Flip flops

My entire body is coated in a very fine, misty film of salt water! PK and I have been slaving away all day in his loft, which may well be the hottest place on earth at the moment. 

This Pepys Motet is officially a monster! We've spent the entire day fine-tuning the rhythmic aspect of the piece, which is a pretty hefty undertaking when dealing with 20 singers, each singing a unique vocal line. The movement is painstakingly slow, which means there's plenty of scope for people singing just slightly out of time with one another, particularly when interpreting triplets!

At one point in the mid-afternoon, when we realised we'd spent 4 hours working through the first minute of music, I went into a mini-meltdown. I genuinely felt like I'd finally met my musical Waterloo (cue song.) It's such an intricate and complicated piece of music and each note recorded seems to require some form of detailed attention. 

Pep-talks followed from PK, Nathan and latterly Julie Clare, and I left the studio feeling a lot happier, realising that we've been listening to everything in its rawest form. No reverb. No after-effects. No equalising. When this stage is complete, PK can go away with his sonic chamois leather and give everything a nice polish! Everything sounds better with reverb! 

So, I find myself returning to Fiona's house tonight, Siegfried Sassoon diary in hand, contemplating a fourth day on the motet, focussing on the other movement. I hardly dare to imagine what it will sound like. I'm not sure how much work we did on it last week, but it was considerably less than we did on the movement we've recently been pulling apart!

Still, there are worse places to be during a heatwave than Hove, Actually. The air is clean, the light is syrupy, and the people in these parts go about life at a very different pace. Cars take longer to turn out of junctions, shoppers take hours at supermarket tills finding the exact change in their wallets, people amble through the streets looking both cool and cool! Flip flops are even cool... Mobile phone receptions come and go, and no one cares. The Co-op has run out of milk and bread. Ditto.

I had breakfast on the beach. A plate of beans on toast and a lovely cup of tea. The air was warm. There was a light breeze. The early morning sun was glinting majestically on the mirrored surface of the calm sea. I was forced to squint whilst looking at it. People around me chatted about stuff that didn't matter, the sorts of conversations you have when you're not worrying about a list of things which needed to be done yesterday. 

I could certainly imagine myself living here, although I'd feel a little disloyal to Hampstead Heath! 

We're told the heat-wave is only going to intensify next week, with temperatures destined to break the records set in 2003 (which incidentally is mentioned in the oratorio which is being performed by the Fleet Singers on Saturday night!)

Songs About The Weather. 7pm. St Anne's Church, Highgate!

#effortlesssegueintoplug

#saynomore

#howmanyofmyreadersunderstandhashtagging?

This train to Hove literally stops everywhere. I mean, where or what is Fishergate other than a road in the City of London? And what the hell is Aldringdon? Did it even exist before I got on this train? Will it ever exist again? Am I dreaming? Do you think I could get the driver to take me straight to Fiona's flat?

Friends?

I'm on a train yet again from London to Hove, having opted to save myself an early start by staying at Fiona's the night before my day with PK tomorrow. I was hoping to get to Hove in time to sit on the beach and watch the sun setting, but I might have left it a little late. The sun looks suspiciously low in the sky, and I've barely left Victoria! 

The weather is oppressively hot. They have now raised the "heat wave warning" to level three, which means we now have to look out for all our very old and very young relatives, some of whom, apparently, are likely to die. The fourth (and final) warning is coupled with an even gloomier prognosis. Apparently "anyone could die." Cheery!

I, for one, am struggling to keep dry. How tragic is that in the middle of a drought? When the heatwaves roll in, we must all pity the hairy people. They were talking about keeping hairy dogs clippered nice and short on This Morning this morning, and I feel the advice should be extended to humans of the hirsute variety!  After showering at the gym today, I simply couldn't dry myself. I couldn't tell if water or sweat was pouring off me, but two towels and a hair dryer did nothing to stem the flow! It's genuinely mortifying. 

Talking of water, I've just taken a massive dive into the First World War pool to do research for the musical I'm about to write. I'm working my way through archive lists at the Imperial War Museum, seeing which of the collections of papers might be relevant. Of course it's impossible to ascertain the relevance of papers without knowing the story I'm trying to tell, but I can't decide on a story until I've done the research! Which ought to come first, I wonder? 

A few weeks ago, I felt moved by a poster on the tube for Friends of the Earth's campaign to plant flowers to save bees. Nathan and I are both great bee lovers and the deal was to text the word "bee" to a number, which would donate £5 to the charity, and in return a packet of seeds would be sent to me filled with flowers that bees like. Simples.

Today the man from Friends of the Earth called to ask for my address so he could send me the seeds. "Do you have a few minutes to talk?" He asked. I nodded semi-audibly. "Firstly, I should point out that I'm part of a small team of people who are paid by the charity to make calls of this nature..." How sad, I thought, that we've reached a stage where disclosure of information requires someone from a charity to make it clear that he's not a volunteer and is being paid to warm-call me. 

He took my address details fairly swiftly, but then the inevitable happened, "so where will you plant the seeds?" He asked.  "Probably in my garden," I said. "Oh are you a keen gardener?" he asked... And there it was. Rule number one when you're asking for more money, "make them feel special by hooking them in with chatter about something which interests them..." 

And with that he launched into the script. Did I know that four types of British bee were already extinct? Did I fully understand the nature of the crisis that the loss of bees would create? I barely had time to respond before he motored on into the next part of the script, priding himself on the fact, no doubt, that he could charm the elderly birds out of the trees and make it sound like he wasn't actually reading a script. 

