've not really felt 'up for it' today.

This is partially because report writing season is upon us. These things have always been difficult, but have become more so in the past few years: now that the whole system is computerised it's impossible to scrawl a few lines of over-sized handwriting. Most people get through this by putting a large cut-and-paste generic thingy at the top of the rep, outlining what their set has (supposed to have) been doing over the previous term. Until recently, I'd resisted this, thinking that it gave reports an inhuman and listless feel. But even I've fallen for it this time round. There isn't time to handcraft a whole report for each kid. I also get the feeling that the Boss likes a generic section - it gives every report a comforting blandness.

And the state of the English! I know education has been in decline ever since we allowed Business Studies on the curriculum and Geography started to be taken seriously as an academic subject, but - honestly. Telf and I pinned a notice to the workroom wall the other day, explaining the difference between 'practice' and 'practise', because we were so sick of being asked. It's not just grammatical errors I'm talking about, either (Dave picked me up today for using 'the set have...', ho hum, even Homer nods, though not always to the extent that George-taught amateur grammarian DB can spot). I'm talking about grisly mixed metaphors, jargon, and, worst of all, stultifying dullness.

Actually, it's been a bad day for my English. Sue picked me up for correcting her use of the subjunctive. Only she was right and I was wrong. Bugger.

By three pm I'd been so thoroughly mind-raped by Microsoft Word that I wasn't at all interested in getting in a kayak. I was even less interested when I did get in and found that Mighty Midget Guesty had adjusted the foot rests during Games yesterday. Two mysteries: first, why was the bastard using my boat? And second, why on earth should he have moved them *further down the hull*? He's only five foot three, for fuck's sake. Perhaps he was using it as a submarine.

Wislon got on my tits, too. I really love Ben, for all his poshness. But he's been bullying Karena for trying to pinch kids out of choir for a play rehearsal. We old hands know that kid-poaching is a sensitive business of give-and-take. Unless the Games Department is involved, of course. They don't really do sensitivity. But poor Karena, for all her irritating thespish ways, does not know this. Nor did she know that Ben was himself pulling a fastie in ways too complicated to go into here. I fear that her production of 'Cat Girl' is going to be a fuck up. This is a terrible shame, as she's so keen to prove herself. She just let herself be talked into producing a show too early by Gary. She thought that, being a pro, she would find it easy. She forgot that she would be working with the worst sort of amateurs. She also forgot the old 'children and animals rule'. The first year girls, so far as I can work out, are both.

I think 'Under Milk Wood' might also be having a few problems. Furball is looking tres stressed today. More on that later in the week. There won't be a blog tomorrow, unless it's written very late. Telf and I are taking some sixth formers to see a stage version of 'The Third Man' at the Arts Centre in Darlo. What a great novel. What a great film.

....don't be so gloomy. After all it's not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Yarm School they had brotherly love - they had twenty-five years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? Dave Boddy.

Found myself in Darlo today, buying lacquer to touch up a small hole in Maisie's back bumper. As is the way of things, I wound up in Ottakars. Three purchases made:

1. Stories from the Thousand And One Nights. Thought I'd absorb a bit more Islamic culture. It's in Penguin Classics. What the fuck have they done to their covers? The old black and cream was so, well, *classic*. The new one - I'm sure you know what I mean - is just shit. Though at least it's one step up from the PC's that have stills from TV tie-ins on the cover. I wouldn't be seen dead with one of those.

2. Anna Karenina. This winter's Big Thick Novel. Dave's forever banging on about it, so I thought I'd give it a go. I'm warning, you, though: I can't go for long without a few good gags. And I suspect it may be a bit short on jollies.

3. Going Postal. The new Terry Pratchett novel. With the possible (possible) exception of Graham Greene, Pratchett's the only really great English novelist since Dickens, and along with Dickens, Eliot, Greene and Austen one of the only five English novelists that everyone should read. Hardy? Miserable fucker. Woolf? Stream-of-consciousness - pretentious bollocks. All other postwar English "literary" writers? Self-obsessed, navel-gazing, onanistic, self-referential, self-important, irritating, flabby-minded, relativistic, snobbish, elitist tossers. All of them. Pratchett, like Dickens, reminds us why it's important to remember that we're human, and - like Dickens - does it with humour, pathos, energy, and by creating characters that stay with you long after you've reached the last page. Brilliant.

I'm sitting down drinking the contents of one of the bottles of cheap white that I taxed from the refreshments table at the Talent Night. Typical Yarm School stuff: quite drinkable without being in any way distinguished. A bit like the Head. (Um?)

