More delays

Eyes down. Here we go again. I’m at Newcastle train station on a stationary train, which is waiting for a guard and a driver. Apparently there’s been a fatality on the line somewhere near Peterborough. I can’t bear the thought of another journey like last Monday. In fact I’m wondering if I should rush down the aisles and offer to drive the silly thing myself.  All passengers heading to destinations as far as York have just been frog-marched off the train. Apparently there’s another train in the station which will get them where they want to be at greater speed, although I’m fairly sure they’ll be met by an East Coast firing squad designed to keep the lid on what could well be another PR catastrophe.

I’ve just been down to the buffet car to be told that it’s not working... for the second delayed train in a week running! When I started to complain to the three people standing behind the counter (apparently waiting for an urn), an aggressive Scottish woman slammed a big metal door in my face. Thing is, I know that none of these delays are actually being caused by East Coast, and furthermore that I’m an arsey bastard who likes to whinge, but East Coast staff are plainly demoralised and weary at the moment and they really shouldn’t take it out on passengers! Surely someone needs to teach them how to deal with angry, emotional or bored customers. Rule number one: open the buffet car. Rule number two: if you can’t open the buffet car, at least let people know so they can make other arrangements, or avoid making their way down the train like plonkers!

Despite a sensation of impending doom about this journey, I’m in a really good mood. It was day one of the 100 Faces edit today and we cut the film - in its entirety - in about five hours. I was very relieved that it cut together so speedily, because an enormous amount of time from hereon will need to be invested in post production work.  Everyone who features in the piece was filmed in front of green or blue screen, which means we need to spend a huge amount of time keying in different backdrops and making sure the people in the film a) don’t look like cardboard cut-outs, b) don’t look like they’re making an appeal for the MacMillan nurses c) don’t look like they’re acting in an in-house corporate film for HSBC and d) don’t get visually overwhelmed or upstaged by what’s going on behind them. This film, after all, is about one hundred Faces, and one hundred faces need to shine. At the same time, it’s important that physical numbers are seen regularly in the film to give the audience a sense of how old the people they’re looking at are. I suspect we’re going to be sitting on a very sharp knife-edge between subtlety and lily-guilding. The film needs a rawness to it; a realness.

I’m very much enjoying the process of editing in Newcastle. I love the city and I love its people. I’m staying in a great hotel with a river view and a bath and we’re in a great edit suite run by a lovely bunch of people, with jelly babies and cups of tea aplenty. What more could I ask for? I’m also enjoying the thought that this entire piece, from orchestral sessions  through to the dotting of i’s and crossing of t’s, will have been shot, recorded, graded, promoted and mixed in the region (with a little help from the hills above Sheffield, of course!) Self-sufficiency certainly feels very appropriate. BBC Newcastle have always punched way above their weight in the field of television. They are now far and above my favourite BBC Region.

Pepys was out and about in a very cold London all day on this day 350 years ago. He went by water to Deptford and Limehouse to look at masts and newly built boats and to talk to various people about the Chatham Chest, a fund set up in the late 16^th century to pay pensions to disabled seamen. The aforementioned chest was probably the world’s first occupational pension scheme – not that anyone in my position would understand the meaning of a pension! (If I lose the ability to compose, just stick me in the nearest dustbin.) Pepys was forever worrying about the cold (and worse still, getting himself wet in cold conditions) so a trip on the Thames was his idea of hell. By the evening he had got himself into something of a tizzy, so went to bed with a posset. Now why on earth do we not have possets anymore?

Ranting

I watched the latest John Lewis advert last night; the one with the snowmen. It is, I declare rashly, one of the finest adverts I've seen; a very beautiful short, almost entirely lacking in branding, but utterly memorable. Exactly as adverts should be in my view and I'm plainly not the only one as the ad has garnered 2.5million hits on YouTube.

Remarkable, though this figure is, the film is still subject to the inane ramblings of the faceless, nameless imbeciles who always feel obliged to make insulting and nonsensical comments on these sorts of forums. 

"I don't get it," writes one emotionally crippled drongo, "it's just a film about a snowman walking for miles to buy his snowman girlfriend a pair of gloves." And in that one sentence, our friend succinctly sums up exactly why the advert touched me so deeply. 

