Hey I'm a Qype Insider. A small victory and a largely empty one. But what with my fevered qypeing and my equally frantic twittering, I wonder if I almost now qualify as a digital citizen..?

I start rehearsals on Sunday so I'll soon fall digitally silent again.

Belatedly writing up the minutes for a committee meeting a month ago, I see that we also agreed that I would investigate the Bedlam as a potential Fringe venue.

I would love to have a show on there. Not at all influenced I'm sure by the wild success this most recent fringe of a strange little show consisting of monologues that the audience voted for on arrival to determine which were performed. Except apparently they fixed it every time a journalist came in. Fancy that.

We've avoided it historically as it apparently doesn't have toilets backstage. So I feel extra rebellious and wild in my investigations...

Incidentally, I saw a gorgeous film on Christmas Eve. Dean Spanley. Philip French's write up does it a great deal of justice so I shan't bleat on about it. But it was a charming delight.

It's sadly now gone from the Cameo but worth seeing on the big screen if you can find it. The Tokai sniffing would be poorly served by a little television.

What a difference a day makes.

Four days ago, I was irritably thinking that I couldn't quite believe I'd talked myself into entering this year's one act play festival. How time-consuming it would be. How much better it would be to stay home and hibernate for a gloomy and chill January rather than dragging along to the chilly cheerless rehearsal rooms to end by confronting the rage and / or consternation of the conservative SCDA committee. So I thought on 24 Dec.

But three days later, having gorged on a month's worth of shopping in only a day and done the duty rounds of available relatives, I'm starting to think a little project for January is a rather more appetising prospect. So I should set to my totalitarian state research.

And await the verdict of my three festival venue applications for my little project for the summer.

What a fine cultural year it should be.

My new toy. Could it be time to give in and get a devil's own blackberry??!

We went along to the Traverse Christmas Quiz last night at which we were ritually butchered. Although with only Brian's name identifying the team, my ignorance is a secret yet safe I think.

Beautiful Emma was there, looking beautiful and perfect despite professing to feel ill and terrible. I thought quietly to myself that I wasn't even ill but felt weak and terrible and looked it. She did not.

Anyway, one great piece of news. I have - as ever - half an eye on my next again show which is slightly crazy given that I haven't started rehearsals for my chronologically next show yet. And it's only 3 days til Christmas so perhaps I could more productively be thinking about how to cook the turkey.

But anyway, I'm still flirting with the idea of doing Antigone. This was a plan born out of the Festival-double-bill-with-Brian's-ex-wife idea though I'm not sure how much of that story made it as far as the blog. I think not much while we were still in negotiations as it seemed inappropriate.

As it happens, the double bill has withered on the vine but having twisted Ross' arm to read the play, he still murmurs about it now and again and I have always had a terrible romantic obsession with the story. After all, what could be more perfect than the story of a girl who keeps everyone else happy but herself?? And ends up dead for her troubles.

The stumbling block was a) the script as it's so didactic (would that be the word?) as to be almost unpalatable for a modern audience and b) Antigone. Who could / should play such a part which can easily be very unsympathetic but to get the point across, shouldn't be..? She also should be fairly young. And whenever you need a specific type of person, there always seems to be a dearth of them in this lunatic amateur world.

Anyway, far it be from me to do anything so unprofessional as precast but when Ross suggested Emma, it seemed wildly optimistic as she's always festivalled up to her eyes in August. However, when I put this to her last night (and eventually we wind round to revealing the first piece of good news), she didn't pchaw and laugh scornfully and say 'don't be ridiculous I would rather gouge my eyes out than get involved in your Greek classic' but instead offered a 'wasn't quite sure what she'll be doing next festival - can she comment nearer the time?' which in my wildly over-optimistic mind is almost a yes. Wouldn't you say?

The second piece of good news is that Dmitri is back in the Globe. Just in time for Christmas. Maybe he could be my Antigone's fiance....

Enormously belatedly, I have uploaded a few choice Twelfth Night pics which can be found here. Enjoy.

I've unknowingly tipped over the 400 posts mark which is quite exciting.

You'll be glad to know that despite the cosy darkness, I managed to drag along to the gym this morning.

But all of this is largely irrelevant. I post this as connector of the family for those without facebook, i.e. my daddy.

For here is my little sister on a street corner in Sydney on a Harley. Bonnes vacances, ma petite.

I think the blinds may turn out to be a force for evil.

I set my alarm for 7am this morning with the intention of springing up and going to the gym before work but when it went off, it was so dark and cosy and I was so snug and warm that I thought maybe it would be better if I had a little extra rest before I went to work...

