Q:How many council workers does it take to tell you when they’re changing a light bulb?

A: Six.

Yes, six different people I was transferred to until I finally found someone who could tell me when the Christmas lights go up in town. (October 26th, if you’re that interested.) Armed with that information I was able to draft up a shooting schedule, using eight pieces of paper sellotaped together, divided into a grid of days and weeks. Somewhere near the beginning of this journal is the tale of a humourous evening early in SS development when James and I decided we needed about 80 days to shoot this movie. We in fact need only 36. Which just goes to show how wrong you can be when you’re me.

So what else has been going on? Oh, mostly chasing-up people, making phone calls, posting letters – that kind of caper. It’s getting very tedious now. I wish pre-production was over. Or at least that we could get onto the interesting stuff, like tech scouts and rehearsals. But no, first we have to make lots of lists and tick everything off those lists.

Yep, it’s just five and a half weeks to go. That scared me when I realised. The truth is that none of what we have left to sort out is difficult, or even that time consuming. It’s just bitty and somewhat annoying. What I don’t understand is how I managed to do ALL of this myself two years ago on The Beacon, without a producer, location manager, props manager or anybody like that.

James and I met this evening at The Courtyard (fancy that), where we were served by Dido, who was also singing over the PA system. I was impressed. Anyway, we worked out what needed doing next. Our primary concern is to get the locations locked, especially since Simon’s going to be choreographing the fight scenes in a couple of weeks and he still hasn’t seen two of the key locations.