More fraud

There's an awful advert for Macdonald's on the telly at the moment which features two women stuck in a lift. They make the most of the terrible situation by bonding the way that only women with their precious ability to respect and love each other can. One says "what lovely shoes" and the other one responds "would you like to try them on?" That bit always makes Nathan feel sick. He has a pathological hatred of feet. They play the name game with post-its and show each other photos on their mobile phones. Finally the rescue men arrive (men, you'll note), and prize open the lift doors, passing the girls a bag full of chicken dippers, or something similar. At this point the women turn nasty and refuse to share their food with one another. The message of the advert is supposed to be that Macdonald's food is just too tasty to share, but actually they're saying women are dreadful, fickle creatures, who would stab their new best mate in the back for a plate of chemically-enhanced chicken. One wonders how an advert like that is conceived. And I'm not necessarily sure we can blame male advertising execs...

I spent the morning with young Josh at the greasy spoon round the corner. We put the world to rights, talking about theatre and politics, before returning home for me to finally pay my tax bill. In the process of paying I dared to look at my bank balance and discovered, to my great horror, that a whole heap of fraudulent activity has been taking place on my account, mostly in the form of someone going for regular meals at a Weatherspoon's... And when I say regular, we're talking sometimes five meals a day: £30 here, £25 there, but all adding up to well over a grand's worth of shitty food during the course of January. That's one hungry thief! Typical me, really, to attract a foodie with the least classy taste buds!

Obviously my card has instantly been cancelled, but I was somewhat distressed to learn that the fraudster had also tried to pay for hotels using my details, but that all this money had been reimbursed. The hotels had obviously (rightly) decided it was a dodgy transaction. Quite why my bank hadn't noticed and then notified me about this curious activity, I'm not sure. The man I spoke to seemed as non-plussed as I was. All in all there were 44 dodgy transactions. I wonder if the fraudsters have any concept of who I am. Do they know my name? Have they wondered what sort of person I am? Have they googled me? I wonder if they feel any guilt at all for what they're doing to people? I bet they consider this to be a victimless crime.

So it would appear that the coward, Theresa May, is hell bent on not condemning Trump for his catastrophic policies on immigration, which, I'm convinced, will single-handedly make Americans public enemy number one in the face of Islamic extremists. I don't just think he's going to end up with a problem on home soil. I'm pretty sure he's also going to make Americans abroad the target for all sorts of nastiness. And yet Theresa May is so desperate to be loved by everyone that she won't openly condemn him. She poo-poohed the petition which is currently doing the rounds - until it started hurtling up to the 2 million signatures mark, when suddenly she sat up, thought "oh shit" and asked Amber Rudd to pour some scorn on Trump. (Note how she gets Rudd to do it instead of Boris Johnson because she can't trust him to do anything but make himself look like a giant areola.) I loathe that woman. She's a dick.

The Dry Cleaner from DesMoines

I worked all day today and spent the morning in the local "orange" cafe. There was a really eclectic playlist coming over the sound system, which even included music from Joni Mitchell's seminal album, Mingus. I haven't heard any of those tracks for many years. I listened to it on repeat for much of my first year at University after being introduced to it by third year jazzers on the music course. There was a great snobbery attached to jazz music at York University. You were either a jazzer, or you weren't. I would love to have been one. The cool kids all did jazz. I became a "thesp" instead. In fact, they called me King Thesp. I used to walk around barefoot in a kaftan. Even in the snow. Philippa was Queen Thesp.

If you're interested in quirky jazz and funk, I would recommend a listen to Mingus. You can hear The Dry Cleaner From DesMoines here

York University would appear to be twice the size that it was in my day. There's a whole extra campus called Heslington East, which seems to be the new location of Goodricke and Langwith Colleges, both of which used to be situated on the main campus. There's a new lake and everything. I'm not sure how I'd feel if my old college had upped-sticks and made its way to a new location.

My accountant emailed me late tonight to say that she'd managed to average my earnings from the last two years, and, in the process, save me a considerable amount of tax liability, which is a heck of a relief. I heard a piece on the radio last night which suggested that the British tax system is the most complicated in the world. They're trying to change things, but, apparently, it's not going to get any easier for freelancers. I've heard we're now going to have to do tax returns four times a year. Just what we need.

I've been going though the script of Em today. Philippa has given me a few notes, and Clare, up at Edge Hill Univserity, gave me some pointers on Scouse dialect. I suspect I'm only really going to be titting about with the script until we do a reading and I get to hear whether the dialogue is effectively coming off the page.

Nathan has already gone to bed, and I am waiting up for Young Josh who is staying at ours tonight. It'll be lovely to see him.

