Let down: made up

I've been on the White City estate and under the West Way all day today, searching for filming locations in beautiful sunshine, with a lovely lady called Clare. 

I find myself perpetually drawn to rather shabby and gloomy locations; places with a bit of character. My concept of beauty is often what someone else would describe as a right mess. Finding unique locations often means going off the beaten track and heading into the alleyways and dark corners of buildings which most people would avoid like the plague. Today we found ourselves in a barbed wire and cardboard box-lined lane behind Shepherd's Bush Market with a tiny mosque in a tin-roofed prefab at one end and tube trains perpetually rushing overhead. A wooden cupboard lined with pairs of shoes sat on the pavement outside the mosque. The barbed wire was softened considerably by plastic roses, which had carefully been woven in. It was unique and hugely inspiring. I love locations which pose more questions than they answer; locations which tell their own story. 

Today's particular obsession was car parks and concrete underpasses; the grottier, grittier and more depressing the better! I particularly love car parks. They're often stranded rather spectacularly in the 1960s, even down to the painted transfer writing daubed everywhere; words like "exit" "staff only" and "no parking." Damp patches, mildew and little strips of sunlight give the walls a dappled, mottled, filmic effect, and there's usually a spectacular view from the top. 

It's rather hard to transition from the  composer of a work to its director. I like to sit with the finished version of the music and listen to it again and again until the pictures come to me, but obviously this process is no good if there's only a week between the studio sessions and the film shoot and the locations you need require permissions. I must have heard or uttered the phrase "health and safety" twenty times already today!

We have, rather predictably, been completely let down by the CSI steel pan band. I'm not at all happy about the situation. It's not much fun to spend time writing music for an ensemble who can barely be bothered to tell us they've decided not to play it. It's also not a great deal of fun to realise that, as a direct result of them pulling out at the very last minute, we may well have to lose the entire number they're playing on, which means a soloist who's learnt his number and a group of dancers don't get to be in the film.

We've also been charged for a number of studio sessions which were booked for them but unused. Sometimes I don't know what goes through people's minds.

I wouldn't mind so much if they hadn't twice said they'd do it. Their final reason for letting us down was that they had a relationship with another recording studio which they couldn't break. Quite why this wasn't something they could have told us at the start of the process I've no idea. I feel really disappointed and sad and have no idea how I'm going to go about sorting this. More stress. Thanks guys. I hope you don't do this to all the people you work with. 

On a more positive note, we now have a date for the second ever performance of my hour-long song cycle, Songs About The Weather, performed by the wonderful Fleet Singers in Hampstead. The piece is  about six different catastrophic meteorological events and how they effected people in NW3. Most of the stories and memories belong to members of the choir themselves. Get the date in your diaries. Saturday July 20th. I would be thrilled if anyone reading this could come along. It remains the longest piece of music I've ever written... And, I hope, one of the best!

That magical light

We're currently in Huntingdonshire, or at least we would be if Huntingdonshire hadn't been unfairly swallowed by Cambridgeshire in 1965. We've come to visit Lisa and Mark and their daughters Poppy and Rose, in the charming village of Spaldwick. I was meeting the two-month-old Rose for the first time, and she's a beautiful-looking baby. How strange, therefore, that I continually referred to her as "he!"

We woke up in Wiltshire this morning, in the midst of the mother of all dawn choruses, which I managed to record with the machine I bought on Friday.

We had rehearsals during the morning for Much Ado About Nothing. The music I've written is beginning to sound rather lovely and I've really enjoyed working with such a super group of people. I've laughed a great deal this weekend. 

I have, however, felt ill all day on account of all the rubbish I've stuffed into my face over the past few days. I take this opportunity to state publicly that a major diet and health regime will begin tomorrow, so if anyone reading this sees me secretly scoffing a bar of chocolate, you have my permission to cruelly mock me. Call me fatty. Call me anything. It's for my own good! Nathan says if you cut me I'll bleed saturated fat, and he's not wrong. I reckon I'm 3 stones over-weight and am not happy about it.