Well I didn't really feel the benefit of my blinds last night as I didn't arrive home til a little after 3am.

But gloriously the second in a row client night which I was approaching with some dread tonight has been cancelled. Happy days at home with my blinds!

I am working from home this morning as the blind man is visiting.

After - how long can it possibly have been? - at least two years I'm sure - months at any rate of letting my neighbours gaze freely into my living room, I now have an obscured view.

The blind man has moved onto the spare room.

I want to rush to the living room blind and hoist hoist it up to unrestrict my measley restricted view. But it seems rather bad mannered while he's still in the flat.

On the plus side, I've been living more or less since I moved in here with a towel, cleverly hung from a truncated coathanger to conceal the shabby gape at the foot of my inadequate bedroom blind. Once the blind is up and I can actually twizzle the room into darkness, I shall, I'm sure, start sleeping like a small young baby. Imagine how sweet tempered I'll always be.

By the way, I went behind everyone's back and met up with lovely Esther at the weekend. Hah!

That'll teach you to make plans when I'm not around...

Hey so I'm cast. I mean, I've cast it. My one act. The one act which I've obviously hardly mentioned here as work has been sucking my life's blood. But now I hope I am back. Or at least a little more communicative. And yes, it's full steam ahead.

So I have a moment to have a little flicker of excitement and then it's plunging into the practicalities of sorting sound and set and props and who will be my general manager I wonder? Any takers??

But yes, great news. It seems like an age since I directed last though it isn't really. Maybe now I'll really miss pretending to act.

Humiliatingly, I dreamt last night that I was giving Paul Higgins (actor turned writer and consequent author of Nobody Will Ever Forgive Us) writing tuition.

At one point in my dream, I said to the poor confused man: "I mean, I know you might wonder why I, who have never written anything, have been chosen to tutor you who have vastly more experience, but I hope you'll soon see why".

Such subconscious arrogance.

You know it's a desperate day when your own father nags you about not blogging. So for you, my daddy...

He and I went to the theatre at the weekend as it happens (clearly why he chastises me as he wishes to see my review of the event). I've never been to the Royal National Theatre and a fine venue it is too. Air-conditioned which makes a nice change from the Trav. Great accoustics. Great sight lines. Even for us sat up in the cheap seats and with a whole giant three storey house filling the stage.

We watched August:Osage County. I shall be interested to see what DG makes of it as he caught the matinee before legging it across town to see Hamlet. Two epics in a day. I do not envy him (aside from the David Tennant thing). Anyway, I still can't quite make up my mind about whether I liked it or not. It was certainly tremendously well acted. The cast of thirteen were a fine ensemble and there were some really impressively done group scenes - them all sitting down to dinner for example - which were just beautifully choreographed.

The plot was suitably dark. Father goes missing. Oh oops he's actually killed himself. Mother is high as a kite on a glorious mix of medication so hardly cares but oh she does care really. Older sister struggles to hold it together as her own marriage collapses because her husband has run off with one of his students. Middle sister is the despair of the family as she can't get a man and maybe even gasp might be a lesbian but oh, it's all alright because she's only shagging her (male) cousin who actually turns out to be her brother. Little sister is dating and in fact hopelessly head over heels with a slimy fellow who maybe has a bit of thing for very young girls but hey, she's desperate so she won't let that deter her. Then there's the sheriff with the unfulfilled yearning for the older sister who's too busy to realise. The traumatised au pair kind of girl who can't get attached to anybody because her parents died and so lives out this hopeless surely joyless existence being bullied by this family from hell. And the daughter of the oldest sister who clearly has her own issues because there she goes smoking weed again with her aunt's lascivious boyfriend.

A lot for three hours, I would suggest. Which father liked and I was a bit more dubious about. I admire the scale of her (in fact, writer is a Tracy but a he so I take it back, I mean his) ambition.

I wonder if it means more if it's some kind of satire on the political state in America towards the end of the 2007 as they staggered around slightly rudderless as they wound to the end of the shambling Bush administration.

It was a great character piece and would be a delightful and meaty challenge for the bunch of actors. Did it suffer from too much devising and too much (heavily influenced here by Max Stafford-Clark on the joys of devising with a bunch of ego-centric actors) kow-towing to actors? But then if you check out YouTube, they seem like a very self-effacing bunch.

So, as I found after Zinnie Harris' Fall in the festival, I'm not really sure what I think. DG??

another week of horror but I'm optimistic that next week will be better!