I felt really let down. I'd donated money to a charity, a small sum, of course, but there I was with a man reading a script which was plainly going to end with his asking me for another donation. And more calls will follow, I've no doubt. Friends of the Earth will sell my contact details to other charities and I'll receive emails filled with bleeding heart requests for money from the type of fashionable charities for children and animals which I despise.

It's cynical and it's sad, and I shall think twice before donating to a charity like this again. A one off donation should surely be enough?

I'm afraid the caller got a slightly terse response from me. "I know where this is going," I said "and please stop reading this script at me. I am genuinely excited to be receiving my seeds, and I will plant them and hope that more bees come to visit me, but I know you're going to ask me for more money, and that's really not fair. Are you okay for us to just finish this call now?"

I could tell he was somewhat taken aback by my response, but the idea of going through a ten-minute conversation with him feeling more and more as though he were reeling me in seemed unfair on us both! To my mind, he alienated me right from the start of the conversation by telling me he was being paid to make the call, and it immediately struck me that his behaviour was no less irritating and morally dubious than that of those out of work actors and wannabe models who jump out on you wearing kagools and holding clip boards begging you to donate to charities who ought to know better!

Rant over! You're better than that, Friends of the Earth! 

I've now got off the train and snaked my way down to the sea front. I did manage to miss the sunset but have been rewarded with a pale blue sky and the twinkling lights of Brighton stretching into the misty distance. I may well try to record more waves. There's not a wisp of wind in the air tonight... Just the faint aroma of seaweed, candy floss and barbecues. The moon is glinting in the sea like phosphorescence! 

Frustrating

I am actually losing the will to live. I've watched my day disappear into a hell created by Microsoft. Nathan has spent long hours talking to people across the world about the fact that my address book in my old computer refuses to appear on my new one. Part of me feels annoyed because it's such a ghastly First World problem to have! Feeling ashamed at myself doesn't serve to dampen the anger I feel that I may well have to input them all painstakingly by hand.  The bloke at PC World was completely unhelpful. He just blinked gormlessly at us. 

We had such positive plans for the day. We were going to sort out all the artwork for our charity release before heading to the park to photograph some of Nathan's knitwear designs. But by 5pm, when it was time to go to the gym, what had we achieved? Nothing. Nothing at all. I'd merely sat on a sofa, twiddling my thumbs, attempting to hatch plans for my English Counties composition. 

The complete lack of control that one experiences when dealing with PCs is deeply frustrating. At one point the Microsoft helpline was suggesting a charge of $99 for the privilege of helping us. That demand seemed to be retracted when I told Nathan to say he was from the BBC and wanted to talk to their press office, but not soon enough for me to change my view that Microsoft is a shoddy, money-grabbing company whose employees don't give a damn about the company they work for, or the customers who find themselves using their broken and rubbish products. 

To make the day seem even worse, a bit of Internet banking in the mid-afternoon established that neither of us are in a particularly good financial shape at the moment, so we've vowed to tighten every belt we can find. 

We did a big shop in Sainsbury's after the gym; lots of fresh fruit and vegetables and any two for one offers we could find. My Mum always used to say that she quite enjoyed making every penny count at the times in her life when she was poor, and the shopping expedition became quite good fun as we poured over price tags and tried to work out the difference between wanting food and needing it! 

This evening, whilst Nathan was at one of his knitting groups, I drove around the North Circular to the White City Estate, where I needed to pick up the stereo I'd left at Mustafa's Cafe on the last day of our shoot. 

The sun was setting and the most astonishing hot wind was buffeting its way around the estate. Getting out of the car was like stepping off a plane into a Mediterranean country. This weather is just insane!

I hate Windows Eight

It's been quite a frustrating day which started with Nathan and me, attempting, against hope, to move all my documents into the ghastly computer with the even more ghastly Windows 8, I bought earlier in the year. I've been putting it off. I knew the process was going to be frustrating beyond belief.The silly thing is full of glitches and non user-friendly nonsense and as a result, and because the damned thing nearly sent us mad, tomorrow morning starts with a visit to PC World to see if they can help to do a series of things that a Mac wouldn't even need to be told to do! We went at lunchtime today to find a little note on the help desk counter which read; "apologies. No technicians are in the building today." Apparently the enormous mega-store doesn't have anyone who can fix computers on a Monday! Imagine that in the Mac Store?!

We returned home and I sat, comatose, in front of the old computer all afternoon. It's the only place I can write Word documents at the moment. I apparently have too many instances of Word running on various defunct computers which have been taken back to PC World and are therefore not accessible for the necessary process of deactivation! Kids, if you change computers, don't forget to deactivate programmes like Word! It's impossible to get in touch with Microsoft to remedy the problem! 

We rehearsed with the Fleet Singers tonight and were joined by David from the Rebel Chorus who has come to bolster the bases. The existing bases in the choir have raised their games as well, helped largely the injection of confidence provided by bases around them who are singing more strongly, so we've gone from being the section which needed resuscitating to the power-house which motors the choir along! Bravo us! 

Before the rehearsal, Nathan and I sat on the Heath eating a mini-picnic from Marks and Spencer. We didn't have long, so rested in a pool of yellow light under a tree up near the pub where Ruth Ellis shot her lover. Two people, about 50 metres away, were having the mother of all arguments, which turned into the woman slapping the fella several times before storming off and screaming at him like a fish wife; "you f***ing Lithuanian Polish Jew poof!" He wouldn't have lasted long in the Second World War, I thought. He'd have been wearing a proper rainbow-coloured star in the camps!

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.