I never loved you more than on those happy autumn days

We've been at my parents' house in Thaxted all day. It was a last minute decision. When you wake up on October the second and discover it's the hottest day of the year, you have to get out and about.

I knew brother Edward and Sascha were heading up, so it felt like the perfect opportunity for an ad hoc family gathering.

The sun was so hot, but it was a strange, dusty, almost dead heat. Like the heat you'd expect to find in a desert. Dry as toast, rather Mediterranean and certainly very unlike anything I've experienced in this country. It's hotter here than it is in Rome, Athens and LA. We're practically the hottest place in the world!

We walked around the fields and everything felt wrong. Beautiful but wrong. The sun was low in the sky, so the shadows were as long as I've seen. Nathan had his top off and yet we were kicking our way through autumn leaves. The bushes were laden with sloes and juniper berries, and many of the trees were turning brown. But it felt like Spain. Hot. Utterly magical. It must have triggered the Leo The Lion fire energy inside me because I felt truly alive. We came back home and shared the first apple from one of my parents' trees; a fabulously crunchy variety with a proper kick to it. I bloomin' love the autumn!

350 years ago Pepys went to visit his cousin Peg Kite. Great name. She was the daughter of Pepys' Auntie Julian (another fabulous name) and Pepys hated her. In fact he went as far as to describe her as a slut. Steady on!

There was a trip in the afternoon to the King's Theatre to see a play called Victoria Corombona, which Pepys hated. His enjoyment of the piece was hindered greatly by really rubbish seats. 6 days ago at the Union Theatre, I knew exactly how he felt!

Thank you for the music

I woke up at about 10am and immediately set sail for Northampton. It ought to have been a fairly speedy journey, straight up the M1, but there are “road improvement works” at Luton which slowed me up considerably. There are always road improvement works at Luton. When they finish one section, I’m sure they simply dig it up and start all over again. The M1 is meant to be our flagship motorway; the speediest route to the North, yet for the last 5 years it’s been impossible to get beyond Luton in under an hour and a half. Grrr...

I reached Northampton just before lunchtime and had a bag of chips at Harry Ramsbottom’s whilst watching the world go by. It’s a troubled town. Northamptonians tend not to bother with their town centre these days and are far more likely to do their shopping down the road in Milton Keynes. The beautiful medieval market square, which used to house one of the biggest markets I’ve ever seen, has borne the brunt of years of council mismanagement. They’ve made parking difficult and expensive. They’ve made the streets complicated to drive around. There are weird one way systems. There are way too many concrete buildings. The place feels unloved. They’ve cleared half the market stalls in the square to create a “performance space” which no one ever performs in, and because half the market stalls have gone, the rest are struggling to attract customers so are closing at a great rate of knots. The area should be filled with street cafes, but instead, bored Somalian lads hang about in little clusters, intimidating anyone who has dared to venture into the badlands.

The people who were shuffling past me seemed inadequate and slightly pathetic. It actually became quite upsetting. I saw a toddler in a push chair wearing eye makeup. I’ve never seen so many ticks and limps and obviously troubled people. The busiest shop was the pawn-broker.

To make matters worse, The Jesus Army were out and about, stopping young people in the streets. They’d erected some kind of marquee and there were a group of chinless types playing some of those grotesquely chirpy Jesus songs on guitars and un-rhythmic bongos. I fail to see how any group of people could want to publically celebrate a) being so talentless b) being so ugly c) being so sinister d) being so smug e) being so unable to think for themselves f) being so fast to condemn and g) annoying the hell out of God! They’d set up a little pair of chairs and a table which had a big bowl of pretzels on it (oy vey) one assumes to attract hungry people and then clobber them with Jesus speak. I’m not sure it counts as an A-grade conversion if a group of homeless people move in to take advantage of free pretzels. A weird women in a fair-isle cardigan was telling them that Jesus loves everyone (obviously she was lying) but that he particularly loves the poor. The homeless people were out of their minds on crack. One of them didn’t seem to be aware of his own existence. A conversation about the existence of God was almost definitely one step too far. I bet the cardigan-beclad perm-headed cow handing out leaflets washed her hands very carefully at the end of the day, smug in the knowledge that she’d bought a few more souls for Jesus. Meanwhile, the crack head had stolen her wallet and used God’s money to buy himself another hit (or a multi-pack of pretzels) Ah, the delicious irony.

