Yesterday started with a fire drill, which is the thing I dread most of all whilst doing these courses. The alarms are always right above the beds and the drills routinely happen at 7am. It's brutal. One moment you're sleeping soundly and the next you're screaming!
This morning's drill was considerably less horrifying than I've known them to be in the past. They've changed the alarm sound to something less terrifying, so I spent the day feeling a great deal less traumatised!
Breakfast happens every day at 8am and we have an idyllic walk from the boarders' house where we're staying to the school itself. The walk takes us across hilly, tree-lined playing fields. Sevenoaks is the sort of school which makes you realise quite how well the other half lives. There are countless theatres and rehearsal spaces, rows and rows of practice rooms, a swimming pool... I think perhaps all schools these days are better equipped than they were in my day - one of the positive legacies of Tony Blair - but these private schools are something else. My taxi driver on Friday told me that, until relatively recently, the students here wore straw boaters in the summer. Part of me thinks if you're going to to step up to the fanciest bell in town, you might as well ring it like a proper posh git. And spend a childhood getting beaten up so they can Lord it over everyone else in their adult years!!
Rehearsals start at 9, and yesterday we basically spent the day working our way through the musical's new prologue, which already feels like it sets the show up more convincingly than the last one. It's a lengthy old sequence: at least fifteen minutes long, with scores of different set ups, all of which need a great amount of work. I'm loving working with the creative team. Hannah is a joy. She's really laid back, but works in an extraordinary level of detail handing the cast plenty to work with. Sometimes I think she must be in my head. I'll be making a little list of notes which I might take to her at the end of a rehearsal, but just as I write something down, more often than not she'll say it out loud to the cast.
Sam the choreographer makes me laugh all the time. She's a fascinating woman, who has been in the industry for a long time, with experience of working in television on some of the most iconic light entertainment shows from the 80s. I wish I could impress on the young people in the cast quite how important it is to sit people like Sam down and ask them about their life and work. I gained so much from asking Arnold Wesker about the theatre scene in the 1960s. There's so much to understand about people which comes from appreciating how they did things in different eras.
I spent the day smelling of biscuits. There's definitely something wrong with my washing machine. That, or I need to acknowledge it's time to throw away a load of T-shirts!
The cast held up well throughout the day, although if it were me, my brain would have been dripping out of my ears by 9pm. Young Frankie took an elbow to the head towards the end of the day, and the poor lass spent the night with an ice pack pressed to her head. For a laugh, Alex the MD was holding fingers up in front of her face: "how many fingers?" He asked. "Friday" she responded. No one knew if she was being serious! I'm glad to report that she seems to be fine this morning!
Sunday, 14 August 2016
Saturday, 13 August 2016
Day one in the school house
Waking up felt kinda rough this morning. I felt like someone had spent the night chucking bricks at my head, like the little old lady who lived on the A6 in Higham Ferrers, who was regularly carted off for lobbing things at the cars outside. I think I was having some kind of sugar hangover. I ate a lot of sweet stuff yesterday. It's the first time I've ever started to associate eating badly with feeling unwell.
I got very irritated at Charing Cross by a man wearing a South Eastern Trains uniform. "Is this the Sevenoaks train?" I asked. "It's the Tunbridge Wells train." "Oh! Does it not stop at Sevenoaks?" "Yes it does..." "So it IS the Sevenoaks train." "No, it's the train to Tunbridge Wells." His eyes glinted cheekily. He was making a little joke. Twat. I realised at that point, as I began to get incensed with the world, that I hadn't slept properly!
The first day of rehearsals at Sevenoaks went well. The weather was almost comically lovely. For much of the day Hannah, the director and Sam, the choreographer, sat on benches outside planning the show, and, during the breaks, we all rushed to catch a few rays of sun. This is summer like summer always used to be! A giant half-moon started rising at 4.45pm, pretty much when the sun was at its hottest, which seemed quite bizarre. For the longest time I thought it was a wedged-shaped cloud.
We spent the day working through vocals in the show, and pretty much covered all the ensemble material. The cast have retained it well enough, but it still feels like there's a huge mountain to climb!
For the next couple of days, we're sharing the school with the cast of Spring Awakening, which follows Battle of the Boat as the next show out of the proverbial NYMT blocks. It performs this coming week at Leicester Curve under the direction of Nikolai Foster and ought to be quite stupendous.
