What a glorious day it is today. As I left the house I passed my neighbours who were looking all summery and heading off to Alexandra Palace. What a fabulous place to visit on a sunny day.
Ben Holder, the musical director of Brass, and one of five Bens working on the show, came over at noon today, and we listened to every single one of my arrangements. It was a fairly mammoth session, as you can imagine, but it made me realise how much I've achieved. He has kindly stepped in to offer help on some of the latter stages of prep, and this takes a great weight off my mind.
There were a couple of moments as I was trying to write on the train yesterday when I realised I was hideously stressed. Close friends will not consider this news. Only last week I spent ages trying to convince Fiona I wasn't stressed when she accused me of being so. But the stress symptoms are here. Heart palpitations, dizziness, inability to sleep. Every time I drifted off last night, I woke up panicking. I haven't had these particular symptoms since working on the 40-part version of the Pepys Motet, which essentially remains the most stressed I reckon I've ever been. Plainly my body is telling me that I can't continue at this pace, which is slightly odd as I wouldn't necessarily say I'm working that hard! Maybe it's a cumulative thing?
I watched Top of the Pops 2 on the television last night. They were screening an episode of the cult show from 1979, with a rather peculiar selection of songs including Janet Kay singing Silly Games, which, structurally speaking, is one of the most eccentric pop songs ever released.
There's a limit to the number of Top of the Pops shows they can broadcast these days because a large swathe of the DJs who presented the show have subsequently been arrested on paedophilia charges.
The (relatively safe) Mike Reid was the man with the mic in this particular show, but seeing very young girls, plastered in make up and pouting for Britain made me incredibly uncomfortable. It also made me realise that, like it or not, this was the way of things back then. Girls were trophies. Sex objects. The more youthful and fecund the girl, the more virile the older the man standing next to her looked.
And those girls were definitely playing the game. At one stage Mike Reid said, "the worst part of this job is having to stand up here with all these devastatingly attractive ladies." Cue the girls around him laughing as seductively as a group of sixteen year-old girls could. Five seconds later, Legs and Co, that dreadful dance troop, appeared wearing sexy lingerie and blowing kisses at a Vaseline-smeared camera.
We worry about the sexualisation of today's kids but back then, I think, the world that was presented on television was a great deal more sinister and unhealthy. Even as a child I used to wonder why all the young girls were draped over these old, hairy men. It was endemic to the BBC and I'm not sure we should be looking at scapegoating the presenters. What about the producers and floor managers who chose the girls to stand behind the DJs.
Sometimes I think it's important simply to draw a line under a particularly unsavoury period, like slavery, the imprisonment of gay people, or the oppression of women and say "it wasn't illegal then, it is now, so let's focus on today's problems."
Speaking of older, hairy blokes, I was speaking to my cousin yesterday about our wedding. His friends had apparently all been coming up to him and asking which one of the grooms he was related to; "the older one or the younger one?!" It didn't take long to establish that I was the older one. Not the smarter one, the one with the curlier hair, the one that cried or the one in the bow tie... The older one. Thanks!!
I am still a man in my 30s, yet in half an hour's time, my "younger partner Nathan" will be a man in his forties. Take that!
Sunday, 29 June 2014
Saturday, 28 June 2014
Burgess Hill
I appear to be at the train station in Burgess Hill. It's a funny old place, with a ticket office which never seems to be open.
Burgess Hill itself is not the most attractive town. It's filled with rather plain 1930s architecture and out-of-town industrial units.
The middle-aged man on the platform next to me, with his insanely posh partner, is so drunk that he fell over whilst trying to sit on a bench! He lay for some time like a beetle on the Tarmac, apologising profusely whilst his wife tried to pick him up. I desperately wanted him to be called Gregor. I have a horrible suspicion he was at the party I've just been to, so I'm pretending I've not seen him to avoid any more embarrassment!