Of course, after a while, these comment forums invariably descend into name-calling, mud-slinging and general illiteracy. You know there's a problem when someone misspells the word "shit."

It certainly makes me wonder what goes through the minds of people who obsessively watch films they don't like, seemingly just to think of terrible things to write about them, all the time, or course, hiding behind their pseudonym tag. 

I've suffered my fair share of these kind of inadequate musings over the years. They're usually attached to the more upbeat tongue-in-cheak musicals that I make for the BBC, and more often than not come from people who have entirely missed the point of a community musical whose primary aim is to bring people together and allow them to have a bit of fun doing something they've never done before. Process rather than end product. 

I've always argued that no-one objects to a well-considered, witty diss, so when Metro: The Musical was described as "the worst thing to happen to the North East since Thatcher," I laughed. Also, after the mayhem that Thatcher caused in the region, I'm relieved the writer feels that the North East has obviously had such an easy subsequent ride. 

I was also fairly amused at the comment about Coventry Market: the musical, which asked, "who wrote these lyrics? A gimp?" Although this particular remark is bordering on the, "your Mum smells of wee..." type of insult. In fact, very recently, someone wrote of Metro, "I once had a turd which sounded better than this..." Put this man on the stage! He's got a talented arse! 

I was less amused, however, to read the rumour that Metro had cost £200k to make, as it opens up the BBC, to yawnsome arguments about wasting license fee payers' money. I think the BBC waste my license fee every time they show the football, but keep quiet because I know that some people love it.

I think it's when things get uber personal that I begin to draw the line. 

One man sent many messages suggesting that anyone reading should email me to tell me how disgraceful it is that I make a living "making crap". I would add that this particular call to arms from Biglips88 was entirely ignored, by Biglips himself, as no one has so far emailed me. Come on Biglips, put your money where your mouth is! 

There was, of course, also Burtisitart, a frustrated artist, who even recorded his own film telling me to get out of Yorkshire before making A Symphony for Yorkshire. I wouldn't have minded, but he went on a six month crusade on every chat forum known to man to try to encourage people that only a Yorkshire-based composer should be able to write an anthem to Yorkshire, holding up Ilkley Moor Bar t'at as a shining example of how things should be done.  Sadly, it turns out that this particular piece was written by a shoemaker from Canterbury, and A Symphony For Yorkshire sold an unprecedented number of DVDs for Children In Need.  Poor Burtisitart! Maybe he'll think of his own idea one day instead of wasting time feeling angry with others. 

But you know, every time I read a comment which describes someone in the film as looking like a "boiled egg"  or a "fat pig", or read a remark like "come on, thumbs down... We've nearly overtaken the 342 people who starred in this feeble cack," a little part of me dies, and I wonder if these people would be able to say something like this to my face, or any of the people in the films, and, if they did, whether they'd celebrate the sadness they'd created. 

There's even a comment from one of the Coventry performers who says she regrets taking part in the film, but did it "whilst she got her singing career off the ground," adding "God, why did my dad let me do it. Prick." Nice one Lottie Tottie. I'm sure you're a deeply credible artist these days and that your father would be delighted to  be called a prick! 

Of course, ultimately, all publicity is good publicity, and every time my films get another YouTube hit, I get a small PRS payment, so, you know, he who laughs last and all that...

One day, however, I'd love to meet BigLips, Burt and Lottie. I'd like to know what sort of lives they live, and whether they're happy. And if any of them are reading this, how about you come out for a drink with me? We could talk about the John Lewis advert and there's one or two other things I'd like to say... But to your faces!

Skating

Nathan and I are in Thaxted, celebrating our first communal day off for what seems like years. 

We had a lie-in and then spent the rest of the day doing washing, posting letters, printing photos and (in Nathan's case) knitting. In essence, we did very little. I even sat down to watch an episode of Columbo from 1972, which was set in London, but very plainly filmed in California. I have seldom seen a less convincing depiction of the UK!

The post office in Highgate closes at noon on a Saturday, so I rushed there for about 11.30, and was horrified to find the place literally fit-to-burst. It's only a tiny little shop, and I was 39th in the queue, so the place resembled Harrods on the first day of the winter sales. Someone kept farting. Someone else was coughing like they had pertussis. It was 12.15 before I got out of the place, feeling like I'd caught all manner of terrible diseases.

