We're at Brother Ted's house watching an ancient episode of Treasure Hunt from 1985 which was filmed in Warwickshire at a time when all my relatives who once lived there were still alive. The last clue was found in Wilmcote, where my wonderful Auntie Gill used to live. Edward and I went on a lengthy trip down memory lane as we watched it, looking down at the deep green trees and pinkish Warwickshire earth from Anneka Rice's helicopter! What a great show Treasure Hunt was (with the best theme tune in the world!)
I woke up early enough today to spend some time orchestrating Beyond the Fence, before heading off to NYMT auditions, which were happening in London. There are a huge number of London audition dates this year, all of which are over-subscribed to the extent that more staff have needed to be brought on board to deal with the demand. For the first time since I've worked with the company we split the auditionees into four groups instead of three. I sat in on auditions for the two older groups and we met some very interesting young people.
The room was full to the rafters with three of this season's show's musical directors, the director of brass, and two young lads who were auditioning to be part of the music team. When we walked in the space, the kids were standing around the piano doing a vocal warm up and there was something of a carnival atmosphere going on.
We heard some great singers and recalled a good number of them. There's a tendency for people to sing musical theatre songs in American accents, which means I don't have a clue if any of them can do a convincing Yorkshire accent. I find American accents in general rather off-putting when people are singing. I think people spend too long fussing over them to the extent that they threaten to stop people from engaging in true emotion. Most of the time they're utterly unnecessary in terms of the song's story and they usually force the singer's voice up into their nasal passages!
Speaking of true emotion, I was incredibly sad when Fiona greeted me this morning with the news that Terry Wogan had died. I have always considered Wogan to be a legend, not just because of his associations with Eurovision but because his voice and his radio show were such an enormous part of my childhood. My parents had tapes of pop music they'd recorded on his show. He used to play a lot of ABBA, which I think he called Grabba. I remember him cheekily calling Chiquitita "Take You teeth out." I always thought he looked like my Dad. They both had dark hair and lamb chop side burns. Actually, I think I used to wonder if my Dad and Wogan were the same person, in the way that my Mum apparently used to think her Mum was Vera Lynne! Fiona also used to think that her Dad was Terry Wogan... Popular figure. Anyway, his wit and warmth be deeply missed.
Sunday, 31 January 2016
Manchester
I left the house this morning at 6.30am exactly. The sky was pitch black with no hope of light, even in the eastern sky. Archway Road was already busy with cars and the dawn chorus was in full flow. Everything felt a little topsy-turvy.
The tube arrived as I entered the platform at Highgate. It smelt of vitamin B12, but it moved speedily to Euston Station.
I fell asleep at 10.30 last night, which has to be some sort of record, so waking up at 6 was a bit odd, but nothing like as gruelling as it might have been.
I queued for an early morning tea in a thick cloud of diesel smoke at the station. God knows what they do at 7am on a Saturday to cause so many noxious fumes, but it was definitely creating an atmosphere from which I needed to escape. A cluster of Virgin train staff were standing in the midst of the haze checking tickets. "I bet you're glad you're standing here!" I said, sarcastically. He rolled his eyes, "yeah, I get all the good jobs..."
The sun finally came up as our train passed through Milton Keynes. The sky became an impressionist masterpiece of baby blues and chocolate-coloured wispy clouds.
As we arrived in Manchester I realised I'd lost my train ticket. I rushed back into the train to find the contents of my carriage had been emptied into a bin bag by a man who wasn't paid enough money to give a shit; "have a look in that bag" he said, and I found myself hastily rifling through old banana skins and greasy sandwich wrappers. All, of course, to no avail. I threw myself at the mercy of the people on the ticket barriers and, fortunately, they let me pass. As I get older, I find people tend to be more lenient. I fit the profile of a fair dodger less and less!
