The session

The day started with breakfast, Israeli style, in a little American-themed cafe on Dizengoff. Israeli breakfast usually involves a side of salad, which just feels wrong!

Today was the big day. The reason why we’re in Israel.

We took a taxi up to the University of Tel Aviv where we recorded the music for 100 Faces with the Israel Camerata. Michael conducted in the concert hall. I hid in the control room with a chap called Rafi who was engineering the session.

We had a lot to record and 100 Faces is not an easy composition. I realised as soon as I’d finished writing it that it was going to sit very squarely in the English string orchestra tradition. There are more than a few shades of Vaughan Williams and Elgar within, but, for a film which is very much about British Jewish people, that feels entirely appropriate.

The orchestra, however, don’t really have English Musical Renaissance as one of their points of reference. Most of them are Russian Jews, many of whom came to Israel in the 1990s after the collapse of communism. I kept wondering what they were thinking: whether they were enjoying the music, relating it somehow to their own musical influences, or just telephoning in their performances in a slightly perplexed manner!

What immediately became apparent was that the orchestra weren’t at all used to playing to a click track (namely the little ticking noise they hear through headphones as they play to keep them strictly in time.) They’re a proper concert chamber orchestra, so their currency is live performance where they cling to the vapour trail of the conductor’s baton. Click tracks for them are confusing and restrictive - and they made their feelings in this regard very clear!

Perhaps as a result, the session felt a little fraught on occasion and what we’ve recorded isn’t by any means perfect because no one could have achieved perfection in just three hours. They are, however, a brilliant orchestra full of quite sublime players, so much of what we recorded was wonderful.

After the session I tried to pay the orchestra and immediately entered a hell zone, entirely created by Barclays Bank, who kept me on the phone for 2 hours (at £1.80 a minute), putting me on hold, making me talk to the fraud team, sending me in ever-decreasing circles. It was a dreadful experience and it utterly ruined any joy I’d had during the session or any desire we had to celebrate. In the end Michael had to pay the orchestra (taking out an over draft in the process). I don’t think I’ve felt so stressed this year. 

After a bit of food, I cheered up, and a lovely swim in the Mediterranean brought the stress levels down again. The beaches in Tel Aviv are quite legendary and it’s possible to wade a long way out before your head vanishes under the water. Rather large fish happily swim about between your legs.

We went for dinner tonight with Michael’s friend, Kobi, and walked for about an hour along the seafront, past the sad shell of a building where, in 2001, twenty-one teenagers queueing for a nightclub, were killed by a Palestinian suicide bomber. Michael was actually further down the beach in a cafe at the time and describes the bomb as sounding - and feeling - like a sonic boom.

We ate in Tel Aviv’s “first” neighbourhood, the charming and very quiet district of Neve Tzedeq. The cafe was in a little covered street which is accessed only by a door in a wall. It’s like entering Narnia through the wardrobe. It reminded me of Shoreditch in the days before it became over-trendy. We were surrounded by the cool kids of Tel Aviv. There were more white people with dreadlocks per square metre than in Camden Market in the 90s!

A DJ played music as we ate roasted cauliflower and green beans cooked in garlic and lemon juice. I was thrilled when he pulled out a copy of Frida’s Something Going On album, and played one of the tracks.

After tea, we delved even deeper into Neve Tzedeq, which grew more charming with every step. The most lovely corner surrounds Suzanne’s Dance Theatre, which is held up as the institution singularly responsible for gentrifying the area. The wonderful courtyard outside is covered by a canopy of tutus!

It was a charming end to a rather special day.

Terrance Aviv

Getting up at 4am this morning was a trial. Luton Airport love their shit o’clock flights, which is unfortunate because trains don’t go through the night to the airport, so, in order to get a 7am flight, you have to go by car. Thank God for Nathan who offered to drive, but ended up staying up the whole night because he got stranded on a train returning from Brighton last night and only got home at 2am. Sometimes it’s better to have no sleep than to fall into a deep sleep and get woken up with a terrible start.

We got stuck in a terrible traffic jam entering the airport. That’s what happens when driving is the only way to reach a place.

