I've had a funny tummy all day; plainly a reaction to rich food, and the little bit of stress I've been under lately.
Nonetheless, I've been with the lovely Cindy, my Broadway producer friend from New York, all day... In Thaxted and Cambridge.
We woke up to some lovely food courtesy of my Mum, and then battled through the tail end of a cold front to a curious little church in darkest Essex where there are bizarre 17th Century anti-witch symbols scratched into the walls above the doors and windows. Why are they there? How paranoid were people back then when it came to witch craft? Who knows? What I do know is that it's one of the most bizarrely atmospheric places in the whole of East Anglia, and, in driving wind and rain, felt like the perfect way to start our day.
It's Cindy's 30th Birthday. She's 30 on the 30th... And on a blue moon to boot, which I'm told is very significant. Cambridge felt like a natural choice for the day. Cindy likes England, spiritual things, pretty buildings, shopping and glamour and Cambridge has all of those things in absolute spades. The sun came out as soon as we arrived and we got a sensational subset which Cindy described as "apricot" (except she pronounced the word "app-re-cott." Americans are weird!)
We even managed a little bit of punting; an hour or so along The Backs as the sun went down. Cindy sat like a queen in her big frock coat as I snaked the boat around groups of rather silly lads who plainly didn't understand the difference between the pole, the oar and, in fact, the punt itself!
I think many were somewhat emasculated by my punting prowess, and obviously assumed I was taking my girlfriend out on the water to impress her. If only they'd known the truth, it would probably have emasculated them even more! At one stage I offered to rescue a dropped pole belonging to one group of lads. Perhaps, unsurprisingly, they point blank refused the offer. Way too embarrassing with a pretty lady present!
It was freezing. I was forced to use a metal pole which slipped through my hand and conducted the iciness of the water, giving me a terrible aching sensation, and to make matters worse, the wind was high and the current on the Cam during winter months is incredibly strong, which made returning upstream to the punt hire place rather hard work.
We returned to Thaxted for a birthday feast in the sitting room in front of an open fire. My Mum had even managed to find a gluten and dairy free birthday cake, which went down particularly well.
On the car journey to the train at Bishop's Stortford, Cindy's jet lag (and three mulled wines) kicked in and as we pulled into the station she started talking absolute jibberish... Cue me assuming she was having a stroke and going into hyper-mode. Turns out she'd simply nodded off and started talking in her sleep. It was curiously instantaneous, however. One moment she was chatting away happily. The next she'd briefly signed out!
The trains home to London were in disarray as a result of vandalism somewhere near Tottenham Hale, and we ended up being forced to join the tube network at Seven Sisters, which no decent human being should ever have to endure.
We stayed up late to read and listen to sequences from Brass, which Cindy feels is a very impressive work. She was crying within two minutes of hearing the first song, which I take to be a good sign!
Less good, however, is this funny, runny tummy which I feel it's imperative not to have when I wake up tomorrow. I have a party to cater, God dammit!
Tuesday, 31 December 2013
Monday, 30 December 2013
Pastiche
I'm back in Thaxted at the end of a long old day, the first part of which seemed to go by in a flash. I can count on the fingers of one hand the things I usefully achieved before about 6pm. I spoke on the phone to a few people and did some work on Brass. I've spent a considerable amount of time on this project immersing myself in musical styles from the turn of the last century, in order to make the musical feel as legitimate as possible. I can't imagine why anyone writing a period piece wouldn't do this, and am surprised that Lloyd Weber's new musical about Profumo doesn't tap into the rich tapestry of musical styles which the early 1960s offers any composer on a plate.
The big rage in the First World War was ragtime, which people used to foxtrot to. Unfortunately ragtime to me is about as alien as R and B, so I spent two hours this afternoon writing a single eight bar sequence! You have to get these things right. There's no point in writing half-arsed pastiche, or, for that matter, a pastiche which doesn't also feel like a decent piece of music in its own right. I am also feeling the pressure to write excellent music as the script today passed the NYMT producer test, seemingly with flying colours. Hurrah. Could it be I've finally cracked it with this piece?
