Purim

It’s the Jewish festival of Purim today, which is, essentially, the equivalent of Hallowe’en, in that there’s an “anything goes”, somewhat rebellious vibe in the air, which sees people arriving at shul in fancy dress. Our rabbi was dressed as a penguin, for example...

During the service, which was held by a sister synagogue in Great Portland Street, the story of Esther is intoned in Hebrew. The fun part is that every time the name of Haman is mentioned (he’s the dude in the story who tried to commit genocide against the Jewish people in Persia,) the congregation are set the task of drowning his name out with hooters, rattles, boos and yells. It’s all highly theatrical and a great deal of fun.

After the service, we went downstairs into the hall, and performed a parody of Kiss Me Kate, replacing the original words with funny puns about being Jewish. “Brush up your Torah” etc.

Having made it abundantly clear that I was there to make up numbers only, I received the script to discover I’d been given two large solos, one in Brush Up Your Torah, which (in its original version) is the song I hate more than any other in the world! The tune is ghatsly, the lyrics can only be described as “rapey” and it goes on forever! Actually, the more I studied the music for the whole musical, the more I realised what a huge pile of dross it is!

That said, Marc and Felicity had written wonderfully clever alternative lyrics which were great fun to sing, despite the acoustics in the hall being ludicrous. The audience was highly appreciate and actually included an old university friend of mine, Gawain, whose girlfriend, it turns out, is affiliated to the New West End synagogue where I sing. Small world.

The evening ended with some lovely food and the rabbi yodelling, which I’m not sure anyone could have predicted. 

I was surprised the crowd was as large as it was as London was hit by a blizzard today. It’s such a rare occurrence. I walked into Mountview this morning in glorious sunlight, two inches of snow under my feet. And then, at about lunchtime, it started tipping it down. The streets around Warren Street were pure white, this evening, which is a sight you almost never see these days in central London. I found it all rather exciting if I’m honest but hope it doesn’t affect people coming to BEAM tomorrow and Friday.

Esoteric

I watched a tiny bit of breakfast television this morning. They seemed to be at the Sage in Gateshead with the “next generation of inventors.” Loads of local children were holding up placards with pictures of their handiwork. I was a little confused that none of them seemed to have local accents. Plainly, the next generation of inventors are all from public schools...

I have to say: I find the tragic artifice of television utterly laughable. The idea that, at 7 in the morning, a whole circus troupe might be warming up and jumping about in the background of the shot whilst the presenter does a piece to camera is just a nonsense. The desperation people show to be on telly never ceases to amaze me. An all-woman choir had turned up to the Sage this morning simply to sing Rock Around the Clock. The sum total of their involvement seemed to be to provide three seconds of music whilst the presenter said “back to the studio.” It’s just all so fake, and the less you watch telly, the more you realise how rubbish it is when you do. We take so much nonsense for granted. 

For the next two weeks I’m working at Mountview, which is actually the drama school where I did my training. It’s a real treat to be back in the old building especially as it’s moving to Peckham at the end of this year. For me it’s very sad that the place is not remaining in Haringey. The borough was apparently simply not that fussed about keeping one of London’s premier education institutions. Mountview was always North London’s drama school, and it’s very much the reason why I settled in this part of the city.

Still, I am making the most of walking to work. It’s a 40-minute journey and I pass through all manner of woods and parks on route. It has been freezing cold, however. It snowed throughout my journey yesterday. This morning, the ground was rock solid with a hoar frost which glinted magically in the sunshine. Parakeets were sitting on the trees in Highgate Wood. Those fellas never used to live near us but seem to be everywhere now. Their green coats were literally glowing in the sun against the grey winter trees. It was almost as though they’d lined themselves up in a pocket of sunlight for a photo. Tarts. The rise of parakeets in north London is an extraordinary phenomenon. I remember the first time I saw one on Hampstead Heath. A group of strangers stood, looking up at a tree, gasping and saying “but what on Earth is it doing here?” A few years later, the heath was full of little green flashes. It was only three years ago that I heard that all-too familiar squawk and saw a flock of them flying over my house, and now the local woods are full of them.