I met Michael at the airport, but, as we arrived at the gate, a grumpy woman rushed over with green tags, which I instantly knew meant that our carefully packed hand luggage was going into the hold. Boring.

The flight was okay. I wasn’t as nervous taking off as I normally am and we managed to get all the way to Israel without any turbulence. The landing was a bit like a roller coaster, however. The lads sitting behind me decided that the pilot was drunk. That didn’t help!

It’s hot in Tel Aviv, but nothing like as hot and humid as it was when I was here last year. The white tarmac in the airport was utterly blinding in the sun.

I’ve not been hugely well of late. I’m working myself into the ground and have trashed my immune system with too many late nights and early starts. I’m hoping the slower pace out here will be good for me, and once we’ve recorded the orchestra tomorrow, I can relax a little. I’d also love my sense of smell to return!

We took a bus from the airport to the centre of town. I made two observations as we trundled along. Firstly, that Israeli graffiti is more likely to be written in English than in Hebrew. And secondly, that the Israeli’s love to show people pulling really hammy faces on their hoardings!

We went down to the beach this evening as the sun set. It’s obviously much closer to the horizon down here, so it’s sudden lights out at 8pm. We’re two hours ahead of the UK, so it was strange to think that, back home, people were still basking in sunshine.

There was a huge billboard on the side of the British Embassy with an advert for the UK on it. I was surprised, and somewhat charmed, to see that Britain is being billed over here as the best place in the world for gay couples to tie the knot. Two gay men were pictured holding hands under Big Ben, with the slogan “love is Great.” Yes it is. #LoveIsEveryone

Tel Aviv is, of course, the gayest city in the Middle East - and one of the most gay-friendly in the world. There’s one reason why Israel always does well at Eurovision - and that’s Tel Aviv (which I’ve decided is short for Terrance Aviv.) Anyway, because gay marriage still isn’t legal here, I guess there are lots of gay men in this city who want to tie the knot, so the poster is probably rather spot on.

As we reached the beach, another giant billboard read “twenty years of Pride.”

The gay beach here is next to the ultra-orthodox beach, which is entirely fenced off (for modesty.) They alternate the beach for use by men and women. Today it was the turn of the women. A big sign outside informs people which gender is allowed in on which day and reminds those going in to behave in a proper manner. 

The beach at night assaults one’s senses with a riot of music. Jazz sax drifts down from the fancy hotel on the cliff top. Weird Arabic pop pumps away in one of the bars. In another, Mr Blue Sky suddenly dances its way into the sonic melee.

Segways and motorised scooters are the fashion du jour in Tel Aviv. I saw one man zooming down the middle of Dizengoff Street with a bouncing dog in tow...

We had ice cream before heading back to the hotel. I ate a raspberry and cherry sorbet served with a rich, creamy dark chocolate. It was absolutely delicious. We heard roars and cheers coming from a nearby bar where they were playing the England/Columbia match. I thought we’d lost. I now think we might have won. 

Avebury and fraud

It’s been a weekend of mixed emotions! Right now, I’m meant to be in Israel, for a three day break before recording the orchestra for 100 Faces. I would appear to still be in Highgate! It’s a long story involving passports which I probably oughtn’t bore you with because it will only make me stressed, but, in a nutshell, the plan is to go out on Tuesday morning instead, and stay out for an extra two days... it’s not ideal, but sometimes needs must. It meant I got a lie-in this morning, so the positives aren’t too far from the surface.

In the process of trying to change my hotel in Jerusalem, I discovered that I had been defrauded to the tune of £3.5k from my bank account, in, what the woman from Barclays fraud department describes as the “worst one of these I’ve ever experienced.” Hotels.com were next to no help. In fact, in the hour and five minutes that they kept me on hold, whilst trying to work out how to refund a defunct card, the cost of the replacement room they were offering went up by £50. The woman from the company took great delight in telling me that “hotel room prices go up and down.” In fact, she then said, “I’d suggest booking now before it goes up again.” She quoted a new rate to me. I asked if the rate included breakfast, and in the time it took her to check, the room price rose again. When I pointed this fact out, she laughed joyously!