I left Highgate for Thaxted at about about 8.30pm and drove like the clappers up here to meet my friend Cindy from Stansted. Cindy has come from New York via Dallas and Rome, which seems almost impossibly glamorous!
Cindy is celiac (I nearly wrote celeriac!) which means she can't eat wheat or dairy - basically anything nice! I had mentioned this to my Mum, but was truly amazed to get back to Thaxted from the airport to find she'd whipped up an entire spread of wheat and dairy free food. Cindy was thrilled, of course.
Top marks also to my mother for showing me bits of the quilt she's been working on for my 40th birthday, which is genuinely one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen - lovingly filled with all sorts of quilted scenes from my life, mostly to do with the films I've made and the music I've written. I immediately burst into tears, of course. I can't wait to see what it looks like when it's all put together and am determined to forget what I've seen so that the surprise can be all the better in August when it's unveiled.
Anyway. I must go to sleep as I have a long day tomorrow, taking Cindy on a tour of the spiritual, pagan and ghostly world of Northern Essex and Cambridgeshire. Sometimes it's rather good to recharge those particular batteries, but you need to take a believer with you... And Cindy is most definitely a believer!
The big rage in the First World War was ragtime, which people used to foxtrot to. Unfortunately ragtime to me is about as alien as R and B, so I spent two hours this afternoon writing a single eight bar sequence! You have to get these things right. There's no point in writing half-arsed pastiche, or, for that matter, a pastiche which doesn't also feel like a decent piece of music in its own right. I am also feeling the pressure to write excellent music as the script today passed the NYMT producer test, seemingly with flying colours. Hurrah. Could it be I've finally cracked it with this piece?
I left Highgate for Thaxted at about about 8.30pm and drove like the clappers up here to meet my friend Cindy from Stansted. Cindy has come from New York via Dallas and Rome, which seems almost impossibly glamorous!
Cindy is celiac (I nearly wrote celeriac!) which means she can't eat wheat or dairy - basically anything nice! I had mentioned this to my Mum, but was truly amazed to get back to Thaxted from the airport to find she'd whipped up an entire spread of wheat and dairy free food. Cindy was thrilled, of course.
Top marks also to my mother for showing me bits of the quilt she's been working on for my 40th birthday, which is genuinely one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen - lovingly filled with all sorts of quilted scenes from my life, mostly to do with the films I've made and the music I've written. I immediately burst into tears, of course. I can't wait to see what it looks like when it's all put together and am determined to forget what I've seen so that the surprise can be all the better in August when it's unveiled.
Anyway. I must go to sleep as I have a long day tomorrow, taking Cindy on a tour of the spiritual, pagan and ghostly world of Northern Essex and Cambridgeshire. Sometimes it's rather good to recharge those particular batteries, but you need to take a believer with you... And Cindy is most definitely a believer!
Sunday, 29 December 2013
On the silence of appreciation
This blog entry is really more of an appeal to readers who know creative people. In this instance, I use the word "creative" to mean those who write, paint, direct, compose, take photos, and make films; those who create art from nothing, rather than performers, whom I think of more as "re-creative."
Definition complete, I move on to the body of the appeal...
We've all done it haven't we? Been to see a friend acting or performing in a piece; maybe she's in a professional West End musical, maybe he plays in an amateur orchestra. Sometimes what we see is incredible, and we cheer and laugh and feel hopelessly proud. Other times we sit through a proper turkey, longing to go home, wishing the misery would end! What we ALWAYS do afterwards, however, is congratulate the performer. We recognise how hard they've worked and if the show was bad, and we don't want to lie, we use phrases like "If it wasn't for you, that show would have been meaningless..."
The cardinal sin would be to walk away without making a comment - doing this would undoubtedly lead to the abrupt end of a beautiful friendship. As a result, we often queue for hours in grotty bars and church halls waiting to grab our performer friends and fill their ears with buttery compliments. It's the etiquette. It's what performers subconsciously demand.