Today's party was at my cousin Matt's house in Ditchling, a gloriously attractive village on the edges of the South Downs. It's one of those places you can't really believe exists! The party was a three-fold celebration: 21 years of marriage, 10 years since Matt started his business with his wife Boo, and five years since he was diagnosed with cancer. He made a tremendously moving speech - essentially about love - which had us all welling up.
Meriel came as my honorary husband and we spent much of the day drinking Pimms and eating cake. Despite the weathermen's promises of terrible weather all day, we were blessed with nothing but glorious sunshine, with the exception of one ten-minute shower. How do these weathermen manage to get things so spectacularly wrong?
Many of my extended family were there; my aunt (is it strange that I genuinely only have one aunt?) my cousins, their children and step children - the party creaking under the weight of homosexuality. It's not just both my brothers who are gay!
My aunt and my mother wore exactly the same skirt! What are the chances of that? Neither seemed at all worried by the fact. My mother apparently used to do the same thing with my God Mother, Janet. They're all a bit psychic, my lot. In fact, as I was walking along with Auntie Glen, I picked up my phone to send Nathan a text and she suddenly said, "and how IS Nathan?" Like I'd done something more than simply think about him... bit weird.
Today marks the 100th anniversary of the shooting of Archduke Ferdinand, which of course started the chain of events which speedily led to the First World War. It's quite an astounding thought. One moment England is basking in the glory of an Edwardian summer and within two months it's at war... The greatest loss of life in war this country will probably ever know.
A brass band was playing at Victoria station. I sat in a cafe working, and kept hearing little blasts of Nimrod and other patriotic tunes. There's something rather timeless about a train station. I imagined Victoria 100 years ago... The news slowly filtering through about the Archduke's assassination. The majority of people having no idea what that meant, a couple more wondering if that meant a few lucky soldiers would be able to travel to Europe for the adventure of their lives.
Burgess Hill itself is not the most attractive town. It's filled with rather plain 1930s architecture and out-of-town industrial units.
The middle-aged man on the platform next to me, with his insanely posh partner, is so drunk that he fell over whilst trying to sit on a bench! He lay for some time like a beetle on the Tarmac, apologising profusely whilst his wife tried to pick him up. I desperately wanted him to be called Gregor. I have a horrible suspicion he was at the party I've just been to, so I'm pretending I've not seen him to avoid any more embarrassment!
Today's party was at my cousin Matt's house in Ditchling, a gloriously attractive village on the edges of the South Downs. It's one of those places you can't really believe exists! The party was a three-fold celebration: 21 years of marriage, 10 years since Matt started his business with his wife Boo, and five years since he was diagnosed with cancer. He made a tremendously moving speech - essentially about love - which had us all welling up.
Meriel came as my honorary husband and we spent much of the day drinking Pimms and eating cake. Despite the weathermen's promises of terrible weather all day, we were blessed with nothing but glorious sunshine, with the exception of one ten-minute shower. How do these weathermen manage to get things so spectacularly wrong?
Many of my extended family were there; my aunt (is it strange that I genuinely only have one aunt?) my cousins, their children and step children - the party creaking under the weight of homosexuality. It's not just both my brothers who are gay!
My aunt and my mother wore exactly the same skirt! What are the chances of that? Neither seemed at all worried by the fact. My mother apparently used to do the same thing with my God Mother, Janet. They're all a bit psychic, my lot. In fact, as I was walking along with Auntie Glen, I picked up my phone to send Nathan a text and she suddenly said, "and how IS Nathan?" Like I'd done something more than simply think about him... bit weird.
Today marks the 100th anniversary of the shooting of Archduke Ferdinand, which of course started the chain of events which speedily led to the First World War. It's quite an astounding thought. One moment England is basking in the glory of an Edwardian summer and within two months it's at war... The greatest loss of life in war this country will probably ever know.
A brass band was playing at Victoria station. I sat in a cafe working, and kept hearing little blasts of Nimrod and other patriotic tunes. There's something rather timeless about a train station. I imagined Victoria 100 years ago... The news slowly filtering through about the Archduke's assassination. The majority of people having no idea what that meant, a couple more wondering if that meant a few lucky soldiers would be able to travel to Europe for the adventure of their lives.
