Icy Dead People

Saturday! And not a normal one - this is the start of 2 weeks off. But typically, I awoke with a 7 in it and read quietly in bed like the good boy I hope to one day become. Breakfast was buttery and cheesy and that was just the scrambled eggs, the rest of the morning being devoted to Youtube, not sure if it counts as an addiction or a religion.

Meanwhile, a minion boxed up my duplicate coins and yea, they weighed 10 kilogrammes and were difficult to hold up for long. They shall hit the online auction facilitator tonight to provide much-needed funds for, I don't know, coins or something. Then we waited slightly too long for Sydney and she'd been a little like me with the not getting up when told to and the lying around and the pretending not to hear.

But once she'd brushed her hair all over the car she perked up and we had a splendid 4 1/2 hour rehearsal in which the set grew and grew until it took up half the auditorium. We bequeathed my old wartime suitcase from the Evacuee school project to the theatre as a prop, waste not, damn right.

'Wind in the Willows' is a sedate story from gentler times, but not the way we've done it. Hedgehogs and rabbits and weasels and other forest fauna have to pop up here and there so in the absence of portal technology at knockdown prices, tunnels have been built alongside the audience crucible so that we can scurry around unseen and unheard (but probably not unsmelt) and emerge elsewhere.

Viewing holes have been cunningly incorporated into the megastructure so that we can see our cues and spy on the audience. Apparently it's a bit interactive as well as musical and some of them will be playing the part of picnickers so expect some creaky legs at intermission. But it's all hilarious fun and everybody should attend and fill the auditorium and have a good time.

Of course all these tunnels get a bit sawdusty and we'll be going down in full costume so I went down Sydney's tunnel to give it a good spring clean. The we distributed masks around the room, maybe for some kind of German speciality film where they only wear masks.

Now, being as I was unjustly unplugged from my Youtube Cyber-teat and had a 4 1/2 hour rehearsal full of dances and songs with only Jaffa Cakes as nutriment, my mood at the end can be a little unpredictable. One of the girls spent the whole time crying and asking when Mummy was coming to pick her up, and even one of the adult volunteers fell down the stairs and banged her leg. But at the end Poppy and Riley and Sydney and Alfie and anybody else ending in -ee absolutely insisted on an emergency 45 minute game of hide and seek with me in the sunshine.

Much later, because I failed to get off my butt and choose a Saturday-Night-Is-Film-Night video, 'Sixth Sense' was chosen for me. I watched, absorbed, understood, hid behind a pillow, and finally witnessed the underpinning denouement of the entire film and got the prescribed surprise. Then I sang a medley of Willows-related songs in the shower because I do not see dead people, only stupid ones.