A whiff of Milk Tray

Miami is a proper cacophony of sound. It’s not even 9am and the place is buzzing with dissonance. I can hear several motorbikes, lorries reversing all over the place, air conditioning units, the sea, cars horns galore, the bangs and crashes of building work, aeroplanes and a million musac tracks... I’m sure the same is true of London, but I suppose I’m never trying to relax in London! Plus, I suppose, after 15 years in the place, I must have got very good at filtering out unnessary noise.

My ear feels a lot better today. Whether that’s due to the amateur “lavage” I was subjected to, the weird nasal sprays, or the incredibly expensive eardrops that wouldn’t stay in my ear I don’t know. It certainly feels like the US health system is WAY behind the British one. Something I didn’t expect for a moment. For a doctor to poke a stick blithely into a man’s ear he knows to be a composer was perhaps the most shocking aspect for me! Oh well. Life is all about these experiences. Speaking of which, a man has just appeared (abseiling from above) on my balcony. A whiff of the Milk Tray, but sadly I discover he’s just here to clean the windows! These chaps must have balls of steel.

I continue to write the motet. Even here in Miami I’m trying to work for 2-3 hours each day. I'm relieved to say that I feel much clearer about its structure now. There will be 6 linked movements and I’ve now finished the first draft of one of them. Rather eccentrically, I started half way through the piece with the dark, slow third movement, which begins in 1664 with the death of Pepys' brother and runs through to the end of the plague in 1666. I'm sure it will turn out to be the longest of the movements, both in the amount of diary time it covers, and in purely musical terms. Par for the course for an Adagio.

350 years ago, Pepys went to visit Montagu and found the place bustling with well-wishers and sycophants. General Monck had even arranged some of his trumpeters to give him a quick fanfare. Quite when this took place, we can only imagine. Maybe it was as he came down the stairs to breakfast. A sort of 17th Century equivalent to entrance music in a tawdry 1970s American sit com. I hope it was accompanied by some canned applause.

Much of the rest of the day was spent debating politics. People were getting jobs back that they’d had under Cromwell. The ones who'd backed the wrong horses were running for their lives, or desperately attempting to change their allegiances. The great and the good were trying to work out the practicalities of a free parliament. Who would head it up? And what would this mean to everyone else, including Charles II?

Pepys then headed off to a tavern in King’s Street, Westminster, where, with two friends he ate an enormous dinner of “two brave dishes of meat, one of fish, a carp and some other fishes.” He adds that they were “as well done as ever I ate any”. Hardly a surprise for Pepys, whose superlatives knew no bounds. The group then went to another pub, where they drank a few pints of wine. Oddly, for a man who’d been drinking so heavily, he seems to have conducted a full day’s business after this point. Hollow legs, our Sam. Unlike me.

Hell in Paradise

I’m currently sitting by the pool, trying to calm down after a rather stressful experience. I woke up this morning feeling rather peculiar. There’s something wrong with my ear. It feels like there’s been some almighty build up of pressure or wax. Low rumbling noises like air conditioning units or the sound of wind are almost deafening, in a sort of curious vibrating weirdness. Perhaps I got some water in my ear whilst swimming yesterday. Perhaps it’s the start of a cold. Whatever the cause, and despite medical treatment, I’m feeling very dizzy. I’m a dizzy old queen!


I immediately took myself off on an adventure to the Miami Beach Medical Center, which in retrospect felt like a waste of time and $300 that I don’t have. I was seen by a doctor with halitosis who told me it was just a build up of wax. He heard my accent and decided to say “cheerio” to me until I literally wanted to throw up. Perhaps he thought he was somehow bonding with me, but every time he said it, I just smelt his breath. He also told me proudly that he’d been to London. “That must be why he knows my language so well”, I thought. “Where did you go?” I asked “To a big shopping mall,” he replied. After much prompting, I discovered he meant Harrods.

The whole experience felt a bit third world if I’m honest. They decided to syringe my ears. Frankly, I could have done better with a pea shooter and a tub of dirty bath water. There were none of the modern clicking machines that they use in the UK, just a syringe and a sort of kidney shaped bowl, which I had to hold. I got covered in waxy water and then the doctor got a big pointy stick and stuck it in my ear. It hurt like hell. They didn’t remove much wax, certainly not enough for me to feel any different and I was sent away to a pharmacy to get a nasal spray and some eardrops.

