It begins...

Tues 10th Mar
Just got back from the first morning of research at Central Library. Met up with Len and local historian Anne Buchanan who showed us around and explained clippings, archives etc. She also elaboarated a little on some of the ideas she had emailed me when I first told her about my plans! Had the first proper chat with Len about how I envisage the project progressing and what I'd like to try and achieve with it. Len is incredibly supportive and I think he gets what I'm talking about! Explained that I wanted to avoid the 'bigger' names from Bath's history, ie Beau Nash, Jane Austen etc. and wanted to find out about more obsure characters or even ordinary people who just had 'a tale to tell'. We spent an hour or so independently picking out books from shelf, thumbing through, jotting down names, events etc. Len set off to continue his own research at home; I spent another few hours reading and copying copious articles and pages onto my phone (oh, the wonders of modern techinology... plus very handy as I didn't have any change for the photocopier). Must admit, feeling VERY daunted by the task ahead - at the risk of stating the obvious, there's just SO MUCH HISTORY!! I guess it's better to have too much inspiration than too little though. I don't want this to be a measured chronological unpicking of people/events that mark specific milestones over the last few centuries, more like a lucky dip of intriguing tales from the past with no discerning theme; the thread to connect them will literally just be this beautiful city of Bath. They'll be my BathSongs for you.

By my calulations, I have just under 13 weeks before the show at the Old Theatre Royal, so I think it wise to draw up a general plan of action:
Weeks 1-2 - research; gather as many potential starting points as possible (2 weeks)
Week 3 - condense ideas to (maximum of) 15 that have strongest potential for songs and research further (1 week)
Weeks 4-8 - write songs (5 weeks)
Weeks 9-11 - record songs (3 weeks)
Weeks 12-13 - rehearse songs (2 weeks)
Sounds easy enough......... *gulp*