Jigsaw puzzles

We're doing a 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle of the world on the sitting room table. It's addictive. We've done all the land masses and are now struggling to get all those silly islands in Micronesia sorted out. It's become an obsession. There are currently six of us trying to cram wrong-shaped pieces into wrong-shaped holes whilst screaming with frustration. 

This house is stunning. It sits on a cliff top surrounded by heathland and woods. There's a tiny bay below us with a pebble beach. The tide goes out really far. At one point Raily was jumping off a rock into the sea, which later in the day was in the middle of a beach surrounded by a group of picnickers. 

We took a longer route down the ravine to the beach after lunch and stumbled upon the most beautiful waterfall which was cascading over a moss-covered cliff. It was like some kind of fern-filled Hawaiian grotto. The most capable Capability Brown would have struggled to create something so perfect! But then again, this landscape was created by dragons. 

Getting to the cottage by car involves a rather long and bumpy trip along a dirt track. There's a field entirely filled with horses on one side, which is a somewhat unusual sight. Even more usually, the field on the other side of the track is always full of crows. Hundreds of them. It's a bit sinister if I'm honest! 

I've set up a long-form treasure quest for two of the little girls in our number,  whose task is to follow clues to locate ten little tiny toy animals who have come all the way to Wales to visit them. It's been great fun to watch their faces light up when another clue turns up. Most of the clues are written in chalk. It's great fun. 

But I'm returning to the jigsaw now. MUST COMPLETE BEFORE BED! 

Ah! Wales

We’re in Wales. More precisely, we’re in the most Western part of Southern Wales, in the midst of the Pembrokeshire National Park, somewhere between Fishguard and the Newport that isn’t the Newport near Cardiff. This is Welsh Wales. The Wild West… 

We drove here, with Sam and Matt and a shed load of baggage crammed into our car. The weather was beautiful in London. By the time we’d reached the Severn Bridge, it was looking overcast, and as we passed the “Croeso Y Cwmru” sign, it started to rain. Welcome to Wales indeed! 

Wales isn’t just the Land of My Fathers, it’s the land of MY father, so I always feel like I’m coming home when I enter its green, green embrace. And of course the landscape is green because it gets well-watered. Hence the rain. But my Dad tells me the weather in these parts doesn’t stick around for very long - whatever it is - and that has certainly been our experience so far. 

We stopped in Swansea for lunch. Everyone is exceptionally friendly in Swansea… and inquisitive. They’ll basically talk to anyone - particularly those they don’t recognise. We went around Tesco buying food for the house we’re staying in, and must have talked to five people. One woman came up to us to talk about garlic, and a young lad outside wanted to know all about London. He was an outsider himself, he said… Turns out he was from the Rhondda!  He was part of a group of teenaged lads who were talking to each other in the most peculiar blend of Welsh and heavily accented English. They told me they were off to play rugby on the beach. They were wearing the wrong clothes for rugby, and it’s the wrong time of year for the game, but they assured me they were off to play a match. Maybe there’s a new sport called beach rugby? 

Swansea is covered in wild flowers. It’s obviously some kind of initiative by Neath Borough council because all of the verges by the sides of every major road are covered in the most amazing riot of colour… So, so beautiful. Bravo Neath County Council. (I may have made that up. It might be a Swansea City Council initiative. Is Swansea even in the borough of Neath?)

It seemed to take forever to reach our little cottage. We’re staying here with a bunch of university friends. Tanya, Raily, Mez, Hils and their associated loved ones, plus, of course, Sam and Matt. We holiday together every year, but this is the first time we haven’t ended up on a campsite. (Although, Nathan and I have latterly ditched the tents and opted for the relative luxury of bed and breakfasts.)

