Everything was fine until I woke up. At 4:40AM. Suddenly I was hounded into a theatre by my cast, who didn’t even TRY plying me with coffee or catnip. This is what they call a get-in and I would be lying if I didn’t mention that I spent most of it asleep on the chairs of the theatre. BUT by the end of it we had worked out where everyone was comfortable sticking everything and how much noise we could make. Ooh-err, missus.

Before we had time to make shop in Tesco and build a tent out of postcards (which happened anyway), we were standing on a raised platform on the Royal Mile. We had 20 minutes in which to act out an impromtu staging of the family friendly portions of our play. The other 18 minutes we had to spend inviting members of the public to fight Harry dressed as a soldier and singing the Dambusters march to silly words. While our reduction of Eric Coates’ superbly light orchestration left the middle registers somewhat absent, what we lacked in accuracy of pitch we made up for in volume. I mention this because what I did next, flyering for two hours, was not especially noteworthy. Though I can now say “COME SEE GOLDILOCKS AS A DOMINATRIX” without smirking. And while I’m placeholding with random crap, can I mention Weetabix? Fnord, fnord, fnord, om nom nom nom nom.

Before we could say any of the above we were thrust on stage for our first performance of Once Upon a Time. We walked out to an audience which looked like 51 people but was in fact 54. They laughed and groaned. And groaned and laughed. And groaned again. This meant everything was going swimmingly. We were having so much fun that… (CAPTION COMPETITION! FINISH THIS SENTENCE IN 15 WORDS OR LESS AND WIN AN EXCITING HOLIDAY TO WHEREVER YOU ARE CURRENTLY LIVING)

And so we ended up here in the party flat, eating stew and drinking increasingly strong gin while our stronger-willed and less exhausted friends are out flyering for Merman on Broadway like the troopers that they are. And so they should, Ethel is 100 and happy birthday to her. I’m told they sang “There’s no Merman like this Merman ‘cos this Merman’s a man…” which has been latterly confirmed by Ros. WELCOME TO MARIO KART. Sorry, that was Rock’s phone. ROCK! You have a text!