I stayed at the Gateway services, peacefully writing until 3am. The Jewish man in the kippah was still playing on the gambling machines when I left. I thought it seemed rather a strange nocturnal existence. I wondered if he goes to the services every night, and whether gambling sits comfortably with his religious beliefs. Maybe he was sticking to the arcade games.
I did some good work, however, so the feeling of exhaustion I'm experiencing today is worth it. I think if you simply embrace insomnia, don't even try to sleep, and do something useful instead, you end up happier in the long run.
I did a lot of soul-searching whilst sitting in the service station with my cup of tea and little bar of Galaxy chocolate. It strikes me that the time has come for me to seriously reappraise my decision to work in British musical theatre. It's just not an industry which has learned how to sustain its writers and I am fed up with the constant feeling that I'm simply a beggar waiting for scraps to be thrown at me by kindly passers by. Em, therefore, could prove to be my last work of musical theatre. Maybe it's good for me to bow out on something this personal. Maybe something else will crop up. Who knows? I've given myself until the summer to make a final decision.
I have to say, I would quite fancy going and doing another sort of job. One where I'd have a guaranteed income, holiday pay, and a pension! I spoke to a woman today who was sitting in an office at Ali Pali. She was right by the front door, but explained to me that, although there was no longer a receptionist in the building, it wasn't her job to open doors and do the meeting and greeting. I thought how nice it would be to roll into work and be able to be belligerent about the perimeters of my job description!
We were at Ali Pali for a VIP tour of the building work which is being done on the old theatre where we got married. It's such an exciting place and such an wonderful renovation project. They're currently focussing on making the auditorium safe and functional. Those reading this blog who attended our wedding or saw it on telly, will remember that the stalls area is enormous, and that our ceremony took place on a little stage in front of the theatre's official stage. At some point they're planning to renovate the stage itself, but in the short-term, they're opting for something similar to our wedding set-up, with retractable or portable seating.
There will also be (fixed) seats in the balcony, which, for health and safety reasons, my brother and sister-in-law remain two of the only people to have actually visited. The first of their MC-ing sequences came from up there. For the princely sum of £900, you can have your name engraved on a plaque on one of those chairs. They're still fundraising for the renovations, and in a later blog, I may well furnish you with the details needed for making donations. For as little as £30 you can have your name added to a giant list of donors which will be displayed on the theatre walls.
They've made a decision to allow the place to keep its shabby chic character. Plaster work will still be chipping off the walls, and it will maintain a sense of faded grandeur. I think it's going to be absolutely stunning. I'm told we remain the only two people ever to have got married there. Result.
Tuesday, 28 February 2017
Nice cup of tea
It's midnight, and I have driven to a service station on the M1. I do this periodically when I know I'm not going to sleep. It saves me the bother of tossing and turning all night. I'll do some work whilst listening to the tinny hum of R and B on the radio. If I'm a good boy, I might treat myself to a little cake. A lone man wearing a kippah is playing an arcade game. I wonder what his story is. If he weren't so engrossed in his game, he might wonder what mine is.
I have just dropped Emma Fraser off in Saint Albans. This evening she did me the great honour of singing a song from Em at the MMD cabaret. She did a wonderful job. It's always such a splendid evening. It's so great to hear the songs that other musical theatre writers are coming up with. There's so much diversity, both in theme, musical style and within the writers themselves.
I've not had a very good day if I'm honest. I found out just after lunch that an application to the Arts Council has been turned down. I genuinely don't know what to do. It's rare that I simply can't see a solution. I ended up in a position where I was forced to place all my eggs in one basket and, I suppose, this is what happens to the unwise. The application was incredibly strong. I know this because it was elevated to a level where no negative feedback could be offered. I was merely told that "another project was preferred." Applications which receive this particular feedback are allowed to instantly reapply without changing anything on the application form. That's the great lottery of public funding. Had I put my application in a week earlier, or a week later, it may well have been that another project wasn't "preferred."
Who knows?
The only thing I know for certain is that I feel terribly anxious. And that I'm sitting in the London Gateway Services with a cup of tea not really knowing what to do with myself...
I have just dropped Emma Fraser off in Saint Albans. This evening she did me the great honour of singing a song from Em at the MMD cabaret. She did a wonderful job. It's always such a splendid evening. It's so great to hear the songs that other musical theatre writers are coming up with. There's so much diversity, both in theme, musical style and within the writers themselves.
