A bit of gossip for you...

As well as beginning my new book, Katie's Christmas, I have gone back to being a student. At my age!!! And I'm loving it. I've enrolled on a course in set design for performance at Central St. Martin's School of Art, near Kings Cross, and the timing is perfect for my various theatrical excursions this year.

Noye's Fludde - the opera by Benjamin Britten - has a cast of 200, including , of course, assorted animals to go into the ark two by two. But I'm beginning with the opera buffa characters - the GOSSIPS, saucy women who distract Mrs Noye from joining the ark as the storm approaches.

These are not yet true costume designs. I am just trying to find the gestures and attitudes of these bawdy wenches. I imagine them in medieval garb, as befits a miracle play, and indeed Tewkesbury Abbey, where the opera will be staged this July. This is how I like to approach a project like this - and it's similar to how I would approach characters in a book - imagining their motivation, their body language, their expression. Because this will give me the costumes and so the characterisation.

I'm having a lot of fun with these ladies, who I imagine as blowsy, voluptuous, vulgar... and just a little bit wicked; they do drown in the flood, after all!