What Witching Hour Is This?

Well, now that I've calmed down about the cacophonous Italians, I can turn my attention to more serious matters. I had a short play of mine performed before an audience last night. It was just a 10-minute two-hander that a pair of stalwart young actors from the Theatre Royal's pool had a go at. I love seeing my work performed – it's a very strange feeling to see the two-dimensional people I invented in my head starting to speak and move. These two, Gary Keane & Emma Carlton did an excellent job and (as all actors should) found facets to my characters that even I hadn't seen. Well done. The audience laughed in all the right places, anyway.

Tonight, after a fractious day at the orifice, I'm going to the social evening at the Writers' Studio. That's if I get this entry written, my ironing done, and dinner cooked beforehand. This working-for-a-living malarkey doesn't half take up some time, I can tell you. I barely have chance to wash behind the ears – or to partake in the usual 3-fingers of whisky - before it's off to bed again. Somehow (and don't ask me how) the night passes all too quickly and before I can say "It must be against Human Rights to be forced to use an alarm clock!" I'm waking up again and the whole caboodle starts all over again. Is this how you lot have been living for all these years? I take my hat off to you, that's all I can say.

A friend of mine is unfortunate enough to have become ill recently, and found himself being sectioned and subsequently incarcerated in the locked psychiatric ward of our local hospital. I went to visit him the other day, and it was a rather unnerving experience. As we sat chatting, I had this sudden fear that I might not get out again. I could just see myself going towards the door, only to be gently ushered back by the nurse saying: "Come along now, you know you can't go home yet. Put your slippers back on and take a nice comfy seat in the dayroom." I felt gripped (unreasonably) by the possibilities of a Kafka-esque situation developing, and wondered how on earth I – wearing lime green socks, a T-shirt bearing the slogan: "Dirty Old Men Need Love Too", and with my dyed blonde hair standing on end as if I'd accidentally trapped my head inside a wind tunnel – could convince the staff that I was only a visitor? I'm planning to visit him again this weekend, so if you don't hear from me after that, please write to His Excellency the Nabob of Ward 66 and tell him that I am really, really – despite appearances – quite, quite normal. Tell him also that my pet dodo will die of starvation if I don't come home, and that I also need to clean at least one of my seventeen bathrooms.

There, big sighs....