I did it!

I’m not sure I ever thought this day would come! It is now exactly 350 years since Pepys finished writing his famous journal - and nine and a half years since I started writing mine. Pepys wasn’t a hugely happy man on the 31st May, 1669. He stopped writing because he genuinely thought he was going blind. As it turns out, diligently writing his diary by candlelight had caused terrible eye-strain, so the less he wrote in the coming months, the more his sight improved.

I actually had the opportunity to hold his journals in the Pepys Library at Trinity College, Cambridge. It was incredibly sad to note that, when he started, his writing was small and very neat, but by the end, when his eyesight was failing, it was scruffy and about three times the size.

He wrote his diary for 9 1/2 years, during a hugely exciting time in British history. He personally witnessed the restoration of the British monarchy (and was actually on the very boat which brought Charles II from his exile in Holland back to the UK). He watched countless friends and colleagues die of the Great Plague, then gave us the most vivid accounts of the great fire of London, before documenting the Dutch invasion of the UK in 1667.

I remember hearing an historian talking about Pepys and saying that his diary gave us more colour than any other document of the time and that later decades just seemed that little bit less exciting without his accounts.

Pepys didn’t want his diaries to be read by others. He wrote in a form of shorthand, and used words in Italian, French and Latin to further obfuscate passages which offered lurid details about extra marital affairs.

If you read his official documents and letters, the language is considerably more florid, and, as a result, far more difficult to understand. His diary, by contrast, is plainly worded - adding grist to the notion that real people didn’t speak in Shakespearean tongue. If we travelled back in time to 17th Century London, we’d probably have a far greater understanding of what ordinary people were saying.

The last entry in Pepys’ Diary talks about preparing for a trip overseas. We know that he went to France during the summer of 1669, and sadly, that, whilst away, his wife contracted an illness and died. We don’t know how her death affected him, because, well, there’s no diary. She is buried in Saint Olave’s Church, London, where my Pepys Motet was first performed in November 2010. Pepys commissioned a bust of his wife which looks down on the church from high in the ceiling. It’s a hugely animated image, almost as though the long-suffering Elizabeth were nagging Pepys as much in death as she did in life.

The Pepys Motet was written in Leeds, London, New York and Miami from January to September 2010. It is a 6-movement work, originally scored for forty voices, which were made up of eight individual choirs of five singers, representing vocal traditions as diverse as gospel, folk, opera, musical theatre and early music. One of the choirs came from Trinity College, Cambridge (where Pepys studied) and another was formed of five Royal Navy officers, to represent Pepys’ day job as a Navy clerk. Each individual part is unique, so at times all forty voices are singing separate lines. We recorded five of the movements and performed three live at St Olaves. The last movement was performed in a circle around the audience, which was something of a coup de theatre.

The project genuinely nearly killed me. It’s the most ambitious and complicated work I’ve written in a career which has been somewhat defined by ambitious and complicated projects. We rehearsed during the autumn and I rehearsed each choir, many times, separately - travelling all over London, up to Cambridge and down to Devon often in terrible gales. I’m ashamed to say that I lost my rag on countless occasions! The stress of it all really got to me. The complete insanity of the period is documented in this blog, if you read back.

Three years later, I was able to re-write the piece as a twenty-part Motet which was released as a CD. It’s still one of my proudest achievements. It’s a highly quirky album, which is unlike anything you’re likely to have heard. And if you don’t have a copy, you can download one at all the usual places, or buy a physical copy on my website.

The final movement of the Pepys Motet includes the last, somewhat wistful, words which Pepys wrote - exactly 350 years ago - which I will quote almost in full because this date feels like such a milestone for me.

“And thus ends all that I doubt I shall ever be able to do with my own eyes in the keeping of my journal, I being not able to do it any longer, having done now so long as to undo my eyes almost every time that I take a pen in my hand; and, therefore, resolve, from this time forward, to have it kept by my people in long-hand, and must therefore be contented to set down no more than is fit for them and all the world to know...

And so I betake myself to that course, which is almost as much as to see myself go into my grave: for which, and all the discomforts that will accompany my being blind, the good God prepare me! May 31st, 1669. S.P.”

I would love to take this opportunity to thank all the singers who loyally came with me on the Pepys Motet journey, some of whom like Abbie and Michelle, have become friends for life. Out of the Pepys 40 came the Rebel Chorus who recorded the London Requiem and the Four Colours EP. This composition genuinely changed my life.

You can hear the last movement here (definitely one to listen to on headphones to hear all the sonic detail. Read the text, close your eyes and listen to the words whizzing around... )

This is me with the actual diary in 2010... seems like such a long time ago

Quizzical

I ran a quiz in the city tonight. I am trying to be a lot more careful with the jokes I crack, as the modern day culture of political correctness has made it very difficult to generate humour about, well almost anything. Broadly speaking, if you so much as mention a minority group in the present climate, someone will misinterpret what you say as some sort of dig and leap to offence (on someone else’s part.) My favourite ever response to one of my quizzes was when the client accused me of homophobia and antisemitism. The former has happened on more than one occasion. I think I’ve written about it before. The only thing worse than genuine homophobia is accusing a gay man of homophobia. Particularly when you’re straight. And a woman. So be careful you have all the facts before pulling those sorts of words out of your lexicon.

Comedy, and genuinely not taking life too seriously, were some of the only tools LGBT people had in the bad old days. We didn’t have rights. We didn’t have the law on our side. We didn’t get to complain. So we cracked jokes - the more politically incorrect the better. You see the last vestiges of this approach to life on RuPaul’s Drag Race.

I was talking to my mate Matt the other day who thinks that we’re going to look back on that particular show in twenty years with our hands over our mouths in deep shock - just like we do with some of those misogynistic comedy shows from the 1970s. I hope he’s not right, but the world is so humourless at the moment that I think it could be the way we’re heading.

I’m pretty sure that gender specific pronouns will be dead in twenty years. Even tonight I found myself choking back the phrase “good evening ladies and gentlemen.” My worry is that there’s nothing polite to replace the phrase with. “Hello, good people,” perhaps? It doesn’t exactly trip off the tongue. I am certainly beginning to know how my Granny felt when I tried to explain to her that Dana International, winner of Eurovision, had been born into the body of another gender. She just nodded a lot, smiled and obviously decided that she hadn’t heard me properly!

