A nocturnal visitor

I have not been sleeping at all well recently, but last night, after watching Bake Off, I was in bed by 12.30, and, asleep soon after. 

What I wasn’t expecting was to be awoken in the night by the sound of tapping. Initially, I thought it was the open bedroom window rattling in the breeze, but I immediately established that it was a calm night and that the noises were coming from the other side of the room.

I lay awake, for some time, trying to work out whether I would be able to hear our next door neighbours that clearly, if, in the middle of the night, they started rattling about in close proximity to our common wall.

But the sound got louder - and more scratchy - and then it was definitely in the room, just behind my cello, which sits in the corner, in front of the wardrobe.

I got up, switched the light on, waited for a moment, and then saw the thing I was dreading the most: a grey female rat scuttling, at high speed, along the skirting board. Now, obviously, I am a great lover of rats, but even I draw the line at sharing a bedroom with a wild one. There was no way I was going to be able to get back to sleep again - particularly as she was now behind the piano, which meant every movement she made was amplified by the instrument’s inbuilt mechanisms. Wildly depressing.

So, I went into the sitting room and slept, very uncomfortably, folded up on the sofa like a broken accordion...

This morning, as I was eating breakfast, hoping the rat had become bored of my bedroom and gone back to wherever she’d come from, she wandered in, bold as brass, and stood staring up at me, for long enough for me to ascertain that she was indeed a pretty rat, definitely on the grey spectrum, rather than a more sinister black or brown, and not dissimilar to some of the rats that we used to keep as pets. “You shouldn’t be here!” I shouted, thinking, as I did so, what ludicrous things we tend to say when we’re stressed. As I stood up, she bolted, back into the bedroom, and behind the piano. 

And then it was time for me to leave the house to visit Bernard Kops...

What with the water pouring through the sitting room roof again, the damp walls and the broken draws and cupboards in the kitchen, sometimes I just want to close a door on my flat and run away as fast as I can. Being poor just isn’t fun any more!

A few days of summer

It’s back to the grind stone today after a pair of highly relaxing days. The grindstone seems to involve getting the car MOT’d and going into UK Jewish Film to officially deliver 100 Faces. Of course these things are always much more stressful than they ought to be. I’ve shelled out money for a device to copy all the various formatted films onto, but, despite clearly saying on the packet it’s large enough, every time I try to transfer materiel onto it, I’m told there’s not enough space. It is deeply frustrating. I am somewhat resigned to the fact that part of my mission in life is to make peace with the fact that I am simultaneously addicted to technology, yet destined to always be its slave rather than it, mine.

I had two away days on Monday and Tuesday after a very wonderful Saturday where I went walking on Hampstead Heath with Llio and Silvia, and then up to Thaxted for an evening of games with the family, Helen, Sally and Stuart.

It is always a treat to spend time with Llio and her mum, Silvia. They exude warmth, enthusiasm and openness. I took them to the pergola, and then on to Sandy Heath, that little triangle of land which no one tends to visit on account of it being sandwiched between the two roads which cut through Hampstead Heath. Sandy Heath, as the name suggests, is where they used to quarry for sand. It’s also the site of a pair of oak trees which are way over 300 years old and were probably saplings when Pepys was still alive.

There are a series of black ponds in the area which, due to the drought, were both bright green with chick weed and frighteningly low on water. Still, we enjoyed watching the ducks skimming the surface of the ponds, their bills wide open, chowing down on the surface vegetation.

We had tea in Highgate before I toddled off to Thaxted. The games night was being hosted by Sally and Stuart, a delightful couple of my age, who are almost certainly my parents’ closest friends in the village. They adopted two very charming girls about seven years ago and my parents have become their surrogate grandparents. Brother Edward and Sascha were also there. Sach and Helen brought delicious cakes.

We ate amazing food and played board games, including one where you have to guess the years when certain historical events took place. It obviously plays into the hands of those who have a “historical spine” - a rough sense of when certain things happened and how one event in history triggered another. Even with a fairly good sense of these sorts of things, it’s still possible to end up guessing a year which is hundreds of years out!
I drove home, watching a giant full moon in the sky.




Sunday was a wash-out both weather-wise and work-wise. My computer is very much on its last legs. Buttons keep freezing. Its inbuilt mouse stopped functioning. The good folk at the Apple Store were next to useless. I’m in a catch 22 as I can’t not have a computer, even for the 7-9 days it’s going to take to repair, but I equally can’t carry on with a computer which doesn’t function. A new computer will cost £1250. I can’t afford that. Even the Mac-approved “work arounds” - ie a slave keyboard and a tracking mouse pad - would cost £200.

