Casting shadows on the walls

Last night we had an adventure on our way home from Brother Edward's house. It was fast approaching midnight and we were very keen to mark the arrival of hallowe'en by hollowing out a pumpkin. It's an age-old family tradition. I've carved pumpkins on October 31st every year of my life for as long as I can remember. As children, we used to go to a magical yard, where hundreds of different sized pumpkins were stacked up. The large ones cost ten pence and the small ones were 5p. I think we were allowed to pick one of each sort, and it was the highlight of the year. I longed for hallowe'en more than I longed for Christmas. I've always been a proper little pagan!

Anyway, at 11.30pm on a Sunday night, searching for pumpkins is like looking for the Holy Grail. We drove through Holloway, Muswell Hill and Crouch End, searching for little shops with racks of vegetables outside. A surprising number of these sorts of shops exist in North London, but most of them are Greek or Turkish-run, and pumpkins must be fairly culturally insignificant to these Mediterranean types! They don't know what they're missing...

We almost gave up, but decided, just before heading home, to make a detour along the Stroud Green road, where, to our great excitement we saw a great big row of glorious, bright orange creatures, waiting patiently for us under a halogen street light. The feeling of excitement as we rushed over to them and selected two for carving was incredibly reminiscent of the feelings I had as a child in that yard in Bedfordshire. The  very best things come to those who wait, and we carved the pumpkins in front of Glee, whilst Castor and Pollux tried to run away with the little stringy, gloopy, mushy, cruddy inside bits which we were decanting into a washing up bowl. We put little candles inside our masterpieces and they danced all night!

This morning I went to the hospital for my whooping cough blood test. The male nurse took a look at my form, read the words "suspected pertussis" and went a little pale! He vanished for a while, saying he needed to have a little chat to one of his colleagues. I half expected him to return wearing a mask like those little camp Chinese boys in the nail bars. I have seldom felt so much like a leper! 

The rest of the day has been spent preparing music for my concert and studying the music I'll be MD-ing on Saturday's Roy Harper gig. Rehearsals begin the day after tomorrow and I'm excited. It's such remarkable music. I feel incredibly privileged to be helping...

I'm currently in Soho waiting to hear Nathan performing a song from the musical Taboo in a fundraising gala. I expect to feel extraordinarily proud, although I've just had a text from him saying the rehearsals are over-running and that he's planning to "wing it." Jeopardy in a blog. Perfect! 

October 31st, 1661, was a terribly boring day for Pepys. HE might not have been bored, but I'm afraid his account of things is utterly tedious. In short, the diary entry is all about his uncle's will. Someone came from the country to talk to him about the sale of a house that came as part of the estate. I'm falling asleep writing about it... Gonna go hear some West End Wendies! 

The anguish of humiliation

We're sitting in brother Edward and Sascha's sitting room watching the results shows of various talent contests whilst eating delicious wraps. 

We've had a very relaxing day, although the anti-biotics I've been prescribed for my suspected whooping cough are leaving the most revolting metallic taste in my mouth, which has been getting on my wick all day. 

There seems to be a bit of a ruckus brewing with the so-called psychic Sally Morgan, who's been invited by various sceptics to take a test on Hallowe'en to prove decisively whether or not she can talk to the dead. Derren Brown has got involved, and there's been a lot of mud-slinging on twitter but I find myself feeling slightly uncomfortable. 

Here's my issue. However much of a money-grabbing charlatan this so-called psychic is, what she's doing is bringing hope and closure to people who are grieving. If people want to believe she's for real, and take solace from what she's doing, then I'm afraid I don't have a problem with her doing it. I certainly don't think she needs to be exposed in some sort of clinical trial.
 
More than this, I believe what she's doing is no different from what priests, vicars and preachers across the world are doing on a daily basis, and no one challenges them. Has Rowan Williams ever been invited to take part in a scientific experiment aimed at definitively proving the existence of God!?

And don't tell me Psychic Sally is different because she makes money out of vulnerable people. There are plenty of born again nutters in the states who'd give her a pretty good run for her money in that respect! 

October 30th, 1661, and Pepys spent the morning playing his newly altered lute, which pleased him greatly. 

He spent the afternoon in Deptford on a ship called The Norwich, meticulously examining every single nook and cranny. Pepys was nothing  if not thorough. 

He returned home to the news that his great friend and mentor Sir Robert Slingsby was to be buried without funeral. His corpse was apparently beginning to stink, but Pepys was furious not to be given an opportunity to pay his final respects. 

