Somerstown

Another day, another quiz. Yesterday’s was in the City and tonight’s was in Kings Cross in that curious district called Somerstown which runs for a few blocks north of the major railway terminuses. It’s traditionally quite a Bengali area and it’s extremely deprived: a stark contrast to the opulence of the British Library and the newly renovated St Pancras, which surely has to be one of the world’s most stunning railway stations.

I once worked in a primary school situated in the concrete jungle of Somerstown. It was a charming little school and I used to go in and teach music whenever there was a tiny bit of extra budget which wasn’t being spent on classroom assistants with the languages required to teach a revolving door of newly arrived immigrants from the Indian subcontinent. It was often heartbreaking work. One little lass took a huge shine to me and used to want to come and sit on the piano stool with me. She was a wonderfully musical child and actually had perfect pitch. The great sadness was that she’d been born with no eyes, so was obviously blind. Music wasn’t really encouraged at home. It’s often not in Muslim families. Staff told me that she would regularly attach herself to anyone who came into the school to talk about music. It seemed very sad to me that she wasn’t able to have regular lessons. Music could probably have offered her a way out of her predicament or certainly an opportunity to feel more of a sense of self esteem. I always thinks about that girl when I’m in the area. She’ll probably be about twenty now. I wonder how she turned out.

Anyway, after setting up the quiz in Somerstown tonight, I went off to write in a cafe in St Pancras station. I found a lovely quiet spot in what used to be the old lost-and-property office and had a cup of tea and an orange juice. A couple of women sat next to me and talked for two hours solidly about mental health. They talked about cycles, breakdowns, trigger points and “fear of representation” whatever psycho-babble that is. One of them said she’d banned herself from reading her self help books, because she’s “well now.” She said she’d put them all in a box so she knows they’re there if she needs them. Which she doesn’t. But she might. They talked in very studied calm voices but it was very clear there was a franticness right underneath the surface, dying to explode. What made me very uncomfortable was the fact that both of them were blaming their mothers for their mental health problems. One of them said it was a very important moment when her mother had finally apologised to her, which made me feel incredibly sorry for her mum.

Look, I know that lots of people have terrible childhoods but I’m just not sure it’s particularly useful to look to blame everyone but yourself for the way you behave. Part of the process of becoming an adult is learning to take responsibility for your actions. Yes there are exceptions and yes I am aware that I had a golden childhood presided over by the two of the best parents I’ve ever come across, but, by and large, most parents are simply doing their best under incredibly difficult circumstances. Bringing up kids is difficult. End of. And parents make huge numbers of sacrifices which it seems really unfair to throw back in their faces because we now have trendy terms for all the errors they made. Just be grateful they didn’t kill you and be thankful for everything they got right.

Football pundit

There was a bloke on the tube this morning. He was probably 60 years old. He had bad teeth but he was rather cool looking with a shock of grey hair in a fashionable cut. He was wearing headphones and reading a magazine about music. It instantly became clear that he was fairly high on (probably) ecstasy. He was having a lovely time singing along to the music he was listening to, periodically shouting words of encouragement to the people in his ears. He was bordering on threatening and I was quite worried when a father with a young daughter got onto the tube and unwittingly sat next to him. The man decided to start talking to the young girl. She can only have been about two and had no idea what he was saying, but he was talking to her as though she were an adult, almost like she was another bloke down the pub. He drew her attention to his magazine and pointed at a picture, “he’s a ladies’ man, him. A real ladies’ man.” Then he asked her what she’d thought of the match. The sight of a sixty-year old man asking a two-year old girl whether she’d enjoyed the footie was too much for the rest of the carriage, who had one of those rare and rather lovely London moments when everyone started smiling and making eye contact. When the girl failed to proffer a suitable answer to his question, he retreated back into his headphones, stood up and gave a very excited match commentary as though he were a pundit on a football show: “he shoots! He scores! And it’s 3-2 to Tottenham. The crowd are on their feet...”

Only in London! 

Quiz factor

I appear to be doing an endless round of quizzes at the moment. Quiz season is definitely upon us. Lots of companies are doing their annual Christmas parties and, often at the last minute, will decide they need a bit of entertainment, probably in an attempt to prevent the full scale, squalid carnage usually associated with these occasions!

Seasonal quizzes can be a lot of fun, but also quite draining because they aren’t for everyone, and, if they’re made compulsory for the employees of a company, many will disengage and fill their brains instead with the notion of free booze!

There’s a very curious phenomenon which happens during a quiz. The quiz master always needs to kick things off by listing the rules and regulations. Chose a team name. Make sure it’s written at the top of every piece of paper. No cheating etc. But whilst this takes place, a roar of excited chatter is simultaneously happening within the room, which makes you almost certain that absolutely no one is listening to a word you’re saying. The moment you say “okay, let’s start with question number one...” complete silence descends in the room. It’s extraordinary.