The show could, on the whole, have been much worse. Very few people humiliated themselves, with the possible exception of Ene's band. They were crap even after I made them cut their dire version of Under The Bridge. Aled and Forthy - the dancing reindeer - were gently persuaded off the running order during the soundcheck.

Hits of the night: Tom Moullali's band; Jaff's version of some Joe Cocker song so bland I can even't remember what it was called - though I was playing it two hours ago; and Ben Needham and Adam Metcalfe's hilarious versions of "Sam's Song" and "Me And My Shadow". Jade, Jen and Sab were moderately hot, though I think I got a better deal than the audience. I was watching from behind.

I spent the whole night running about untangling cables and tap-testing mics. Accompanied a few people, though I think the audience is so used to me playing the piano that I'm just part of the scenery. A good thing, as I made a number of fuck-ups. Rescued myself as usual, but just goes to show how daft I am to insist that everyone rehearses themselves silly while forgetting to do a bit of basic piano practice myself.

The other really enjoyable thing I did today was to get Gary to knack Brett W*lkinson sideways. You never meet any teachers' kids called Brett. You know why? Because calling a kid Brett virtually guarantees he'll turn out a complete pain in the arse. Anyway, 2C's Brett has the appearance, demeanour and attitude of an aggrieved three-toed sloth, which, unfairly prised from its branch, has been forced to read "Julius Caesar". Getting him in trouble is always a pleasure.

Yaaaawn - it's sleepy time down south.

Spent half of today thinking about this bleeding talent show I'm helping to run on Friday. At the moment we have: the dancing girls (see below, not much talent, but lots of pelvis); a string of solo singers (Anna St*bley is about the best of them, and to be frank Muqtada al-Sadr's DVD collection would better fit the definition of "light entertainment" than her singing); lots of meat-heads singing a rugby song; and Aled Jones dressed up as half a reindeer. Thanks to the fact that I can't say no to a pretty face - Emily Hutchinson's in this case, damn her - I am going to be associated with this farce in the public mind. Ooops, time for a change of metaphor: "farce" carries connotations of entertainment. Possibly the word I'm looking for is "shambles". Or "fuck up", possibly. Some of it will be OK: Sab, Christina and Hannah doing their Destiny's Child number, for example. But the rest of it will be pure tits-up.

Fortunately I have Lynne Sykes around as my enforcer. Yes, she's only a sixth former and she periodically attacks me. But she's the one person in the school who everyone is scared of. And by God, she gets the job done.

Time for another list, I think. I've decided I rather like them. Tonight's is a tribute to Bridget Jones, the fictional incarnation of many women I've known. So today's BJ count-up:

(Fnarrr, fnarrr)

biscuits: 15 (excellent)
cigarettes: 0 (I don't smoke any more)
number of times I thought "I could really do with a tab": 2,593
ditto ditto ditto ditto ditto: "..or a drink": 1,593
caffeine: about 150mg (wheeee! wired!)
alcohol: dunno, still on first glass
students unfairly punished: 3
Urgent administrative jobs not done: 14
Books marked: 0
Minutes spent driving at 90mph singing along to the Killers' "All These Things That I Have Done": 7.26
Dogs walked: 0 (give me time)
Fat student teachers getting into kayaks laughed at: 1 (he even had an extra-wide boat, the loser. I'd go easy on him, but he's a chemist)
Kayaks fallen out of: 0 (for a change)
Number of repetitions of the word "fuck": 267 (if you include that one)

I'm sorry if today's blog is unduly harsh on a number a people. I'm just in a bit of a mood.

Spent this afternoon on the river with Woody (Alastair), training for the Devizes-Westminster. It was my first ever experience of "wings" - those clever paddles designed by some maths spod to shift the greatest possible mass of water for the least possible effort. I was a bit unnerving, really. Conventional paddles, old-fashioned or asymmetric, go where you make them go. Wings steer their own crazy path through the water, and you have to trust them to get on with it.

Woody is among the biggest perverts I've ever met. And I've met a few. A couple of weeks ago we ran into Nikki Jackson as we were lugging our K2 across the netball court. I told him that she was sister to the lovely Jemma, and he spent the rest of the afternoon musing aloud on the lines of: "do you reckon, if they're late for something, they shower together?". We navigated a bit of a zigzag course that day, let me tell you.

We made pretty good time to the green huts and back. The Tees is at its best in autumn and winter. Today it was lovely, smooth going all the way. The only surface movement we came across was when we turned round at the huts and cut back through our own wake. Saying that, there was quite a lot of surface movement near the jetty, where Frodo Edwards was whizzing around in the unSafety Launch. Like most rowers, he doesn't really understand the difference between white water and racing kayaks (he calls them "canoes"), and the vital fact that while the former thrive on big waves the latter are horribly unstable. Tremendously entertaining he may be, but one day I'm going to punch him.