We've spent the last hour or so sitting in front of an open fire in my parents' sitting room, talking about my Great Grandparents' house on the Isle of Wight which my Mum practically lived in as a child.  It sounds like heaven; an enormous, ramshackle mansion house with an 8 acre garden stretching down to its own beach. 

My Mum used to lie in bed at night watching the beam of light from the iconic lighthouse at St Catherine's Point passing through her bedroom. I always loved that story. It always seemed so romantic. She used to stare out of the window and watch the moon's reflection drifting across the sea. 

There's a lot to be said for simpler times. The other day I sat in a pub with a group of people and realised we were all staring at our iPhones instead of talking to one another. How will we ever regain a sense of community if we can only communicate virtually?! I genuinely feel we've all become a little complacent. I'm also losing the ability to write!

The joy about visiting Thaxted on December 1st was being able to drive past The Christmas House, which has been part of Christmases for me, for the last 20 years. Somewhere on the road between Stansted and Thaxted is a house which lights up like a Christmas tree throughout December. Hundreds upon thousands of little tiny lights adorn its rafters. Enormous snow men and reindeer skip across its roof. Music plays: the sound of angels singing. The courtyard is open to the public and often filled with excited children. And who could blame them? When the house lights up, Christmas is here! 

Pepys spent the morning 350  years ago with the Duke of York, the future James II of England. Pepys had recently become obsessed with administration, and had collected together all invoices pertaining to ship masts, which everyone seemed delighted with. 

He went from Whitehall Palace to St James' Park, and saw, for the first time in his life, people "sliding on skates." I'm actually wondering if the practice originated, like so many Restoration fashions, from mainland Europe. After all, one tends to associate skating with the dykes of Holland, and Charles II brought much Dutch culture with him when he returned to London. It may also have been that the hot winters of the last few years had made skating impossible, and that, prior to this, skating had been frowned on by Cromwell and his cronies. Those puritans sure knew how to be boring! 

Sheffield hills

Much as I find St Pancras Station iconic in the extreme and incredibly tastefully renovated, it can be a confusing place for those of us who aren't lucky enough to be taking the Eurostar to Micky Mouse's Parisian abode. 

The trains to grubby places like Sheffield, Leicester and Kettering are fenced off from the rest of the station and accessible only by specific escalators which can take some time to locate. 

Still, Britain looked gloriously beautiful from the train as it charged north. The frozen sky was powder blue and lined with a lattice-work of shimmering vapour trails. Frost and mist clung to the downs around Luton. The fields looked like they'd been dipped in Golden Syrup and dusted with icing sugar. I wonder when we'll see our first snow?

As I travelled up to Sheffield, I found myself glancing through the hundreds of emails I sent to people, trying to get them to listen to, or buy the requiem. The upbeat tone and optimism of them made me feel incredibly sad. 95% of them were entirely ignored. 

One of the truly horrific aspects of being a writer is the incessant need to self-promote. It's so embarrassing and disheartening, particularly when you're forced to contact people like agents, reviewers, producers, and execs, who know their value and behave like prannies.

Oddly - and this is very curious - Americans, Canadians and Australians almost always respond to my emails. The absolute radio silence is a curiously English phenomenon. Maybe it's because we shy away from conflict? Whatever the case, I genuinely think that the Brits are ruder than any nation in the world.  We've coasted for way too long on accents which sound refined! 

I spent the afternoon holed up in a farm cottage in the hills above Sheffield with Andy, our music man on the 100 Faces project. Today we were editing all the spoken passages so that they fitted perfectly with the orchestral soundtrack. It's astonishing how the spoken word can be made to sound so much like singing, when the right word hits the right beat. I'm really beginning to reap the benefits of my slightly anal score, which dictated the rhythm of every single spoken word. Leave nothing to chance, that's my motto! 

As we drove back to Sheffield, I found myself envying Andy's lifestyle. The air in those hills is so rich and sweet, and he's surrounded by high-calibre folk musicians, making music almost every night of the week, in pubs within a few minutes' drive of his house. 

