Zeppelins

I’m sitting in the auditorium of the Lost Theatre, which is somewhere in the void between Vauxhall and Stockwell. It would appear to be nowhere near a tube. We walked here in the rain and my shoes leaked miserably. I am seriously wondering if I have a form of trench foot because every time my feet get wet these days they begin to itch. I’ve come to the Lost Theatre to watch the Sitzprobe (or first rehearsal with band) of Nathan’s concert which takes place on Sunday night. It’s a show which features music by Stephen Schwarz, who wrote Godspell and Wicked, so there’s plenty of wonderful material to choose from. Unfortunately I’ve had a bit of a diary f*** up, and booked myself to go on a research trip to Leeds which begins on Sunday, so of course I’m going to miss the important gig.

I’m thrilled to report, however, that the concert is going to be excellent. The band is tremendous and the singers are superb. Nathan’s singing a song called Fathers and Sons, which is devastatingly beautiful. He’ll also be performing West End Avenue, an Alice Ripley standard, which is a terrific song that makes me desperate to go to New York. If anyone wants to see the show, it’s on this Sunday night. 7pm at the Battersea Barge. Be there or be square.

Whilst watching the “sitz”, I’m transferring research notes for my First World War musical into an ever-growing word document file, which is currently 110 pages long. I’m turning into quite some expert, but by the end of the month, when I’ve been to Leeds and the French Battlefields, I’m going to be utterly fed up with acquiring knowledge, and desperate to start the creative process.

My hand was forced today by someone who’s trying to get extra funding for the project who asked me to commit to a working title for the piece. I’ve opted for a single word title, Brass, which is slightly unfortunate due to its similarity to the title of my last stage musical, which was, of course called Blast. I’m trying to convince myself that this is all okay by using 1970s examples. Led Zeppelin called all their albums Led Zeppelin and the Bee Gees had massive hits with songs called Words and World. I reckon that puts me in fairly good company.

At the moment the word Brass feels like it pretty much sums my musical up. I’m telling the story of a group of Leeds women who reform a brass band which was disbanded when their relatives and sweethearts went off to war. The women are munitions workers who fill shells made of brass, the very shells which their men folk are trying to dodge in France. So, for the time being, Brass it is.

I’ve returned to the Pepys Motet to give the remaining four unrecorded movements a little dusting. Essentially, I’m trying to strip the pieces of unnecessary vocal lines which will take a long time to record in the studio, but prove ultimately fruitless. We’re set to record the remaining four movements at the end of October and the beginning of November. Because I have to prioritise Brass, I’m getting up earlier every day this week and doing a solid hour in the morning on Pepys. That said, it was incredibly cold this morning...

In the middle of the day we went to Muswell Hill to arm ourselves against the invasion of moths who are threatening to destroy Nathan’s woolly artwork. The little bastards have started munching through his socks, and some of them have entered the holy stash of yarn on the top of the wardrobe. They must be stopped, of course, so whilst the US decides whether it’s going to invade Syria, I’m announcing a war on moths.

I actually think there’s something of a gap in the market for a moth ball which doesn’t smell like death. Moth balls smell as horrid as they did at the turn of the century and you’d think by now someone would have invented something which has a nicer fragrance. Moths apparently don’t like the smell of lavender, so why can’t a moth ball be invented which masks whatever grotesquely poisonous substance is used to kill the critters with a smell which is more pleasing to human noses? I assume it’s because no one wears natural fibres these days. If there were a need for moth balls away from the small number of artisans who use proper wool for knitting, we’d have something which killed moths and made us go “ahhhhh.” Like Shake ‘n Vac, you know? Or Zoflora bleach.

Hippodrome Albion

We spent this afternoon at the Albion pub in Islington celebrating Jem's birthday. It was a lovely occasion, marred only slightly by the weather (coldish and damp) and the attitude of the staff within the pub who came across as arrogant, and,

in some cases, rather rude. 

It's one of those London pubs which obviously knows its value. It'll always be packed to the rafters because it's such a beautiful building in a highly desirable part of town, but its "too cool for school" staff plainly don't feel the need to try that hard.

