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.