The "Spring" cast are a very different bunch to the Brass lot, with a different energy, which is, no doubt, born out of the differences in the two shows. The Brass lot always come across as a bit studious and intense, which I love of course, and the Spring cast seem a bit livelier and fun-loving although they're working round the clock. Wherever I looked yesterday, a group of kids was practising choreography, or sat in a corner with Dougal the MD running through sequences of music. I very much enjoyed sitting outside at one point, listening to an acoustic guitarist strumming chords in the distance.
I don't altogether know if the Brass lot will know what's hit them this week. We have a show to stage in nine days and will have to work every hour of our 9am to 9pm allotted time.
I got very irritated at Charing Cross by a man wearing a South Eastern Trains uniform. "Is this the Sevenoaks train?" I asked. "It's the Tunbridge Wells train." "Oh! Does it not stop at Sevenoaks?" "Yes it does..." "So it IS the Sevenoaks train." "No, it's the train to Tunbridge Wells." His eyes glinted cheekily. He was making a little joke. Twat. I realised at that point, as I began to get incensed with the world, that I hadn't slept properly!
The first day of rehearsals at Sevenoaks went well. The weather was almost comically lovely. For much of the day Hannah, the director and Sam, the choreographer, sat on benches outside planning the show, and, during the breaks, we all rushed to catch a few rays of sun. This is summer like summer always used to be! A giant half-moon started rising at 4.45pm, pretty much when the sun was at its hottest, which seemed quite bizarre. For the longest time I thought it was a wedged-shaped cloud.
We spent the day working through vocals in the show, and pretty much covered all the ensemble material. The cast have retained it well enough, but it still feels like there's a huge mountain to climb!
For the next couple of days, we're sharing the school with the cast of Spring Awakening, which follows Battle of the Boat as the next show out of the proverbial NYMT blocks. It performs this coming week at Leicester Curve under the direction of Nikolai Foster and ought to be quite stupendous.
The "Spring" cast are a very different bunch to the Brass lot, with a different energy, which is, no doubt, born out of the differences in the two shows. The Brass lot always come across as a bit studious and intense, which I love of course, and the Spring cast seem a bit livelier and fun-loving although they're working round the clock. Wherever I looked yesterday, a group of kids was practising choreography, or sat in a corner with Dougal the MD running through sequences of music. I very much enjoyed sitting outside at one point, listening to an acoustic guitarist strumming chords in the distance.
I don't altogether know if the Brass lot will know what's hit them this week. We have a show to stage in nine days and will have to work every hour of our 9am to 9pm allotted time.
Thursday, 11 August 2016
The Battle of the Boat
Nathan and I are currently driving through the empty streets of South West London, having just seen a brilliant production of The Battle of the Boat, which is this year's NYMT new commission. And what a show it is! Ethan Maltby and Jenna Donnelly have written a dark and brooding, deeply heartwarming piece which features some of the most beautiful sequences of music I've ever heard in musical theatre. It's such a treat to hear an orchestral score, particularly one performed by such an enormous band. I sometimes think that people should stop looking to the West End for new musical theatre, and turn their attention instead to the National Youth Music Theatre. That's where you're going to hear the good stuff. The stuff which breaks new ground.
The cast was sensational. All nine of the show's leads were brilliant performers. All brought something special and unique to their well-drawn characters.
Maltby's music washes over his listeners like a thousand gentle waves. It's engulfing, filmic, folk-inspired. The story of the show is really very lovely. It tells the tale of a group of young kids during the First World War, who watch a propaganda film about the Battle of the Somme and become determined to find a way of getting to France to help the war effort. In the end they build a boat and decide to sail across the Channel...
It's been dubbed "mini-Brass" because the age group of the cast is one below that of our show. Both shows are about the First World War, and there are similarities in the timbre of the music, but actually, after seeing the piece, I genuinely welcome any comparisons! There's a musical storm sequence which actually took my breath away, and Maltby's writing for percussion instruments is in a different league to mine.
I'm actually rather proud to say that Ethan and I actually played in the same youth orchestra as young lads. We toured Canada and played on Blue Peter. I still have the video! Perhaps there's something in the water in Northamptonshire which breeds this folk-inspired orchestral theatre music.
So if you're reading this, and you can get yourself to the Rose Theatre, Kingston before the show's run ends on Saturday, I urge you to go. Go. Just go. Go and support British writing talent. I'm bored of people trying to justify ghastly juke box musicals, or, worse still, saying that we need to innovate musical theatre by engaging non musical theatre writers to write new shows. The talent is out there. It just needs to be nurtured. If you genuinely like musicals. And you genuinely care about the future of the art form, get off your harrises and see this marvellous show!
The cast was sensational. All nine of the show's leads were brilliant performers. All brought something special and unique to their well-drawn characters.
