A very short notice directing job this week, making a ten minute case study film for the national Community Languages Show, about kids at a Birmingham school who are taking exams in their parents' native languages. What effect does it have for a child raised in England to have their knowledge of Urdu recognised with a qualification?

Fascinating shoot; the teachers at the school we filmed at were generous with their time, and the kids fought their shyness to say some very upfront and interesting things. I'm off to edit it pronto now...

The NHS job is proving every bit as interesting as it looked, and this week we filmed an operation, between interviewing doctors, researchers, surgeons and patients.

The op we shot was a prostatectomy using a robot - surprisingly uninvasive, and we were interviewing the patient two hours later, sat in bed with tea and biscuits. It was amazing to see the dexterity of the surgeon at his control station replicated so precisely by the probes in the patient’s body which we could see on a big monitor.

Obviously, being in the theatre meant wearing scrubs, which, as you can see, do not flatter me. Along with starting to understand which colour piping on the dark blue nurses’ uniforms means a specialist or nurse practitioner etc, I learned on Wednesday that in operating theatres, qualified medical staff wear blue hats, whereas a white hat means “don’t ask me; I’m a numpty tourist”. One to look out for if you wake up on the operating table one day and want to know what’s going on.

Anyway, I’m certainly glad to live where I do, as our hospital seems to be the place to go for lots of things, and all the people we’ve interviewed have seemed both bright and compassionate.

Jo and I went to the Prince Charles cinema in Leicester Square for the cast & screw screening of Doghouse last night. It’s a feature I worked on late last summer, and it was great to see the crew again.

Apart from a Guardian review comparing it (I suspect rather inaccurately) with another recent spoof horror, I’d not read much about it. While we waited to go in, the make-up effects designer, Karl Derrick (who’s a jolly nice chap), told me that the reviews were “marmite”. Excellent expression. In any event, I laughed a lot during the film. It was lovely to see the people again, and a free drink or two took the edge off the stress of getting there in time during a tube strike...

Started a nice new bit of (sound) work this week on a film for the NHS to encourage support for biomedical research facilities in Cambridge. Looks to be another interesting and educational job.

Before getting to the main week of shooting later this month, we warmed up this week by interviewing a famous doctor and hospital patron. I saw the corridors underneath the public part of our large local hospital (voted best NHS hospital last year, I learned) for the first time - it’s a whole other world of zooming vehicles. Fascinating.

Coming up: filming an operation...

Last night the band I’m in played a gig at the 12 Bar in Denmark St (in London, for people who don’t buy lots of guitars and thus automatically know what I mean by Denmark St).

It was as nice to see the boys as always, and between soundcheck and gig, Guy took me and Robin to his daughter’s Soho restaurant Cattle Grid on Poland St, which was chilled out and did lovely food.

Koogaphone and Sister Chain & Brother John (who we know from our gigs in Berlin) supported us, and people said kind things about it afterwards. Which was especially forgiving as we went on about half an hour late ‘cos of equipment nightmares in the soundcheck earlier... Koogaphone kindly lent us some gear to bail us out.

That’ll be it for our band for a month or two, as Guy’s off touring America for the summer with his slightly bigger band Van der Graaf Generator.

I got home in the small hours of the morning, and am still feeling a bit deaf.