Tuesday 6th November

In the tiny village of East Tilbury, on the farthest reaches of the Thames estuary, we found a slightly bonkers school, run by a charming but slightly bonkers head, full of slightly vapid and gormless children.

Now, we were there today to do Penelope Penguin, the one project we have that is designed specifically for Infants. It's a very gentle show, very simple (compared to the others in the rep) and has penguins in it, which keeps me happy. But it is an infant show, which brings it a whole new set of problems (or 'challenges' as schools like to call them). Working with infants is immeasurably more difficult. Their conceptual understanding is less well developed, their concentration span is much shorter and they tend to be far more interested in rolling around on the floor and making random unspecified noise than in working together to tell a story. Or much else, for that matter. Back in the day, infant Seagull shows used to run a half-hour workshop where three actors worked with a team of fifteen childs, and it worked pretty well. My belief is that a whole day working with us is far too much for children that young, and I'm not at all surprised that their concentration wanes over the course of the morning. Add to that the fact that there are now only two of us, and that today we had a group of thirty, and the prospect becomes less appealing by the moment. To alleviate some of the difficulties we've had with this show in the past, Sian has added a new scene featuring a whole phalanx of penguins, for which we have a complete set of brand new penguin costumes, and this does help to a very great extent. But for both of us, this remains a heavy day's work.

To put a final cap on the day, I seem to be succumbing to this year's Winter Lurgey. To combat this, I set to work as soon as I was home making my signature chilli con carne with extra welly, in the hope that I could blast the Lurgey out of my system. Remarkably, this would be the second time within a week that I've made my own food in my own kitchen. I'm starting to remember what it feels like to live in the real world.