Then. More bad fortune. Poor adorable Sarah-Jane had to pull out, having done a stoical job at her first dropped in at the deep end rehearsal.

A restless (part of a) weekend. And an excellent brainwave in the form of (best if you can find someone with exactly the same name to keep the programme tidy, right?) SJ. Whom I will always remember for having done a fantastic and fantastically funny monologue at a sort of cabaret style evening thing performed at a disused church in the Grassmarket some years back. She's a whizz at improvisation - not that this would be necessary, of course, given that she would have one whole week and a half before the show started. So I phoned her with trepidation and you could almost hear the cogs in her head grinding and clicking: could she squish it in amongst everything else at this impossibly short notice? And like an angel, she say yes.

Bless her with bells on.

She gobbled up all of the stage directions in a frenzied half hour briefing and was Ready To Take To The Stage. Just in time to coincide with a message to say that poor Chris has topped off his bike and shattered his bone so he wouldn't be at that night's rehearsal.

Well, you win one. You lose one. Seems to be the rule.

But SJ is two whole rehearsals in, now. Chris rejoined us last night. And I had, for perhaps the second time since we've begun, The Whole Cast in one place. Incredible.

And it was a little tinged with sadness as I always regret the move from rehearsal rooms to venue. I go from having them pranking and fighting and loving and bitching all of two feet away from me to distance - cold and heartless distance - between me and they. Pesky stage. Pesky gap between audience and stage. And suddenly they're a little bit less mine and a little bit more their own thing. Like sending a child off for its first day at school.

Cast. My cast. You've been brilliant company. Now go have a brilliant show.