Clippy's log - page 28

18/8 7:10pm. We might as well go in, no point hanging around. As we start moving, a Savoynetter introduces himself to the boys and says "I didn't realise who you were, I've been reading your blog with great interest". Actually that's happened quite a lot this festival.

7:30pm. Ah that Iolanthe overture, we love it. When the curtain rises we look for people we know - and there's a lot tonight. Both Celia and Leila are people we've spoken to at least once, and they're doing a great job of acting the part of five year olds. Charlotte warned us to watch her dancing and acting, and we are by no means disappointed - she is throwing herself into the part with some gusto, and obviously having a whale of a time doing so. She'd be a credit to any chorus! The peers' march is quite something too. There's so many of them they can hardly fit across the stage! Quite a few tenors too, unless they're just basses singing down the octave. Actually there's quite a number here at the festival - Midga hasn't cracked his "collective noun" joke since Trial by Jury. Anyway, Rosuav is reviewing the show so I don't have to. It's an Iolanthe comparable to ours in 2006. Enough said.

10pm. I'm on duty with Rosuav again. David Turner waffles a bit, and often diverges into anecdotes from his own career, which Rosuav never bothers to note, so it's not onerous. Nothing like gunzelling a full length SRHC Blue Train consist at 80km/h between Centre Road and Westall. Not even like getting the numbers and liveries of a triple NR lash-up on PW4 at Laverton. Shut up Clippy, you'll get some gunzelling days soon enough.

10:30pm. We and Elise join Midga in the club. Elise has plenty to say about the singing (some positive and some negative), and the boys echo bits about the tech and crew side of things. Not that it's easy to talk tech when Elise has some music to talk about.

10:45pm. Community singing - including the peers' march up on the stage, for the third time this festival! Midga leaves the camera ready for action but Elise doesn't take the hint. Surprisingly, some of the cast are here already and join us for the march - fairies as well as peers! Charlotte, who has been telling us how she has joined it often enough in theory (I mean in rehearsal), is right in it of course - which reminds all of us (or at least all who were around at the time - Traal is too young to remember) of Jessica from our own show. Happy times.

11pm. Usual cabaret. We don't know many of the songs and it seems Elise doesn't either. We decide to bail early. Charlotte is nowhere to be found.

11:40pm. Elise has twisted the boys' arms and forced them to help her finish the spag. Charlotte is chilling out with a cup of tea - poor thing, she's had a stressful show. She's still too uptight to eat anything much, so Elise tells her own horror story about how to (potentially) give yourself diabetes. I have never had a lingering disease like that - although I have had a broken board and a varicose rivet, each of which put me in hospital for major transplant surgery. Not fun.

1:30am. We leave in order to let the girls get some sleep. It still feels weird for a show to be over with no cast party, but getting to bed before it gets light outside is probably a reasonable alternative. The spag is still not finished so we are invited over for a picnic lunch tomorrow!

19/8 11:30am. The boys gradually become conscious of the fact that they've missed out on Singing from the Bandstand - bits of G&S in the park with everyone joining in. Oh well.

1pm. Have lunch making gear, will travel. Charlotte has only just got up - which is the right thing to do after a show.

2:30pm. After eating and a lot of talking, we go for a walk around the gardens. It's a beaut day out, worthy of any late autumn day at home, and the camera gets a good work-out. We get to see all over the Pavilion Gardens, including a ride on the miniature train (it sure feels good to have wheels on steel rails rumbling under us again), and eat lunch on The Slopes, near the weather station where the birds assemble to have bits of apple fed to them in front of the camera. Midga quite rightly introduces Australian railway philosophy to the English and the American, simply by throwing his apple core into a garden bed. He explained to them that, as most of my faithful readers will know, it was the great Sir Harold Clapp who said "PLANT MORE FRUIT"! It goes over well. At the gardens there's what looks like a jumping castle. Charlotte was almost ready to have a go (she didn't get a chance at one while on stage, and all five year olds should have an outlet for excess energy) but it turns out to be just a bunch of trampolines tied together.

Clippy's log - page 27

16/8 4pm. Elise walks out - she has a lower threshold of pain than we do. Even though she teaches music.

5:20pm. The show finishes. We were supposed to be at dinner at 5pm!

5:35pm. We turn up at last and Elise is wondering where we are. And whether we survived the concert. So we just tell her - this is what happens when an appreciation society tries to turn into a performing society, by degrees.