In the meantime my travel insurance company and I’ll name and shame them (Columbus Direct) were not only incredibly rude to the health centre, they systematically gave me wrong numbers to call. It got more and more stressful, until I was forced to pay for everything up front. Heaven knows when I’ll see that money again. And heaven knows when this weird vibrating thing will stop. The music I’m listening to at the moment is almost unbearable – and that’s not just because it’s rancid R and B.

You can’t actually escape music anywhere in Miami. Every pool, every shop and every restaurant pumps it out at full volume to the extent that you never get to listen to just one track; you’ll hear two or three simultaneously and at different volumes. It's like listening to Berio except with musak. Yesterday I heard Chiquitita played on pan pipes in the background whilst something by Edith Piaf played (probably) by Liberace droned on and on in the foreground. I'd have notated it, but it sounded like shit.

Yesterday I finally got the opportunity to visit the “historic Art Deco district”. It’s very cool. I love Art Deco and the area was exactly as I’d imagined with rows of brightly coloured buildings all with stunning bold lines and perfect curves, most with a hint of the Mediterranean about them; very different to the predominantly white art deco buildings we tend to find in the UK.

We saw a rabid drag queen "doing" Liza Minelli, photographed our shadows on the beach, met the rudest man in the world behind the counter at Starbucks, and sat and ate at the News Cafe, which is where Gianni Versace drank his final morning coffee just before he was taken from the world. The steps where he was shot, which are in front of his former villa, have become something of a ghoulish tourist attraction. I’m not sure it’s particularly appropriate to lie down and play dead in the spot where someone bled to death, but people do. Perhaps not everyone who was posing for a picture knew why they were doing it. Maybe they just saw a lovely Spanish looking villa, saw other people having their pictures taken there, and thought, “let’s see if we can smile so broadly that our perfect American teeth look like freezer units!”

Last night we went to the theatre to watch a play called The Golden Gays, which unsurprisingly was based on The Golden Girls predictably with men in drag. We lasted all of ten minutes and left whilst one of them was singing There Are Worse Things I could Do from Grease, with a chronic lisp and stranglely all on one note. "An achievement", I thought, between giggles.

Now here’s a quandary. 1660 was a leap year, so I’m going to have to write about what Pepys did on the 29th February as well as the 1st March. Hold on to your gussets! No, wait, he didn't do anything of any interest on either day, so you'll just have to skim read the next couple of paragraphs.

On February 29th 1660, Pepys discovered that Montagu was going to be returned to the high ranking Naval position he’d occupied under Cromwell and lost because there was a feeling he had sympathies for the royal family. Pepys called in on his mother and then Mrs Turner, where his cousin gave him a “brave” (meaning good) cup of metheglin, a sort of spicy mead, and the first he’d ever tasted.

On March 1st, Pepys went to the office, and found, as normal, that there was nothing to do – even after such a long time away! He then decided to write about the death of one of his friend’s coachmen in rather graphic detail; “killed with a blow of one of his horses that struck his skull into his brain”. Lovely. And I bet no-one has their photograph taken whilst pretending to be a horse at the spot where he died! Pepys then shared two pints of wine with Mr Shipley, and then retired to bed early. And that’s all, folks.

Dead Minger For Love

It’s a very blustery day today. Bright and sunny, but a little too breezy to sit and write on the balcony this early in the morning. We drove to Fort Lauderdale last night, which for those who don’t know Florida well, is filled to the rafters with men of a certain persuasion. Matt’s friend decided it would be really cool to visit a bar for bears, which because I’m hairy and English was a bit like asking me to wear a coat covered in ten dollar bills.

The area was horribly seedy. The bar was at the side of one of those wide roads you see in the films with the soulless 7/11 shops and Neon advertisements shooting into the sky. It was sandwiched between a sex shop and a tattooist and had “entrance round the back” written on the door, which made me shudder.