Sadly the same is often not true when it comes to creatives. I heard the story today of the step mother of one song writer who sat down (in a studio) to listen to her step son's work and actually went to the loo just after he'd started playing the first song from his new album to her.
I remember once playing a group of friends my A1 film for the first time. We all sat down in front of a giant screen to watch it. I was really excited, but just as it started two enormous dogs rushed into the room slobbering on everyone, barking insanely and causing such an extended commotion that the entire set-up of the film was lost. I had to stamp my little feet very hard to start the piece again!
Three times this year, an even more peculiar phenomenon has happened, where I've shown someone my work and they've actually said nothing about it afterwards! Nothing at all. Not a "well done" or a "wow, that was ambitious," just a silence, before the conversation moves on to something else, and it's impossible to then charge in with a "so what did you think of it?" Type question...
It seems that people these days genuinely grasp that it's possible to badly hurt the feelings of a performer. We understand that it takes guts and skills to stand on a stage and do stuff well. When it comes to purely creative people, however, we can be a great deal less understanding.
When you make a film or write a piece of music you invest almost every part of yourself in it; years of blood, sweat and tears will often have been poured into a piece, and often rather large sums of personal money will follow the creative outburst in order to bring it to fruition. A key moment in any creative person's journey is the handing over of their work to the wider world for the first time. It is utterly terrifying. You hope someone will like it, or "get it" as we started to say in the late 20th Century, but you won't be at all surprised if they don't because you yourself lost all sense of objectivity as soon as you lifted pen to paper! An important part in the painful process of giving birth to a creative endeavour, is showing the work in its unfinished form to friends. Having a friend read an early draft, hear an unmastered mix, or see an ungraded edit of a film is like dipping your toe into the murky waters of Joe Public. Your heart beats in your mouth. You feel sick. You look at their faces with great anticipation to see how they respond to certain passages...
...But then, after all of that, sometimes people don't say anything at all, which of course makes you immediately assume they don't like it, in fact it must be so awful, they can't think of anything nice to say just to sweeten the pill. Not even, "gosh, that's a lot of work..." or "up to the usual Till standards"!
I'm sure I don't need to say what a crashingly awful effect silence of this nature can have on a creative person. He or she simply wants to hide away, to have the work suddenly disappear. The flaws he knows exist in the draft or the edit become wide chasms which will never be filled, and he deflates like an old football on a neighbour's garage roof.
I think there's an understanding that performers, actors particularly, are creatures with rather low self-esteem, but very few people fully appreciate how complicated and emotional it is for the man or woman who actually gave birth to the art that the performer is interpreting. It's a curious disconnect which I have seen throughout my career. I once dared to play a song on the piano to a friend, who suddenly started randomly pressing keys at the top end of the piano whilst I played as though to say "gosh this is dull isn't it? Perhaps if I play something else, he'll get the message." What makes this behaviour even more bizarre is that it never seems to come from a nasty or brutal place, and I'm not sure that this weird silence necessarily comes out of someone not actually liking what they're hearing or seeing. I can only think it comes because people don't fully comprehend what it means to create something, and therefore can't think of the right questions to ask for fear of looking silly.
The only analogy that sticks here is the one I briefly referenced earlier about giving birth. Creatives have a seed of an idea which we nurture for months; feeding it, obsessing over it unhealthily, letting it grow, until finally, one day, we feel proud or brave enough to hand it over to the rest of the world.
If someone handed you their baby and asked what you thought of him, would you bounce it on your knee for a few minutes and then hand it back to the mother without uttering a single word? No! You'd say how beautiful it was, and if you couldn't think of anything nice to say about its appearance (we all know the majority of babies are mingers), then you'd ask the mother about the process of giving birth and how she found it, and perhaps even ask what her plans are for the baby in terms of its future. Just out of politeness, really!