I’m with her on the escalating cost of things as well. Just as Grannie used to thrust a few coppers into my palm and say “buy yourself something nice,” because she genuinely didn’t know how much things she didn’t regularly buy cost, I have started to be shocked at the price of almost everything. Train travel is particularly ludicrous as is, as we discovered to our chagrin in the last few months, the cost of rent.

We move out of our beautiful flat in Highgate after fourteen years in June. In order to find a flat of comparable size, our rent has gone up by a quarter and we are two stops further up the Northern Line. It feels a little ludicrous and we’re genuinely not sure we can afford it, but needs must and money has a habit of coming when it’s most needed.

Nathan and I are looking forward to a new home, however. After the continuous flooding, the building work, the thick layer of dust, and our landlord being somewhat cavalier about our suffering, the house has been quite the toxic home of late. We had a gas leak recently, which came as a result of a non-gas-safe registered odd-job man being sent round to fix our hob. The emergency man from British Gas said the leak was 100 times larger than any he’d expect to find in a domestic property and that we were in immediate risk of catastrophic explosion. He also told us if we decided to tell the authorities about the odd-job man, he would immediately go to jail with no questions asked.

It was a chilling and sobering moment!

Let’s start learning from the past

I am very worried about the world at the moment. During the night, whilst suffering from jet lag, I found myself watching the BBC rolling news. Every story delivered another little piece in the overall catastrophic picture. The piles and piles of plastic rubbish being shipped mindlessly around the world. Intrusive data collection by multi-nationals. The fact that Nigel Farage’s followers call him “The Master.” The fact that people I love and respect voted for his ludicrous Brexit Party. The fact that politicians are no longer held to account for lying. The fact that Jeremy Corbyn can suspend someone from the Labour Party for not agreeing with him. It’s all hideous.

The world at the moment is starting to resemble the political climate of the 1930s. In this country alone, we have a Hitler and a Stalin and no one seems to be looking at the bigger picture. It suits those on the right to call Corbyn Stalin and those on the left to call Farage Hitler but everyone seems to be blithely ignoring the absolute danger of the person they support. I maintain that Farage is the more dangerous of the two because he’s a single-issue politician with no manifesto, no sense of what he’d do once the Brexit problem has gone away, no checks and balances within his own party and the seeming inability of any of his followers to be at all perturbed when he lies. He’s an unstable, power-crazy, one-man-band and if you voted for him just because you want us out of Europe, then shame on you. Think of the bigger picture. Think what might happen when his thugs realise they’ve got rid of the immigrants and this country STILL hasn’t got its act together. Who will they turn on next? The people who need expensive medication? Trans people who require hormones? HIV people who require combination therapy?

Having come back from America where there’s a definite underclass, where only something like 27% of people with HIV are undetectable, where gun crime is out of control, where trans and gay people fear for their lives unless they’re wrapped up in the safety of a larger city, where middle class people who have paid taxes all their life realise they haven’t paid enough medical insurance to have life-saving surgery. I can see the future away from Europe, and I don’t like it.

We have to start learning from the past, or someone you know and love very dearly will be being marched off to a concentration camp and you’ll be too scared to speak out. Think, people. Before it’s too late.

Invisible minorities

Jet lag is a funny old thing, isn’t it? Here I am at 3.40am, wide awake, wondering whether to try to sleep or just acknowledge that sleep isn’t meant to happen tonight. I’ve just taken a melatonin. Do they work? 

I notice that Felix Klein, Germany’s antisemitism chief, is now advising Jewish people in the country not to wear their kippot in public. The remark reflects the sad fact that antisemitism is, yet again, on the rise, right across the world. 

I suspect that Klein, through his comments, was actually trying to make it clear that there’s a very large problem in Germany which hasn’t yet been resolved. The sad fact is that, in certain communities, Jewish people are not safe. The sadder fact is that all of this is happening in Germany. 

Here’s the rub: Jewish people, like members of the LGBT people, are a largely invisible minority. Unless a Jewish person “presents” as Jewish, by wearing a kippah, a sheital or a mogen David, or emerging from a synagogue on an early Saturday afternoon, he or she has the ability to blend into society, or to use a term which irritates me beyond anything, “pass.” An LGBT person, similarly, is only largely recognisable to others if he rubs society’s nose in his particular affliction by holding hands with another man in public, or dressing and speaking in a stereotypical manner. 

It is, thankfully, becoming more and more unacceptable to tell a gay man that if he presents as gay then he only has himself to blame if he gets beaten up. I used to be told this all the time, to the level that I was sickened by my own innate campiness and even changed the pitch I spoke at to hide my sexuality. I think back to childhood teachers telling me to “try not to lisp” or hauling me up in front of an older group of students and telling me I ran like a fairy. I was banned several times from playing with girls at school and, on one occasion, my mum was told that if I didn’t stop playing with girls I’d end up gay. I have always been proud of my Mum’s response to this little nugget of hideousness. At the time she was a CND activist and said, “I’d rather he were gay than a nuclear scientist!” My favourite part of that particular story, in retrospect, is the fact that, I’m her eyes, the opposite of gay was a nuclear scientist! 

Anyway, the roundabout statement I’m making here is that, time and time again, statistics have proved that people are more likely to show prejudice about minority groups if they don’t actually know anyone from the community that they fear. The people who complain most vociferously about immigration are often those who don’t actually know immigrants. People who routinely post online bile about women wearing the hijab, are less likely to know a Muslim woman. And so it goes on... 

In the fight against prejudice, visibility is crucial, and that becomes a great deal more important if the minority group is essentially invisible. If we don’t demonstrate the breadth of a community, the belief in stereotypes will continue to prosper. People only started to accept gay men when they saw us as more than mini-John Inmans and realised there were as many different types of gay men as there are human beings. 