I've not had a very good day if I'm honest. I found out just after lunch that an application to the Arts Council has been turned down. I genuinely don't know what to do. It's rare that I simply can't see a solution. I ended up in a position where I was forced to place all my eggs in one basket and, I suppose, this is what happens to the unwise. The application was incredibly strong. I know this because it was elevated to a level where no negative feedback could be offered. I was merely told that "another project was preferred." Applications which receive this particular feedback are allowed to instantly reapply without changing anything on the application form. That's the great lottery of public funding. Had I put my application in a week earlier, or a week later, it may well have been that another project wasn't "preferred."
Who knows?
The only thing I know for certain is that I feel terribly anxious. And that I'm sitting in the London Gateway Services with a cup of tea not really knowing what to do with myself...
Sunday, 26 February 2017
Back in Thaxted
I was back in Thaxted this afternoon, depositing the car that I'd borrowed to drive to Abingdon yesterday. My Mum cooked a fabulous roast meal with all the trimmings. I don't actually know what "trimmings" are but we must have had them, or, at least whatever the vegetarian equivalent of trimmings are. Actually, the trimmings are probably all the things that vegetarians eat...
Brother Edward drove me back to London and, on returning home, I found Nathan in the sitting room recording a pod cast. He does one a week these days, and they're really rather popular. He's just returned from running classes at a knitting retreat in Manchester. There wasn't a single man on the retreat. I tell you: the quest for gender equality has to work both ways.
We watched the Let It Shine final today. I'm not sure what "guest" judge, Peter Kay was on, but he certainly made it all about him rather than the contestants! My favourite part of the show was when we were told each band would be singing a proper "musical theatre" song, before the first group got up and sang Footloose... from the film, Footloose. The film may have been turned into a tatty jukebox musical, but there's no way on earth that you could call its title track a "musical theatre number." Karma Chameleon by Culture Club was featured as the encore in the musical Taboo, but you could never describe it as musical theatre song.
Of course, when the next band sang an ACTUAL musical theatre song (from Hairspray), the studio came alive. That's because REAL musical theatre songs are written with this sort of audience response in mind.
It turns out that the band aren't even centrally featured in the narrative of the show they're publicly auditioning for. The musical, we learned tonight, is actually about five teenaged girls! I hope I'm not correct here, but it seems the boys are merely singing the songs which punctuate the action in the style of Torch Song Trilogy. No wonder they've never bothered to check if the lads can actually act!
At the end of the show, Gary Barlow told the lads that they start rehearsals "tomorrow morning" (Sunday?!) Turns our that the show opens in September. I doubt there'll be any rehearsals at any time in the near future! I don't really know why people bother to say things like that.
What pleased me, however, was that one of the winners, a chap called Sario, is an NYMT stalwart. He was never in Brass, but has been doing shows with them for many years. I think he's still only about 19! NYMT kids have two retirements. The first when they're too old for youth theatre, and then again at the age of 70!
Brother Edward drove me back to London and, on returning home, I found Nathan in the sitting room recording a pod cast. He does one a week these days, and they're really rather popular. He's just returned from running classes at a knitting retreat in Manchester. There wasn't a single man on the retreat. I tell you: the quest for gender equality has to work both ways.
We watched the Let It Shine final today. I'm not sure what "guest" judge, Peter Kay was on, but he certainly made it all about him rather than the contestants! My favourite part of the show was when we were told each band would be singing a proper "musical theatre" song, before the first group got up and sang Footloose... from the film, Footloose. The film may have been turned into a tatty jukebox musical, but there's no way on earth that you could call its title track a "musical theatre number." Karma Chameleon by Culture Club was featured as the encore in the musical Taboo, but you could never describe it as musical theatre song.
Of course, when the next band sang an ACTUAL musical theatre song (from Hairspray), the studio came alive. That's because REAL musical theatre songs are written with this sort of audience response in mind.
It turns out that the band aren't even centrally featured in the narrative of the show they're publicly auditioning for. The musical, we learned tonight, is actually about five teenaged girls! I hope I'm not correct here, but it seems the boys are merely singing the songs which punctuate the action in the style of Torch Song Trilogy. No wonder they've never bothered to check if the lads can actually act!
At the end of the show, Gary Barlow told the lads that they start rehearsals "tomorrow morning" (Sunday?!) Turns our that the show opens in September. I doubt there'll be any rehearsals at any time in the near future! I don't really know why people bother to say things like that.