We came off the water early, as Jen and Jade had twisted my arm to help with their dance routine again. Today - God help me - they were dancing in costume. If you can dignify a couple of bits of cloth with such a term, of course. Woody is being made to retake his first year of medicine at Aberdeen, so I took him along so he could revise his anatomy. There was plenty on show for him to work on. The girls were pretty good, even though they were without Sab - who was in Manchester with Gary and DB watching 'Volpone'. They just need to be a little more confident. If they do the thing with real brio they'll steal the show tomorrow night. Not that that should be much of a challenge, given that the next best act is Jaff's baked bean eating race. Artistes careful of their reputation are beginning to pull out. Today's casualties were Christina and Phil Br*adey. Phil may be a bit of a silly arse sometimes, but he knows his music and he doesn't want to be humiliated. Lynne has started to give me looks that say, "why the fuck did we ever get involved in an enterprise with Cuthbert House?". She has a point. Dave and I were discussing, the other day, what it is about Cuthbert that makes them such a load of pointless goons. They have been thus since as far back as Dave can remember (about 1991, I think) and show no signs of changing. I have respect for only three Cuthbertians: Capt. Furball; Caz (who's left); and Emily Hutchinson. They're all curiously biddable. Today I got the latter to use her innocent feminine wiles to beguile the former into giving up some of the theatre time he's using to rehearse "Under Milk Wood" so we can have a thorough tech rehearsal on Friday. He'd have said "no" to me, but like the lovely, frustrated middle-aged man that he is, gladly acquiesced to her tearful pleas.

1. Maisie and the road nearly parted company on the drive into Yarm. Bit icy, I thought.

2. I marked the 2nd form exam while we watched John Gielgud, Richard Chamberlain and Robert Vaughn in Julius Caesar. Robert Vaughn (Casca) with a beard looks exactly like my old pub boss Frank Parr. Frank, by the way, is the only truly great manager I've ever met, even if he was fond of applying quotations from "Four Quartets" to the business of changing lively barrels of Heineken in the cellar. (The 2nd form moaned that my marking was "random", by the way. True enough, but what right do they have to complain about it?)

3. Theatre Studies in the Catholic Church hall. Told the upper sixth girls that they couldn't go in if they were on the pill. Two things worried me: (i) they *all* (except Jen Taylor) looked startled and asked me if they could "have a word"; (ii) the silly bastards believed it. I blame the teachers.

4. Attended part of the fifth form study day, run by a very hyperactive little man who looked about twelve. Good jokes, though. I particularly enjoyed the Darth Vader one that just doesn't work in writing.

5. Did fuck all for two periods in the afternoon. A great feeling, especially as it means that all my lower sixth reports will be late. Billy 1, paperwork 0. Again. Result.

6. Watched - at their request - Sab, Jen T and Jade do the dance routine they've worked out for Friday's talent show. It was, um, well, er... well, I don't think anyone with a dodgy ticker should watch it. Did you really have to do that with your pelvises, girls?

7. Jazz practice. On Saturday, they made me proud, tonight they made me miserable. Sab and Matt N complained that they were being edged out by the new L6 members. I see their point, and I'm going to do something about it. I'm not sure they saw mine: that if the band is to carry on, we need to train up new members. Am still desperately worried that we won't have a decent singer next year.

8. Left my wallet lying around. It was picked up and locked in the safe. Reclaimed it, then left it lying around again. God knows where it is now.

9. Maisie and the road nearly parted company on the drive home. Still icy, I thought. As well as, why do I never learn?

10. New hall table arrived in the post. Discovered that there is immense satisfaction to be had sitting in a huge cardboard box on the dining room floor, enticing your sceptical munsterlander to join you with the aid of b*scu*ts (have to be careful - she can read that word).

You know, I sometimes wonder why I bother writing plays when what I enjoy most - and a lot of people would say I'm best at - is music.

I've just had a great day playing with Sarah B and the band at school's Christmas Fair. May sound cheesy, but it was enormous fun. We did a load of standards, and then some stuff from the album. We made some CD sales, and have got a provisional booking from Steve McClaren's wife to play a party sometime. I'm really worried what we're going to do next year when Sab is drinking and shagging her way around Manchester or London. There are few decent singers in the lower sixth, and none of her calibre. Though I wouldn't like her to hear me say it too often, she's the best singer I've ever worked with. After a few drinks I'd be tempted to call her a genius. Good job she's so shallow when she's not behind a mic. (Only joking, Sab).