I sat in a cafe for a couple of hours writing music, before meeting Debbie outside Radio Northampton. Debbie is an old friend from Music School days. We sang in choirs together. She came punting with me on my 18^th birthday. We go back a long way. She looked fabulously cool in a pair of sunglasses.

Northampton was blisteringly hot. It was, in fact, the hottest October day on record, so we went to Abingdon Park and sat in a lovely cafe, before driving up to Kingsthorpe to pick up her lovely kids and deposit them at some kind of Beaver convention. The Beavers, I’m told, are miniature cubs. We were north of the town near Weston Favell shopping centre, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many children swarming around a single concrete courtyard. It was mayhem.

The purpose of my trip to Northampton was to see a memorial concert for a chap called Jack Zerfahs, who taught ‘cello at the music school back in the day. He must have lived to be very old indeed, because he’d semi-retired even back then. He always taught the ‘cellists who set at the front of the orchestras and as such I was always a little angry not to be one of his brood. He ran the auditions and made all the decisions about who sat where in what orchestra, and, I suppose, would be very fast to point out that one of his pupils hadn’t done his or her best if they’d had a bad audition day.

Anyway, the concert was performed by a huge number of people I knew; teachers, former pupils, many of whom I’d not seen for 20 years. Some, like my cello teacher, from the age of 7 to 17, didn’t seem to have changed whatsoever. It was delightful to see her. Others looked grey and wizened. The ensemble was essentially a string orchestra. Fiona was playing. Others from our era looked extremely well. Many had had children. Some were still pro musicians, others had successful city careers. Some of the older kids were there as well; the ones who were glamorous sixth formers when I was 14, and used to scare and excite me in equal measure. I actually struggled to speak to one of them afterwards – feeling that same-old child-like crippling embarrassment as he talked to me about his business restoring stringed instruments. Once a sixth former, always a sixth former!

The quote of the evening had to be from Mr Dyson, who used to run my string quartet. I went up to him, and shook his hand, “I doubt you’ll remember me...” I said. Hoping that he would. He looked hard, and then smiled. “Ben?” “Yes!” I said – thrilled to be remembered. And then he continued – rather proudly... “Benjamin Twigg,” he said. “Till” I said, “Benjamin Till...

Although it’s funny you should call me Twigg...” and then it dawned on me that it wasn’t funny at all. Those who know me well will remember that I was once the partner of a certain New Labour MP, who was elected in what many might think of as the defining moment of the 1997 election. His name was Stephen Twigg and it was the most surreal period of my life. We were plastered across a number of newspapers, and I suppose, as it all happened four or so years after I’d left Northamptonshire, people like Mr Dyson would have read the papers, seen my photograph, and been impressed/ horrified/ excited that I was moving in such impressive/horrifying/exciting circles. In his mind, I guess, I’ll always be associated with that moment in time. He later told Fiona how embarrassed he was about the “gaff.” She (correctly) told him that I’d found it hysterically funny, because it’s exactly the sort of thing that I’d have done myself.

Remember this?

Anyway – it was a fabulous concert and the orchestra played brilliantly.

I went home via Fiona’s parents’ in Collingtree where Fiona’s nephew was staying the night. In a particularly hysterical episode, he was awake when Barbara checked in on him, so she brought him out in his little sleeping bag to say hello and have a little night-time cuddle. He was smiling and gurning like a lunatic and didn’t seem to be at all receptive, even when people spoke directly to him. It was then we realised he wasn’t actually awake at all. His eyes were open, but Oskar was in the land of nod. I guess you really had to be there, but it was brilliantly amusing.

On my way home – at 1am – I got stuck in the mother of all traffic jams on the M1... Same area around Luton. I didn’t get back to Highgate until 3.

350 years ago, Pepys and his wife “lay long in bed” and amongst other things talked about music. Elizabeth wanted to learn how to sing. Co-incidentally, Pepys had booked himself in for a singing lesson with his teacher Mr Goodgroome, that morning, so Elizabeth tagged along. Pepys wasn’t the most tactful man. Elizabeth wasn’t a particularly musical lady. There may be trouble ahead...

I have a dream, a song to sing...

It’s been another ridiculously hot day. Last night was almost unbearably sticky. I slept lightly - in a semi-hallucinatory state. At one point I think I must have brushed past Nathan’s fingers because I dreamt/imagined there were worms in the palm of my hand. I woke up at about 4am. It’s something I’ve been doing ever since the court case. Lots of thoughts roll around my head at that time in the morning. Lots of plans start to form, and then I’m suddenly wide awake. I got up and watched some telly whilst listening to the rats scratching about in their cage.

