Events on the main stage in Trafalgar Square were due to kick off at 12noon, so I headed into London in the morning. I had spoken to Miss T the day before and she’d talked about meeting up in the afternoon – she was babysitting for her sister the night before, and so would be passing through London.  I’d agreed to lend her and Mr S one of my old cameras, so this was an ideal chance to hand it over – so I wanted to get plenty of time in before I met her. When I arrived at the square, at about quarter to 12, there were already a lot of people waiting and so I went to find myself good vantage point at the top of the stairs leading up to the National Gallery where I settled down for things to get going.

12 o’clock came and went.  As did half past, as did 1pm.  And still we stood waiting.  Finally, about quarter past 1 our two hosts appeared on stage.  They were two young ladies (Not young young I don’t suppose.  Not what I might have referred to as young before, but from the view of my advancing age, young enough.) dressed in traditional Chinese outfits. It took me a little by surprise when they introduced themselves as Yvonne and [something equally non-Chinese].  Anyhow, they proceeded to introduce a whole load of dignitaries ranging from someone from the Chinese embassy who couldn’t speak English, through to some senior policeman, via Boris Johnson who couldn’t be bothered to turn up but sent us a video message (which we ended up seeing twice, apparently because of technical problems), all of whom made speeches about how great the occasion was and how proud they were to be associated with it.  After around 45 minutes, the painting of the dragons’ eyes and a photo call on the stage, the entertainment started.

The first, and by far the best, act was a dragon dance.  We were told that it was telling the story of a dragon who was sent into the mountains to collect some kind of special tea.  He had to overcome a whole load of problems on his journey and, apparently, was scared for a long period around the middle.  The dance was impressive.  The dragon was made up of two people and the whole dance took place on top of a set of 7 and 8 foot poles.  There were lots of acrobatic jumps from pole to pole accompanied by traditional Chinese drums and thing which no one but the front row of the crowd right by them could hear because it wasn’t amplified.  Following that there was some singing and something else (probably: I can’t actually remember, it made such an impression).

By this time I was losing interest and wanted to wander up to Chinatown, but was a little bit trapped.  Even when they moved the barriers back to make more room on the ground the steps were pretty crowded and I was struggling to escape.  I found my way down the side of the steps in the end, knocking out as few people as possible on the way down. I took some general shots around Trafalgar Square and then my phone rang. It was Miss T.  She was just setting off from her sister’s house and, after a little discussion, we arranged to meet outside of Leicester Square tube.  This was on the right line for her, and was a good reason for me to head that way.

So I did.  I walked up around Trafalgar Square stopping to take some shots of the stalls and people around the edge (as well as taking a picture for some foreign visitors. It seems if you have professional kit on your shoulders people expect you to be able to take good photos on their little instant digital cameras.  This is, of course, the opposite of the truth.), and headed up the (closed) road to Leicester Square.  There was more going on there, and I spent some time taking pictures around there.  The plan was to then go into Chinatown itself, but a little exploration revealed that wasn’t going to work because of the crowds and time.  So I just went to meet Miss T.

Once she arrived we headed off for a break at a lovely little cafe in Covent Garden.  On the way there we spotted a whole load of TV OB trucks parked outside the Royal Opera House so went to investigate. Of course neither of us had realised it was the night of the BAFTA awards; why would we? It’s not like we both work in the entertainment industry or anything. We sat for an hour or so in the cafe, Miss T had soup while I had a very large slice of Chocolate Bombe and surprisingly nice Apple juice.  We chatted and I got to take the weight off my feet for a while.

One thing Miss T wanted to do was get photographs of some graffiti which had appeared on some building site hoardings near London Bridge.  We decided we should head there before the light faded too far.  With those photos in the bag, we walked back along the south bank of the river toward Waterloo, snapping away as we went.

As a theatre and events photographer it’s been a long time since I took landscape pictures so it was a bit of a change for me, but still remarkably enjoyable.  It’s also been a long time since I went on a shoot with another photographer, and it’s always very interesting to see what they spot that you missed, especially when out of the confines of a performance space.

Miss T and I parted company once we reached Waterloo station.  It was pretty late by this stage and we both needed to get off home.  We sorted out who was taking what camera kit (I was still carrying some of the things she wanted to borrow in my kit bag), said our goodbyes, she headed off underground and I went and got my train.

On the train home I sat opposite a photographer who had clearly been on the BAFTAs red carpet.  He was editing and tagging his photos with the help of a celebrity cheat sheet issued by BAFTA.  It crossed my mind that it would be very helpful if something like that could be provided by producers when I’m working with particularly large casts.