I’m at Mountview School working with the foundation year and a writer called Sam Potter on a musical adaptation of a children’s book. We’re really just having a bit of fun for two weeks to get a feel for whether the somewhat esoteric material lends itself to a musical treatment. We’re doing lots of improvisation and I’m throwing out a few songs here and there. The students are brilliant: really experimental and up for it. There’s a good atmosphere in the rehearsal room.

I have to stop writing. It’s too cold not to have my hands in my pockets.

Present continuous

I’m afraid I was rather rude to an evangelical Christian yesterday, as I rushed from a rehearsal in Notting Hill to another rehearsal back in Highgate. He was handing out fliers at the tube whilst saying “Christ the Lord has risen” or something ghastly like that, so I looked him in the eye and said “shut up.” Yes, of course, I could have been considerably ruder, but I was fairly shocked at myself for the anger he made me feel. With all the desperate problems we have in the world at the moment, I think it’s time we started trying to work out how we can unite, rather than wasting time handing our fliers at tube stations which tell us how we should behave. It’s incendiary. I have no objections to anyone with religious faith - my friend Abbie has taught me that not all Christians are anti gay - but I strongly feel that religion needs to be a personal thing: it should not be inflicted on anyone and people must not be either frightened or cajoled into getting involved.

I have very much enjoyed watching the Winter Olympics on telly and shall miss them now they’re over. I’m quite a sucker for an Olympic Games and will happily sit and watch almost any sport - with the exception of team games, which I hate. For some time, I’ve tried to work out what it is about team games which irritate me. I find them utterly boring. Football, rugby, cricket, hockey. Dull. Dull. Dull. Dull.

Football is, without question, the most loathsome game of them all. My least favourite part is the after-match analysis and interviews. Quite why everyone feel the need to talk in the present continuous, I’ve no idea. The match is over. We can help all viewers to acknowledge this fact by talking in the past tense, which is, after all, what it was invented for. I feel the same about the very same trait in historians: “so Henry the Eighth is fighting with all his might to suppress his feelings for Boleyn.” In what world is this still actually happening?!! It’s an affectation and I simply don’t understand the reason for it. Just as I don’t understand why midwives talk about “baby” without using “your” or “the.”

So who have I offended today? Christians, footballers, historians and midwives? Not a bad roll call.

And just like busses...

If your day’s routine involves reading one of my blog’s over breakfast, I feel I must apologise for my apparent inactivity of late. I’ve been wary of writing too many posts which say, “I was really busy, I had a cup of tea and I went to the gym.” And have, instead, tried only to blog when there’s something interesting to say, lest you all decide I’m a terribly dull person.

Over the last three days, I’ve worked on three quizzes. Last night’s was at a school in Guildford. I sat on the most uncomfortable chair. It was made of bendy plastic and leaned perilously so that my bottom was pushed to the back, whilst some awful ridge dug into my back. I couldn’t imagine being a student at the school and finding myself sitting, for long hours, on a chair like that.

I drove home in the dead of night, after dropping the quiz master off at the town’s train station. I had forgotten quite what a delight the Arts and Crafts, brick-built cathedral is, especially at night when it gets lit up in a fabulous, eerie manner. I just confused myself by calling Guildford a town and yet describing its iconic religious building as a cathedral. I thought the definition of a city was an urbanisation with a cathedral. Northampton’s lack of one has always been cited as the reason for that particular place not being granted city status. Apparently not. Guildford is defined as a large town. To make matters more confusing, it is sometimes described as the county town of Surrey, but this seems to be in dispute. Kingston Upon Thames also has some sort of claim to the title, but has been swallowed up by Greater London, which possibly means it’s no longer in Surrey. Curiouser and curiouser...

It has been hectic over the past few days. I sang in shul this morning, which seems like a lifetime ago. It was a very early start. It went well. The choir blended really well and we sang material which both excited and moved me. There is something rather special about singing in an all-male choir. It’s a very specific, rather gutsy sound. I think it must activate my Welshie roots.