 Believe it or not, I’m still coughing. But certainly not as often. I maybe have 10 or so attacks each day – often when I’m at the gym. Aside from the coughing, however, I guess I’m almost better, but it’s very strange to think that I was ill for the whole of September. I can’t remember the last time an illness wiped me out of for a whole month. As a result, I’m extremely worried about my voice. It’s in tatters from the uncontrollable coughing. The hoarseness feels almost identical to how it felt before my operation and I’m terrified the polyp has returned. Talk about one thing after another...

On the bright side, we now have our top sop for the choir. Hurrah! She’s an actress in Phantom. I can’t tell you how excited I’m getting about this concert, and the choir we’re forming for it. I really want them to go on to great things and have big plans. Because it’s a relatively small choir of 16-18 voices and we’re all music readers, we can market ourselves for all sorts of session work. My dream is to build a reputation for doing concerts and recordings in strange locations. I want the choir to feel the music they perform and really draw people in; really challenge the perceptions people have of live performance. I don’t want anyone who sees us to feel that crippling sensation that classical music fans can experience, when they feel glued to their chairs, holding their breath for fear of breaking the concert-going etiquette. In my experience, people should be able to show their appreciation at any stage in a performance, but particularly at the end of a movement, unless, of course, a conductor very specifically holds the moment because there’s a tangible sense that one movement needs to segue into the next. I want to lose that ghastly thing when you walk into a concert hall and the orchestra are all sitting on the stage practicing. It’s arrogant, it looks amateur and it wrecks the magic of the moment.

Anyway – because I’m fired up I worked solidly from 9.30am to 11pm, stopping only to watch Pointless (which I try to watch, because I know my parents also enjoy it and like to think we’re all doing the same thing at the same time) and Strictly Come Dancing. I didn’t enjoy any of the dancers tonight, and have taken against the blond-haired footie player on account of his having a head like a bucket!

And what of Pepys? Well his entry from September 30th, 1661, is possibly the longest ever!
There was a ruckus in the City of London. The French ambassador had been rowing with his Spanish counterpart; something to do with the Swedes. The King got involved (telling no English man to get involved), but it did little good, and as a result, there were soldiers and various people rushing through the streets all day. At one stage there were even barricades outside both embassies. Pepys went to Chelsea to do some business with the Privy Seal, and looked at some beautiful paintings at Danvers House that he’d previously only seen at night. They looked astonishing in daylight.

He returned to the City to hear that the Spanish had taken arms against the French and killed several people (including an Englishman who'd been caught in the cross-fire). London was in a state of jubilation at the prospect of a Spanish mini-victory. As Pepys put it; “we do naturally all love the Spanish, and hate the French.” How little things change!

Pepys recounted the story to his (French) wife, who was understandably none too happy with his summing up of the situation. A little tactless, I feel, Mr Pepys.

The sun is still in the sky

I've melted. It's official. I'm sitting on a sofa feeling like an old dish cloth. It’s incredibly hot outside, and I’ve been working very hard. There’s an astonishing amount of arranging to do for this concert on November 27^th and also a huge amount of organising. We seem to have a full choir but for 2 tenors and a top sop. I'm not so worried about the soprano, but I'd love to find some tenors. They don’t grow on trees, and those that exist get very finely spread!

I worked all morning in the cafe, and then went for a lunchtime walk with Fiona around the edge of Highgate Woods. Beautiful sunshine and glorious green-dappled shade. I’ve been sitting on a sofa all afternoon and evening doing more arrangements, wary of the fact that I start a job in Manchester at the start of November, so have to be done, dusted and fully organised by then.

It’s now 9 o’clock and I realise that if I don’t move, or eat something in the next half an hour I’m going to turn into a pumpkin or a troll.

The 29^th September was a Sunday and Pepys went to church in the morning. He hosted a lunch for a large number of people, and everyone was very merry. They went back to church in the afternoon, and then to Sir William Penn’s house, where Pepys met Sir William’s brother, Captain George Penn, who was an explorer and seemed incredibly glamorous. There was even more merriment and a huge amount of wine. Pepys became so pissed he couldn’t say his evening prayers for fear the servants would realise how drunk he was!

Treat him well, he is your brother

London has been basking in an unseasonable heat-wave today. Temperatures have been in the late 20s, the trees are still green and vibrant, and it feels like summer all over again. I found myself writing music on Hampstead Heath in the late afternoon. It felt good to be back there. I’ve been neglecting the place of late.