Our taxi driver was asked to wait whilst we had a peer inside. It was like something from the Dead Ringer For Love video, but without Cher to spice things up. There was a curiously musty aroma and it was plain that the guys inside had been sitting there since the late 1970s, allowing the hair to grow on their heads and bodies without any pruning or topiary. It was absolutely beyond words, so we made a hasty retreat and sat in the taxi trying to work out where to head next. The i-phones came out, so I decided to stretch my legs in the parking lot, which in retrospect was probably a mistake.

Emerging from the darkness came a middle-aged black man wearing day-glow shorts and a vest top. He looked wrong; a combination of insanity and drug-addledness. He made a bee-line for me. I politely backed away. “What’s your name?” He slurred, his strange eyes bulging. “Benjamin” I mumbled, smiling politely in a “please don’t rape me” sort of way. “Are you Russian?” he asked; “Yes” I replied, hoping it would throw him off the “Ohmygodyourebritishiloveyouraccent” scent. It didn’t work and in one swift move, he entered my body space and pinned me up against the car, whilst inside Matt and his mate continued with their i-phones.

I somehow managed to extract myself from immediate danger and got myself into the car. I sat, heart racing, in the front seat and said; “right, I think it might be time to go”. It seems no one heard me. The man started tapping on the window and for some unbelievable reason, the taxi driver, oblivious to what had been going on outside, opened the window, and suddenly the man’s face was back in mine. “Can I come with you?” He said. “No, thanks” I replied “What’s your name?” he asked again, “Benjamin” I repeated. He held out his hand as though to shake mine. I offered him my hand half-heartedly and he went to kiss it, which I thought was his way of acknowledging defeat.

Unfortunately instead of kissing my hand, he licked it, and then seductively allowed his spit-sodden bottom lip to smear itself across the back of my hand, leaving what can only be described as a snail’s trail of saliva. My subconscious spoke; “dear Lord, that was absolutely hideous!” thinking surely, this was the time for the taxi driver to step on the gas and get us out of there. Unfortunately not and now my suitor was waving condoms at me and trying to thrust one into my spit-laden palm. He then grabbed my arm and started, with a rather frightening amount of strength for a crack whore, to pull me out of the car; “okay guys, now’s the time for you to realise what’s going on and give me a bit of help!” I yelled... and finally, the other people in the cab tuned in to what was going on and I was rescued.

The taxi screeched out of the parking lot and the strange man was left limping in our wake throwing condoms in the direction of the cab. Obviously adrenaline then made me see the funny side of what had just happened, and for the next ten minutes, all four of us were laughing so hard we thought we were going to burst.

Later on, we found a much more salubrious corner of town, where the gay bars were between antique shops and lovely cafes, and my faith in my people returned.

I don’t think I’ll ever live to see the day when weather does something as spectacular as it did yesterday afternoon. It had been raining; quite heavily at one point and at a curious angle. The sky went a shade of purple and everything looked sort of foggy. I sat in my hotel room looking out towards the western horizon where I could see an orange smudge behind a ridge of floating mauve clouds which looked like smoke and made the skyscrapers resemble chimneys. The smudge was the sun, and it was slowly burning through the mist; first a long way away and then coming closer, travelling at speed across Miami, glinting in more and more panes of glass across the city. It was as though a thousand orange lights were being switched on.

I rushed onto the balcony and stood in awe as the light came nearer and nearer to me. And then suddenly my face felt warm and I realised I was bathed in this beautiful crimson light. I looked behind me, and over the ocean was the most enormous rainbow, a great arc in the sky, the largest I’d ever seen, stretching from one corner of the horizon to the other. In front of the rainbow, aeroplanes in the sky were glinting mysteriously in the sunlight. And suddenly I could hear car horns beeping across the city as drivers spotted the rainbow. I looked across and saw people on the balconies, waving and smiling. And it lasted like that for five minutes. Five magical minutes where time seemed to stand still and the world was bathed in paranormal light. Five minutes where I could do little but hold my breath and wonder. I had to thank God. I couldn’t think of anyone else who could have brought this extraordinary gift to us all. It was profound and utterly joyous. And so bizarre to think that on the other side of the States, an earthquake had rocked Chile and a tsunami was crashing across the Pacific Ocean. Mother nature certainly knows how to put on a show.