Still, I love hanging out with Jem's lot. They're a rag-taggle bunch of glamorous bohemians from all corners of the world who are absolutely brilliant company.

This evening we went to the Hippodrome in Leicester Square to see the incomparably talented Christina Bianco doing her cabaret set. Bianco is a mimic who sings well-known songs in the style of diva vocalists. She's obviously a lovely lass and is spectacularly good at what she does. No one takes on Celine Dion, Kristen Chenoweth, Shirley Bassey and Barbra Streisand (and wins) without having a seriously impressive set of pipes. 

We went there with Lli. I'd never set foot in the iconic Hippodrome before. It had become a cheesy night club by the time I'd moved to London and these days, after a full-scale makeover, it's a casino. I've never been in a casino before and was surprised at how busy and claustrophobic it felt. Almost every corner was filled with card tables covered in blue baize, slot machines and weird groups of yanks watching American football matches underneath bizarre chandeliers. It was a surprised to find a rather charming cabaret space on the third floor. 

It's really quite depressing to enter a building which was once (but is no longer) such an important theatrical location. It was built in 1900, and Wikipedia tells me that the entrance to the auditorium was through a bar which was dressed like a "ship's saloon."

The auditorium itself included a proscenium arch theatre and also an arena which sank into a 230 foot, 100,000 gallon tank which was used for "aquatic spectacles." The tank featured eight central fountains and a circle of fountains around the edge. Entrances at the side of the auditorium could be flooded and used for the boats. Shows in the venue often included polar bears, elephants and horses. And the place even had a retractable roof that could be lit up at night.  It's where Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake was first performed in this country for Heaven's sake!

Why on earth would we replace a unique space like that with a blinking casino?!

Porn songs and ice cream

It's been a glorious day spent in the company of the lovely Hilary with a series of other great friends making cameos throughout.

We started on Upper Street with brunch at Fredericks, a restaurant which was very much the focus of Islington-based New Labour activity after the 1997 election. 

Stephen Twigg and I went to all sorts of bizarre fundraising dinners there. They'd sit us on a table with all the other crazy arty party faithful types; Sir Ian McKellen, Tony Robinson, Cindy off of Eastenders. I spent many a decadent drunken night in that establishment! 

Those who know me particularly well will know that I once wrote the soundtrack to an adult movie. For obvious reasons it's nothing like my other music; more Ibiza trance than Introit, but I did the job without hiding behind a pseudonym, so careful where you look when you're popping into one of those backstreet shops in Soho! It's an awful film. Something about football. All the actors were supremely ugly and it was made in an era when there were serious restrictions on the British adult entertainment industry. The majority of hanky-panky was censored and I'm sad to admit that I didn't get to see the film before writing the music. Just as well really. Everyone in it looked like they were having an awful time! 

Anyway, I was offered the job at a New Labour fundraising event at Fredericks... See, there was a point to that tangent! 

Our brunch companions were Nathan, Julie Clare and Jess Mog, who was a student at the music school in Northampton and therefore  someone I've known for about 25 years. Anthony from the choir popped by and filled us in on the ups and downs of his eventful summer. Anthony is without a doubt the most optimistic of all my friends. I always feel so jaded and cynical when he sails through a room and always say goodbye promising to be more positive.

The knitters in our company (Nathan, Julie and Jess) went off to Loop in Camden Passage to sit in an upstairs room pouring over shelves of beautiful artisan yarn whilst knitting. I think they call it a "stitch and bitch" session.

Hils and I walked in ever-widening circles and ended up on a bench on the canal towpath behind Noel Road, where playwright, Joe Orton was murdered in the late 60s. It's also the street where my dear friend, Ellie once lived. I told Hilary about the towpath summer parties that the residents of the street whose homes backed onto the canal used to have. Ellie once described them to me and the image has never left my mind. I drank tea and recorded the sound of a barge coming through the tunnel to add to my collection of atmospheric noises. 

We had lunch in a Thai restaurant. I wasn't hungry, but it was fabulous to sit out on the pavement whilst the sun glared down on us. 