The NYMT auditions in Manchester happened at Chetham's school of music, which is like Hogwarts in the city centre. We saw around sixty young people, and, with one or two notable exceptions, the over all standard of singing was a little shaky. I think perhaps mediocrity breeds mediocrity. If the kids don't spur each other on and strive for excellence, then the overall standard drops. I say this because the acting sessions later on in the day were much better than the singing ones, which may have been because we started with an exercise which demanded bravery. Whatever the reason, very suddenly the whole group came alive. The issue, of course, is that, if they've scored brilliantly well for acting and not so well for singing there's no way you can justify calling them back for a musical. I was tough on all the kids. I overheard one group in the lunch break saying how intense the session had been. I don't hold the punches when I run these sessions. The right piece of advice at this stage of a young person's career can make a huge difference. It's up to them if they listen to me or not...
We had a lot of fun, as always. As we came back, the start of the day in those clouds of diesel fumes felt like a life time ago. When you fill your day, as we have today, life moves much more slowly. And that suits me rather well.
We arrived at Euston Station at 9pm, and I took the tube to Bethnal Green where I got a bus to God knows where in East London to attend the after party of my mates Julian and Carla's wedding. Julian is my long-suffering, patience-of-a-saint record producer, who has engineered many a wacky project over the last twelve or so years. Someone once described us as behaving like a married couple in the studio. Now we're both actually married, we can decide whether that was or remains the case!
I met a rag-taggle bunch of old friends there, and couldn't work out why they all knew Julian until I realised he'd introduced me to most of them! Jim Fortune and Vic were there. Paul from Sonica. Lovely Ivor, who's played guitar on pretty much every recording I've ever done. Fiona was there too, and has come back with us to Highgate to sleep in our loft.
...And that's where we are now. Not in the loft. In the sitting room, wrapped in blankets, listening to stories of Fiona's recent trip to Bangkok.
The tube arrived as I entered the platform at Highgate. It smelt of vitamin B12, but it moved speedily to Euston Station.
I fell asleep at 10.30 last night, which has to be some sort of record, so waking up at 6 was a bit odd, but nothing like as gruelling as it might have been.
I queued for an early morning tea in a thick cloud of diesel smoke at the station. God knows what they do at 7am on a Saturday to cause so many noxious fumes, but it was definitely creating an atmosphere from which I needed to escape. A cluster of Virgin train staff were standing in the midst of the haze checking tickets. "I bet you're glad you're standing here!" I said, sarcastically. He rolled his eyes, "yeah, I get all the good jobs..."
The sun finally came up as our train passed through Milton Keynes. The sky became an impressionist masterpiece of baby blues and chocolate-coloured wispy clouds.
As we arrived in Manchester I realised I'd lost my train ticket. I rushed back into the train to find the contents of my carriage had been emptied into a bin bag by a man who wasn't paid enough money to give a shit; "have a look in that bag" he said, and I found myself hastily rifling through old banana skins and greasy sandwich wrappers. All, of course, to no avail. I threw myself at the mercy of the people on the ticket barriers and, fortunately, they let me pass. As I get older, I find people tend to be more lenient. I fit the profile of a fair dodger less and less!
The NYMT auditions in Manchester happened at Chetham's school of music, which is like Hogwarts in the city centre. We saw around sixty young people, and, with one or two notable exceptions, the over all standard of singing was a little shaky. I think perhaps mediocrity breeds mediocrity. If the kids don't spur each other on and strive for excellence, then the overall standard drops. I say this because the acting sessions later on in the day were much better than the singing ones, which may have been because we started with an exercise which demanded bravery. Whatever the reason, very suddenly the whole group came alive. The issue, of course, is that, if they've scored brilliantly well for acting and not so well for singing there's no way you can justify calling them back for a musical. I was tough on all the kids. I overheard one group in the lunch break saying how intense the session had been. I don't hold the punches when I run these sessions. The right piece of advice at this stage of a young person's career can make a huge difference. It's up to them if they listen to me or not...
We had a lot of fun, as always. As we came back, the start of the day in those clouds of diesel fumes felt like a life time ago. When you fill your day, as we have today, life moves much more slowly. And that suits me rather well.
