Lights, Camera...

The Boy is making his first proper short film as a writer and director and I've been roped in to co-ordinate the fight scene.

It is 11 years since I have directed anything and now I have a couple of recent drama school graduates to put through their paces and block in a fight scene I plotted out with the Boy the night before.

Several of the Boy's friends have also been drafted in as film crew members so I have the double pressure of not making a tit of myself in front of them and embarassing him and, more importantly, remembering how to break down an action sequence into its component parts then put it together so it functions as a coherent whole.

And to put it frankly I am bricking myself.

Surprisingly, though, it actually goes OK and I remember that I can actually still do this, expecially when the two guys involved turn out to be really up for it. It almost makes me nostalgic for the life of play directing and producing I was once part of instead of the somewhat lonely path of writing I have now embarked on.

Once I've done my bit I fade into the background and watch the Boy do his stuff. He works well with the actors and he knows what he is doing and what he wants.

But then I remember he is now no longer the Boy. He is 18 and hungry to achieve and he has that confidence of youth where absolutely anything is possible.

I watch him work and although the child is still very much there he's also a grown-up and all sorts of worries and worst-case-scenario anxieties about him heading off to university fade away.

I now know he'll be OK when he leaves home in a few months to study film production, both on the course and off it. He's gonna be just fine...