MOOMINS!

I've decided - Monday is the official start of puppet making for the Christmas show - MOOMINLAND MIDWINTER. It's a show we are making for the Egg, the beautiful children's theatre in Bath. The last two days have been a slightly exhausting delight - Lee Lyford (the Egg's associate director), Hattie Naylor (the writer), Tom Rogers (designer) and myself spent pretty much two whole days working through Hattie's script and working out HOW it can all happen. Tom has the incredibly hard task of working out how to represent all of the many spaces and scales in the show without filling the stage to bursting. And now the list has emerged - at least 35 fully articulated puppets - Too-Tickys, Hemulens, Little Mys and Moomintrolls in various sizes, not including shadows, animations or flat objects. I think I'd better get going!

I shall be strengthened and motivated by the words of the inspirational children's author David Almond on Desert Island Discs this morning - "Where else is our culture going to be regenerated except through young people and through art for young people". Made my day.