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Today I finally finished my run of 4 talks in 3 weeks with an address to the CF Trust’s regional conference in Oxford.

Rosie, the Chief Exec of the Trust, originally asked my consultant to come along and talk about the adult service, but she couldn’t make it so the baton was passed to me. I love doing talks and things in general, but especially for the Trust. And even more extra-specially when it’s to talk up the amazing team at Oxford who helped keep me alive long enough to reach transplant.

I would pop the text up on here, but it was a 30 minute speech and the text is close-on 3000 words, which is quite a good deal mroe than anyone really wants to read on a blog, but if you really, totally desperately want to read a copy of it, let me know and I can mail it to you.

It went really well – by all accounts so did the entire day – and it seemed to strike the right notes I was trying to hit. It’s always hard to pitch a speech to parents of people with CF, particularly some very young children. You need to make sure you’re not belittling the task that lies ahead, the enormity of dealing with all the crap that life with CF throws at you, but at the same time it’s important to let them know that CF doesn’t strip your life away of all meaning or ability to have fun and it certainly doens’t mean you’re going not going to be able to make something of your life.

I think – I hope – that I managed to pitch it right this time. Certainly all the feedback I received from the day was positive, but then it’s got to be a pretty awful and borderline insulting speech that will make anyone come up to you afterwards and tell you it was rubbish, so it’s good not to get too carried away.

It was nice, though, to have a chance to catch up with the team who came along. Clinic time is so precious I’m always reluctant to stay and chat too long, but today I got there at lunch time with a chance to sit down with them (and my parents, who decided to come along for the day) and have a really good catch up and chat about things – medical and non.

On the way home I developed a killer headache and was running much later than I’d planned, so I had to pull out of a rehearsal visit in Northampton for the project I’m working on with the Royal and instead couldn’t do much more than veg on the sofa and eat a bowl of soup. Really bizarre, hard-core headache, it was, but it doesn’t seem to have recurred as badly since, so it must have been a one off and probably thanks to dyhdration more than anything else. Was a sucky end to the day, but it had been a good one for most of it, so no real complaints.

Tonight I experienced quite possibly the most mesmirising stage performances I may ever have seen, with the possible exception of So I Killed A Few People at the Edinburgh Fringe in 1999, but for very different reasons.

I was at Milton Keynes Theatre to watch the phenominal acting talents of Sir Ian McKellan and Patrick Stewart alongside Simon Callow in Waiting For Godot and they truly blew me away.

I have to confess that I’m not actually a huge fan of the play – in fact, I’ve never managed to read it all the way through as I got a trifle bored with it (sacriledge I know, but the arts are all about personal opinion) – but they made it a remarkable experience.

There’s an old acting lesson that states that acting is not about acting, it’s about reacting and that couldn’t have been more clearly illustrated than in tonight’s performance. McKellan and Stewart are constantly working in support and opposition to each other, always adding depth and flavour to whatever’s going on in the scene without ever battling to steal the audiences attention.

Didi and Gogo are difficult roles to play – emotions varying wildly, constantly on-stage but rarely actually doing anything – but they played them both with the deftness of touch that made sense of the unfathomable.

I could sit here and write about them all day, but I’d soon run out of superlatives and end up on a Lucky-style meaningless rant, so I’ll take my thinking hat off now and leave it at that.

Suffice to say that it’s still touring round the country and lands in London at the end of May at the Theatre Royal Haymarket and if you – or anyone you know – are interesting in a career in performance, don’t waste your money on silly summer schools which purport to teach you all you need to know in a week, or wile away your time at a second-rate acting school on a three-year degree course*, just save your cash and buy a front-row stalls seat to watch these masters in action. You’ll learn more in 2-and-a-half hours in the Haymarket than most acting course can teach you in a year.

*noted exceptions being the top-notch London training centres like RADA, LAMDA, E15 and Mountview. Possibly LIPA, too.

It’s funny because I’ve always laughed off those “Superman” posts from the time of my transplant 16 months ago, but I’m starting to think there might be something in it. I can’t fly, I don’t have X-ray vision and my hair doens’t go all slicked down when I take my glasses off. Most of all, I always wear my underwear beneath my trousers. The operative part of that word being “under”. But he is from Krypton so he may not have realised that yet.

My similarity to Superman merely extends to the fact that I appear to be powered by the sun. I’m very environmentally friendly in that respect – I’m solar-powered, just like Supes.

