The Paines Plough LATER went down a treat. People seemed to enjoy it anyway, and laughed all the way through. All five of us - David Eldridge, JMC , Dave Hill and Pauline Hannah, brought different flavours to the Romford tapas. JMC has given a neater precis than I can of the show, but despite the distinct approaches, there was much that resonated between the pieces.

And having gone on last week about writers not ACTING, it was the performing I enjoyed the most. I'd forgotten about the buzz and the adrenaline and the energy you get from an audience responding warmly.

It was also great to meet the other writers and to feel part of a club. A big thank you to David Eldridge for bringing us all together.

Tomorrow morning I'm up to Manchester for the final BIG BUILDINGS design meeting. I'm not quite sure what this is going to involve but Jo has assured me that I'm going to be able to see the model box.

This will be the third occasion on which I have seen the play imagined in a medium other than the written word. The first time was when I came across the publicity image, and the second time when I heard the play read. Now I'm going to see what the stage will look like in three dimensions.

Until recently I was under the impression that my professed fascination with architectural images and models was largely fraudulent - as it didn't appear to be grounded in any actual knowledge of (or sustained interest in) buildings. But I was reminded the other week that when on family holidays we ever went to a castle with a gift shop, I always hankered after those cut-out-and-glue build-your-own cardboard medieval villages you could buy. Then spent ages cutting them out and trying to get the little tabs into the right slits.

There's something poignant about people and objects dramatically reduced in scale - just take a look at Tom Merillion's photographs of Birmingham, as if the real buildings and people depicted were part of a planner's models.

And BIG BUILDINGS actually features two architect's models itself - one a proposed planners model of the docklands, another of an office building. So I'm hoping that hiding somewhere on the model box will be two tiny architect's models, their detail almost indiscernable.