The rain just about held off last night. It was cold and Virginia wished she had taken something thicker. But it didn't pour with rain, only a few drops towards the end of the evening. This was just as well as we had gone to see "Twelfth Night" performed in the gardens of Robinson College in Cambridge in the Cambridge Shakespeare Festival. And a heavy downpour would have dampened our spirits and drowned the Bard's lines.

Got there far too early, and could even have parked right outside the entrance. Whether people have been deterred by the frequency of the rain this year, or distracted by the Olympics on the TV, there were plenty of empty seats. I took a crossword book along, should have suggested to Virginia she brought a book to read. Most of the other playgoers were foreign language students, there were a few families with young children one or two of whom almost wandered around on the stage. But this wasn't the West End.

The scenery was minimal, a bench served to sit on as well as being Malvolio's cell door. At the start I wondered if the actress playing Viola had forgotten a line or two - it didn't matter, they kept going. This is what my piano teacher tries to drum into me, the importance of keeping going. One or two mistakes the audience won't notice as long as one keeps going. That's a hard lesson for me to learn. We had a female Feste - which was fine. A kind of adjustment for the many years where female roles would be played by men. Some of the cast doubled up. Sir Andrew Aguecheek could have been a mite taller to fit the description in the text of the play.

At half-time Virginia dashed off for a hot chocolate, and when she got back I had a plastic cup of mulled wine. A bit bitter but it helped the second half along.

Twelfth Night is an important play to me. Watching it on the TV turned me on to Shakespeare which school had inoculated me against. It was sweet seeing it last night, and listening to the lovely lines that Will wrote.