our film there is a jackdaw called Mr Edelweiss. Some of his bits will be computer-generated but a lot of his acting will be done by real jackdaws. The Animal Trainers (see you-know-what) and I have been working with three different birds for six weeks already. They are called Devil, Al and Dorian. It is Devil who has been naughty. Last night he caught a mouse (which wasn’t naughty) and ate it (which was). It means that overnight he put on 8 grams in weight which means that he can’t be fed today and consequently can’t work because he will only work for food. I had no idea jackdaws were such finely tuned instruments. Apparently if they eat too much they can’t fly or they explode or something.

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Martin Harrison is our First Assistant Director (see Glossary) and, apart from the Director, is really the most important person on the set. He’s just come up to me and said that when he first read the script he thought to himself, Oh, what a lovely simple story. He now realises that the lovely simple story is without a doubt the most complicated film he’s ever worked on. This is largely due to the preponderance of animals and children and also goes to prove once again that simple is never easy.

I am watching Oscar Steer, who, aged six, is our youngest actor apart from the piglets, who are only a month old. He is so clever and funny. He can even run in the mud.

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The Story 3

So now you know a bit about Phil and Rory. There’s just one other important thing I have to tell you. Rory adored his children and would spend hours making things for them. The best thing he’d ever made was a machine called the Scratch-O-Matic. He’d had the idea one long summer’s day as he was watching Vincent scratching the piglets with the end of a broom. Piglets love being scratched and they would jostle each other for position under Vinnie’s broom handle. Vinnie would try and scratch each piglet equally but inevitably the strongest ones would get the most attention and then it would be suppertime and Vinnie would have to go indoors complaining that the littlest piggies had been left out. Mr Green sat up all night with a huge bit of paper and a pencil, then spent an entire day in the barn sawing and hammering and occasionally letting out great bellows of rage when something had gone wrong with his calculations. Then he came in and went to sleep so soundly in front of the fire that Mrs Green just left him there for the night. In the morning, he was up and about before anyone, and when the rest of the family had come downstairs for breakfast, he proudly announced that he had something special to show them all. Consumed with curiosity, the children and Mrs Green followed him into the barn, where a sheet had been flung over a gigantic structure right in front of the pigsty. Pink with pride, Mr Green whipped away the sheet to reveal an amazing machine. It all started with a bicycle seat and pedals. You sat on the seat and pedalled, and all at once a great system of levers and cables whooshed into action. The cables controlled the levers, which controlled a selection of brushes and sticks and broom-handles which all moved about as music came out of a great gramophone horn. Each little pig was settled under a brush and scratched to its heart’s content as it listened to whatever music you fancied putting on to the record player, which is an old-fashioned term for a sort of iPod. All the children said the Scratch-O-Matic was the cleverest invention since sliced bread, and Vincent in particular thought it was the finest thing he’d ever seen in his life.

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All this just goes to show that Mr Green was dad-tastic and the idea of him having to leave home and go off to fight and maybe even get hurt made them all thoroughly miserable.

On the morning of his departure, everyone saw him up to the top of the lane and waved him off as he disappeared round the corner. They shouted and jumped and made loads of noise. As soon as he’d gone from view everyone fell silent. Mrs Green looked at the three sad faces.

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‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Dad’ll want something sweet when he comes home so let’s make him some strawberry