Everything is in danger of getting a bit blurred. I spent all day at Coventry University saying “you go there, wait for this, then do/say that” to the Third Year Theatre Students as we try and hammer our piece, Trial of Faith, into some kind of shape for tomorrow evening’s performance (7pm in Ellen Terry Building’s Theatre, should anyone fancies coming). Then I charge back home to pick Eve up from Nursery. We get back to the house and immediately Eve starts directing me: “you go there, wait for me to say this, then you come here and say that”. Confusingly, I’m required to act the role of a parent watching my children (Eve’s dolls) perform in a play which she, playing the role of ‘the teacher’, is directing. Fortunately, whilst an extremely limited actor, I can keep up with the layers of fiction involved in this scenario. My fear is that Eve is currently only three and a half and already exploring sophisticated play-within-play scenarios, I’m not sure I’m going to be able to keep up with the levels of self-reflexive play-within-play-within-play-within-play madness she’ll be have pushed onto by the time she’s doing GCSE Drama. Hopefully she’ll just be doing all the sciences with pure, applied and further maths.

James