Smell
23.23 is not a time to stop working of an evening. I'm all wound up like a spring, and I'm incredibly hungry, so am having to do a late night dart to the shops to find something both low fat and filling. Realistically this means a bowl of soup. Still, it's a lovely evening. The air is throbbing with rich aromas; the smell of garlic from the pizza shop next door, the dark scent of exhaust fumes from the Archway Road, a hint of Chinese restaurant, a whiff of rain...
My sense of smell is really very keen at the moment. There's almost constantly something wafting through my nostrils! The honey-like scent of buddleja is something I seem to be able to discern from a thousand paces, and there's a Lily-like smell which drifts into the kitchen every morning. I'm not usually good with smells. Perhaps I'm turning epileptic?
I went to Camden Market this afternoon to see if I could find Nathan a little something extra for his 40th on Monday. I haven't been down there for years and I couldn't believe how buzzy and full it was. It's definitely not a place to visit either with something specific in mind or if you're in a hurry. The place is teaming to the Pat Rafters with East Asian tourists carrying the most enormous back packs, whose only task it would appear is to suddenly stop and create enormous pile-ups and terrible traffic jams. The place had me running for the hills!
Just before I left, I saw a sign for a little pizza stand which advertised that it's products were made with "real tomatoes." Real tomatoes on a pizza? Whatever next?! Am I being dim? Aren't all pizzas made with real tomatoes.
My sense of smell is really very keen at the moment. There's almost constantly something wafting through my nostrils! The honey-like scent of buddleja is something I seem to be able to discern from a thousand paces, and there's a Lily-like smell which drifts into the kitchen every morning. I'm not usually good with smells. Perhaps I'm turning epileptic?
I went to Camden Market this afternoon to see if I could find Nathan a little something extra for his 40th on Monday. I haven't been down there for years and I couldn't believe how buzzy and full it was. It's definitely not a place to visit either with something specific in mind or if you're in a hurry. The place is teaming to the Pat Rafters with East Asian tourists carrying the most enormous back packs, whose only task it would appear is to suddenly stop and create enormous pile-ups and terrible traffic jams. The place had me running for the hills!
Just before I left, I saw a sign for a little pizza stand which advertised that it's products were made with "real tomatoes." Real tomatoes on a pizza? Whatever next?! Am I being dim? Aren't all pizzas made with real tomatoes.
Thursday, 26 June 2014
Rain, creepers and Mormons
It's siling it down outside. Thick, heavy drops of rain throwing themselves at the road below us. I can see them glinting under the street lights. I've just finished work for the day and am watching a documentary about British Mormons, who seem a rather peculiar bunch. The film focusses on a young lad from Sussex who is going through his "missionary training." He appears to be slowly losing his mind, or at least his identity, as he becomes more and more brainwashed by his religion. It's incredibly upsetting. It's like the light has been switched off behind his eyes. Religion has so much to answer for.
I feel entirely washed out today; the product of my having finished a big chunk of work on Brass last night and my body screaming for me to stop. I have no option but to plough on, however. On and on I go.
Today, I decided to map out all four of the remaining songs in broad inaccurate strokes on manuscript. My plan is to work on all four simultaneously without letting any one run away faster than the others. This gives me a very clear sense of what remains to be done and means I don't end up getting all excited about finishing one before immediately feeling sick again because I have to start the next. Orchestrating Brass is an absolute triumph of will power if nothing else.
When I go to the gym, the bus drops me off in Tufnell Park on the Fortess Road, which is a street I know incredibly well. I know it because I lived there for eight years. It's all rather fancy these days; filled with cafés, and organic butchers and stores which sell sorbet, but when I lived there, it was something of a dump, with shops boarded over and a slightly down-at-heel vibe, which suited me just fine!
The road behind our old house is called Lady Somerset Road. It's an attractive tree-lined affair full of ramshackle, Virginia creeper-bedecked Edwardian houses which I used to stare at in awe when I lived there, imaging how it might feel to have a house which looked so beautiful.