Last week I had really reached the end of my body’s ability to cope with what I was putting it through. I was sleeping in the daytime for the first time since my CMV set-back in May last year and I couldn’t rouse myself to do anything unless it was fundamentally important to either eating, drinking or earning enough money to eat and drink. I was slow, lethargic and just down-right knackered.

This week, in addition to having a little less to do – certainly less running around – the sun’s been shining and my batteries have been well and truly recharged. It’s such a wonderful feeling. I don’t know if anyone else watched the Comic Relief Kilimanjaro trip, but in it Fearne Cotton hit the nail on the head when she said, “People should never underestimate how good it is to feel normal.” That’s what I’ve go back to this week.

It’s interesting because even when I’ve been running myself ragged over the previous few weeks (or more), I’ve been totally aware of how great it is to be doing it all. I’ve never once taken my ability to do all these things for granted and every day I thank my donor and their family for allowing me to do it. This week has been a reminder, though, that as much as I enjoy what I’ve been doing, I really do need to make sure I leave myself some “me time” – some time just to sit and chill out and enjoy the world around me.

And that’s what the sunshine is great for – it’s 100% guaranteed to make you look out of your window in the morning and smile. At least it is for me. Even waking up at 5.45am, just seeing the first rays of sunlight and walking out to the car at 6.45am in broad daylight makes the day easier. I just feel more happy, more alive, more free when I can see the sunshine out the window.

My energy has returned and I feel like I can conquer the world again. I’ve got work coming in and I’m on target to finish my new screenplay by April Fool’s Day (no joke), which is motivating and energising me any more.

There’s a huge amount to be said for positive mental attitude, which is why the sun and summer help improve life so much. As a good friend of mine is wont to say, “This is my life and I choose to love it”!

I’ve been so busy of late that I’ve fallen way behind on my cinema viewing. Most disappointingly of all, I wasn’t able to get to all the Oscar nominees, which is something I try to do every year. I was really bothered about not checking out Doubt or The Reader in particular, but I also really wanted to see both Milk and Revolutionary Road. But time waits for no man and neither do cinema releases, which are getting shorter and shorter windows at the multiplex now.

Thanks to all of this I decided that I’d spend my first clear-diary-day yesterday at the flicks and catch Watchmen – the kind of film that is likely to make so much more impact on the big screen than when you bring it home on DVD.

Interestingly, I wasn’t expecting to like this very much, which probably served it very well. I have a strong tendency to hype things up in my mind and end up ultimately disappointed by them, so going into a film with low expectations often then works in my favour.

I was suitably impressed – it’s a really good film. The visuals, as you’d expect from 300-director Zack Snyder, are impressive, particularly the open two sequences. But what I liked most about it was how happy it was to let both the people and the story be ambiguous. There’s no clear-cut, black and white definitions in Watchmen at all.

I’ve not read the Alan Moore graphic novel this is based on, but knowing his work I suspect that all of the ambiguity is from him, something Snyder’s clearly worked hard to keep in. I can only imagine the pressure that came from the studio to “lighten it up” and make a few of the characters more likeable. But it’s tribute to Snyder that he stuck to his guns and has turned out a kind of anti-Hollywood blockbuster – it’s big and loud and brash, but it also has a very “indie” sensibility, putting the characters at the forefront and enjoying it’s inherent contrasts.

It’s definitely worth seeing, if for no other reason than it’s a rare comic book movie that ditches the idea of playing to the “tween” market and instead pitch itself exactly where the graphic novel that’s gone before it did. Like the uncompromising Sin City, this features gruesome, hard-core violence, full-frontal (albeit CGI) male nudity and soft-core sex scenes between two main characters. Batman and Robin this is not. Better than that, it is.

The third speech in my 3 week, 4 talk period went down really well at the CF Trust fundraiser 1 in 25 Ball at Wokefield Park near Reading.

The full text of my speech, as delivered, is below.

It’s an amazing place, Wokefield Park. You arrive on a long driveway through the golf course, which is lovely but somewhat reliant on them only allowing 10-handicappers on the course, I’d hope. As you approach the hotel, the first thing you come across is the big conference/exectutive centre, which presumably doubles as the club house, too. It’s an odd looking building that’s not unattractive but doesn’t exactly wow you upon arrival. Instead, it’s more of a run-of-the-mill hotel and conference venue in really, really nice grounds.

Having been inside to check in, I’m told we’re actually staying in the other section of the hotel, the Mansion House, where the ball itself is taking place. So we jump in the (new) car and head over to the other part of the grounds, where we round a copse of trees to discover the most beatiful period mansion I think I’ve ever stayed in. With a newly-refurbished and stylishly modern interior, it’s a perfect marriage of old architecture with 21st century functionality.