I suppose the reason I don't go into music professionally is twofold: first, there's bot-all money in it; second - and this is the more important - I'm not sure I'd get the same kick out of it. As a hobby it's great. As a job, I suspect, it can suck. That said, I am having a few thoughts about the music biz at the mo, albeit on the smallest of small scales. My old website, www.thorns-hilton.com, has expired, so my pianistic skills are no longer advertised on the web. I'm thinking of putting up a new one with a catchier name - www.billhiltonmusic.com, or some such - and seeing if I can get extra work out of it.

Hmmm. Better think about that. Anyway, I'm utterly shagged out. Leave me to my bottle of Merlot. Did I tell you I was worried I'm becoming an alcoholic? Better than being into glue-sniffing, I suppose. Solvent abuse killed a cousin of mine; better to begin the crash out of life with a nice red, I think, than a tube of Araldite.

I set an exam this afternoon for the third form (that's Y9, normal dudes). I thought I'd give them a piece of poorly written and wordy text and ask them to make it shorter, more readable, clear and elegant. Where, oh where, was I to find some suitable bullshit?

After about three seconds' thought I logged on to the school website to find the online version of the newsletter and download a few hundred words of the Headmaster's deathless prose. You can imagine my surprise, then, when the CyberCop monitoring software wouldn't let me look at it, the "weighted phrase limit" being, apparently, "exceeded". As the article I wanted was entirely non-sexual (rather like its author, I suspect), I can only conclude that the writers of internet filtering applications have pulled off the remarkable feat of teaching their products to identify bollocks.

The original article has been removed since this afternoon to make way for this week's edition of the newsletter. By way of alternative I offer the following sample of the boss's oeuvre. Collectors and connoisseurs will note that it is from the newsletter dated 11 Nov 2004:

"Y*RM SCHOOL HOSTS HMC HEADS' MEETING
On Tuesday of this week I was proud to host the North-Eastern Divisional Meeting of HMC Headmasters. The Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference (HMC) is the professional association to which I belong and at which I represent Y*rm School. There are 240 schools in membership throughout Britain, including famous public schools such as Eton, Harrow, Rugby, Winchester etc. Membership is only awarded according to strict criteria and Yarm School is the only Teesside School in membership. Within this region, which extends from Sheffield to the Scottish border and includes Cumbria, there are famous schools such as RGS Newcastle, Bradford Grammar, Leeds Grammar, St Peter's York etc."

[Y*rm gets an asterisk to fox the search-engines. I'm willing to bet HM is an enthusiastic ego-surfer. And as this page is for a select few, I don't want it popping up too much on Google....]

Anyway, by the standards of the vandalism he can inflict on the language, this is relatively inoffensive.

I am freely slating the HM - a man, in truth, that I rather like - with a clear conscience, as by 5pm tomorrow I will have spent 73 hours in the service of School this week. It's (yay!) the Christmas Craft Fair, and School's "highly acclaimed jazz band" (his words) is on duty all day. I must say, I don't know who is responsible for all this alleged acclamation, but it's the first I've heard of it. Though we are pure class, of course.

A big shout out (as you crazy kids say) to Murtaza. He phoned a few hours ago to say hello and talk about the blog.

One of his queries was, am I going to actually post the text of the play? To which the answer is, let me write the damn thing first. Seriously, though, I have been thinking about this, and I think the answer is that I won't; at least not in its entirety. I might post some bits for your comments during the writing process, but I think the completed product is best circulated on paper. Even then, you might find me very careful. My experience has been that showing drafts to friends can be a problem. Each friend gives you an opinion that is different from all the others. So I tend to keep my own counsel.

I'm going to do some more work on the thing tonight, after I've walked the dog. Nothing much happened today except the jazz band played in assembly ("Fever", in the sports hall - poor acoustics), I had a stand up row with Ed Pinkney in the U6, and there was a fifth form parents' evening. In the words of Michael Stipe, oh, life.

I've been pretty shattered today, as yesterday was a 17-hour fest of teaching and theatre-going. Lear was pretty good, thanks for asking, even though it was in Newcastle rather than Leeds, as I mistakenly led you to believe. The kids were fine, though Danny Moore's experimention with slo-mo crisp eating annoyed the middle-class toss-arses in the row in front of us.

