They have cancelled the morning lighting session. I did not set my alarm. I climbed out of my bed at 7.47, which as a parent who has been programmed by my daughter to wake at 6.24 no matter how late I went to bed, was a luxury. I got to bed about 1.30, after celebrating the brevity of the post-performance lighting session, by utilising the time saved to buy my board op a drink, (it was his shout, but he has a mate on High School Musical 2, and while he was getting updates on the hilarity of their production week, I could only get them in) and catch up with the wardrobe crew, whom I almost never see, as our schedules conflict. What am I saying? We’ve just been working all the time.

The seagulls are screaming like on bin-day in Cardiff. A yellow sun is peeking under the granite clouds over the granite city of Aberdeen. This is the furthest-flung venue on the Quadrophenia tour, and we are re-rehearsing on the road, over a period of four weeks. We also rehearsed on our holiday week, so everybody is fatigued, and I’m losing track of what is cut, what is new and going in tonight, what is new, but can’t go in tonight, and what we did before, and has now to be re-instated. Age. I used to be as sharp as a tack. Now, if the budget permits, I get an assistant to be sharp for me. This show is not distinguished by its budget, and it has been the board op who has been remembering the numbers I forget, which is not without its dimension of embarrassment.

This show blew me away when it was first mounted at Welsh College. I didn’t have a clue as to what was going on, but the music had a phenomenal energy, and the cast were offensively good. Of the students, three of the cast, two of the crew, and two of the designers have gone on to work on this tour which has American money behind it. Some tiny portion, of which, has gone on the lighting. Despite regular standing ovations, we are addressing the ‘having a clue as to what is going on’ aspects of the production, and are currently rehearsing with Peter at the helm, who is from L.A.

I had a very nice hotel when I got here, as the managers obey, for the production team, a law of parity with the director, who after sweating it out for a week in Leeds, pointed out that it was possible to get hotels, these days, with air-conditioning. The Campaign for Real Perspiration has, I am informed, no branches in the USA. The air-conditioned bliss of this hotel was, however, not available to me when I arrived as noroomattheinn.com had not faxed (FAXED!) my dates through. The unavailability of my nice hotel was being thrashed out by telephone at reception, as I heard Celtic concede their first goal to Arsenal, in the bar next door. I had to haul my luggage, morosely, across a second city to another sweaty hotel, where the No Smoking instructions were honoured more in the breach. I was lucky; Mr Gage in the cast found his digs had, thoughtfully, been pre-trashed, as befits the rock and roll lifestyle. I found him in a corridor, on his mobile, tracking down somewhere with a toilet seat.

At my air-conditioned breakfast, I noticed a sign by the belt-fed toaster saying, ‘Please do not put croissants into this machine’, placed there, presumably at the insistence of the local Fire Brigade. I can talk. Last week’s late-night plotting session inadvertently attracted the attention of The Leeds Metropolitan Fire Service, much to the delight of the drooling wardrobe crew. Everybody knew we were working late, except Stage Door, who hadn’t isolated the stage area on their little control panel. This lost us the headway on our schedule, which we had striven for.

Mister Headway is certainly around this week, and I even have time to blog.

And write. A first draft has been sent off, and this week I have, on impulse, started another adaptation of an Alasdair Gray novel, in a speculative enterprise. Arriving at the Stage Door, I discovered a company of actors, taking a break from rehearsing another Scottish novel, ‘The Silver Darlings’. They are being directed by Kenny Ireland, whom I worked with for The Wrestling School, and whom I haven’t seen for some time. We chatted about how an adaptation must serve the intentions of the author, but must also strive to be theatrical, and not to duplicate the experience of reading the novel. For me, this is the exciting bit about the adaptation process, and if I have served a rather long apprenticeship before pupating into a nervous writer, I am at least equipped with a range of memories of the kind of things, which enthuse all departments into doing excellent work. In my opinion, all theatre workers light up when challenged to create a moment, which is deftly theatrical.