We arrived at Euston Station at 9pm, and I took the tube to Bethnal Green where I got a bus to God knows where in East London to attend the after party of my mates Julian and Carla's wedding. Julian is my long-suffering, patience-of-a-saint record producer, who has engineered many a wacky project over the last twelve or so years. Someone once described us as behaving like a married couple in the studio. Now we're both actually married, we can decide whether that was or remains the case!
I met a rag-taggle bunch of old friends there, and couldn't work out why they all knew Julian until I realised he'd introduced me to most of them! Jim Fortune and Vic were there. Paul from Sonica. Lovely Ivor, who's played guitar on pretty much every recording I've ever done. Fiona was there too, and has come back with us to Highgate to sleep in our loft.
...And that's where we are now. Not in the loft. In the sitting room, wrapped in blankets, listening to stories of Fiona's recent trip to Bangkok.
Friday, 29 January 2016
Tired
I managed to polish off a full orchestration today, which has given me hope for the future in terms of getting this beast into the hands of musicians. It still feels a bit like an uphill struggle, though. I'm literally running on empty.
I tend to sit in front of my lap top at a little table in the corner of the rehearsal room so that I can be on hand for anyone who needs me. One of the music staff will occasionally sidle over and make a suggestion for some underscoring or a change in accompaniment or harmony, and director Luke will sometimes ask us to clarify the intention behind a certain line.
At the end of the day there's a de-brief, which gives us all a chance to talk about what's happened during the day. The process works well. On a new show, particularly one with such a curious genesis, there will always be one or two teething issues, as everyone discovers each other's eccentricities, working methods and how best to effectively interact, but I think we've started to find a good rhythm,
The cast made huge leaps forward today, managing to stagger their way through to the end of act one of the show. There's still an enormous amount to achieve, but I kept catching little glimpses of what the final show will look like, all of which were accompanied by little tingles of excitement.
I hate the commute to and from the rehearsal space. The tubes are always ram-packed, and at the end of a tiring day, when you know you're going home to continue working, a face full of someone's enormous back pack is unpleasant, bordering on traumatic! Londoners put up with a hell of a lot of nonsense on a daily basis.
At the end of the day there's a de-brief, which gives us all a chance to talk about what's happened during the day. The process works well. On a new show, particularly one with such a curious genesis, there will always be one or two teething issues, as everyone discovers each other's eccentricities, working methods and how best to effectively interact, but I think we've started to find a good rhythm,
The cast made huge leaps forward today, managing to stagger their way through to the end of act one of the show. There's still an enormous amount to achieve, but I kept catching little glimpses of what the final show will look like, all of which were accompanied by little tingles of excitement.
I hate the commute to and from the rehearsal space. The tubes are always ram-packed, and at the end of a tiring day, when you know you're going home to continue working, a face full of someone's enormous back pack is unpleasant, bordering on traumatic! Londoners put up with a hell of a lot of nonsense on a daily basis.
Thursday, 28 January 2016
That Michael Jackson...
As I walked to the tube this morning, I discovered that the whole of Archway Road had been closed to traffic due to an "incident." A brief chat to my friend who runs the coffee stand ascertained that the "incident" was, somewhat predictably, someone jumping from Archway Bridge, known in these parts as Suicide Bridge. Despite the local council's desperate attempts to prevent people from being able to jump from the edge, it remains a Mecca for those who are struggling with life. The Archway Road towards Archway itself runs through a gully, which means, by mid way up, it's about thirty metres below Hornsey Lane, which passes above via an old metal bridge. Those who jump assume if the fall onto Tarmac doesn't get them, then a passing car will...
It's a nasty business. Whereas I have a great deal of compassion for those who become so depressed they want to end it all, the greatest chunk of my sympathy rests with the drivers and pedestrians on the A1 underneath who have to deal with the (for want of a better phrase) fall out. It's incredibly sad.
Speaking of fall out, I've seen that newspapers this morning are filled with the news that posh British (white) actor, Joseph Feinnes has been cast to play Michael Jackson in a crazy sounding road movie set at the time of 911. People are up in arms about the concept of a white man playing a black legend.