What pleased me, however, was that one of the winners, a chap called Sario, is an NYMT stalwart. He was never in Brass, but has been doing shows with them for many years. I think he's still only about 19! NYMT kids have two retirements. The first when they're too old for youth theatre, and then again at the age of 70!
Abingdon
What a busy day! I managed the tiniest of lie-ins before taking the tube to Tottenham Hale station, where I absentmindedly tapped my debit card upon entering the overground station, which may well prove to be a hugely expensive mistake. Transport for London have made a big deal out of encouraging us to use debit cards instead of Oyster Cards, but when errors are made, it's much more difficult to get refunds. The man at the station said I needed to call TfL and my bank, but when I phoned TfL, I was told that nothing could be done until 24 hours after the incident. Yawn.
I was at Tottenham Hale on my way to Bishop's Stortford, where I was meeting my brother who took me to Thaxted where, after a sandwich, a piece of cake, two cups of tea and a two-hour sit-down, I borrowed the parents' car, and drove 100 miles through sheeting rain and traffic jams to Abingdon in Oxfordshire where I was helping out on a quiz.
That just about sums my day up. The quiz was at Abingdon School and went very well. My friend Claire was there. She was one of the producers on our wedding. Her team came second by one point. They were leading all the way through, then utterly tanked the sports round!
I'd never been to Abingdon before. I had no concept of the place. For the longest time, I didn't know if it was Abingdon or Abington. Then I realised Abington was in Northampton!
The drive home was lonely and long and seemed to involve driving through a never-ending rain storm. They say another gale is on its way. What will this one be called? I guess, after Doris, it needs to start with an E. Emma? Esmeralda? Estelle? Ermentrude? Time for bed.
I was at Tottenham Hale on my way to Bishop's Stortford, where I was meeting my brother who took me to Thaxted where, after a sandwich, a piece of cake, two cups of tea and a two-hour sit-down, I borrowed the parents' car, and drove 100 miles through sheeting rain and traffic jams to Abingdon in Oxfordshire where I was helping out on a quiz.
That just about sums my day up. The quiz was at Abingdon School and went very well. My friend Claire was there. She was one of the producers on our wedding. Her team came second by one point. They were leading all the way through, then utterly tanked the sports round!
I'd never been to Abingdon before. I had no concept of the place. For the longest time, I didn't know if it was Abingdon or Abington. Then I realised Abington was in Northampton!
The drive home was lonely and long and seemed to involve driving through a never-ending rain storm. They say another gale is on its way. What will this one be called? I guess, after Doris, it needs to start with an E. Emma? Esmeralda? Estelle? Ermentrude? Time for bed.
Saturday, 25 February 2017
Bank is w*nk
Bank Station is a scary place. I don't really know why it feels more frightening than other Underground Stations but it's something to do with its sheer scale and the huge numbers of people who pass through it. Perhaps some of the other London transport hubs like King's Cross have overground aspects, which make them somehow seem less vulnerable. Bank is all underground. A vast cavern of platforms, corridors and escalators opens up from a couple of tiny little entrances on street level. You go deeper and deeper underground, and spend long periods of time walking between platforms to change trains. My mind always goes to a dark place if I'm hanging about in the station for too long. Probably because I was once evacuated from there in the post 7/7 period when everyone was way too jumpy. It was a terrifying experience because I got lost in the labyrinth of corridors in an attempt to get above ground. I guess I always wonder what would happen, in Bank specifically, if some kind of terrorist attack took place. I ended up back at the station at just gone 6pm in some sort of crush of people between the DLR and the escalators which take people up to the Northern Line. It was deeply unpleasant.
...Enough of the dark thoughts!
So it would seem that Storm Doris has generated a degree of London-baiting from those who live outside the city. I saw a post on Facebook which said "Storm warning. Southerners are urged not to travel unless absolutely necessary. Northerners, you will need your big coat." Ha ha! Very funny! The post I saw was followed by countless blithe and facetious comments suggesting Northerners were still out there drying their clothes in the storm. It's just such a pointless thing to say. Londoners don't have gardens and even if we did we'd be more sensible than to hang our washing out in a gale.
There seems to be a perception that when any event happens in London, it instantly becomes national news. I completely understand how this has become the perception, but the trouble is that when London grinds to a halt, because a quarter of the English population live here, and a great many others travel here for work, the rest of the country feels it. If there are strikes on the London Underground it's vital that the country knows about it, in a way that it simply wouldn't be in the highly unlikely event of the Tyne and Wear Metro going down. There's a reason why union action is focussed on the South East, and that's because it grabs the country by its balls.