Once a year, the good folk of Lady Somerset Road stage a street party. They put huge trestle tables out in the street and eat and drink until late. It's all rather Italian. There are bands, and probably a fire engine... There's always a fire engine.
As I walked down the road today I noticed a sign on a street light reminding residents that the next party was on its way. What I found astonishing was that they were advertising it proudly as the 15th annual street party. Fifteen years seemed like such a long time, until I realised I'd actually moved into the area two years before the first one!
It would seem that many things are conspiring to make me feel old at the moment. The revival of The Wier in the West End, for example, which is a show which I worked on as an usher in its very first guise at the Royal Court Theatre before it went into the West End for its first run almost 20 years ago. I remember the show well. It had an enormous impact on us ushers (all of whom were wannabe theatricals.) I remember the first preview, and one of the ushers actually having to be carried out of the theatre by audience members because the play had upset her so thoroughly! I'm sure it's meant to be the other way round!
The tubes have been in disarray today, and I ended up getting stuck at Archway on a highly-crowded train which was randomly terminated at the station. About 400 people ended up on the platform, all cursing and swearing and trying to speak to a slightly autistic LU staff member who didn't want to look anyone in the eye. We were all astonished by the announcement which came over the tannoy as we waited; "ladies and gentlemen there is a good service running on all London Underground lines." You can't make this shit up!
I feel entirely washed out today; the product of my having finished a big chunk of work on Brass last night and my body screaming for me to stop. I have no option but to plough on, however. On and on I go.
Today, I decided to map out all four of the remaining songs in broad inaccurate strokes on manuscript. My plan is to work on all four simultaneously without letting any one run away faster than the others. This gives me a very clear sense of what remains to be done and means I don't end up getting all excited about finishing one before immediately feeling sick again because I have to start the next. Orchestrating Brass is an absolute triumph of will power if nothing else.
When I go to the gym, the bus drops me off in Tufnell Park on the Fortess Road, which is a street I know incredibly well. I know it because I lived there for eight years. It's all rather fancy these days; filled with cafés, and organic butchers and stores which sell sorbet, but when I lived there, it was something of a dump, with shops boarded over and a slightly down-at-heel vibe, which suited me just fine!
The road behind our old house is called Lady Somerset Road. It's an attractive tree-lined affair full of ramshackle, Virginia creeper-bedecked Edwardian houses which I used to stare at in awe when I lived there, imaging how it might feel to have a house which looked so beautiful.
Once a year, the good folk of Lady Somerset Road stage a street party. They put huge trestle tables out in the street and eat and drink until late. It's all rather Italian. There are bands, and probably a fire engine... There's always a fire engine.
As I walked down the road today I noticed a sign on a street light reminding residents that the next party was on its way. What I found astonishing was that they were advertising it proudly as the 15th annual street party. Fifteen years seemed like such a long time, until I realised I'd actually moved into the area two years before the first one!
It would seem that many things are conspiring to make me feel old at the moment. The revival of The Wier in the West End, for example, which is a show which I worked on as an usher in its very first guise at the Royal Court Theatre before it went into the West End for its first run almost 20 years ago. I remember the show well. It had an enormous impact on us ushers (all of whom were wannabe theatricals.) I remember the first preview, and one of the ushers actually having to be carried out of the theatre by audience members because the play had upset her so thoroughly! I'm sure it's meant to be the other way round!
The tubes have been in disarray today, and I ended up getting stuck at Archway on a highly-crowded train which was randomly terminated at the station. About 400 people ended up on the platform, all cursing and swearing and trying to speak to a slightly autistic LU staff member who didn't want to look anyone in the eye. We were all astonished by the announcement which came over the tannoy as we waited; "ladies and gentlemen there is a good service running on all London Underground lines." You can't make this shit up!
Wednesday, 25 June 2014
Diaeresis
I've been battling my way through the epic eleven-minute opening sequence in Brass today. It changes key and time signature so many times, and has the added complication that the first four minutes is only performed by piano, drums and trumpet. I find myself being more cautious in what I write for this particular reduced ensemble. I can't just empty a box of musical instruments over the score to paper over inaccuracies with a wash of sound. Neither can I nestle in the comfort and familiarity of string music.