Hopeless

Well I have to confess that the news from the States is slowly wearing me down. A petition from a Leeds-based solicitor is doing the rounds. It suggests that the Queen should not be forced to meet Donald Trump when he comes to the UK on a "State visit" because it would cause the monarch too much to embarrassment. It was Theresa May's idea to bring old Trumpy-bum over here, and she resolutely stands by the idea in the face of 1 million signatures suggesting she reconsider. Theresa May, we're told, has already infuriated the Queen by answering the monarch's question about what Brexit would actually mean for the country with the vapid, broken-record remark that "Brexit means Brexit." hate Theresa May almost as much as I hate Trump, which is almost as much as I hate Boris Johnson.

It comes to something when American friends are thanking us for signing the petition. My dear friend Christopher Sieber said things were getting "really hairy" over there. And yet people continue to remain apathetic, taking great delight in remaining neutral and burying their heads in the sand whilst the world falls apart. This "silent majority" were the ones who allowed Hitler to do his worst and don't you dare try to claim that this is somehow different. If you don't agree with what is going on at the moment, you have a duty as a human being to register protest before someone you love has their civil rights taken away from them. How long before gay marriage is repealed in the US I wonder? They did it in California, it's not beyond the realm of possibility.

I've been shafted by a tax bill which has meant I've not slept for days now. My accountant is currently in the process of seeing if there's any way of lowering it based on the fact that my earnings for 2017 are 1/6th of my earnings for 2016. It's utterly hopeless. UK tax regulations have always been profoundly complicated and unbalanced when it comes to freelancers with wavering incomes.

Trainspotting

The cast of the new Trainspotting film were on the Graham Norton show last night and it instantly struck me quite how era-defining the original film had been for my generation, right down to its music. I can't hear those two iconic chords from Born Slippy by Underworld without being transported to 1997, when I was 22. I think it's no co-incidence that the coming-of-age film for my generation was about listless drug addicts struggling to find a sense of identity. Lack of identify is the quintessential problem for Generation X. We didn't come of age in a blaze of Rock n Roll, New Romanticism or Punk. We were the generation whose pop stars were Neighbours and Eastenders cast members and the first manufactured bands. Victoria Beckham from the Spice Girls famously went on a twenty-year voyage to discover what it was that she was actually good at but, in the mean time, we still accepted her as a celebrity. We're all in our early forties these days and yet we've still not offered any truly iconic figures to the world. In my view, a lot of the problem originates in the fact that we grew up the children of Thatcherism, watching cycles of boom and bust where no-one cared about society and everyone cared about money. I haven't really thought about the issue a great deal more, but something awoke in me when I saw the cast of Trainspotting, and I think it and I think it was a sense of anger for my generation!

I learned yesterday that Westminster Council has decided to start penalising the drivers of diesel cars. From now on, parking in the Borough is going to be twice as expensive for diesel vehicles. Diesel has been utterly demonised of late and it seems everyone is jumping on this particular hate wagon. Ironically, we bought a diesel car because, at the time, it was meant to be better for the environment. Plainly this is no longer the case. Someone from the council was interviewed, and he was really hard line, "we want to make people think twice about their decision to buy vehicles which pollute the environment." That's me told.

The problem is that you're taxing the poor. Wealthy people don't care how much it costs to park. They just park. It's people like Nathan and me, who can't afford to replace our diesel vehicle, who will be shafted by this new rule. Apparently we're to expect a massive hike in what we pay to enter the congestion zone as well. I'll look forward to that.

I assisted Abbie at a quiz in a Synagogue last night. Every time I sit in a reform Synagogue, a sense of great calm wafts over me. It shouldn't matter, but it matters enormously to me that this is one of three British religions which supports gay marriage. Walking into a religious space where homosexuality is not just tolerated, but genuinely celebrated, always has a profound effect on me. I love visiting a place of worship where there's no sense that someone's going to come out of the woodwork and try to convert me. That's the joy about Judaism. There's no agenda of this description.

Abbie played the theme from Schindler's List as part of a "name the film" question. I was proud of her for doing so, particularly as the other assistant felt so strongly that she shouldn't have. People get so embarrassed by the concept of cultural faux pas. It was more than a little moving, to sit in a Synagogue listening to that particular piece of music. Aside from being one of the most beautiful pieces of film music ever written, it's also extraordinary to watch a group of people, happily taking part in a quiz, and think that, even in this country, in this era, anti-semitism still exists. It's always so depressing to go through so many high steel gates just to get into a place of worship. Imagine that in a church?

Stir crazy

I've officially gone stir-crazy today. The cold-man-'flu rumbles on, and, as a result, it's too tiring to leave the house for long periods of time. I feel like one of those Victorian children wearing a sailor suit who got carried about on a cushion because they were deemed to "sickly" to travel by their own steam. We went to the local Sainsbury's today, and the simple act of carrying two bags of shopping home exhausted us both.

I'm finding it almost impossible to concentrate on anything for long. Every time my brain is faced with a stumbling block, it caves in. I was trying to write music earlier - and it would go okay until the situation required a bit of thought, at which point, I'd get flustered and start something else.