A glance out of any window in his cottage offers enough inspiration to get any writer through an entire day, and I found myself wondering whether my music would somehow become more expansive if I lived under those tall, brooding Yorkshire skies. 

November 1662 ended in a bitter cold frost. Pepys himself was quite content. His newly refurbished house had been cleaned and decorated, and despite the huge sums of money he'd spent furnishing his grand new rooms, when he did his end of month accounts, he was still worth over 600l. His only worry was whether employing a well-bred female companion for his wife was going to end up costing more than he could realistically afford. 

The death of humanity

It struck me today that it's actually quite lonely being an autocue operator. You sit, on your own, in a darkened corner of a studio, with only a series of disembodied voices coming through a pair of headphones with which to interact. Because of this, no one has any idea who I am, and when the breaks come, I take myself on a forage for food or drink, without speaking to anyone but people in shops or behind canteen counters. 

One of my little quirks is that I find it incredibly hard to strike up conversations with strangers, and more bizarrely, when I'm out of the habit of talking, I sort of vanish into a haze of vulnerability, which I need to be jolted out of. 

Still, I love the job. I'm doing autocue for my old, dear friend, Matt, and the show he fronts is getting funnier by the minute. Earlier on, the director's voice popped into my ear...

"Benjamin", he said, mock goadingly, "I've just seen your name on the Internet. You have a secret life, don't you?" I laughed, sheepishly... One of the producers heard the conversation and chipped in... "ooh, do tell..." The director responded, "let's just say that Mr Till isn't just an autocue operator..." I brimmed with pride. But perhaps he'd read that I was a stripper... 

On a more bewildering note, I've just been to the Tesco Extra in Borehamwood, which genuinely has to be the largest shop I've ever visited. 

I found the experience bewildering and terrifying. There aren't just shelves of things like loo paper, there are walls of them. Floor to ceiling, and glowing under garish strip lighting which periodically flickers and strobes. Nothing is real. The fruit is polished like patent leather, the vegetables throb with chemicals. 

A side wing takes you into a vortex of plastic, Made-in-China shite. Things you'd never go into a supermarket to find. Things your kids didn't know they'd be lost without. Shelves of little pink glittery books and pencils with tiny feathers on the end. Toys which fall apart when you remove them from their impenetrable see-through plastic coffin cases. 

...And everyone walking in circles like the living dead. Be-coldsawed, toothless crones on the tills beckon you over, smiling everywhere but their eyes, and teeth, because they have none. The experience is soulless, American, plastic and tragic. What has become of humanity?

God bless East Coast!

I travelled up to York this morning, and saw, as we passed through the South East Midlands, quite how much of this country has been effected by floods. Every river we passed had burst its banks. Every lake and pond was indistinguishable from the field it was sitting in. People on the train billowed and tutted in awe and horror. The phrase which rang out more than any other was, "I have never seen anything like it." I know for a fact that I haven't. 

Hats off now to East Coast Mainline, in particular a woman called Claire Peacock, who sorted me out with a new ticket, at no extra cost, when a mix up on the platform with another provider made me miss my train. I was in such a state when I reached her, and could have burst into tears when she waved her magic wand and gave me a ticket for the next train. She has renewed my faith in East Coast, and made me begin to think that Monday's hell was something of a blip. 

York itself is flooded as badly as I've ever seen it with water gushing out of the windows of buildings by the riverside. The swollen Ouse was like hot melted chocolate rolling along a spoon. 

It's always great to be back in York, however. I love that the good folk of the city just get on with their lives when it floods. My Mum tells me York was on the news yesterday with a silly reporter standing waist deep in water (unnecessarily) and saying how worrying it was that parts of the city had been under water on a worrying number of occasions this year. Apparently the woman she was interviewing said, "yes, it's not much fun, but please tell the world that York is very definitively open for business!" Bravo York... 

That said, if I didn't know the city so well, I'd probably say that it looked somewhat apocalyptic! Bus loads of tourists were standing open-mouthed on the bridges. 

I was in York to watch the premier of a film commissioned by the City council about the Ebor Vox project, which saw some 600 performers marching through the streets of York whilst singing one of my compositions. And what an honour it was! 

It was such a fabulously unique and eccentric project which the film captured rather skilfully. I feel very proud to have written the piece and hope it becomes something of a standard in York. I was also rather chuffed to be described in the film as an acclaimed composer. That's nice, isn't it? 