Fiona is back in town, and we had coffee at my favourite cafe, whilst I sent hundreds of emails to hundreds of people. There’s much organising to be done. For those who read this blog who tell me off for not pre-warning them about interesting events, I have two dates for your diary.

Firstly, October 13^th, when my partner, Nathan, is premiering his “singing monk” cabaret at The Pheasantry on the King’s Road. The cabaret is called Brother Act and The Pheasantry is a Pizza Express. You pay £12, and then sit and watch various acts whilst stuffing your face with carbs – if you’re feeling hungry. The food costs extra, obviously, but it’s well worth a visit, because over the course of the night you’ll see four contrasting cabaret acts, some of which are incredible, whilst others will make you howl with laughter for all the wrong reasons! It’s the latter acts that I love the most...

The second date for your diary is November 27^th. I cordially invite you all to celebrate my 15^th anniversary of being a professional composer with a retrospective concert of my work at St Mary at Hill Church in the City of London. The work will feature a string quartet and a16-voice choir, and will culminate in a premier of two of the movements from my Requiem. We will also be performing the controversial work I wrote for the choir in Lincolnshire, so you can see for yourselves what a work “lacking in soul” actually sounds like. For the members of the choir who are still reading this blog - a big hello - I do hope you’ll also come along. It was, after all, written especially for you and I’d love you to finally hear the work...

We collected our car from the garage this afternoon, having struck the deal that we’d pay for the broken parts if they did the labour for free. It felt like an honourable compromise, although it cost me over £200 and the steering wheel still makes a proper racket when it’s on full lock. Ironically this was the problem that we initially thought would fail the MOT. £1500 of work on other parts of the car and the original problem’s still not fixed!

We’ve just returned from the Landour theatre in Clapham where we saw Ragtime. It was an astonishing experience. The Landour is a tiny little fringe space which can only seat 60 or so, and yet there were 21 people on the stage - a tiny little stage - singing and acting their absolute socks off. It was an extraordinary visceral experience, which had me in tears within minutes.

With the exception of one actor, who was doing "telly acting" and was completely inaudible throughout, the cast was magnificent. Particular hats off to Jonny Barr, Judith Parrish and Kurt Kamsley. For those who don’t know Ragtime, it’s a remarkable score, which I realised for the first time tonight, is one of the greatest musicals of the last 30 years. Strangely, I remember seeing it in the West End 8 or so years ago, and not being hugely impressed. This year has been very interesting for me. Twice in the last two months, I’ve found myself needing to reappraise a musical. Furthermore, I find myself almost constantly reappraising the concept of the London Fringe. One of the reasons why the show left me so cold in the West End was that it was in a barn of a space where the intimacy of the writing vanished into a puff of proscenium arch. If there’s a good side to this recession, it’s that it’s forcing people to re-examine creativity. People can’t expect to get rich any more – but that doesn’t mean we have to be rubbish... far from it. We simply have to be inventive and give younger people and harder workers opportunities to shine, because from invention, exciting things grow.

Saturday September 28^th, 1661, and Pepys, like me, went to the theatre. He saw a play called Father’s Own Son at the King’s Theatre and enjoyed it thoroughly. He spent the evening drinking... unlike me, although as I write this, Nathan is preparing a hot chocolate! Yummmmmmm

Croissants

We're returning from Southwark where we've been watching The Baker's Wife at the glorious Union Theatre. Sadly, it's a train wreck of a show, which was unsuccessful in the 1970s for good reason. The show is peopled by the most grotesque individuals, all of whom seem to have no other function than to hate each other and the world around them. 

This particular production brought nothing new to the piece. The cast spent the entire show shouting at one another. Being able to shout is not an indication of someone's ability to act - a fact I often want to tell the RSC. The director had obvious decided that atmosphere could only be created by smoke, and every 3 minutes a great gust of the stuff would completely envelop the audience, leaving us all feeling sore-eyed and utterly claustrophobic. 

The plastic row of chairs I was sitting on had broken and sort of bounced up and down when anyone moved, which made everyone try to sit as still as possible and this could only be achieved by tensing every muscle in our bodies! You could have played me like a xylophone at the interval! I was sitting behind a man with the biggest head in the world, who was himself sitting in front of a pillar, so the viewing experience was greatly impaired, even before the smoke obliterated what little of the show we could see. 

