Day 19: Proms Redux

"I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips,
Straining upon the start.  The game's afoot:
Follow your spirit, and upon this charge
Cry 'God for Harry, England, and Saint George!'"
      - Shakespeare, Henry V (III.i.1-34)

After yesterday's rather somber post about the labours of dragging a body accustomed to action through the tension and discomfort of relaxation, I'm glad to say I was somewhat more animated on Friday.  Two days of R&R had proved more than enough, and now a wall of errands of admittedly varying levels of dullness stood before me, the pith and peel that required careful and methodical unwrapping before I could get at the juicy flesh - pizza at the amazing Rossopomodoro, and the hugely anticipated Film Music Prom at the Royal Albert Hall (my third this season).

I will spare you the details of my multiple voyages to Kingston, to attend the gym and to find some walking shoes for my weekend in Wakefield, and of my haircut in Surbiton - if you are desperate to hear the ins and outs of these trivialities then you can always find me on Twitter. I did, however, enjoy the feeling of once again being busy, of performing tasks and enjoying their results, even if those tasks were hardly Herculean labours. Striding from house to town to bus with the Test Match in my ears and what I liked to think was a steely visage of determination on my face, time ticked quickly and fruitfully, so much so in fact that before I knew it I was in Covent Garden, mooching slowly around the various shops and stalls awaiting my slightly-delayed girlfriend.  By this point, with only a hastily consumed Waitrose salad inside me, I was ravenous.

I never cease to witter on about Rossopomodoro (on Monmouth Street) to everyone I know.  It is the most authentically Italian restaurant I have ever visited in London - in that the service is attentive yet incredibly patchy. I asked for two beers, yet received only one glass. I gave our usual pizza order to one waiter, who shrugged in what I believed was grudging acknowledgment, before his colleague returned in five minutes to say could we please repeat our order as he seems to have forgotten it already. Once your mains have arrived you are condemned to restaurant limbo, so that you have to practically wave your wallet in someone's face before you are allowed to pay.

All of this sounds awful, but they are just some of a number of reasons why this place is so real, so authentic.  We English Londoners, used to clipped confidence and smart service, visit Rossopomodoro and experience a new methodology, one where patience and humour is required, because the staff are simply enjoying their jobs, having fun, and smiling and joking with regular customers (many of whom appear to be Italian). And once you have sampled their simply divine La Verace pizza - for which all ingredients, including the water for the dough, come from Naples - then you won't care an ounce about what hurdles you may have had to leap to get that far.

Dinner digested and, eventually, paid for, we took a Number 9 Routemaster bus, one of the few still working in London and as such a gloriously retro experience, and sauntered to the Royal Albert Hall.  We arrived perhaps a couple of minutes before 7, to be greeted with a ringmistress of a ticket inspector who insisted we marched on the double to our seats as the performance was about to commence.  I had rather banked on a gin and tonic and a peruse through the programme first, having mistakenly believed the concert wasn't due to start until 7.30, but instead we were herded like disobedient sheep to our 2nd Tier box just as the conductor made his way onto stage.

The concert itself was mixed but on the whole extremely successful.  It tried to cover almost every base imaginable, and couldn't help falling flat at times (including a particularly turgid performance of Walton's Henry V suite, which despite stirring narration from Rory Kinnear of the key scenes, sounded woefully out of place), but overall it was a real triumph of a night. The usual favourites were all out in force - Star Wars, Psycho, Murder on the Orient Express, the main themes from Out of Africa and Schindler's List - but two other arrangements really stood out. 

Firstly, and rather surprisingly given I've read none of the books, was the performance of Hedwig's Theme from Harry Potter (I'd previously confused Hagrid and Hegwid before, much to Jo's consternation), which is a real masterpiece of mystery and suspense.  John Williams' haunting opening melody, chimed gently on celeste, is magical enough, but the swooning string scoring and staccato brass betray a real sense of ingenuity in the construction of the score. 

