To be or not to be? Or rather, to sleep or not to sleep? That was the question last weekend.

Daughter has been studying Shakespeare at school and, like most pre-teens, has announced that it is "quite difficult". I can't say I ever rated him that highly myself, preferring writers who manage to say everything in two or three well-chosen words rather than the Bard who never used one sentence when ten would do, as clever as his prose is.

Anyway, I realised there was a National Theatre production of Hamlet on at the Theatre Royal and managed to get last-minute tickets.

I thought it might be a good idea to expose daughter to Shakespeare "live" to encourage her love of dramatics.

Daughter was excited at the thought of going to the theatre for a proper grown-up play, especially when I said we could go out for a pizza first.

Leaving the restaurant we went to pick up our tickets. These were "up in the Gods" with a restricted view - the only ones still available.

I love the Theatre Royal but it was so hot up there that everybody immed-iately started fanning themselves with their prog-rammes.

Every time daughter said: "I don't understand this bit, what's going on?", 20 people turned round and very ostent-atiously said: "Shush", meant that the first half was a nightmare.

By the time the interval came round daughter had fallen fast asleep and that was the end of her introduction to the theatre.

Sitting on the bus on the way home, I asked her if she had enjoyed any of it at all. "The ghost was good," she said, "but the pizza was better."