They missed a trick. There were many songs about the glorious smell of bread and surely it wouldn't have been hard to fill the theatre with that particular smell. A toaster backstage would have done the trick. Theatrical smoke stinks; a cloying, weirdly perfumey all-pervading aroma, which ruined any sense of the place being set in a bakery! 

The experience angered me greatly, because I have so much respect for what they're doing in that space at the moment. Still, all the talk of bakery sent me rushing home to watch my favourite programme The Great British Bake Off. Today's show... Croissants.

No theatre for Pepys 350 years ago. He was too busy eating grapes and gawping at melons. Real melons, which had been sent from Lisbon by Sandwich, and the first Pepys had ever seen! How excited he must have been. I hope he didn't prove to be mildly allergic to them like I am!

Elizabeth went to Whitehall to call in on Mrs Pearce who had been "churched" on that day. This religious tradition, which I'm told lasted well into the 21st Century, involved women, exactly a month after giving birth, being integrated back into society after the mayhem they'd endured. In many cases women would go to church to give blessings for surviving the ordeal (often against the odds), but in some cases they went to be "purified", which seems a great deal more sinister. How ghastly religious men can be! 

He has what you might call a trivial occupation!

It's hot, it’s wet and it’s incredibly sticky. I'm sitting on the tube during a rush hour. As we make our way progressively further north, the carriages are becoming more and more crowded. The windows have steamed over. Sweat is gushing from every pore.

I'm knackered. It’s a good form of knackered. I’ve been in Trafalgar Square all day today playing Samuel Pepys in a curious art installation-cum-peep show called "the Samuel Pepys show." Do you see what they did there? It's subtitle was "sneak a peek," but unfortunately someone wrote "peak" all over the branding, so midway through the day someone else arrived with a load of e's to paste over the offending a's!

Anyway, my task was to flounce about in 17th Century garb attempting to get passers by to look through a series of little windows which revealed a set of model boxes which represented what's being planned for London in 2012 for those of us who are all Olympic’d out. These corporate events can be excruciating, but the artist who'd made the model boxes had done such an incredible job that you couldn't halt the swathes of people who wanted to look through the windows. They fired everyone up, and it was a privilege to guide people over. The highlight was definitely the window which demonstrated the Globe Theatre’s “37 Shakespeare plays in 37 different languages” festival, which featured a real person sitting in a tiny cardboard theatre. He was dressed as a 16th century fool, and as the day went on, we switched roles so that I could have a go at sitting in the theatre. It was great fun. The weather held out until five minutes before we packed up and I think the majority of people who saw the installation went away enriched by the experience.

I felt rather pathetically proud to be playing Pepys. I was also pleased that so many Pepys fans came over to talk to me. There’s always a sort of stand-off between Pepys aficionados where the two parties sort of size one another’s knowledge up. One man spoke at me for about 4 minutes assuming I knew nothing about the man, and it was strangely satisfying to floor him with a nugget of knowledge as soon as I’d managed to get a word in edgeways.  I met a charming naval historian and had long chats with two people who claim to have ancestors who were part of the Pepys clan. I was also astonished by how many primary school children seemed to know who I was. One little girl came rushing over and said; “have you found your parmesan cheese yet?” It seems Pepys burying his cheese in the garden during the great fire has become the story that most children remember. Like when you learn about the Egyptians and only remember that they used to get the brains out by shoving sticks up the nostrils!!

Who's this little girl?

Sadly my feet hurt like hell on account of my having been given shoes that can only be described as having Cuban heels. Heaven knows how women manage to walk around in stilettos. I was also slightly disappointed by the wig I was given. I think it was a less Pepys and little more Jill Gascoine.

The fascinating part of the day was definitely arriving in Trafalgar Square at 8.30am to find two kestrels flying around. They had owners, who were wearing those leather gloves, but it was a very peculiar sight. I suddenly remembered hearing stories that the "troublesome" pigeons in Trafalgar Square had been scared away by kestrels and felt rather special to be up early enough to witness it happening for real. And it very much did the trick. The hawks flew about for half an hour or so, but by the end of the day I'd only seen about six pigeons in total. Not much fun for the family who came up to say "where have the pigeons gone? I brought my children to Trafalgar Square to see the pigeons!" And part of me felt very sad indeed.

350 years ago was a nasty rainy day and Pepys went to the theatre with his wife. Keen readers of this blog will remember that trips to the theatre were considered okay if Elizabeth was present. Pepys had a rather peculiar set of moral boundaries! They saw King or No King at the King’s Theatre and it was “very well done.” Because of the rain, they took a coach home. I wonder what they'd have made of the tube...