6:45pm. We don't make the same mistage twice! The boys aren't going to the show tonight but Charlotte is. We head down there and the boys and I hang around in the club.

7:35pm. Elise joins us to help leech wifi. She still doesn't have a steady supply of email. It's not going too well and a few words between Rosuav and their resident geek show why - it's not public yet! It's only a trial system. In between ping packets we continue to converse. As always.

10pm. Chris, Sarah-Jane and Robert Hall come in and everyone makes a fuss as is obligatory. Robert blogs you see, and any failure to oblige would be recorded for posterity. We move to a proper table, and Elise uses my pal to read Savoynet while the packets continue to time out.

10:30pm. The Club opens as usual with community singing of chorus numbers from the show. Time Gasvic did Sorcerer obviously, none of us know it very well.

10:45pm. University Challenge for under-50s (and honorary under-50s). Midga is within an inch of being on one of the teams but escapes just in time. After a while Ian runs out of questions and - the game is a draw!

11:55pm. Home. Via Elise's as usual. That bag needs to be dragged uphill, not carried.

17/8 11:30am. Midga gets up and wonders what to do. Rosuav is still asleep so he grabs Traal and the Rollingstock book and prepares trip plans for the days off.

4pm. Time for lunch. Two eggs and "a few" sausages each. Luckily Midga keeps working over the food.

4:30pm. The days are filled, so Midga and Traal work on the Smartpax 2020 document. At this rate the thing will be done by the time we get home!

7pm. Time to go - Ruddigore tonight! Hope it's good, we have high standards.

7:35pm. The curtain opens and we are transported back two years - the same Paul Lazell set the Festival production used in 2007. The bridesmaids enter - and we're in 2007 still! A glance at the program shows - director Andrew Nicklin. All is explained. The cast aren't as good though, a mixed bag. What strikes me and Midga in our professionally amateur capacity is the lighting - too much fill and practically no highlight, which makes everyone on stage look like a cardboard cut-out - ehee!

10:30pm. Neil Smith asked us as a personal favour to oblige the theatre staff in not using Traal, so I'm back on duty with Rosuav jotting down the adjudication.

10:45pm. We rejoin Midga in the Festival Club. Elise comes in too and Midga opens with the leading question "Did you recognize any of the direction of that show?" All of it maybe?

12 midnight or so. Standard finish. Goodnight!

18/8 11:30am. Better get up soon - Elise is coming for lunch!

1pm. Elise and Charlotte turn up - Charlotte has been let out of rehearsal on good behaviour but isn't eating. Tech/Sitz/DR is apparently going quite well, but that huge opera house is as much of a shock as expected!

1:50pm. Charlotte has to go - chookas! Oops, that has to be translated.

5pm. Lunch has merged with dinner so we all move to Elise's to finish off the spaghetti.

7pm. And off to the theatre. A surprise awaits - not only is Elise Cripps's peppermint drop cart broken off at the handle (by person or persons unknown) but all the stuff is sold already! So she doesn't have to get into that "eye-catching" costume and sing the same song to every passer-by any more.

Clippy's log - page 26

Yes I'm way behind, I know. Traal is always busy and the phone can't always get an internet connection. I don't have a USB port of my own, which I sometimes regret.

15/8 11:45pm. Elise is ready to bail and usually wants a gallant young man to carry her bag up the steel hill to Upper Buxton. And the boys always respond to that sort of thing. Dinner again tomorrow? Yay! We'll bring some supplies.

11:55pm. Home and it's not yet midnight. Diary time, this time with the right timezone on the Google Calendar. Several good gunzelling days coming right up!

16/8 9am. Midga gets up and gets ready for church. It's the Sullivan service at the Methodist church, should be good. Mum has emailed, just for an update.

9:45am. Time to think about going. We concluded that the service is at 11am, after being confused by one part of the festival program saying 11 and another saying 10:30. The church's own web site is considered an authoritative source.

10:15am. We walk out. Have Bible, will travel. If Bibles aren't in fashion at this church Midga will be un the unusual position of having started a new fashion.

10:45am. We arrive. The church is packed and the choir is rehearsing. It turns out 10:30 was for the choir to be assembled (it's Festival people as well as church members) and 11 is for the service. We manage to find two seats and I sit on the floor.