In the cast is Tom McGovern, who said he has had a quiet couple of years. This is a man who has portrayed a rather excellent and memorable Hamlet, at the Lyceum in Edinburgh, and one whose phone, you might have thought, rang at least once a month. Also in the cast is Anne-Louise Ross, she of the faeces-on-face moment in ‘Trainspotting’, who didn’t recognise me, at first. (I have new moustache) and I reminded her that I had worked with her in 1978, when her hair was black. ‘You haven’t changed a bit.’ I said, to a chorus of rather unkind derision from the rest of the cast. His Majesty’s Theatre is normally only a receiving house, but after last year’s hugely-successful ‘Sunset Song’, they are trying to make this an annual event. I can sense the very bricks of the building sensing a premiere of their very own, in the offing.

I have checked out of my posh hotel. Actually, it’s not so posh as to not have snack dispensers in the lobby, and I succumbed to large bag of Revels last night. At least, I thought, it’s better than having them in your room, in your mini-bar, at hugely inflated prices. I’ve posted off a script, (still a thrillingly novel experience) and come back to meet our director, to plan.

Also checking out of his hotel, down the road, in Greenock, we hear, is Adelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi. I venture to suggest that the Scots have angered that nice Mrs Clinton, and our director tells me that his uncle was the Flight Engineer on Flight 103, and that he came, with his family, to visit Lockerbie. His aunt never re-married. I press my case for clemency, but very, very gently.

We dined in an American-themed restaurant. He out-exoticked the waiter by asking for relishes that may never have reached these shores. ‘We have Tabasco.’ ‘Sure!’ he said, after the briefest of pauses. Laptop on table, he acted out Jimmy’s confusion at his father’s funeral, with such conviction that I fear that someone is phoning social services as we eat.
As we entered stage door, I notice Anne-Louise through the door of the rehearsal room, and, moving on ask our director if he has ever seen ‘Trainspotting’. ‘Oh yes, what a movie!’, he said, and then had to go running back and peek through to see Anne-Louise, as an act of homage.

We plotted lighting over the technical rehearsal. As usual, I installed my office at the back stalls, next to the lighting console, and this week, I have a table, but no chair. Last week, it was vice-versa. This is my second five-hour session here, and I have enhanced sympathy for actors who stand around for hours on rakes, since that’s exactly what I’m doing, except in front of the proscenium.

After teabreak, England were 180 for 3, and Megrahi was probably over Lockerbie.

Having worked at the Royal Court with American directors, I quickly got the idea that things are a little different over there. They like people to take their ideas on board quickly, and then to get on with it. They could get pretty shirty if you didn’t. Our director, even though the nation of my birth has just freed his uncle’s murderer, is still effusively polite, and commendably warm. But when he hits me with a sudden idea, I enact it speedily and without question. Since day one, my rig for ‘Quad' has been predicated on adaptability. There were too many people in the room, with opinions that mattered, who could have said, ‘Make it look more like a rock show’, or ‘Make it look more like an ordinary play’. To his immense credit, when the rock god himself was in the room, he said ‘We shouldn’t be concentrating on the band; we should just be telling the story’. The design has since fluctuated between these tenets, and in respect of other imperatives, but the rig has only required cosmetic alteration. When challenged to produce ‘Blue, with goboes.’ He’s looking at it two minutes later.

At this point, I am onstage, being a stand-up lighting designer, enunciating and projecting instructions to the board op, at the back of the stalls. I have no rig plan in my hand, but when I say things like, ‘Kill one-eight-thing, and one-eight-thing!’, he knows exactly what I mean.

Our choreographer has elected not to come back from holiday to rehearse this week. Hats off, she did last week, tanned and bursting with health. I am standing in for her as our director’s sparring partner, as we walk the scenes and the lighting states. He takes this all very seriously, and I am variously hugged, threatened and ignored. Nonetheless, it has been a very productive way of working, and many good ideas have surfaced, been explored, and confirmed within minutes. Thus, when sixteen cast have walked on stage, they have been given very clear instructions, and because they have become so familiar with the music and their characters’ motives, radical reworking has been brisk.

His Majesty’s is a fine theatre, with a marble proscenium, and a tiled finish around the stalls, and despite its classiness, seems to accept the huge amount of noise we’re making without complaint. It is also equipped with a decent green room, which I inhabited until it was time to head for food and a sleeper train. All my Scottish chums were too busy to socialise, but I’ll be checking out their tour, as it is strongly-tipped for success.

