San Fran stumps

We have walked so far today that our feet are like tiny stumps. My thighs feel like they're bowing out like a Japanese woman, and Nathan says his feet ache up to his knees.

Rule number one when visiting San Francisco: bring a pair of decent shoes because you're going to walk. Everywhere. And every walk will involve a hill with a death-defying gradient!

The day started in North Beach, which is the Italian district of town much associated with the Beat poets. The ghosts of Karouac and Cassidy are everywhere you walk, particularly at the world famous City Lights bookshop. I believe City Lights was the first American book publisher. They also risked ruin by publishing Karouac's book of poetry, Howl, which was instantly banned because the conservative 1950s American society considered it obscene.

City Lights (quite rightly) takes itself very seriously... To the extent that it would be almost impossible to find a trashy novel there, and each of its cavern-like rooms are filled with academics and bohemians who don't seem to smile all that much! It's also the only bookshop I know which plays music. And why not? We bought an autobiography of Harvey Milk, the brave, openly gay San Francisco politician who was assassinated in the late 70s. It felt like the right book to buy in this city and the right place to buy it!

Washington Square Park is a wonderfully eccentric place in the early mornings. In every corner, hordes of people stand in groups doing Tai Chi. Most of them are impossibly old... and Chinese. I sat and watched a group of eight elderly women doing disco Tai Chi to Boney M's Rasputin which was being played on a tinny little stereo. They had all the moves. It was quite marvellous.

We had breakfast listening to music from Tosca in Cafe Pucinni. A mushroom omelette and potatoes with toast and jam. Utterly delicious.

From Washington Square, we trekked up the impossibly steep Telegraph Hill to look at the gloriously Art Deco Coit Tower; a 1929 folly which resembles a fire hose, and was built at the top of the hill to remember Lillie Hitchcock-Coyt whilst simultaneously "beautify" San Francisco. It was from the top of this hill that Nathan caught his first glimpse of the Golden Gate Bridge. It was also where we saw our first San Francisco parrots: green birds with red heads. They're not native here. Very much like the parakeets on Hampstead Heath, they must have escaped from a zoo at one point, and decided it was a nice enough environment to breed in!

We walked down Telegraph Hill via the spectacularly beautiful Filbert Steps. Essentially they're a set of wooden steps which snake their way between wooden houses and wonderful eccentric gardens which simply cling to the side of a cliff. The smells as you walk down are stunning. The fresh scent of pine trees. The rich aniseed-cum-curry aroma of Fennel. The flowers are simply stunning: the bright pinks of bougainvillaea, mixed with plants and flowers I've never seen before. One tree seemed to be sprouting pumpkin flowers. Remarkable.

At the bottom of the hill we encountered the Levi Strauss building, which was the home of the first ever jeans factory. There's a little exhibition in the foyer featuring 150 year-old pairs of jeans. Jeans with amazing stories. Who'd have thought an item of clothing which I've never worn could be so interesting? Who'd have also thought that Levi Strauss has one of the best records of human rights of any American employer. They were the first organisation not to segregate black and white workers and the first to raise funds for the fight against HIV, when everyone else was trying to pretend the disease wasn't happening. Hats off to Levi Strauss.

Many of the company's employees were outside in the courtyard. There was a van which was giving out merchandise relating to a(n obviously highly popular) basketball team. There was a huge queue. We both laughed when we noticed every single one of them was was wearing a pair of Levi's. The only company in the world which can't tell you off for wearing jeans in the market place!

We walked from the Levi factory up Market Street then Folsom Street (famous for its leather bars)... This particular walk must have been at least five miles. One of the highlights of the day was definitely being able to show Nathan the Castro, San Fran's bustling, thriving gay district, where every lamppost, every shop, and even every house displays the rainbow flag. Towering above the district is the largest rainbow flag I've ever seen. It billows proudly in the wind.

We both felt such pride to be there; so moved by and grateful to the people who built that particular community. We had lunch at a cafe called Mistique and I had a delicious halloumi sandwich, which is the first halloumi I've ever eaten in the States. The water here tastes a little funky, however... A bit like chlorine. They fill their drinks with ice, and subsequently everything tastes like a swimming pool!

