In which some plans change

Wednesday 31st October - Friday 2nd November

What's this? A day not working? An entire day? At home? What the hell is this about?

Yes, it's true, I had a whole day in my own house, reacquainting myself with it's sorry dilapidation and wonderfully enthusiastic central heating system. And writing class logs from last week's DSL. Little more to say about Wednesday. Oh, except that I actually made my own food in my own kitchen for the first time in months.

And so to Thursday, which saw me in the car and heading up to Wenlock to begin work on the second of our three new shows for this term. Children of the Sreets is set amongst the slums of Sao Paolo, Brazil and follows the lives of children who run the gauntlet of curfews and clearance squads. More thn that I can't tell you, as I arrived to find only the first third of the script ready in finalised form, the rest being cobbled together from Margo's working copies of the old version of the show from the days when Seagull ran companies of three actors. We set off to have a read-through but it quickly became apparent that the bulk of the script wasn't yet in workable form. So having read through what we could, I set off down the road to the Broseley Guest House and its many cushions. Despite the lure of a pub quiz in the Duke of York next door, I showed remarkable willpower in nipping over for a proper pub dinner of liver and onions then returning to my room for an evening of pacing and line-learning, rather than an evening of some beer.

Friday morning saw me pacing once again - I find it impossible to learn lines sitting down or standing still. The only way lines go into my head is by pacing rapidly around a small area and drinking copious amounts of tea. Well, to be honest, the tea has no bearing on the line learning, it's just another excuse to drink copious amounts of tea. Any excse will generally do: reading, writing, watching the telly, being on the phone... If I have no excuse for drinking tea, it tends to mean I have nothing to do, in which case I fill in time by making a cup of tea.

So at midday, Sian and I went over to Cressage Hall and ran through the first scene, which by now I could largely do off book, but which requires very little actual rehearsal as it largely consists of me standing at the head of a class of children talking to them. In a Scottish accent. We'd got as far as running through this scene a couple of times, when Margo rang to say there was no way the rest of the script was going to be ready in time. This was something Sian and I had anticipated and, given that we'd given ourselves five days to work up the whole show before its planned opening on Tuesday next week, we'd already been discussing contingency plans. Sadly, our fears proved well-founded. Given Margo's present illness the script wasn't going to be ready for us in time, and without a script we wouldn't have time to get it ready.

So, a decision having been made, I quickly rang The Shop to see if they could use me for anything tomorrow. Why did I do this? Why? I could have had, of all things, a Day Off! Well, I haven't worked a Saturday for ages and I'm starting to think it would be a good idea to try to keep them sweet before they let me go altogether. Also, I needed to make up for the days of rehearsal I was losing. Unfortunately, The Shop had a free 10 - 6 shift, so back into the car I got and drove straight back down the M40 again.