Up at 8.30, in time to be at the pool at 9.00, which is opening time. Ambient temperature has plummeted from 27 degrees to 10, and a fierce wind is blowing.

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Showers cold as I’m the first there and they haven’t warmed up yet. Find door between changing rooms and pool is padlocked, am told by the assistant that Pedro hasn’t arrived yet with the keys. Cold and wet, I decide to lie on a bench and do my quadriceps exercises to pass the time – I have to do ten minutes every morning and evening in an effort to get the knobs back into my knobless knee. (Latest diagnosis is that I have tendonitis, in other words, tennis elbow in my knee).

At last the key arrives, and I get my half-hour swim.

Home for breakfast. Decide to catch up on photo organization: download printworthy photos August-October onto a CD and take them to the photographer to get printed. Do shopping, pick up photos, have lunch, then snooze in the windy garden with a sleeping bag and the dog on my lounger.

Wake up, do a Spanish practice listening comprehension and fail it (I have to get 70% in every section and I only score 68%) – my exam is next Saturday.

Go to the hospital to see South African rugby injury patient (see a few posts ago in Diary) – he’s doing well, can move fingers now, is out of the neck brace, and has no drips any more. He will fly home on Tuesday.

Go to friends for a play reading: ‘Habeas Corpus’ by Alan Bennet. I am cast as Mrs Wicksteed. Nearly die of embarrassment when I have to say ‘Kiss me. Yes. No. Hard’ to the man who is cast as my husband. Fortunately my own husband is cast as my lover. We snack on sandwiches and come home, have just fruit and wine for dinner, and I catch up on the blogs.