The biggest problem of all is that I feel claustrophobic and cooped-up like a silly little hen. I'm bored of my own thoughts. I'm getting ratty. The biggest treat of the day is to go down to the kitchen to make a cup of tea with the lovely new kettle Fiona gave us... The rest of the time, I just want to fall asleep, but when I try to sleep, I get woken up by the weird gurgling in my lungs which sounds a little bit like there's a tiny, angry man in my œsophagus trying to take delivery of something!

I saw a set of photographs today from a production of Madam Butterfly at the Scala. I'm sure the production sounded exquisite, but I have to say, in an era where so much is made about issues regarding authenticity and race, the time may have passed when it's appropriate to have non-Japanese women playing this enduring role. I don't know why it is that opera remains the final frontier when it comes to forcing audiences to suspend their disbeliefs. I get incredibly bored when people maintain that a 50-year old, rather dumpy opera singer, has "convinced" an audience "through clever acting" that they're a delicate ingenue. Opera singers are, in general, the poor cousins when it comes to acting in the visual arts, and frankly, what you lose vocally from hiring someone with the right look, or ethnicity to play a role, you gain ten times over in believability. Sorry to be hard line, but I can't think the art form will survive much longer if we don't start acknowledging some basic truths. Why would anyone believe that the following image is of a fragile 18 year-old Japanese woman with a fearless and vital American army general? It makes no sense to me.

Stink bomb

Don't you just hate it when London Underground publish posters which advertise "planned" closures of lines and stations. Like it would be possible to create a poster which advertised "unplanned" station closures!

The weather today was brutally cold. I haven't yet needed to wear a coat this winter, but today I rather wish I'd at least worn a scarf. I'm not really complaining. I love it when it gets really cold because it's the only time of the year when I don't overheat. I have a broken thermostat.

I went into town today to meet a lovely lady called Sharon who works in the alumni department at the University of York. She wanted to introduce me to Tom Cantrell who runs the (relatively new) theatre department there. We had lunch in a cafe called Note, which, when I last checked, was the classical record store attached to the Coliseum. I was a little sad to see that it's gone, but, let's face it, who goes shopping for CDs these days?


It was a lovely meeting. I was able to fill them both in on the career successes of some of the people I studied with at York, and they're keen to bring me up to the university to talk to some of the students about my own work, which would, of course, be a great honour. No one has to ask me twice to go to Yorkshire!

I bumped into Hannah Chissick on my way into the meeting. She looked haunted and confessed that she was on her way home from rehearsals, suffering from a ghastly 'flu. There's definitely something going round and I'm now convinced that what Nathan and I had definitely had the severity of a 'flu. She described herself as feeling "transparent" and I knew exactly what she meant. I'm personally a great deal better, but by no means out of the trees. I'm still finding most things, including the merest act of thinking, highly tiring. Even today, whilst sitting in the cafe, I suddenly became aware of having a desperately dry mouth, which no amount of water seemed to be able to touch. I'm also still making a slightly watery, gurgling noise when I breathe. It's a horrible sensation.

I went home via Leicester Square, which smelt of shit. Do people still let off stink bombs? If they don't, some old lady had a really rough journey down the escalators just before me!

Sallon in Soho

We slept until 11am this morning and I think we're both feeling a little better as a result. There's certainly a bit more colour in our cheeks. I looked like Zammo off of Grange Hill in the mirror yesterday!

It's been a very quiet day. We're still coughing, wheezing and spluttering, so have spent much of our time under duvets. Doing anything is exhausting. I've been out of the house twice, on both occasions to visit the local shop, and when I got back inside, I was panting like a fat person.

I managed to do a bit of work this evening. I worked on the Nene project, playing about with a few melodies, and developing lyrics for the sequence in the Cambridgeshire Fens, where I feel begrudgingly compelled to rhyme Nene with "been."

Our kettle broke in early December, so, for the last two months, I've been boiling water on a stove like a Victorian. Fiona took great pity on us during her last visit, and, discovering that we were ill, was kind enough to send us a kettle through the post so that we could have hot lemon and honey. It was deposited at 9.30pm tonight by a very confused Amazon delivery man. Everyone gets confused by the location of our front door.  It's the reason why we've never had anyone canvas us from a political party, or been trick or treated at Hallowe'en. I'm officially excited about the concept of honey and lemon.

It's a quiet news day, so if anyone reading this fancies a little blast from the past, I'd love you to have a look at a film we shot (massively guerrilla-style) about eight years ago in Soho. It features my dear friend, the eccentric, Philip Sallon, who was a 1980s club host and a founding father of both Punk and New Romanticism. We shot the film to demonstrate the fact that Soho was dying. Since this film was shot, huge areas of the district have closed down and are being replaced by fancy-brand shops, and sanitised, themed restaurants. Philip is nocturnal and, for most of his life, has spent the wee-small hours, wandering around Soho, talking to the rent boys, the trannies, the druggies, the prostitutes, the bouncers, the old school Soho-types and the club kids. This little film, which is rough as old boots, gives some sense of his adventures... Have a watch.