TUESDAY 10th OCTOBER 1979

Costume fitting for Ludwig and the Harvest Festival. Its the usual Gaynesford attempt at costume and the items I end up wearing traverse several centuries and most of Europe. Raven calls it a pastiche, I have another less polite name for the pile of rags attached to an evening dress that I eventually find myself being shoe horned into. I appear to have net curtailing at the ends of my sleeves and something similar on my shirt front. Raven is still debating where I might a find a powered wig.

Editors note. At a time when schools were nominally Church of England, these sorts of semi-religious observations were not unusual. In theory children would bring a small item to add to the 'harvest' which would then be donated to the needy. In times past this would have been meat and bread. The late 20th century equivalent seemed to be Dundee cake and tins of baked beans. The Gaynesford version wisely shyed away from anything too religious and concentrated on what Raven would undoubtedly a performance.

Cook's diary continues... The trouble with Raven is that he gets carried away with these performances and it occurs to me that we could probably do just as good (or bad) a showing without the stupid costumes. Steve as our resident poet/artist/bohemian points out several times that the denizens of Gaynesford have probably never even heard of Beethoven, much less his music. So are likely to be very confused right from the start.

The plot if I can use that time is that ol' Ludwig comes back from the grave to listen to 'The Pastoral' interrupting a news reader (Stuart) in the process lead a discussion on the meaning of harvest festival by wandering up the centre aisle of the hall. ' This will be an full assembly and I am not at all happy about a wander down the middle of the crowd of piss-takers and loud-mouthed sods.

Stuart will also be doing a roving microphone bit asking specially secreted candidates they think is the meaning of harvest festival. In an unspoken joint bit of evilness we fail to explain to the sixth form that we have stooges but mention in passing that there will be a roving microphone. Both Steve and Mark cast several worried glances in my direction after this announcement.