I should explain my class terminology here. Though it pains me to admit it, I am now middle class. But the above mentioned toss-arses were the sort of people I mean when the part of me that is still working class uses "middle class" as an insult. There were three of them: mum, dad and teenage daughter. Mum clearly wasn't getting any off the speccy goon she'd married (probably because she was, as poet Rob Bellerby pointed out, "a bit of a munter, sir"). She certainly perked up every time Edmund came on stage. The daughter - let's call her Jemma, or Emily - was bored off her tits, and seemed to want nothing more than to go home and get back to her Physics homework and mock Oxbridge entrace exams.

Anyway, you and I know that eating a packet of crisps slowly in a theatre actually makes more noise than troughing them back at normal speed. But acquiring that knowledge is a painful rite of passage, and Danny was going through it last night. The toss-arses didn't turn round and politely ask us to ask him to stop. They just made comments to each other about it being "iwwitating". Eventually Telf got a bit iwwitated himself, told Danny to be quiet and firmly asked the speccy one if he would accept our apologies. Only he did it in that special Telf voice that suggests that if the apologies aren't accepted the apologisee will be subjected to the variant of the Vulcan Death Grip that gets taught on Bristol University English courses.

The show was a mixed bag. Corin Redgrave's Lear was good, though for my money he kind of fluffed the final sequence. Edgar wasn't really up to the job, but Edmund was superb. Lear's a bit like Paradise Lost: the bad guy is by far the most likeable character. I find Edmund's Darth Vader-like repentance once he knows he's dying a bit wet, though. I'd be much happier if the play ended with Lear, Cordelia, Albany, Kent, Gloucester and Edgar dead, and Edmund standing centre-stage with Goneril and Regan on either arm. As the lights went down his final line would be, "now it's mine! all mine! ha ha ha ha ha!". Much more satisfactory.

I haven't seen a lot of Shakespeare in the three years since I took to being a playwright myself. I look at him with different eyes now. As I've said before, I've started to notice that his story structures are a bit shit to say the least. Audiences don't notice because his characters and language are so fucking fantastic that they carry us along, past all the weird contrivances of letters thrown through windows and women pretending to be statues of their dead selves and mistimings and misunderstandings. These days, lacking the power of Shakespeare's talent and influenced by film, we're obsessed by precise structures. Well, at least I am. I suppose in that regard I'm more of a screenwriter that writes for the stage than a proper playwright.

The other thing that struck me is that if he were around today he'd be absolutely minted. The bloke died getting on for half a millennium ago, and his stuff is still playing to packed houses. And not just school parties and toss-arses out for self-improvement, either. There were people there, it seemed to me, just for the fun of it.

Thanks to Dave, who has just emailed to point out that he's seen no evidence that I've done work on the play for 48 hours.

In fact, that's exactly what I've just been doing. OK, so I wasn't sat at my desk, but I was out walking the dog. This is a highly congenial writing environment, even if it does impose some contraints on the writer: one cannot, for example, actually physically write anything down while being pulled around Richmond by a large munsterlander. It doesn't half get the brain going, though, and I reckon I've done an hour's useful work. Dickens used to swear by long walks to aid the creative process, so I'm in rather distinguised company in this thinly-veiled form of copping out.

You won't hear much from me tomorrow, as I'm off to Leeds to see the RSC's Lear. Maybe a few good habits will rub off on m

A busy couple of days.

Thursday morning was boring (meeting, least said better); Thursday afternoon fun (in Nottingham, nearly got killed shooting red light, in Grantham seeing Auntie Vera, then Alex and Bon. Not seen the latter in six or seven years).

Yesterday was the Aidan/Bede disco. The usual stuff: adolescent testosterone tsunami meets equally adolescent dressed-up jailbait - and, yes, the windows steamed up. I had long conversations with mad-but-lovely HM's wife Fiona, and with the slighly less mad but at least equally nice Christina Les.

Today I've done bot-all apart from play Civilization III, take a few disco lights back to the hire shop and go into Darlington to buy John Humphreys' new book, "Lost For Words". Sort of polemic thingy about the state of the language. Lovely man, lovely writer, but very angry. John, calm down.

Anyway, the lamb and roasties are in the oven, and I've just done the mix for blueberry clafoutis (three quid for 150g of bleeding blueberries! What did M&S do? Sythesise them individually in agar jelly from a computerised record of their DNA?).

You'll notice that I've done next to nothing on the play for 72 hours. Shit.

A busy couple of days.

Thursday morning was boring (meeting, least said better); Thursday afternoon fun (in Nottingham, nearly got killed shooting red light, in Grantham seeing Auntie Vera, then Alex and Bon. Not seen the latter in six or seven years).

Yesterday was the Aidan/Bede disco. The usual stuff: adolescent testosterone tsunami meets equally adolescent dressed-up jailbait - and, yes, the windows steamed up. I had long conversations with mad-but-lovely HM's wife Fiona, and with the slighly less mad but at least equally nice Christina Les.