A dreadful mighty killer

Hmm. It's the nearest Saturday to Hallowe'en and I seem to be dressed as Dracula, or Beethoven, or someone in a frock coat. I couldn't find anything in the house to give the effect of dark tubercular smudges around my eyes, I so set fire to a piece of paper and smeared the ash all over my face. I look like a pudgy,  middle-aged chimney sweep. That's a thought. When does a person officially reach his middle age? 

I'm off to a party, by the way, I'm not just dressed like this for a laugh..,

We had a second choir rehearsal today. This time it was the turn of the sopranos to cram themselves into my bedroom. Before anyone accuses me of impropriety, the bedroom is where the piano is kept in our house, ever since my next-door neighbours started banging on the wall every time I so much as opened the piano lid! 

The rehearsal was exhausting, but it went very well. Everyone got the gist of the songs relatively quickly and we were able to do some detailed work. 

After the rehearsal, I went with Nathan into town, and we met Ellie for whatever the afternoon equivalent of brunch is. Lupper? Tunch? Ellie forgot to eat several times, which was amusing.

Back via the tube, which broke down at Goodge Street. I worry about the Olympics in this city. How is the infrastructure ever going to  deal with the massive influx of people?

I'm sad to read of the death of Jimmy Saville. What a bloomin' icon, eh? How many of us wrote to him as children asking him to fix something for us? My letters always started "Dear Jim'll", 'cus I thought that was his name. I thought the letters that they read out which said "Dear Jim" we're rather disrespectful. And for those reading this blog from further afield, Jimmy Saville presented a children's request show in the 1970s called "Jim'll fix it." He was a bit creepy, but we loved him! He also ran the London Marathon 'til he was 118 years old. Strange that he died in his 80s, therefore!

How weird does the first sentence of Pepys' diary 350 years ago sound?

"This day I put on my half cloth black stockings and my new coat of the fashion, which pleases me well, and with my beaver I was ready to go to my Lord Mayor’s feast, as we are all invited."

Double entendre aside, it appears Pepys was all dressed up with nowhere to go, as the two Sir Williams decided the event would be too crowded to stomach! Pepys was not impressed, but as fireworks whistle and whizz past my window, I find myself feeling it was rather an appropriate night for a damp squib! 

Giving up the fight

How easy it is to forget to blog before midnight these days!

I probably forgot to blog because I don’t really have anything to write. The day, as ever, was spent preparing music for the concert on the 27th, and printing out parts for the singers who requested them. Postage is ridiculously expensive. It costs about a fiver these days to send a set of scores to someone...

I went into town to meet Nathan for lunch and we ate at a greasy spoon called Diana’s. I was served a plate of road kill masquerading as a vegetarian lasagne, but ate it with great alacrity. The journey home ought to have taken about 45 minutes, but it was actually never-ending.

We had an incident with a stroppy bus driver. It’s an all-too-familiar occurrence for Londoners. The bus drew to a halt just before Archway Station, and the driver announced that everyone would have to get off because he’d been re-called to the depot. As we milled around on the lower deck, he informed us that there was another bus just behind, which is something they always say. I HAD made a resolution not to pick any fights this autumn, but there was something in his manner which made me want to scream. He seemed to have no concept that his actions were seriously disadvantaging his erstwhile passengers and seemed to take great pride in chucking us all off his big shiny bus.

Fortunately a woman with a baby in a pram made a stand. “I’m not leaving this bus until the next one pulls up” she said, “I don’t want to stand in the cold with a newborn baby.” Obviously, a bit of cold never did a newborn any harm, but I felt proud of her for being belligerent. I joined the game; “I think you’ll find we’re well within our rights to stay on the bus until the next one arrives.” And at that point, the driver got very shirty. He shut all the doors, started the engines, and shouted that he was going to drive us all to the depot if we didn’t get out of the bus. He started to pull away from the curb, so I hit the emergency door open button, and he promptly slammed his foot on the brake.

I went up to his pathetic little bulletproof plastic screen, and asked if he could tell me for a fact when the next bus was coming. “It might be very soon” he said. “But it might not be?” I asked, sarcastically. He shrugged. “Well, can you radio someone and ask?” “I’m on my break” he replied, “I don’t need to talk to you anymore.” And with that, he put his feet on the steering wheel of the bus and took out a newspaper. “Look, just radio your boss!” I demanded, “I don’t want to have to complain about you.” He childishly pressed the appropriate button, and after a seemingly interminable wait, a voice came over the system. The voice asked how he could help, but the driver simply shrugged and indicated that he wasn’t speaking. He looked like a grotesque mime act. I opened the cab door and shouted through; “hello, I’m one of the passengers on the bus. We’ve just been asked to get off, but there’s a woman with a baby on board, so we’re all staying put until the next one comes along. Could you tell us when that will be?” There was a pause, and then a slightly surprised voice replied; “the next bus is just leaving Kentish Town. It will be with you in about ten minutes?” “Thank you” I said, “can you tell me why the bus driver is refusing to co-operate?” The disembodied voice then said something really weird; “some people in this world are nice, and others aren’t.”