But I have to say I'm deeply bored of online London-baiting. Firstly, I feel obliged to point out that most Londoners were not born here, so calling us a load of soft southerners is just weird. Secondly, if a non-Londoner lived and commuted in this city for just a week, they'd go running for the hills unless they had serious guts. And thirdly, I walked the entire length of the sodding River Nene... in December... without a coat. So stick that in your whippet-laden trousers!
We did a day in the studio today recording the songs from Lawrence and Emyr's musical. It was fairly slow-going but ultimately hugely rewarding. The obligatory technical issues kept cropping up, and I think the studio engineer was expecting a classical session with a conductor and everyone playing together, rather than a complex piece of music with myriad tempi and metre changes and musicians who needed to be layered up. I felt every one of the composer's frustrations. At one point he was frantically playing a game on his iPhone whilst waiting for yet another issue to be solved. I think I would have blown a gasket at his age!
One of the musicians arrived with a peace sign on her T-shirt, and I asked her if she saw the symbol as one for peace or as the logo for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), which, for me is a hugely pertinent and moving image. She didn't know what CND stood for, or who CND were. Neither did any of the other kids. They also hadn't heard of Enya, which made me very confused. Am I now officially old, or do these young people need a history lesson?!
...Enough of the dark thoughts!
So it would seem that Storm Doris has generated a degree of London-baiting from those who live outside the city. I saw a post on Facebook which said "Storm warning. Southerners are urged not to travel unless absolutely necessary. Northerners, you will need your big coat." Ha ha! Very funny! The post I saw was followed by countless blithe and facetious comments suggesting Northerners were still out there drying their clothes in the storm. It's just such a pointless thing to say. Londoners don't have gardens and even if we did we'd be more sensible than to hang our washing out in a gale.
There seems to be a perception that when any event happens in London, it instantly becomes national news. I completely understand how this has become the perception, but the trouble is that when London grinds to a halt, because a quarter of the English population live here, and a great many others travel here for work, the rest of the country feels it. If there are strikes on the London Underground it's vital that the country knows about it, in a way that it simply wouldn't be in the highly unlikely event of the Tyne and Wear Metro going down. There's a reason why union action is focussed on the South East, and that's because it grabs the country by its balls.
But I have to say I'm deeply bored of online London-baiting. Firstly, I feel obliged to point out that most Londoners were not born here, so calling us a load of soft southerners is just weird. Secondly, if a non-Londoner lived and commuted in this city for just a week, they'd go running for the hills unless they had serious guts. And thirdly, I walked the entire length of the sodding River Nene... in December... without a coat. So stick that in your whippet-laden trousers!
We did a day in the studio today recording the songs from Lawrence and Emyr's musical. It was fairly slow-going but ultimately hugely rewarding. The obligatory technical issues kept cropping up, and I think the studio engineer was expecting a classical session with a conductor and everyone playing together, rather than a complex piece of music with myriad tempi and metre changes and musicians who needed to be layered up. I felt every one of the composer's frustrations. At one point he was frantically playing a game on his iPhone whilst waiting for yet another issue to be solved. I think I would have blown a gasket at his age!
One of the musicians arrived with a peace sign on her T-shirt, and I asked her if she saw the symbol as one for peace or as the logo for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), which, for me is a hugely pertinent and moving image. She didn't know what CND stood for, or who CND were. Neither did any of the other kids. They also hadn't heard of Enya, which made me very confused. Am I now officially old, or do these young people need a history lesson?!
Friday, 24 February 2017
Doris Day
As I lay in the bath this morning, I could hear the mother of all rain storms battering the roof tops outside. A great roar of water was gushing down the side of our house and throwing itself into the pathway leading into our neighbour's basement flat. It was quite bizarre, therefore, to leave the house some twenty minutes later to the sight of perfect blue skies and a sun glinting on the wet pavements like a spotlight on a mirror. Today was the day that Storm Doris surged across the country. The media have dubbed it "Doris Day." There were, of course, the obligatory travel warnings galore. Another example of the media whipping stuff up for their own amusement. That said, I wasn't entirely happy with the idea of Nathan being forced to drive all the way to the Peak District this afternoon to teach on a knitting retreat. It apparently took him almost three hours to get as far as Watford Gap.
I am still not actually watching, reading or listening to the news. I catch the odd headline on my way into work, and occasionally read up about an event, but otherwise, I am news-free. This makes me feel no better than the people I admonished for voting Brexit without knowing anything about politics or understanding what on earth was going on, but, at the same time, Brexit and Trump have taught me that the media don't need truth to print a story. They just need an opinion. The more controversial the better. The reliability of the source is unimportant. And I simply can't be dragged into all of that.