I beat Miss T back home for once, although unusually we did start off from my main station rather than hers.

I was glad of a few days with nothing planned this weekend.  The last few weeks have been a bit non-stop.  Early in the year I bought a whole new load of camera kit but hadn’t had much chance to take it out for fun and play with it through January so, on Valentine’s day, I packed up my backpack and headed off to shoot the silent disco in The Scoop at More London.  I was expecting it to be a reasonably busy event with plenty going on to photograph.  Unfortunatly that wasn’t the case.

My trains arrive into London Waterloo which is just a few minutes walk away from the London Eye and South Bank.  Once on the South Bank you can walk along the Thames path right down to Greenwich (in fact the path runs 184 miles from near the river’s source, according to the National Trail website).  So I decided to walk from the station to City Hall, quite a nice walk I’ve done plenty of times before with a full kit bag.  What I failed to factor into my journey was how much heavier my new kit is when compared to my old kit, and how out of practice I am at walking with it after winter (in fact quite probably how out of practice I am at walking at all since I started using my bike for local journeys just under a year ago).

Once I reached The Scoop I was disapointed that there weren’t many people there, and it wasn’t much of a sight.  I couldn’t even easily get close to the edge of The Scoop because they had security barriers around it.  There were pretty friendly looking staff around (one of the young ladies gave me quite a smile as I walked past, actually) and I’m sure, had I asked, they would have been quite accomodating, but I wasn’t really in the mood having walked all that way, so I just stomped past, around the other side of City Hall and flopped onto the stone seating / steps for a rest and to decide what to do. For some reason I chose to walk a bit further.

I wandered across Tower Bridge, in front of the Tower of London and along some of the roads in the City. I didn’t take any pictures.  I had half an idea to walk to St Paul’s, but didn’t make it that far.  I came back down to the north side of the Thames by St Magnus the Martyr (who were ringing their bells at the time) and walked back up to Tower Bridge.  By this time I was starting to hurt; my feet and legs were the worst. I crossed back over the river with the intention of seeing if things had hotted up at the disco, but they hadn’t so I decided to head home.

By this time my shoes were feeling really quite uncomfortable and I was limping slightly.  It felt like my sock had shifted slightly aroud in my shoe and the feeling of it moving against my foot was starting to annoy me, so I stopped to sort it out.  Unfortunatly it wasn’t my sock, it was the skin on the ball of my foot which had blistered very badly.  I hobbled on to London Bridge tube and back to Waterloo where, thankfully, it wasn’t much of a wait for the train.

I continued to suffer for it the next few days.  While my feet felt a little better after a good night’s sleep my legs decided to start aching more.  I think perhaps I was a bit ambitious (albeit not intentionally) on my first outing of the summer, but at least I know now how much practice I need to get in before we really hit the summer events season…

The weekend drinks were supposed to be for Miss D’s birthday.  We’d already kind of had birthday on her actual day, but given it was in the middle of the week and Mr T was working they decided to go for a few drinks with people on the Saturday afterwards.  It took place at our usual pub in Guildford.  I went on the train while everyone else except Mr P came in Mr T’s car.  I met Mr P at the station and we walked to the pub together.  It was the first time Mr P and I had seen each other since the new year, so we talked about what we had done over Christmas and I told him about my new year’s resolution and the Press Club.  Once we arrived at the pub we got a table, and then people changed their mind about the table so we moved.  And then they changed their mind again and we changed back.  Shortly afterwards they changed their minds again and we moved for one final time.  The rest of the evening went pretty much without hitch.  I sat between Mr P and his brother and oposite Miss D.  I talked mainly to them because they were the people I knew most.  It did strike me as the evening went on, however, that other than me it was really just a group of Mr T’s friends.  Granted Miss D’s friends are either busy with babies or further away than was practical, but it was still all Mr T’s friends.  In fact Miss D said something in the following days about feeling she wished there were more girls there to talk to.  I suppose there wasn’t much anyone could do.  On the way back home as I was walking with Mr P back to the station after the rest of them had gone off to the car park he said he sensed some tension between Mr T and I.  I’m not really sure why, I thought it had gone OK and I’d pretty much managed to avoid saying too much to him.  I guess either it’s more obvious than I realised, or he just read that into it because he knows what I’ve told him before.