To cut a long, and stressful story short, I’ve got myself a cheap mouse, and I think I can manage for a bit longer. Dull, dull, Mcdull.

On Monday, I went out for the day with Michael. We decided to head up the M40 to Warwickshire for a bit of country air, although I never need an excuse to be in Warwickshire. It was particularly lovely to have a chance to head to Stoneleigh and visit my grandmother’s grave. I was a little irritated when I got there to see that someone had had a tidy-up and removed all the stones I’d carefully placed there to say I’d visited in the past.

We walked up across the hill above Stoneleigh, and looked down at the little houses in the village in a scene somehow reminiscent of Beatrix Potter’s Mrs Tiggywinkle. Standing up there on the ridge, I often wonder if it would be possible to throw a stone and have it drop down the chimney of one of the houses. Preferably my Grandmother’s old house. It’s still very odd to walk past “High Beams” and realise it no longer belongs to her. It’s a stunningly beautiful house. I miss it greatly.

We walked back down the little tree-lined causeway which snakes up the side of the hill, and went along the river, pleased to note how well the oak tree was doing that we planted in memory of my grandparents. I was also rather pleased to see that they’d planted a community orchard in the water meadow down by the road bridge, next to the old shack where my Grannie used to go for her WI meetings.

We’d had lunch in a rather nice pub opposite Kenilworth Castle, where the staff were utterly charming, and after visiting Stoneleigh, we drove to Leamington for late afternoon tea. Most of the places were shut - it being a bank holiday and all that - but we found a tea shop, just behind the parade, where a family of Chinese people had created the quintessential English experience with a hotch-potch of mis-matched

crockery, chintzy decor and piles of home-baked cakes, scones and pastries. I had a cream tea. Michael had been craving a toasted tea cake with melted butter all day, but I know he was secretly envious of my scone.

Yesterday found us in East Sussex visiting Mezza, Hils and Jago with Sam Becker, whom I picked up in South London on my way down.




The journey down was easy enough. It’s not usually so effortless. There’s no easy journey from Highgate to Lewes. You essentially have three choices: East of London, West of London or through the centre of London, which, in fairness, is the shortest journey in terms of numbers of miles, but absolutely hopeless unless it’s the middle of the night, and even then, with these new 20 mph speed limits, everything takes forever.

We reached Lewes and pottered about the shops for a while, focusing on antiques. Sam was looking for a sewing box. Meriel was looking for a filing cabinet which was wooden rather than metal, but had a lock on it. As a therapist, she is apparently obliged to keep her clients’ records under lock and key.

The basement of one of the antique shops was almost certainly haunted. On walking down the steps, Sam and I were both somewhat knocked back by the heaviness of the atmosphere. My logical head suggests the heeby-jeeby vibes must have been something to do with the dampness in the air down there, but I’ve seldom felt such a curiously soupy air. It was, however, in that very basement where Sam found his sewing box, so perhaps the spirits were guiding us there!

We went back to Hilary’s to drink banana and raspberry smoothies whilst watching 100 Faces. I wanted to play the film to them all and I was very touched and heartened by their responses as they’ve given me a sense that I’ve created a more universally moving film than perhaps I’d initially thought.

It’s funny: the friends of creative types, those who are amongst the first to see our work, carry such a weight of responsibility. A mis-timed, or heavy-handed remark can absolutely destroy the crucial self-belief and confidence an artist needs to offer his work to a wider world.

The day ended in Tide Mills - a wonderful spot on the coast which bears the ruins of an old village and hospital.

We sat on the shingle beach, eating an ad hoc picnic of hummus and tomato sandwiches with chips, as the sun slowly sank in the sky.

Sleepy Hollow

I wasn’t feeling particularly chipper yesterday. I haven’t been sleeping very well: a combination of not having Nathan around, and the fact that we have builders in at the moment, who have a key to our flat. It’s most disconcerting to wake up to the sound of a bunch of men climbing up the ladder into the attic! As Fiona pointed out - who often sleeps up there - it would have been a little more disconcerting for her! 

I had a massage first thing as well, which may well have brought a few toxins to the surface. And then, of course, yesterday was also the day the rains finally came. There was a moment when it felt like some sort of monsoon was sweeping through central London. People were running for their lives! I nestled, for a time, under an awning in China Town, watching umbrellas being turned inside out, whilst great sheets of rain water surged along the tarmac.