I should point out that the fraud on my account started the day I booked with hotels.com, and that eight of the large sums of money taken from my account went to hotels.com. So if the fraudulent activity has anything to do with my booking with them, I shall be double furious. Of course, initial attempts at complaining have been greeted with a hillock of indifference.

Yesterday, on the other hand, was delightful. It was Nathan’s birthday, and, at 9.30am, Abbie, Little Michelle and the two of us jumped in a car and headed for Avebury. A year is not complete without a) a trip to Cambridge to punt, b) hollowing out a pumpkin on Hallowe’en and c) a pilgrimage to the UK’s largest standing stone circle, which is so large that an entire village lies within.

I love that place. It feels so important. Every time I visit the place, I feel enriched and spiritually revitalised. There is true energy within those stones. Furthermore, the weather is always extraordinary when we visit, even when the weather men (and Brother Edward) predict that it’s going to rain! It’s never rained.

We were joined in the pub in the middle of the stones by Nathan’s sister, Sam and Ginny, Paul, the lovely Kate and her hilarious son, Lukas.
We had a glorious day wandering around the stones, eating far too much food, falling asleep on patches of grass and laughing like nutty bong-bongs.

Highlight of the day was almost definitely visiting the wishing tree, tucked away on the edge of the site. It’s not a single tree, it’s a set of four, with interlocking canopies, whose roots are entwined and ripple along the surface of a chalk bank like veins over a sinuous forearm. People attach scores of ribbons to the trees, with messages written all over them. Others carefully push coins and little notes with their wishes written on them into nooks and crannies in the bark.

I read one or two, and found them hugely moving. “I wish for a book of kindness and peace” and in a child’s handwriting, “I wish that everyone dies at an old age and has a very nice life.” And then in the same little crevice, “I wish that my three beautiful girls have a long and happy life.”

We drove from the mystical rolling hills and winding lanes of Wiltshire into Oxfordshire, where the fields stretch for mile after mile, like a giant patchwork quilt.

The evening sunshine made the grasses and crops look like copper and gold. Clouds of dust billowed into the horizon where scores of tractors were harvesting fields.

We were visiting the Uffington White Horse, which is another one of those places which the year doesn’t feel complete without a visit to. For those who’ve never visited, the Uffington White Horse is an utterly primitive and prehistoric carving on a chalk hillside. It’s like a gigantic cave painting; a series of flowing lines, which might be a horse and might be a dragon. A giant eye watches over the Oxfordshire plain. At the foot of the horse is the man-made hillock where St George is said to have slain the dragon.

They’ve fenced off the horse itself to protect it from erosion. A temporary measure, they say, but I have a horrible feeling that the days of sitting in Paganesque circles around the eye are gone for good.

It’s a windswept spot. A skylark was hovering in the air above us. I think he was looking for a gentlemen friend because he was relentlessly singing. We must have been there for at least an hour, and his whistling never once stopped. That’s the ultra-obsessive behaviour of one of nature’s men for you!

We walked a mile or so back to the car as the sun started to set, and listened to the London Requiem at full blast on the way home. One of the quotes I found on a gravestone which I set to music in that particular piece goes “for what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and melt into the sun.” As we listened to that sequence, we were driving down the side of the White Horse hill, and the sun seemed to be melting into red wax. We all noticed and pointed at the same time. It was a special moment because all three of the people I was driving had sung on the album.

The moon rose whilst we were getting slightly lost somewhere near the confusing spot where the M1 and the M25 pretend to meet but don’t quite. By then I was exhausted and ratty and Michelle and Abbie had to pretend I wasn’t being a twat! The moon would have cheered any one up, however. As would the memories of our day. “One of the best birthdays ever” said Nathan. And I agreed.

Searching for civil partnership?!

I read a news piece today about Rebecca Steinfeld and Charles Keidan, who are currently going through the courts in a bid to force heterosexual civil partnerships to be legally recognised. As it stands, same sex couples can STILL opt for civil partnership over marriage, largely, one assumes, because the LGBT couples who entered into civil partnerships before same-equal marriage was granted, cannot - and should not - be forced to annul their existing arrangements simply because the institution no longer exists.