I always refuse to shh people. People will quieten down when they need to. One of the most awful sounds in the world is someone shushing people into a microphone. It’s a horrible, grating noise even when it’s not being done into a mic. I think people actually make the noise without realising they’re doing it. It’s even worse when someone else does it on your behalf when you’re talking. It feels very patronising; like they’re suggesting you can’t control your own crowd.

The brilliant company I work for, QuizQuizQuiz, really know their craft when it comes to quizzing and, over the years, have put a great deal of work into figuring out what makes a quiz go smoothly. At the end of every quiz we’re asked to give feedback about questions which have gone down well or particularly badly, and all questions are verified and painstakingly researched by the same team who write the questions for Only Connect. A question which no one in the room gets right is considered a bad question, and the majority of teams are expected to get between 60 and 80% of answers correct. If this doesn’t happen, a quiz master has incorrectly identified the demographic of those taking part. Rounds are encouraged to be as broad as possible and are usually themed with a gimmick rather than being specifically about geography, history or food and drink. There is nothing more demoralising or frustrating than being thrown an entire round of questions which you know, before they’re asked, you’ll have no hope of answering. I attended a quiz once where the music round was exclusively about Rat Pack singers. If you don’t like that kind of music, you might as well go for a walk around the block. The round on motor racing at the last quiz I attended was an all-time low.

I went to Brother Edward’s house tonight for the first time in way too long. We watched Strictly and X Factor whilst eating the most delicious Mexican fritters. They have a name which I seem incapable of remembering. Sascha made them specially after reading that we’d eaten them as street food whilst in America on our road trip. I continue to adore Debbie McGee on Strictly and continue to wonder what on earth has gone so badly wrong with the X Factor. It seems to have become a curious cliché-ridden parody of itself. I have no idea why they thought it was a good idea to have just five weeks of live shows. It strikes me that a show instantly falls apart when its producers continually try to update it. Bake Off and Strictly have proved that audiences respond best to a show which doesn’t evolve! There is something deeply comforting about familiarity.

European Capital of Culture

The news yesterday was buzzing with the story that five UK cities: Belfast, Milton Keynes, Leeds, Nottingham and, I think, Perth, had been banned from applying to be the European Capital of Culture in 2023. There are, we’re told, a number of strict criteria concerning which countries are allowed to apply, none of which a post-Brexit UK would fulfil. Of course the slant of the story was that this was another example of European cattiness and bureaucracy. How dare those bastards take this wonderful gift away from people who have spent time and money preparing their pitches?

Of course, I have a huge amount of sympathy for the teams who have worked on these, now pointless, bids, but I wholeheartedly support whichever European body has made the decision to pull British cities out of the running. We voted for Brexit. We’re constantly told that it was the will of the people, and wills, even those based on nebulous whims, have consequences.

There’s a fabulous arrogance in the UK which is fanned by the notion that we’re so important we can leave the EU, dump everything that’s crap about it and reimport all the good bits. We call the shots because we’re British. And great. It’s this same sense of entitlement and hubris which probably means that many Brexiteers still think they’ll be able to retire to Benidorm if they fancy it.

And don’t we hate it when the rest of Europe calls us out on it? A woman on the radio went on and on about the cruelty of the people who decided to pull the plug on our bid for Capital of Culture status. She regaled listeners with facts about the massive investment opportunities which were generated by Liverpool winning the title in 2008. And she was right. It’s a wonderful gift for a city and, my love for Leeds aside, the combined Belfast/Derry bid could have proved really important for the future of Northern Ireland, but we no longer have a right to expect to gain from these European initiatives. It’s like divorcing someone and still expecting to have sex when you feel like it. We made it very clear that we wanted to go alone, so now we have to face up to this fact and stop expecting everything to be brilliant. The economy is in tatters, we’re facing a second decade of financial catastrophe. Before we entered the EU we were known as the poor man of Europe. And we’re heading back there. Brilliant.

And whilst I’m talking about the news, I watched with horror the stories about terrorist atrocities in Egypt today. But I was suddenly struck by how much the reporting of news has changed. I want my news to be factual, not floral. I’m not interested in a journalist trying to use words to paint a picture of how awful a catastrophic bomb must have been for those involved. Let those people involved tell me or simply tell me the facts and I will paint my own picture. The phrase which really leapt out at me was the reporter saying, “they came here to kneel in prayer but instead they laid down in death.” Sentimental. Mawkish. Badly written. Just tell me the facts.