So the next time a creative friend asks if you'd like to watch or listen to their work, remember a few things. 1) He or she has plucked up a considerable amount of courage to ask you to listen to or watch their work, and in the process has placed a great responsibility on your shoulders which you must try to take seriously. 2) If it's genuinely not a good time and if you can't focus properly on the piece, tell them, but don't forget to ask to see it again when a better time comes. The creative person will immediately feel ashamed to have bothered you and will probably not be brave enough to ask you to listen a second time. 3) Focus on the piece, and remember your face will be watched very carefully as you appreciate it! 4) Be careful with your critiquing; at this early stage, the creative certainly won't be ready to hear that what he's made or written is crap. Ascertain, before venturing an opinion, if it's too late for notes and if the creative asks for feedback, work out what level of comment is appropriate in terms of how much time he has to remedy problems. 5) If in doubt, remember the baby metaphor. Treat the work like you would a new born child (or a bride talking about her wedding day) and you won't go far wrong!
Definition complete, I move on to the body of the appeal...
We've all done it haven't we? Been to see a friend acting or performing in a piece; maybe she's in a professional West End musical, maybe he plays in an amateur orchestra. Sometimes what we see is incredible, and we cheer and laugh and feel hopelessly proud. Other times we sit through a proper turkey, longing to go home, wishing the misery would end! What we ALWAYS do afterwards, however, is congratulate the performer. We recognise how hard they've worked and if the show was bad, and we don't want to lie, we use phrases like "If it wasn't for you, that show would have been meaningless..."
The cardinal sin would be to walk away without making a comment - doing this would undoubtedly lead to the abrupt end of a beautiful friendship. As a result, we often queue for hours in grotty bars and church halls waiting to grab our performer friends and fill their ears with buttery compliments. It's the etiquette. It's what performers subconsciously demand.
Sadly the same is often not true when it comes to creatives. I heard the story today of the step mother of one song writer who sat down (in a studio) to listen to her step son's work and actually went to the loo just after he'd started playing the first song from his new album to her.
I remember once playing a group of friends my A1 film for the first time. We all sat down in front of a giant screen to watch it. I was really excited, but just as it started two enormous dogs rushed into the room slobbering on everyone, barking insanely and causing such an extended commotion that the entire set-up of the film was lost. I had to stamp my little feet very hard to start the piece again!
Three times this year, an even more peculiar phenomenon has happened, where I've shown someone my work and they've actually said nothing about it afterwards! Nothing at all. Not a "well done" or a "wow, that was ambitious," just a silence, before the conversation moves on to something else, and it's impossible to then charge in with a "so what did you think of it?" Type question...
It seems that people these days genuinely grasp that it's possible to badly hurt the feelings of a performer. We understand that it takes guts and skills to stand on a stage and do stuff well. When it comes to purely creative people, however, we can be a great deal less understanding.
When you make a film or write a piece of music you invest almost every part of yourself in it; years of blood, sweat and tears will often have been poured into a piece, and often rather large sums of personal money will follow the creative outburst in order to bring it to fruition. A key moment in any creative person's journey is the handing over of their work to the wider world for the first time. It is utterly terrifying. You hope someone will like it, or "get it" as we started to say in the late 20th Century, but you won't be at all surprised if they don't because you yourself lost all sense of objectivity as soon as you lifted pen to paper! An important part in the painful process of giving birth to a creative endeavour, is showing the work in its unfinished form to friends. Having a friend read an early draft, hear an unmastered mix, or see an ungraded edit of a film is like dipping your toe into the murky waters of Joe Public. Your heart beats in your mouth. You feel sick. You look at their faces with great anticipation to see how they respond to certain passages...
...But then, after all of that, sometimes people don't say anything at all, which of course makes you immediately assume they don't like it, in fact it must be so awful, they can't think of anything nice to say just to sweeten the pill. Not even, "gosh, that's a lot of work..." or "up to the usual Till standards"!
I'm sure I don't need to say what a crashingly awful effect silence of this nature can have on a creative person. He or she simply wants to hide away, to have the work suddenly disappear. The flaws he knows exist in the draft or the edit become wide chasms which will never be filled, and he deflates like an old football on a neighbour's garage roof.