Sometimes orchestration is a little how I imagine key-hole surgery to be. Often there's only one possible choice, which involves placing a delicate spot in exactly the right location on the manuscript. Stick the dot in the wrong place, all hell breaks loose and suddenly you've a bleeding carcass of a composition which needs urgent attention!
Anyway, the good news is that I finished the draft for this particular sequence at about ten o'clock tonight, which gave me time for a lovely hot bath. I shall celebrate by sitting on the sofa for an hour or so, with a nice cup of tea, looking for episodes of Storage Hunters!
My cold has settled into a rather nice woozy place with the added benefit of a productive cough which I'm finding most satisfactory. I went back to the gym again after lunch, but drew the line at walking up the hill to Highgate Village.
Guys, I'm really struggling to think of anything to write tonight! I've not spoken to a soul all day apart from Nathan and my Mother on the telephone.
I did learn a new word, however. Diaeresis. A diaeresis, for those who have not been looking at my Facebook feed, is a special sort of umlaut, which happens to feature in my mother's name, Noëlle. To quote my beloved school drama teacher, "a traditional umlaut changes the the pronunciation of the vowel it sits on top of, but a diaeresis tells you to pronounce the two adjacent vowels separately (and not as a diphthong.)"
So therefore my mother's name (with the aid of the diaeresis goes from Nole to Nowell. Simples!
There are a number of names, like Zoë, which also use diaereses, but only one regularly-used word in the English dictionary, which still has one... Naïve.
Nathan tells me we used to use diaereses a great deal more regularly, in words which, these days, we tend to spell with a hyphen. Top of the list: coöperation and reëlect. Bizarrely, The New Yorker publication still insists on using diaereses in its columns today. It's considered to be an incredibly quaint and old-fashioned practice, but I rather like it. I may try and use diaereses more often in this column. (Especially now I've learned how to do one on my iPhone.)
I'm still rather attached to my mother's name for a diaeresis, however; "my special umlaut."
Sometimes orchestration is a little how I imagine key-hole surgery to be. Often there's only one possible choice, which involves placing a delicate spot in exactly the right location on the manuscript. Stick the dot in the wrong place, all hell breaks loose and suddenly you've a bleeding carcass of a composition which needs urgent attention!
Anyway, the good news is that I finished the draft for this particular sequence at about ten o'clock tonight, which gave me time for a lovely hot bath. I shall celebrate by sitting on the sofa for an hour or so, with a nice cup of tea, looking for episodes of Storage Hunters!
My cold has settled into a rather nice woozy place with the added benefit of a productive cough which I'm finding most satisfactory. I went back to the gym again after lunch, but drew the line at walking up the hill to Highgate Village.
Guys, I'm really struggling to think of anything to write tonight! I've not spoken to a soul all day apart from Nathan and my Mother on the telephone.
I did learn a new word, however. Diaeresis. A diaeresis, for those who have not been looking at my Facebook feed, is a special sort of umlaut, which happens to feature in my mother's name, Noëlle. To quote my beloved school drama teacher, "a traditional umlaut changes the the pronunciation of the vowel it sits on top of, but a diaeresis tells you to pronounce the two adjacent vowels separately (and not as a diphthong.)"
So therefore my mother's name (with the aid of the diaeresis goes from Nole to Nowell. Simples!
There are a number of names, like Zoë, which also use diaereses, but only one regularly-used word in the English dictionary, which still has one... Naïve.
Nathan tells me we used to use diaereses a great deal more regularly, in words which, these days, we tend to spell with a hyphen. Top of the list: coöperation and reëlect. Bizarrely, The New Yorker publication still insists on using diaereses in its columns today. It's considered to be an incredibly quaint and old-fashioned practice, but I rather like it. I may try and use diaereses more often in this column. (Especially now I've learned how to do one on my iPhone.)