The cottage is a Sam and Matt find. They stayed here two years ago and raved about it in a most infectious way. So here we are, and it’s absolutely stunning. We had our tea on a terrace overlooking the beach, which is 100 meters below us. I genuinely had to keep pinching myself just to take in the glorious view. As the light faded, the sea appeared to get lighter in colour until one could almost imagine it being made of milk. We went down to the water’s edge, out of a gate in the garden and down a magical set of natural steps through a little wooded area. It’s all rather Famous Five, and I think the kids with us are going to have the most incredible time. We walked along the water’s edge and skimmed pieces of slate on the calm water. 

I blinkin’ love Wales… 

Sisyphus

I spent the entire day sitting at the kitchen table once again and for the first time in my life hit a moment when I actually became bored of my own creativity! The work I'm doing formatting Brass is so mind-blisteringly dull that it's actually putting me into a panic; a fear which I think must be born from worrying that my work on the piece might actually never be done. I feel like a modern-day Sisyphus, forcing myself to work in a level of detail which feels almost pointless. But creep forward I must, one minuscule step at a time... Let's hope it's worth it, and that the show isn't met with the level of indifference displayed by that silly, droopy gothic girl in Wales with her ludicrous online review!

Desperate for little treats to take me away from the hell of my task in hand, I searched high and low throughout the day for things to distract me when I'd reached certain milestones in my process. I'd switch the kettle on, for example... Sadly, something usually drew me back into the work, so the kettle boiled regularly, yet no tea was ever made. Sometimes I'd check Facebook, which is rare for me, but I'm pleased to report that I found an old school friend lurking there today. We went to Junior School together. In fact, we shared 'cello lessons. She was a bit rubbish at the 'cello, sadly, and confessed today that she only took it up because she wanted to be Julie from Fame. This strikes me as a hugely understandable reason for learning an instrument. I, too, wanted to be Julie from Fame. I wanted to run down a long corridor with my 'cello case in one hand and my schools books in another. Genuinely. It was a fantasy which followed me through much of my childhood, but sadly the corridors were never long enough and running wasn't allowed in them. Besides, I was never late for anything, so why would I be running? As a point of fact, it's actually really very difficult to run with a 'cello case; it trips you over, and makes the instrument inside rattle about rather dangerously... Anyway, my old friend was more of a dancer and tells me she did ballet right up to the moment she went to university, when she gave it up in favour of some kind of business degree, which, no doubt, will have brought her a much more stable lifestyle. It was lovely to hear from her. I liked her enormously when we were at school. In fact, I think I had a bit of a crush on her...

My only other "treat" today was going through my emails and opting out of junk mail. After formatting one set of instruments, I'd allow myself to opt out of a couple more. When I started to click on the "un-subscribe" button - which, in some websites, has become the almost intolerably grotesque "click here to un-sub" button - I began to notice that large swathes of the emails were coming from one website address, fewgbe.net. I just don't see the point in some of the things which get generated and sent on by these companies. They often make no sense. If they were well-made adverts, I'd sort of understand it; for every one hundred people who ignore the advert, there might just be one person who is looking specifically for the thing the company is trying to sell. But when the writing is gobbledygook, or, as is happening more and more recently, is written in an invisible font, you wonder what on earth's going on.  Who is keeping the industry of junk mail alive? It strikes me that it's an exercise in futility which is right up there with what I myself have been doing all day!

So, there we have it. Back in a full circle to where I started, which very much sums up my existence at the moment. Each morning I open up a new file (a single song) which I complete by the end of the day, and the process begins all over again. Thankfully, a group of us is going away on a little holiday tomorrow, so I've got something to look forward to...

Filth

Every time I take a blinkin' 134 bus into town, there's a driver change near the Archway bus depot. I'm not sure it's something which routinely happens on this particular route, so I do think I've been unlucky to encounter it as often as I have. The process is a faffy one, and, if the new driver isn't ready and waiting for the bus to arrive with his little tin money box, then it can take forever. As it did today. There was also a little flash of road rage as the bus pulled away from the stop in the form of a rather aggressive exchange between the bus driver and a trucker who'd inadvertently broken some sort of Highway Code.