From Castro we walked up the steepest hill I've ever encountered which was a road lined with stunning Victorian villas and palm trees. Palms trees, in fact, where squirrels play. Imagine that? Squirrels in palm trees is a sight which I never thought I'd see. This particular road took us up to the pine-covered Buena Vista Park. The clue is in the name of the park. We snaked our way, accompanied by humming birds and giant yellow and black butterflies, in an upward direction along dusty paths through tall trees to an open space where the views of the city are quite sublime. The paths are filled with professional dog walkers. One pair of walkers had 20 dogs between them, and two enormous plastic bags filled with dog poo, which they were throwing into a dustbin. I guess that's one of the prices you pay for walking dogs in such large numbers!

In San Fran, no two houses are the same. Most are painted in glorious colours. All have wonderful gardens lined with flowers. It's a riot of colour. Truly. It takes your breath away.

To celebrate the joy of this city's architecture, we tramped for another few miles to visit the Painted Ladies, which is a row of highly-coloured Victorian villas on the edge of another park. These houses are so famous that they have appeared in something like 70 films. Actually, by San Fran standards they're not all that, but it was lovely to see them, and even nicer to stop for thirty minutes, lying on a soft lawn listening to a hippy chick with a guitarist playing jazz standards and easy listening music on her flute. Beatles songs, Carole King... The guitarist could only play bossa nova. Every chord had a sneaky added major seventh and then we realised that he was only ever playing two chords. It's amazing how most songs will sound like jazz standards when played on a flute with a guitarist playing in this manner!

From the Painted Ladies we staggered (via a coffee shop) to Corona Heights, a curiously rugged hill top above the Castro with the best views of San Fran I've probably ever seen. We'd had non-stop sunshine all day, but by this stage a fog was rolling in and engulfing the North of the city. Up there, on the exposed rocks, the wind was incredibly strong. In one direction, the streets of the city stretched for miles, bathed in glorious late afternoon sunlight. In the other, nothing but banks of fast-moving clouds, rolling in, covering the sun, giving everything a curious sepia light.

We returned to the Castro for a bowl of soup, and another bout of people watching. The gays of San Fran gave us much to discuss. There were some fabulous trans-people and a shed load of drugs casualties! By and large, however, the gay scene here seems very open and friendly. And, of course, the English accent helps!

We took the trolly bus back to North Beach, which was a somewhat edgy experience. There was a screech and a bang at one point when the bus came off its electric cables. The driver did an emergency stop, turned all the bus lights off, went outside and casually fixed the problem. Later on, one passenger decided he didn't much like the driver, and there was a mega-display of trash talk, the driver giving as much as he was given. I was expecting a gun to be drawn at one point, but both parties seemed content to use the word "mother fucker" repeatedly. There was a little girl on the bus who seemed very upset by the exchange, which I felt was very sad, but we spoke to the driver afterwards who said it happens every day.

San Fran

We touched down in San Francisco at exactly midnight British time, which felt deeply surreal in the glorious Californian afternoon sunlight.

The plane journey was about three hours longer than I'd have liked it to be. The only highlight of the ten-hour marathon flight was being able to look at Mount St Helens from above; its summit peeking out from the top of a cloud like Olympus in Greece. I was obsessed with that particular volcano as a child. I remember writing a terrible poem about its big eruption.

San Francisco had started to look rather hazy by the time we exited the airport. The clouds had descended on the tops of the hills. It's strange: this city is famous for its fogs, but during the two week period when I was last here (exactly 14 years ago) we didn't see a singe mist descend.

By the time we'd reached the city itself, everything had become overcast and drab... But it didn't matter. This city is absolutely brilliant. We were faced with quite a walk from the subway station to our hotel, but because it took us through North Beach, and past places like Washington Square, we thought it might be fun.

The city is unlike anywhere I've ever visited. It feels like a curious blend of New York, Seville and, one assumes, certain cities in Latin America. The architecture is flim-flam and brightly coloured. We didn't even touch the surface with our short walk this afternoon, but we did see a big chunk of China Town, a number of old-school trolley buses, and countless wonderful views which seemed to involve buildings clinging to hills in ever-bizarre contortions. It's all very Herbie Goes Bananas here!

A quick check of my watch tells me it's 3am in London right now, which will explain why I feel like absolute death. More tomorrow. But we're both safe, happy, and excited to start our honeymoon.