350 years ago, Pepys woke up in Epping. He had some red herrings for breakfast whilst a young lad attempted to mend his boot-heel. Unfortunately he left a bigger hole than was there before. You just can’t get the staff. Pepys then jumped on his horse and rode back to London through Epping forest commenting that the road was good, but on one stretch might as well have been a canal! In London, he found all the shops closed and the army out on the streets; a thanksgiving day was being observed across the city in honour of the return of Parliament.

He finally met up with Montagu, who seemed very glad to see him. They had food together, and then Pepys called in on his daughter, Mrs Jem, before finally heading home and finding his wife well.

The following pictures might give some sense of the extraordinary weather here yesterday...

The sun breaks through

Plane in the rainbows

As the sun sets

Paedophiles in tents

I’ve just woken up and am sitting on a balcony looking over what must be the whole of America. The sea is now turquoise and a light breeze is rustling in the palm trees. It’s cloudier than it was yesterday, but still very pleasant.


Since being here, I’ve realised how similar this place is to Spain. For a start, Spanish seems almost as universally spoken as English but visually there are constant reminders. Last night we wandered along a pedestrianised street filled with outdoor restaurants, street entertainers and jewellery stalls and I was reminded of the Ramblas in Barcelona. We had some fairly horrible Italian food, watched a transvestite tap-dancing in platform heels and then sat in a bar where I drank two gin and tonics and immediately wanted to talk to everyone who'd listen. Fortunately tiredness eventually won and I guess we were all tucked up in bed by Midnight Florida time.

The people here feel very different to the people in New York. There’s a sort of earthiness in Miami tangled up with a whiff of redneck. It makes me wonder whether my love of all things American isn’t more a love of New York. Scratch the surface and I’m wondering whether things smell less fragrant over here. On our way to the hotel from the airport, we crossed over to Miami Beach via a very large bridge from the mainland, which was sitting on a sort of spit of land covered in shrubs and the odd scrawny palm tree. By the side of the road were a series of tents; “what an awful place to go camping” I said to the driver; “or are they homeless people?” The driver’s response rather floored me; “They’re sexual predators" he said "they’ve been released from jail, but they’re not allowed to live within 1000 metres of anyone, so they'll stay here until the government can work out what to do with them”. Surely no truly progressive country would allow this to happen. Frankly, if someone cannot be trusted to live anywhere other than in a tent on a bridge, he’s not yet ready to be released from jail.

350 years ago and in far less progressive times, Pepys was up by 4am. He must have had a terrible hangover, but he was very quickly out of Cambridge and on the road back to London. He stopped at Audley End House, just outside Saffron Walden. Interesting for me as my parents live in the next-but-one village of Thaxted.

Apparently it was not unusual in those days for a well-dressed traveller to turn up unannounced at a stately home and expect to be given a tour and that's exactly what Pepys did. On this occasion it was the housekeeper who did the honours, and Pepys was impressed; “the stateliness of the ceilings, chimney-pieces, and form of the whole was exceedingly worth seeing”

He was taken down into the cellars, where he helped himself to wine, drank more toasts to the King, and played on his flageolette, enjoying the “excellent echo” down there. Again, quite where Pepys had kept his flageolette on his horseback journey to Cambridge is almost as interesting a question as what the housekeeper must have thought when he whipped it out in the cellar!

Pepys headed back to Saffron Walden and at the White Horse Inn, there was more roguish behaviour; “kissed the daughter of the house, she being very pretty

He continued his journey. It was raining, but the roads were good. He got as far as Epping, where he turned in for the night after a game of cards and “some merry talk with a plain bold maid of the house” which brings to mind some ghastly scene from a bawdy Restoration Comedy; “Come quick, Mistress Pert-bottom, I greet your heaving bosom like a suckling pig”. Well I guess whilst the cat’s away the mice will play...

 











We had an incredible sunset last night and this is the view from our balcony!

