Thursday 26th February 2026

Alarm at 0730. Took a while to haul myself out of bed...knackered! Descended to the kitchen for porridge. Drove in to the theatre for a 0930 start...the Company Stage Manager bored us all to death for the first half hour with a load of admin guff, then we started work where we had left off last night. I'd explained to Kate the DSM that I had decided not to leave at 1600 as planned, as I'd hit traffic around Manchester, and have to drive a certain distance in the dark...so it meant Bob and Sayan could carry on marking out the shape of Act 1. Broke for lunch...I heated up a jar of baked beans, which I then lathered on top of two pieces of toast and some Emental...worked a treat. Chatted to Shirley about Dickens...she had told me that they lived in a village west of Rochester. 

She said she'd inherited a full set of leather-bound Dickens novels, but had yet to read any of them. Carried on working bits of Act 1, and the songs as they came up. We actually did a stagger through, which held together remarkably well...Bob seemed very chuffed with our progress. Broke for dinner...microwaved the last of the chicken and mushroom lasagne I'd cooked on Tuesday evening. Worked through "Good Golly Miss Molly" and "Dirty Old Heart of the City", then broke early. I drove back to Bakewell Street, aiming for a No.2 in my private bathroom. As I sat there with my trousers around my ankles, a large spider came hurtling across the bathroom floor, making a bee-line for my trouser leg. I used a mug to catch him, leaving it in situ for mein hosts to deal with tomorrow! FaceTimed Aki, who had arrived at High View this evening...she was stuck in the house with John and Margaret, Kath having gone home, and Jim and Emma shacked up in an AirBnB ahead of tomorrow's 0930 wedding at the Civic Centre. Drove down to the London Road Alehouse in the drizzle, to catch a bit of James's band's set...they are called the British Premonition Collective. As I rocked up outside the venue, with it's floor to ceiling plate glass windows, I could see eight blokes cavorting about in black, their faces obscured by black balaclavas with eyes sewn onto them...James sat at an ironing board and played lap-steel guitar with an e-bow, putting it through several effects pedals. It was loud and tuneless, but intriguingly compelling...the singer declaimed improvised lyrics, a sort of demented cross between Mark E Smith, John Cooper Clarke, and Gerry Adams! I really enjoyed it...they'd go down a storm in Berlin!