Monday, Monday

8 a.m. Toast with honey while watching Yes Prime Minister. I had it set to V+ all the episodes and now they are recording quicker than I watch but I feel guilty deleting without watching, so I try and shoe-horn an episode into every non-work day. Decided to stop saving the whole series, so I can go back to chuckling at something mindless every now and again.

10 a.m. Reading ‘O Beloved Kids’ by Rudyard Kipling. It is the letters to his son John, who died on the battlefields of France in 1915, and his daughter Elsie. Really interesting to read about life back then, and there is a delightfully whimsical sense of humour in his words and illustrations, as well as an awful poignancy.

11 a.m. Click open Word. Chapter seven’s cursor winks saucily at me. ‘Now look,’ I tell it. ‘I have come up with the next bit so I can get out of that corner I wrote myself into yesterday. I woke up at 4am puzzling over it, and it will damn well work!’ Chapter seven doesn’t look convinced.

12.30 a.m. Before mum left for Southend today, she told me to cook the chicken. I remember she said this once about ancient salmon fillets. I proceed with caution.

1.30 p.m. Munching chicken and rice and trying to back away from Riverdance on the television. Every time I click a channel I seem to return to Riverdance. No! Take your flying feet of glory elsewhere!

2 p.m. Tap, tap, tap.

4 p.m. Tap, tap, tap.

4.30p.m. Get happy phone call. My friends T and M like chapters 4 – 6! Spend most of next half hour with a big grin from ear to ear. Feel all inspired and encouraged to carry on.

7 p.m. Need chocolate now or head will explode. Eat Twirl bar, feel normality returning. Go back to researching dance clubs in 1939. Play swing music to get me ‘in the mood’. End up rock-stepping around the room.

8.30 p.m. Stand in garden for a while. Water tomato plants. Breathe air.

8.45 p.m. Tap, tap, tap.

10.30.p.m. Stretch, cuddle naughty tortie cat, and decide it is time to unearth bed from all the research books piled on top of it and watch another hour of ‘24’. I had a dream the other night I was the female equivalent of Jack Bauer and I completed my mission to deliver a computer chip that I hid in porridge. You just don’t get that sort of solution on ‘24’. Porridge, it's the way forward.