Alice in Miami

I am in Miami! Now there’s an announcement! I’ve come here with Matt and it’s all extremely exciting! It's about 5.00pm. We’re very high up in a very tall hotel, and I can’t stand anywhere near the edge of the balcony for fear of falling off. The sea is deep sky blue, the beach is white, there are palm trees everywhere, and it’s about 70 degrees. Two eagles are circling around in the sky. The smell of toffee apples is drifting up from below. Can life get any better than this, I wonder?


Well, possibly, because last night was the premier of Alice In Wonderland. A fabulous occasion; almost overwhelming. The red – or in this case green – carpet was lit up like a Christmas tree, and despite the rain, thousands of people had turned up to peer and cheer at the stars. Nathan and I ran in; perhaps overly conscious that none of the screaming hordes were interested in peering, cheering or waving at us. In retrospect I would have hung around a bit longer to soak up the electric atmosphere, or at least taken a few moments to study some of the topiared hedges which seemed to have sprung up everywhere on Leicester Square.

I sat down in the cinema to find myself sitting next to Philip Sallon and Phil off of Eastenders. Two more contrasting Philips you could never hope to find! The latter Phil was obviously there to support Barbara Windsor, who lent her dulcet tones to the surprisingly feisty door mouse.

The film was great. Tim Burton was plainly born to bring those characters to life in all of their menacing trippiness. What I didn’t realise is that the whole piece was a “Return To Oz”-style sequel to the Alice books. Alice was returning as a young adult to the land she’d visited in dreams as a child and there were many highlights; the Cheshire Cat being a particular favourite. He sort of swam through the air and disappeared and reappeared in clouds of black smoke which looked like ink in water.

It goes without saying that Matt was brilliant as both Tweedledum and Tweedledee and Helena Bonham Carter made a brilliantly wacky Red Queen/ Queen of Hearts. Johnny Depp brought a huge amount of pathos to the Mad Hatter and Alan Rickman made a perfectly fruity caterpillar. My only issues were with Alice, who I thought was more Sloanney than quirky, and the 3D effects, which didn’t exactly bowl me over. Those dark glasses mean that everything becomes a bit gloomy. Tim Burton’s films are dark at the best of times.

The after show party was tastefully eccentric with baths filled with gin, waiters dressed as Wonderland characters and bizarre sweeties on trolleys which could have come straight out of Harry Potter. I would have loved to get rip-roaringly pissed on the fabulous selection of peculiar cocktails, but I had a flight to catch first thing.

The 26th February 1660 was a Sunday and Pepys and his family were still in Cambridge, strolling in the fields behind King’s College. I wonder if there needed to be seven sheep present (or is it cows) in those days. Perhaps my brother, Edward, a King’s graduate, would like to add a little comment about why it is that there needs to be seven animals in that particular field, and whether it’s true that one of them ended up on a roof!

Mr Pierce the surgeon made a reappearance just after lunch to announce that Montagu had left his Hinchingbrooke country pile and headed for London, which rather upset Pepys, who was obviously planning a visit, no doubt wanting to be the first to bring his Lord up to speed on the goings on in London and then bask in the glory of his arrival there. Mr Pierce was particularly annoyed as visiting Montagu seemed to have been his sole purpose in going up to Cambridgeshire.

Later in the day there was a phenomenal amount of drinking, matched only by the number of toasts that were being made to the King and all his family – and probably by the time they’d finished, his servants and pets too. Pepys was in a naughty mood. He cut church and went drinking instead. Predictably, after consuming his body weight in alcohol, the evening ended back at his Inn with the first written reference to Pepys’ the rogue engaging in a spot of how’s your father;

“I staid up a little while, playing the fool with the lass of the house at the door of the chamber.” The passage ends with those four comforting words that have become utterly synonymous with our hero; “and so to bed.”

But not to bed for me. If you’ll excuse me, there’s an art deco quarter I need to visit!

The view from my hotel balcony, which admittedly looks more Malaga than Miami, but I'm sure the readers in rainy London will appreciate my joy at being here!

Alice in Where?