If you'd like to see the film in full (roughly 18 minutes) you should go to www.eborvoxfilm.net and see me being interviewed in various shades of black! 

I sold a copy of the Requiem this evening, which I'm hoping was bought by one of the performers. I'd like to think at least some of the  600 performers might be interested in other projects I've worked on! 

350 years ago, London was in the grips of a bout of fairly cold weather. There had been snow on the roofs of the houses when Pepys woke up the previous morning and a hard frost the following day. This was fairly shocking, not just because it was relatively early in the year for cold weather, but because there hadn't been any snow - literally - for 3 years, a fact I find astonishing when we consider that Pepys is often associated with the Little Ice Age; ice fairs on the Thames etc. in fact, 1650 is historically considered the gateway to a series of bitterly cold winters, which makes Pepys' accounts of warm, dusty winters all the  more noteworthy.

The road to hell

I became a leader of men last night, and an angry one to boot! 

My journey home from Newcastle on the 7.04pm, very quickly became a nightmare, with the train grinding to a halt outside Darlington where it sat, motionless, for 2 1/2 hours whilst engineers tried to work out how to get us through severe floods.

To make matters worse, we'd been informed, on leaving Newcastle, that the buffet car was closing down due to "lack of staff, " and would only reopen in York... When the announcement was first made, no one batted an eyelid. Newcastle to York is an hour's journey tops. Little did we know that it was destined to take over 4.

As we sat on the train outside Darlington, waiting for information about what was going on, a sense of wartime camaraderie began to develop amongst passengers. I lent someone my phone charger and got taking to the woman opposite who was knitting Christmas stockings. Periodically, someone would crack a lame joke, and the carriage would erupt into hysterics. 

What united us all was the sense that there was a complete lack of visible train staff as we sat, twiddling our thumbs. Periodically, a disembodied voice on the tannoy would inform us that there were floods on the line, but no one came through the train to answer a series of mounting questions. As the hours ticked past, more and more of us missed our last connections. The tannoy voice assured us that, if we got off the train at our planned stops, station staff would be able to help. What seemed odd was the voice's constant reiteration of the demand that we weren't to try to distract station staff until our train "had cleared the station." This was apparently for our own safety, although the suggestion passing through the passengers was that the guard simply wanted to avoid the wrath of angry passengers if his promises of assistance from station staff evaporated. 

The voice also told us that we could fill in forms for potential compensation, but that "unfortunately", all the forms had inexplicably disappeared from the train itself. A little convenient, perhaps?

After two hours, the train started inching forward through the flood zone, and for a short time, everything got a little hairy. The train started listing to the right, there was a weird smell of burning, and the chap on the other side of the aisle said he could see "waves of water..." When I went over to look for myself, the comment was downgraded from "waves" to "ripples," but none of us had any idea what was going on in the darkness outside.

We sped up south of North Allerton, where the passengers from previously cancelled trains joined our's, and turned the carriages into a giant game of sardines. At York, a lot of people got off. The woman next to me had missed the last connection to Sheffield, so had decided to book herself into an hotel, and the lady with the stockings had no idea how to get back to Scarborough. 

There were no announcements to tell us that the buffet had reopened, but word slowly filtered through to my carriage. Absolutely parched, and terribly hungry, I went, twice, to see if I could find something to eat, but there were scores of people in the queue, so I decided to give it 30 minutes.

Imagine my horror, therefore, when the faceless guard made an announcement to say that the buffet car was having to close, yet again due to "staff shortages." 

It should be pointed out that the buffet car man was later found relaxing in First Class. Not exactly entering into the Dunkirk spirit!

We finally reached Peterborough and learnt that the train (initially due in to London at 21.45) was now expected to reach its destination at 00.55, but just south of our final stop at Stevenage, we were told (again via tannoy) that "due to planned engineering works" the train was now being diverted via Hertford, which would add another crippling 20 minutes to the journey. 

I saw red and immediately stormed my way down to the buffet carriage to find the guard. I found the buffet man, in first class, and asked him to confirm if we were going to be delayed another 30 minutes. "I don't know," he said, "I wasn't listening... I'm not on duty. Speak to the guard. He's the other end of the train." 