Maltby's music washes over his listeners like a thousand gentle waves. It's engulfing, filmic, folk-inspired. The story of the show is really very lovely. It tells the tale of a group of young kids during the First World War, who watch a propaganda film about the Battle of the Somme and become determined to find a way of getting to France to help the war effort. In the end they build a boat and decide to sail across the Channel...
It's been dubbed "mini-Brass" because the age group of the cast is one below that of our show. Both shows are about the First World War, and there are similarities in the timbre of the music, but actually, after seeing the piece, I genuinely welcome any comparisons! There's a musical storm sequence which actually took my breath away, and Maltby's writing for percussion instruments is in a different league to mine.
I'm actually rather proud to say that Ethan and I actually played in the same youth orchestra as young lads. We toured Canada and played on Blue Peter. I still have the video! Perhaps there's something in the water in Northamptonshire which breeds this folk-inspired orchestral theatre music.
So if you're reading this, and you can get yourself to the Rose Theatre, Kingston before the show's run ends on Saturday, I urge you to go. Go. Just go. Go and support British writing talent. I'm bored of people trying to justify ghastly juke box musicals, or, worse still, saying that we need to innovate musical theatre by engaging non musical theatre writers to write new shows. The talent is out there. It just needs to be nurtured. If you genuinely like musicals. And you genuinely care about the future of the art form, get off your harrises and see this marvellous show!
Wednesday, 10 August 2016
Above The Stag
Today was another scramble, essentially to achieve very little. I seem to be spending all my time at the moment jumping on tubes and heading to meetings and appointments which are nowhere near Highgate. There's a huge amount to achieve before rehearsals for Brass begin on Friday, but, for some reason, I'm spending all my time editing the Pepys Motet film, which, of course, has to be done, but does it need to take this long to do it? As of this evening, however, I'm relieved to report that my work on the project is almost done. I've even given the film a little grade, upping the contrast in some of the shots, and making others a little lighter. The only problem is that I'm waiting for Carmen in the US to film and send me her little segment, which she's going to do with her fiancé. As soon as I have that, I can get the film online, tell everyone about it, and forget all about it. Until then, I'll feel the project hanging over me like a rotten vine. I find it quite difficult to move onto pastures new whilst the fields behind me haven't yet been harvested!
I went for osteopathy this afternoon, and stayed in town to meet Nathan and Carey for lunch. We sat in the churchyard behind Central St Giles, an incredibly peaceful spot which very few people appear to use. The others ate food from a rather fancy place called Pod, where I could find nothing which didn't either come with lashings of coriander or have the calorific content of air. I just can't be doing with the whole wheat-free, carb-free, sodium-free, fat-free, taste-free vibe.
This evening we came to Above The Stag in Vauxhall, which is London's only LGBT theatre. I'd never been there before. I'm slightly embarrassed to admit that I didn't even know it existed. I'm told it used to operate above the pub next to the Victoria Palace Theatre until the whole area was knocked down, I think, for Cross Rail. Vauxhall is, of course, after the death of Soho, London's only gay district, so it made sense to relocate the theatre there.
I like Vauxhall. I don't know it at all well, but it's got a really nice, quite American vibe. It's a district where old and new rub shoulders rather convincingly. There are countless, somewhat dingy, Victorian railway arches, but look up and you'll see a plethora of shiny chrome skyscrapers. Much of the gay scene is situated within the darkened, twisting warrens of former railway-owned property. There are gay bars, saunas, shops, cafes as well as the theatre, and on a summer evening, like tonight, it buzzes like a district of Miami, with fabulous bears spilling out onto the streets!
We were at the theatre to see the handiwork of photographer, Gaz Sherwood, who'd taken pictures of us singing as part of his "Sing Out" project, which focusses on LGBT people working in the musical theatre industry. His latest set of portraits are being displayed on the walls of the theatre bar, and tonight was a sort of launch event. I'll be honest and say I felt rather proud to have my portrait hanging on the wall of a theatre. I'm sure it's a pretty common experience for an actor, but it's very exciting new ground for me, which instantly took me back to myself as an eight-year old, staring longingly at the glamorous head shots of actors working in Northampton's Royal Theatre.
Gaz is a wonderful photographer. His work is incredibly detailed and the pictures are crystal clear. He presented us with a pair of prints of the images he'd chosen which were printed on water colour paper, which looked fabulous. I wish I could have used mine for my driving license!