Here's my take. The film is set in 2001, when Michael Jackson was arguably at his most extreme when it came to skin peels and bleaches, plastic surgery and weird behaviour. Michael Jackson did everything he could to appear white. He may have been a hugely proud black man, but, if he was, from about 1982 onwards, he never told his face. So from a purely aesthetic perspective, I sort of feel that it would be easier for a white man to pull off the role...
I have a feeling we need to be a little more consistent in the way we respond to casting decisions of this nature. Two years ago, a straight man was cast in the role of Alan Turing, a man revered by my community. Benedict Cumberbatch will surely never know how it feels to be a gay man - particularly not one who was chemically castrated - but he won awards for his acting, because, when it comes to gay characters, the world is happy to acknowledge that acting is pretending.
Of course the more subtle, or convenient argument against casting gay as gay, is that gay people may feel differently, and act differently, but they don't LOOK differently to straight people, and therefore, it ought to be easier for a straight man to impersonate a gay one. The continuation of this argument is that using prosthetics to make a white man appear black is gruesomely insulting. I agree. But Jackson didn't look black.
Then we must look to other casting decisions which, though hugely insulting to certain cultures, do not create headline news. About ten years ago I worked in the casting department on the film Brick Lane. We did an enormous amount of outreach work in the Bengali community searching for a young lad to play a radicalised Muslim. In the end, despite our hard work, the producers cast a mixed race Irish/ Indian Hindu to play the role. Did Hollywood go mad? No. He looked right... Apparently.
In 1999, I worked on a production of Madam Butterfly. Our USP was that we had an "authentic" Butterfly in the lead role. As we all know, Madam Butterfly is a Japanese woman. Our Butterfly was Chinese. The audience lapped her up. They thought she was amazing. She was. But, from a Japanese perspective, I'm sure she was about as inauthentic as Feinnes playing Jackson promises to be. The opera singer in question paid no attention to Japanese culture. She just sang the words beautifully and shuffled around in a kimono emoting wildly.
Adrian Leicester played Henry V in 2003 to great critical acclaim. The real Henry V, of course, could be called many things, but black isn't one of them. I totally applaud Leicester being cast in this role. But colour blind casting has to work all ways. If an actor puts enough work into his characterisation to make her performance feel authentic, then I don't have an issue with it.
I'll end on one final point. On another film I worked on, a certain black actor, who will remain nameless, came into audition to play the role of a black man in the film, and said in his casting that he wasn't prepared to "black up" for a role. He wanted to play the film's lead because he didn't see why the role shouldn't be played by a black man. He was right. There was no reason on earth why that role shouldn't have been played by a black person other than that it had already been given to someone else! As we move into a world where producers and directors are rightly encouraged to think out of the coloured box when it comes to casting, it's worth remembering that someone still has to play the black roles, and if we won't allow that to be white people, where on earth has the logic disappeared to?
There's not a lot to say about rehearsals today, other than that we were there and they happened. We were interviewed by a charming journalist and I continued to orchestrate music, getting a little irritated at the sheer number of interruptions... There was a very surreal moment when I tried to escape distraction and sat working under headphones in the kitchen of our rehearsal space. I could hear two separate rehearsals taking place, both involving our music, which got louder and quieter as various doors were opened and closed. It was most peculiar!
I came home this evening and worked until 10.30pm. Now I watch Ru Paul. Can I get an amen?!
It's a nasty business. Whereas I have a great deal of compassion for those who become so depressed they want to end it all, the greatest chunk of my sympathy rests with the drivers and pedestrians on the A1 underneath who have to deal with the (for want of a better phrase) fall out. It's incredibly sad.
Speaking of fall out, I've seen that newspapers this morning are filled with the news that posh British (white) actor, Joseph Feinnes has been cast to play Michael Jackson in a crazy sounding road movie set at the time of 911. People are up in arms about the concept of a white man playing a black legend.
Here's my take. The film is set in 2001, when Michael Jackson was arguably at his most extreme when it came to skin peels and bleaches, plastic surgery and weird behaviour. Michael Jackson did everything he could to appear white. He may have been a hugely proud black man, but, if he was, from about 1982 onwards, he never told his face. So from a purely aesthetic perspective, I sort of feel that it would be easier for a white man to pull off the role...