Every day we're told something else is damaging to our health. Today, the newspaper next to me informed me that we now need to eat ten portions of veg a day to "really slash health risks." And don't even get me started on the spurious faux scientific shite they make up in adverts to sell projects. "Biffidis Digestivens" in yoghurts, "built in vibrancy serums" in hair dyes, "Micellar Water with Micells" and "anti age 3 technology" in fabric softener. These people must think we were born yesterday. And yet it seems to do the trick.
I've been at Trinity all day doing the last day of rehearsals for the workshop of The Lady Killers project. The team worked incredibly hard and pulled off an excellent performance, which very much landed with its audience. I was proud of them all. Every single one of them raised their game steadily throughout the day and were giving it everything by the time we performed. It's a good show. I hope the writers finish it.
Storm Doris was going full tilt all day and aggressively rattling the roof of our rehearsal rooms. At one point I wondered if the ceiling was about to cave in. She managed to tip a lorry over just down the street. It was apparently quite "exciting biting" as my Dad would say. The lorry hit a bus and lots of people were rushing around in a panic. It was supremely gusty at New Cross Gate station when I left to go home. Pieces of rubbish swirled over the tracks and onto the platform. The clouds, all indigo and black, seemed to be in a hurry to be anywhere else, darting across the sky in terror. Fleeing from Doris' anger.
I am still not actually watching, reading or listening to the news. I catch the odd headline on my way into work, and occasionally read up about an event, but otherwise, I am news-free. This makes me feel no better than the people I admonished for voting Brexit without knowing anything about politics or understanding what on earth was going on, but, at the same time, Brexit and Trump have taught me that the media don't need truth to print a story. They just need an opinion. The more controversial the better. The reliability of the source is unimportant. And I simply can't be dragged into all of that.
Every day we're told something else is damaging to our health. Today, the newspaper next to me informed me that we now need to eat ten portions of veg a day to "really slash health risks." And don't even get me started on the spurious faux scientific shite they make up in adverts to sell projects. "Biffidis Digestivens" in yoghurts, "built in vibrancy serums" in hair dyes, "Micellar Water with Micells" and "anti age 3 technology" in fabric softener. These people must think we were born yesterday. And yet it seems to do the trick.
I've been at Trinity all day doing the last day of rehearsals for the workshop of The Lady Killers project. The team worked incredibly hard and pulled off an excellent performance, which very much landed with its audience. I was proud of them all. Every single one of them raised their game steadily throughout the day and were giving it everything by the time we performed. It's a good show. I hope the writers finish it.
Storm Doris was going full tilt all day and aggressively rattling the roof of our rehearsal rooms. At one point I wondered if the ceiling was about to cave in. She managed to tip a lorry over just down the street. It was apparently quite "exciting biting" as my Dad would say. The lorry hit a bus and lots of people were rushing around in a panic. It was supremely gusty at New Cross Gate station when I left to go home. Pieces of rubbish swirled over the tracks and onto the platform. The clouds, all indigo and black, seemed to be in a hurry to be anywhere else, darting across the sky in terror. Fleeing from Doris' anger.
Wednesday, 22 February 2017
Ali Pali, Llio and stuff
This week I've been finding out what it feels like to be a commuter in London, and I don't like it one little bit! Journeys home on the tube are particularly awful. With every stop further north, fewer and fewer people seem to alight, whilst more and more get on, until you can't possibly imagine how a carriage could be any more crowded. There's so much anti-London sentiment in the rest of the country. I've no doubt now that our entirely broken infrastructure is the reason why all Londoners are stand-offish and so profoundly incensed that everyone else seems to think we have it so easy. By the time I got home, I looked like a soggy old sponge.
I've been at Trinity all day with the group of students who are working on excerpts from the Lady Killers musical. I'm really rather impressed by what I'm witnessing, and genuinely not feeling the need to intervene too often. The students are working harmoniously, taking risks and achieving great things. Lawrence has written some really lovely music. Catchy tunes. Fabulous jazz sequences. It's being performed by a band of fourteen very high-calibre musicians who are, in the process of rehearsing, taking steps into the crazy world of actor-musicianship. Some have proved to be more convincing actors than others. I gave them all a talk today about looking self-conscious, but, as someone who did a straight music degree, I know exactly which world they come from, and it's one where hiding behind a music stand feels like the safest place to be. We're also working with some of the students on the opera course, whom, though great actors, are a little lacking in conventional stage craft. It's difficult to know how to address a fundamental issue like this in such a limited rehearsal period when there's so much else to do.