Today I've done bot-all apart from play Civilization III, take a few disco lights back to the hire shop and go into Darlington to buy John Humphreys' new book, "Lost For Words". Sort of polemic thingy about the state of the language. Lovely man, lovely writer, but very angry. John, calm down.

Anyway, the lamb and roasties are in the oven, and I've just done the mix for blueberry clafoutis (three quid for 150g of bleeding blueberries! What did M&S do? Sythesise them individually in agar jelly from a computerised record of their DNA?).

You'll notice that I've done next to nothing on the play for 72 hours. Shit.

Did very little today, except watch the sixth form girls' netball match in the afternoon at the invitation of the team captain. Much against my will, obviously. I was dimly aware that, unlike basketball, there is supposed to be "no bouncing" in netball. Funny, that, as I found myself noticing rather a lot...

Tomorrow there will be no post, as I'm off to Nottingham on a Theatre Studies course. This finishes at 12.15, so I'm going to spend the afternoon in that wonderful city, one of my favourites - then off to see Alex and Bonnie in Grantham at teatime.

Oh, probably no post on Friday, either, unless I write it very late at night: it's the Aidan/Bede disco, so everyone's favourite slacker/housemaster will be regulating the volume and scouring the bushes for covert smokers and shaggers.

Have fun while I'm away, won't you?

Back at work today, which seems to have done the leg a certain amount of good. I had to limp everywhere, and my knee is still clicking audibly (and hurting when it does), but things seem to be on the mend. Had to explain to a couple of first years that "click---'oooh, fuck!'-----click-----'oooh, fuck!'" is the characteristic noise made by injured English teachers.

My third form was pretty interesting this afternoon. (That's Year 9 to all of youse what teaches in proper schools). Last Friday we read M.R. James' 'A School Story', which is pretty scary if you have a bit of imagination about you. They do, and seemed to like it. So today we were talking about suspense and how it works. How come, they wanted to know, a story can still have the effect of keeping you in suspense even if you know how it's going to end?

Well, I'm no expert, but I reckon it's because stories don't operate on the level of rationality. We can, of course, get intellectual satisfaction from either the plot (as in a detective story) or from the themes and ideas (as in literary fiction). But the actual stuff of story, which is derived from character, works on our emotions and imagination - what the Romantics would have called our Sensibility. We feel a sense of suspense when Indiana Jones is running away from the giant ball, even though we know he will get away, because he is a well-drawn character from the start and we empathasise with him; we feel, at least a little, as he does. Brecht thought all of this uncritical absorption and escapism was the primrose path to fascism. But then he was German, I suppose, and foreigners are always getting funny ideas.

Then I had to stand by the river for an hour with the other snivellers and cripples and watch Pete take the canoeists out. To be honest, I didn't really miss it, as Tuesday afternoon is always such a rush even without paddling, and it was pretty cold. Interesting chat with Gabriella di Giorgio, who is all cut up because her French bulldog has died, suddenly and prematurely, of cancer. We agreed that the world is made up of people who love dogs and people who don't understand why others love dogs, which is why some sympathised with her feelings and others thought it ridiculous that she was making a fuss over a mere animal. She's a good girl, is Gabi; not your average fourth former who stands around, embarrassed, waiting to be spoken to. She makes the conversation. Definitely an individual to be watched.

Anyway, a bit more work is being done on "Nothing On" this evening. I'll keep you posted.

I've been stretching a lot today. The nice doctor man said I had to, to stop my calf shortening as it heals. Anyway, I've had the day off work and spent most of it lying flat on my back with the affected limb in an elevated position.

So, plenty of time to get some reading done. Nothing, as yet, on the character biographies. That said, there are a lot of things I meant to do this weekend which had to be postponed after yesterday. For example, Maisie needs a good clean - the northeast's roads being particularly claggy this time of year. But plastered in embarrassing filth she remains.

What I have started doing, though, is running through Ray Frensham's "background and setting" checklist. (Yes, yes, I know this sounds like writing by numbers, but it's a big help, and made all the difference on 'Them and Me' and 'Have You Ever Been To Vegas?'). Background's important because it's where the characters operate, and everyone's affected by their environment. It's also, often, where they come from - it's formed them. In some drama and fiction it's arguable that the setting is actually a character: we might call it pathetic fallacy, but the moors in 'Wuthering Heights' seem to have moods and almost human characteristics. Milton stresses the importance of the geography of hell in 'Paradise Lost'. Lester Burnham's primary co-actor in 'American Beauty' is small-town America, with all its foibles and prejudices.

