Welcome Back

It seems there is a post-Edinburgh bug going about - I'm one of at least four people who have come down with some kind of lurgi since getting home. Mine is taking the form of sinusitis with a touch of tonsilitis, so I feel as if my head is full of cotton wool. My particularly welcoming pile of post contained a rejection letter (from Mills and Boon - yeah yeah, desperate times = desperate measures) which said "we feel your story and characters would not be suitable for publication in any of our publishing programmes" - wow, they really didn't like me, did they? Mind you, having forced myself to read a few M&B books, I suspect they mean my stuff isn't suitable because the characters have more than two dimensions and there is actually a plot in there somewhere.

Also, a letter from Cambridge City Council saying they are, after all, going to charge me £30 for 5 minutes' parking. There's my car, sitting outside a B&B, with a visitor's parking permit in the windscreen but at 8:35am, the permit doesn't have Saturday's date written on it yet. You're a traffic warden; do you think (a) ah, a visitor, must be having their breakfast, they've got a permit but just need to fill in today's date so I'll give them a couple of minutes, or (b) yay, a visitor, they've got a permit but they're five minutes late writing the correct date in it so I can fine them, hoorah! It's no wonder traffic wardens are amongst the most hated of public officials. What with the drunken louts at night, the derelicts on the street during the day, the slack approach to customer service in the shops (Saturday morning, queues to the doors, one person on the tills, in each shop) and the over-priced restaurants, never mind the inflexible and mean-spirited traffic extortion department, I shan't be rushing back to increase the tourist burden on Cambridge.

I'm curious to know who's arriving here via Google - as well as searches for most of the acts and films we saw last week, someone arrived here via "gym knickers" and someone else via "Shane Danielsen girlfriend". Wonder if it was the same person? Watch out, Shane! I don't even remember gym knickers featuring in any of my underwear-related discussions, in fact I'd prefer to forget their horrible existence altogether.

OK, rapid change of subject before I have some kind of memory recovery-induced trauma.

We are proceeding full steam ahead with "Echoes"; we now have a cast of three, and a crew (minus a sound person, but I'm assured that will be fixed by Saturday); phone call on Friday will hopefully result in us being able to collect all the gear we need ready to begin shooting on Monday, assuming one of the insurance companies I've contacted gets back to me so that I can insure everyone and everything. I've spent the day getting all the paperwork together - release forms, contracts and so on - and trying to track down the last few props we need. Anyone have a 1940s style calendar they would lend us, or know someone who will drive a big truck down a road so we can film it? My head is spinning not only from the cotton-wool effect but also the ever-increasing list of things to remember, and the increasingly intricate timetable of when everything has to be done/collected/signed/paid for. What I need is an Angel to give me a few hundred quid, then I'd be more relaxed. Unfortunately many of the companies who have done corporate sponsorship and support of community arts in the past are in difficult circumstances themselves and are no longer in a position to do that kind of thing.

Ten mini-angels giving me £50 each would be fine too!

And this is a short - what's it like producing a feature? I'll give the verdict on whether I want that particular adventure at the end of next week, assuming I've survived this experience.