RFH refurbishment - auditorium 

HOME IS WHERE THE HEART IS

I am so loving being in London…..

A whirlwind week seeing friends for lunches, drinks, coffee, drinks, dinner and errrr ……drinks every day. A few fabulous gigs also thrown in to the mix - notably Hanne Hukkelberg (surely the next Bjork?), the lovely Steve Lawson’s Recycle Collective gig to launch his wonderful new album (which I was ever so slightly involved in), and preview the imaginative and beautifully performed ‘New Standard’ set with Julie McKee before their Edinburgh Festival run (go check it out if you’re up there), and a heartfelt solo gig at the new Vortex by the ever-creative Estelle Kokot

On Friday I was offered a tour of the Royal Festival Hall’s site redevelopment - a huge and very exciting project. So, suitably dressed in hard-hat, fluorescent jacket and very dodgy wellingtons (which instantly cause you to walk like a builder), I went hunting for my old office and discovered that it now appears to be a bar....which seems somehow appropriate.

The auditorium currently consists of miles of scaffolding (in itself a remarkable feat of engineering) and although not totally gutted by any means, there's so much already changed in the building that despite having worked there for 19 years, I was nevertheless getting confused as to my whereabouts.

Yesterday to C and OVP's gaff for a lovely afternoon/evening/night in their garden with my closest and very-missed friends. In short, my ‘family’. The last thing I remember is having way too much fun with a pitchfork digging up potatoes in J's allotment at dusk. Don't ask. I've really no idea...

THE LAST ONE TO GO HOME

Yes, ha ha, very funny, now can we have the usual British summertime back please.
I left NY at this time of year to get away from 37 degree temperatures, but the degree equivalent of the average mid-life crisis age is methodically following me around the world, like a big weather-personal-joke thing.
And at the risk of missing out whole countries due to sporadic internet access of late, suffice to say Berlin was, errrr, HOT.

Monday was spent entirely at the American Embassy due to spectacularly incompetent lawyers who had somehow managed to totally mess up our visa application by failing to notice a ticked box on our forms and hence not following up by obtaining, or asking us to obtain, the required extra information. As far as I can see, all they had to do for their thousands of pounds was to 'copy out' forms we had already filled in months ago and notice a ticked box, and in addition to missing the tick, they even managed three 'copying - out' errors. Unbelievable! I swear my 8 yr old niece could have done a better job. So on Monday morning beady-eyed lawyer calmly sat there and said 'our paralegal missed it i'm afraid. She's new. The worse case scenario is that you'll have to stay in the UK whilst the extra information is processed'. WHAT?! (We know exactly what this means because the very same thing happened the first time round, and TH was delayed in the UK for no less than 4 months, due to someone in the same company once again missing a ticked box!). The TH looked like he was about to have a heart-attack and I was about to come out with my now automatic-American-response to threaten to sue , but then remembered that they're lawyers. (Allegedly.) Although frankly they're so useless I'd probably have won. Worst of all was their total lack of apology or any kind of concern. For all they cared we could be homeless and jobless in the UK for 4 months due to their incompetence, and that was just 'one of those things'. I can really see how folks end up in jail for years for crimes they've not committed if this is the standard of legal representation in this country.

The American Embassy must be the only place in the world with 'America' in the title which doesn't have air-conditioning. So we sat in excruciating heat for the entire day with about 600 others and one fan (the redistributing warm-air kind, not the stalker kind), waiting for the verdict. Our number got bypassed. And bypassed.... And after about 4 hours I had become accustomed to the idea of being stuck in the UK for 4 months and was compiling a rather exciting list of 'things to do in London when you're stranded'. By 5pm I was very jolly indeed, with the Edinburgh Festival, the London Jazz Festival, a whole bunch of friends to stay with and 'cooler weather' on my list.....

By 5.30pm everyone had been processed except us and a guy who looked totally strung out on something. In short it didn't look good. It looked a bit like the tail end of a party when you really should have left hours ago, particularly as there was no alcohol.

Finally we got called for our interview. Miraculously the guy interviewing us a/ clearly wanted to get home and b/ had managed to dredge up the missing information from TH's previous application 3 years ago (which the lawyers had claimed would take days to get out of the archive). Half an hour later our visas were agreed. We handed over the lawyer's credit card information to pay for the visas, and guess what - their credit card info was incorrect! What a surprise. I've never seen the TH get his credit card out so quickly.

On leaving the embassy we both immediately started smoking again. The TH out of sheer relief. Myself, because I was gutted. No 4 months in London ......and London still feels like my home.

POKER NIGHT

8 four-packs, 7 bottles of wine, 6 investment bankers, 5 broken glasses, 4 all-ins, 3 broken plates, 2 glamorous jazz singers, 1 shark, 1 dog/pig and 1 all-day morning after....

