I can't always stop myself. Give me a bit of time to myself and I might just start admiring my own ingenuity. It depends on what I'm admiring and when I do it as to how destructive this truly is. Last night, I think I managed to be on the right side of self-appreciation. Okay, that's already sounding a bit onanistic, I'll explain in detail, purely to avoid the reader getting a totally twisted impression of what I was doing in bed last night.

For reasons of my own, I found myself with a copy of the DVD of "The Musical!" in my hand. I thought that I'd just check to see if it played on my computer. An hour later, I'd finished watching it. There. Self-praise is no praise indeed, but I applauded some of what I saw. Literally.

I was also horribly critical of some of the performance and writing, but I didn't let that spoil my enjoyment, which may be because I was watching my own stuff, or may be because I can't help loving the show we put so much time into crafting, or may even be because it's not actually that bad. I've no idea.

I heard last night that Jack Dee once said that you never laugh as much as you did when you were at school. That that unbridled side-splitting laughter never hits you as an adult. I think I know what he meant. Having said that, I have laughed so much that it's heard as an adult. Often with old school friends. Maybe that's a lucky thing to be able to do. Maybe it's something I can occasionally tap into - a vigour of funny that I can enjoy perennially.

I don't know.

I do know that I laughed last night, despite knowing the next line throughout the performance and having to confront all the shortcomings of an individual performance of a shwo that I knew could be done better. I didn't laugh a huge amount, but there were some moments of enjoyment. And if I can still appreciate something that was, effectively, the love of my life for a good year, then that's probably a good thing.

I should also probably look to the future, rather than keep re-appreciating a past that I have no intention of repeating... unless I dust off the radio adaptation of it...