I bask in the glow of many lanterns.

Friday 19th October

Tech day. I like Tech Day. Tech Day is the day when we get out all the lighting and sound equipment and work through the script, inserting lighting states, sound cues and every possible effect we can shoehorn in - bearing in mind that we have to be able to opearte everything between the two of us, whilst simultaneously performing, changing costume between every scene and cueing the cast of childs who will have forgotten most of what they're supposed to do (often becasue they're too busy marvelling at how cool the lights are). When you get to be involved in designing the tech and making the tech work, Tech Day is fun. Actors hate tech day. I love it. It involves ladders, cables and plugs and semi-obscure terms that are enjoyable to use purely because you sound like you know what you're on about, and you know that to so many other people you know this fact alone might make you seem impressively knowledgeable in a very minor way. 'Do we have a spare fresnel?' for example, is the sort of thing you can say on Tech Day. 'Three and Five lanterns and the Profile should come up on the box' is another. 'Put up the FX then take everything out but the profile for a general wash' is yet a third. Even more exciting than all of this is the presence in Jumble Bag of an Animatronic Bear. Animatronic Bear began life as an ordinary teddy bear, before the operation which replaced some of his internal stuffing with some mecchano and two servo motors which work off a remote control device used in the 80s to operate remote control cars. Animatronic Bear can now turn his head from side to side and raise and lower his arms. He can also twitch convulsively when he is switched on and off, make faint but audible motorised sounds like the new Daleks do and fall over sideways whenever he makes too expansive a gesture, as if his traumatic surgery has left him suffering from narcolepsy. Oh, and his pre-recorded voice sounds very like a sleepy Stuart Maconie off of Radio 2. For scenes in which the child-actors have to carry the teddy bear, Animatronic Bear is replaced by Stunt Bear - his undoctored double. In all other respects, Stunt Bear is much the same as Animatronic Bear, except that he looks a bit gay.

With Tech Day in the bag and everything packed into the van, I got back into Oona the Laguna and back onto the motorway, back home to Ealing ready for my first weekend of expensive torture at the hands of Philip of Death. Read on, if you dare... (or, you know, can be arsed...)