The bedrooms are something else – huge beds, loads of room and, best of all, a proper rainfall-head shower that I could have stayed in all weekend it was so gorgeous and refreshing.

The ball itself went exceptionally well – we were kindly put on a table of hugely friendly people who made us feel welcome in a room full of 120+ total strangers (save for Jenny, the CF Trust Regional Fundraising Manager who had invited us down). After a slightly cocked-up (time-wise) but delicious dinner, I was given a really quite lovely introduction, cribbed mostly from this blog and the CF Trust’s website and delivered my short speech.

After dinner there was the usual auction and raffle, followed by a brilliantly organised casino of Blackjack and Roulette, where guests could make a donation of £10 to the Trust in return for $100 in play money. Then when all was said and done at the end of the night, the chips were cashed in and the top 5 walked away with a prize.

I spent a little time teaching K how to play Blackjack and nearing the end she spent a lot of time trying to lose all her chips so she could go to bed and ending up actually winning more back. Riding our luck (and knowing that we were far from chip leaders, so seeing no point in diligently saving our meager stack up), we decided to switch to Roulette, which I usually dismiss as a mug’s game.

As it happens, through a careful system of hedging my bets I was a fair bit up coming into the last 5 minutes. Soon, though, it started to dwindle as I got over-confident and bet stupidly, although I suppose that betting in general is an intelligent thing to do, which is a concept many may struggle with. With one spin left, I had eight chips, so to make it exciting I put half on Number 11 (the hottest number of the night) and one on 25 (a number I’d bet near or around several times and lost out on) and with the final spin of the night, the ball dropped in 25!

Much to my amazement, after cashing out, I found myself landed up as the 3rd place chip holder and the happy winner of a lovely case of Spanish wine from the oldest vineyard in Spain. Not bad for a random guess. It’s quite easy to see how addictive gambling could get in those situations, though, so I’m not dashing off to Vegas to get stuck in for real just yet.

After the casino packed up and as the band were hitting their final numbers, we both called it a night and headed to bed, exhausted from the day’s activities.

Here’s the full text of the speech I delivered to the ball guests:

“Good evening, Ladies and Gentlemen. Thanks for having me here tonight. I’d like to thank the organising committee for what has been a great night so far and I’m sure is only about to get better. I’d also like to thank the sponsors of tonight’s event. I wanted to mention you all by name but so many people have been so generous in support us tonight that it would take me all of my speaking slot to go through you one by one, so instead I’ll just offer up a very big and – sorry – generic thank you to everyone who’s helped us to make sure we’re in profit already before we even tackle the auction, raffle or casino. So thank you.

I do this kind of thing quite a lot for the CF Trust. It used to be really easy. Before I had my transplant, I’d turn up at these events dragging an oxygen cylinder behind me – I was on 24-hour oxygen – and looking terrible. I was incredibly skinny, I had really pale skin and horrible, dark rings around my eyes. I’d just stand at the front of the room and say “Look – it’s rubbish” and people would feel sorry for me and pledge loads of money.

Now I’ve had my transplant it’s a whole different ball game. I stand in front of people and say “it’s rubbish” and they think, “It can’t be that bad, he looks great.” At least, I hope they think I look great. But I feel great, I feel better than I’ve ever felt and it means that when I do these events now I actually have to think of something to say!

The CF Trust is very important to me, as you may know. They’ve helped me through some of the toughest times – in fact, the very toughest times – of my life and been there for me throughout. Which is why I like to do things like this. Because apart from getting all dressed up and enjoying a lovely meal, I get a chance to give something back to them for all they’ve given me.

And the work that CF Trust is doing – the gene therapy work that tonight is helping to fund – is vital to helping make sure that people don’t have to go through what I’ve been through. If gene therapy works the way we all hope it’s going to work, it will remove the need for transplants by stopping the lung damage that proves fatal to so many people with CF. It will – hopefully – help to ensure that children being born with CF today have a much better chance of a much longer life than I will ever have.

I consider myself very lucky to have received the gift I did. When I do events like this and I start talking about luck, I always come back to the same story – the story of my friend Claire. Claire was a slightly odd friend in that she was, in fact, an oxygen concentrator. A portable oxygen concentrator. And she was something of a good luck charm. She originally belonged to a friend of mine called Emily, who had a successful double-lung transplant in January 2007. Once she’d recovered, she realised she had no need for Claire any more, so she passed her on to me and, six months later, I received my transplant. Once I’d recovered I, in turn, passed her on to a friend of mine called Sam.