In my view, the same is true of Jewish people. It became a personal policy, some time ago, to put my kippa proudlyon my head every time I left the house to sing in synagogue. I opt not take it off again until I get back home - or Shabbat comes down (whichever happens first.) As a result of this rule, I’ve been to my god daughter’s birthday party wearing a kippah, I’ve started quizzes, I’ve even walked into a church in Northampton to rehearse Rutter’s Gloria. I do this, not just because if someone’s in the market for having a pop at a Jewish person, I’d much rather they tried it on with me than a young lad who might be frightened, but because it means that people will see me in the kippah, going about my ordinary business, not looking overly religious, and realise that there are all sorts of different types of Jewish people. Religious ones. Atheists. Zionists. Anti-Zionists. Women who like to sit up in the balcony. Others that would rather be rabbis. Left wing Jews. Right wing Jews. LGBT Jewish people. Black, Chinese and Indian Jewish people. Rich ones. Poor ones. Frum ones. Disabled ones. I could go on and on... 

So, in summing up, yes, it may be sensible advice to protect yourself from the ghastly people in society by not wearing the kippah, or the hijab or an AIDS ribbon, but unless people are brave enough to be visible, then society will never change.

So, when you’re wondering why comedian Tom Allen cracks so many jokes about his sexuality, wondering why my husband talks so much about his HIV status, or are tempted to think that Jewish people are rubbing our noses in it by wearing kippot, remember this blog. And remember that open-mindedness can only come if people are brave enough to step out of the shadows. 

London ahoy

LThere really is a ludicrous lack of signage on the New York Subway system. You pull into most stations and immediately panic because all you can see is a dark void and a load of pillars propping up the grimy tunnels. There’s usually very little to tell you where you are. In London, you can immediately see which station you’re passing through. The station names are clearly printed on the eye-catching red, white and blue iconic roundels. In New York, the wording might be on a grubby mosaic or on a little sign attached to a post. There is no consistency, so you don’t know what to look for.

It gets worse, however. Take Franklin Street down in the West Village, where the powers-that-be have made identification considerably more difficult by turning the station into a tribute to the late, great Aretha Franklin. The actual station’s name is written on ornate and very beautiful mosaics, but they’re made from muddy brown and sepia tiles which are barely visible in the darkened tunnels. By comparison, the Aretha Franklin tribute has led to a large number of very official-looking sign-like plaques being placed on the walls which say the word “Respect.”

On my way down to Wall Street I got in a complete tizzy because I was trying to find Respect Station on the somewhat confusing Subway maps! 

We had breakfast in the West Village, at a lovely little cafe called Dante, where I had crispy croissants and Michael had what he described as one of the best-ever avocado on toast experiences. I didn’t like to tell him that Jem had already provided me with that whilst I was staying with him on Wednesday night!

It was boiling hot again, and we decided to walk back to Wall Street via the Hudson. There was a children’s play park down there filled with fountains and all sorts of cool streams and water pumps. I envied those kids so much. I was desperate to dive into some sort of swimming pool.

The hot weather sent us rushing away from the Hudson and back into Manhattan, looking for a shady street to walk down. We ended up in TriBeCa, which, it turns out, is a really beautiful and very quiet part of Manhattan. It’s filled with old warehouse buildings which have been turned into flats and little pocket parks where the New Yorkers walk their tiny dogs - usually dachshunds! The tops of all the buildings, which are normally six storeys high, are covered in the most intriguing-looking roof gardens: little oases of green, which must be wonderful to sit in with a glass of lemonade at the end of a hectic day.

We sat outside a little cafe. Michael drank macchiato and I had a nice cup of tea. The Americans are getting slightly better at serving English breakfast tea, although I did come across some up-himself barista yesterday who told me that my incredibly weak tea had been “steeped to perfection.” I told him to steep it again “‘cus this Midlander doesn’t like dishwater.” He got a bit shirty and started calling me “mate” in a cod Dick Van Dyke “fuck you” kind of way!!

Our destination this afternoon was the Museum of Jewish heritage, which, as one might expect, was a pretty painful journey into the world of the holocaust. There was a wall of photographs of children, mostly from France, who had been killed in the camps. One particular image of a pair of tiny little girls, probably sisters, wearing pyjamas, really affected me. It’s hard to say what it was which drew me so deeply into the picture. It was probably the level of absolute innocence in the children’s faces and the complete incomprehension that anyone could have looked at those two little dots and felt anything other than a deep desire to protect them.

...And then it was time to collect our bags, jump on the E train, and head for the airport. My T-shirt stinks. I’ve only had hand luggage during this trip, so haven’t had enough clothes, and had to hand wash a few things in the hotel. The (tiny) sink didn’t have a plug, so I was doing it all in the shower, and then I couldn’t dry things properly, so now I’m that person that people don’t want to sit next to on an aeroplane. I’m considering buying myself a new T-shirt at the airport because I feel so ashamed!

It’s been a wonderful, exciting, enriching trip, which really feels like it’s lasted an eternity. When I think back to arriving at JFK just a week and a day ago, and eating a pizza slice on 42nd Street whilst heading to Frank’s house in that strange gale, it feels like another world away.

I’m a very lucky man, and I owe everything to the Robinson’s Award, who spotted 100 Faces and gave me this wonderful opportunity. London, I’m coming home.

Dumbo

We went to Crown Heights today to meet one of Michael’s old school pals who’d left England in the 1990s to become a Lubavitch rabbi out here.

Crown Heights is a very low-rise area compared to Manhattan where nothing is less than six storeys high, and most of the buildings are considerably taller. The Main Street, Utica Avenue, is incredibly wide and totally tree-lined. It actually reminded me of some of the roads out in Mile End.

The temperatures were pushing 90 degrees today, and that’s the type of heat that can make me feel a bit panicky. I suddenly noticed how slowly we were walking. Nothing is important enough to hurry in that sort of heat!

We ate in a kosher deli and I had a delicious - if a little stodgy - plate of spaghetti. Michael’s friend, Haim, was very lovely. He arrived with two of his children who were as good as gold.

After eating, Haim took us to the main shopping street for the Brooklyn Lubavitch community, which is called Kingston Avenue. It’s got a lot of charm to it. It feels quite run down and tatty - this is not a wealthy community by any means - but I loved the fact that shops were blaring Klezmer music out onto the streets and all the posters and shop signs were in Hebrew. It reminded me of Washington Heights (if you swapped the Latino community with Jewish people.)

It’s the sort of highly orthodox area where you hear a lot of Yiddish being spoken and the men are almost exclusively dressed in black and white, with homburg hats and big bushy beards. The women all wear sheitals (wigs.) They take great pride in them, and I’m told some can cost up to £2000. 

