Writers are strange wights

As are dolls' house makers.

I made bread last night

Crackling, chewy sourdough bread.

It *must* have been good.

I decided to take half the loaf into work to distribute at the breakfast
meeting (just showing off really) and flung it into a bag this morning.

Halfway across the park I look down - and there is a small crowd of grey
squirrels (I.e - 3) around my ankles, looking expectantly at the bag.

I half expected one to start tugging on my sock in supplication.

Dubai Film Festival - here I come!

Just got the accreditation through - I'll be in Dubai for the festival
next month.
Excited and apprehensive in equal measure - sounds about right.

Recession?

I very rarely travel between 5 and 7; I got out of the habit years ago,
when trains were crowded, hot and sticky. I made more sense to stay
close to work, drinking coffee and writing for a few more hours before
heading home.

Today I went home at 6.15 because I had bread dough rising in the
kitchen, and realised that if I didn't get it punched down and shaped by
7 I would be pulling out of the oven at midnight.

I was shocked to get a seat.
The train wasn't empty by any means, but 2 years ago, at 6.15, I would
have been travelling on my hind legs, with my nose pressed against
someone else's back or armpit.

Anyway. The bread is punched down and rising again, and I am in my
local boozer, drinking a very nice red wine and hacking about at Act 3
AGAIN.

Frankenstein

Drama - 90 minutes.

Creating life can sometimes be as terrifying as losing it.

I dreamed that my baby came to life again

that it had only been

cold

and that I rubbed it before the fire and that it lived.

I awake and find no baby.

Creating life can sometimes be as terrifying as losing it.

Mary Shelley rattles alone, last survivor in the frozen paper-strew ruins of life, making and waking the dead - husband, lover, child, friends, sister, mother - drawing them out in the wastes of ice and fire and ink.

But the creature that haunts her long lonely night is the little she created 20 years before...

He sleeps; but is wakened; he opens his eyes; the horrid thing stands at his bedside, opening his curtains, and looking on him with yellow, watery, speculative eyes.

Drama, 90 minutes.

16 hours later, on an entirely different wifi network...

... and firefox/google is *still* serving all my requests in SWEDISH.

How to get the best tickets to see any show in the West End

Method 1:  Work in London Box Office:  My first job in leaving Uni was as a meerkat, popping up over the counter of the Old Vic to sell tickets... the money was ok, the hours were long, but the perks included access to the secret masonery of ticketsales, swapping unsold seats with other meerkats in theatres all over London.  It was an education ...

Method 2: Buy Theatremonkey: A Guide to London's West End - the most comprehensive and userfriendly guide to chosing and buying theatre tickets ever published.

TheatreMonkey is, similtaneously, a website, the theatre buff called Steve who runs it, and now a beautifully designed book, that provides first hand inside information on booking tickets for London theatres.

Not only does the Monkey tells us how to go about get our tickets (even for "sell out" shows), without being ripped off, he has also done the hard work for us - and visited every single venue to test the seats; leg room, vertigo, that little bit shaved off by a pillar or a balcony (often, ironically, the most exciting seats as well as the cheapest) - the Monkey has been there and checked them for us.  Above and beyond, I call it

The quirks of each theatre building (and they are odd and quirky, believe me) are lovingly detailed, and each has been given a new, beautifully designed, seating plan - for the first time in a standardised format

What the Monkey has missed (and that's not much, as far as I can tell!) is been supplied and supplemented by comments made by other theatre goers via his website.

The book itself is comprehensive enough to allow to plan almost every aspect of your visit, and just slim enough to fit inside a pocket or handbag.

I've long been in the habit of buying pocket A-Z maps of London for overseas guests, with my mobile number and a pre-pay oyster card taped to the front cover.

Now I will be throwing a Theatremonkey: into their bags with it, along with admonition to "get lost, have fun and come home in one piece!"

I'm guessing you are single -

- balding guy sitting 10 feet from me in Cafe Nero.

Because I can still hear you suck your teeth at this distance, and if I
want to smack you over the head within 5 minutes, it is clear that any
marriage would have ended in spousi-cide over the breakfast table a
decade or so ago.

Also, woman sitting opposite. If I can tell from the tinny thud from
your ear buds not only that you are listening to Maggie May by Rod
Stewart, but *also* recognise the exact recording....

a.) you are playing this much too loud.
b.) you will be deaf before you reach 25.
c.) if an irate commuter doesn't kill you first

Swedish is not one of the languages I read...

... so why the £*ck does the East Coast* line WiFi route all traffic via
Sweden, ensuring that all google results are served in Swedish -
including my Blog dashboard.

(* until 10 hours ago the National Express East Coast line, now
re-nationalised!)

What makes writing "cinematic" rather then "televisual"?

My own (very) rough rule of thumb...

When you express of the essence of the script-

- is it an image -

- or an idea?

I have always loved November; it starts with Halloween, which growing up
in Wales was celebrated with turnip head lanterns and apple bobbing),
then the local fair used to park outside our front door for 2 days of
thumping disco music, hot dogs, and ancient rides and dodgems. Barely
is the last candy floss stick swept away before Bonfire night and the
lovely smell of gunpowder ... and then the rest of the month unwinds in
a flurry of red and ginger foliage, early frost, slick mists and coal smoke.

The best, is of course, at the end of the month, when for once the
entire world does revolve around the correct axis, in a stupendous
celebration of the anniversary of the birth of - ME!

Why, I believe in the US they are so overwhelmed by the amazing event
that they call the festival of my birth "Thanksgiving" - and sacrifice
many Turkeys in my honour.

Colour me impressed!

The Ethiopian script, T'sion, has, in the 2nd and 3rd acts 6 distinct
narrative lines to follow, and I have always found it hard to
concentrate on fine tuning one without fracturing the others, or
breaking the script apart like a engine on the kitchen table.

In the past I have tried tagging and colour coding them on the page to
visualise they way they interact... Or writing 6 different threads and
reintegrating them.

But just like that engine on the kitchen table, I always end up with a
widget that gets left behind.

But I have just started to "grey out" any scenes that don't relate to
the thread I am concentrating on - literally changing the colour of the
words on the screen to the palest grey MSWord can provide. I can still
see the other scenes, I can still calculate the rhythm, the counterpoint
of one character's story against the other, while only editing the
single story as it winds it's way across 8 years and two continents...

Then, when I'm done - highlight the whole document, chose black - and
voilà! the whole script reappears.

I can't believe it took me so long to work this one out!

...my head hurts...

I don't know if the pounding is my hangover or the rain hammering on the
roof.

Either makes the idea of going out to stack my woodpile very unappealing.