Countdown

Cables and wires everywhere on site right now. All the steelwork is up and waiting for the fabric to be attached. The picture above gives an idea of what it's like - a giant "Cat's Cradle' really which I imagine will make more sense when attached to the fabric (or perhaps not). I spent some of Saturday wandering around the site sketching and marking places that will need remedial aesthetic attention. The Holland Park gardeners will be busy and I expect more terracotta than you'll find in a Florentine garden to litter the site by 5th June.

This week is podcast week. Or more specifically, Wednesday is podcast recording day and the rest of it will be spent editing and dropping in music so we can have them up on the website within a week or so. Three guests will feature this year, kicking off with the leader of K&C council - which will be a bit unusual but I'd expect him to have something interesting to say about publicly funded arts. After him, Jim Naughtie of Radio 4's Today programme will come in to summarise and chat about the forthcoming season. This is a man who has interviewed Presidents and Prime Ministers for years so the idea of James and I sitting around in a studio with him is a challenging one! The last of the three is the art critic Brian Sewell, whose love of opera he has often shared through articles in our programme magazine.

So much needs to be done on site from this point forward it is hard to imagine how we will fit it all in. But we will. Lots of contractors are gearing up to do their bit and it is amazing what can be achieved in a day when everybody puts their mind to it. Carpenters, diggers, engineers, gardeners, sign makers et al will all bring their skills to bear on creating what we hope will be one of the most spectacular performing spaces in the country.