I'm still rather attached to my mother's name for a diaeresis, however; "my special umlaut."
The Summer Book
Nathan left for Leicestershire at 4pm today. I wanted to spend some quality time with him, but I'm panicking about Brass, so sat in the kitchen writing whilst he watched telly in the sitting room. We managed a quick spot of lunch together at the spoon, but by the time he left I wasn't really ready for him to go.
I came down to London Bridge in the evening which was full to the rafters with people, all of whom seemed to be heading in the opposite direction to me. I felt like an otter swimming up stream!
When I see a cloud of people walking towards me I often wonder how many of those unfamiliar faces I have passed in the street before. The likelihood, of course is that we pass hundreds of people on a daily basis who we don't take in but could well have walked past us on countless occasions. I used to think thoughts like that about my brother before I found him. In fact when we met for the first time we immediately tried to work out if fate had conspired to put us in the same place at the same time at any stage in our pasts.
I was in London Bridge to see Sara Kestelman in The Summer Book at the Unicorn Theatre. It was a highly atmospheric little piece written by Tove Jannson, the wonderful Finnish writer who brought The Moomins to the world. It was, as you might expect, all white nights, loneliness, summer storms and archipelagos: the sort of piece which makes me very keen to visit Scandinavia. I've periodically had dreams of staying in a log cabin on a Swedish island ever since finding out that Benny and Bjorn from ABBA wrote pretty much all of their biggest hits in a shack within the Swedish archipelago. I can imagine a summer on a secluded island being rather good for the old creative juices. Maybe I'll do it one year when I have a composition to immerse myself in.
Sara was, of course, remarkable as the Grandmother in this two-hander and the little girl who played the granddaughter was rather charming too if perhaps a little limited. Such an enormous and demanding role for a young actress...
We went out to Strada afterwards with Philippa and another one of Sara's friends who'd come to see the show. We were served by the most engaging waitress who was from Barcelona of all places. We had a lengthy chat about Cadaquez, the erstwhile Catalonian home of the artist Salvador Dali. Philippa and I visited the place in the year 2000 when Philippa was doing research for her screenplay, Little Ashes, which was turned into a film staring Robert Pattinson some 7 years ago.
Anyone familiar with Dali's work would turn up in Cadaquez and instantly understand where some of the influences from his paintings came from. There's something about the light out there, the muted colours and, more interestingly, a lot of the rock formations on the coast are somehow reminiscent of the jagged shapes and twisted, melted forms of Dali's pictures.
I came down to London Bridge in the evening which was full to the rafters with people, all of whom seemed to be heading in the opposite direction to me. I felt like an otter swimming up stream!
When I see a cloud of people walking towards me I often wonder how many of those unfamiliar faces I have passed in the street before. The likelihood, of course is that we pass hundreds of people on a daily basis who we don't take in but could well have walked past us on countless occasions. I used to think thoughts like that about my brother before I found him. In fact when we met for the first time we immediately tried to work out if fate had conspired to put us in the same place at the same time at any stage in our pasts.
I was in London Bridge to see Sara Kestelman in The Summer Book at the Unicorn Theatre. It was a highly atmospheric little piece written by Tove Jannson, the wonderful Finnish writer who brought The Moomins to the world. It was, as you might expect, all white nights, loneliness, summer storms and archipelagos: the sort of piece which makes me very keen to visit Scandinavia. I've periodically had dreams of staying in a log cabin on a Swedish island ever since finding out that Benny and Bjorn from ABBA wrote pretty much all of their biggest hits in a shack within the Swedish archipelago. I can imagine a summer on a secluded island being rather good for the old creative juices. Maybe I'll do it one year when I have a composition to immerse myself in.
Sara was, of course, remarkable as the Grandmother in this two-hander and the little girl who played the granddaughter was rather charming too if perhaps a little limited. Such an enormous and demanding role for a young actress...