As I set out to find a restaurant, my heart sank. It had been raining several times during my stay so far, but not even hard enough to make me put on my pullover. But the rain was heavier now, despite the sunshine. I walked down streets of sparkling granite, the rain hanging in shafts of sunlight, seeing only little cafes that were too expensive for those working in the arts. I saw a dazzling double rainbow printed on dark grey clouds, which seemed worthy of a round of applause, but scurrying Aberdonians, in cagoules, didn’t even notice.

I once did a fairly irregular tour where we ate in Pizza Express in every town. Some restaurants are fairly hostile to single diners, but they never are. But the couple in front of me were asked whether they had booked, or not, and this was at 6.30 on a Thursday. Recession, what recession? I headed for a tapas bar and ordered a fino sherry, which arrived in a bingedrinking-sized wineglass, rather than the little fluted sherry glass you get in sensible countries, like Spain. Having unwittingly ordered getting on for half-a-pint of sherry, I began to think ‘What this is costing me?’ Six pounds forty, according to the receipt. One feels slightly churlish asking how much a drink costs when you order it, but this uneasiness is exploited by restauranteurs beyond the limit nowadays. The fish was fresh enough to realise that it might well have been landed at the harbour, which was half-a-mile away. How many British cities still land fish within their precincts?

I am quite familiar with the Caledonian Sleeper services, having trudged up and down to Pitlochry over three years. The cabin staff are either really hilarious old Scottish blokes, or impossibly beautiful eastern European girls with names like Aniezka or Magdalena. With the latter, the illusion of being in a spy movie is enhanced by the fact that they know your name, as they have it on a clipboard, and say ‘Velcome to Ze Schleeper’ Mister McCarron’. Such is the strength of the illusion, that you also get the idea that Robert Shaw will force his way into your berth, and try to beat you up. No eastern European glamour tonight. I have Alex, who is a really hilarious young Scottish bloke. Perhaps all the Magdalenas and Anieskas have gone back to more prosperous countries to become integrated transport consultants, or spies.

Alex cheerfully informed me that I would not have to share my berth tonight, and I settled in, unpacking my laptop cable, to resume this blog, before remembering that he 13A sockets got removed, presumably at the insistence of the Annoyance and Inconvenience Executive.

I am in coach E, just behind the locomotive. This is a bad call, because the train will be coupled up, at Waverley, with the Inverness train. I will take the full force of the shunt.

I didn’t sleep well. The Edinburgh impact nearly knocked me out of bed, and I had a late phone call, which lasted only a second, before passing out of reception. I was too hot, and the sheet pulled away from the cold PVC mattress. When I got the knock on the door, in my delirium, I failed to imagine what was happening before Alex was unlocking my door with a cup of tea. He told me that we were running half-an-hour early, which, despite my grogginess, I instantly interpret as Bad News, as I’d have to kick around a deserted Crewe for an extra thirty potentially freezing minutes, while the Upper Crust people were still asleep. The Sleeper breakfast used to consist of a croissant-type snack, (vile), a little tub of muesli crunch with a dollop of stiff yoghourt on top of it, (acceptable) and a small muffin-like thing (quite nice). Gone. Two sticks of shortbread, and that’s your lot, now. I opened my window blind, (a tricky, push down, pull towards you, lift, repeat until it works operation) as modesty is best sacrificed to the end of knowing that you have arrived into your station. Despite sleep-deprived disorientation, I followed my packing whilst abluting and breakfasting drills.

The rigorous attention to detail all fell apart when I settled in the waiting room in Crewe next to a 13A socket to find that my laptop cable was missing. For a lighting designer with more than one job on, (I have six), this is the nightmare scenario, and my battery currently dies after about five minutes.

I reason that it is in the green room in Aberdeen, and was about to text the Company Manager in there, when I realised that it had to be in berth E22. The train was till there, but the platform staff couldn’t let me on, and the guard on the train can’t go down there because it is his job to look out the window. Seven people have got off the train five minutes ago, and no-one is allowed to board the sleeper at Crewe. But the AIE insists that he be vigilant. ‘You’ll have to get in touch with the lost property office in Euston’, they said. I suddenly think it unlikely that I will hear the recorded message, ‘If you have left your laptop cable on a sleeper, press one.’