I think there's an understanding that performers, actors particularly, are creatures with rather low self-esteem, but very few people fully appreciate how complicated and emotional it is for the man or woman who actually gave birth to the art that the performer is interpreting. It's a curious disconnect which I have seen throughout my career. I once dared to play a song on the piano to a friend, who suddenly started randomly pressing keys at the top end of the piano whilst I played as though to say "gosh this is dull isn't it? Perhaps if I play something else, he'll get the message." What makes this behaviour even more bizarre is that it never seems to come from a nasty or brutal place, and I'm not sure that this weird silence necessarily comes out of someone not actually liking what they're hearing or seeing. I can only think it comes because people don't fully comprehend what it means to create something, and therefore can't think of the right questions to ask for fear of looking silly.
The only analogy that sticks here is the one I briefly referenced earlier about giving birth. Creatives have a seed of an idea which we nurture for months; feeding it, obsessing over it unhealthily, letting it grow, until finally, one day, we feel proud or brave enough to hand it over to the rest of the world.
If someone handed you their baby and asked what you thought of him, would you bounce it on your knee for a few minutes and then hand it back to the mother without uttering a single word? No! You'd say how beautiful it was, and if you couldn't think of anything nice to say about its appearance (we all know the majority of babies are mingers), then you'd ask the mother about the process of giving birth and how she found it, and perhaps even ask what her plans are for the baby in terms of its future. Just out of politeness, really!
So the next time a creative friend asks if you'd like to watch or listen to their work, remember a few things. 1) He or she has plucked up a considerable amount of courage to ask you to listen to or watch their work, and in the process has placed a great responsibility on your shoulders which you must try to take seriously. 2) If it's genuinely not a good time and if you can't focus properly on the piece, tell them, but don't forget to ask to see it again when a better time comes. The creative person will immediately feel ashamed to have bothered you and will probably not be brave enough to ask you to listen a second time. 3) Focus on the piece, and remember your face will be watched very carefully as you appreciate it! 4) Be careful with your critiquing; at this early stage, the creative certainly won't be ready to hear that what he's made or written is crap. Ascertain, before venturing an opinion, if it's too late for notes and if the creative asks for feedback, work out what level of comment is appropriate in terms of how much time he has to remedy problems. 5) If in doubt, remember the baby metaphor. Treat the work like you would a new born child (or a bride talking about her wedding day) and you won't go far wrong!
Saturday, 28 December 2013
Traffic jams and hams
The journey back from Hayward's Heath, or Crawley or wherever we were staying last night was traumatic in the extreme. Traffic was solid - bumper-to-bumper - pretty much from Gatwick to Heathrow which made us all grouchy and miserable. The plan had been to spend today - my Mother's birthday - in London, and I'd thought how lovely it would be to show them the cafe I like to work in (closed) and as an alternative, Highgate Village (mostly closed!)
We ended up in Cafe Nero drinking orange juice which, the bottle reliably informed us, was the product of ten oranges "lovingly" squeezed into a bottle. How insane do these advertising executives think we are? I mean, how does one prove that their oranges are squeezed lovingly? That said, as my brother later pointed out, how do you prove that the oranges WEREN'T squeezed with love?
This evening we went to the theatre to see the Jeeves and Worcester play at the Duke of York's Theatre. Unfortunately, we were placed in a row, at the end of which, two enormously fat women were sitting. My poor father was squeezed into his seat like the oranges in his juice at lunch time. There was all sorts of passive aggressive sighing from both women when any of us tried to get to and from our seats at the interval; "Mum you're going to have to stand up again ..." "Oh no." Meanwhile the two of them couldn't stop gulping down huge vats of strawberry ice cream.
The theatre was boiling hot and smelt bloody awful as we entered, which made is laugh like school children. The auditorium was also filled with Christmas jumpers. I've seldom seen so many comedy knitted Christmas trees and reindeer! It prompted me to wonder whether patterned knitting is making an unnecessary come back!
I wish I could say the show itself had made me laugh. It felt extremely old-fashioned; men dressed as women, people doing funny voices, and hamming things up in the true style of coarse acting. It wasn't very me, I'll be honest, although, as my Mum rightly pointed out, "it's nice to get out!" There is something about going to the theatre which is special, even if the piece isn't great.
