Auditions

I woke up this morning and watched a cookery show which features Janet Street Porter and a chef called Brian travelling around the country. The two of them turn up in an area of Britain and Janet goes off to explore its cultural and historical significance whilst Brian finds out about the local cuisine. At the end of the show, they head to an al fresco setting and Brian cooks Janet some food.

The incredibly boring, long-running gag is that every time Brian adds butter or cream to the food he's preparing, Janet starts screaming like a fish wife, making digs about the fact that he's creating a heart attack on a plate. On and on she goes like a broken record to the extent that I'm pretty sure Brian would like to throw the whinging imbecile into a vat of cream cheese. It's not a format I enjoy. But then again, I wouldn't enjoy anything which featured a Loose Woman.

I had a relaxing morning. More accurately, I had a morning where I couldn't get off the sofa no matter how hard I tried. In fact, I spent most of it wrapped in a towel. I must have watched at least three cookery programmes.

After lunch (a piece of toast), I hauled myself down to Pimlico to call in on the first day of auditions for this season of the National Youth Music Theatre. I'm proud to say that one of the shows being presented is the new, improved version of Brass, which will mark the 100th anniversary of the Battle of the Somme.

It was lovely to see everyone again. NYMT is a like a giant family. Nikolai Foster the director and Dougal Irvine the composer were both there. They're working on one of the other NYMT productions this summer, a production of Spring Awakenings, which promises to be absolutely brilliant. Under normal circumstances we'd be in direct competition for young people, but it genuinely seems like they're looking for edgier, rock and pop performers, which leaves the older kids with legitimate voices for Brass. Hopefully there won't be too many rows when it comes to the final casting.

There were some great kids there today and I stuck about at the end of the day to make sure that the ones who felt like Brassers were recalled for the show.

I made my way back to Highgate in horrible mizzle, which made me feel sweaty and irritable.

Nathan came back from work and we ate pasta and salad and found an episode of Glee on his computer which neither of us could remember if we'd seen or not. We watched it all the way through and still didn't know if we were seeing it for the first time. That's how disposal the telly we watch is!