THE ID AND THE EGO

Even now, things about this city still amaze me almost daily. For instance, there are NO passport photo booths. No such thing. So having reached the point in my stay when I need to complete another batch of endless administrative paperwork in order to maintain my right to live the American Dream (?), I find myself forced to visit actual photographers for my 3 photos for this, 2 for that and 1 for the other.

Problem. Well several actually. Number one being my pathological hatred of having my photograph taken. Back in the UK it was trauma enough to have to shut myself in the photo booth at Waterloo Station for a whole afternoon, armed with a bucket of pound coins, but at least there was a small chance that I would emerge several hours later (and several tens of pounds poorer) with a photo vaguely resembling my self-image. And most importantly, nobody else had to undergo this painful process with me.

It is rather different here. I now have the required photos but it is 4pm Friday. I began my photo session at midday on Thursday.

The first photographers was a very hit and run affair.....errrrr, what, no mirror? I'm sorry, but with the number of times per day I'm asked for ID here, there is NO WAY I'm going to spend the next 2 years looking like an escaped convict who's recovering from a second-degree burns incident on a sunbed. It was just too embarrassing to join the queue again to re-do said photos so I went to another shop.

At the next place they had a problem with my head. The thing about living here (visa) is that your head has to be 1.25" from top to chin, but if you want to work (work permit), your head needs to be 2mm smaller - perhaps so as you don't get any big ideas.... especially as a foreigner. However, if you want to get into the country in the first place (passport) I believe your head has to be 10mm smaller. Or something. Which would be all very well if there wasn't the added problem of the measurement from your eye level to the bottom of the photograph.

I swear you have to have a PhD in maths and a logarithms book close by to be a passport photographer in this city, and the guy in shop 2 was having a great deal of trouble 'minimising' me. Ok, so on top of my photo phobia I now find out I'm facially a total freak, and the square of my hypotenuse doesn't equal the sum of the squares on my other two sides. So in the next batch of shots, which took forever, I am looking, (because I'm feeling), like the Elephant Man. I really couldn't put him or myself through all that again, so I pretended to be happy and went to shop 3.

The girl in shop 3 actually took some photos I was almost pleased with. But she wasn't. 'You're smiling' she said 'they probably won't accept them'. (Quite where that smile had come from after the day I'd had I've no idea. It can't possibly have been mine.) By this point I'd traversed the city several times and it was practically bedtime. Maybe if I slept on it (my face that is), I'd wake up with it miraculously the right size, colour, shape and expression.

This morning I cut my fringe, flattened my hair down with gel to lose a few millimetres and plastered make-up on before attempt 4. The first photos were apparently 'no good', as some hair had 'got away' and consequently both my ears weren't showing (?) And I was starting to think that I'd never be able to travel or work again purely on account of not being able to produce a valid photograph, when the photographer caught me off-guard and got the shot. I look nothing like myself, but that's okay as 'good likeness' doesn't appear to be on the list of requirements. The point is I look miserable, have 2 ears and am the right size.

So now we know why only 34% of Americans own passports.

INDEPENDENCE DAY

So, because 230 years ago, the Americans got away from us Brits, last night I joined 3 million other 'independently minded people' to stand on the FDR ( a large motorway which runs over 9 miles up the eastern side of Manhattan ) to watch the much-awaited firework display. (The FDR was closed to traffic, just incase you're wondering....)

The aliens are coming and their goal is to invade and destroy. Fighting superior technology, Man's best weapon is the will to survive. Yeah that's the movie, but actually it could easily have been the theme of the display - particularly at the end, when the will to survive came in very handy whilst trying to get home at the same time as 3 million other 'independently minded people'.

The actual individual fireworks were probably the most original and creative I've ever seen - notably ones which exploded into star shapes and 3D boxes, Saturn rings and slow-rising ghost-like alien things. But, whatever happened to the three act structure? Like most displays these days, after the initiating incident the whole storyline rather lost the plot. There was no 2nd act climax, and even the denouement was confusing with several false-endings. Just imagine being at the theatre and the audience clap because they think the play's over (in several places), only to find it starts up again. Said play would almost certainly be considered rubbish, right? Visual storytelling is no different to any other, and in my opinion, all firework display designers should enrol on Robert McKee's 'story' seminar.....

Anyway, personal structure gripe aside, it was a good display as displays go. It's just that nothing will EVER compare to the Millennium firework display in London. That year my friends were clearly sleeping with the right people because I found myself, with only a handful of others, viewing from the roof of the Royal Festival Hall, so close to the action that burnt-out firework shells were landing on the ground at our feet. I will never ever forget that evening and the background soundtrack of my French friend D, who was leaping up and down with excitement behind his tripod as he took zillions of photographs, whilst simultaneously trying to direct another friend in the use of his new camera by screaming every few seconds 'Press zee fooking BUTTON!'

Apparently.....