I've come home and am watching the ABBA documentary on BBC4, with Agnetha talking about The Winner Takes it All. What she said almost broke my heart. "sometimes when I feel low-morale, I play some of the ABBA songs, the ones we're most proud of, and think, "I did this at least." The legend that is Agnetha saying "I did that at least..." She did that, and so much more besides.
We ended up in Cafe Nero drinking orange juice which, the bottle reliably informed us, was the product of ten oranges "lovingly" squeezed into a bottle. How insane do these advertising executives think we are? I mean, how does one prove that their oranges are squeezed lovingly? That said, as my brother later pointed out, how do you prove that the oranges WEREN'T squeezed with love?
This evening we went to the theatre to see the Jeeves and Worcester play at the Duke of York's Theatre. Unfortunately, we were placed in a row, at the end of which, two enormously fat women were sitting. My poor father was squeezed into his seat like the oranges in his juice at lunch time. There was all sorts of passive aggressive sighing from both women when any of us tried to get to and from our seats at the interval; "Mum you're going to have to stand up again ..." "Oh no." Meanwhile the two of them couldn't stop gulping down huge vats of strawberry ice cream.
The theatre was boiling hot and smelt bloody awful as we entered, which made is laugh like school children. The auditorium was also filled with Christmas jumpers. I've seldom seen so many comedy knitted Christmas trees and reindeer! It prompted me to wonder whether patterned knitting is making an unnecessary come back!
I wish I could say the show itself had made me laugh. It felt extremely old-fashioned; men dressed as women, people doing funny voices, and hamming things up in the true style of coarse acting. It wasn't very me, I'll be honest, although, as my Mum rightly pointed out, "it's nice to get out!" There is something about going to the theatre which is special, even if the piece isn't great.
I've come home and am watching the ABBA documentary on BBC4, with Agnetha talking about The Winner Takes it All. What she said almost broke my heart. "sometimes when I feel low-morale, I play some of the ABBA songs, the ones we're most proud of, and think, "I did this at least." The legend that is Agnetha saying "I did that at least..." She did that, and so much more besides.
Thursday, 26 December 2013
Christmas number ones
We're in a Premier Inn in Burgess Hill, having spent a glorious day with my extended family at my cousin Matt's house in a rather sleepy village called Ditchling in East Sussex. There were 27 of us, I think, at least one person representing every decade from their teens to their 70s. It's a pleasant period in my family's time-line. There aren't any ancient people farting in chairs, annoying little toddlers rushing about, or any young competitive mothers demanding that everyone admire their babies and cater for the whims of their routines. We can all chat like grown ups and have lots of fun together playing the same games without anyone having a tantrum. It struck me, as I looked around the room, that this is the last Christmas of my 30s. Funny to think I'm nearly 40. I was always the baby of the family. That role has now been taken by a lad called Ned, who is growing up fast. So fast, in fact, that his mother kept saying (jokingly I hasten to add) "remember he's young, vulnerable and incredibly needy! At least that's how my baby needs to stay!"
We had a familial quiz with everyone preparing a three-question round. Mine was about Christmas number ones. How many can you name? To aid people, I created a giant poster-sized document with little photographic clues, either to indicate the artist or the song itself. Artist most likely to have a Christmas number one? The Beatles (4), Cliff Richard (4), Spice Girls (3). Title of song most likely to get to number one at Christmas? Do They Know It's Christmas? (3) Mary's Boy Child (2). Song which most surprisingly didn't make it to number one? I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day. Band who most surprisingly didn't jump on the search for a Christmas number one band wagon? ABBA. Classy, you see? They did a New Year song instead.
We had quiches for lunch and soup for supper and everyone got along famously. We toasted Nathan in absentia - he is astonishingly popular with my family - and I felt a twinge of sadness that we've not been able to be together this year. I miss him more than ever tonight.