This area is known as quite a hot spot for tension between the African American and Jewish communities. There were actually quite devastating riots here in 1991. The police were apparently so overwhelmed that they actually decided to withdraw from the area and let the two sides continue to fight. They have subsequently apologised for this decision.

We ate doughnuts on a step and watched the world going by. 

We took the subway down to the East River, at the point where Brooklyn looks across at the bottom most tip of Manhattan. We ended up walking along the most wonderful and quiet little road called Joralemon Street which is lined with mid-Victorian, brick-built, characterful houses. There are trees everywhere, and all the houses have little front gardens which the residents have filled with fragrant flowers. There are cafes with massive windows selling vegetarian food and speciality coffees and, nearer the river, the houses are covered in clapper board.

The Brooklyn pace is more relaxed and much slower than Manhattan’s. People sit by the river on benches and wooden deckchairs, quietly contemplating the view, and many of the piers have been converted into nature reserves and sculpture parks.

The wonderfully-named DUMBO (Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass) is the brick-built, gentrified-industrial, triangular area of Brooklyn underneath the roads and train tracks leading away from Manhattan Bridge and Brooklyn Bridge. No film about immigrants in New York would be complete without a sequence shot in DUMBO. If it weren’t for the throngs of tourists, ice cream vans and flea markets, it would be a magical and highly atmospheric location. As it stands it’s rather similar to Camden Market: lots of warehouse spaces selling artisan shite at vastly-inflated prices.

We went back into Manhattan en route to Queens for dinner with Ian and Jem. As soon as we pulled into the first subway station on the island, everything became frenetic again. An announcer on the tannoy system was blowing a veritable gasket, trying to get us to listen to what he had to say. You’d think we were being round up to be shot! It’s clear I’m getting older because I find the high-octane pace of Manhattan less exciting and increasingly irritating!

As we pulled into Jackson Heights, a storm started. Just a few drops of rain turned the air into thick soup. We exited the subway and walked out into a world of exotic Latino fruit and food stands, all nestling underneath the shabby subway arches. The most amazing smells of barbecuing meats, curious spices and caramelised peanuts blended with the evocative aroma of the first drops of rain on a hot summer’s day.

By the time we’d reached Jem and Ian’s the rain was falling heavily, and by the time we’d sat down in their living room, it was absolutely tipping it down outside.




Dinner was with a lovely crowd of Brits, Aussies and Yanks, and food was, as usual for Jem, delicious. Top marks have to go to the coffee and chocolate cake which was coupled with cream into which Jem had folded mixed berries doused in rum.




Heading home in the sticky, muggy air was a bit of a trial but we changed trains at 42nd Street which is on the 1 line, and therefore air conditioned, so everything improved enormously!

Choral services and corsages

We went into the village for a meal with Cindy last night. She chose a lovely little vegetarian restaurant on Thompson. She was a little late, so Michael and I ordered starters. I opted for a vegetable soup which was placed on the table almost as soon as I’d asked for it, in the style of the old Stock Pot restaurant on Old Compton Street where they used to want to get you in and out as quickly as possible. High turnaround meant larger profits.

My problem is that I’m not a huge fan of eating alone if I know the person I’m with is waiting for their food. I feel self conscious and then get food envy whilst they finish. I waited some ten minutes for Michael’s food to arrive and then stopped the waiter and asked if he could take the soup away, keep it warm and then bring it back when Michael’s starter was ready. The man looked confused, “I’m sorry!” he said, “I didn’t realise you’d want to eat together!” It was unquestionably the oddest thing which has been said to me since coming to the States this time. You walk into a restaurant with someone. You sit down with them. And the waiter assumes you don’t want to eat at the same time as them?! Bizarre!

Cindy joined us, and we chewed the metaphorical fat and caught up on at least a year’s worth of gossip, before taking a pleasant stroll around the village to a bar called Pieces where we’d hoped to see a drag show. Sadly the bar was very crowded and very loud. We were all shattered and the queens took rather a long time to get onto the stage. More to the point, they weren’t the finest drag queens I’ve ever seen and because I felt we were in for a night of crude lip-syncing and lame jokes, we ducked out. 

As we left, I was reminded of the time I went to Pieces with Philip Sallon about ten years ago. I had a ball but he was fairly unimpressed. I still remember him going up to the door man as we left and saying “you know what the best thing about this club is? ...LEAVING it!”

This morning we decided to go to an American synagogue to see whether their standard of choral singing could hold a torch to ours, so we ventured to the Upper East side.

The thing which I’ve noticed time and time again since being in NYC is African American people, obviously in deep distress, delivering endless, angry monologues to pretty much anyone who’ll listen. Sometimes the rambling is almost poetic and sounds like freestyle rapping. Sometimes it can be quite frightening. The great sadness is that the behaviour tells you what enormous gulfs there are in society over here. Plainly these folks could do with some help. Plainly they’re not getting it.

The synagogue was very large and rather beautiful. It’s obviously at the centre of a very thriving Jewish community. It was bustling and fairly crowded and no one came over to the two Brits standing at the back of the kiddish because no one noticed we were there!

Sadly there wasn’t a choir - and the chazan wasn’t fabulous - so I didn’t get my dose of spectacular. New West End, in my head at least, can continue to be the greatest orthodox choral service in the world!

We sat under a tree in Central Park, and actually dozed off listening to the susserating leaves and the park-like sounds which don’t change wherever you are in the world. Children laughing. Dogs barking. Mothers reprimanding...

We went down to Battery Park in the afternoon. That’s the bit at the southern most tip of Manhattan where the ferries leave for Staten Island and you can see the Statue of Liberty watching over the bay. Boats full of tourists left every few minutes, helicopters chugged overhead and there were quite a few people on jet skis. None of any of this was appealing, although there is something genuinely iconic about the Statue of Liberty.

We walked along the Hudson, back up to the World Trade Centre and ended up getting horribly lost in the network of subway stations all of which are in slightly different places, serving different lines, but seem to call themselves World Trade Centre. It’s a genuine nightmare. The signage in the stations is terrible. At one point we were in a crowd of horribly frustrated people looking for the E line, literally going round in circles...

