That was the year that was...

What a strange year...It seemed to have gone really quickly and rather uneventfully, but looking back, it was packed with stuff!!!


In short, there was MIDEM in Cannes, several visits to Dublin, a few days in Lundy by helicopter, POPKOMM in Berlin at the Flughafen Tempelhof, holiday in Cannes, NAB in Las Vegas as part of a whole month in Southern California as a result of the volcano ash cloud which included a visit to family near San Diego, a trip to Santa Barbara and an earthquake, moved house and studio , music for three big TV series, a duo for violin and ‘cello, began an orchestral piece called Bluebird, a couple of wildlife films and theme tunes and a new biological nephew...Phew!!!

MIDEM was great and it was lovely to have our shot of sunshine and warmth in January. Lots of our sub-publishers travel to Cannes via London and it was a pleasure to show our American, South African , Danish and Japanese friends London from PARAMOUNT at the top of Centre Point. This is my favourite stop off in town and I could spend all day up there watching the tiny traffic and people below.

Dublin remains a great place to visit although the economic situation over there is bad. We discovered the Powerscourt Centre which is a nice collection of shops in the centre of Dublin around a grand space which houses a rather nice cafe/restaurant.

I went to the US for two weeks and ended up staying a month!!! I was one of the first people to have their flight cancelled...I was sitting in a restaurant in Pasadena with my US sub-publishers a couple of days before I was due to return when I got the text informing me of the cancelled flight. By the time I’d got through to the Virgin Atlantic call centre, the soonest replacement flight was in about a month!!! Over the next few days, I managed to get that reduced to couple of weeks. Rather than sit about and fret about it, I decided to go on a couple of trips and took a train to Santa Barbara. Unfortunately and very unusually, I took some British weather with me and it rained both days!!! The last day I was there, however, it was glorious and I had a good stroll and lunch in the town which is very nice...Lots of bright adobe houses and palm trees bordering the Pacific Ocean. I also took the opportunity to revisit family near San Diego and have a few more music meetings in LA. Virgin Atlantic were very good with my compensation and the girls kept the office running perfectly, so no harm done...Although it was great to come home and see Jane and the family and have a curry!!! In fact I had curry for three days in a row on my return...Lovely!!! Btw, NAB was great and I even won fifty buckaroos in the Bellagio which I spent on a rather nice dinner.

I paid a flying visit to Berlin for POPKOMM and met a few of our sub-publishers there. It was held in Tempelhof airport which I’ve wanted to visit for ages. It’s an extraordinary place and almost completely unchanged from the sixties when it was featured in Funeral In Berlin starring Michael Caine. Very atmospheric place. Sadly, I didn’t book in to the Ritz in Potsdamer Platz, which is the home of the Curtain Club which, at the moment, tops my Martini list. I wanted to stay in Tempelhof itself as it’s nearer to Schonefeld airport where I arrived from London and departed to Nice to meet Jane for our short break in Cannes.

It was a rather confusing arrival, as Germany and France are both Schengen countries, so passports aren’t shown on arrival. I only had cabin baggage, so after a short walk through a corridor from the plane, I emerged blinking into the sunshine, not sure if I’d taken the wrong turning and was about to be arrested by airport security!!!

Our holiday in Cannes coincided with a yacht festival, so it was busier than usual. Howeber, the first evening was brilliant as we watched the prizewinning yachts do a turn around the bay and do a ‘twirl’ just by our balcony.

On the commission front, things were thankfully pretty lively and I wrote music for three series which will be long runners as well as a couple of wildlife films. I also revised the music for an ITV show which will be airing soon...More details when it airs.