So that was that weekend.  The next weekend (last weekend) I got a text from Mr P saying that Miss C was over from France and asking if I would like to meet up with them on Saturday and maybe go to the theatre.  Always being up for the theatre, and very happy to see Miss C again, I said I would.  Unfortunately Miss D was off seeing Mr T that weekend (she sees him every weekend and Miss C not very often, but still.  Miss C’s going to be back in about 3 weeks when I’m told it’s Mr T’s birthday so there’ll no doubt be a collection of his friends going out for that which we’ll all go to) so it was just me.  I met them at Embankment tube just after 4, just in time to see a protest march going past along the Embankment.  I’m not sure what they were protesting about, and I didn’t have my camera so I didn’t bother investigating too much.  We walked to the discount Tkts booth in Leicester Square to see what shows were still available and decided to go with Buddy, the Buddy Holly musical.  Both Mr P and I had seen the touring version a number of years ago and were happy to go again while Miss C hadn’t seen it at all.  The show went up at 7.30 so we headed to find a bar.  We went to a nice place near Covent Garden and chatted until it was time to head to the theatre.

The show wasn’t quite what I remember (or the touring version has more story telling).  I still enjoyed it, and I think I’d go again if someone else wanted to.  It’s supposed to tell the story of Buddy Holly’s life, but the story telling is a little thin on the ground.  The first half takes you from an appearance on the radio of The Crickets as a country band through them recording their hit singles, Buddy’s marriage, the band’s break up and on to the final tour.  The second half turns the audience in the theatre into the audience at Holly’s last concert in Clear Lake with The Big Bopper and Richie Valens in 1959.  It’s more like seeing a tribute band than a musical.  Buddy’s death is treated handled very poignantly if briefly and it seemed to genuinely take some people by surprise (“shit” said one lady behind us with honest surprise when the VO said what had happened).  The thing closes with a big reprise of Oh Boy.  It does make you leave with a smile on your face.

Sitting next to me were a couple of foreign girls and sitting next to Mr P were another couple of girls one of which caught my eye a few times during the show.  I’m sure she was looking at me, and she wasn’t unattractive either.  I thought maybe I might be able to find out if she really was interested during the interval, but she seemed to be buried in her programme with her friend so I summised she wasn’t.  On the way out she was standing in front of the theatre waiting for her friend when we came out, and again she caught my eye.  So I don’t know what she thought — perhaps she was as shy as me and that’s why she hid during the interval — but I am liking the attention my new look seems to be attracting.  Just got to keep it up and I think I’ll be well on track to managing my new year’s resolution!

I keep thinking I must have forgotten something.  This is despite taking an extra day to get ready.  I had planned to leave on Monday.  That left Saturday to work (more about that some other time), Sunday to finish off the shopping, and pack and the Monday was free for travel.  It didn’t quite work out like that.

I did work on Saturday and I did try to shop on Sunday – in fact I made a special trip across to the Westfield Shopping Centre in London (the new big one which opened just in time for the Christmas rush) – but it was slightly less successful than I had anticipated.  I only had one really important present to buy, something for my Grandma, but despite my best efforts I failed to get her anything.  Admittedly the Westfield was/is not the most appropriate place to look for Grandma type things, but I had hoped it would have something. It didn’t.  So I tried Oxford Street.

The problem with Oxford Street is that if you don’t know what you’re looking for you’re unlikely to find anything you want.  I never know what I’m looking for so I rarely find anything at all.  This time was a very slight exception.  I set out knowing I needed to find something for my Grandma.  This was the important one.  Not the only one, but the most important one.  I’m going to see her on Christmas day – that’s the day after tomorrow – so I needed to find something that day.  But, ah ha!  “Actually, if I don’t find something today I can always find something on Tuesday”.  Great idea, assuming I manage to get home on the day I plan to get home.  Getting home on Monday gives me Tuesday and even, if it’s an absolute emergency, Wednesday to find something.  As you know, I’m only just on the way home now.  Tuesday.  Afternoon.

So, a bit of a success?  Yes.  I managed to buy a present which I didn’t need to buy until after Christmas.  As well as my family I had both Miss T and Miss D on my present list.  Miss T’s reasonably easy – gift vouchers for Dress Circle or something to do with theatre, I also spotted a large Kandinsky calendar – Miss D’s a little harder.  However the mild success came in the form of a desk calendar.  I was in Borders looking around and books and things which Grandma might like when I spotted a table with lots of desk calendars on it.  I didn’t think much to begin with, but then saw a collection of calendars which related to certain countries.  They had little phrases and bits of trivia about the country in question.  I looked and found exactly what I was looking for: one about Spain.  Miss D’s starting a Spanish course with the Open University in February, so this is perfect – it’s only small so she can’t complain I’ve spent too much on her, it fits in with something she’s doing and interested in, and it shows I’m willing to help with her learning.  Great.

Unfortunately that’s all I managed to buy, which still leaves the problem of what to buy my Grandma.  I now have tomorrow.  Just tomorrow.