Obviously, with so many live musicians, and a massively boomy rehearsal space, we're having some issues with sound (problems with sound in a musical? Get away with you!) but we did a run tonight and have all day tomorrow to rehearse, so they're bang on schedule for a day of finessing and refinement.
I'm pleased to say that Lawrence took my advice when I suggested recording the three songs we're working on in a proper studio. We're doing that on Friday and it will almost certainly provide everyone involved with something they can feel proud of long into the future. I emerged from York University with a single cassette recording of a few compositions I wrote whilst studying. It was this tape which got me my first professional gig with Arnold Wesker, and from then on I've never looked back, always placing recording my compositions right at the top of my creative agenda. You can never take a recording away from someone. A live event is film-flam by comparison.
I spent the evening with Llio who is singing a song from Em at the next MMD cabaret. She's going to do it beautifully if tonight is anything to go by. We got a bit hysterical at one point because she handed me a cup of tea, and in the process of putting on the table next to me managed to pour half the cup of tea she was holding in her other hand directly into my bag. It was like one of those scenes in the farces where someone viciously pours custard into someone's hat and then forces them to put it on!
I came home via the road which goes all the way up to Alexandra Palace. It's a really steep climb but the view from the top is as good as any in London - possibly in the world. At night you can see hundreds of thousands of city lights stretching into the distance. It's not the nicest place to be after dark, however. Gangs of Greek and Turkish lads go there in their cars to look threatening, snog, smoke pot and generally reenact scenes from the movie, Grease, or, in their case, one assumes, Greece. There's a vibe of lonely lawlessness up there. On a summer's night, there's often a sense that you've entered someone's turf who doesn't want you there.
It's all go this week. I'm knackered!
I've been at Trinity all day with the group of students who are working on excerpts from the Lady Killers musical. I'm really rather impressed by what I'm witnessing, and genuinely not feeling the need to intervene too often. The students are working harmoniously, taking risks and achieving great things. Lawrence has written some really lovely music. Catchy tunes. Fabulous jazz sequences. It's being performed by a band of fourteen very high-calibre musicians who are, in the process of rehearsing, taking steps into the crazy world of actor-musicianship. Some have proved to be more convincing actors than others. I gave them all a talk today about looking self-conscious, but, as someone who did a straight music degree, I know exactly which world they come from, and it's one where hiding behind a music stand feels like the safest place to be. We're also working with some of the students on the opera course, whom, though great actors, are a little lacking in conventional stage craft. It's difficult to know how to address a fundamental issue like this in such a limited rehearsal period when there's so much else to do.
Obviously, with so many live musicians, and a massively boomy rehearsal space, we're having some issues with sound (problems with sound in a musical? Get away with you!) but we did a run tonight and have all day tomorrow to rehearse, so they're bang on schedule for a day of finessing and refinement.
I'm pleased to say that Lawrence took my advice when I suggested recording the three songs we're working on in a proper studio. We're doing that on Friday and it will almost certainly provide everyone involved with something they can feel proud of long into the future. I emerged from York University with a single cassette recording of a few compositions I wrote whilst studying. It was this tape which got me my first professional gig with Arnold Wesker, and from then on I've never looked back, always placing recording my compositions right at the top of my creative agenda. You can never take a recording away from someone. A live event is film-flam by comparison.
I spent the evening with Llio who is singing a song from Em at the next MMD cabaret. She's going to do it beautifully if tonight is anything to go by. We got a bit hysterical at one point because she handed me a cup of tea, and in the process of putting on the table next to me managed to pour half the cup of tea she was holding in her other hand directly into my bag. It was like one of those scenes in the farces where someone viciously pours custard into someone's hat and then forces them to put it on!
I came home via the road which goes all the way up to Alexandra Palace. It's a really steep climb but the view from the top is as good as any in London - possibly in the world. At night you can see hundreds of thousands of city lights stretching into the distance. It's not the nicest place to be after dark, however. Gangs of Greek and Turkish lads go there in their cars to look threatening, snog, smoke pot and generally reenact scenes from the movie, Grease, or, in their case, one assumes, Greece. There's a vibe of lonely lawlessness up there. On a summer's night, there's often a sense that you've entered someone's turf who doesn't want you there.
It's all go this week. I'm knackered!
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