Rehearsals lope on. To my surprise, I'm dearly loving it. Now the terrible scrutiny of is the script good enough is over (more or less), I'm left with the comical delight of seeing people I don't know (and some I do!) wrestle with words from my head.

It turns out my head (my lack of background research) failed me when it came to the Scottish judicial system. Last night, the lawyer in the cast told me sheepishly that the scene I described when the photographer is taken in for questioning by the Police would never have happened.

We ran the show from start to end on Sunday and it was - at a kind estimate - twenty minutes too long. At a mean estimate, thirty minutes too long. I think over-running in the Fringe is the height of rudeness so am currently on an editing rampage. It will clearly speed up when they know their words and know where to stand. But it'll be nice to leave them pause for thought too.

So the implausible prison scene, despite containing a beloved (by me only) line about a man whose eyes were filled with blood (the ultimate horror surely in a play of aesthetic overload), is gone. And it turns out that 'most everyone had secretly thought it didn't work but no-one was vulgar enough to mention it.

I love that, three weeks in, they feel that they can speak their minds. This is a good sign, right?