But let me make one thing clear: civil partnerships are not some golden little gift awarded only to gay people. They are the nasty remnant of homophobic compromise. Just as the Tories couldn’t bring themselves to lower the age of consent for gay men from 21 to 16 without insulting us all with an interim drop to 18, so the repugnant concept of gay marriage was tempered by the creation of civil partnership.

But as we used to say, whilst fighting for same sex marriage: “the same, but different” is not the same as equal. Rosa Parks didn’t make her stand because she wasn’t allowed to travel to the same destinations on the same busses as white people. She refused to move because her being told to sit at the back of the bus sent out the message that black people were less valued than everyone else.

Essentially, there is very little difference between marriage and civil partnership. There are one or two tiny aspects regarding tax which favour marriage, but essentially the difference is merely in the words used to describe the institutions. Semantics no longer matter because equality - in civil marriage terms at least- has been achieved. (Don’t get me started on churches...)

I can think of no logical reason why a heterosexual couple would want to have a civil partnership other than to be deliberately provocative or to pathetically shun the “misogynist institution of marriage” so that they can lord it over those of us who are married. Their issue can’t have anything to do with religion. Marriage doesn’t have to be religious. You can get married in a register office or a venue which has been marriage-approved without any reference to God. In fact, in many cases it’s frowned upon or even disallowed. I know someone who was banned from walking into a register office to the Beach Boys’ God Only Knows because of its “religious content.”

This court case smacks of the same double standards that these oppressive religious types get caught up in when they say, in defence of their mean-spirited homophobia, “what about my rights not to be offended by gay people?” LGBT people fought for many years for equal marriage and to hear a straight couple whining that they desperately want what we fought so hard to move away from seems at best churlish and at worst, insulting. If you don’t like the concept of marriage and the various benefits and problems it brings, just don’t get married. A civil partnership will bring the very same positives and negatives.

It strikes me that Steinfelt and Keddan are simply trying to prove a point - and this, I’m afraid, comes across as both tasteless and a little homophobic because it puts a massive finger up to the struggle we fought for genuine equality.

Oliver and the Foxes

I was awoken last night by a sound which I can only think was cats shagging. It was the most unearthly noise, but one which I found somewhat mesmerising. The two animals sounded a bit like babies crying, but the extraordinary thing was that they were matching each other in pitch. One would let out a sort of strangulated moan and the other would copy it. As the first’s cries rose in pitch, so the other’s would, to the extent that the noises started to sound like the wails of pleasure rather than pain.

We went to see Abbie playing Nancy in a production of Oliver in a garden in Earls Court last night. She was great. The role suits her enormously and I was very excited to hear her singing As Long As He Needs Me, which she did with moving panache.

Oliver is a bit of a weak show if I’m honest. It’s musically very entertaining and there are some amazing songs, but it’s dramatically frustrating. We never really find out anything about the characters, and most burst into song before we know anything about them.

The production wasn’t without its issues either, many of which were sound-related. An open air show is always going to be a challenge in this respect but there WERE a smattering of head mics so it should have been a lot better than it was. Sadly, the sound man didn’t seem to know who was wearing them at any given time, so much of the ensemble scenes took place in silence. In fact, to make matters a little more comic, we’d periodically hear people whispering off stage - “come off this way.”

In one of the songs, the only mic which was on, was being worn by someone singing hugely out of tune, so you could see thirty people singing, but only hear a sort of squawking noise, which was a shame.

During Abbie’s big solo, a man with Alzheimer’s walked onto the stage and walked right up to her, peering into her face. Quite how Abbie managed to stay composed, I’m not sure, but she didn’t come out of character or miss a note. There’s a pro for you! Eventually the bloke playing Fagin appeared and escorted the man off the stage, not before his wife had also sauntered into the action. Just after they’d disappeared behind a hedge, a huge gust of wind dislodged a massive sign on the back wall which subsequently blew away - all whilst Abbie bravely continued. I was very proud of her.

Gummy Brass

Back to the grindstone. For the next three days I’ll be back at Mountview School, resurrecting our children’s musical so that Andy Stanton, the writer of the original book, can come and have a look at what we’ve been doing. Apart from being utterly knackered as a result of really caning it on 100 Faces, I’m going to try to make the most of my last ever days in a building where I studied for a year in the mid 1990s. Mountview, the quintessential North London drama school, is moving to Peckham. I never thought I’d ever hear myself saying that! When I next work there, I won’t be able to walk there through the woods.