Noisy piano

There was a very odd light in the sky as I walked to Julian’s studio yesterday morning. It was mild, but very windy. Light grey clouds were skimming at high speed across an apricot sun. The walk along Parkland Walk was delightful. The tops of the trees were rattling and swaying quite dramatically but everything at ground level was incredibly calm and still. There were scores of autumn leaves on the ground. There hasn’t yet been enough rain to turn them all to slippery mulch, so, instead they dance in circles, joyfully skimming across the roads and pavements.

We spent the day putting final touches to the mixes on the Em album, and I think we’re within half a day of completion. It’s funny how a tiny little tweak here and there, half a decibel of extra volume or a minuscule reposition of a rhythm can bring something into bright colour. The only issue I’ve had fairly repeatedly is a somewhat noisy piano pedal, which is responsible for a number of clinks, clonks and groans throughout the album. I suspect they’re the sort of real sounds which I’ll grow to love. It is, after all, these subtle noises which prove we’re using live musicians, who breathe and shuffle and feel emotions which they express and generate using parts of their bodies!

Crowd surge

I feel like I’ve been run over by a bus! We’ve just done a quiz in a school which featured some of the biggest crowd surges I’ve ever witnessed! Note to self: run for the hills if anyone tells a group of children that the prizes for winning are a) boxes of chocolate and b) at the front of the room (where your computer and a shed load of expensive equipment are between you and them!) A stampede will almost certainly occur which will involve an almost bewildering number of 13 year olds, all of whom will tell you they were on the winning team! The capacity young people have to think adults were born yesterday knows no bounds.

I have rarely been handed such a random set of answer sheets in such a collectively awful state of repair. Several young people arrived holding pieces of paper by the corners which were literally dripping with sticky fizzy pop, covered in great blobs of pizza oil and smeared in chocolate. At least I hope it was chocolate...

Sometimes, when running a quiz, you have to understand your function. In this instance, we were definitely there to facilitate the youngsters having a good time. Many simply wanted to eat crisps and Haribo sweeties, flirt and chat. The quiz for them was just background noise. Some of them wanted to quiz, however, and those who did, on the whole, did very well. One team, right in front of me, took everything incredibly seriously and eventually won, which was gratifying. The team which wrote “I’ve just peed my pants” for every answer in the last round, I’m pleased to say, lost!

I’m back to writing Nene again. The version of the composition which is being performed in Peterborough and Northampton in early 2018 is twice the length. It feels like an old friend, but it’s a little difficult to crack into. The piece rattles through scores of different keys, and inserting sections is proving to be a little tricky from a technical perspective. I’ll get there.

hitting the ground

I need to stop! I was forced to hit the ground running today, admin and a lengthy Skype call in the morning followed by an afternoon of preparation for a quiz I was working on in the city tonight. I feel I’ve done nothing but race around. To make matters worse, I keep thumping my damaged elbows on things. It’s amazing how often we bash our elbows without really noticing. I’m pretty sure that the accident last Tuesday hasn’t done any lasting damage, but the bruising is spectacular. I’m not sure I’ve had anything this impressive since I was run over by a car at the age of 10. I’d just come out of a fair, and was holding a goldfish in a bag. I’ve no idea what subsequently happened to the goldfish. I’m sure it got royally flattened by the next passing car. I still have a little scar on the back of my leg from the incident. I remember flying through the air in slow motion and Brother Edward, who witnessed the event, being very upset. I also remember how embarrassed I felt because I knew it was my fault and didn’t want the teachers at school to know what I’d done because thought they’d be disappointed in me. I also remember sleeping in the television room that night. Quite why I was set up with a zed bed in that room, I’m not sure. Perhaps I couldn’t climb the stairs.

The quiz went well. As quiz master I was also asked to auction off a football boot signed by someone called Zlatan Ibrahimović. It’s difficult to think of anyone less well equipped to auction off a football boot than me. I know nothing about football. I didn’t even know how to pronounce his name, and, after Googling him didn’t feel particularly drawn to the man. He’s apparently had his first name trademarked, talks about himself in the third person and seems to have a penchant for violence. Not cool. No one in the room seemed that bothered about buying his boot either. It was like getting blood out of a stone. The point about charity auctions is that they should never be about trying to get a bargain. They should always be about giving money and getting something nice in return... I was hugely grateful to the guy who bought it in the the end who plainly understood this fact. I don’t think he wanted the boot but he plainly wanted to donate something to the wonderful hospice we were raising funds for. One very brave woman stood up and talked about the death of her son in a heartbreakingly honest speech. It was very difficult to stand up afterwards and get everyone excited about quizzing! I just wanted to go home and have a little cry.