Water fight!

We're driving down a series of country lanes in the area of the UK where Wales meets Shropshire. There's a deep, earthy, smokey, straw-like aroma in the air. The smell of a mid-summer evening in the countryside. A giant deep yellow crescent moon is glowing in the sky just above the horizon. Everything feels nostalgic, somehow. Heavy. Laden. 

We've been at Nathan's sister's house all day celebrating the fifteenth birthday of Nathan's nephew, Lewis. It was roasting hot, and we sat in the garden for most of the afternoon, eating burgers and dipping Doritos into pots of yoghurt. 

The highlight of the day was almost certainly the enormous water fight which became something of a grudge match between me and Nathan's niece, Beckie. I was armed with an enormous water pistol. She was forced to fight back with two plastic cups. We stalked each other around the garden whilst the rest of the family took refuge in the conservatory. 

Nathan's entire family was present. His sister, her three children and their partners, his Dad and step Mum, his Mum and (might as well be) step Dad, and, of course, Little Renee.

The most amusing guest was Nathan's father's dog, Barney, who got overwhelmed by the numbers of people and started humping everything in sight! I think there is little in life more amusing than the sight of a dog trying to hump a human, particularly when the human in question is Nathan's mother holding her great grand daughter. Today proved rather conclusively (if proof were needed) that I am still a child at heart... And this makes me very happy. 

In the evening we did a general knowledge quiz and then sat around with a guitar, singing songs, before Beckie amazed us all by singing, word-for-word, inflection-for-inflection the whole of my Hampstead Heath: the Musical song.  Very flattering indeed. And a lot of fun. She knew it better than me! 

We've just had a bit of a nasty scare after realising we were rapidly running out of petrol in a part of the world where petrol stations are few and far between. With every closed garage, levels of anxiety rose a little higher, but eventually I found enough signal on my phone to download a "find a garage app", which took us into a little town called Newport off the A41, where we struck gold. 

There was a curious humming sound in the garage, which I recorded on my little zoom machine. I've started recording sounds across the country for a future project based around the ancient counties of England. It's long been a great obsession of mine to write an album of material which celebrates the beauty and history of England. Specifically England. I'm actually planning to write a work for string quartet and natural sounds recorded in the ancient counties. I've already recorded some fascinating sounds in Wiltshire, Warwickshire and East Sussex, but won't score anything until I've got a remarkable database of material. It's very much a long-term project. 

Reunions and anniversaries

It's obviously incredibly late and I'm only just arriving in London at the end of a day which seems to have lasted forever. In fact the only thing which has flown by was my journey from Thaxted (where I had a quick loo break) to London, which I did in a world record time of 51 minutes. Ah! The joys of motorway driving in the wee smalls. And in London every single traffic light was on my side. 

I am, however, tired to a point of panic! It may well be that I have to post this blog without any conclusion or any form of proof-reading. Apologies in advance for grammatastrophies! 

I spent the afternoon lazing in Soho Square; a sort of impromptu, and rather magical reunion of the cast of a play I was in for a couple of lazy Edinburgh festivals back in the mid-90s. We've stayed in touch over the years which meant the conversation was a pleasing mix of catch-up, nostalgia and planning for the future. There was always something very special about the group. We bonded like no cast I've ever been part of since. Four of the six of us present have now got children, but children and partners were left at home across the board... I think subconsciously we all wanted to feel like twenty year-olds again. We laughed a lot. And vowed not to leave it so long next time.

I hot-footed it back to Highgate on a series of rail replacement buses, jumped in a bath, grabbed my DJ, threw myself into the car and drove to Norwich, or more specifically the strangely-named town of Wymondham, where I attended the silver wedding of my first ever mentor. Catherine Stratford taught me from the age of 12 to the age of 18; history, mainly, before she became my sixth form tutor. She was a huge influence on me and a massive part of my formative years. We used to go and do her garden and she'd give us ginger bread and cloudy lemonade. She lent me my very first Charleston record and co-taught me GCSE history with my father. Urban myth has it that I got the highest mark in the country for that particular subject, so between them they must have done something right! That said, when you're the son of a history teacher, you tend to discover that you've been learning the syllabus from within the womb. I could never understand why the other kids couldn't date churches!  

Catherine is also the reason I went to York university, so without her, heaven knows who I'd now be. Her daughter has just finished her first year at Oxford, so is probably not dissimilar to the age Catherine was when I met her. They're identical. It was like talking to a memory! 

She came up to me half way though the dinner, flung her arms around me and announced that I was the only former student in the room. What an honour. 

I genuinely don't have the energy to write much else. As I drove through it, Thetford Forest looked extraordinary in the early evening orange sunlight. That place is incredibly atmospheric. There's something about it which is both sinister and alluring. Something to do with witchcraft, which I can't put my finger on. The trees are odd, somehow. It's almost as if they're watching you... 

And on that spooky bombshell, I'll hit the sack! 