11am. The service starts with a Fred Wagstaff style "Good morning!" which, like Gary Slavin's "Do you know where we're going from?" is said in the expectation of a reply. A browse of the news sheet/order of service gives the impression of a fairly traditional church which is trying to unbend a bit - sort of like ours. There's plenty of reference to sin, repentance, forgiveness and Jesus' supremacy so it looks like a good Bible-believing church. A reading from 2 Chronicles too, that's a good start. We open with Ps 95 sung to one of Sullivan's hymn tunes, and the organ plus congregation fills that little church with music! Responsive prayers are not what we're used to, but hey, this is why we visit other churches. Another hymn - Glorious Things of Thee are Spoken, sung to Sullivan's "Lux Eoi" (which we sing another hymn to, can't think which) - which is misspelled Eloi, and the minister says "Some of you can probably guess why", which could be another indication that this is a serious congregation. Then a responsive psalm - we went from Ps 147 at home just before we left, to Ps 98 here. And the downward trend will continue when we get back, so I'm told. The sermon is on John 2, the miracle of water into wine at Cana. It's preached by a high up minister (former Vice President of the Methodist Conference - a sort of Moderator of the GA I guess) who happens to also be the president of a local G&S society. Unfortunately he seems a bit liberal - I can accept straying from the passage to do a thematic sermon, but to say "however you explain the actual event of water turning into wine" and then describe a whole lot of God's common graces as "water into wine moments" is going too far. The boys decide to go again next week to see if the regular Sunday service is better. After the sermon (which seems ridiculously short), our good friend Ian Henderson (Grosvenor in 2007, Prince of Monte Carlo this year) gets up and sings the Lost Chord. Apparently it's a tradition to do it at this service... even though it's hardly worship music. We all join in the last verse and it does sound pretty grand. Just at the end Midga notices there are two pairs of hands on the organ - wish it had been recorded. Then some more prayers (after the sermon!) including the Lord's Prayer, which they considered unnecessary to print in the news sheet. And we finish with Onward Christian Soldiers. A key change for the last verse and a good organist give us a musical high. Love it.

12:30pm. It's probably too late for a family chat session, but it's a good excuse to get out of having to socialise with people who know we're here for the festival and want to talk about it rather than church. It does get tiring saying the same thing over and over. And of course the eternal refrain "Oh Australia, I'd love to go there one day"... at least the guy at Jodi's church who asked "Which side of the Mississippi is that?" gave it variety.

12:45pm. We try to step Gae and David through setting up a voice call in Google Chat, but it seems none of the microphones work. It's getting late anyway so we give up.

3pm. Emerald Isle in the Paxton! We get in and they're all over the stage already, it's a concert version not fully staged. I guess we could have expected that. Elise comes in and sits behind us - she was going to Parsons Pirates at the opera house at 2:30 but she got the times mixed up! The show opens with a bit of narration - which is a good thing because the singers' diction isn't up to the task of telling us the plot. The orchestra are all over the place too, and Elise has a few things to say about the singers' technique. Still, it's an introduction to the piece, and the MIDIs will do the rest until someone produces it properly.

Clippy's log - page 25

The quarter century, and we're not even half way though August!

Incidentally, have you noticed how the day always seems to end just after a page break? Must be something to do with the amount of daylight at these high lattitudes, our A4 paper is used to Australian days.

13/8 11:30pm. Midga decides to go home as he has a headache. A few xkcds and then bed.

14/8 6:53am. Midga wakes up with a migrane. System analysis reveals dehydration as the most probable cause. Three litres of water and a cup of tea later, he's well enough to read emails, El Reg, RSS and Facebook. Then the phone needs recharging. Rosuav is still asleep, but Midga quietly puts Traal's USB port onto the task.

9:30am. Might be worth getting up.

11am. Might be worth going to bed again. Come on Midga, I want to go gunzelling!

1pm. Rosuav comes back from shopping. At last Midga can access the phone which is his only timepiece. Phew, haven't missed Mis(s)-trial by Jury!

3pm. We're here for Mis(s)-trial, and hey, half the cast of Grand Duke are in it! Rosuav is blogging about it in full so I'll just say that it's an amazing reproduction of the audition process, followed by a gender-bent TbJ which works surprisingly well. Another to get the DVD of.

5:20pm. Back home, for dinner and a rest before the Club - pot luck Ruddigore!

10pm. We arrive early and still there's no tables! Then Elise drags us over to her cast table. That means we have to sing! And she introduces us to a charming young lady by the name of Charlotte, who's doing the Festival Iolanthe.