I was in town to try to have my laptop fixed. My “genius” at the Apple Store was a charming Armenian girl called Maren. The news wasn’t good. My keyboard is screwed. It can be replaced - for £200 - but even if I had the money right now, I can’t be without a computer for the 5-7 days it will take to be mended as I have a whopping commission on the go in the shape of re-orchestrating Brass for the Mountview performances. So, I went away, hoping I’d be able to muddle through until such time as I can afford the time (and money) needed to remedy the situation. Ho hum. 

I did a lot of darting from location to location to avoid the rain. There’s a curious sense of camaraderie which comes from sheltering from inclement weather in a somewhat bizarre location. At one point I found myself in a doorway with a homeless person, a family of bizarrely tall Japanese tourists and a circus performer wearing nothing but a bunch of sequins and carrying a hoola-hoop!

Tonight was all about watching this year’s NYMT new commission. It was a long time ago that I passed on that particular baton on to Jake and Pippa, but I am always keen to support the other members of our ever-growing, highly-exclusive club.

The show was written by my mate Eamonn O’Dwyer who is a lovely writer. If you can imagine a blend of Sondheim and Vaughan Williams you probably won’t be far off the mark. The show was an atmospheric, brooding, ghostly retelling of the Sleepy Hollow myth, beautifully directed by another friend, Alex Sutton. As we’ve all come to expect from NYMT, the standard of musicianship and performance on stage was exquisite. What NYMT does brilliantly is these epic, large cast pieces where the commitment and energy of the entire cast becomes the star of the show. That said, I have to give mention to two individuals; Jade Oswald, playing a sort of Kate-Bush-esque weird woman of the woods character, whom I expect great things from in the future, and young Sophie Walker, who played double bass in the band. And yes, I am singling out a pit musician. My blog. My rules. People should do it more often in reviews. Bravo Sophie.

To be a writer

Monday was day two of knitting widowity, and, in a continuation of my plan to see lots of people whilst Nathan achieves world domination, one stitch at a time, I met up with young Josh for a walk, a swim and a picnic on the Heath.

It has become my ambition to visit the men’s pond as often as I can whilst summer is still with us, and I found a pair of Nathan’s trunks which I lent to Josh, so that I could introduce him to the joys of that particular spot. For a Northerner, he didn’t half make a fuss about getting into the cold water, which was actually relatively warm.

He calmed down once he was actually in, and was soon saying how pleased he was to be there. That’s the spirit. I’m not sure he quite knew what to make of the naked sunbathing area, but part of the joy of Hampstead Heath is its anything-goes, somewhat-subversive vibe. Obviously its nocturnal gaybo activities are well-documented, but it also attracts fairly large number of pagans, naked dog walkers and people taking magic mushrooms! People swim in the ponds every day. In the winter, they break the ice and dive in. Soft Southerners? My foot!

After swimming, Josh and I walked across the Heath and had a mini-picnic sitting by the Victorian viaduct near the tree with the hole in it. Herons nest on strange orange floats in the little pond there. A pair of them flew right over our heads, no more than five meters above us. It was a glorious sight. Heaven knows what keeps those giant, gawky creatures in the air. Flying looks like a great deal of effort!

We walked back to the car, talking about everything and anything, but a great deal of the chatter was dedicated to attempting to work out why it is that writers these days are so often expected to work merely for the privilege of having our productions staged. Almost as if the gratitude we inevitably feel is payment enough. One of the reasons I’ve chosen to start directing theatre again is that a director is far far more likely to be paid in this industry than a writer. It seems bizarre, but them’s the facts.

The glorious men’s pond

On Sunday morning, I got up at shite o’clock to drive Nathan and his sister, Sam to Heathrow Airport. The two of them are off on an antipodean adventure, which starts in New Zealand. Nathan is essentially on a knitting tour of the world, teaching and making special guest appearances at craft shops and yarn festivals down under and in San Francisco. He’ll be away for six weeks, which will be amazing for him, but distinctly odd from my perspective. 

I have a local friend, a Lib Dem activist called Matt, who suggested, some weeks ago, that I might like to join him one Sunday morning for a swim at the men’s pond on Hampstead Heath. It’s curious: I think most people would describe me as a proper “Heath Person”, but, apart from a quick dip on my birthday this year at the mixed ponds, it’s been about fifteen years since I last swam there. I don’t really think you can call yourself a Heath Person unless you regularly take full advantage of all of its natural joys.