Now, the thing about luck – as I’m sure you’ll all find out later when you hit the casino – is that it runs out. Last year, when I was celebrating my 26th birthday – a birthday I never through I’d see – Sam lost her fight. She died. And no matter how many times I tell this story, I still find it really emotional. Because it’s hard. The reality of the transplant list is that if you’re waiting for double-lungs you’ve got a 50% chance of getting them. Which means 50% of people die while they wait. I realised just last week that I’ve actually known more people who’ve died on the list than who’ve had a successful transplant.

And 50% is quite a good statistic to look at. Take a look around your table now – 50% equates to every other person on your table dying. That’s too many.

And that’s why the work of the CF Trust is so important. The gene therapy research that they’re doing will remove that element of luck from the lives of everyone who has CF. It’s not a cure, but it will work to prevent the lung damage that puts people in a situation where they face such bold statistics.

We all want you to enjoy yourself this evening, we want you to have fun. But we also want you to remember that you’re hear for a reason. You can help the CF Trust remove that element of luck from peoples lives by digging deep and bidding big in the auction and enjoying the casino.

Have a great night, thank you.”

This is the first week in a while that I’ve not had things scheduled in my diary for every day of the week. It was a nice change to look in the diary and see some blank spaces.

Somehow, though, it doesn’t feel like I’ve got much of a break – I’ve been so busy that I’ve left a lot of things neglected and so I’ve been on an enforced desk-bound catch-up mission all week.

That said, I did manage to get to the cinema last night to catch Gran Torino, Clint Eastwood’s new film, which I completely loved. I don’t know quite what it is about Eastwood that hits me, but all of his recent stuff since Million Dollar Baby has really grabbed me and totally absorbed me. He’s a truly masterful filmmaker and Gran Torino is his best for a while. Changeling was good, but felt a little bloated and over-long to my tastes. GT on the other hand is perfectly weighted, plays out along an arc that’s at once predictable and surprising – not an easy thing to manage in today’s world of more and more savvy film-goers.

Speaking of filmmaking, things may be starting to look interesting from a freelance standpoint. I’ve got a meeting today to discuss a project in Northampton which stems from a networking session last week, plus I’m in talks to shoot a “making-of” doc for a low-budget British movie that’s gearing up for pre-production at the moment, which is very exciting.

I’ve also just started work on a new screenplay which is, I think, my most commercial spec script that I’ve written so far. I’ve set myself a deadline of 1 April to have a finished first draft, after which I’m going to do a polish on an old script and the new one and start to shop them around companies and agents to see if there’s any interest.

And in between all of that, I’ve got my last 2 talks of my marathon session of 4 in 3 weeks coming up this Saturday and next. I promise I’ll try to blog about them to let you know how they go, since the previous talks I seem to have managed to gloss over entirely on here. If I get half a minute I’ll try to pop back on and at least update the entries for last week’s talks so you know to whom and about what I was speaking.

Although I’ve been doing lots of, frankly, really cool stuff, I’ve actually not enjoyed being as busy as I have been. It’s been non-stop for almost a month and I haven’t had chance to do the things I want to do – I’ve always felt like I’m constantly moving from one thing to the next without pausing for breath, which is something I don’t really want to turn into a habit as this new life should be all about enjoying it all.

So here’s hoping I can be more disciplined about saying “yes” and “no” to things and focus more on what I see as the things I most want to pursue. Sooner or later I’m going to have to make a decision on what I most want to do with myself, and the sooner I do that, the better for everyone, I think.

Hugest apologies for the lack of blogging – last week was completely manic, trying to squeeze in as much of my over-flowing inbox of work as I could before spending the weekend away in Bath with K’s ‘rents for their joint birthdays.

It was a totally fantastic time, but I was unable to fore-warn of a lack of blogging as it would have given the game away. The weekend, which was spent in a rented cottage just outside Bath in a lovely little village near Westbury along with three very good friends of the family, was a total surprise.

We took K’s ‘rents off to Longleat house for a tour, which her Mum believed was all that was happening, before she received instructions to pack for 3 days away. Arranging to travel in separate cars, we arrived with her best friend from the village back home in ours to surprise her. With the other friends traveling up from Devon stuck in roadworks, we frantically tried to delay the house tour for half-an-hour. Expecting to be told that it couldn’t be done, instead we were offered a private tour of the house for no extra charge – remarkable people at Longleat.

