Morning everyone. I'm currently wading my way toward a draft of a radio play, it's technically overdue as of today but my lovely producer Liz has given me a few days' grace, so yet again I'm writing this when I should be writing that (hello Dave). But I thought I owed you people a post, I know there are a (countable on fingers) number of you who look in regularly, and it's only right and fair that I give you something to read.
B went to Edinburgh for four days last week, so I was full-time Dad for the duration, and lovely that was too, if a trifle exhausting, as I was a bit nervy about my deadline and got insomniac. But all in all it went gratifyingly well. Spike missed his Mum a fair bit and there were a few tears but we had a Grand Day Out at the Science Museum on the Wednesday, the anticipation of which helped keep his pecker up, and baby Bernard, while initially a little perplexed at his mother's sudden not-being-there-ness, soldiered on manfully and was a delightful bean, albeit one that emitted masses of noxious slurry from his rear end, must have been something he ate.
At the Science Museum, we saw this



which bowled me over. Not literally, it doesn't work anymore. But I remembered it did bowl over poor old Huskisson, the first ever railway fatality.

Other things: reading Harriet Devine's interviews with many brilliant writers in Looking Back: Playwrights at the Royal Court, 1956-2006. Essential and riveting. And I caught the last night of Philistines at the NT. Even from the back of the circle I managed to become besotted with Ruth Wilson's Tanya, and also Rory Kinnear as her brother Pyotr (but in a different way). And yes I suppose they really could the pair of them (the characters, I mean) do with a kick up the backside, as their father intimates in no uncertain fashion - but then couldn't we all?