I went for osteopathy this afternoon, and stayed in town to meet Nathan and Carey for lunch. We sat in the churchyard behind Central St Giles, an incredibly peaceful spot which very few people appear to use. The others ate food from a rather fancy place called Pod, where I could find nothing which didn't either come with lashings of coriander or have the calorific content of air. I just can't be doing with the whole wheat-free, carb-free, sodium-free, fat-free, taste-free vibe.
This evening we came to Above The Stag in Vauxhall, which is London's only LGBT theatre. I'd never been there before. I'm slightly embarrassed to admit that I didn't even know it existed. I'm told it used to operate above the pub next to the Victoria Palace Theatre until the whole area was knocked down, I think, for Cross Rail. Vauxhall is, of course, after the death of Soho, London's only gay district, so it made sense to relocate the theatre there.
I like Vauxhall. I don't know it at all well, but it's got a really nice, quite American vibe. It's a district where old and new rub shoulders rather convincingly. There are countless, somewhat dingy, Victorian railway arches, but look up and you'll see a plethora of shiny chrome skyscrapers. Much of the gay scene is situated within the darkened, twisting warrens of former railway-owned property. There are gay bars, saunas, shops, cafes as well as the theatre, and on a summer evening, like tonight, it buzzes like a district of Miami, with fabulous bears spilling out onto the streets!
We were at the theatre to see the handiwork of photographer, Gaz Sherwood, who'd taken pictures of us singing as part of his "Sing Out" project, which focusses on LGBT people working in the musical theatre industry. His latest set of portraits are being displayed on the walls of the theatre bar, and tonight was a sort of launch event. I'll be honest and say I felt rather proud to have my portrait hanging on the wall of a theatre. I'm sure it's a pretty common experience for an actor, but it's very exciting new ground for me, which instantly took me back to myself as an eight-year old, staring longingly at the glamorous head shots of actors working in Northampton's Royal Theatre.
Gaz is a wonderful photographer. His work is incredibly detailed and the pictures are crystal clear. He presented us with a pair of prints of the images he'd chosen which were printed on water colour paper, which looked fabulous. I wish I could have used mine for my driving license!
How the other half live
Today I learned what a profoundly useless organisation the British Post Office has become. After yesterday's ludicrous queuing incident, I went back to the Highgate branch and, as I handed my package over to be stamped, I realised the tape around the edge of the package had started to come unstuck. I noticed a stapler on the server's desk and asked if I could borrow it quickly to staple the corners together to prevent the CD I was sending from falling out. "I'm afraid I can't let you use that," said the woman. "Really? Why?" I asked. "For health and safety reasons..."
This afternoon I had the misfortune of visiting the "Post Shop" in Greenwich, where all the members of staff looked like they'd been slapped about by large wedges of camembert. All I needed was a passport photo for my driver's licence. They had a photo booth. The only trouble was that it cost £5 and only accepted coins. I went up to one of the counters, clutching a £5 note, waiting for the woman behind the counter to draw breath whilst talking to a friend, and asked if she could give me change. "No, sorry" she said, politely enough, "I don't have that much change in my till." I wasn't sure I believed her. She sent me to the counter opposite where there was a massive queue. After five minutes, I was served. I asked for change and the woman sighed the sigh of a martyr, took my fiver, and handed me five £1 coins, her lips sagging with the weight of her generosity.
I had my photo taken in the booth. It took a while to get the hang of the weird spinning seat thing. A slip of a button later, and I'd ordered one large copy of my chosen image rather than 4 small ones, so that was instantly £5 down the drain.
I spoke to the woman at the till again, and explained that I'd pressed the wrong button and that I didn't have any more cash. Could I perhaps pay with a card? She ushered me to the back of the post office and told me I could get cash there. She didn't tell me she meant over the counter. That took a while to work out. Then there was another five-minute wait in the queue...
The man behind the counter duly gave me £5 in £1 coins and I went back to the passport machine, posed for yet another picture (feeling increasingly self-conscious) and pressed the button for four smaller shots. In the meantime my "large portrait" picture came out of the machine, all fuzzy-edged with a great big purple blob on my forehead which made it look like I'd badly dyed my hair. The four shot then came out. It had cut the top of my head off and the purple blob this time was across my forehead. Plainly there was something wrong with the printing process!
I went to the counter and asked if I could possibly have a refund. "You made a mistake and pressed the wrong button," she said. "That's very true" I said, "but the purple splodge on the photograph would make this photo unusable even if I'd wanted a photo this size." I handed her the other photo: "And there's purple all over this set as well. I've spent £10 now and I still have nothing for my driving license!" She looked at the four smaller photos, "well you can't use these ones for a driving license because you've cut the top of your head off..." "But these pictures are purple, and I would hazard that they'd still be purple even if I spent another £5 making sure the top of my head wasn't cut off! Your machine is faulty!"