Just realised I've put my teaching hat on - must be a result of being deprived of today's fix of patronising didacticism. Apologies: I'll shut up.

I've just been presented with an unexpected opportunity to spend a lot of time writing over the next 48 hours. While playing a swift game of five-a-side at DB's Aidan House Charity Footballathon I experienced a shooting pain in my left calf. The crowd of sportsmen around me, most of who have played the last ten minutes of 1st XV games with arms hanging off and severe cranial trauma, extended the kind of humour and sympathy I've come expect, viz., "what's up with you, you big girl? Can't you hop?"

So I took myself off to Darlo Memorial for a check up. I can recommend A&E departments to writers wishing to learn about the human condition: all of life is there, as well as death, and quite a few of the intermediate stages. I got to see the doc pretty swiftly, because the crowd of scorched chavs who injured themselves in last night's firework parties were being left hanging around - "to suffer, the silly bastards".

Anyway, it's a torn calf. Nothing serious, but a day's malingering tomorrow and taking it steady for a week or two. The lovely Mrs Hilton is in a state of advanced fury because she has to do all the dog walking for a while, and says she's going to "talk to" Dave. Poor Dave.

Time, then, for a good few hours of character invention.

I've been asked to point out that not all of my students are going to be actuaries (see below). This is fair enough, as School also produces its fair share of: accountants, estate agents, management consultants, engineers, arms dealers etc. etc. It's also worth pointing out that, although most of our alumni are involved in wrecking the planet and/or grinding the faces of the poor, some do useful things - we've produced doctors and even a very small number of teachers (salut, DB). And all of them, even the corporate droids, are jolly nice people. This is about as far as I ever go apology-wise, so I hope it suffices.

OK, play-related targets for the weekend: first, finish reading "A Fury For God" and kick off V.S. Naipaul's "Beyond Belief", which has been recommended to me; second, I want to start working up my character biographies. In case you don't know, the accepted way of doing things these days - at least among playwrights and screenwriters - is to start off making extensive notes on all the characters in your drama. The order of events in the early stages usually goes like this:

1. Think of basic idea
2. Invent characters in real detail - history, appearance, personality etc.
3. Design plot

The plot comes third because, as we know, all action is derived from character; it's true in every sense that character = action. If you don't believe me, turn to everyone's favourite camp, dead, transatlantic novelist, Mr Henry James, and see what he has to say about this in "The Art Of The Novel".

Anyway, when I'm inventing characters I work from a checklist of characteristics in Ray Frensham's "How To Write A Screenplay", and usually end up with about ten handwritten sides of A4 for each character. Plot ideas start flowing from these straight away, so I keep a separate pad on the desk next to me to jot them down.

Talking of writing mechanisms, I've just been at PC World mulling over the idea of getting a new iBook. My old one is dying, and doesn't support MacOSX, so very little new software works on it. However, as usual, the place appeared to be staffed exclusively by malnourished teenage gnomes on day-release from a school for "special" children. These purple-shirted, pigeon-chested loons never know anything about Macs. I asked one if they would sell me an Apple AirPort Base Station with my iBook (I really want to go WiFi - email in the bog! Yippee!). He grunted a bit, tried to sell me a Hewlett Packard PC, then suggested I order straight from Apple and wandered away, his Ritalin having apparently worn off. I refuse to order stuff straight from Apple, because it always takes weeks and often ends up with someone like Bob Holsom or Ben Hinton in Sheerness or Dudley.

Dave has just emailed to tell me that I should be with him in Thornaby, as the noise generated by all the fireworks must make it very like an occupied Iraqi city on a rough night.

I shall not, however, be heading over there. For a start, the standard Friday night occupation for Thornaby's upper middle class is to hang around outside Spar wearing shell suits and Burberry caps, immediately prior to finding the tasty MX5 of some visiting country-dweller and nicking the alloys or sticking a screwdriver through the hood. As to what their chavs get up to, God only knows.

Anyway, no work on the play tonight, as it's Simpsons night on C4. Whoo-hoo!

A few bemused questions from Alex today:

Q: If you hate writing why are you doing so?

A: In truth I love it because it contributes to my already highly-developed sense of self-importance. But it sounds (I think) pleasantly self-deprecating and cool to say the reverse. So, affectation again.

Q: And I fear a play about anything in Iraq may have trouble avoiding political issues.

A: Yeah, I know. I just want to avoid obvious partisanship or tubthumping.

Q: And is Shakespeare really torture....?!

