This is me trying to write a script...

This is me trying to edit a script...

And this is the script now...

All of which makes me keeping a production diary kind of redundant, since these three photos tell the tale of the last six months better than I ever could. The only thing Stew didn't manage to photograph was the moment my hard drive crashed and I lost all my writing somewhere in between photograph two and photograph three. It's probably quite good there isn't a photograph of that. Just to finish off the series, here's a shot of me hanging around in the theatre we're going to be performing in this time tomorrow week...

I'm kind of subliminal and I look like I have one leg, but nevertheless it serves its purpose:

And the photo of me the morning after our closing night will not, I repeat not, be making it onto this (or any other website) ever. In the universe. In perpetuity.

One week, one day, one minute to go!

In a week, we'll be preparing for opening night.

The long list of things I have to do by next week will either be

a) done

b) discarded

c) extended and/or replaced by an extended family of other lists

I am quietly confident in predicting the latter.

By the way, a special hello to Andrew Blain. He knows why. Our nerdy little secret.

The problem with writing everything on a laptop that is extremely convenient and can go with you everywhere and is very easy to use and has wireless internet...

... is that computers crash...

The problem with centering your entire publicity campaign (including ticket bookings) through your very funky and excitingly organised websites...

... is that websites crash...

And the problem with linking your email to your website...

Well I think you get the idea.

Anyhoo. Sorry to anyone who emailed us on Friday. Sorry to anyone who went to book tickets on Friday. Our website has never done that before. It decided it might try and loose all its data in the week before our show.

Good on it.

Thankfully, we are full to the brim with nerds at Standing There Productions. Central Nerd Command was manned on Friday by Stewart "Oh alright give me a look then" Thorn, with help from over the seas by Nick "I'm not strictly working on this project" Jaffe, and was closely monitored by Paul "My Life Is Flashing Before My Eyes" Daniel, who had just perfected the new design elements when they were sucked into the internet abyss.

I'd like to thank our nerds. Our nerds are the best nerds in town. Standby nerd Andrew "The Original Kingnerd" Blain was subbed in off the bench a few weeks ago when Stewart was at the movies, so special mention to him as well, natch.

You are, every one of you, princes among men.

And by the way, could one of you possibly come and have a look at my email settings? There's something I'm trying to do with the email signature. Thanks.

According to Wikipedia, a theatre director "is a principal in the theatre field who oversees and orchestrates the mounting of a play by unifying various endeavors and aspects of production".

Which is obviously a very helpful description when someone asks you, "What exactly does a director do?", which is a question I get asked surprisingly often.

I say surprisingly often because, to me, people should be asking what writers do. Writers are the the ones who spend a lot of their time deleting and redrafting and reading things and getting distracted and researching a completely redundant potential plot line and then cleaning out the entire fridge and organsing all their New Yorker magazines in chronological order with the fiction editions in a special section to the right of the...

Never mind.

Anyway. Wikipedia also divides theatre directors into types. The dictator, the negotiator, the creative artist and the confrontationalist.

They all sound like wankers to me. None of which helps me answer "What exactly does a director do?"

Anyway, fat lot of good the internet is. I looked up acting and I got this:

“Acting is merely the art of keeping a large group of people from coughing.”

Well anyone who has been on stage in August knows that isn't true.

Did you know Posh Spice's favourite food is still toast? That's your fact for the day. Just you WAIT until that piece of information surprises you when you're thinking about something else one day. Facts for the day are making me more and more lightheaded as the weeks pass. Only two weeks now until our comedy festival show, For We Are Young And Free. There are free tickets on our website and new photos although sadly none of the photos of me in rehearsals wearing my tracksuit pants made it on there. Can't imagine why not. You guys are really missing out. Maybe I should take some advice from Posh Spice: "I wear jeans more or less every day so it makes sense to me to spend that little bit more on something that my bottom will be relying on so much". My bottom has been relying on my jeans more than perhaps I realised. I like Paris Hilton more and more each day I read this Posh Spice book.

There are a couple of people I think are magic.

I think my sister's a bit magic. I live with my sister and when I get up in the morning, that day's newspaper is outside my bedroom door and the kitchen is polished and my sister is up and out in the world getting on with her day while I stumble to the fridge for my morning stare at the top two shelves.

The newspaper must get there by magic. She must have a magic wand that cleans the kitchen in silence. She's magic. I know it. I've always known it. When she was a kid she was magic, too. She made all her food last longer by growing it somehow while in the process of eating it and watching mine disappear.

Anyway, Paul the Magic Website Man is magic too. I don't know how come things can change overnight on a website but it's all still there, but they can, apparently, and they do. And Paul did it all on his birthday, with a hangover, and he did this too, where incidentally you can book tickets for our show that starts in two weeks.

Two weeks. That's also magic. Somebody shrank time.

Bastards.

I am sorry to bang on about this but isn't Paris Hilton just something else?

A Person Who Is Fabulous sent me a package in the mail that arrived today and which contained two books:

Confessions Of An Heiress: A Tongue In Chic Peek Behind the Pose (by Paris Hilton WITH Merle Ginsberg)

and

Victoria Beckham, That Extra Half Inch: Hair, Heels, and Everything In Between

Person Who Is Fabulous has helpfully highlighted some of the key passages with appropriate notes such as "For the love of GOD" (next to a photograph of what can only be described as a pubic bone jutting out like a verandah - pointing morbidly downwards to some material the size of a postage stamp only just covering a vital organ).

Previously, I had no interest in Victoria Beckham. Now, however, I have seen her mouth.

Fan. Tastic.

Thanks very much to Person Who Is Fabulous. You really have prevented me from getting a lot of things done. All in the name of research. Oh yes. Let the fun begin.

PS. Did you notice our new site? Here - you can buy tickets there! Already!

Yikes.