So I was sent over to the manager, which involved standing in yet another queue. She looked at the pictures and pointed at the full-sized shot, "I'm prepared to refund you on that one, but not the other one. You've cut your head off on the other. I can't be held responsible for that." Feeling like a broken record, I mentioned the fact that I felt pretty confident that, if I did take another photograph, and sat properly in the chair, I'd still end up with a purple splodge on my forehead. I asked if this would cause an issue with the passport office. "Go back to the booth and take another photo making sure your eyes are level with the markers on the screen. That's the only advice I can give you... Or speak to the lady over there who can take you into the back room where they have a studio that does all that stuff properly." The lady she pointed at was the first woman I'd spoken to. The one who didn't have change! The one who, it turns out, could have saved me money and time by telling me that she had an on-site business which specialised in the very thing I was looking for. But no. She was too busy talking to her mate to want my custom.
The manager took the photos from me, handed me a refund and I went back to the photo booth only to realise she'd given me a refund which included a £2 coin, which I couldn't use in the machine. As I emerged, red-faced and angry looking, a lovely American lady came up to me: "if you're looking for passport pictures, there's a wonderful chemist around the corner where they do a great service." So I left the Post Shop and went there instead. She was right. The lady in the chemist who took my picture complimented me on my odd socks, put me at my ease, took the picture without any fuss, delivering four individually cut photos five minutes later.
It's been a genuinely frustrating afternoon. I was filming Rebel Chorus member, Mel for our Pepys video in the Greenwich foot tunnel. The last time I went down there during the day it was entirely empty, but today, probably because it's the school holidays, the place was humming: absolutely rammed with people, all of whom seemed desperate to rush into the background of the shot and do that stupid rabbit ear thing with their fingers that Japanese teenaged girls do. Why do people do that? Do they think it will improve the image? Do they think I won't notice and they'll end up a YouTube sensation? Do they think they're the first people in the world to play that oh-so-funny practical joke? One group of kids heard the music we were playing as a guide for lip-syncing and decided to join in. Singing became shouting. Shouting became yelling, and before we knew it, the entire foot tunnel had become a high-pitched, echoing scream-fest which lasted three minutes and became so loud and grating we were both forced to block our ears. It was so, so horrifying.
I went into Soho later on to discover that the lovely little cafe on the corner of Wardour Street and Old Compton Street, in which I've spent many a happy end of ending, has closed down. Another casualty, one assumes, of rising rents and impending Brexit-related recession.
I was somewhat cheered by the sight of a man walking a ferret down Lower St Martin's Lane, and a lovely early-evening drink with our friend Carey from New York, who kept us thoroughly entertained with stories from Broadway.
This afternoon I had the misfortune of visiting the "Post Shop" in Greenwich, where all the members of staff looked like they'd been slapped about by large wedges of camembert. All I needed was a passport photo for my driver's licence. They had a photo booth. The only trouble was that it cost £5 and only accepted coins. I went up to one of the counters, clutching a £5 note, waiting for the woman behind the counter to draw breath whilst talking to a friend, and asked if she could give me change. "No, sorry" she said, politely enough, "I don't have that much change in my till." I wasn't sure I believed her. She sent me to the counter opposite where there was a massive queue. After five minutes, I was served. I asked for change and the woman sighed the sigh of a martyr, took my fiver, and handed me five £1 coins, her lips sagging with the weight of her generosity.
I had my photo taken in the booth. It took a while to get the hang of the weird spinning seat thing. A slip of a button later, and I'd ordered one large copy of my chosen image rather than 4 small ones, so that was instantly £5 down the drain.
I spoke to the woman at the till again, and explained that I'd pressed the wrong button and that I didn't have any more cash. Could I perhaps pay with a card? She ushered me to the back of the post office and told me I could get cash there. She didn't tell me she meant over the counter. That took a while to work out. Then there was another five-minute wait in the queue...
The man behind the counter duly gave me £5 in £1 coins and I went back to the passport machine, posed for yet another picture (feeling increasingly self-conscious) and pressed the button for four smaller shots. In the meantime my "large portrait" picture came out of the machine, all fuzzy-edged with a great big purple blob on my forehead which made it look like I'd badly dyed my hair. The four shot then came out. It had cut the top of my head off and the purple blob this time was across my forehead. Plainly there was something wrong with the printing process!