I have a feeling we need to be a little more consistent in the way we respond to casting decisions of this nature. Two years ago, a straight man was cast in the role of Alan Turing, a man revered by my community. Benedict Cumberbatch will surely never know how it feels to be a gay man - particularly not one who was chemically castrated - but he won awards for his acting, because, when it comes to gay characters, the world is happy to acknowledge that acting is pretending.
Of course the more subtle, or convenient argument against casting gay as gay, is that gay people may feel differently, and act differently, but they don't LOOK differently to straight people, and therefore, it ought to be easier for a straight man to impersonate a gay one. The continuation of this argument is that using prosthetics to make a white man appear black is gruesomely insulting. I agree. But Jackson didn't look black.
Then we must look to other casting decisions which, though hugely insulting to certain cultures, do not create headline news. About ten years ago I worked in the casting department on the film Brick Lane. We did an enormous amount of outreach work in the Bengali community searching for a young lad to play a radicalised Muslim. In the end, despite our hard work, the producers cast a mixed race Irish/ Indian Hindu to play the role. Did Hollywood go mad? No. He looked right... Apparently.
In 1999, I worked on a production of Madam Butterfly. Our USP was that we had an "authentic" Butterfly in the lead role. As we all know, Madam Butterfly is a Japanese woman. Our Butterfly was Chinese. The audience lapped her up. They thought she was amazing. She was. But, from a Japanese perspective, I'm sure she was about as inauthentic as Feinnes playing Jackson promises to be. The opera singer in question paid no attention to Japanese culture. She just sang the words beautifully and shuffled around in a kimono emoting wildly.
Adrian Leicester played Henry V in 2003 to great critical acclaim. The real Henry V, of course, could be called many things, but black isn't one of them. I totally applaud Leicester being cast in this role. But colour blind casting has to work all ways. If an actor puts enough work into his characterisation to make her performance feel authentic, then I don't have an issue with it.
I'll end on one final point. On another film I worked on, a certain black actor, who will remain nameless, came into audition to play the role of a black man in the film, and said in his casting that he wasn't prepared to "black up" for a role. He wanted to play the film's lead because he didn't see why the role shouldn't be played by a black man. He was right. There was no reason on earth why that role shouldn't have been played by a black person other than that it had already been given to someone else! As we move into a world where producers and directors are rightly encouraged to think out of the coloured box when it comes to casting, it's worth remembering that someone still has to play the black roles, and if we won't allow that to be white people, where on earth has the logic disappeared to?
There's not a lot to say about rehearsals today, other than that we were there and they happened. We were interviewed by a charming journalist and I continued to orchestrate music, getting a little irritated at the sheer number of interruptions... There was a very surreal moment when I tried to escape distraction and sat working under headphones in the kitchen of our rehearsal space. I could hear two separate rehearsals taking place, both involving our music, which got louder and quieter as various doors were opened and closed. It was most peculiar!
I came home this evening and worked until 10.30pm. Now I watch Ru Paul. Can I get an amen?!
Wednesday, 27 January 2016
Crash!
We arrived late at rehearsals this morning simply because we couldn't haul our sorry arses out of bed! Both of us are still full of cold and utterly exhausted.
It was a rather bitty day. Members of the cast kept having to leave rehearsals for costume fittings, so there always seemed to be key people missing from the scenes that were being rehearsed. Our stage manager and assistant director were kept incredibly busy, rushing about, filling in for the missing people. It's a pleasure to see the actors starting to find their characters, however. There are some really clever performers in the cast.
I had another massive computer crash today which sent me rushing back home to make phone calls to the technical support people in America. If I'm honest, the number of computer music software malfunctions I'm having on this project is making me a little twitchy. I have an obscene amount of work to do, and am very much aware of the clock ticking down. Right now I'm only able to appear calm and in control when everything goes to plan. The moment I get bowled a googly, I instantly go into melt down.