High alert

I went to Borough today for osteopathy. The tubes were incredibly sluggish, and I waited for ages for one to appear at Highgate. It was only when I arrived at the osteopath's that I was told that Britain is currently on a high alert for terrorism. An attack is, apparently, imminent, and the osteopath even suggested that Londoners have been told to keep tube travel to a minimum. I don't actually believe him on this front, because if this IS the case, then the terrorists will have won. I am, of course, slightly concerned about flying to America tomorrow... But what can you do?

Islamaphobia will no doubt start to rip this country apart. We could well end up in the position Germany found itself in with its Jewish population in the 1930s. I found myself regarding everyone who got on the train home with deep suspicion. You can be as politically correct as you like, but on a day like today, if someone carrying a backpack and wearing a yashmak got onto my carriage, I would move. This is, of course, ridiculous, as any self-respecting Muslim terrorist would wear a suit and tie and look as Western as possible! But do terrorists have self respect?

As I passed through King's Cross, I started to think about the worrying rise in home-grown UK terrorism. Top of my musings was wondering if political correctness has created a viper's nest. Allowing certain branches of the Muslim community (or any minority community for that matter) to live in this country without properly integrating, and without respecting British laws and traditions will ultimately lead to people being born here who simply don't feel British, or, worse still, don't respect or don't have a sense of one-ness with their fellow countrymen.

This is not a problem which exists America, where patriotism is something which almost everything is pinned onto. Kids in American schools learn why they're lucky to be American, whilst kids in Britain are taught that we ran a hideous Empire which crushed ethnic minorities. In the 1950s being "un-American" was a crime... Being un-British is almost de rigueur!

Obviously there is much that is wrong (and fake) with the American model, but equally there is much right in the English model which we rarely get to celebrate because celebrating Englishness is seen as at odds with building a multi-cultural society.

In my view, British people who break British laws, for whatever reason, need to be punished. British citizens who send their children to Egypt for female genital mutilation should be instantly thrown into jail - no questions asked. Arranged marriages should be considered null and void and those who can't speak English to a high enough standard should be send to compulsory classes. It may seem right wing in the extreme, but living in a country whose values you reject - or, worse still, whose laws and cultures you use to make money with the view of returning home and lording it over your peers - is wholly unacceptable.

I also firmly believe the Muslim community needs to start taking more responsibility for what is happening. I am sick to the back teeth of Muslim leaders "washing their hands" of the actions of a "small minority" or blaming poverty and racism for the unfortunate choices their fellow Muslims make. If the community is genuinely horrified, then it is the community's responsibility to infiltrate some of these groups and either prevent radicalisation from taking place or shop those who become radicalised to the authorities.

If a small group of gay people were behaving appallingly - the only parallel I could draw would be if a group of HIV positive bisexual men were deliberately sleeping (unprotected) with heterosexual women - I would be first on their case.

I remain, however, a huge believer in immigration. I think immigrants create fresh, young, exciting Britain, and I do not believe we should be reversing the tide of people who want to live in this country. But I ONLY believe in immigration when it goes hand-in-hand with integration and doesn't pander to any aspect of religion. Interracial marriages and multi-lingual, mixed-heritage children are what makes Britain great. I feel genuinely proud that there are more mixed-race children in Britain than anywhere else in the world.

I had the most curious dream last night that my dear friend Edward had arrived at a function (as he so often does) with his mother, Joan, in tow. Seconds later, an almost identical version of his mother appeared at the same do, and he greeted her as fondly. "I didn't realise your mother had a sister" I said, "she doesn't," Edward replied; "this is my mother as she was exactly ten years ago. I travel with them both so I know that when my mother eventually dies, I'll always have another ten years with her." How is it possible that my subconscious managed to come up with something so profoundly weird, and yet simultaneously so magical and moving? In my dream I burst into tears at the thought... And in reality, I woke up crying and I cried for some time. My pillow was wet with tears by the time I got out of bed.

Tarts

I'm sitting with Nathan and Cindy in our relatively tidy sitting room watching the X Factor on iPlayer. We're actually watching it on itvplayer, but I refuse to acknowledge this particular system because it's rubbish.

We've basically been tidying the house all day and have dispatched about eight bin bags of carefully sifted rubbish into various recycling bins across the capital. We threw away as much as we possibly could. Tomorrow I'm going to become even more ruthless and throw away about half of my possessions!

Our house is full of moths. We're gonna kill them all. They're chowing down on all of Nathan's beautiful knitted objects. They must therefore die. Horrifically if needs be.