The journey from Wiltshire to Huntingdon took us cross country through all my old childhood stomping grounds. From Oxford we travelled north along the A34 through south Northamptonshire towns like Brackley and Towcester. I regaled Nathan with stories of haunted houses and woodland adventures, remembering great friends like Tash and Ted who lived in this corner of the county when we were growing up. 

We crossed the M1 at Collingtree, the home of Fiona's parents, and then trundled along the A45 through Billing and round Earls Barton and Wellingborough. We pulled up in my childhood town of Higham Ferrers to stretch our legs and peer though the windows of our old house in one of the back lanes. As we walked around the house, we could see the walnut tree in the back garden which we'd planted on my Dad's 40th birthday. It's absolutely enormous these days and I'm sure the current owners of the house would be astonished to realise it is actually only 30 years old. The tree was a surprise, but I remember my Dad getting so worried as we waited for the tree to be delivered, thinking he was going to get some kind of stripper-gram!

It shakes me to the core to realise that I'm 40 next year. Perhaps I should plant a tree somewhere. I like the idea of being able to visit it from time to time to check on its progress and make myself feel incredibly old! 

As the sun sets on a glorious summer day,  we head back to London through the dusty, heavily-scented half-light which makes this time of year so profoundly magical. It's almost ten o'clock and the sky is still light blue. There's a yellowish light on the horizon. I feel sick though. I don't care if I never eat again! 

Much Ado

I seem to be in a hall in Wiltshire surrounded by adults dressed as children, all of whom are acting like five-year-olds. It's as sinister as it is surreal, but I've grown to expect nothing less from the members of the Royal Air Force Theatrical Association. We're rehearsing Much Ado About Nothing on the RAF base near Corsham. 

There are baby pictures lining the walls. They all belong to people in the room and we're having a competition to guess who is who. Nobody seems to recognise mine. I think it's obvious, but people don't know me very well in these parts. I'm dressed as Wonder Woman (not now, in the picture; at the moment I'm wearing a Wee Willy Winky night shirt and a dressing gown.)

We seem to be playing Flap the kipper with fish made out of newspapers at the moment. Earlier on, we played musical statues. I have never seen adults behaving in a more competitive way!

I better post this before I lose consciousness!

Orange and Bongiourno

It's really muggy today. I went into an electics shop on Tottenham Court Road to buy myself a new recording device and nearly keeled over. Fortunately the man pointed out that their air conditioning had broken down and that it wasn't just me going through the male menopause!

I've had a rare day off today, which found me doing very little other than coming into central London to meet Nathan for lunch.

The rest of the day seems to have been spent in front of the telly, making frequent phone calls to Orange and Ofcom about the phone bill business which came to light yesterday. The more I scratch the surface, the more I'm convinced that this is a legal scam which needs to be stopped. Ofcom assures me that Bongiorno are actually "in bed" with Orange and that the two companies are working together to make sure as many people as possible sign up for their products, which makes me feel incredibly let down by a service provider that I've been loyal to for 14 years. The man from Orange strenuously denies that they're in cohoots with Bongiorno and did his best to distance himself from the company, although he did admit that Bongiorno pay them a "small" percentage of their takings. Whatever the truth, the business is now being officially looked into by Phone Pay Plus, Ofcom's sister company (in charge of telecommunications), so we'll have to see what they say. Bongiourno claims that I willingly accepted their charges, and that they sent a text of confirmation to my mobile the following day. Fortunately, I never delete texts, so am able to prove conclusively that the text they actually sent read;

"(FreeMsg)Get to B!Games at bGames.mobivillage.com each day. See FAQs for more info. Free access week then £1.50/week until u reply stop."

If there's anything here which tells me implicitly that I've signed up for a gaming service, please point it out!

