Friday, August 24

Sörnainen, 7:30

An early day and no rain: Auo and I set off silently at 7:10 while the others slept. Here I am at Sörnainen, watching a painted tram leaving the stop while the students stand on the platform for the first time since the start of summer.

I will begin the morning with some full-strength administration before spending the rest of the time creating a new edition of last year’s DoEL e-book to include seven pages of illustrations that weren’t there but should have been.

Andy, Jutta and I will go for lunch at the Chinese restaurant in Arabia mall because the restaurant at Arcada has 500 metre queues of bewildered new students. I have never been to the Chinese lunch buffet before and it was a very pleasant change. I could do that again one day.

In the afternoon we will all address the new students. I will say nothing substantive for the simple reason that I am giving a solo two-hour performance to them all on Monday morning.

Performance over, I will be in the middle of booking a hotel room in Berlin for March when I will receive an email from Irma telling me that she has just booked the room – just in time.

After that I will race home so that we can all go to Sundö tonight for tomorrows’s market. I will take a rucksack full of laptop just in case the sauna house calls me at dawn.