We had a familial quiz with everyone preparing a three-question round. Mine was about Christmas number ones. How many can you name? To aid people, I created a giant poster-sized document with little photographic clues, either to indicate the artist or the song itself. Artist most likely to have a Christmas number one? The Beatles (4), Cliff Richard (4), Spice Girls (3). Title of song most likely to get to number one at Christmas? Do They Know It's Christmas? (3) Mary's Boy Child (2). Song which most surprisingly didn't make it to number one? I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day. Band who most surprisingly didn't jump on the search for a Christmas number one band wagon? ABBA. Classy, you see? They did a New Year song instead.
We had quiches for lunch and soup for supper and everyone got along famously. We toasted Nathan in absentia - he is astonishingly popular with my family - and I felt a twinge of sadness that we've not been able to be together this year. I miss him more than ever tonight.
Wednesday, 25 December 2013
Breathing together
...And a very Happy Christmas to everyone reading this blog! I'm actually watching The Sound of Music on YouTube. After all, what Christmas would be complete without a few of our favourite films? We've just got to the intermission - the bit where Dame Julie rushes back to the nunnery - and I'm now contemplating a dose of Downton Abbey, because I never liked the bit with the Nazis...
Julie and I are ensconced in front of the open fire whilst the others are next door watching Doctor Who. I've never really been into Doctor Who; not back then, or now...
Predictably, I've eaten too much. Way too much. As a result there are only certain chairs I feel comfortable sitting in! Cue the vomitorium!
Nevertheless, I've just heated a load of roast potatoes and am starting all over again. What's wrong with me!? I suppose good food deserves to be eaten, and Julie's food - which she's spent the best part of two days lovingly preparing - was particularly good.
Other than that, it's been a quiet Christmas. I was lucky enough to be given a Queen Mary Christmas parcel tin dating from 1914. Queen Mary, King George V's wife, was a recidivist fundraiser, who raised huge sums of money at the start of the First World War, which she used to provide every fighting soldier with a little souvenir brass box which was filled with cigarettes and chocolate. I've read much about these boxes, but genuinely never thought I'd own one. To make things even more appropriate, the tin is not only made of brass (tick), but it belonged to one of the Durham Pals, who followed the Leeds Pals over the top at Serre on July 1st, 1916.
I am hugely grateful to my brother for even thinking to buy it for me. It was a hugely touching gift which left me really quite speechless.
I was also rather thrilled to receive a badge which would have been worn by the Leeds Pals on their caps.
I've not left the house today, not once. I'm not sure this is particularly good for me, but, then again, does anyone ever do health conscious on Christmas Day?
I hope not too many people reading this will have been depressed, alone or lonely today.
My dear, dear friend sent me a text today in response to my sending her a rather maudlin message about not having any money, which I'm sure she won't mind my sharing. For some reason it really made a difference...
"Right now we are not homeless. Right now we are managing to pay bills. Tomorrow we will keep working towards our goals. Right now- just keep breathing. We'll keep breathing together."
Isn't that wonderful?
Julie and I are ensconced in front of the open fire whilst the others are next door watching Doctor Who. I've never really been into Doctor Who; not back then, or now...
Predictably, I've eaten too much. Way too much. As a result there are only certain chairs I feel comfortable sitting in! Cue the vomitorium!
Nevertheless, I've just heated a load of roast potatoes and am starting all over again. What's wrong with me!? I suppose good food deserves to be eaten, and Julie's food - which she's spent the best part of two days lovingly preparing - was particularly good.
Other than that, it's been a quiet Christmas. I was lucky enough to be given a Queen Mary Christmas parcel tin dating from 1914. Queen Mary, King George V's wife, was a recidivist fundraiser, who raised huge sums of money at the start of the First World War, which she used to provide every fighting soldier with a little souvenir brass box which was filled with cigarettes and chocolate. I've read much about these boxes, but genuinely never thought I'd own one. To make things even more appropriate, the tin is not only made of brass (tick), but it belonged to one of the Durham Pals, who followed the Leeds Pals over the top at Serre on July 1st, 1916.
I am hugely grateful to my brother for even thinking to buy it for me. It was a hugely touching gift which left me really quite speechless.
I was also rather thrilled to receive a badge which would have been worn by the Leeds Pals on their caps.
