CHAPTER FOUR - 11:30pm to 01:50am

Sometime after 11pm a big troop of children of all ages - from teeny tots to 10 year olds - arrive with their minders from 'the base' and join the set. The rehearsals now include these kids, all dressed up in Victorian garb, with a woman at their head. They queue up in an orderly line down the road from the theatre, out of camera shot.

And suddenly the scene starts to make more sense, as 'Barrie's' reaction on the theatre steps is in response to seeing a load of children arriving at the last moment to watch his play. They troop up the steps in crocodile-fashion and enter the theatre as Johnny and Dustin watch them go in. Then 'Barrie' spots a boy standing alone on the pavement, off by himself. He walks down to greet this new boy and bends down to speak with him. Then he persuades the boy to run in and see the play. Barrie stands alone on the pavement, looking at the boy entering the theatre and twirling his cane in contemplation.

This scene gets rehearsed and filmed time and time again, with varying changes in the way things are played. It must have been way after midnight by the time the scene is safely in the can.

Around 1am there's quite a long break for the actors as the crew start re-setting for different camera angles and the continuation of the scene. We have a brief buzz of excitement as Johnny wanders over towards some crew members standing on the Green - he's coming closer to us with each stride!! He chats to the crew, shaking people's hands as he greets both old and new friends.

The watching crowd by this time includes a young couple beside me who'd managed to get a photo of Dustin Hoffman on the previous evening, when Dustin deliberately crossed over the tape barrier during a break to go and lie down for a few minutes on one of the park benches! This couple begin waving madly and calling Johnny's name. Johnny looks over at our group, gives a big grin, and happily gives us a big double-arms wave in return, but he doesn't come over. At the same moment the security men home in on us, in case any of us get the bright idea of stepping over the skimpy tape and heading towards JD. But we're a well-behaved little bunch - plus by now we know that we'd get kicked off the green if we did anything as naughty as that.

JD soon returns to the main set area and goes and perches on the theatre steps alongside Dustin and several of the crew. One woman has two small children in tow and Johnny chats with them; he has pictures taken with some of the children and their mothers; he takes a couple of phone calls. In general there's a lot of dallying around that looks very tedious for everyone.

Eventually he seems to get tired of being looked at (and who can blame him?) and he crouches down in the road with his back to us. Someone eventually lines up several directors chairs and offers him one, and although he's fractionally nearer to us, all we can see now is the back of a beautifully-white shirt and a very neatly groomed head!

In the meantime I'm being entertained by a couple of new people who've arrived very late - or very early, given that it's now Tuesday! It transpires that they both live on Richmond Green (the larger open space close by) and they've come along separately to see how the filming is getting on. I find out that they both happened to witness the Neverland crew's flying visit to another house on Richmond Green in late June - the event that gave us Johnny's picture with his duck friend. They said that nothing much really happened that day: Kate Winslet and Julie Christie came out of the house, went back in, and came out again - all day long!

Both of these people are welcome additions to our dwindling flock of onlookers - it's now well past 1:30am and all but the strong-willed have packed it in and gone home to bed. The woman has a great admiration for Johnny's work so we have lots to chat about; the man is a William Blake fan who's determined to get an interview with Johnny to discuss "Dead Man Dead Man" (as he calls it).

We get acquainted when I tire of hearing him calling the film by the wrong title and leap up to give him a quick synopsis of the different themes in Jarmusch's masterpiece and show him my little British Film Institute book at the same time.

He looks at me doubtfully as though he's encountered a roving Dead Man fanatic.. and to a great extent he's right!