Weekly reviews

This is the first of my Sunday morning blogs. Usually I post as and when the spirit takes me but I am hoping the discipline of sitting down on a Sunday morning regularly will impose some order on my life. I suspect that this is a hangover from my professional life, which I haven't totally succeeded in leaving behind.

I love reading other people's blogs and do a circuit almost daily of my favourites. I notice Archimedes the cat has had a great deal to say, while his owners, Himself and Herself, have been a bit muted. I suspect the workload as we head to the festive season has got on top of them. The Best Beloved and I have been invited to a meal in the new Year to discuss "projects" and I am already salivating at the idea - the project as much as the meal! Natty Chap has given up smoking and is enjoying cold turkey before Christmas. He is also writing an interesting blog about his production of "Attempts on Her Life", due for presentation at the Havant Arts Centre in February. I am feeling a little guilty as I am Stage Manager for the show but haven't attended any of the rehearsals yet. Nathan said I was expected after Christmas so I took him at his word. I am reading "Stage Management:The Essential Handbook" in the meantime and researching the use of CCTV for stage purposes. The Handbook says that the stage manager should be in attendance all the time and I am not sure the Bench have got quite the right angle on stage management. I might even write a document to that effect. Anyway if I can solve the use of TV, I can then make a visual recording of the rehearsal process, which should be more valuable and pertinent for "Attempts" than the usual Stage Manager's copy.

The weather yesterday prevented me from putting Teak Oil on the Firstborn's garden chairs. They are stored in the garden shed and. when the chairs are in there keeping dry, there is no room for me to get in there. let alone wield a paintbrush. I am hoping Kitten will find a solution to the bike stored there. If the bike goes, I can at least get into the shed alongside the chairs. The garage looks like a theatrical furniture store with the dining table and chairs from "The Wild Duck" and the Kitten's store of furniture. It is therefore not much use as a workshop or a garage. I put Garden Furniture Protector on the chairs on Friday when the weather was cold but dry and my exercise class for that day had been cancelled.

It is two more weeks and the Christmas break will be upon us. This is when I have a break from my exercise classes as well and so am looking to have lots of walks to make up the difference. I am eating healthily and well. I feel fitter than I have done for many a year but I still weigh eighteen stone. I went down to sixteen stone during the early part of the year and that is probably where I should be if the truth be known. However the weight creeps up on you. I try to claim some of it is muscle rather than fat, but it still feels like a feeble excuse. I am going to reinstate Sunday afternoon as a visit to the gym and the treadmill or static bike, in order to bring my exercise sessions up to four per week. I also try to walk on Mondays and Thursdays - non exercise class days. Saturdays are slobbing days and I watch football as much as I possibly can. Yesterday's game against Aston Villa at lunchtime set the standard. Pompey didn't play well and never really got their act together but still ran out 3 -1 winners despite giving away a penalty.

I have a meeting tomorrow night with Tim Dawes, which might result in yet another project. I owe Tim an apology as I quoted extensively from a newsletter, of which he is the author, in an earlier posting. I don't think I actually gave him the credit in the posting and I would like to point out that the copyright is his. I am something of a magpie when it comes to ideas - decades of being a primary school teacher - but lack the academic discipline of clearly identifying and thanking my sources as I should.

The Cattermoles (Robin and Terry), our friends who live in France, are coming over this week and Terry would like back the two books he lent me when we were over there earlier this year. I am ashamed to say that they are still unread by me. I am beginning to get the hang of this reading lark but it tends to be theatrical works or play scripts at the moment. The former tends to be my bedside reading and the latter needs sit down concentrated time for it to be absorbed by me. I still haven't finished Act 2 of "Bronte". I was chastised by the Kitten because I couldn't remember the plot of "Shadow in the Smoke", the second part of a series currently being filmed and shown on telly with the girl from Doctor Who and Secret Diary of a Call Girl (name escapes me). I read the whole series a couple of years ago but haven't retained the plots. I don't think this makes me a wicked person, an absent minded waste of space perhaps, but again some of the ideas will emerge in future productions and I will claim them as my own. I remember still Pie Corbett's advice to creativity: imitate, innovate, invent. I am still firmly in the realms of imitation in most areas of my endeavour. Occasionally I will take an idea and add something new to it - innovate. However invention is still a distant dream!

Billie Piper!

There's life in the old dog yet!

Beware fair maidens - and you know who you are ( I may forget a name but never a pretty face or turn of an ankle)!