Climbing mountains

Getting home tonight is set to be something of an adventure. It seems I've missed the last direct train to London from West Worthing. I'm currently on a crawler train to Brighton hoping that I'll be able to make a connection which will get me into London before the last tube leaves either Victoria or London Bridge, but because the current train I'm on is already delayed, I'm not sure this is going to be possible. I hate it when timings go wrong like this. 

The day started brilliantly with a full veggie breakfast on Hove beach with Fiona. How wonderful to be able to emerge from your front door, and be on a beach within two minutes! Starting a day with a blast of salty sea air is surely the antidote to most illnesses?

I was with PK in Worthing by about 11, and we were deep in the world of Pepys after a cup of tea and a fistful of chocolate half-covereds. I thought today was going to be easier than yesterday. We were working on the third movement, the one about the Great Plague, which is slower and far less complicated than the one about the Great Fire. It very quickly emerged that we had our work cut out. Many, many mistakes had been made by the singers. Whole performances had to be melodyned and really surprising people, people with wonderful voices, had obviously struggled in the studio. It is, however, time for me to acknowledge that the Pepys Motet is a highly complicated composition which requires near-virtuoso singing skills, so I have to accept 90% of the responsibility for the difficulties we encountered today! 

We'll get there and it will be extraordinary; genuinely like nothing anyone will ever have heard before, but every CD we eventually press will have blood on its hands! Mine, PKs, all the singers...

I'm going to come back down to Worthing next week to finish off a rough mix. It's no hardship. I adore spending time with PK, and his wonderful partner, Liv, always cooks something spectacular. Today we were treated to noodles with tofu, avocado and cucumber. Just delicious. My only issue is that I feel bad for PK. I brought him onto this project to mix two pieces of music, not give them emergency surgery! 

Part of me longs to walk away from a project with nothing left to do on it. White City lingers on, with Louise the editor struggling to archive the film due to the antiquated programmes and formats she's been expected to use. I had grumpy texts from her yesterday informing me that the traumas continued, and once again I felt bad! 

Fiona's beautiful musical Postcards continue to haunt me today. As a writer, she truly understands the art of simplicity... and simplicity is my Holy Grail. She explained yesterday that she'd spent half an hour playing the same 3-note sequence over and over again until it felt perfect. Perfection! What a glorious word! When I'm in a recording studio a sort of mania descends which is created largely by the appearance of the most ridiculous musical mountain that I'm trying to get everyone to climb which only reveals itself in full as people approach the microphone. It looms from behind a sort of calm mist, and before they know it, they're hurtling towards its jagged peak in a rusty old aeroplane! What my music needs is a Zen master! 

Readers who have embroiled themselves in the saga of my journey home will be thrilled to hear that I've made my connecting train! I'm desperately hoping now that no one's going to come and sit anywhere near me. I long to sit in absolute peace and quiet; a state triggered by a pair of teenaged girls who sat behind me on the train from Worthing to Brighton, giggling and shrieking at almost everything. 

...Unfortunately, I've now been joined by a pair of sighing lovers who are eating wraps and staring longingly  whilst touching each others' bare knees with hummous-covered fingers. They're going to start snogging: I can feel it in my bones, and I'm going to self-defenestrate! 

I don't suppose I have a great deal more to write. I have another manic day earmarked for tomorrow; drinks in Soho at lunchtime followed by an insane trip to Norfolk for the 25th wedding anniversary of someone whose wedding I actually attended. This makes me feel ancient... And rather silly, as it's just dawned on me that I went to the wedding dressed in Charleston-dancing clobber. 

And yes, tragically, I can dance the Charleston. It's the only dance my dyspraxic, spazzy bones will allow me to do! 

Night night. 

Postcards

7pm. I'm on the south coast, hurtling along on the railway line between West Worthing and Hove. I often find myself doing this route and it always seems to take much longer than it ought to to get from one town to the other. There are all sorts of strange-sounding seaside villages in between; Lancing, Port Slade, Shoreham on Sea. The light is amazing tonight, however. A low sun. Clean air. Everything deep green or gold. 

I've been with PK all day making a start on mixing the Great Fire movement from the Pepys Motet. It's almost impossible to know if it's going to be any good. It's definitely experimental, and quite epic-sounding, but some of the individual performances have left a little to be desired. There's a gaping gulf of difference between knowing how to read music and being spot on in time and in tune to a level which is good enough for a recording. It's intricate music and the slightest bum note is noticeable. Auto-tune has become our friend, and that makes me a little sad. 

Still, I guess the use of computer effects sends us in a new sonic direction, which is potentially much more exciting...

1.30am - I am staying the night with Fiona in Hove. Earlier on, we sat on the beach and watched the sun setting. A group of lads were sitting on the sea wall and were, at one stage, perfectly silhouetted against a giant bright orange sun. 

We had a lovely walk along the sea front and came back to Fiona's flat for pasta and I got to listen to her astonishing "Postcards"; a set of instrumental tracks scored for strings which are inspired by different places around the world. The sea air has made me feel very sleepy, which is nice. I'm hoping for breakfast on the beach in the morning. Perfect. 