I went to the counter and asked if I could possibly have a refund. "You made a mistake and pressed the wrong button," she said. "That's very true" I said, "but the purple splodge on the photograph would make this photo unusable even if I'd wanted a photo this size." I handed her the other photo: "And there's purple all over this set as well. I've spent £10 now and I still have nothing for my driving license!" She looked at the four smaller photos, "well you can't use these ones for a driving license because you've cut the top of your head off..." "But these pictures are purple, and I would hazard that they'd still be purple even if I spent another £5 making sure the top of my head wasn't cut off! Your machine is faulty!"
So I was sent over to the manager, which involved standing in yet another queue. She looked at the pictures and pointed at the full-sized shot, "I'm prepared to refund you on that one, but not the other one. You've cut your head off on the other. I can't be held responsible for that." Feeling like a broken record, I mentioned the fact that I felt pretty confident that, if I did take another photograph, and sat properly in the chair, I'd still end up with a purple splodge on my forehead. I asked if this would cause an issue with the passport office. "Go back to the booth and take another photo making sure your eyes are level with the markers on the screen. That's the only advice I can give you... Or speak to the lady over there who can take you into the back room where they have a studio that does all that stuff properly." The lady she pointed at was the first woman I'd spoken to. The one who didn't have change! The one who, it turns out, could have saved me money and time by telling me that she had an on-site business which specialised in the very thing I was looking for. But no. She was too busy talking to her mate to want my custom.
The manager took the photos from me, handed me a refund and I went back to the photo booth only to realise she'd given me a refund which included a £2 coin, which I couldn't use in the machine. As I emerged, red-faced and angry looking, a lovely American lady came up to me: "if you're looking for passport pictures, there's a wonderful chemist around the corner where they do a great service." So I left the Post Shop and went there instead. She was right. The lady in the chemist who took my picture complimented me on my odd socks, put me at my ease, took the picture without any fuss, delivering four individually cut photos five minutes later.
It's been a genuinely frustrating afternoon. I was filming Rebel Chorus member, Mel for our Pepys video in the Greenwich foot tunnel. The last time I went down there during the day it was entirely empty, but today, probably because it's the school holidays, the place was humming: absolutely rammed with people, all of whom seemed desperate to rush into the background of the shot and do that stupid rabbit ear thing with their fingers that Japanese teenaged girls do. Why do people do that? Do they think it will improve the image? Do they think I won't notice and they'll end up a YouTube sensation? Do they think they're the first people in the world to play that oh-so-funny practical joke? One group of kids heard the music we were playing as a guide for lip-syncing and decided to join in. Singing became shouting. Shouting became yelling, and before we knew it, the entire foot tunnel had become a high-pitched, echoing scream-fest which lasted three minutes and became so loud and grating we were both forced to block our ears. It was so, so horrifying.
I went into Soho later on to discover that the lovely little cafe on the corner of Wardour Street and Old Compton Street, in which I've spent many a happy end of ending, has closed down. Another casualty, one assumes, of rising rents and impending Brexit-related recession.
I was somewhat cheered by the sight of a man walking a ferret down Lower St Martin's Lane, and a lovely early-evening drink with our friend Carey from New York, who kept us thoroughly entertained with stories from Broadway.
Tuesday, 9 August 2016
Happy unbirthday
My birthday started rather badly. Nathan went to work. I had my evening plans cancelled and I ended up home alone. It was all a little desperate. I sat in front of the telly editing my film whilst wishing I'd thought a little harder about what I might do today.
Nathan, bless him, must have texted some of my friends, because I had a series of lovely messages, many of which took the form of little films and photographs. My favourite came from Goddaughter Deia, who was on a trampoline. Her head kept bouncing into shot whilst she sang a deeply scatalogical version of Happy Birthday. There was also a photo from my cousins Matt and Boo, which their three children in Stockholm holding a sign which read "Happy Birthday Ben." Lovely. People are so kind. And inventive.
I spoke to my Mum at lunchtime who suggested I took a trip up to Thaxted, and it struck me that this was the right thing to do. If in doubt, head to the parents! I tried to post some letters before leaving. The queue for the Highgate Post Office stretched out into the street, just like it gets in the run up to Christmas. I hung around, ineffectually hoping it would miraculously disappear if I muttered swear words under my breath. Peering into the shop I noticed that the man at the front of the queue was sending scores of parcels, so I gave up, and decided to go to Muswell Hill en route. I'm not sure what it was about Monday August 8th, but that branch was similarly chocka. I'd paid for 25 minutes' parking, and, after twenty, was no nearer the counters, so gave up and drove to Thaxted in a foul mood.
