Making friends, productive and permission to move.

1. The list of names that Bettany mentions at the end of each day's workshop has been getting longer as the week passes. 

2. At the end of the day, I'm a bit boggled by how much work I've done -- both in terms of hours and in terms of quantity. I've mostly had my headphones on, full of white noise, against the scaffolding racket and the household distractions. The day has flown by.

3. The physio has loaded me up with an exercise routine that is really pushing me -- and it actually feels okay to do that work.

Green stem, surprise and lines.

1. Linda next door has a marvel growing in her garden. It's like a small green pineapple on an electric green stem speckled with brown. She says she planted it years ago and it never came up. 'It's not meant to be outdoors,' she says. We imagine that the hot weather might have brought it out of hiding. I'm admiring her vigorous pink lavatera and she says conspiratorially, 'Wilco. Their seeds are only 50p.'

2. Alec asks to walk home through the shopping centre. We're on the same floor as Wilco, and remembering Linda's advice I go and look at the seeds... and nearly have a heart attack when the woman herself bobs up in front of us.

3. I am supposed to be feeding Bettany her lines, but the script is downstairs, and I don't know the parts of two other characters not played by my daughter. But it's okay, because she can prompt  me by bellowing those lines at me in between her own.

Quotation, measure and artist.

1. Years ago Bettany and I made a shrine box for Amelia Earhart. I'd forgotten what was inside it and when I dig around looking for her quote about shirts, I am surprised to find  a pack of cards with an early aviation theme, a dicast model of her plane, Bettany's certificate for doing a good presentation and some unfinished trading cards, one of which carries the quote in question. 

2. Today I am being measured for a bespoke shirt. It is such a relief, after years of holding my body up against commercial clothes and coming up disappointed, to know that there will be a garment made especially for my shape.

3. To wonder at the skill of a writer who can sustain a first person narrative in which the reader can see what the character cannot. (I've got an audiobook of Kazuo Ishiguro's An Artist of the Floating World on the go).