My rehearsal was going swimmingly last night. First rehearsal without the scripts and they had - it appeared - being working super hard on their line learning. To the extent that I had one of my slight panic 'how on earth am I going to eke out another 7 rehearsals' moments.

But luckily as it turned out, we got to approx page 20 and their lines mostly collapsed around their ears. So there is yet work to be done. But they're doing ever so well.

Aside from sound which I badly need to get something organised for, we have most of our props. Gordon turned up more or less in costume. The lovely Esther was in attendance in a prompting capacity. It was one of those lovely making progress rehearsals.

Extra delightful as I always assume the first rehearsal off book will be shockingly bad. So. So far, so good.

On cinematic matters, I had less of an extravaganza this weekend than I'd hoped on account of sacrificing a precious afternoon timeslot to walking Naomi's baby labradoodle on the beach. But the weather was sunny though brisk so it seemed like a good sacrifice.

And I did manage to catch The Reader which was sentimental. Good. But sentimental. Though my cinema trip was rendered perfect by a fellow cinema goer. We got to the dramatic climactic moment when she sits in her cell and takes out the tape recorder and takes out a pad of paper and you know she's about to begin her epic personal odyssey and the man behind me hissed out "she can't read". A smart observation. But moments like this make it all fun, do you not think?