Only twenty seven sleeps till publication day. Here’s the jacket, by the way. It’s very brown, as is only appropriate. Whitechapel in 1888 wouldn’t have been a riot of colour.

My husband, always the first to get his mitts on a bound proof copy, made a start reading it and soon complained that there was too much backstage theatre arcana which people wouldn’t understand. I think he was just trying to wind me up. He knows I hate subordinate, explanatory clauses.

‘Do you smell burning?’ asked the limeboy, a member of the theatre’s lighting team whose job it was to heat up the lime cylinder with a gas flame to produce its characteristically brilliant white light.

No, no, no. I told Mr F, my readers don’t need spoon-feeding. They know how to open a dictionary. They can find their way around Wikipedia.

Meanwhile I’m rather enjoying this sequel-writing lark. It’s so wonderful to hear old familiar voices. Of course ‘old’ is right in more than one sense. A friend asked me what on earth I could do with a bunch of characters who are now in their seventies and eighties.

She said, ‘I suppose there’ll be a lot of funerals.’

Not necessarily. I intend to keep the body count manageable. Nor will the story turn into an organ recital. Think of it as The Straight Story meets Advanced Style .

Finally, a warning that I’ll be off-line briefly later this month while my website gets a wash and brush up. I’m getting slider images on my Home Page, dear reader. No, I didn’t know what they were either but once I saw them I had to have them. Any day now….