There was nothing that I could say to that, so I went and relayed the news to the pregnant woman, who pretended to be listening to me, but made it very clear she was only interested in gurgling at the baby. Am I the only one who gets fed up with going on and on about the fact that they’re amazing multi-taskers? If you’ve ever tried to have an in depth conversation with a mother who’s anywhere near her child, you will know that women aren’t quite the multi-taskers they’d like to think they are!
# Controversial.

The next bus eventually drew up, and by the time we’d negotiated a set of road works, we were all about 45 minutes late.

I finally heard from the doctor’s today about the whooping cough tests. Apparently I need to have a blood test at the Whittington, but by the time he phoned to tell me the news, it was too late. I’ll have to wait until Monday morning. He did, however, write me out a prescription for anti-biotics, which they usually only give to people in the early stages of the illness, but he said it could do me no harm. I’ve taken one, and am already wondering if it’s done me some good. This obviously irritates me no end, because I feel it’s something that should have been spotted more than a month ago, before I potentially ruined my voice by hacking my vocal chords into my tonsils every five minutes!

350 years ago, Pepys went to St Paul’s churchyard to pick up his theorbo, a kind of lute, which he was having altered. It cost him 26 shillings and George Hunt, the instrument repairer, told him it was now as good a lute as any in England. Pepys lapped this particular comment up like a hungry kitten drinking milk.

He went to the theatre with the roguish Captain Ferrers to watch a production of Argalus and Parthenia, and noted that the lead was played by a woman; a woman with “the best legs that ever I saw.” He was well chuffed. Pervert.

In the evening, the men went to the pub, where Pepys brought a belt for “second mourning” which cost him 24shillings, and was, apparently, “very neat.”

And me I get so tired

I'm utterly exhausted! We've just had our first rehearsal for the concert on November 27th. It was a second tenor sectional, and it went extremely well. It was particularly useful to see how difficult each of the pieces of music are to learn. The irony, of course, is that we polished off learning all the Lincolnshire songs within seconds. They truly are the easiest pieces of music I've ever written! I can only assume that the choir leader has an extremely low opinion of what her choir is capable of! 

The most difficult song in our set is probably my arrangement of Mr Blue Sky. It shouldn't be hard, but the intricacies of Jeff Lynne's writing can make the internal parts seem somewhat random - particularly for a non-music reader (of which there are several in the choir) or someone who doesn't know the original song.

Anyway, running a tenor sectional with suspected whooping cough is no laughing matter. Every time I sang too high or forgot to breath, I'd be rewarded with another coughing/honking fit. I was hoping to go to the doctor's today to have my official test, but I had a phone call in the afternoon which informed me that the laboratory who issue the swabs weren't answering the surgery's calls. Oh, the blinking NHS... 

350 years ago Pepys went to St Olave's church and sat in the fancy Navy pew with the two Sir Williams. The hot topic of conversation was the death of Robert Slingsby. Pepys was devastated, but was dubious as to whether the two Sir Williams were feeling the pain as much as he was. The pain he felt when he saw his wife's old-fashioned, and rather threadbare mourning garb was a great deal more tangible. He wrote that he was ashamed to take her into the church! Poor Elizabeth.

Help me cope with everything

My mother 'phoned this morning to tell me that my brother’s partner, Sascha, had been diagnosed with whooping cough. I found the news disturbing, as, the last time I checked, Sascha was not a six-year-old child! I genuinely thought the illness was something that only affected children. I remember how the words “whooping cough” used to terrify me as a child. I think there was something of an outbreak of the disease in Bedfordshire in the late 1970s. We never got it, but there was always some child on our street who was close to death. The word “whooping” always felt so shockingly onomatopoeic. You’d hear these children coughing, and shudder!
Anyway, with Sascha confirmed with a case of whooping cough, I started to look at my own symptoms in a different light. I’m in my 7^th week of coughing. I cough uncontrollably and then gasp for air, a process which often ends ups sounding like I’m honking like a goose. I have a constant itchy sensation in my throat. I cough every time I laugh, or run, or get cold. I cough at night. I often cough so hard I give myself a headache.