We finally boarded an entirely random subway train where everyone was so irritable that a woman who managed to trip herself over on the heel of my shoe stood for some time giving me daggers expecting me to somehow apologise for her clumsiness.




...And then, of course, you get off the subway train in Midtown, and are instantly surrounded by even more fuck sticks, all stopping for selfies in the middle of the street and generally seeming to have no concept of what’s going on.




It was a relief, therefore, to duck into a deli for tea with Christopher Sieber before he performed in The Prom this evening. It’s Tony season, so he’s knackered. He’s not allowed to miss any shows, and every spare moment is spent rehearsing special material for the award ceremony.




On the way to the theatre I heard a woman, rather appropriately, singing Uptown Girl and suddenly started wondering whether the Pet Shop Boys’ dark, sardonic West End Girls was a typically English response to that somewhat perky American song. Seconds later, we walked into a cafe and, just as we sat down, Uptown Girl started playing, loudly, on the radio.




Chris was absolutely wonderful in The Prom. It’s a light, fluffy piece with a shed load of heart about a young girl who wants to take her girlfriend to a school prom, and, as such, it has shades of Everyone’s Talking About Jamie about it. The Americans certainly know how to put a musical together and those old timer actors in the cast certainly knew how to sell a joke and a number. It was a hugely entertaining and diverting evening and the crowd, particularly the younger ones, went mental for it. I noticed afterwards that some of them were dressing like the lead characters and wearing corsages on their arms.




We went backstage afterwards for a quick hug and a congratulations before wending our way back to the financial district, feet aching from all the walking we’ve been doing today.

Eccentrics and woo girls

I went to Christopher Street last night, and stood outside Stonewall for a few minutes. It’s a pilgrimage I make every time I come to this city. Without the Stonewall riot, the gay rights movement may well have run a very different and less successful course.

That said, I get a strong sense that the US is considerably behind the UK when it comes to LGBT rights. Some of the laws, particularly for trans people, are draconian, and young people across the country are terrified to come out. Christianity has an unacceptably damaging hold on society. As a result of all of this, there’s still a sense of gay people clumping together and creating their own family units in a way which doesn’t happen so much in London.

I walked past Monster Bar last night, and saw a large group of my siblings, sitting, in rows, watching an episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race on a giant screen. I would have joined them, but they are at least an episode ahead of where we are in the series in the UK. It was a touching sight, however. I love the idea of a communal watching experience. It reminded me of all of those stories of groups of gay guys in the 1980s gathering to watch episodes of Dynasty at the height of the AIDS crisis. Sadly, these occasions would often become increasingly less joyous. Some of those who sat down excitedly to watch episode one of a new season weren’t destined to see the last.

It’s Fleet Week in New York which means scores of members of the armed forces are in town, wandering about, rather merrily, in their uniforms. I’m not sure I understand the concept of Fleet Week. Maybe it’s about giving ordinary people an opportunity to express our gratitude to military people. Maybe it’s an opportunity for them to let off a bit of steam once a year, or perhaps they’re here for the Memorial Day parade on Monday. Whatever the case, they’re absolutely everywhere, all looking terribly smart.

Michael arrived in town last night, so we spent the day really “doing” New York. We must have walked at least ten miles. Probably more. From the World Trade Center, all the way to Central Park, and round and round in circles as we explored various districts.

We initially walked up to the West Village, stopping off at the 911 monument, which is really very beautiful. The blue prints of the two buildings have been turned into giant waterfalls which drop deep into the earth. The names of all those who died in the event have been carved into metal walls around the edge. Here and there, a rose or flower has been pushed into the imprint of a name, most likely by a still-grieving relative.

We went vintage clothes shopping in the village. As usual, I was on the look out for cufflinks and found a lovely pair from the late 1960s. Aside from being Fleet Week, today was obviously also graduation day for a lot of university students. Large groups of be-robed individuals were standing under the arch in Washington Square Gardens having their photographs taking by proud relatives.

From the village, we made our way to the High Line, a rather amazing walkway which follows the route of an old goods railway line. Over the last twenty or so years, it’s been lovingly landscaped. When I first came to New York, only a single ten-block section was open. It now stretches all the way up to 34th Street. If anything it’s now too crowded. We shuffled along behind long queues of tourists, all randomly photographing pieces of sculpture, with no idea what the works of art were actually all about!

We had lunch in the bustling mid town. It’s not an area I like a great deal. It’s smelly, hectic and full of very angry, shouty, insane and impatient people, but it’s also where the theatres are, so it’s a somewhat necessary evil as we wanted to buy tickets for The Prom, which stars my good friend Christopher. And just as I was pointing out Christopher on a photograph outside the theatre, the man himself appeared behind us. It was lovely to chat and I’m very much looking forward to seeing the show on Saturday night.

From the hell of Midtown, we found ourselves in the calm oasis of Central Park which, today, seemed to smell a lot of incense. That’s not a euphemism for dope, although we did walk through clouds of that as well. It genuinely smelt like a catholic church! I have no idea why. We walked around the boating lake and into that lovely peaceful wooded area filled with the art nouveau lamp posts, which felt cooling and calming.

It’s certainly a place which attracts fairly quirky people. Two trombonists were sitting under a tree playing The March of the Valkyries, which was, well, fairly eccentric.



Speaking of eccentric, we went for a wee in the gents loo in the park and were mid flow at the urinals when we realised women, bored of queuing for the ladies’, were running into the gents loo and using the cubical. Call me prudish, but I don’t think that’s anything like okay. It’s embarrassing in the extreme when a woman comes in, particularly if she’s also saying something facile like “don’t worry I’ve seen it all before.” Imagine if a man walked into a ladies loo, opened the cubicle door and said, “it’s okay, I’m gay, not a pervert, I just want to blow my nose and there’s no paper in the gents!” It has to work both ways, and if some women are scared even of a trans women using the cubical next to theirs, then it is certainly not okay for a woman to walk in on a man actively peeing. Double standards.




We exited the hotel in the evening into that blinding, crisp, yellowing light which is very specific to Manhattan in the hour before dusk. It’s a photographer’s dream. It’s an atmospheric, timeless sort of light which instantly triggers nostalgia. Michael was trying to take a picture of me, but some woo girl walking past had better ideas, “looking good” she said, as I tried to pose, feeling highly self-conscious. She then proceeded to make her daughter dance behind me, so that any picture we took would be wrecked by a porky little ballerina.