Julie and Nathan left, and Hilary and I embarked on a Samuel Pepys-style epic walk, all the way from Angel to Covent Garden, where I bought my brother his birthday present, and then down to the South Bank via Hungerford Bridge. Hilary bought an ice cream from the farmers' market and we spent a good hour ambling around in what has to be one of the coolest parts of town. I always feel so proud to be a Londoner when I'm on the South Bank. At the moment they've got an orchard of apple, plum and God knows what else trees down there in giant pots. Some of them are absolutely laden with fruit. There are flower beds and herb gardens all over the place, and the bees were going insane! 

From the Southbank we walked all the way to Victoria via Vauxhall, stopping for some time to marvel at the glorious sight of the sun setting behind the Houses of Parliament. Sometimes nature is capable of such extraordinary displays that I find myself wondering why more people don't believe in magic!

I look like a pepper grinder

I was awoken this morning by the tingle of light rain, which, after the glorious summer we've had, actually made for quite a romantic sound. I lay for a few minutes listening contentedly whilst trying to work out what day it was. By the end of the week, early mornings are really not my friends!

I gave myself, as ever, an impossible list of things to do today. The book I'm presently reading is about the Leeds Pals. I ordered it from Amazon assuming it was the size of an ordinary book, and was astonished when it arrived to find it had the dimensions of a small coffee table.

It's nevertheless wonderful reading, and filled to the brim with tales of sadness and hopelessness including the story of the wife of a man who was labelled "missing in action" who kept his room in their cottage made up for him for the next fifty years hoping he'd return. These Madam Butterflyesque stories never fail to draw me in and make me feel a little sad. 

Water started pouring through the ceiling again, so we stuck a saucepan in the middle of the sitting room, and hot-footed it downstairs to see the landlord's wife, who was horrified and immediately arranged for a little man to come over. The little man was every bit as tiny as we'd hoped, and arrived with an even smaller version of himself with sallow, nicotine-stained eyes and grey skin like an elephant's trunk. They bolted into the loft, and before I could say "fabulous, darling," he'd jumped out of the dormer window and taken a broom to the guttering. Fearless. 

After a late lunch, we went to the gym, and I wriggled around on the treadmill like a jam roly-poly. Now September is here I have no excuse not to get fit. The older I get, the more I understand the concept of barrel-chestedness. 

I took my enormous book with me and tried to read it whilst cycling, but it was so large, it kept catching on my elbows and frisbeeing off towards the Man Mountain precariously  balanced on the bike next door. 

I left the book on a bench in the changing rooms and returned to find it had become an unofficial shelf with two iPhones and a Blackberry belonging to complete strangers sitting on top. One assumes the owners had seen the book, thought "that's not a book, it's a purpose-built shiny tray designed to keep electrical equipment from soaking up the sweat on these gipping wooden benches" and behaved accordingly.

Oh well. I'm glad the book has proven to have a number of uses... 

A new family member

Today was delightful. I did a morning's work and then made my way down to Old Street to see three generations of the Goslett clan. We painted nails, created mini-masterpieces out of tiny plastic beads and caught up on much needed gossip. Deia showed me her new bedroom with its wonderful wall mural and giant toy giraffe, and we examined the strange burrows in their wooden garden table, which Philippa claims to be made by wasps but I'm pretty sure are the product of some kind of leaf-cutting bee.

The plums in the garden were, as I suspect most autumn fruits will be this year, extraordinary. Perfectly formed and not a single one of them munched by wasps. Perhaps the leaf-cutting bees have already claimed the patch! 

The big news of the day, however, was my becoming a god-father again, to Deia's sister, Silver. I was so excited and moved to be asked and shall endeavour to do my duties with alacrity and great charm. I have decided it's important for me to be the godfather who brings magic into children's lives. Actual parents have enough on their plates merely keeping their children alive. Periodically it's highly appropriate for a mad composer to appear from stage left to take the kids on a spiritual adventure. 

I also feel obliged to teach long words to my godchildren. With vocabulary comes power, although I think Deia got a little tired of my insisting that she learned what a hemisphere was and how to differentiate between odd and even numbers. On and on I went until Deia politely said "we've had plenty of your odd and even numbers now. Why don't we play hide a seek with this fan?" Enough said.