We went out to Strada afterwards with Philippa and another one of Sara's friends who'd come to see the show. We were served by the most engaging waitress who was from Barcelona of all places. We had a lengthy chat about Cadaquez, the erstwhile Catalonian home of the artist Salvador Dali. Philippa and I visited the place in the year 2000 when Philippa was doing research for her screenplay, Little Ashes, which was turned into a film staring Robert Pattinson some 7 years ago.
Anyone familiar with Dali's work would turn up in Cadaquez and instantly understand where some of the influences from his paintings came from. There's something about the light out there, the muted colours and, more interestingly, a lot of the rock formations on the coast are somehow reminiscent of the jagged shapes and twisted, melted forms of Dali's pictures.
Monday, 23 June 2014
Quilt
It appears to be raining. Quite heavily, in fact. We're driving along the M11 with the windscreen wipers set to "hard-core" listening to Kevin Brookes talking on Radio 4 about his book which recently won the Carnegie Medal. He tells us it took nearly ten years to get the book published. Almost every publisher turned it down because "children's stories need happy endings..." It strikes me that all great art gets rejected at some stage - often repeatedly. I think the problem with publishers, agents, producers, commissioning editors and those who make money out of raw creatives is that they have too many preconceived notions about what they believe "works", and often a ghastly misguided desire to have quite heavy creative input in the work. This, of course, waters stuff down and means the truly inventive stuff (which is ultimately what's going to be classed as great art) struggles to break through. The greatest art is driven by a single creative mind, and I think the best producers recognise this fact. Art cannot be created by committee.
Speaking of great art, we've been in Thaxted this afternoon. It's Nathan's day off, and we wanted to do something a little different to celebrate. The highlight of the visit was almost certainly my mother handing me my 40th birthday present. Before you all start wishing me a happy birthday through the highly personalised medium of Facebook, I should point out that she's a couple of months early (God knows I'm clinging on to my 30s for as long as I can!) My birthday is the 8th August.
The present she handed me was the most staggeringly-ornate, stunningly-beautiful quilt I think I've ever seen. She'd hand stitched it from scratch with 22 panels representing my career and life - which I suppose I'm lucky enough to have as two different sides of the same coin. All my compositions and films are there, alongside panels to represent my family, pets and favourite places in the world. Even Gloria Bee makes a little appearance, trying to make a nest in a television with the Channel 4 logo on it. There are panels representing Brass, Songs About the Weather, our wedding, my Grandparents... Perhaps the most impressive aspect is 100 individually quilted heads to respect my 100 Faces film. I stood for some time and stared at it in awe feeling unbelievably moved.
I believe she's been working on the piece for over a year - and my GOD, it shows. It's the sort of thing which will crop up on The Antiques Roadshow in 100 years and end up getting purchased by the V and A. It is that beautiful. Right now I feel like the luckiest and most loved son in the world.
Speaking of great art, we've been in Thaxted this afternoon. It's Nathan's day off, and we wanted to do something a little different to celebrate. The highlight of the visit was almost certainly my mother handing me my 40th birthday present. Before you all start wishing me a happy birthday through the highly personalised medium of Facebook, I should point out that she's a couple of months early (God knows I'm clinging on to my 30s for as long as I can!) My birthday is the 8th August.
The present she handed me was the most staggeringly-ornate, stunningly-beautiful quilt I think I've ever seen. She'd hand stitched it from scratch with 22 panels representing my career and life - which I suppose I'm lucky enough to have as two different sides of the same coin. All my compositions and films are there, alongside panels to represent my family, pets and favourite places in the world. Even Gloria Bee makes a little appearance, trying to make a nest in a television with the Channel 4 logo on it. There are panels representing Brass, Songs About the Weather, our wedding, my Grandparents... Perhaps the most impressive aspect is 100 individually quilted heads to respect my 100 Faces film. I stood for some time and stared at it in awe feeling unbelievably moved.
I believe she's been working on the piece for over a year - and my GOD, it shows. It's the sort of thing which will crop up on The Antiques Roadshow in 100 years and end up getting purchased by the V and A. It is that beautiful. Right now I feel like the luckiest and most loved son in the world.
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