Secondly was a rousing collection of highlights from the James Bond films, with all the main themes covered, but what struck me was how much the BBC Concerto Orchestra really seemed to be enjoying themselves - at one point, during a particularly important mid-bar rest, the string players as one twirled their instruments full circle before continuing as if nothing had ever happened. I was in fits of laughter at its sheer audacity and comic timing. 

As I've said before, the Proms should be praised for consistently aiming away from of elitism and cultural snobbishness and instead embracing allcomers to appreciate top-class music making. Yesterday's concert was simply another example of that theory being put effortlessly into practice. 

Day 9: Pink Floyd

"Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way.
The time has come,
The song is over,
Thought I'd something more to say..." - Pink Floyd, Time


In 1995, two seemingly unrelated events took place.  My school in Bristol started giving me 'prep' (homework to pretty much every other school in England) and my loving parents bought me a Sega Saturn for Christmas. (A Sega Saturn! What a way to show my age!) I'd never owned any previous consoles, having only experienced them wonderingly at neighbours' and friends' houses, but as the occurrences of the first event became rather more regular as the school year dragged on, I found myself unable to enjoy the second event as much as a ten-year old boy should.  When you have a demon of a maths teacher like Mr. Evans, you don't dare turn in your algebra a day late just because you were trying to set the Mountain course record in the Lancia Delta in Sega Rally.


However, by pure accident, I managed to combine the two. The Saturn was stationed in the 'playroom' by a charmingly clunky Acorn CRT monitor, a hangover from our old Atari ST, not far from a battered old sofabed which I would wearingly unfurl every evening and cover with old-fashioned exercise books and ring binders. One evening, when I was particularly frustrated with an English essay that had started but simply refused to end, I took a break and started rooting around the desk, toying with the idea of taking on that ridiculous fifth boss from Panzer Dragoon again. (I was so close!)


Instead, though, my eye caught a glimpse of a CD cover lying on the desk.  I hadn't remembered putting it there, and had only vague memories of my Dad mentioning it. It simply bore a stylised ray of light shining into a glass prism and refracting into a rainbow. It was undeniably striking, especially to a ten year-old, but it didn't even reveal the artist or the album title. Intrigued, I turned the Saturn on, let it run through to what was then the thoroughly modern CD screen and slipped the disc into the tray.  I pressed C on the joypad and returned reluctantly to the essay.


That night was the first ever time I had listened to music on the Saturn, and it became a ritual that I adhered to for as long as I remember grappling with homework.  I eventually added other CDs to the roster - Billy Joel's An Innocent Man and its brash reworking of soul and Stax; Dire Straits' easy-listening giant Brothers in Arms - but those records were in the rather unfortunate position of having to follow Dark Side of the Moon.  I'd never before heard alarm clocks or cash registers or disjointed voices layered together in music.  I'd never heard an instrumental, much less one with a single female voice improvising a horrendous yet melodious cry to heaven (or with titles like "The Great Gig in the Sky").  And I'd never heard anything so fatalistic and final as the closing song cycle of "Any Colour You Like", "Brain Damage" and "Eclipse".  My small childish brain was simply blown away by what I still consider the greatest (non-classical) album ever committed to disc, and I have spent the rest of my life trying to find something to equal it (and have some fairly close with The Who's Who's Next and the Floyd-esque Ten Silver Drops by Secret Machines).


I had the opportunity to revisit those early memories when my girlfriend surprised me with tickets to see Brit Floyd at the London O2 yesterday evening.  Various extenuating circumstances meant we could only see the first half, but they were note perfect from the outset, sensibly dividing guitar and vocal duties across the band and keeping the inter-song chat to a minimum.  Particular highlights were the monolithic "Welcome to the Machine" and a sensitive, studied "Us and Them", although both Jo and I found the visuals, while appropriate, slightly disconcerting at times.


I left feeling as if I had rediscovered a small part of myself, reaffirming my faith in music and its power not only to delight in the present but also to transport to the past as well as any sepia-toned photo album or battered train ticket.  My Saturn may have bitten the dust a long time ago, but it opened the door to my current obsession with music, and to lose that would be to lose a part of me too precious to replace.