I've just re-read what I wrote last night. Goodness, I do witter on, don't I! However, I still maintain that Mary and Joseph would have appreciated a good bar of CDM, or, perhaps more appropriately, a megabar of Galaxy, because I'm blowed if I'd have known what to do with a bar of myrrh.

Still, notwithstanding the predilections of the Holy Family (and I apologise unreservedly if I've offended any particular sensibilities), I've just returned from the dress rehearsal of 'Tom Sawyer', and I'm very pleased to report that all went well - other than the inadvertent omission of one particular scene (which we rehearsed after the rehearsal, if you get my drift), and one other occasion when the producer stopped the proceedings and advised the cast on stage that they had omitted a second scene, only to be put firmly in my place by a clearly irked cast who reminded me that the scene I was banging on about was, in fact, pursuant to the one that I had just arrested. I'm glad to report that the feline stand-in acquitted itself very well, and I'm sorry that the original one felt that being poisoned by an eleven-year-old was too much to bear and decided that it couldn't face the pressures of the bright lights. I do sympathise.

The play feast after the rehearsal went extremely well, and you would have been proud of your offspring(s) as they behaved impeccably in the dining room. Either that, or the peperoni pizza was so spicey that it rendered the dining room volume level a lot more quiet than normal. ('Dining' is often mis-spelt in exercise books as 'dinning': an error that causes me to hesitate before correcting same!)

Anyway, I hope you'll be here tomorrow, and if you are, I hope you'll thoroughly enjoy the show. Drinks afterwards in New Room, btw. ('By the way', my daughter assures me. Come on, get a grip, your children will be sitting GCSEs in text-messaging in a couple of years - or so the Telegraph tells us!)