I set off on Friday afternoon, around 4 in fact, with all my bags – my main bag containing clothes and my laptop, and my camera bag with two cameras and accessories.  The plan was to miss out London as best as possible, travelling via Clapham Junction and Watford Junction.  It’s a route I’ve taken before and I knew it would be busy, but the aim was to avoid the tube.  The first section of the trip went fine, and although I had to stand on the train from Clapham to Watford, I was reasonably happy.  The train from Watford to Lancaster, on the other hand, was slightly less enjoyable.

First of all the train was busy.  That was ok, and I didn’t really mind sitting on the floor in the vestibule area.  The key thing was that I could see my bags – there was thousands of pounds worth of kit in them which I can’t afford to replace and that kit is my livelihood.  So I sat with it.  A few other people were in the same area as I was, initially two girls and another guy although one of the girls left and must have found a seat somewhere (they declassified two of the first class carriages because the train was busy and I guess she sat in one of those).  Shortly the guy got off and the other girl moved to a seat in the next carriage which left me by myself.  During the trip up to this point various people had been walking up and down going to the shop and things, including a couple of young lads who had clearly been drinking and were a little aggressive.  After a while one of them came and stood opposite me and made a phone call to, what seemed like, his girlfriend.  During it he told her about this lady who he had been sitting near who had got him a bit wound up – his friend had been playing music on his mobile phone and she’d asked him to turn it down.  This had obviously made them a bit worked up and I guess they hadn’t been too polite to her.  Shortly afterwards she had apparently told them to move a bag which was touching her foot.  This, apparently, was the last straw.

The lad who was on the phone was explaining this to his girlfriend in pretty colourful language and at one point he turned around to be and said “sorry for my language, sir, this woman’s just been winding us up”.  I’m not offended by it, so I told him it was ok, and he carried on his conversation.  Once off the phone he started talking to me.  He was obviously drunk but seemed reasonable.  He explained that they were squaddies doing their phase one training and it was one of the rare weekends they get off.  He said they weren’t allowed to drink during phase one and when they get time off they just go mad.  This seemed fair enough to me.  He also had a whinge about people from London.  When I told him I was from Aldershot he asked me a few things about how he would get the train to visit his girlfriend, doing her phase two training in Aldershot, and I happily explained.

Shortly he was joined by his friend who was saying things about how he had to leave the seats they were in or they he would have hit the lady.  But that “I ain’t no wife-beater”.  He also complained about another one of their group who had apparently been telling him he should apologise for the way he spoke to her.  He then turned to me and said “if he comes back, do you mind if I spark him out?”, and punched the train wall.  Hard.  To which I replied, “I think it might cause a bit of trouble”.  His friend agreed saying something about not ruining their careers.  Soon enough the third one joined them.  He was clearly much more drunk than the other two.  He started to tell the second guy how he should apologise for being disrespectful to her, and how they had trained together and where in the same squad.  This started an argument.  Luckily it died down reasonably quickly when they realised two of them were getting out at the next stop.  The most drunk one was supposed to be getting off one stop later.

As the train slowed down they moved towards the other set of doors in the vestibule out of my view, and people started making their way from main area of the carriage to the doors I was sitting next to.  Just as I stood up to let people off the train one of the squaddies, the third to join me previously, came flying across the train covered in blood.  He was swiftly followed by another, the second to join me, kicking, punching and generally beating him pretty hard.  The thought ran through my head that I should do something about it, but I didn’t suppose I’d be able to help the situation with two large, trained, drunk lads.  There was a middle-aged man and another young lady waiting to get off with me, he tried to reason with them, she screamed for them to stop.  They weren’t having any of it.  After a while, just as the train doors opened, two guys from elsewhere in the train got involved.  One threw one of them off the train while the other, who it looked very much like had been trained himself (a bouncer, I thought), restrained one of them.  The one inside the train calmed down very quickly (I suppose he didn’t have much choice while being pressed against the wall by this other passenger) while the one on the outside stayed quite aggressive.  The train driver closed the doors until the police arrived to keep them apart.