I suspect there are going to be a lot of late nights in the coming week as I attempt to get myself back on schedule.
I ended up having to call the people in America twice with two separate catastrophes. I could tell the first guy who dealt with me was going to be very helpful but that I wouldn't hear sight nor sound of the the women whom I spoke to on the second occasion probably ever again. I think she got really insulted when I had to keep asking her to repeat herself. I couldn't make head nor tail of her accent and she kept using Americanisms which I'd never heard before and couldn't decipher. The clincher was probably when I asked if she could get back to me really quickly because I had a very pressing deadline which was freaking me out. I could tell by her response that she couldn't give a shite! So as I go to bed, I'm still waiting for her to get back to me to tell my why, when I input drums into my system, I hear the sound of blinking whistles! My drum charts sound like a Pride parade!
I would just like to say that since starting work on this computer musical I have NEVER had so many computers crash on me!
It was a rather bitty day. Members of the cast kept having to leave rehearsals for costume fittings, so there always seemed to be key people missing from the scenes that were being rehearsed. Our stage manager and assistant director were kept incredibly busy, rushing about, filling in for the missing people. It's a pleasure to see the actors starting to find their characters, however. There are some really clever performers in the cast.
I had another massive computer crash today which sent me rushing back home to make phone calls to the technical support people in America. If I'm honest, the number of computer music software malfunctions I'm having on this project is making me a little twitchy. I have an obscene amount of work to do, and am very much aware of the clock ticking down. Right now I'm only able to appear calm and in control when everything goes to plan. The moment I get bowled a googly, I instantly go into melt down.
I suspect there are going to be a lot of late nights in the coming week as I attempt to get myself back on schedule.
I ended up having to call the people in America twice with two separate catastrophes. I could tell the first guy who dealt with me was going to be very helpful but that I wouldn't hear sight nor sound of the the women whom I spoke to on the second occasion probably ever again. I think she got really insulted when I had to keep asking her to repeat herself. I couldn't make head nor tail of her accent and she kept using Americanisms which I'd never heard before and couldn't decipher. The clincher was probably when I asked if she could get back to me really quickly because I had a very pressing deadline which was freaking me out. I could tell by her response that she couldn't give a shite! So as I go to bed, I'm still waiting for her to get back to me to tell my why, when I input drums into my system, I hear the sound of blinking whistles! My drum charts sound like a Pride parade!
I would just like to say that since starting work on this computer musical I have NEVER had so many computers crash on me!
Tuesday, 26 January 2016
Boycotting
Golly. Everyone in the Beyond The Fence camp is utterly exhausted today! There have been meetings, gruelling singing rehearsals, dance calls... All this time I've been trying to orchestrate an incredibly fast-paced number which is making my eyes bleed. Apparently this tiredness is quite normal for this stage in rehearsals: everyone has suddenly realised quite how much there is to do and, as a result, the brain's capacity shrinks exponentially!
Slowly but surely everyone else in the company is getting the same cold. Without going into a great deal of detail, it involves a heck of a lot of mucus and quite a number of trips to the loo. Nathan has it as well.
The company is a happy one. Everyone gets on very well and we all have a good sense of what we personally need to do to make the show extraordinary.
I've heard that some former Greenham women have decided to publicly boycott the show. Frankly, I don't give a damn if they don't much want to see it, but I think it's a little harsh for them to speak of actual demonstrations before they have any idea what the show is actually about! I'm afraid I actually get the impression they're boycotting merely for the sake of something to be angry about. The stumbling block for them, I suspect, is that two men have written the show and this is something they'll struggle to see beyond. I say three things to that:
1) It was computers which took us to Greenham, so even if we'd wanted to write about something else, the experimental nature of the project dictated that we shouldn't...
2) As the son of a CND woman, I refuse to apologise for being interested in this particular subject.
3) If a Greenham woman, or any woman for that matter feels THEY ought to have been the one to write a musical about Greenham, then they've had thirty years to get their act together! I'm hardly jumping on a band wagon!