I bought two wooden boxes from Homebase yesterday which we've filled with mementos from our wedding and Brass; cards, photographs, little gifts, pieces of music, dried button holes... It was lovely to look through everything again, particularly the wedding stuff, which has been in a giant pile in our bedroom. We found cards from Michael Stipe and Katie Melua, and, of course, all the lovely messages and letters from friends and family.

We briefly stopped tidying the house to have lunch at the Cafe Rouge in Highgate. We'd found some tokens for the restaurant in a pile somewhere and thought how lovely it would be to treat Cindy to a decent meal.

I ate a tart, and then had another tart for pudding. It was pretty decent food, although some tart in the kitchen stuck a load of coriander in the tossed leaf salad. I can taste that shit a mile off and had to spit an entire mouthful of food into a napkin as soon as my teeth made contact with the evil herb.

After eating we went onto the Heath and sat on blankets watching the bright green parakeets flapping through the bright blue sky whilst drinking bright orange fizzy pop. It was nice to be back on the Heath after an entire month away from London.

Derbyshire again

I feel like we've covered a fair amount of the country today. As I type this blog I'm in a car speeding through the centre of Derby. Derby!

Derby is where Simon Groome and Goldie from Blue Peter were from. The Blue Peter team used to come up to his farm to go sledging. Derby is also where I failed to win a Gillard award for my film about Watford Gap... But I can't hold that against the place.

This morning we drove down to Guildford, where Nathan was doing a gig singing opera in a marquee. I deposited him outside a glorious house in the middle of a rather beautiful wood, and drove off to look for a NHS walk-in clinic. I've had a dry, tickly cough since Brass finished. It doesn't seem to be going away and I'm not at all into the idea of going on a honeymoon which might involve visiting an expensive American doctor.

The walk-in clinic at Guildford hospital, which was advertised on the internet, turned out not to be a walk-in clinic, and I was sent instead to Woking.

It took an hour for me to be seen, but the doctor I met was very good. Very friendly. She's put me on antibiotics and wants me to have an x-ray when I get back if the drugs don't work because she could definitely "hear something" in my left lung. Great.

I returned to the fancy house in the wood, picked Nathan up and drove North, around London, through the Home Counties and up into the midlands to the delightful Derbyshire town of Belper, where Little Michelle's father, Michael, was celebrating his 60th birthday in his brand new garden.

It was a charming event. Lovely company. Beautiful food. A great fire which we all sat around. Michelle sang three operatic arias accompanied by Ben Holder (our Brass MD, who happens to be her partner... They met at our wedding.) Her voice improves every time I hear it.

The views from Michael's garden are stunning; you can see right across the valley to a dark wood, and a hillside criss-crossed with dry-stone walls. It's almost as though you could throw a stone across the valley. The air is so still and hazy up there. I longed to be walking in those fields. There was something rather haunting about them.

Kate Bush

So, I can't be absolutely certain, but I'm pretty sure Kate Bush just sang Cloudbusting especially for me!

We have just emerged from the musical event of the year, the most hotly anticipated live gig that perhaps there has ever been. Kate Bush at the Hammersmith Apollo.

The air of expectation as we arrived at the venue was quite extraordinary. Everyone was having their photograph taken in front of the sign which said "Before The Dawn: sold out." Ushers were trying to keep people moving, but everyone wanted to savour every moment.

The merchandise stalls were mobbed. I bought a mug. I wanted to honour Kate's request to not take photographs during the gig, so figured a mug would give me something tangible to take away with me.

She came on stage singing the song Lily from the Red Shoes album. I got so excited that tears started spurting from my eyes. Her singing was really rather fabulous. She sang in a robust area of her voice; a blend of re-enforced head voice and a far less familiar chest belt.

Everything started like a rock concert. The band (which included a double drum kit) played from a plinth. Kate Bush stood in front, in a spotlight, belting out some of the more familiar numbers; Hounds of Love, Running Up That Hill, King of the Mountain...

And then everything sort of disintegrated... The band was trucked to the back of the stage, people dressed as fish skeletons rushed on, and Ms Bush appeared in a film sequence floating in the sea whilst performing And Dream of Sheep from the Hounds of Love album. It soon became apparent that she was going to do the unimaginable and perform the entire Ninth Wave.

