain rail which is directly above her bed. Unsurprisingly, she came up to sleep at ours, and opted, wisely, for the loft space, because our feral pet rats were on the loose in the sitting room. Out of the frying pan and all that...

We had a late night cuppa before turning in, and it was 3am before I knew it.

This morning I went to Marble Arch to see Matt’s new house, which is very swanky indeed. We had lunch in an Italian just off the top end of Oxford Street, and caught up on about 3 months’ gossip. After saying goodbye, Nathan and I wandered towards Soho through that rather peculiar part of London which is south of Oxford Street and north of Piccadilly. It’s where all the tailors and posh people hang out, which probably explains why I’d never been there before. The area smelt of wealth. Everywhere we looked, another impeccably-dressed individual was sashaying along the road looking rather pleased with him or herself.  

I had my hair cut in Soho. I liked the lady that did it. She looked about 6 years old, but took a great deal of care over what she was doing, opting to use clippers rather than scissors. She even trimmed my eyebrows, so now I look a great deal less like Denis Healy and probably at least 2 years younger!

I am, however, proper knackered, which makes me feel at least 60 years old. I’m sitting in front of the telly and can barely keep my eyes open.

350 years ago, Pepys was forced to bid a fond – and tearful - farewell to his trusty servant Jane, who was going to live in the country with her mother. She obviously didn’t want to leave, and cried a great deal as Pepys handed over her final wage packet, along with a little something extra for having been a loyal servant for three years; “I shall never have one to please us better in all things.” He wrote, rather winsomely. But fear not, dear readers... she will return.

He then went to see his father, and together with his brother, Thomas, got to work on the family accounts. They discovered their father had but 45l in the world, much of which he owed to others. It was a sobering thought. What if he’d died before inheriting money from his brother (Pepys’ Uncle) Robert? What would have become of his good-for-nothing wife?

Aside from a quick visit to the theatre, the rest of the day was spent dealing with family business; discussions about the will, discussions about potential brides for Pepys’ brother, Thomas... At one point, they were met by a veritable deputation of people who wanted to have a go at Pepys’ father for sacking his servant, Ned. We’re not told what Ned’s crime was.

There was a letter waiting from Sandwich when Pepys returned home. All seemed well, but he was still in Alicante with no plans to return to Britain with Catherine de Braganza any time soon. Ms - or Lady – or Princess de Braganza, had been betrothed to Charles II. She was Portuguese, so heaven knows what Sandwich was doing in eastern Spain. The letter was dated July 22^nd, so it took about a month to arrive, which probably beats a postcard sent from Spain via the Royal Mail.