First day of rehearsals. I arrived early to find the hall we were supposed to using full of high school kids doing some kind of drama workshop with the National Theater of Scotland. Ilona arived and after much consulting of diaries it turned out the hall had been double booked for the whole day. We retired to a smaller room and started a read through. The door opened and an elderly lady poked her head in. "Oh!" she said and left the room. She poked her head back in again bridling with wrinkley indignation "Are you going to be long? Because we've got an art tutor!" she snapped.

Having no arguement against that kind of logic we scarpered to Ilona's house for the rest of the morning.

The evening was spent down at the village hall listening to The Scottish Ensemble, a 12 piece string group playing pieces by Sibelius, Tchaikovsky, and Mendelsohn. Audience of 50 or so. Realy nice evening. I forgot how much I like seeing music performed live. Sound apart, and there is nothing quite like feeling cellos and bases resonating in the same room, I had forgotten how much I enjoyed watching the interplay between the players. The little nods and smiles that pass between them. And the joy. There were some players really enjoying themselves last night, you could see it on their faces. It was infectious. loved it. A great evening. The only bum moment came when one of the audience, sitting off to my right, started to fumble in his pocket for something during a very quiet passage. I'm not sure what it was in there but it sounded like a paper bag full of dessicated hedgehogs. The music got quieter and quieter and he didn't stop, just tried to get whatever it was by being even more careful which just stretched out the agony and made it worse. Twat.

Second Day of reheasalising. Having my usual. 'What the fuck am I doing thinking I can act?' thoughts again. We had a lot of fun today played around with things, threw things in, took things out messed about, tried to see what worked and what didn't. The others are still working out who their characters are and I'm trying to make Steve less of the boring sanctimonious little goodie goodie two shoes than he is on the page (and as I played him last year). A good idea. Unfortunatly this involves making him a little more complex and means I might actually have do some acting. Dammit!

It will all work out in the long run but at the moment I'm just happy that we all seem to be getting on well. There's a lot of giggling and silliness. We're going to be stuck with each other on tour for weeks. So far so good.