So now it's official.

Standing There Productions is doing a theatre show during the Comedy Festival!

This is foolhardy and terrifying and those of us in charge of writing said show had frankly better pull a rabbit out of our hat fairly quickly.

At the moment, the show consists of a draft script and a series of hand drawn "maps", kind of like family trees, demonstrating what the show is intended to become (always good to keep by way of hilarious retrospective comparison with what the show actually ends up being). Some of these maps are on napkins. Some of them are on the backs of invoices from places like the physio where I went to get my wrist looked at. One of them is written in a crayon. (It was down the back of the couch).

In the next five months (yes I am counting December shut up) the show will become three dimensional and will develop a life of its own. Rita has drawn up a budget that, if it were a person, would be very intimidating and already would have done its Christmas shopping.

Any advice, support, love, affection, cash, and potential bums on seats would be most welcome at this point.

Also, anyone who can read my handwriting from when my wrist was broken might be able to help me decipher the previous month or so worth of not very helpful "notes" I've been taking on the show. What do we think "[indecipherable word] could be hilarious" might mean? What could be hilarious? What dammit!?

Let me know. Quickly.

Just while I'm on this point, quote of the year so far goes to Rita (as usual) for her assessment the other day that we did not need to panic about a certain aspect of the production "at this stage". I expressed my relief and Rita considered the position for a moment. "Although", she said soberly, "There's panicking to be done".

This, I think, shall be my mantra until May 2007. There's panicking to be done. How exciting.