I went home via Soho, where I had my hair cut. I told the bloke he could do whatever he liked, wondering if I'd been missing some sort of Holy Hairstyle Grail  for all these years by continually asking it to be short at the sides and slightly longer on top. 

What did I get? The same old, really. Just a little shorter on top, and when I looked at the barber in the mirror, I saw he'd cut my hair exactly the same way as he'd cut his own. For three quid extra, he clippered my beard and afterwards proclaimed "I have created a new man," which felt suitably poetic. 

I walked back to the tube in the searing evening heat. They say the weather will break tomorrow, so I can only assume that this is the last day of summer. Aren't we all meant to go and pick a rose to put in our hats, or something? 

I had an email yesterday from someone who runs a website about the Yorkshire Pals who said he'd only help me if I donated all my earnings from the project to a military charity in honour of the men who fell. Lovely idea, but how would I live for an entire year whilst writing it? I'm already having to batten down the hatches to make what I am being paid work! I think people forgot that creative people a) aren't all filthy rich ponces and b) pay their rents and feed and cloth themselves by working just like anyone else. I suggested that if I donated money to a charity, a sizeable percentage of my donation would go towards paying that charity's workers and executives. We all have jobs to do and my job is composing. 

Fine men

I went on the tube today for what seemed the first time in ages. I guess I've not really had any business in central London recently and have been driving about quite a lot instead. My underground experience was every bit as horrible as ever. Sweat. Grime. Claustrophobia. Someone's arm periodically brushing my elbow as he turned the pages of his newspaper. Me edging further and further into the glass partition by the door and leaving a weird deposit of greasy moisture. Ah! The joys of a first world country.

I took the tube to Pimlico for a meeting about the First World War musical. The meeting went really well, but I kept getting the impression that the guy I was taking to wanted to say something which he never got around to saying. Maybe that was my imagination! 

I spent the rest of the day reading about the Leeds Pals, which I'm finding greatly upsetting. The city was so proud of their Pals division, who really were the creme de la creme of young men in the area. There were university lecturers, lawyers, clerks, and even Leeds United footballers and Yorkshire County cricketers amongst the ranks. When they paraded through the streets of Leeds, huge numbers of people turned up to cheer and throw flowers. They were like film stars, really, the embodiment of the spirit of the city. Fine, fine men. 

...And yet they were obliterated. 700 were killed of the 900 who went over the top on the first battle of the Somme, and then, when they were merged with another West Yorkshire regiment, they were re-obliterate at Vimy Ridge and then again during the Great Push in 1918. A mere 42 of them returned. 1400 went away to war. That's about a 3% chance of survival. They say not a single street in the city didn't have at least one blackened window. 

The 42 who came home marched proudly through the streets of Leeds behind a police brass band. It upsets me to think what an astonishingly pathetic sight this must have been. 

I know. Let's bomb Syria...

An OCD dream!

I've got a bit of a headache, probably as a result of staring non-stop at a computer screen all day. I've had to buy a novel I need for research as a PDF, and I'm not enjoying the experience of reading it on the computer. The bright screen is making my eyes go round in circles.

I am working at the speed of light, sometimes with as many as six emails going at one time. September has arrived, everyone's coming back from their holidays and it seems there's much admin as a result. 

Whilst not reading online books or dealing with waves of virtual paper work, I've been tidying the living room. Proper tidying it. I even bought "Shake and Vac", which means I may well have entered some kind of portal to the 1980s. We've found a shop on our street which sells cleaning products. Nothing but cleaning products. t's an OCD sufferer's dream. All the shelves are stacked with everything you could ever imagine a caretaker needing; mop heads, curious brushes, buckets, yellow hazard signs, dusters, tea towels, massive vats of carpet shampoo, sprays, varnishes, resins, waxes... Fabulous. 

So now my living room smells of vanilla and lavender and all sorts of chemical-edged scents which have been threatening to choke me all day. 

Cleaning our house is like cleaning the Forth Bridge and I'm terrified that the wonderful things I've done in the kitchen and bathroom will be reversed before I've got my hands on the bedroom, hall and loft. I'm finally beginning to appreciate my mother's remarkable ability to keep our house clean throughout my childhood. How did she do it?!