I think, perhaps, my problem was always the fact that I’ve never been a big fan of gender segregation. If I can’t share an experience with my female friends, it seems somehow less appealing. The unfortunate fact is that the Mixed Ponds is by far the least pleasant of the three natural swimming ponds. It’s also much more policed as a result of children and women being there. Woe-betide anyone trying to take a photograph there, for example...

It’s strange, one of the major societal shifts I’ve noticed in the last thirty years is the way that children are dealt with. When I was a lad, there were places children just weren’t allowed to visit (including all pubs) because they were considered inappropriate for young people. These days, the emphasis is on all of us to modify our behaviour IN CASE children are present. Hence a teacher, taking a group of school children for a wildlife walk on the Heath a year ago, feeling she had the right to come up to me, whilst I was having my photo taken as part of a professional shoot, to say “I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask why you’re taking photographs.” “Because I’m in a public place, you silly woman, and it’s my absolute right to take photographs of whatever I chose to take photographs of - and I’m afraid that includes the children you’ve brought into this public space, who, by the way, are wrecking my photos, so could you take the little shits away?”

Anyway, this, and some of the ghastly shrill noises on the fringes of the #MeToo movement, have steadily started to make me realise that it’s sometimes rather nice to be in the company of just men. For a man who has routinely surrounded himself with women, this is a fairly seismic realisation, but as I’m so often told, everything which is going on at the moment is a pendulum which needs to swing in the other direction before it finds equilibrium, so, until it does, it’s rather nice to spend the odd hour here and there in an all-male environment, if not just to remind myself that we’re not all bad eggs.

I was certainly hugely pleased with the decision to go to the men’s pond with Matt. On a Sunday morning the place is stunningly calm and it is an absolute treat to bob up and down in the cooling, soft water, with 360 degree views of nothing but trees, hillsides and nature around you. Curious birds with long beaks share the water with you, and seem quite happy to swim right up to you as you make your way around the water. Parakeets squawk and fly over head in flashes of bright green. The water levels are obviously incredibly low at the moment. Little railings attached to the jetties, which are there to give respite to a tired swimmer, are plainly meant to be just above the water level, but these days, you have to stretch out of the water to grab one. It was at these ponds, and as a result of the drought, where the terrible accident happened two weeks ago, which everyone there was still discussing on Sunday. I mentioned it in my blog on my birthday. The fact seems to be that a bloke dived off the jetty, in a certain type of dive, which takes you deep and flat. Because of the level of the water, he went low enough to hit the bottom of the pond, and, in the process scraped against a pile of masonry rubble, which, one assumes, was left there when they built, or rebuilt the jetty. He managed to cut his entire stomach open, and was rushed to hospital for major surgery. The good news is that he has now been sent home, no doubt very relieved to be alive.

As a result of the accident, there are now signs up everywhere telling people how to safely dive. Fortunately, I’m not a diver!

I left the ponds wondering how on Earth it could be that I’ve not been there for so long, feeling massively grateful to Matt for reminding me what a stunning place it is.

In Nathan’s absence, I have realised that part of my task is to make sure I see lots of people. I am a fairly natural hermit who will quite happily go underground for days on end. That’s okay when you live with someone because, at the end of the day, they can jolt you back into the land of the living. So, I’ve decided, whilst Nathan is away, that no day must pass without some form of facial contact with someone I know.

Later in the day, I took myself off for lunch with Michael in Soho. We went to my favourite Mediterranean cafe on Berwick Street, which, judging by the sudden price hike, is everyone else’s favourite Mediterranean cafe. Or no-one’s... and is making a last-ditched attempt to make ends meet. It’s a lovely spot. You can sit outside and watch the good folk of Soho parading. Twenty years ago, everyone who passed by would have been a freak, an eccentric, a drug addict, a sex worker or some sort of fabulous club kid. These days they’re mostly tourists. 

From Soho, we went to Jermyn Street, the home of high-end Gentlemen’s fashion. It’s one of those places where you mostly only window shop. Everything is beautiful. Most things are desperately expensive. It’s where you’d go to buy all the things I aspire to wear. Beautiful, felt, button-down braces and bow ties in every colour of the rainbow. Glorious suits. Fabulous Loake shoes. Proper hats. Classic cufflinks. Smoking gowns. Brocade waistcoats. I mean, it’s probably rather good that I don’t have the money to shop there, because I’d end up looking like a tragic extra from a Merchant Ivory film! We can but dream. And what is life, then, but a dream?

Finished!