I've not left the house today, not once. I'm not sure this is particularly good for me, but, then again, does anyone ever do health conscious on Christmas Day?
I hope not too many people reading this will have been depressed, alone or lonely today.
My dear, dear friend sent me a text today in response to my sending her a rather maudlin message about not having any money, which I'm sure she won't mind my sharing. For some reason it really made a difference...
"Right now we are not homeless. Right now we are managing to pay bills. Tomorrow we will keep working towards our goals. Right now- just keep breathing. We'll keep breathing together."
Isn't that wonderful?
Gales, bells and smells
It's not often that I can say a gale has actually kept me awake in the night. I kept thinking someone was knocking on my bedroom door and at one point actually shouted, "come in," thinking it might be a frightened Julie!
There was an odd sort of flashing in the Eastern sky, which could have been lightning, that or some kind of broken lamp behind the houses opposite.
I spent a good twenty minutes trying to record the gale on my little device, but first the battery was dead (thank God my Mum is deeply organised when it comes to where replacements for these sorts of things are kept), but then I couldn't open my bedroom window, so was creeping around at the front door and then the bathroom window trying to record sounds, until I realised my headphones were not working, and then I kept running out of space on the sound card... I'm not sure it was entirely meant to be. Still, there might be something worth using at some point in my life...
I finally fell asleep, and woke up to the sounds of my parents laughing at me describing myself as a Sioux chef in yesterday's blog (now corrected to sous chef!) My computer auto-corrected the word, and I've always been comically rubbish at homophones!
I don't think I slept quite enough, however, as I've felt rubbish all day. I shouldn't complain. I've not had to do more than sit on a sofa and eat copious numbers of mince pies all day.
Brother Edward and Sacha arrived in the afternoon and we ate a lovely evening meal, cooked by Julie, which paved the way for a series of games involving pens and paper. One of them, which required us to draw book titles, was particularly amusing. Try drawing "Emma!"
Julie and I went to the first part of Midnight Mass. We processed around the church holding candles whilst singing Once in Royal, which was just lovely, but when the religious content got confusing, intense and curiously quiet, we made a run for it! We left with the sound of ringing bells in our ears, almost choking on frankincense fumes.
It strikes me that church services will only become relevant when people learn to use those beautiful spaces in a classy and theatrical manner. There's so much inherent scope for moving and engaging people which it seems is rather arrogantly ignored by church people.
There was an odd sort of flashing in the Eastern sky, which could have been lightning, that or some kind of broken lamp behind the houses opposite.
I spent a good twenty minutes trying to record the gale on my little device, but first the battery was dead (thank God my Mum is deeply organised when it comes to where replacements for these sorts of things are kept), but then I couldn't open my bedroom window, so was creeping around at the front door and then the bathroom window trying to record sounds, until I realised my headphones were not working, and then I kept running out of space on the sound card... I'm not sure it was entirely meant to be. Still, there might be something worth using at some point in my life...
I finally fell asleep, and woke up to the sounds of my parents laughing at me describing myself as a Sioux chef in yesterday's blog (now corrected to sous chef!) My computer auto-corrected the word, and I've always been comically rubbish at homophones!
I don't think I slept quite enough, however, as I've felt rubbish all day. I shouldn't complain. I've not had to do more than sit on a sofa and eat copious numbers of mince pies all day.
Brother Edward and Sacha arrived in the afternoon and we ate a lovely evening meal, cooked by Julie, which paved the way for a series of games involving pens and paper. One of them, which required us to draw book titles, was particularly amusing. Try drawing "Emma!"
Julie and I went to the first part of Midnight Mass. We processed around the church holding candles whilst singing Once in Royal, which was just lovely, but when the religious content got confusing, intense and curiously quiet, we made a run for it! We left with the sound of ringing bells in our ears, almost choking on frankincense fumes.
It strikes me that church services will only become relevant when people learn to use those beautiful spaces in a classy and theatrical manner. There's so much inherent scope for moving and engaging people which it seems is rather arrogantly ignored by church people.
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