11:45pm. Elise wants a "slave" to carry her bag home so Rosuav obliges. And just as we're saying goodnight she invites us over for dinner tomorrow! Yay!

12:10am. Nothing on tomorrow until late arvo/evening, so the boys do some mixed Android development/Looney Tunes/random research until Jodi signs on to Skype.

2:20am. Jodi signs off and the boys head for bed.

15/8 11am. It's a Saturday morning, there's nothing on. Midga gets out his Locos and Coaching Stock book and notices there's a lot of Hitachi era EMUs still in service, some captive on branch lines for easier gunzelling. A bit of wikiresearch and then a journey planner please - ah thank you Northern Rail. Hey, it CAN be done in a single day from Buxton. Several marathon gunzelling days coming right up!

4pm. Time to get going - Elise wants us over by 5 because she's on duty at 7. The question is, is she the kind of hostess that wants us to bring stuff? No idea. Play it safe and bring a box of Celebrations (as in, give a gift that will last a lunchtime).

5:05pm. We've found the place but Elise is out! So we chat with Charlotte for a bit. When Elise comes in it turns out she's the very best type of hostess - the type that takes you into the kitchen and everyone helps with both the cooking and the chatting. It turns out she's second oldest of seven and knows what it is - which may be one (more) reason she gets on so well with the boys.

7pm. ACK! Time to be gone! Elise gets her stuff ready and we get moving. Ida tonight, should be Rather Good.

7:15pm. Elise starts work and the boys get tickets - or rather, they try. Sold out! They don't want standing room tickets for a three act show, so they decide to hang around in the Pavilion until the club opens.

7:35pm. Might be a good idea to buy tickets for all the rest of the shows, before they go. Three out of six (seven if you count the matinee of Pirates). Good for the festival but a pity not to see the rest of the shows.

8pm. Might visit the portacabin too, and get the first installment of DVDs. £200 or so goes onto Midga's Visa card... all these shows are so good!

10:30pm. The crowds pour in, full of comments about the show! It's one not to miss, but we didn't have a choice... Elise has so much to say about it she has to write it down to avoid interrupting the cabaret. Incidentally the songs are a cut above average, though Midga still doesn't bother videoing it. Poor camera, it hasn't had a good run since the DR of Grand Duke!

Clippy's log - page 24

12/8 7:20pm. Can we just get on with the show? Doing nothing is stressful. Neither of the boys have anything to do apart from changing the set at interval, so Rosuav procures a couple of seats. In the stalls, no less. For free. Midga decides to stay backstage just in case.

7:30pm. We're starting, thank goodness. The audience seems a bit flat, hope it picks up a bit.

8:45pm. Set change - and it goes very smoothly. This positive factor seems completely lost on certain member(s) of the crew, who, as Rosuav puts it in the very most charitable possible way, don't handle stress very well. I'm not as nice, I think if he can't handle the heat he should get out of the kitchen. Midga is worse, he doesn't want to see or work with this person ever again. OK, not certain members of the crew, one member in particular. That slipped out.

10:30pm. The show is over. Thunderous applause and lots of laughter - it picked up straight after interval. Adjudication is positive and it's clean up time. Midga washes yellow jelly out of plastic champagne glasses. This, of course, will feature in Rosuav's saga. Rosuav starts taking down the set. As usual there's lots of time spent waiting for something to happen, lots of contradiction about whether secondhand screws are to be saved, and lots of work where being of equal height and able to communicate in ultra brief are valuable. The boys fit the bill perfectly.

11:15pm. Festival club! Our cabaret has already started, not sure what happened to the idea of having everyone help clean up the theatre. Still, more bodies would probably have only got in the way. Unlike two years ago, Midga decides to drink. This is the only cast party we get, and people tend to unwind and talk a lot more in these conditions. Leading actresses with heaps of experience, telling all the amusing show stories they can think of. Fun.

1am. The club closes up and we have to go home. Rosuav is nowhere to be seen, so Midga assumes he went home already. Woohoo, we get to walk home with Jackie! She's living in the halls too.

1:20am. Home to hot chocolate and emails.

1:45am. Rosuav comes home! He apparently had gone with Elise and didn't see Midga and me standing near the bar. He's heading for bed, but he leaves Traal and the remaining theatre lollies out. Looney Tunes!

3:30am. Jodi comes online! Time for a mixed serious-fun chat. There's no Skybe rendition of pillow fighting but talking about what's on the stove is a good substitute.