It wasn't until a year later that they aroused my suspicion with a text which read:

(FreeMsg) You're a member of iFortune for £2/wk. Check your horoscope @ ifortune.mobivillage.com. Already know your destiny? Rply stop.

I still assumed it was spam, however, and it took another three texts (one per month) for me to realise that I needed to write "stop" if I wanted them to cease sending these unwanted messages. It never occurred to me that I was being charged. More confusingly, the company by this point had started sending simultaneous texts informing me that I was subscribing to iFortune and B!Games. When I replied "stop" to the double text (see above), it appears I was only removed from the cheaper of the two services. There would have been no way on earth for me to have replied with separate "stops" to both texts as they came as one unit. Very sneaky. I would not learn that I had not stopped the iFortune texts for another month.

It's all highly suspicious, and as such, I'm no longer happy with a "good will" refund. I reckon I'm now in line for compensation for the bother and the panic which this whole business has caused me.

Leaving you now with a picture of a kettle which looks like Hitler...

Mobile scam. Read!!

So today I received a text message from a company called Buongiorno which informed me that I'd signed up for a "horoscope service" which cost the princely sum of £2 a week (charged through my phone bill) and that if I wanted to unsubscribe from said service, I had to text "stop" to the number provided. 

I immediately called Orange to find out what on earth was going on, and discovered that, for the past two years, I'd unwittingly spent a grand total of £232.50 on mobile phone gaming and weekly horoscope/ "love match" updates... None of which I'd ever received, seen or used. 

Apparently in order to have been stealth-billed this extortionate amount of money I'd have needed to sign up for the service, provide all my details, and then counter-sign some kind of "are you  sure this is a product you want?" document. This is all, of course, deeply unlikely and somewhat troubling. Plainly if I DID sign up for weekly horoscope and love match updates, I did so utterly inadvertently, which implies I thought I was doing something else; probably attempting to stop them from sending any more unwanted texts to me. I can only think that this company must be incredibly sneaky in their practices and feel like I've been well and truly screwed over.

Obviously I kicked up merry hell, first with Orange, and then with the company themselves, and have been given a "good will" refund of the full amount, but the whole business has left a terrible taste in my mouth. 

I don't think many of us go through mobile phone bills with a fine-tooth comb, and I'm embarrassed (like a little old man) to discover that the best part of £250 has been deducted from my phone bill without my noticing. This really is the new scammers' frontier. 

So what's the moral of this story? Firstly, be very careful which buttons you press when you're trying to get rid of unwanted screens flashing up on your iPhone. Secondly, when you receive unwanted text messages from companies urging you to "click here to unsubscribe," don't immediately ignore them as spam. If it says unsubscribe... Unsubscribe! And if in doubt, contact your mobile phone provider. Thirdly, check your bills regularly and make sure you can account for everything. Don't do what I do, and assume your mobile phone company will get everything right. Fourthly, it's never too late to get a refund, so if you realise that something somewhat untoward has happened, immediately report it, and know your rights! Demand a "good will" refund. If my experience is anything to go by, you won't have to try that hard.

There. Now go check your phone bills!

Not quite as it seems

The most horrendous aspect of working in Limehouse is changing from the DLR to the Northern Line at Bank Station during the rush hour. I read, today in fact, that Bank is considered the most unpleasant of all tube stations. It's certainly rather badly conceived. Some of the platforms are miles away from each other and only accessible via a series of tunnels, spiral staircases and countless escalators. To make matters worse, many of the obvious routes and corridors are closed off for no apparent reason. It would be a catastrophic place to be if there were a fire. This evening, two LU staff members wearing orange puffer jackets were preventing passengers from standing on the platform in an apparently random 4 metre square area. "You can't stand here," they kept shouting. We obliged, of course, but I wondered if this was the best use of two staff members' time and expertise.

I'm back at DIN studios with Julian and we've now started the lengthy process of mixing the White City songs. 4 days left now, and counting...

