I woke up late.

It wasn't a surprise. I was exhausted. When you burn the candle at both ends, you get more light, but you end up with a short stubby candle. I was burning it in the middle too, so I was, unsurprisingly, sleeping like a pool of wax in the bed. I took quite some peeling off the sheets, I can tell you. I believe I rang in to let them know that I hadn't completely disappeared and that I would be turning up for an afternoon half day.

So, I went to work and caught up with the emails and progress that had happened in my absence. I did what little I could in the time available and then headed home, via a supermarket. I had a visitor for the weekend and I wanted to cook. I like to cook and I rarely do it these days. My chopping boards used to be used for chopping vegetables or slicing raw meat; nowadays it's usually slicing tomatoes and cucumber for sandwiches. I was keen to prepare a splendid pasta bake for my guest. I'd made one before I went to the states and it had been very good - in fact, I took some of it with me on my flying trip to Southampton to demonstrate how nice it was. However, cold pasta bake leftovers are not as impressive as the real thing.

So I made the real thing. I even put in little suprises, in the form of pools of buffalo mozzarella. It was prepared and ready to be assembled and oven-baked as soon as my guest arrived. I probably did some other vaguely domestic things around the place as I waited. I'm like that. I had, for the previous visit of this person, rearranged my dining room back into the shape of a dining room. Guests bring out the home-maker in me. The dining room had been turned into a pseudo-fringe-theatre back in April 2004 and had remained as such during preparations for The Musical! right the way up to the Edinburgh festival. On returning from the festival, I was always too busy with one thing or another to get my arse into gear and put my back into tidying the room. Then, one day I'm expecting a visitor and I can be bothered. Interesting. Interesting also, that I put the room back into the shape of a dining room only a few days before it was due to be used as a rehearsal room again for the re-run of the show which had made its home there for the last year.

Anyway, I digress. It's probably best that I do, since there's not a huge amount that I want to say about the weekend which followed. Friday night was good, and the rest of the weekend is was a haze of relaxation and company. Just what was needed.