Despite the delay, we were still un-accompanied at 12.30 when our private showing of the great house began. It was a fascinating and mesmerising tour and I’d recommend it to anyone with an interest in history or historical houses – it’s gobsmacking. Half-way round, the staff were so unbelievably kind enough to bring the missing pair of our party up to join us when they arrived. Much surprise (although Mama D had guessed who the sixth and seventh of the party might turn out to be) and hugs/handshakes ensued before the very accommodating host could continue her tour.

Once we were done we all repaired to a local pub for a late lunch, after which we all waved goodbye to the each other before heading, in convoy, to Woodside Cottage to surprise them once again with their accommodation and the fact that all of us were, in fact, staying with them.

The evening was spent in a bit of a haze of trying to work out who was where (K and I being in the annex across the way), whether anyone wanted to eat anything (verdict: no, but cake will do nicely) and what we were up to the next day (eventual decision, whatever we wanted) before we all engaged in a frankly hilarious round of card games before taking ourselves to an early bed.

The next morning, to my surprise, I was awake before the house opposite, heading out on a paper run before breakfast. After a chilled out morning, K and I headed into Bath itself to catch up with a an old friend over lunch and a personalised tour of Bath, which included some very strange people reading poetry in a taxi and more gorgeous architecture than you could shake a stick at.

In the evening, after a brief afternoon nap, we all enjoyed dinner together before a dynamite game of Scattagories before crashing out.

Weirdly, I woke up on Sunday morning feeling absolutely awful. I’m not sure if I was over-heating and dehydrated or had eaten something disagreeable the previous day, but my head was pounding and I felt incredibly sick.

As the others all headed off to Lacock Village and Manor, I stayed in bed with K watching over me and ended up sleeping until gone 3pm, at which point I woke up feeling almost right-as-rain, save for a lack of energy from lack of food.

Another evening of fun-and-frolics was met with an early(ish) morning this morning, getting up to breakfast, pack and leave by 10 am. As the others began their trek home, K and I decided to take a more leisurely turn back to MK, stopping to catch up on Lacock (where I discovered they’d used the Abbey to shoot portions of the Hogwarts cloisters in the first two Harry Potter films), taking pics and enjoying tea in the oh-so-English tea-shops that abound in pretty little villages around the country.

On the road home from Lacock we got minorly lost around Cirencester before coming through the most beautiful village/town we’ve been through on all of our travels. The name escapes me, but I want to live there.

Coming through Bicester on the way home, we stopped at Bicester Village, which K had never seen. After wandering the stores deciding that we can’t afford anything there (sorry, we didn’t like the look of anything there), we jumped in the car and headed home, only stopping for the briefest of traditional post-tour stops at Borders and then a quick meal at a fantastically-valued but chronically unfriendly pub before getting home around 7pm, unpacking our things, changing the bed, showering, blogging and – now – going to bed.

It’s been a great weekend and it’s been really nice to totally remove myself from work for a few days. Now it’s back to the grindstone and on with the first of my 3 talks in 10 days.

This is about the first time I’ve had to sit and blog for over a week now (well, in fact, since I last updated). What with my bro jetting off to scarier climbs, K going back to Uni after a fitful snow-induced break right after getting back to Uni after an enormous Christmas break and my attempts to get not one but two new companies off the ground, it’s been a pretty busy time.

It’s been a great time, though – although I’ve been busy I’ve also had time to enjoy myself and have a lot of fun. Last weekend, for example, I took my more local Godson to Wendover Woods to do the high-ropes course which will remain nameless for my lack of desire to see them get any random, free, Google-based publicity.

After booking well in advance for one of the only days they’re open during winter, especially as a b’day pressie for li’l R, we hiked a mile up the hill into the woods only to discover that not only were they not open, they’d not even finished putting the course back together after the winter.

Not wanting to be deterred from the idea of a day of fun, we half-walked, half-skated around the woods for a while before drowning our sorrows in a big pile of chocolate at Rumsey’s, the awesome little Chocolaterie in Wendover village itself. In the evening, we carried on the frivolities at the Old Green Man in one of the Brickhills (I never know which one I’m in apart from Bow, but that’s just because a had a friend who lived there).

I’ve also been hard at work preparing a website for the new companies. LLTGL‘s resident IT-guru and website ubermeister Tom (of nowhereland fame) has been full of expertly-helpful ubertips to make it look shiny and cool, although now I have the problem of writing the copy to sell myself to people, which presents more of a challenge.