Mixing is a rather dull process for a composer because there's a lot of technical stuff - equalising, rhythmic correction - which needs to be done before his opinion is needed again. I therefore spent much of the day sitting on the sofa where Bob had his seizure, staring out across a rain-swept Cable Street, wondering how different the view would have been 80 years ago when the infamous anti-fascist battle took place. I wondered how the recent events in Woolwich would play out; whether the country is surging towards the far right again. Muslims are, of course, the new Jews, and Cable Street, once the Jewish heartland of Great Britain, is now predominantly Muslim, so one can imagine similar barricades being built on the very same streets to prevent the EDL marching through the East End spreading their message of intolerance. "History never repeats itself. Man always does."

I see Centre Point Homeless Charity is running a campaign on the underground. A lad with sad eyes stares out of the poster; "you walked past Mark today," the words inform us: "Just 40p will help make sure you don't walk past him tomorrow." It's a good sentiment, of course. The only trouble is that Mark (pictured) is plainly a middle-class young actor, cynically chosen for his beautiful deep brown eyes, and ability to stare into the lens of a camera with a look which implies vulnerability both emotionally and sexually. 

It annoys me. I would be far more likely to donate to a charity who published the image of a genuine homeless lad, than one who would choose a lad for his look. Maybe I'm being unkind. Perhaps it would be morally questionable to show the image of an actual homeless person; or perhaps the majority of Londoners will think "blimey, homeless lads are FIT, I'm gonna give loads of money to Centre Point so that Mark can go on the X Factor and get proper famous!" Maybe these same people think the impossibly glamorous ladies on the wee-wee pad commercials actual pee when they sneeze, and that X Factor contestants have walked straight off the streets to be seen by an un-briefed panel of judges. 

We live in a world where nothing is quite as it seems... 

Seizure

At 11am this morning I witnessed my very first epileptic seizure. It was a rather calm sort of thing - a mild attack by all accounts - and fortunately, a few months ago, the guy who had the seizure happened to show me film footage of him mid-attack, so I was aware of what was coming and knew not to worry too much. I guess it was both ironic and predictable that it was Bob who was going through the ringer. Bob is the vicar who is singing the song about epilepsy in our White City film. The whole experience was strangely calming and as he came around afterwards, he looked incredibly mellow. He took a few moments, and then went through a sort of check list with me, to make sure his brain was functioning as well as it had before the seizure: "we're in the studio, we're recording the song line by line, we'll stop and re-do it if I get things wrong..." What an amazing man.

I felt somewhat privileged to have witnessed the event and astonished how quickly things returned to normal afterwards. 

So, today we were back to the grindstone, mopping up the vocals for Tales of the White City which we'd not managed to record last week. Norma, who'd so spectacularly melted down on Thursday, stepped into the studio like a woman on fire. At times I thought I was recording Dionne Warwick! It's astonishing what a Bank Holiday will do for a woman's confidence. She was brilliant.

The only thing we've yet to record is the steel pan band. These were the guys who "forgot" to come to the session we'd booked for them last week, and from what I can gather, have subsequently been giving us the run-around, telling us we need to speak to other people associated with the group, people they won't be seeing for some time etc etc. What I find genuinely upsetting about the situation is that I wrote special music for them to play. I came to a rehearsal to see them learn new music. They listened to what I'd written and said how much they'd enjoyed it. They agreed to do the song - no-one held a gun to their heads - and I would have thought that pride alone would make them want to fulfill their promise. It worries me quite how quick people are to let people down. 

I sincerely hope that they'll work something out. They're such wonderful players and such brilliant role models. It would be a terrible shame if we were forced to cut their number - and all the other people involved in it - just because they couldn't get their act together. At this late stage, however, I'm not sure what other solutions there are. 

A woman on the tube seems to be holding twelve copies of the Evening Standard on her lap. Do you suppose she's going to try to sell them on the black market up north? Perhaps she's saving the crosswords for twelve of her friends. Suggestions on a postcard, please.