I went to the dental hygienist today. It struck me what a peculiar blend of unique sounds and tastes one experiences at the dentists. There are high-pitched whines and scraping noises whilst vaguely aniseedy tastes drip down the back of one's throat. Apparently my dental hygiene is good, but I need to wear my special disabled person's gum guard more regularly at night. "I can tell you've been stressed" she said, through her paper face mask and thick Greek accent, "I can see the imprint of your teeth on your tongue..." She's not wrong but I instantly felt like a failure. Still, my teeth now feel smooth and delicious and I was loathe to eat anything for the rest of the day.

I worked the rest of the morning in the cafe opposite the dentist and there experienced a rather lovely moment when I glanced around and saw nothing but a sea of people with relaxed, smiling faces. A rare treat in London. A pair of very old men were talking about the Labour Party leadership, a Dutch family had just tucked into some delicious-looking croissants, a pair of female academics were deciding which type of herbal tea to sample. Everything felt calm and balanced. I suppose a cafe is a good place for witnessing people at their best. We go to cafes with friends as a treat, and use them as little stress-free refuges from the frantic pace of the towns and cities in the outside world.

From the best of society, I happened upon evidence of the worst in the form of graffiti scrawled inside one of the lockers at my gym. "Israelis are Nazis" it said. A bloke was shovelling his belongings into the locker seemingly entirely unaware of what the great big letters said. I could not have used that locker. By using it passively, in my view, you're agreeing with the ghastly sentiment it expresses.

I immediately went upstairs to the manager and reported it. By the time I'd finished my work-out, the locker was open again and the graffiti was still there. I went back to the manager and showed him a photo of the words. "Oh" he said, (I thought he was going to say how shocked he was) "if it's in marker pen, we have to get specialist cleaners in." "Obviously in the meantime you'll be closing the locker down so that no one else has to be offended by the wording?" He started to um and ah. "Let me put it another way" I said, "if you don't immediately shut that locker down, LA Fitness are passively agreeing with the sentiment expressed within and I will immediately print this photo." I held the picture up so he could see that I wasn't joking, and sailed out of the gym feeling angry yet somehow slightly righteous. 

filth

For the rest of the day I've bounced up and down like an emotional yoyo. I worked like the clappers and finished formatting another score from Brass. Hurrah. I then read a review of our wonderful cast recording which is currently appearing in programmes in West End theatres. It describes Brass as a "haunting and evocative" musical. The review goes on to say that the cast's "astounding performances are immortalised forever in this beautiful cast recording" and that the show now has "the opportunity to reach an even wider audience." Hurrah.

The cast of Brass then went a bit loopy searching for reviews of the album elsewhere and found one lurking in a public forum which was a little less than favourable. It pottered along in a vaguely positive way until the following paragraph was dropped like a stink bomb in a 1970s subway;

"The music from Brass is not going to be the next big thing in musical theatre and it might leave you singing more well-known songs that it reminds you of rather than the songs from Brass itself... From listening to the music alone it is difficult to find one stand out, show stopping number. However, all of the tracks are pleasant to listen to; you will tap your toes along to We’re Forming a Band, feel haunted by I Make the Shells, and Billy Whistle is a hugely catchy tune that you will be whistling for days."

I mean, it doesn't even make sense. No stand out number, but one song which you'll be whistling for days! A little bit of digging reveals it was written by a peculiar-looking creature from Wales who's an amateur performer of musical theatre who likes to post videos of herself singing dreadful songs on YouTube. The problem with the Internet is that no-one knows whether the critics are legit or not! We write what we like when we like... (Hence why I'm allowed to publish this lousy blog on a daily basis!) Boo!

...Then I got turned down for some funding from the Arts Council. Triple Boo!

I went to see Llio tonight. Hurrah. And listened to some of the demos for her next album which were sensational. Double Hurrah. She excels as a creator of electronica. At this stage she's just used the samples and sounds she can find on logic, but she's making brave, sometimes breathtaking choices. I'd love her to have the opportunity to work with a really decent engineer to see what magic she comes up with.

