Whiteout

Yesterday I watched the sun rise over frostladen fields washed in pink and gold light. Everything bright and cold and still. Today someone's shaken the glass globe where Peebles nests. Snow tumbles up past my first-floor window.

Digest

Spent the weekend fighting with the new spiral binder machine, reprinting mis-cut pages and failing to find a quick way of working out which way round to put the binder combs into the machine. Notwithstanding, the Myriad scripts are now bound, labelled and ready for tonight's read-through and audition.

On Thursday I saw Roger Llewellyn perform Sherlock Holmes; The Death And Life at the Eastgate Theatre. An impressive one-man performance of a clever script.

House plans are ready to go to the planners. We're both feeling reconnected to the build project and excited about getting started. Now the trees are cleared and the snow has mostly melted away the place looks ready for a house to grow on it. Next hurdles are planning, engineering and costing.

Our family movie on Sunday was What's Eating Gilbert Grape ? Johnny Depp and Leonardo DiCaprio as you'd forgotten they were.

Simon and I saw Invictus at the weekend, and his DVD of 9 arrived. Screen feast.

Dramatic Intentions

Last night saw the culmination of one of my short drama courses in an evening of improvised sketches and games at the theatre, titled Dramatic Intentions. For some of the kids it was their first time on stage so they did well to make it all up as they went along. A fun evening despite my usual anxiety cramps beforehand.

A week of school half-term now then a new set of courses start up, including the radio performance on Myriad in March. This has attracted much interest and I'm looking forward to doing some off-the-wall geek comedy again.

Meanwhile house plans are thrusting forward again after a period up a side street when we ceased to feel the project was our own. Back on track now we are ready to put the planning application in and enter negotiations with the planners.

Winter draws on, with the pale faces and translucent skin tones that characterise this time of year. The birds and squirrels are ever-optimistic, emptying the feeders every other day and starting to flirt with each other in the bare branches of the trees.

Mistaken Identity in a Baghdad Marketplace

I'll spare the details, which are discomforting and nearly always boring, and cut to the denouement. The sinister shadow on last month's scan turned out, upon clearer and more invasive inspection this week, to be nothing more than an aberration on the CT film. In fact a picture - more correctly a full length colour video - emerged of flawless rude health. A golden result; better even than I hoped for.

It isn't quite the appointment in Samarra; more like mistaken identity in a crowded marketplace but still, for me and my ceaselessly inventive imagination, an opportunity to sit down, catch my breath and take stock of what matters.