At about noon on Friday, we finally finished the edit on 100 Faces, which means I’m done and dusted and the film is ready for delivery. I feel a palpable sense of both pride and relief. I’ve worked pretty much full time on the project since February. As readers of this blog will know, it’s been a true labour of love. At times, it’s been incredibly hard work, and it certainly hasn’t been without its stresses, but the process has been rewarding from beginning to end. I feel truly immersed now in the UK Jewish community and feel, all the way through, that I have been wholeheartedly supported. Almost everyone who’s heard about the project feels like they’ve seen it as a very precious thing. It has been a great joy to describe it to people and see the lights coming on in their eyes as they get a sense of what we’ve been trying to achieve.

The last two days of the edit were something of a breeze. We finished at 3pm on Thursday and spent Friday morning making a few tweaks before exporting the film.

The ease was largely generated by Keith’s decision to grade the film - and convert it into black and white - in the week since we did the first round of editing. At the same time, PK was working on the spoken word element in the film, adding subtle and artistic sonic effects, so that it balanced the singing side of things. His work was, as always, remarkable. I’ve often said that the joy about PK is his ability to invent a special reverb effect which has the power to instantly bring a person to tears. I don’t even know if he does it deliberately. There may well be an element of serendipity, but I think a great deal of it is the instinct which comes from a forty-year career working in recording studios. He engineered Depeche Mode and Erasure albums. The man is a legend. 

On Wednesday night the track was digitally sent up to the Isle of Skye to be mastered by Denis Blackham, who is another complete legend in his field. There’s something rather magical about the idea that the music could be recorded in Tel Aviv, mixed in Worthing and mastered in the Inner Hebrides before being laid onto visuals in Skelmersdale, Lancashire.

Keith has done a staggeringly good job of filming, editing and grading the film. I feel genuinely enriched as a result of having that man in my life. He never complains (except about traffic), I’ve never once had the feeling that he isn’t thrilled to be a part of the film we’re working on, and the quality of his craftsmanship is second to none. 

Add Andrei into the equation, who Keith and I have both agreed is the best Soundman either of us have worked with, and you’ve got a winning team.

Mitch and Max did a lot of administrative grunt-work in the office and Michael exec produced the film as well as conducting the orchestra and working with some of the vocalists on the shoots, but that’s it for the team. Budget necessities and common sense forced us all to multi-task, but I genuinely don’t think people will believe that a film as complicated and ambitious as 100 Faces was essentially created by eight men: four Jewish, four not.

The film is lovely. Whether it stands a chance of finding an audience outside the Jewish community is another matter. It IS very Jewish. I didn’t want to use subtitles for the Hebrew and Yiddish, or make people temper their language for those outside of the community who might not know words like “shul” “frum” “Shabbat” “hamentashen” and “kneidlach.” Perhaps it loses a bit of universality as a result. I don’t know. I hope not, in fact I’d be devastated if this were the case. I want non-Jewish people to watch this film and see a diverse, yet utterly accessible and familiar set of people.

St Helens

I’m in St Helens, which I think is in Lancashire. It might be in Cheshire. It’s a fairly grim, unremarkable sort of place, which could be any number of Midlands or Northern towns. When I see a place like this, I start to truly understand what it feels to be invisible. So much is being said and written about representation at the moment. I watched a bit of BBC Breakfast with interviews with Emma Thompson talking about being a woman and a young, deaf rapper talking about his work. A gospel choir (quite rightly) sang the show out with a tribute to Aretha Franklin (although I do feel it showed laziness on the BBC’s part to feature the choir from the recent royal wedding as though there were only one gospel choir in the world.) Diversity is one thing - but if you keep offering up the same faces, you’re hardly creating opportunities.

Anyway, I started to wonder when I’d last seen a Midlands, middle-aged, working class person being interviewed about their life, except as a quiz show contestant, or as part of a vox pop about Brexit or a grisly murder, where the task of the white, working class Midlands woman seems to be to say how worried she is about the children. Northampton county council has recently gone bust. It’s a big Midlands story. But on the day the council announced massive cuts, the BBC took itself to a town in the South West, where, apparently, another council was in trouble...

Get a rapper in from the Midlands and allow him or her to speak openly and honestly about their life, listen without prejudice (without accusing him of transphobia, homophobia or racism) and you might truly understand what a different form of invisibility feels like. Listen, I have deep sympathy for ANY community who feels undervalued or under-represented, but there are some communities whom I genuinely feel are demonised in this country and told to shut up every time they speak. And let me tell you something: right now, their lives aren’t a barrel of laughs. They’re angry, and they have the power to elect the first charismatic, right wing despot who sticks his head above the parapet and gives them a reason to believe that they matter. Which is, let’s face it, a basic human right.