We also had a hugely successful tranche of Valentine’s Cake Bakes for LLTGL, which has been a great way to see all our supporters get truly energised about helping us out. Plus, let’s face it, everyone loves a bit of cake.

I’m now so tired from the early-starts and busy days that I’m struggling to recall all the things that I’ve done, but suffice it to say it’s been manic. And fun.

Oooh, and I finally – after over a decade of dreaming, hoping and wishing – got hold of my Equity card. I’m now a fully paid-up member of the only union that’s ever appealed to me. Somehow I don’t think it’s going to be the pass-card to fame and fortune on the world stage like I used to believe it was, but hey – it’s a life goal realised.

Not like that.

After a fun night of snowballing on Monday, Tuesday started slowing me down a little with a scary kind of feeling that I had something brewing. As it turns out, I did, but it was only a cold.

It feels quite good to sit here at a keyboard and type “only” a cold – as one of my friends put it in a text on Thursday, a simple cold used to be a serious issue to me. It would have me worried, K worried, my parents worried. And we’d ride it out and get in touch with my team at Oxford and sort out some antibiotics to treat the inevitable chest-infection that would have followed.

Now, having a cold means I feel a bit rubbish for a couple of days. I love colds like that.

Still, it does have its drawbacks. Since developing my cold on Tuesday night, I appear to have returned to a previous life as a hardcore insomniac. Since Tuesday night into Wednesday, I’ve been sleeping appallingly. Indeed, I sit in the lounge writing this now at nearly 4am and I’m still not feeling anywhere near tired enough for sleep. But during the day I’m becoming Zombie-fied.

This week has been a fortuitous week to be stuck with insomnia, however, since the snow has meant any work I did have lined up has been cancelled and, as of Thursday, we’ve been properly snowed in. I say “properly” but that’s not 100% accurate. What I mean is that we can’t drive anywhere, which, in Milton Keynes, the city modelled on American-style grid-road systems, is a bit of an obstacle.

Yesterday I did manage a wander down to the shops at the bottom of the road, which is somewhere in the region of a mile’s walk, and discovered that traipsing through snow is incredibly hard work. Coupled with the cold, it left me exhausted. I was certain that it was going to help me sleep better in the evening, but no dice. Another hour of lying in bed tossing and turning lead to me getting up and staying up until I finally all-but-passed-out in the late-early morning hours.

So now I’m sat back in the lounge watching 4am tick ever closer, ploughing through more of the extras on the new Lord of the Rings Extended Edition Box Set I picked up from the now-defunct Zavvi in CMK and charging myself up with the drive and passion to go out and make at least one of the short film scripts I have lying on my desk just waiting to be tackled.

I just need to find a cast…

LOVED the snow today. Kati was off Uni as there was no transport whatsoever in London, which was pretty cool. I shot over to the ‘rents very gingerly this morning, trying to catch Gramps before he left for home, but failed as he wanted to get going in case the weather got worse.

Stayed and had breakfast (I left in a hurry) and coffee, then played a little Wii with my bro before dropping him at the station.

Worked all afternoon on various bits and pieces, but since most people work in London it limited an amount of what I could get done.

K and I ventured out to Tesco to grab some dinner stuff since our cupboards were Old Mother Hubbard’s and while we were there we had a little too much fun with snowballs and decided rather than going home we’d go play. We phoned K’s bro nearby, but the kids were showered and changed and not allowed out again, so we phoned S&S instead and decided that we could still play because we’re grown-ups, which means we can do what we like.

So after swinging by KFC for a snow-bound dinner, we headed to the S&S house, wolfed our food down and headed for the play-park, where the game of Snowball Chicken was promptly invented while K built a snowman.

I ran around a lot and felt a little bit sick from bending down constantly to gather snow up, but that’s OK because I’m a grown-up. I also broke the back of the snowman’s head off by mistake when I was trying to make him a better eye socket. That wasn’t quite so OK as K had spent a long time on him and it was bad. I did repair him, though.

We meandred back to the house and tried to make a smiley face from snowballs on the wall, but it looked more like the wall had a nasty case of albino chicken pox. Oh, well.

We got back home, showered and changed and settled on the sofa to catch up with a ton of stuff we’ve got recorded on Sky+, watching A Short Stay In Switzerland, the BBC film about assisted suicide based on a true story. It’s a cracking film with great performances but an unfotunately clunky script.

Suitably teared-up, we head to bed around 11pm and I sack out pretty quickly.