5:05am. Jodi tells Midga to go to bed.

13/8 1pm. What am I doing in the kitchen? Where are the boys? They must be still asleep.

1:45pm. Midga walks in and eats some cornflakes. This is as bad as the early days of jet-lag.

3:30pm. Emails, lollies, forums, Pirates, Goons - this is a de-stressing day. Suddenly in comes a blowfly - the first I've seen since arriving in England. The hunt lasts about five minutes. SLAP. That's 1000 summer flies killed - hey wait, this IS summer! There just aren't many flies around!

4:27pm. Time to go gunzelling. Let's find out where the limestone trains come from.

5:40pm. Limestone trains come from a long way away. Maybe next time it would be a good idea to do some research on Google Earth first. Anyway, we found some more bridges to photograph, and a path beside the railway from which to photograph Sprinters from a new angle. Home for dinner and then the Gondoliers!

7:20pm. No seats left? NONE? Wow. Just as we're deciding not to bother a couple of ladies come up with tickets they no longer need - so we get to sit in the Upper Circle (just below our usual place in the Gallery) and Rosuav is in the Stalls.

7:35pm. Ian Smith comes out and announces there's been a hold-up (as in bushrangers - although he pronounces it "Dick Turpin") on the main road from Derby. The audience, accustomed to his opening speeches, laugh uproariously, but apparently it's true. So he waffles for a while to give the Derbyites time to arrive.

10:45pm. Festival Club. Rosuav has worked out he can type with Traal's lid nearly closed to avoid incurring the wrath of the FOH staff so I go with Midga to reserve a table near a powerpoint. Too late, taken already.

11pm. Rosuav comes in. He's (predictably) not happy we couldn't get his powerpoint. Nothing we can do.

11:15pm. Community singing, fun but not easy. Gondoliers has lots of chorus work in four part harmony and counterpoint.

Clippy's log - page 23

11/8 8am. Last day of rehearsals. Let's be early in case there's some planning of bump-in etc.

9am. Here we all are again. No "former triumphs" joke please, it's been done to death. Rehearsals are getting a bit more stressed but not to Patience 2007 levels by any means. A few last minute t-shirt and raffle sales keep us busy. The run is stopped every now and then and it's highly amusing to hear people drop out of character and back into their own accents to speak to the director and MD. Most obvious is Julia from German to American, but some of the English to English ones are interesting too. A few people have bugs of various kinds, hopefully they clear up before tomorrow evening.

4:10pm. Announcements about tomorrow. I take careful notes. Savoynet shows are amazing - so many people that do the work! Even a few people helping with makeup (which is provided by the company)!

4:55pm. 45 minutes of notes and announcements! Now let's clean the place up. Angie has prepared slips of paper each with a job written on it. First the eight top prinnies (the ones in the front row of the wedding procession at the end) are told to clean the toilets, then everyone else gets handed a "normal" job.

5:25pm. And the clean up is done! All furniture returned to its place, all props packed into crates and stacked in one place, carpet "hoovered", all belongings packed and the kitchen tidied up. Amazing.

5:40pm. Home again. What's the show tonight? Youth production of Patience. Probably worth seeing, and certainly something to encourage, but between an intensive rehearsal season and Hell Day (ie Hell Week compressed into one day) it's probably not a good idea. Some Looney Tunes and then an early night.

12/8 8am. Here we go! Pack useful stuff and fun stuff (eg camera) and get over there.

9:05am. The truck is already being unloaded as we arrive, so the boys jump right in. I get shoved into Rosuav's backpack but I know I'll be called if any notes need to be taken. I can observe everything happening anyway.

9:30am. Everything is unloaded and the crew are assembling the set. They're canvas flats not ply, and narrower than the ones we use at home, so they can be manhandled by one person. The boys don't know this technique and have to learn it. Luckily they soon get allocated to putting down a floor - screwing sheets of masonite (with a painted cobblestone pattern) to the stage. Screw guns work the same everywhere, and the boys soon show the SM they've been good crew members before.

11am. Act 1 is up, now it's time for a crew tea break - this one is as unionised as the orchestra. A few of them are fairly offensive about it too. The boys decide to steer clear of one or two of the crew members in particular and deal only with Keith the SM and the various Savoynetters in the crew who were at rehearsals. While the crew have their lunch break the cast can use the stage to check their entrances and exits.