The Oranges

Last night found me staying at Ian and Jem’s apartment in Jackson Heights, which is an area right up at the top end of Queens, near La Guardia airport. It couldn’t have been any better placed for my fight from Pittsburgh, in fact the taxi driver got incredibly angry when I told him the address because, he said, the trip was hardly worth his while.

I’m told Jackson Heights was largely built in the 1950s, specifically as a district of cooperative tenement housing, none of which was allowed to exceed six storeys in height. All the streets are treelined and it’s a very charming area which seems to have attracted a large Latino community.

Ian and Jem’s flat, on the fourth floor, is very lovely. It’s light, it’s got a good flow, it’s airy and incredibly homely. Jem and I cooked pizza and took a twilight stroll around the local neighbourhood, and I slept like the dead in their hugely comfortable bed.

Jem rustled up crushed avocado on toast with an egg this morning. I genuinely don’t know how he does it. He is such a good cook.

It was a dull and grey day today, but a very large dose of sunshine was provided by my very dear friend Sharon, who, these days, lives out in New Jersey. Heading to her house involves taking the New Jersey Transit from Penn Station on Manhattan to the hysterically named South Orange. There’s a West Orange, an Orange and an East Orange (which was actually the name of a gay club in York.) Signs on the freeway advertise “The Oranges,” which is brilliant.

It’s all very leafy and hilly in The Oranges and Sharon’s charming little house is effectively in the middle of a forest. It was so lovely to see her. She’s had a really hard run lately so I hope I brought as much sunshine to her as she brought to me.

We went shopping in a supermarket. She was hugely apologetic about having to take me there, but actually I get incredibly excited about the idea of walking around supermarkets in foreign countries. I could do it for hours. I love looking at all the curiously-named products and seeing how things are all laid out. If I lived in the States I would miss being able to buy halloumi. Every American I speak to is fast to tell me they do have halloumi over here but I suspect they just don’t like the idea of not being the great provider of all food-stuffs. I have never seen it sold in a supermarket in the States. (Cue a rush of Americans telling me it’s sold at every corner shop...)

Sharon and I essentially spent the afternoon doing nothing but chatting. We picked up her son, Edsie from school and then, well, kept on chatting!

The journey back to the train station was quite dramatic. They’ve had a lot of weird weather in the US of late, and we were caught in a traffic jam at one point as a result of a tree falling onto the road. We obviously arrived quite soon after it had happened because the poor guy whose car had been royally crushed by the tree was still standing in the street, scratching his head. I am continually amazed by how much damage a falling tree can do.

I stood at South Orange Station on my way back to Manhattan and the train pulled in, but the doors didn’t open. A cluster of people on the platform shared somewhat confused looks, and waited patiently. After ten minutes, police arrived, and a man was escorted off the train and immediately cuffed. It’s amazing how many big dramas one little day can yield!

I am staying my last four nights in a hotel down in the financial district, which is an area of New York I don’t know at all. I remember walking down here on my first trip to the city, only a year or so after 911. The streets in those parts felt heavy and sad. I may of course have been imagining it, knowing the hell of what had happened here, but, to me, there was a tangible stillness in the area which I found very unnerving.

My hotel sits just underneath the soaring new World Trade Centre, definitely in a spot close enough to have been badly effected by what happened back then. These are the streets which would have been covered in that almost iconic layer of white dust. The panic and pain associated with that event must have cut very deep.

I came into my favourite part of the city this evening, namely the West Village, where I ate pizza on Bleecker and learned that the Americans call what we call Margherita, cheese. They call something else Margherita. What a funny lot! The pizza sauce was a bit sweet for my liking but it was a great spot from which to sit and watch the world going by whilst listening to the Bee Gees and ELO on the radio. They played Telephone Line and I thought of my Mum and Dad.

And the winner is...

I can finally reveal why I’m in Pittsburgh. 100 Faces had been selected as a finalist in the Robinson International Short Film Competition and I’d been invited to the city to find out whether or not we’d won.

There were three finalists: Noa, Matan and me. Our films couldn’t have been more different. Noa’s was a beautifully-acted drama, set in Tel Aviv, about a young, pregnant woman, and Matan’s Film was a documentary which included deeply-moving, highly-artistic sequences of animation. I felt very proud to be in the line-up.

On Monday night, we met the charming Robinson family over dinner. They’re the good folk whose generosity funds this important award. The hugely glamorous and dignified mother, Judy, looks very similar to Felicity Kendall and the daughter, Heather, whom I adored, had more than a whiff of Little Welsh Nathalie about her.

The films were shown in front of a large audience on a big screen, alongside four other films which had been entered for the awards and received a commendation. 100 Faces was last to be screened, and I got quite nervous waiting. My main concern was that the film might seem too “English” for an American audience. We’d made the somewhat eccentric decision therefore to play it out with subtitles and actually, I think the audience really appreciated being able to read along. Because it’s a musical film, the music levels in the piece can sometimes be a little engulfing, especially for older ears, so I think it was a good call. The audience seemed very moved and somewhat captivated.

I’m thrilled to announce that, for the first time in the award’s history, they decided to award a joint gold prize to all three films, so 100 Faces is now the proud co-winner of the Robinson’s International Short Film Competition. And I couldn’t be any more made up!

My acceptance speech went down very well. I talked about antisemitism and the great need for visibility within the Jewish community. Lots of people came up to me afterwards to thank me and tell me that my acceptance speech was “as good as the film itself.” I’m not quite sure what to make of that comment! It took me fifteen minutes to write the speech and the best part of a year to make the film! Perhaps I should just write speeches for a living - it’s a damn sight easier! A lot of the speech’s success, I’m certain, was due to my being British. Out here in Pittsburgh there aren’t a great many English people, so the accent’s an immediate winner. Whilst at breakfast this morning, one of the staff at the hotel ran up to me and said “I just want to tell you that your voice has made my day! You should be on the telly with a voice like that! It’s so jolly!” I wondered if she was mistaking me for Santa Claus, but took the compliment.