There are posters everywhere on the tube for Mary Magdalene, a film which Philippa wrote. As I got off the tube at Highgate this evening, I walked through a tunnel of them and felt a burning sense of pride. I’m very excited to see it.

It’s blinking cold. I’m exhausted. I haven’t drunk enough water and my lips feel all chapped. That must mean it’s time for bed!

Tolerance is not a one way street

I avoid the news as often as I can these days. It’s always full of people getting outraged on other people’s behalves whilst shrilly demanding retribution: “Make him resign!” “Boycott his work!” “Cut their funding!” It’s just noise, and lots of it.

...And then there’s the BBC’s special approach to reporting which seems to involve being so terrified of being accused of bias that they go around the houses to express every side of an argument without actually giving a sense of what percentage of people ascribe to which view. Unless, that is, the powers-that-be view this view as potentially contentious, at which point it’s ruthlessly cast aside. Free speech, it seems, is defined merely as what what the BBC defines as acceptable, which, itself, is pinned to the well-tuned moral compasses of the liberal elite. And what would we do without patronising wealthy urbanites telling us how to live our lives?

I understand why it happens. We need to address the awful things which have happened in the past and the huge imbalances in society today, and, in fairness, the pendulum always has to swing in the other direction in order to find its equilibrium. And no one, of course, could be expected to turn a blind eye to prejudice and intolerance...

Or could they?

Last night, the BBC Radio 4 News led with the story that a group of men in Newcastle have been preying on “vulnerable” young women. It is, apparently, fairly likely that many other similar networks exist in towns and cities across the UK. So what do we know about these men? Well, according to the reporter, “the majority are of Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Indian origin, but others come from Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Albania and parts of Eastern Europe.” She was basically too terrified to say that they were all Muslims and, instead, spent thirty seconds of airtime going around the houses to imply this fact without offending the fragile sensitivities of the Liberal elite whom she could hear in the background sharpening their knives to accuse her of Islamophobia. We’re told that the men in question showed arrogantly little remorse for their actions, with most merely talking about Western women and their loose sexual morals. These men aren’t brutally misogynistic because they’re from Bangladesh. Where they’re from is actually irrelevant. The one thing which links all of these men is their religion. Regardless of whether they are misappropriating what they’re taught, religion has given them an excuse or a reason to dehumanise non-Muslim women.

Of course, by wanting to raise this fact, I’m not trying to argue that all Muslims hold these views. Far from it. We’re talking about a tiny minority. But we will never be able to solve a problem which has affected thousands of young women, without being able to find out what makes some young Muslim men behave like this. Shying away from identifying the single factor which links these men is putting more young people at risk.


Only when we identify the root of the issue can we take appropriate action, by which I mean careful education programmes assisted by religious leaders which attempt to reverse dangerously-ingrained views.

Tolerance is something which has to work both ways. If it doesn’t, we’re lost.

Luton

I went to Luton on Sunday night. It was a last-minute decision based on not wanting to get up at shite o’clock just to get stuck in rush hour traffic. I stayed in a Travelodge. A Luton Travelodge. I’m not sure it gets any more glamorous than that. I sat and watched the BAFTAs in my hotel room whilst children in the room across the corridor literally screamed their little lungs out. I think they were screaming out of excitement rather than because they were being slaughtered, but I’m no real expert, and it was Luton.

The BAFTAs felt self-conscious and a little arch. Everyone wore black and all the speakers felt obliged to distance themselves from anything that anyone might have found offensive in the last twelve months. Joanna Lumley, however, was, as you might expect, her usual charming, classy, glorious self, and made for a wonderful host. The list of dead people was nothing compared last year’s roll call, prompting me to think that 2016 was a particularly grim year.

It rained through the night and was raining heavily when I woke up. The rain added a certain something to my joyous experience. I bought my own breakfast. I didn’t fancy paying extra for a bowl of Shreddies. My only complaint was that the milk had warmed up through the night, in my excessively stuffy room. 