I’m in a bit of a rush today. I have lots of stuff to do before heading to Leicester Square for the world premiere of Alice In Wonderland. We’re going as Matt’s guests, and I’m very excited, having never been invited to such a potentially glitzy event before! Sadly, my films tend to get premiered in shopping centres and service stations, so this will give me a chance to see how the other half live! My only worry is that the film is being billed as Disney’s Alice In Wonderland, which makes me wonder what happened to Lewis Carroll. Also a tad perturbed at the title. Matt is playing both Tweedledum and Tweedledee, and the film also features the White Queen; all three of whom are characters from Looking Glass Land. Perhaps they should have simply called the film Alice?


Pepys was up with the lark on 25th February 1660 and arrived in Cambridge at 8am. He met up with his father and brother in The Falcon on Petty Cury - a street which still exists - and found them both well. They strolled, no doubt, down St Andrew’s Street, to Christ’s College, and then Pepys sneaked off to Magdalene College, for a quick trip down Memory Lane, CB3. He met up with friends, former masters and scholars and was delighted to find himself being “exceedingly civilly received”. After lunch, he visited some relatives, did some shopping, and then started drinking, “pretty hard” with many toasts to the King. Fascinating really, as Cambridge was one of Cromwell’s strongholds during the Interregnum. Pepys himself mentions being surprised at how his former colleagues had already adapted their speech from the formal language of Puritanism to more relaxed tones. How quickly people accept change...

The day continued with more food, more drinking, more chat, and then to bed at an Inn. Pepys shared with his brother, whose belongings had not yet arrived, so he couldn’t sleep in his college room.

There’s something remarkably timeless about this diary entry. Every October for the past 350 years, the very same thing has happened up and down the country with a different set of central characters. It brings to mind my first day at university; my parents travelling up to York with me to make sure I was okay before snap... the rope was cut and I was suddenly an adult. It’s quite an emotional moment when you see them driving off into the distance, knowing that you have to start a new life, knowing that the safety of childhood has gone forever. I’m sure it was even worse for my parents who'd spent 18 years protecting me.

Gayers

Another day spent on the motet. I started at 8am and haven’t yet stopped. This is mostly because things have been going a lot better today. It’s still incredibly hard work - mind-numbingly difficult - but I no longer feel like I’m treading water... or tap dancing with blue tack on the soles of my shoes!

I’ve been working on a passage from the time of the plague. It’s a rather beautiful sequence; an account of a dream, and for inexplicable reasons it moves me to tears. There’s something innocent, almost childish about it. It reveals how terrified Pepys was of dying, even though, by this point, death must have seemed inevitable. In that week close to 7,000 Londoners died of the plague. The illness was ripping the city apart.

Lady Castelmayne, who features as the heroine of the dream is the woman whose picture hangs proudly opposite Pepys’ at the National Portrait gallery, despite the fact that in life, she barely knew he existed. As Charles II’s lover, she had bigger fish to fry. But Pepys’ had a major crush on her, and probably because he knew he didn't stand a chance, constantly felt the need to remind himself that she was a “whore”! This didn't prevent him from purchasing at least one portrait of her during the period of the diary:

August 15th 1665: “My last night’s dream... the best that ever was dreamed... I had my Lady Castlemayne in my armes and was admitted to use all the dalliance I desired with her... What a happy thing it would be, if when we are in our graves (as Shakespeere resembles it), we could dream, and dream but such dreams as this – that then we should not need to be so fearful of death”

Pepys then went on to write that even within the dream, he knew the situation was too good to be true. This apparently makes it one of the first written references to a "lucid dream". For more information about lucid dreams click here

On this date in 1660, Pepys set out for Cambridge to help his brother settle in, and no doubt spend some time buttering up Montagu at his Huntingdon country pile. Pepys left London with his friend, the surgeon James Pearce, by horseback at about 7 in the morning. They started their journey in the dark and it was dreadful weather, which made their trip up the old north road quite unpleasant.

They stopped at Ware and then at Puckeridge just west of Bishop’s Stortford, where they fed the horses, had a loin of fried mutton and were “very merry”. They ploughed on and about 6 miles short of Cambridge, the horses gave up the ghost. They stopped at a town called Foulmer, which I assume is the village now called Fowlmere. They played cards and ate roast veal at the Chequers Inn before hitting the sack. They shared a room, and possibly even a bed. Gayers!