I immediately went back to the doctor’s – for the third time in two months. I described my symptoms, and explained that my brother-in-law had been diagnosed with the illness. The doctor dropped everything and made a phone call. With diseases like whooping cough, there's apparently a procedure that needs to be adhered to. I think he was talking to a government organisation who track infectious diseases. They asked him lots of questions, and the doctor got rather angry because, he said, he only had 7 minute appointments and was already running late. He eventually asked me to talk to the woman direct. She asked all sorts of questions. Had I been abroad recently? Had I come into contact with anyone else who seemed to have the symptoms? I felt a little bit like I was in one of those films about a deadly world virus, and wondered if a group of men in white boiler suits were going to appear in a helecopter to take me away.

Anyway, the upshot of everything is that I have to go to the doctor’s tomorrow for a swab test which will confirm everything. There’s nothing they can do if I have the illness. It’s only something you can treat in its very early stages – and they failed to diagnose it on my previous two visits, which makes me feel a little angry. It seems whatever symptoms you go into a doctor’s surgery with, you’re always told to come back in two weeks. I’m told the Chinese call it “the 90 day cough”, and the only thing I can do is sit it out. Still, the knowledge that something definite is wrong with me will probably ensure that I get better more quickly. I'd started to panic that my vocal chord polyps had returned. Better the devil you know, and all that.

Pepys was supposed to travel to Kingston 350 years ago to meet Sir William Batten, who was on his way back from Portsmouth, but a series of important people arrived at the office, and the morning became all about meetings instead. In the afternoon, Sir William Penn accompanied Pepys and Elizabeth to the King’s Theatre, where they saw The Country Captain. It was the first time the play had been performed since before the interregnum, and by Pepys’ reckoning, it should have been left in mothballs; “so silly a play as in all my life I never saw, and the first that ever I was weary of in my life.” So there.

Pepys returned home and was met with the news that Sir Robert Slingsby, comptroller of the Navy, had died. Pepys was devastated and could not sleep; “he being a man that loved me, and had many qualities that made me love him above all the officers and commissioners in the Navy.”

Crackin' up!

I seem to be in Newbury Park. More when I establish how or So, here we are in Newbury Park, which is about as far east as it's possible to journey within London. We seem to have missed the last tube home and we're currently standing at a bus stop, looking at bus routes which go to places I've never heard of. Who knows if Leytonstone, Romford or Barking is any nearer to Highgate than this god-awful place? All I know is that we're on a dual carriageway, surrounded by dodgy-looking geezers and there's not a flipping bus in sight. I can see a drive-thru' Macdonalds, a Topps Tiles, a JD Sports superstore and a lot of rubbish, which has gone all squishy following the mother of all rain storms this afternoon. I can hear a group of lads talking in hushed voices in an alleyway somewhere behind me. The air smells of sulphur and wee! Can anyone remind me why we've decided to hold the Olympics in this ghastly part of the world? I think East London is about as horrid as the world gets. Worse than the slums of New Delhi and possibly even worse than Slough. 

Still, we've had a lovely night with our friends Karen and John, which included a very fine pasta meal and a lot of laughter. 

Earlier today, we went to the BBC Club on Great Portland Street to hear the wonderful Circus Envy. They were, as ever, brilliant, playing an unplugged set of three songs from their new album, Secrets, which everyone should go out and buy immediately. Go on. Do it whilst you're reading this. Then buy a extra copy to give to someone for Christmas. It struck me, as I watched them play, just what increfibly fine musicians they all are. They're also a thoroughly decent set of lads. 

Two buses later and we seem to be heading for Tottenham. I repeat. Two buses later and we're still nowhere near civilisation. Everywhere we turn, nasty people wearing hoodies are swearing or pissing against walls. There are no buses. I'm going to need your prayers tonight! 

October 25th, 1661, was a busy day for Pepys, which began with lunch at The Wardrobe with Lady Sandwich, whom Pepys described as looking "very handsome." He was plainly on heat, one assumes because the bruising in his testicular zone had become somewhat less troublesome.

There was a post-dinner trip to the theatre, to see Love and Honour for the third time in as many days. Pepys thought the play was marvellous, but was the first to admit that his semi-residency at the theatre was bordering on tragic! 

On the way home, Elizabeth and Samuel bumped into Mrs Pierce, who'd recently become something of a pin-up girl for Pepys.

Elizabeth saw right through her husband's desire to hang about like a puppy dog whilst talking "innocently" to Mrs Pierce, and there was a bad atmosphere all the way home. 

Pepys took out his frustration on his clerk, Will Hewer, who was royally ticked-off for behaving arrogantly around the house. I'm sure poor Hewer had merely learnt a trick or three from his employer! 

02.12am, and we're at Archway tube, about to get on our fifth bus of the evening! 24 hour city? I don't think so!

02.25am, finally home!