At the end of the night, just before having a little celebratory whiskey on East Carson Street, the lovely Kathryn, who’d brilliantly organised the whole event, drove us up Washington Hill to look down over the city at night. You get the most wonderful view up there. Twinkling lights stretch as far as the eye can see and then, pitch black and utterly still in the valley below, the river meanders away from its confluence, beginning its long journey into the Midwest. It’s rather romantic to think of the River Ohio flowing all the way to the Gulf of Mexico, through West Virginia, Cincinnati and into the great Mississippi. I remember crossing it when we did our road trip across America and thinking how impressive it looked.

I leave Pittsburgh genuinely thrilled to have had the opportunity to come here. It’s a stunningly beautiful city, one which has truly shaken off the collapse of its manufacturing industries, largely by embracing new technology, its pioneering spirit and, perhaps crucially, by honouring its roots.

As I head back to New York, I feel very content and am now excited to have a little holiday, hanging out with friends, and watching a bit of theatre maybe. Hurrah.

Squirrel Hill

I took myself to the Squirrel Hill district of Pittsburgh today. It’s a lovely, leafy neighbourhood, high on a hill, where a lot of the Jewish Pittsburghese live. It instantly reminded me of the Haight district in San Francisco. It’s not got the hippy dippy vibe, but the buildings look quite similar and there’s something about the way the local park tumbles into the Main Street which reminded me of Golden Gate Park. It’s much much greener, however. Pittsburgh smells of English summers: freshly mown grass and flowers. It’s full of birds. Cardinals are particularly pretty with their bright red and black feathers, and American robins, which my friend Matt described as “British robins on steroids” are, well, just as Matt describes!

I went to a Judaica shop to buy myself a kippah. When you sing every week in a synagogue, you can never have too many kippot. They keep blowing off my head on the tube! I’d had a shop recommended to me which sold tweedy-looking specimens, so I bought one and had a lovely chat to the lady who owned the place.

I sat down in a fabulous diner called Pamela’s and had an over-sized omelette. It was whilst I ate that I realised the kippah I’d bought was a bit of an optical illusion which made my eyes feel very funny. Fortunately, I will never see it whilst I’m wearing it!

I walked with great trepidation to the Tree of Life Synagogue, which is where eleven people were murdered in October last year in a brutal anti-Semitic attack. It felt important to pay my respects, and I stood, for some time, in the beautiful sunshine, staring at the building whilst trying to comprehend what had happened there. People have showered the place with love. There were little crocheted Stars of David hanging from the fences, coupled with messages of: “I hope you know how loved you are”, “love is always the best choice”, “always hope, always love.”

I walked home to the hotel through the charming Schenley Park, which is something of a leafy wilderness in the heart of this quirky city. A network of large roads pass through the park, many on large iron bridges. And just as in Hampstead Heath’s Vale Of Health, a small community exists within the park. Much of it sits underneath these curious road bridges, so they’re surrounded by green forests, yet, over head, the traffic roars louder than it does over the West Way. It’s a curious contradiction.

I managed to get myself utterly lost at one point, using Sat Nav to get to roads which should have taken me home, only to realise that the roads were in culverts or didn’t have footpaths. Americans don’t seem to like to walk unless it’s part of an organised trek. I ended up in a lorry park, hugely grateful to the trucker who helped me to find the cycle path! It didn’t really bother me. I had nowhere to be. I was simply enjoying the weirdness of it all.

I took myself to Point State Park in the afternoon. This is the spot at which the Allegheny River meets the Monongahela River and becomes the surging Ohio River which actually flows out into the Gulf of Mexico. It’s not the most exciting park in the world. There’s a rather impressive fountain, but nothing there spoke to me like so much else in the city.

I walked back to the hotel along the north side of the river. It was a considerably less lovely option than my charming river walk the day before. I found myself on a grotty cycle path, following the route of a deafening dual carriageway. I must have walked about fifteen miles today. My feet feel like stumps

I’ll leave the saga of this evening to a separate blog because, for now, I must sleep, and I have a plane journey tomorrow which I probably need distraction from! Watch this space...

Pittsburgh

There was a huge electric storm in the night. It was a little surreal because there didn’t seem to be either any thunder or rain. Temperatures are unseasonably high in New York, so thunder storms are likely.

I was staying at my friend Frank’s apartment, which is down by the Hudson on 42nd Street. He has wall-to-ceiling windows and is on the 16th floor, so the flashes of lightning looked spectacular. Great big, Scooby Doo forks in the sky. The sky itself was crimson and angry. It was hugely dramatic.

Maybe because of the storm, or because I was alone in an apartment I don’t know, I woke up in the night feeling disorientated and a little panicky. I watched a bit of telly to calm myself down. Surely US programmes are considerably shorter than British ones? The adverts seem to occur about every eight minutes. My favourite ads are the ones for medicine where a voice over is legally obliged to list all the adverse things which might happen to someone who takes the product; “may cause dizziness, nausea, drowsiness, manic episodes, heart attacks or death.” You think I’m joking?

I had breakfast in a cheap and cheerful little place just up from Frank’s. It’s the sort of no fuss joint which attracts the local coppers. I had a mushroom and feta omelette, which, as is custom in the US, came with fried potatoes and pieces of pre-buttered toast for me to have with grape jam. It’s always grape jam. I’ve never been offered anything else for breakfast. And it’s always delicious.

My internal flight to Pittsburgh took me to La Guardia airport for the first time. It’s a nasty old place, which feels rather low rent. You get herded like cattle through security and thrown into little standing-only rooms whilst waiting to board. It’s the sort of place where apples get wrapped in individual cloches of cellophane. David Attenborough be dammed! Like our carbon footprints aren’t already large enough just by being in an airport!

Our flight was delayed as a result of some sort of weight restriction problem on the tiny little plane we’d been slung onto. People were offered compensation to the tune of $375 to walk away. Four left, to great rounds of applause from other passengers. It was like The Price Is Right. The whole experience made me very uneasy. There was also a weird hot gale blowing as we boarded and the pilot was completely incomprehensible. He used the word “bumping” instead of “turbulence.” I like my pilots to sound articulate to the point of arrogance.

The flight itself was horrible. The plane buffeted, bounced and banked its way out of New York. I felt like I was in a car being lobbed out of a giant catapult. My palms sweated constantly. I didn’t feel at all safe.