Once the police arrived things got back to normal pretty quickly.  We’d lost about 15 minutes on the journey time and they made an announcement about an “onboard incident” (so now you know what it means), but shortly got on our way again.  I was quite happy to sit back down with my bags where I was before, but the train manager was worried about the blood on the walls.  Sure they needed to clear it off, and people who were passing through were pulling alarmed faces when he told them to keep clear of the walls, but I had been there when the fight broke out and had been sprayed with blood from the people themselves, so I wasn’t too bothered.  Either way, he didn’t want me there.  So I asked what I could do with my bags – there wasn’t space on the rack and I didn’t want to leave them behind.  He said I could just put them in the corridor, so I did.  And I stood next to them.  A few people came past, I very kindly opened the door for them, I was a bit in the way.  Shortly the train manager came to me again and said “you’re really in the way, can you please sit down, there are plenty of seats”.  I explained about my bags again.  I also said I was happy to take them with me, but I’d have to put them on the seat, and given they had already announced this journey that people must removed bags from seats, I wasn’t really sure I was allowed to do that.  “I’ll make an exception given the circumstances”.

Given all this, that I’d just witnessed the fight and everything, I thought I was remarkably un-shaken.  Having said that I think I might have been a little short tempered with the train manager.  I can see his point, but I can also see mine.  I suppose it will have been a reasonably stressful event for him too, and we were both probably a little tense, but I really wasn’t impressed by the way he spoke to me.  I’d have been quite happy sitting in a blood stained vestibule for the next 45 minutes.  By this stage I just wanted to be left alone.  I dread to think what the other passengers thought of me.

I don’t feel well.  Headache, sore throat, stiff joints and it hurts to move my eyes very far.  And yet I still go and do things.  And yet I still do silly things which, it would be obvious to anyone remotely sensible, would only make things worse.  I went to see KJ.  I don’t mean that itself is a bad thing, simply that when I see KJ I stay up far too late and when I do go to bed sleep on the floor of the lounge (this time I had the added bonus of a mattress, not just on the sofa).  Last night we stayed up until 4am.  Not because we were hard at work doing productive things, not because we were out living it up in the capital, but because we have this urge to do statistical analysis on all night television stations.  There are lots on Sky.  Last night was the turn of Kerrang TV, an automated music television station where you can call and text and request things for them to play – you know the kind I mean.

The problem: “Between the hours of 3am and 5am, with no other people requesting music, how long does it take before a request is played?”  The methodology is simple: request a track and see when they play it.  The answer is also pretty simple, and before the true results were revealed we had already proposed it: 1 hour.  Almost exactly.  The snag with the investigation was the time we begun it – in true researcher style (OK, university paper maybe) we submitted our requested track, Avril Lavigne’s Girlfriend, at 3.25am.  KJ stuck with it until about 4.10am and then folded, I however stayed watching to the bitter end – 4.26( + the length of the track)am.  No wonder I’m ill.

Earlier in the evening we had been to the theatre – the West End transfer of the Menier Chocolate Factory’s Little Shop Of Horrors.  It was very good.  The last time (and only other time) I saw it was way back when my brother was in the chorus (and either 1st or 2nd year) at school, I was still at primary school.  It’s a fun musical and made all the better for having Sheridan Smith (Janet, 2 Pints of Larger and a Packet of Crips) as Audry and Alestair McGowen (various impressionist type programmes) as Orven and assorted other roles once he’s fed to the plant.  To be fair the whole cast was very good – Mushnik, the Ronettes, even the plant – all gave first class performances.  Was it worth £90?  Well, that’s a good question.  I’d recommend seeing it, and cheaper tickets are available (though we wandered into the upper circle during the interval and the view does leave a lot to be desired) but you’ll have to book in advance.  Unlike us.

During the interval, while we were discussing the use of intelligent fixtures in a theatrical setting, a young man came up to us and asked to see our programme.  I was reluctant (it wasn’t mine and he might have run off with it!), but it turned out he only wanted to know if the girl playing Audry was really Ms Smith – his girlfriend had said it was, he thought it wasn’t.  We were able to confirm this and he went happily on his way.  It was at this point it crossed my mind how much like old theatre hacks we must have looked.  It’s the interval, we are standing in the corner with our drinks, wearing our long back coats, discussing the finer points of the sound and lighting design.  If only I’d taken my copy of the stage…

Of course I did go to see it to evaluate it’s artistic merit.  KJ didn’t.  He proved it at the box office: while I was paying I made a few light hearted remarks to the ticket lady – “oh I see, I’m paying now he isn’t able to get his student discount”, “I only sat over there so as not to have to pay” – and she chuckled.  Then KJ turns to her and says “it is Sheridan Smith in tonight’s performance, isn’t it?”.  “Yes”, says she, “the only understudy tonight is [one of the Ronettes]“, “now it all comes out, you’re only here to see “the only cast member being played by an understudy is [one of the Ronettes]“.  “I see, so you only want to see it to see her!” I exclaim.  To this the ticket lady remains stoney faced: a that’s not funny; that’s perverse kind of look.  We took our tickets and left.