As I set off this morning, I could see a massive crowd of commuters walking purposely towards the tube. They get off busses in their droves at the top of Muswell Hill Road and swarm down like a sea of glistening angry wasps. I felt a great relief not to be joining them.

On the subject of Mountview, I think now is as good a time as any to announce that I shall be directing a production of Brass there in November. I was keeping the information under my hat until the creative team had been assembled, but I’m pretty sure we’re there now. Obviously I’m very excited, not just to be directing theatre again after an almost two-decade hiatus in TV, but also to breathe life into a new production of my over-sized baby!

Obviously, I have big shoes to follow after Sara Kestelman and Hannah Chissick, but I can’t wait to get inside the material and show the world exactly how I imagined piece. I am something of a slave-driver in a rehearsal room. I’m not sure the cast will be ready for the emotional roller-coaster they’re about to go on!

In the meantime, however, we head from the sublime to the sublimely ridiculous in the shape of Mr Gum, which will keep me busy for the next three days. I believe we have some of the original cast coming back. I’m excited to see who they will be. I can only apologise to the newbies! It’s the baddest maddest piece written since Mad Joe McBaddy adapted Cats for the Macclesfield Amateur Dramatic Society!

Be safe

A somewhat sobering end to a very pleasant day came this evening when I was witness to a girl being hit by a car in Shepherd’s Bush. It’s difficult to know exactly what happened. She was in the middle of the road. I’m not sure the car was moving particularly quickly but the impact was enough to smash its windscreen. I think she might have hit it with her head because she was lying on the ground, not moving. A massive crowd of people immediately gathered around, peering and cooing. There was very little point in my staying. Some people were closer when it happened and would have seen more detail. It was certainly a fairly chilling sight and I sincerely hope she’s okay.

It instantly took me back to my childhood when we were often witness to people being hit by cars on the busy A6, which hurtled through the town where we lived. Some were killed. A huge piece of graffiti down the local rec read “The Greatest Greg” in tribute to a lad who was hit by a motorbike. I myself was once run over. I was returning from a fair, holding a goldfish in a plastic bag. I still remember the sensation of flying through the air. I still have a scar on the back of my ankle. I don’t know what happened to the gold fish!

It’s a Saturday, which means I was up with the lark, and away to the synagogue. It’s genuinely something I relish, particularly on a summer’s morning. I stroll down to the tube in my suit and kippah, buy myself a lovely cup of tea from the little kiosk, and spend the journey to Queensway going over my music, whilst gently warming up my pipes.

The singing was a little scrappy today. We were without a conductor so had no one to keep us in time, and, crucially, no one with a tuning fork to give us our starting notes! That particular role fell to me because I have a good internal pitching mechanism, but, it turns out, under pressure, I’m likely to start things a tone too low. We had an absolute catastrophe at one point when our tenors set off a fourth lower than my starting note, which caused such mayhem that I spent much of the number giggling. Not singing made me realise for the first time that the congregation sing along with us, which was rather nice to hear. Perhaps they were singing extra loudly to show their support... or to cover our shame!

Singing without a conductor is an odd experience. On one hand there’s a tendency to listen to each other more acutely, which is good for pitching, but, on the other, a choir will get slower and slower!

After shul I took myself to a cafe in Holland Park and worked, for five solid hours on the music for 100 Faces. It was an intense experience. I only came out from under the headphones on one occasion and that was only to buy myself another cup of tea!

I had a pizza with Michael in the evening to fill him in on how comically bad the choir had been in his absence, and, it was as I arrived at the tube to start my journey home that I witnessed the accident.

...And now I feel sad again.

To those reading this blog who know they like to drink quite heavily on an evening out, please be extra careful when crossing roads. Even if the traffic is moving at a slow pace. Even if you assume a car is going to stop because you’ve smiled and waved at the driver. Even if you’re chancing it and think he’ll slam on his breaks because he doesn’t want to hit you...






Be safe.