I consoled myself, in Shrewsbury, with an enhanced breakfast, where the strains of Celine Dion remind me that there have been bigger transport-related disasters.

My cunning plan had been to get off the sleeper in Birmingham, to just miss the early train to Aberystwyth. The earliness of the sleeper would have precipitated a joyful bonus, but, booking my ticket, my plan was thwarted by the news that the sleeper did not stop in Birmingham, despite times to that very effect being available on the Trainline website.

Resigned to a bleary-eyed exit in Crewe, I suddenly realised I could nip down to Shrewsbury and pick up an Aber train, (Ystwyth, not Deen), and arrive in the middle of a production meeting, and not an hour-and-a-half after it. How many hours did I spend on the internet, to convince myself that this was possible?

Triangular journeys like this are a nightmare, and can easily be an outrageously expensive nightmare, if you're not careful, though not as infuriating as watching Fly.be notch up unexplained supplements on your web booking. My producers have been honest and fair, and I am prepared to work to keep costs down. And this blog may be an interesting side effect.

Aberystwyth is, in my opinion, a long way from anywhere. On the recent documentary about the Beeching cuts, a map of Wales was shown, before and after Beeching. Formerly, Wales was squiggled with railway lines, and now there just seems to be one across the middle, and it seems impossible to get there without going via England. And the nearest airport is probably Birmingham, or Gander.

I've just passed through Newtown, and the sun was shining. Surely this place is big enough for a theatre? Wait a minute. Hafren. Been there once, with god knows what. Why have I forgotten about it?

At Machynlleth, a suspicion I have been cultivating was confirmed. As we pulled into the station, we passed a large black steam locomotive. The carriage emptied, and yes, I really had been travelling with a large party of trainspotters, and no, not the Irvine Welsh variety. No. This was the real thing. The entirely sullen man sharing my table had a flask, and a one-legged pair of spectacles, dating from different, not-so-recent decades. He did, however, pull out a bright yellow, state-of-the-art Global Positioning Satellite receiver, which he referred to on spying trackside warning signs. They were a dour lot. I once ended up in a coach with the Gay Bolton Wanderers Football Fans. They were a hoot!

The weather turned to Welsh, more-than-pullover rain, but at Dovey Junction, the hills looked menacingly beautiful. It was now that time when normal people are meant to be awake, and therefore, time to phone and see whether I could be picked up at the station, Orange network permitting.

It did. The National Youth Theatre of Wales, today's employer, is pretty good about volunteer taxis. Steve, last year's Production Manager, it seemed, couldn't keep himself away, despite a posh new job in London, and was to be hopping into some vehicle, (He bagged the hired Range Rover last year.) to pick me up. The view out of the window, as we pulled into Aber, was good reference material for the show we are creating, 'Century', which portrays a hundred years of Welsh history. Central metaphor - rain, of course.

Steve is at the station with a Transit Van, which was not quite as beaten-up as the other two they sent back. He whisked me up to the Arts Centre bar, where the production meeting was just about to get round to the topic of lighting. I talked in very general terms about not hiring lighting I can’t afford, and people seem reassured. Then, into rehearsals. They have moved rehearsals into the Great Hall, into which I used to have to tour with Music Theatre Wales. Such are the memories of those installations that I’m surprised my stomach didn’t turn. A substantial amount of the set was built before I arrived, which has been making for very productive rehearsals. I have two student assistants called, helpfully, Tom and Tom. Last year I plotted 250 lighting cues during the tech, and I am bracing myself for more of the same. The show is displaying every sign of being as good as last year’s Mabinogi, which was very good indeed.

There’s a party tonight, and I plan to show my face, but I have another four-and-a-half hours on a train back to Cardiff tomorrow, and there is a train at 5.30.

Perhaps I’ll get the next one.

Normally, I’m a lighting designer who travels, but this week, I’ve been a traveller who has the blessed relief of lighting something.