The landing was even worse, to the extent that I wondered if I’d ever be able to fly on a small plane again. I ended up with a lap full of Coca-Cola! I was somewhat relieved after we’d landed to hear the co-pilot saying to the hostess, “well that was one of the bumpiest flights I’ve had for a long while!”

I was taken to my hotel by an Armenian Uber driver who was a lot of fun. As we passed the local jail, he waved and then said “that’s the jail: hey bad guys...”

After arriving at the hotel, I took myself for a very long walk along a road called East Carson Street which is well known locally for its many bars.

I have to say, on the strength of my walk, I really rate this city. Rather like Sheffield, it’s known as a centre of steel and iron manufacturing and it wears its industrial past on its sleeves.

It’s situated on three rivers, which carve their way through a steep, green tree-lined valley. Many of the houses which cling to the valley’s slopes look a little Dutch, with clapper board walls and steep roofs.

East Carson Street itself is rather arty and alternative with shops selling crystals, gems, tie-dye clothes and tarot readings alongside tiny independent cinemas and music venues. I was particularly intrigued by a sign in a window which read, ‘“Love each other” Jesus.’ There’s nothing particularly odd about that, except that the sign was surrounded by English flags and stars of David.

The road looks like something from the Mid-West. The buildings are tall and brick built. Probably late Victorian. A hot wind was blowing bits of grit and pollen into my eyes, so there were moments when I simply had to look at the ground and make haste, but I found the area fascinating. Periodically, an old school American truck would trundle past and I was immediately transported to scenes from On The Road, which became even more vivid every time a goods train, on the track parallel to the street let off its whistle, which echoed a perfect minor seventh chord along the valley. It was hugely intriguing and atmospheric.




I came upon an old-fashioned railroad crossing in an area of Victorian warehouses and my imagination started to soar!




I walked back along a river path, surrounded honey-scented flowers, hearing nothing but the rustle of trees in the wind and the chirping of very happy birds. At one point, a woman cycled past, proudly singing Material Girl by Madonna. It was rather lovely to hear. She was better than Madonna herself (based on her recent Eurovision fiasco!)



We ate in a lovely restaurant tonight. I can’t say anything more about what I’m doing here until tomorrow...

Welcome back... briefly

I’m in New York. The weather can only be described as balmy. It feels like the height of summer. It’s rather muggy. The orange, late afternoon sun is casting long shadows down the streets. A sort of haze is hovering on the horizon. The smell of singed pretzels and caramel-coated peanuts blended with the curiously sweet aroma of newly sun-kissed bodies fills the air. I strolled up 42nd Street, eating a slice of pizza. There is nothing better than the first food you taste after emerging from a long-haul flight. The fattier and more carbtastic the food, the better it tastes.

Flying across the Atlantic on my own was a strange sensation, which I’ve not experienced before. I felt a little pathetic at Heathrow airport. I’m a nervous flyer and as I walked around, searching for a WHSmith to buy God knows what in, I kept experiencing these nervous little twitches which I didn’t enjoy in the slightest.

I find sleeping on a plane impossible. The moment I doze off, I immediately wake up again with a bolt of adrenaline, which is always coupled with me flailing about and whacking the person sitting next to me. It’s irritating enough for a close friend but the poor guy sitting next to me today must have thought I was an absolute lunatic, especially when I realised I’d lost my mobile phone and had to ask him to get up to see if it had fallen down by his feet. 

He was suitably jolly about everything. I apologised profusely in my best impersonation of Hugh Grant and he was able to pass me off as an eccentric Brit.

Not that us Brits get to play the bumbling-but-kind card abroad any more. The Brexit wankers have given the rest of the world the sense that we’re hideous, self-important, self-centred bigots.

I hosted a Eurovision party last night and the UK was predictably bashed into last place. I would have blamed Brexit had the song not been a cheap rip-off of an X Factor winner’s single, circa 2004. We selected a lad with bad skin and no stage presence, who’d won a third-rate TV talent show because the viewers liked that he was an ordinary lad from Newcastle. But as a friend texted last night, as the lad shouted that his dreams had come true, “Europe doesn’t give a shit about your back story.”

European countries put up their best artists: wonderful creatures with astounding stage presence and brilliant voices. And we shove a lad on stage who’s just happy not to be doing karaoke down the Dog and Duck. I sound cruel. He’s plainly a great kid, but Eurovision matters too much to too many people to be disrespected or misunderstood by the BBC like that.

Of course, the problem is that we always kid ourselves that it’s political voting. Someone always cries that we were robbed. To that, I answer that Israel won last year, weeks after troops had opened fire on a group of Palestinians in the West Bank. Israel don’t exactly have natural allies in Europe and antisemitism is at an all-time high. Yet they can still win Eurovision.

So why am I writing this blog? It was always my intention to write one blog for every one of Samuel Pepys diary entires exactly 350 years after he’d written them. Pepys kept his journal for 9 1/2 years. A wave of brutal sadness on my part stopped me writing mine after 9. So, I figured I’d pick it up for the last two weeks of May, so that I’m writing an entry on May 31st, 350 years to the day that Pepys stopped writing his. Curiously, Pepys also stopped writing for somewhat tragic reasons. He thought he was going blind. By the end of 1669, his wife had died, so realising he wasn’t actually losing his sight was probably no consolation and the diary was never written again.

I end this blog sitting by the River Hudson as the sun sets. Lights from piers and passing boats are glinting on the calm surface of the water. It’s a warm night. People are sitting at picnic tables, drinking beer and laughing. I can smell barbecues, cigarette smoke and exhaust fumes. A family of Indians are posing for a photograph but the youngest son is attempting to sabotage proceedings to the chagrin of his Mum who, no doubt, just wants a photo where they look like a normal, happy family for once!

You’re never far from noise in New York. Cars roar, sirens wail, music thuds and thumps and people shout angrily at each other from car windows. No one comes to New York to relax. 

This is the exact spot where Chesley Sullenberger, that amazingly brave pilot, skilfully landed his plane after a flock of geese flew into his engines and the plane lost power. It’s unsurprisingly become known as the Miracle on the Hudson. I can’t quite imagine how I would react if, right now, a plane skidded along the surface of the river!