I had a similar issue when I wrote A Symphony For Yorkshire and the Yorkshire supremacists started getting arsey because I was a Midlander, and a work with that title ought to have been written by a man born in Yorkshire. It wasn't as though the BBC had over-looked a load of Yorkshire composers in their rush to commission me. The symphony was my idea! Besides, the irony was that the list of composers and film makers which the supremacists were suggesting do it instead, would have been way way too expensive to book!
Right. Bed time. Well maybe an episode of Ru Paul's Drag Race first!
Slowly but surely everyone else in the company is getting the same cold. Without going into a great deal of detail, it involves a heck of a lot of mucus and quite a number of trips to the loo. Nathan has it as well.
The company is a happy one. Everyone gets on very well and we all have a good sense of what we personally need to do to make the show extraordinary.
I've heard that some former Greenham women have decided to publicly boycott the show. Frankly, I don't give a damn if they don't much want to see it, but I think it's a little harsh for them to speak of actual demonstrations before they have any idea what the show is actually about! I'm afraid I actually get the impression they're boycotting merely for the sake of something to be angry about. The stumbling block for them, I suspect, is that two men have written the show and this is something they'll struggle to see beyond. I say three things to that:
1) It was computers which took us to Greenham, so even if we'd wanted to write about something else, the experimental nature of the project dictated that we shouldn't...
2) As the son of a CND woman, I refuse to apologise for being interested in this particular subject.
3) If a Greenham woman, or any woman for that matter feels THEY ought to have been the one to write a musical about Greenham, then they've had thirty years to get their act together! I'm hardly jumping on a band wagon!
I had a similar issue when I wrote A Symphony For Yorkshire and the Yorkshire supremacists started getting arsey because I was a Midlander, and a work with that title ought to have been written by a man born in Yorkshire. It wasn't as though the BBC had over-looked a load of Yorkshire composers in their rush to commission me. The symphony was my idea! Besides, the irony was that the list of composers and film makers which the supremacists were suggesting do it instead, would have been way way too expensive to book!
Right. Bed time. Well maybe an episode of Ru Paul's Drag Race first!
Monday, 25 January 2016
Equal Ever After
I woke up this morning with a cold rattling through my body like wind howling through an empty house. My nose is runny. My tummy's funny. I need lemon and honey, mummy!
Actually what I need is a bit of sunshine or a really intensely snowy period like they're having in New York at the moment. My friends Cindy and Jem over there are sending me photographs of the mayhem. Jem, who's up in Queens, sent me pictures of snow literally piled up against his windows like an old duvet. I would like a bit of weather like that, please. Instead, we're told this storm will bring us floods. Just what we need.
My back was really painful this morning as well, so I left it as late as I dared to head to rehearsals in an attempt to miss the rush hour crush and perhaps find a seat on the underground. No such luck. The tubes were jam-packed. #londonisbroken
I went to the first part of rehearsals before slipping away for an appointment with the osteopath via Somerset House, where Nathan and I met Michelle of the Turkie for lunch. She was, as always, a luminous ray of sunlight. We sat outside in the courtyard. The sun was stupidly hot for this time of year, but things got rather chilly when it vanished behind the clouds again. The little cafe we drink in serves freshly squeezed juice from blood oranges, which is a glorious shade of red and has a real kick to it.
The osteopath said my lower back was incredibly knotted, but did a grand job of loosening things off. The route from Borough back to rehearsals in Pimlico ought to have been simple, but, instead of changing lines at Stockwell we managed to travel back the way we'd come. I hate the south of London!
This evening we went to the book launch of Lynne Featherstone's "Equal Ever After", which charts her almost single-handed quest to make same sex marriage legal in the UK. Lynne used to be our local MP, and I was incredibly sad when she was ousted last year, particularly as she'd done so much important work during her time in office. She was also a brilliant constituency MP. She's now in the House of Lords, and hopes one day to vote herself obsolete!
