Nivea

Crumbs. I'm seeing double! I was up at 8 this morning and have been finessing and formatting parts ever since. I think I'll be at it long into the night because once that task is complete, I have to export a million midi files...

I am genuinely beginning to crack under the strain of all of this. Just as I think I'm getting a handle on things, someone else emails, or telephones, asking for something else and I'm back to square one. I can't even see the light at the end of the tunnel, because once this Channel 4 project is over, I'm straight into the first set of rehearsals for Brass. I am desperate for a lie-in.

Nathan is similarly stressed. I pity the door in our front room which has been slammed so often today it's coming off it hinges!

Whilst I'm dealing with the musical side of things, poor Nathan is having to wade his way through all the other stuff; liaising with producers, visiting shoots, booking musicians, grappling with technology and dealing with the ever-changing requirements of people whom I'm forced to describe in this blog at this stage as "audience members."

Both of us are now suffering from stress-related ailments. My skin's gone dry and itchy. Nathan can't shake his cough and keeps getting headaches. My back is in spams.

Of course we'll both be fine in the morning. We have good days and bad days and they seem to alternate.

One of our problems is that other people working on this project, quite understandably, want to keep abreast of their own production tasks, and continually demand from us the stuff they feel they need to do everything properly. Of course the issue with this is that, by helping them to stay ahead of things, we end up behind with our own work, which is the foundation which keeps the entire project upright. My stock response: will it wait til Monday? If so, it's less important than the stuff I need to do before tomorrow.

So, I'm having a bath, have plastered myself in Nivea and have had a bowl of Shreddies. This means I can face my night time work session with renewed vigour and, with any luck, get another set of parts completed before I fall asleep.