Richard is a lovely man. He has a day job. I think he's very smart. He has a wife, children and grandchildren. He seems to be one of these people that loves spending time with his family. Or he does a good job of acting like it. And he does sound design.

He very kindly consented to being drafted in for this one. He came along to a rehearsal on Wednesday and recorded some wee bits and pieces as suggested / demanded by the script. And he told a tale of having been on holiday in Canada and hearing Jerusalem played over some sound system. At Bard on the Beach in - can't remember the place name but somewhere with a beach that does Shakespeare in the summer in two tents by the sea.

And despite the fact that he was there to watch King Lear and Richard 3, he was catapulted back to our Jerusalem (Ross and Emma's Jerusalem) and his fancy dancy mixing of some house track with a choir singing the title song. And he was clearly chuffed to bits remembering it. And I can still remember waiting in the wings in the heady dark to go on for the curtain call and the hairs on the back of your neck would creep up at the sound of it all mashed up together. A magic moment.

I'm at that most waking moments when I'm not working are devoted to the show stage. And opening night approaches and the to do list doesn't seem to be getting smaller.

But I suspect (come on now, I know, or else I wouldn't do it) that come next week (still in denial - it's not three days away - it's a whole week away!), I'll sit in the dark of the auditorium, hands shaking over my laptop praying I hit the right button at the right time, and the thing that Richard mixed together for me to which I have just listened and it made me (over tired) want to weep, will play out into the auditorium in the dark and I wouldn't be anywhere else in the world.