Lynne's book mentions our wedding, which she attended. In fact, she talks about it in great detail and quotes many of the lyrics from Changing Expectations, the song our mothers sang. Lynne was introduced tonight by Nick Clegg, and made a wonderful little speech during which she mentioned us again. It made me feel incredibly emotional, and an overwhelming sense of gratitude towards her. She also paid homage to the many LGBT people who suffered on the journey towards equality. I've always felt incredibly proud that Nathan and I were able to place the final cherry on the cake of British LGBT equality, and hugely grateful to the men like Peter Tatchell who regularly risked their lives to enable me to marry the man I love.
Oddly, as we arrived at the launch, a tweet arrived from a young lad who'd just seen our wedding for the first time and described it as "the most beautiful thing" he'd ever watched. It astonishes me that people are still discovering it two years on.
Paul Gambaccini was also there this evening. He and I hung out together a few times almost twenty years ago when my partner at the time was elected as an MP. I didn't expect him to remember me in the slightest, but he immediately beamed and said, "I remember you well. You were writing a musical weren't you?" He was talking about an angst-ridden show called Blast which never made it to the stage, but I was hugely impressed that he remembered. He was (and still is) a gracious and incredibly charming man and as we parted company he said, "it's always lovely to meet someone twenty years on..." And I started to wonder when it was that I became so old!
Actually what I need is a bit of sunshine or a really intensely snowy period like they're having in New York at the moment. My friends Cindy and Jem over there are sending me photographs of the mayhem. Jem, who's up in Queens, sent me pictures of snow literally piled up against his windows like an old duvet. I would like a bit of weather like that, please. Instead, we're told this storm will bring us floods. Just what we need.
My back was really painful this morning as well, so I left it as late as I dared to head to rehearsals in an attempt to miss the rush hour crush and perhaps find a seat on the underground. No such luck. The tubes were jam-packed. #londonisbroken
I went to the first part of rehearsals before slipping away for an appointment with the osteopath via Somerset House, where Nathan and I met Michelle of the Turkie for lunch. She was, as always, a luminous ray of sunlight. We sat outside in the courtyard. The sun was stupidly hot for this time of year, but things got rather chilly when it vanished behind the clouds again. The little cafe we drink in serves freshly squeezed juice from blood oranges, which is a glorious shade of red and has a real kick to it.
The osteopath said my lower back was incredibly knotted, but did a grand job of loosening things off. The route from Borough back to rehearsals in Pimlico ought to have been simple, but, instead of changing lines at Stockwell we managed to travel back the way we'd come. I hate the south of London!
This evening we went to the book launch of Lynne Featherstone's "Equal Ever After", which charts her almost single-handed quest to make same sex marriage legal in the UK. Lynne used to be our local MP, and I was incredibly sad when she was ousted last year, particularly as she'd done so much important work during her time in office. She was also a brilliant constituency MP. She's now in the House of Lords, and hopes one day to vote herself obsolete!
Lynne's book mentions our wedding, which she attended. In fact, she talks about it in great detail and quotes many of the lyrics from Changing Expectations, the song our mothers sang. Lynne was introduced tonight by Nick Clegg, and made a wonderful little speech during which she mentioned us again. It made me feel incredibly emotional, and an overwhelming sense of gratitude towards her. She also paid homage to the many LGBT people who suffered on the journey towards equality. I've always felt incredibly proud that Nathan and I were able to place the final cherry on the cake of British LGBT equality, and hugely grateful to the men like Peter Tatchell who regularly risked their lives to enable me to marry the man I love.
Oddly, as we arrived at the launch, a tweet arrived from a young lad who'd just seen our wedding for the first time and described it as "the most beautiful thing" he'd ever watched. It astonishes me that people are still discovering it two years on.
Paul Gambaccini was also there this evening. He and I hung out together a few times almost twenty years ago when my partner at the time was elected as an MP. I didn't expect him to remember me in the slightest, but he immediately beamed and said, "I remember you well. You were writing a musical weren't you?" He was talking about an angst-ridden show called Blast which never made it to the stage, but I was hugely impressed that he remembered. He was (and still is) a gracious and incredibly charming man and as we parted company he said, "it's always lovely to meet someone twenty years on..." And I started to wonder when it was that I became so old!
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