11:40am. By stretching the crew's break slightly Gary has managed to get all of Act 1 walked through. The crew take down one set of flats and put up another - it looks like being an intensive interval.

1pm. Act 2 is up so everyone goes for lunch. The cast have to be back by 2pm to get into costume, ready for a 2:30 run. The run is a combination of sitz, tech and all the DRs - if I hadn't known it had been done many, many times before I would have said it's impossible.

2pm. Here we are once more on the... oops I didn't want to say that one. The boys and I spend most of the time in the auditorium watching the show. Midga completely fills the second 2GB camera memory card, leaving a 512MB and a 32MB. Contrary to predictions the set change goes just fine, not too long at all.

5:30pm. Just time for some dinner. Midga has sugar deprivation and goes to Aldi for some provisions, while Rosuav takes his first turn at cooking for both boys since leaving Australia.

6:20pm. Eat up, time to go soon! Why does shopping take so long? It's all the protocol baggage of crossing the road, waiting in queue, climbing two sets of stairs etc.

6:40pm. All ready, let's go!

Clippy's log - page 22

8/8 6:20pm. Can't be bothered with a pro Pinafore and Trial. Home for dinner and further Looney Tunes database work.

10:30pm. Festival Club, for a pot luck Mikado. It is announced that it will be sans dialogue, which is received with thunderous acclaim. We're looking for a table and Elise comes up and invites us to sit with her at a cast table. She's a festival official, what can we do but follow her instructions?

12:30am. Home. Thank goodness for a later start tomorrow.

9/8 11:30am. Whoopsy, what happened to getting up for church? When is it anyway? No idea.

1pm. Midga heads Steamy off a crazy idea involving trams and standard gauge freight, via Facebook chat.

1:40pm. Rehearsal time soon - get going.

5pm. The stress is starting to mount but Gary is still pretty easy to get along with. Home for dinner, Utopia Ltd tonight!

7pm. Off to the theatre. Quite a gathering of Savoynetters - they obviously don't get to see Utopia often. It turns out to be quite a good show on balance - although like our recent Mikado marred by soggy lighting design and a few diction problems. Still, a fairly traditional Utopia, with some brilliant ideas that had the boys just about rolling in the aisles - well worth getting a DVD of.

10pm. Midga leaves to reserve a table for us at the Club, while Rosuav and I stay behind to hear the adjudication. He can't use Traal because the theatre staff don't like it. I can't tell the difference, but hey, I don't mind doing something useful. The adjudicator didn't like the show apparently; some of the problems are things I agree with, others I hadn't noticed. Ah well, all goes to show it's only one person's opinion.

10:30pm. We rejoin Midga in the Club and he's sitting with the Learned Judge from the WA show. Rosuav is a bit miffed because the table's not close to a power point to charge Traal, so he doesn't join them. But I do. First up is a community singing of Eagle High. The boys just listen - and it does sound good. Next a University Challenge, two teams of S'netters answering G&S trivia questions sent by Deebee. Most are to do with D'Oyly Carte performers and even Sam Silvers doesn't get them. So everyone (including the Smiths who are officiating) just hams the whole thing up and a good time is had by all.

12:25am. The Oxford people have done their cabaret - the usual selection of songs we don't know, some amusing and some done rather well. Home time. Rehearsals are going to get busy from now on.

10/8 8am. The alarm is on this time. Normal start to a day.

9:05am. We arrive at rehearsal slightly damp - it's raining! Costume run today, and hey, there's fresh batteries in the camera. Between taking photos and the occasional t-shirt or raffle sale there isn't much to do, except that Midga gets to go round the shops looking for a cheap watch to use as a prop.

5:20pm. Shopping, washing and cooking - the three essentials. Pity they take up so much time.

7:15pm. Time to go to the show! Bournemouth society's Sorcerer. A traditional production thank goodness. Not a bad show on balance, could do with a bit more alto in the chorus and some acting in the dialogue. But the pyrotechnics made up for everything, and more! Probably the best is JW Wells' death scene - a curtain closes over him, big bang, curtain opens before we can react and he's gone. Brilliant.

10:15pm. Early finish, off to the club. Community singing of some bits of Sorcerer and the usual selection of cabaret. We share a table with Ross Bryant (the Judge) and Laurie Marks from Savoynet. Laurie entertains us with his Cambridge modified lines for some G&S songs. Fun.

11:29pm. Early night. Thank goodness.