Thaxted provided me with exactly the tonic I was looking for, not least because my parents' old friend, Mo was there. Mo was a colleague of my father's at the school he taught at and I went to, so she's known me since I was perhaps 8 years old. She lived in Crouch End whilst I was at Mountview and used to take me out for cups of tea and chocolate croissants to make sure I was okay. She sat on the front row at our wedding and is in a lot of the shots. She looks a little like my Mum, so I assume the TV people thought she was my aunt. Frankly, she might as well be. She's an absolute riot and has always reminded me of Joanna Lumley. In the last year she's lost a phenomenal amount of weight after being diagnosed with type two diabetes, which she's actually managed to reverse. There is a revolutionary new treatment plan which the university of Newcastle has created involving fast weight loss which genuinely seems to work. If the body is shocked into eating its own fat reserves, it will, apparently, swallow up the thin layer of fat on the pancreas which prevents insulin being created. I think it's the pancreas, but I'm no biologist. I did single integrated science at GSCE like a proper thicko! Whatever the science behind it is, it seems to have worked a treat with Mo. Her nurse calls her a miracle, and she looks a million dollars.
We strolled down to the magic place and communed a little with nature. It felt powerful, somehow. My friend Jo tells me that amazing energies are heading towards Earth at the moment which I reckon we could all do with. And I guess that believing they're there is half the battle. If we start to expect happiness, we'll start to notice it more when we feel it. We'll smile more and happiness will spread. I'm sure the same is true of negativity. Surely the strength of a recession, for example, is governed by how consumers respond to news that there might be a recession? Or am I over-simplifying things? I can sense Brother Edward reading this and hanging his head in shame!
Nathan, bless him, must have texted some of my friends, because I had a series of lovely messages, many of which took the form of little films and photographs. My favourite came from Goddaughter Deia, who was on a trampoline. Her head kept bouncing into shot whilst she sang a deeply scatalogical version of Happy Birthday. There was also a photo from my cousins Matt and Boo, which their three children in Stockholm holding a sign which read "Happy Birthday Ben." Lovely. People are so kind. And inventive.
I spoke to my Mum at lunchtime who suggested I took a trip up to Thaxted, and it struck me that this was the right thing to do. If in doubt, head to the parents! I tried to post some letters before leaving. The queue for the Highgate Post Office stretched out into the street, just like it gets in the run up to Christmas. I hung around, ineffectually hoping it would miraculously disappear if I muttered swear words under my breath. Peering into the shop I noticed that the man at the front of the queue was sending scores of parcels, so I gave up, and decided to go to Muswell Hill en route. I'm not sure what it was about Monday August 8th, but that branch was similarly chocka. I'd paid for 25 minutes' parking, and, after twenty, was no nearer the counters, so gave up and drove to Thaxted in a foul mood.
Thaxted provided me with exactly the tonic I was looking for, not least because my parents' old friend, Mo was there. Mo was a colleague of my father's at the school he taught at and I went to, so she's known me since I was perhaps 8 years old. She lived in Crouch End whilst I was at Mountview and used to take me out for cups of tea and chocolate croissants to make sure I was okay. She sat on the front row at our wedding and is in a lot of the shots. She looks a little like my Mum, so I assume the TV people thought she was my aunt. Frankly, she might as well be. She's an absolute riot and has always reminded me of Joanna Lumley. In the last year she's lost a phenomenal amount of weight after being diagnosed with type two diabetes, which she's actually managed to reverse. There is a revolutionary new treatment plan which the university of Newcastle has created involving fast weight loss which genuinely seems to work. If the body is shocked into eating its own fat reserves, it will, apparently, swallow up the thin layer of fat on the pancreas which prevents insulin being created. I think it's the pancreas, but I'm no biologist. I did single integrated science at GSCE like a proper thicko! Whatever the science behind it is, it seems to have worked a treat with Mo. Her nurse calls her a miracle, and she looks a million dollars.
We strolled down to the magic place and communed a little with nature. It felt powerful, somehow. My friend Jo tells me that amazing energies are heading towards Earth at the moment which I reckon we could all do with. And I guess that believing they're there is half the battle. If we start to expect happiness, we'll start to notice it more when we feel it. We'll smile more and happiness will spread. I'm sure the same is true of negativity. Surely the strength of a recession, for example, is governed by how consumers respond to news that there might be a recession? Or am I over-simplifying things? I can sense Brother Edward reading this and hanging his head in shame!
Monday, 8 August 2016
hot, dry gales
It would appear to be my birthday! Just. As of thirty minutes ago, I'm 42, which I'm told makes me the meaning of life, the universe and everything. I can think of worse things to be. My 43rd year had better be more productive than my 42nd year. Last year was brutal...