I was in Luton to speak to drama and music students at the Chalk Hill Academy, a secondary state school in the town. I listened to GCSE compositions and gave the students as much feedback as I thought constructive and inspiring, before being whisked into the school’s lecture hall to work with drama students on their upcoming assessed performances. I was asked to talk about my career for a few minutes, and the kids seemed particularly keen to discuss Our Gay Wedding: The Musical. I think they were genuinely interested in the project, although, for some reason, I felt a little gauche and self-conscious talking about it. I think all gay men have an in-built valve which makes them a little embarrassed about or wary of outing themselves to young people. Until Clause 28 was repealed in the early naughties, it would have been illegal for me to even mention it in a school, so I guess the roots of my reticence were fed by that particular dung heap. Of course, it’s vital that we usualise LGBT issues in schools. It is highly likely that at least one student in the group considers themselves to be sitting somewhere underneath the rainbow umbrella and I may have offered them a bit of hope or inspiration.

The students did incredibly well and there are one or two kids within them whom I think are super-talented. I was, however, really upset to learn that none of the composing students had computers at home, a fact which is plainly born out of poverty. How can a kid learn his craft if he doesn’t have the equipment to practice it at home? Yet again I find myself profoundly irritated that we’re not looking at location and social background as key reasons for why students are held back in their early lives.

Weddings and misty mountains

We’re currently on a rail replacement bus. Deeply irritating and relentlessly tinny music is playing over the sound system. It is climbing into my ears like a miniature pneumatic drill. It’s a little irritating that they always choose Sundays to disrupt the travel in this country. It strikes me that Sunday is the one day you want to get home speedily. They invariably try to pretend that the failure isn’t planned, but it invariably is, or else it wouldn’t always happen on a Sunday. I would far rather be told about this sort of nonsense when I buy my (hideously expensive) ticket, so I can make the decision whether or not to take another mode of transport. We’re told this bus ride is going to add an hour and a half to our overall journey. Can you imagine what a panic you’d be in if you had a plane to catch the other end?

We’re presently trundling through the outskirts of Glasgow, which turns out to be a very lovely city indeed. The architecture is wonderful. We were staying in the West End district, which is filled with long, red and blond sand stone, grand Victorian terraces. The shops in the area are a bit alternative and it’s full of cafes which seem to place an emphasis on vegetarian and vegan cuisine.

Our day yesterday started with a walk around the Botanic Gardens, which were handily just opposite our hotel. I’m sure, in the spring and summer, they’re absolutely stunning. They looked a little windswept yesterday, but the glasshouses were a treat to stroll around. One room was full of potted flowers. The scents were utterly over-powering.

We took Fiona’s advice and walked down Byres Road and along the charming Ashton Lane, with its retro cinema and hipster bars, before returning to the hotel to get our glad rags on.

We were in Glasgow to attend Nathan’s friend Jason’s wedding to his lovely fella, Gary. It was a charming occasion spent with very lovely people. It’s still rather special to see two blokes getting married. I haven’t been to enough same sex marriages yet for it to feel commonplace. And, of course, the older I get, the fewer marriages I get to attend in general.

There was a ceilidh in the evening. A three-piece folk band put guests through their paces. I was rather proud to have been part of an eight-man reel. It just so happened that all the people who stood up to take part in the dance were men. At first, it didn’t feel particularly strange, but it was so noteworthy to the leader of the band, that he asked if he could take our picture. We danced that reel with great gay pride, suddenly aware of how the eyes of the room were upon us! Society really has changed so much for the better in this respect.

There was a tinge of sadness underlying the day, however. Life can be cruel and unfair and I see a lot of people around me struggling to make sense of the cards they’re presently being dealt. A lot of people have loved ones who are getting ill. Others seem to be going through painful breakups which they can’t understand.






Bizarrely, as I write this sentence, and we charge over misty, snow-covered Southern Scottish mountains, the tinny radio is playing Don’t Give Up by Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush. There’s a message in there for us all...