Translating Arabic

It was the last day of editing on the White City film today, but I feel restless, largely because I had to leave editor Louise beavering away, so that I could get back home to attend a dinner party which I was supposed to be hosting. Poor Nathan had to do all the cleaning and cooking on his own. 

I really thought I'd be coming away from the edit with a DVD of the film in my hand to watch over a celebratory glass of Ribena, but it wasn't to be. I'm told delayed gratification is almost as pleasing as getting something instantly? 

The process of checking the grade and putting credits on the film seemed to take forever, largely because we're working on such a low-fi computer that every change we made needed to be rendered (consolidated) before we could watch it. We spent much of the day twiddling our fingers, looking at the computer and shouting "hurry up!" 

Still, it's done, and very soon this information will filter into my brain...

The highlight of the day was almost certainly our lengthy quest to translate what Islam the Imam said in the film in Arabic, which we blithely included in the hope that it was a positive message rather than a cheeky a call to burn the pope! The sequence from the film was turned into an MP3 and then a movie file and circulated on Facebook and via email with several frustrating responses. Several people "liked" it, others told me they loved me, some said "I speak Arabic, how can I help?" before vanishing into the cyber ether and Brother Edward helpfully suggested google translate forgetting that it only works when there's some kind of notion of the spelling of the word! I've not yet mastered the Arabic alphabet! 

Eventually, a friend of a friend pointed us to a young Egyptian lad, who dutifully translated, proclaiming excitedly; "this Imam is Egyptian! I can tell by his accent." We spent much of the afternoon (whilst waiting for the computer to catch up) Facebook messaging each other. I was much taken with the thought that he was in Cairo, fighting for democracy. 

Turns out the Imam's words are gracious and wise, "Islam means love, security, love and prosperity" which gives me a warm glow. I sincerely hope that most Muslims feel that this truly is the meaning of their religion. 

Light weight

All this beautiful sunshine, and what have I done all day? Errands... And then waited an unfeasibly long time for a 134 bus to arrive at Highgate station.  It eventually rolled up, all innocent, seemingly unbothered by the fact that its late arrival meant that my carefully planned day had gone to seed! I should have left earlier but didn't realise there were road works on the Archway Road or that they'd decide to change bus drivers on the Junction Road. To make matters worse, a man got on who smelt so bad that I was forced to breathe through my mouth. Every time I forgot and breathed through my nose, I gagged. Why does anyone take the bus these days?!

This morning I had to put the final touches to Rich Mix' bid to enter The London Requiem for the British Composers' Awards. It's incredibly kind of them to put the entry in, but I'm certainly not holding my breath!  So many pieces of my music have been entered for this particular award and I've never even heard back from them, let alone been nominated for something. I suspect the compositions that do well in the competition are much more serious classical works, and relentlessly tuneful "pieces of fluff" like the Requiem probably simply cause the judges to either laugh or implode! 

My music all too often conveniently falls between two stalls, which makes it relatively easy to pass off as "not quite right for the competition/ radio station/ commissioning editor / ensemble!"  The head of music for BBC Wales once described my music as "lightweight," which I found hugely insulting. Perhaps it's not the most academic or complicated music ever written but it packs a serious emotional punch, which hardly makes it lightweight. 

The other issue is that I'm always called upon to provide three copies of my work's score. This is a relatively easy task for short pieces, but the requiem is 50 minutes long, and has a 150-page score, which costs the best part of £50 to photocopy and bind three times. Add to that another tenner to ensure the scores' safe return by post and you're looking at serious money, which is, of course, only justifiable if the work is taken seriously by the judges.

In order to save myself a further tenner, I'm going to take the package in by hand this afternoon. Problem is, I can't remember where Berners Street is. It's one of those streets I feel I ought to know. I'm thinking it's in the Goodge Street/ Charlotte Street area. Or is it down in Soho? Or am I thinking of Brewer Street? Really, I should just look at a map, but that would make me a tourist! 

Wherever it is, I shall be glad to hand it in, as the heat is making me sweat all over it and I don't want the scores inside to smudge! 

Oh the heat

We've just finished another rehearsal with the Fleet Singers. They're a bit low on bases, so Nathan and I have stepped into the breach and are attempting to bring a new energy to the choir's foundation. 

We're slowly getting there, and I think

we're on for a stupendous performance of the piece. St Anne's Church, for the record, at the bottom of Highgate West Hill; 7pm on Saturday 20th. If you possibly can, come! 

The rest of the day has found Nathan and me trying our hardest to move forward whilst the sheer heat has attempted to turn us into melting ice sculptures. 

At one stage in the afternoon we were trying to tidy the sitting room, but all I felt able to do was sit on the sofa staring at the Hoover! 

Even now, in the relative coolness of the evening, we've entered a house which feels like a Turkish sauna. It's astonishingly hot. I sweated more buying fruit in Hampstead than I did at the gym. 

Poor James, the conductor of the choir, was actually soaking wet by the end of the rehearsal. Still, none of us should complain. This is what we all dearly longed for last summer! Mind you, if they start banning hose pipes again, I think I'll burst a gasket! 

I'm too hot to bust a gasket come to think of it. I have to be as still as possible.