We then listened to the Pepys Motet album in its entirety. We sat with our headphones plugged into a splitter and experienced the full sonic ride as PK intended. Llio was incredibly effusive with her praise afterwards, describing the work as a masterpiece, which was very kind and made me feel very happy. She wept, got shivers, laughed, smiled, wept again. I would love to have filmed her reaction, if for no other reason than to give me something to look at when I'm feeling low about all things creative! The day ends on a triple hurrah!

Cecil the Lion

I started my day by reading an article about the awful case of Cecil the Lion, a much-loved Zimbabwean male lion who was lured from a conservation area and killed, for sport, by an American dentist wielding a bow and arrow, who paid £40,000 for the privilege. Cecil didn't die immediately and was pursued for forty hours before being shot, decapitated and skinned. For sport. The world is up in arms about it, and chat show host, Jimmy Kimmel got so emotional about the subject that he very nearly broke down...

But is it time to call the hypocrisy police? Every year millions of animals are killed so that we can have tasty food in our bellies. Because eating meat is actually no longer something we need to do to stay alive, technically, our only reason for eating it is that it's nice. We eat for sport, I suppose.

...Of course we can argue long and hard that animals who are bred for meat are killed humanely and probably wouldn't even exist if it wasn't for the trade that ultimately kills them. Kimmel was, of course, quick to point out that the situation would have been far more acceptable had it been hungry local people killing the animal because they needed to eat rather than because they wanted an adrenaline rush. To an extent, I agree, particularly as I'm not sure there's a great deal of nutritious vegetarian food on offer in Zimbabwe!

...but WOULD we actually accept a lion being killed for food? A beautiful lion with an enormous flowing mane? Of course we wouldn't. And so a catalogue of double standards reveals itself. We admonish the Spanish for bull fighting, yet we'll happily eat cow. We condemn posh people for fox hunting, yet begrudgingly support badger culling. We eat pig, but are horrified when someone tries to feed us horse. Some of us are okay eating any sort of meat whatsoever, as long as it doesn't actually resemble the animal from whence it came. Scratch the surface and there are a thousand moral dilemmas going on. And yet because most of us are agreed that we wouldn't eat a lion, we feel we can come down like a tonne of moral bricks on someone who kills one for sport.

Surely the bottom line is that animals are animals, regardless of how rare or protected they are? Pigs are probably more intelligent than lions, they're just not as majestic or beautiful. Cows who line up to be slaughtered in an abattoir may not suffer pain as they are killed, but they do smell blood and panic whilst they wait. Death is death whatever form it takes.

I'm not a militant vegetarian. I genuinely don't care what other people eat. Some of my best friends are meat eaters! I went to a bull fight once and wasn't hugely shocked. I drink milk and acknowledge that if everyone else turned veggie, but still drank milk, we'd still have huge issues in terms of what we'd do with the boy calfs. I wear leather shoes. I occasionally eat gelatine in sweets. I'm as much a mass of contradictions as the next man. Ultimately I'm a vegetarian because I don't like the notion of animals being killed for food and don't much trust the meat industry not to poison me. Let's not forget that the first cases of HIV probably came as a result of humans eating a bush meat...

So whereas I find the case of Cecil the Lion incredibly distressing, I'm just not sure we ought to be starting a witch hunt. Hand on heart, are the rest of us really so irreproachable?

I feel similarly about Lord Sewel, who seems to have got himself into all sorts of trouble for snorting cocaine and having all sorts of kinky sex. I think there's a passage in the bible which says something along the lines of "let he who is without sin cast the first stone." We all got our knickers in a twist about the concept of bugging telephones, yet it's apparently okay to feed our lust for the salacious by secretly filming someone? We all do things in the bedroom that would make us feel incredibly embarrassed in the cold light of day and yet we're capable of ripping someone else apart for the mistakes they make in the heat of the moment. And, if we're honest, many people take drugs. In fact, 38% of young British people admit to having taken an illegal substance of some sort. If everyone who'd taken illegal substances in their life suddenly lost their jobs, then the infrastructure of our country would collapse.