A: His structures are. One of my original ideas was to give “Nothing On” exactly the same structure as “Much Ado”: seventeen scenes, crucial plotpoints in the same places, etc, until I realised that while Shakespeare’s really good at language and characterisation and imagery and all that, his plots often stink. Try reading “Troilus and Cressida”. Ugh.

Q: Do you want ideas or critiques or simple encouragement?

A: All three, please. And if I stop posting to the blog, it probably means that I’m slipping into the easiest of all writers’ activities: inaction. So pester me, if you have the time.

I’ve been mugging up on the Iraq/ Islamism stuff today. (“Page 31, exercises 1 to 80. Get on with it you bastards, Sir’s trying to read”. Yeah, yeah, I know, I’m supposed to be teaching, but they all do all right in the end irrespective of what I say or do. And they’re all going to be actuaries anyway, so who cares?). Malise Ruthven’s “A Fury For God” has been really good - historical/sociological perspectives on the rise of Islamism and the causes of 9/11. At the opposite end of the scale is William Shawcross’s “Allies”, a tongueing portrait of TB and GWB and their matiness along the lines of “I love Dubya, if he wants to bomb the raggies that’s fine by me”. Actually I’m simplifying Shawcross’s argument *somewhat*, and it’s really quite a good book. Also v. interesting in this regard are Akbar Ahmed’s “Islam Today” and Bernard Lewis’s “What Went Wrong?”

I’ve also nicked a copy of York Notes Advanced on “Much Ado About Nothing” from the School Library. I say “nicked” because that’s exactly what I have done. I could have borrowed it quite legitimately, of course, but I’ve taken one of my occasional irrational dislikes to the new morning librarian, Mrs Barker (well, it’s not exactly irrational - she moans all the time) and thus I delight in persecuting her in these small ways. York Notes are great: tell the kids what to think, save their teachers having to.

Did y’all watch “The Power of Nightmares”? Thrilling stuff. Especially the little Taliban blokes at the end skipping through the daisies to “Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head”.

Anyway, I have to go. The dog is lying beneath the table, treating me to a montage of her available smells.

(By the way, don't forget that you can post comments to the blog for all to read. Bring this post up by itself by clicking the link at the bottom, then click "post a comment". You have to create a member ID, but it's easy, and you get next to no spam.)

I'm not really marathon man - though I do have a Flora London Marathon fleece that I stole from DVGD. I just feel that way 'cos I've had a twelve hour day at school - the usual teaching followed by parents' evening (smile, smile, lie, lie - isn't your offspring clever?), and now I'm about to stay up all night watching the American elections in the hope that the incumbent gets stuffed back up his tree.

So, anyway, I want "Nothing" to be a play about civilisations and cultures, and the way they communicate with each other, and I want this to be embodied in the conflict between the Iraqi (who, for some reason, I want to call Cal - very unArabic) and the dominant girl in the theatre group. This will, at least in theory, mirror the Beatrice/Benedick conflict in "Much Ado".

I've picked "Much Ado" as the play they're made to perform for more reasons than just that, though. For a start, it's a smooth escapist comedy; "Cal" wants the ordinary people of his neighbourhood to get just a taste of the life of the (supposedly) cultured western middle class. Also, "Much Ado" has a dark side, and it's a play all about perceptions and misconceptions.

But I want to stop myself writing another stupid political play. I'm not Tim bleeding Robbins. I'm at my worst when I start banging a drum, so as far as possible I'm going to keep nitty-gritty politics out of the whole thing - that would kill the comedy.

OK, beer time. More thoughts tomorrow.

...maybe I should explain the idea. In short, it's this:

A group of low-rent British actors are touring post-war southern Iraq using drama "workshops" to help the local population "work through" their traumatic experiences. A local terrorist (or is he?) kidnaps them and makes them perform "Much Ado About Nothing" as punishment.

Lots of opportunities for gags (I hope), and a chance to look at a few ideas I've been wanting to write about for a while now. Of which, more tomorrow...

I suppose the point of this is to try to keep track of the creative process. If you're reading this then the chances are you know I've written three major things: "Them and Me" and "Have You Ever Been To Vegas?", both of which Yarm School loved, and "Paradise" (also know as "Robin and the Gimp") which the BBC, apparently, didn't. Bastards.

Anyway, after a year's break, I'm going to have a go at writing another stage play, which is apparently what I'm good at - I'll be avoiding radio drama for a while. It's going to be called "Nothing On In Basra Tonight", and it's not going to be a musical. Sorry to disappoint all of you who think I should stick to writing songs. There might be songs in it, but they won't dominate.

Don't worry though, it will have jokes. I might even reintroduce Wile E. Coyote. Just for old times' sake.