For those who don't know The Hounds of Love, the Ninth Wave is the album's epic B side; a through-composed psycho-drama sung from the perspective of a drowning woman. And she did the lot. With panache. There were helicopters floating above the audience, huge silks which billowed like waves. At one point an entire house trucked on and Kate's real-life son Bertie sat on a sofa delivering the most surreal monologue about sausages. It was peculiar, amazing, moving, eccentric,  sumptuous, perplexing... All the things you want a Kate Bush concert to be.

Kate herself came across as entirely unpretentious and utterly un-enigma-like. Very warm and friendly in fact. Between songs, she seemed just like someone's Mum. Before the interval she said "we're gonna have a little break now. See you in a little bit..." And off she went, waving like she'd just won the bingo!

The second half focussed mostly on the Ariel album. When you're Kate Bush, you have too many hits to even try to cram in. You don't need to sing Wuthering Heights or Baboushka or This Woman's World. If you chose not to sing a single song from your latest album, no one will complain. The highlight of the second half was almost certainly Ms Bush's live recreation of her duet with a blackbird! On the Ariel album it was audacious enough, but when you recreate, chirp for chirp, the sound of a series of blackbird calls, in perfect time, you are a God. She is a God. I cried again.

Just before the end of the evening she sang a song I didn't know, just her and a piano (which they'd just dropped an enormous tree through). The hall fell silent, and there it was; that familiar Kate Bush ballad sound. Those open piano chords. That voice which jumps up and down octaves. The warm vibrato. The notes which fade to dust but somehow end with a seductive heavy consonant. It was a magical moment, made more magical by her finishing the set with Cloudbusting, the most anthemic of all of her songs. It will take me a long time to forget the image of row upon row of hands clapping in time at waist level, and then, as elation grew, above the head, and then a Mexican wave of people simply standing up because they didn't know how else to show their excitement.

And so the concert ended with everyone on their feet, which I guess can only be called a premature-standing ovation!

And I fulfilled a life-long ambition which no one will ever be able to erase from my memory.

Kate Bush. You have made me the luckiest man on the planet. Not only did you just sing beautifully, you did so on the twelfth anniversary of my relationship with my husband Nathan! Thank you from the very bottom of my heart! What a way to mark twelve years!

Fuzzy

I had a lovely lie-in again this morning. I’m still a bit fuzzy-headed and washed-out, but am slightly better than I was yesterday. I think recovery is going to be a rather long journey this time round, however.

Our bedroom is an absolute tip. There are piles and piles of things heaped on every inch of the carpet. I started to move boxes and suitcases around and found loads of things from our wedding; cards, old button holes, loose bow ties, bits of music, one or two of the more perplexing presents we received, photographs, heaps and heaps of paper work. Just looking at it broke me out in a sweat. It’s almost impossible to know what to do with it. So many people gave us presents which need to be hung on the walls in some way, but there is literally no wall-space in a house which is already filled with my photographs. Then, of course, I found loads of birthday cards, and the silly jokey made-in-China presents that people get for you on these kinds of occasions. They’re great fun for the day of the party: you wear with them, or play with them, or laugh at them... but then what? Where do they all go - except in terrible piles on the bedroom floor?

I threw away two bin bags full of stuff and then stalled and went into town to meet Nathan for a late lunch. On the tube on the way in, a woman sneezed and said “bless me” which I thought was a little eccentric, don’t most people say “excuse me?”I have never really understood the whole shouting “bless you” at strangers when they sneeze. It’s an odd compulsion, and quite intrusive. Surely most people would rather not have their sneezes publicised to the world?

On the way home, I collected our car from Highgate Autos. It’s the first time we’ve used these fellas, and I was hugely impressed by them. Not only did they do us a brilliant deal on the large amount of work we needed doing, but they were friendly and charming. It makes such a difference. They’re situated in a little mews development behind the High Street, which ought to make them the most expensive garage in the world, but they’re really not. I was also thrilled to hear that there’s been a garage on that particular site since 1910, which, I guess is pretty much since the first cars entered London. I love those little pieces of modern history.

I came home, and have started watching the athletics. I’ve no idea which athletics I’m seeing, but I’m thrilled to note that one of the 5000m runners is called Gaylen Rupp! Apparently he’s Mo Farrah’s running partner. As Nathan rightly points out, “of course he’s a fast runner; he needed to run away from all the kids who beat him up at school because of his silly name!”