One of the great tragedies of modern life is that we expect our politicians to behave in ways only the most boring people in society do. This only has just one outcome: boring politicians. The interesting ones are always forced into resigning. Do I know anything about Sewel? No. Do I know whether he was any good as a politician? No. Does anyone else? No. So why do we care what he does in the bedroom?

There. I've bored myself now...

Disastrous Colchester

I watched a bit of a Time Team documentary last night. They were searching (rather unsuccessfully) for an ancient palace belonging to King Canute. There's obviously been some sort of top-down reappraisal of the way we're expected to spell Canute. Apparently he's henceforth to be known exclusively as Cnut. CNUT! Now I'm all for a bit of historical accuracy, and am the first to refer to Boadicea as Boudicca, but I reckon you've got to draw the line at calling someone by a name which could become an auto-correct catastrophe on your computer!

My mate went to school with a girl called Fuquenisha. I think she was a young Muslim girl. The teachers actually insisted that everyone call her Nisha. Imagine having your actual name banned from the playground?

I went to school with a Chinese girl called Hoo Flung Dung, and someone whose middle name was rumoured to be Cuckoo. That may have been casual racism, though...

I have seldom seen so many people descending on Highgate tube this morning. They were actually queuing to get into the little causeway which runs down the hill to the station's back entrance. I felt like I was in a Lowry painting.

There were more ferocious queues just to get out of Moorgate Station. At one point we were all funnelled into a tiny corridor where the queue came to a stand still for the best part of five minutes. I can't imagine what would have happened had someone shouted "fire." London is surely bursting at the seams in a way which has to be remedied before there's an event which causes an unimaginable loss of life.

I took the train from Liverpool Street to Colchester this morning for a meeting at the beautiful Mercury Theatre. I'd always thought Colchester was meant to be a rather charming city filled with impressive Roman remains. Not so if you arrive by train...

The train station is a mile or so out of town and the walk into the city is uninviting, un-signposted and covered in concrete. This is plainly not a place which wants to invite people in. I ended up walking along a horrifying dual carriageway with no pathways. One slip and I would have cascaded under a lorry. On the outskirts of the city centre sits the most beautiful former cinema building which has been boarded over. The place feels bleak. Unloved.

After my meeting, I sat in a cafe and listened as someone asking for directions to the station was told, "you wouldn't want to walk it, mate..." Well at least it's not just me! I tweeted the town council and they said they were working on "improving this route." You'd think it was the first thing any self-respecting council would have worked on.

I got the bus back. The sign said "all busses stopping here go to the train station." As I got on I double checked and the driver said he was indeed going to the station. Imagine my horror therefore when he didn't actually stop there! Busses go near to the station but not actually to it! If anyone from Colchester is reading this, and you value outside visitors, I suggest you get onto the council and urge them to sort this nonsense out!

I came home, working on the train and back at the ranch, before heading to my dear friend Daniel's house in Belsize Park. Daniel has recently had twins with his partner, Matthew, and I got there early enough to hang out with the babies, who are delightful. Masculine parenting is quite fascinating to watch. The kids were having their feed when I arrived and after they were done and burped and things, Daniel said "I think it's time isn't it?" Within a minute, both kids were in their cots, the lights were out and there wasn't another peep out of them!

I'm afraid I've become all too used to bed time being quite a drama with my friends' children. Seeing it happening so casually and effortlessly was striking, almost brutal.

Michelle of the Turkie joined us for an evening meal. I'll confess to being rather chuffed that Daniel and Michelle (though both contemporary alumni from York University) only met properly at our wedding where they got on like ancient friends.

We ate an amazing pie with eggs and onions and tomatoes and a crispy topping which is apparently an old Burbidge family recipe. I remember Daniel making it for me twenty two years ago. Twenty two years! Where do those pesky years go?