Today was all about a glorious lie-in. I haven't had a lie-in since before we went on holiday, and it was just wonderful to cuddle Nathan whilst drifting in and out of consciousness.
We had lunch in the greasy spoon and then went up to Friern Barnet to collect some props for a filming session I'd booked in for this evening. Who knew it could be so difficult to find flammable material in a B and Q? I wanted to create a miniature bonfire so needed the sort of thing you might throw onto a barbecue. I found nothing of the sort. Apparently the barbecue season is over... I would have thought that the barbecue season ran seamlessly into the bonfire season and that flame accelerants might therefore be an all-year-round essential product. Nope.
So I bought a metal dustbin and went to Tesco for a couple of throw-away barbecues. Bad choice. I needed fire, not smouldering coals.
Still, whilst we were up in those parts, we took a trip to a hand car wash place, and got all the sticky stuff that falls from lime trees around our house water-blasted from our roof and windscreen by a clutch of fabulous immigrants wearing wellies.
I came home and started editing together my little film. The majority of footage is now in, and it's good to get a bit of a shape. There's so so much admin to do before we start rehearsals at Sevenoaks on Friday, however, so heaven knows when I'm going to get it finished. I have pages and pages of admin to do. Email upon email to send. I picked up a speeding fine whilst driving home from Northumberland, which is £100 and three points on my license. This is, of course, bad enough, until we factor in the fact that I'm about the only person in the world who only has a paper driving license, which I've somehow lost. So tomorrow I've got to try to sort all that nonsense out. Is it even legal to only have a paper license?
The filming session this evening was with Llio in her garden. Llio has a solo in the fourth movement of the motet, which includes some of the most famous lines that Pepys ever wrote. In the midst of the mayhem of the Great Fire of London, Pepys rushed around his house throwing his most valuable possessions into a cart, and burying some of the others: "did dig a pit, and put our wine in it. And our Parmesan cheese!" As it happened, when Pepys returned to his house after the fire had finished raging, he found it still standing. The wind had changed direction at the last moment, which meant the far south-eastern corner of the city including the Tower of London was saved.
The weather today was very unusual. Hot and dry with high, rather tropical winds. Exactly the sort of weather, in fact, that caused the Great Fire of London!
Today was all about a glorious lie-in. I haven't had a lie-in since before we went on holiday, and it was just wonderful to cuddle Nathan whilst drifting in and out of consciousness.
We had lunch in the greasy spoon and then went up to Friern Barnet to collect some props for a filming session I'd booked in for this evening. Who knew it could be so difficult to find flammable material in a B and Q? I wanted to create a miniature bonfire so needed the sort of thing you might throw onto a barbecue. I found nothing of the sort. Apparently the barbecue season is over... I would have thought that the barbecue season ran seamlessly into the bonfire season and that flame accelerants might therefore be an all-year-round essential product. Nope.
So I bought a metal dustbin and went to Tesco for a couple of throw-away barbecues. Bad choice. I needed fire, not smouldering coals.
Still, whilst we were up in those parts, we took a trip to a hand car wash place, and got all the sticky stuff that falls from lime trees around our house water-blasted from our roof and windscreen by a clutch of fabulous immigrants wearing wellies.
I came home and started editing together my little film. The majority of footage is now in, and it's good to get a bit of a shape. There's so so much admin to do before we start rehearsals at Sevenoaks on Friday, however, so heaven knows when I'm going to get it finished. I have pages and pages of admin to do. Email upon email to send. I picked up a speeding fine whilst driving home from Northumberland, which is £100 and three points on my license. This is, of course, bad enough, until we factor in the fact that I'm about the only person in the world who only has a paper driving license, which I've somehow lost. So tomorrow I've got to try to sort all that nonsense out. Is it even legal to only have a paper license?
The filming session this evening was with Llio in her garden. Llio has a solo in the fourth movement of the motet, which includes some of the most famous lines that Pepys ever wrote. In the midst of the mayhem of the Great Fire of London, Pepys rushed around his house throwing his most valuable possessions into a cart, and burying some of the others: "did dig a pit, and put our wine in it. And our Parmesan cheese!" As it happened, when Pepys returned to his house after the fire had finished raging, he found it still standing. The wind had changed direction at the last moment, which meant the far south-eastern corner of the city including the Tower of London was saved.
The weather today was very unusual. Hot and dry with high, rather tropical winds. Exactly the sort of weather, in fact, that caused the Great Fire of London!
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