So I trekked my way through the compartments and found the guard sitting in a little room at the front of the train behind a closed door. 

In my view he should have been a great deal more present throughout the journey. People were worried about getting home, and they were hungry. Surely it would have been a nice gesture to try to keep the buffet open until we reached King's Cross? Everyone on board understood that the floods were unavoidable, but we were also aware that railway staff had chosen to close the buffet car for the very stretch of line  where delays were most likely, which generates questions about whether someone at East Coast was trying to avoid handing out the customary free teas and coffees that these situations require.

"Is it true we've been diverted via Hertford?" I asked the guard. "I'm afraid so," he said. "But 20 minutes ago you said we'd be in at 00.55?" "They changed their minds and redirected the train at the last minute. It happens. I can't control what they do." "But it's added another 20 minutes to our journey. There are a lot of people on this train who don't know how they'll get home from King's Cross, what you CAN do is a tour of the train to answer people's questions and put their minds at rest." "I've made announcements," he said, "if they want help, they'll have to speak to station staff." "But will we be given taxis?" I asked. "It depends how you'd normally get home," said the guard. "By tube", I said "and tubes won't be running at this time." "Then they'll need to provide you with a taxi." "Does that apply to everyone on the train?" I asked. "Not if they live around the corner from King's Cross" came the reply. "Very few people do. Could you make an announcement to let the passengers know that taxis will be provided?" I asked. "No." His response was brutal. "Will you pass through the carriage to put people's minds at rest and explain to them that the train has had another delay? "I'm not going to pass through the train. I've made an announcement." 

...So I did his job for him, and went into every carriage making the announcement I felt sure he should have made himself:

"Ladies and gentlemen, some of you may not have heard the announcement, but I'm afraid we have a further  20 minute delay, so aren't due into King's Cross until 1.20am." (Big groans) "What you MIGHT not know is that East Coast Mainline are obliged to help us to get home, so when the train comes into the station, follow me, and we'll go and speak to station staff about getting free taxis home." I got three rounds of applause, countless "thank Gods" and a number of people made "people power gestures." I was also subjected to a barrage of questions, which would have been much better answered by the train staff.

I went back to the guard and explained that I'd spoken to all the passengers and suggested that he might need to radio ahead to tell the station staff that a large number of taxis would be required!

I asked one more question, the answer to which was deeply disturbing;

"Why did they stop the buffet car at Peterborough?"

"I've no idea," said the guard, "I assume they needed to attend to first class passengers."

I'm not sure there's anything else that I can add to that! 

As I got off the train, 200 passengers followed me down the platform, and, in fairness, the staff at King's Cross seemed both organised and polite, if slightly overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of people who needed help.

Now, I don't know how long it took to get everyone home. I was being picked up by my partner at the station, so I left a cluster of people with station staff. 

But here are my questions:

1) Why did the train guard spend the majority of an incredibly difficult journey sitting in his room? Why did he make little effort, even when asked, to put people's minds at rest? Was he frightened perhaps by the response he'd get?

2) Why was the buffet car closed for a single section of the line which rail staff must have known would be subject to delays? Surely a compassionate company would do everything possible to make sure their customers were fed and watered during a distressing time?

3) Why had complaint forms mysteriously vanished from the train itself?

4) Why did the buffet car open at York, and then close within an hour whilst there were still long queues of thirsty people stretching down the aisles?

5) Why on earth would East Coast Mainline seem to favour the comfort of First Class passengers?

6) Why was the buffet car staff member sitting in first class instead of rolling up his sleeves and helping passengers through a difficult experience? Why would someone be employed simply to run the buffet car from York to Peterborough?

Thing is, I love train travel, and I particularly love the iconic route from London to Edinburgh. We all make mistakes, and many of East Coast staff are absolutely brilliant at their jobs. I have had countless stress-free journeys on the route. But last night something went wrong beyond the issues created by the floods and I would love someone to get to the bottom of it. 

I am grateful for the communications I've had with East Coast, a spokesman from whom has said: "Our staff have been dealing with exceptional weather conditions over the last two days, and have been working hard to get customers to their destinations.

 

"We thank Mr Till for bringing this to our attention and will investigate what happened."