Michelle came to stay with us tonight and is presently asleep in the loft. Nathan is totting up the sales from his new knitting pattern, which is a glorious scarf based on Peano's space-filling curve. He released it yesterday and it's already sold more than twenty copies. He's understandably fairly chuffed.

Woodpeckers and Mongolians

I woke up this morning, a bit peeved at the idea of being up so early, and desperately wishing that I could have had another hour in bed. As I sat, in a partial coma, eating my cornflakes, staring out of the kitchen window, I was rewarded with the sight of a beautiful woodpecker bouncing about within the branches of the enormous tree in our back garden. I'm used to woodpeckers round these parts being green and yellow, but this one was black and white, almost as though his little body (or was it his wings?) was a tiny chess board. He had a bright red head, which I think must mean he was a juvenile greater spotted woodpecker. (I looked that up on google!) We're certainly doing alright at the moment for birds in our garden. Beyond the nesting robins, magpies, black birds, wood pigeons and great tits, we've had wagtails and now woodpeckers. I'm holding out for a pair of flamingos...

It's a good job the view out of the kitchen window was so inspiring, as, baring a quick trip to the gym, I've done nothing but sit at the kitchen table from 8.30am this morning til 9pm tonight. I've been working on Brass again, developing the score so that it matches the rewrite of the script I finished in June. There's a hell of a lot to do. I've blithely re-written the whole of the Prologue and decided that the piece needs to start with an epic, virtuoso overture played by a brass band, which of course I now have to write! There comes a time when you long to stop working on a show... and that moment has arrived with Brass. I've pampered this dark beast for two years now and I need it to stop demanding food from me! That said, I'm sure there's at least another month's work in the score, so I have to take lots of deep breaths and complete this final stage a bar at a time.

It was nice to get back to the gym, although some of the blokes there are somewhat cliched. I reckon all that grunting and sparring can't be good for anyone, and I would question any man's sexuality who feels the need to be so brutally masculine. The way they talk to one another is insane. They call each other "cuz" and "bro" and communicate in little bursts of nervy chatter which explodes from their mouths like the last remnants of ketchup from a plastic squeezy bottle.

We sat down to watch some telly at the end of the night, but some kind of atmospherics (I assume) meant that none of the channels were working properly. The screen kept freezing and breaking up. It got so frustrating that we were forced to switch the telly off. I even considered reading a book (I don't read*) until I realised there was a blog to be written.

*Of course I know HOW to read and I fairly regularly end up with my nose in a non-fiction book when I'm doing research, but novels have never really been my thing. My brother is not a reader either. Perhaps it's in the genes. Perhaps it's more to do with my being slightly ADHD. I certainly don't think I have the mental stamina and calmness for reading novels. I'd constantly want to be doing something else.

I reckon I've read no more than thirty novels in my life, which sounds like rather a lot, but that includes periods when I've actively tried to read a book a week, like the time I worked on the stage door of the New Ambassadors Theatre, which had to be one of the most boring jobs in the world. I once did a 40-hour shift and slept in an area no larger than my curled up body! I'm somewhat proud to say that, back then, I read everything by George Orwell and a whole host of other dystopian novels by like likes of Huxley and Henry Miller. I've also read Joyce's Ulysses... But before you start accusing me of being all high-brow and intelligent, other novels that I've consumed and enjoyed include Death on the Nile, How Green Was My Valley, Murder She Wrote: The Novel, Duty Free: The Novel and Mrs Tiggywinkle.


...Please don't bombard me with ideas for good reads! I feel obliged to point out that I simply don't have time to read. By the time my days are in their twilight, I'm so spent that the best I can manage is a TV show with no plot line.

That's said, we've just watched Joanna Lumley's Trans-Siberian Express documentary on ITV player, which does offer food for thought. It's a stunning series which I would urge you all to watch. She's such an unbelievably engaging woman and she's travelling through parts of the world which I can't even begin to comprehend. Mongolia. Siberia. Parts of rural China.

It's actually made me want to go to Mongolia. It's rather mystical, and they have a good track record of dealing with LGBT people. Being gay was decriminalised in 1961!