More displeasure

I don't know why it is, but I sometimes think people deliberately enjoy winding me up. Perhaps they get some strange pleasure out of it. It has come to my attention that there was much more to the argument I told you about yesterday than met the eye. I had a phone call last night from Gwyneth Gilhooley to the effect that her husband had spent Wednesday night in The Bell Inn (to watch some supposedly important football match or something). He was there with Martin (our lighting man) and - I am still incredulous - Gordon and David! It seems that the pair of them staged the said argument to get out of rehearsal to watch the game! I can't believe they would stoop so low. No wonder Gordon wouldn't answer the telephone yesterday - he obviously thought I'd discovered the truth much sooner. Well, I wouldn't like to be in his shoes when I catch up with him.

Some of you may have seen the article in the local press a few weeks ago about our trying to track down some of the harder-to-find props for the show. We generally do this sort of thing for all of our productions, even if we don't actually need anything, because it's a great way to publicise the show at no cost. They charge an arm and a leg for an advert, you know. Well, this time, the request was genuine. In addition, David is insisting that as many sound effects as possible are done 'live' rather than by record. This is easy with regard to things like doors knocking and bells ringing, but less so when it comes to dogs barking.

As we haven't had much of a response - well, any, actually - Sylvia has suggested I repeat the request on this blog, as this doesn't cost anything either. We are therefore looking for a dog with a good loud bark, a Morris dancer's outfit, a pistol, and a cockerel that can crow on demand. It's possible that the latter may have to go on stage with me for one scene, so it needs to look impressive and be seen by the back row of the audience. I could do with practicing with it as soon as possible, so if anyone out there has a large cock, can they drop me an email as soon as please? I'm getting desperate.