I was supposed to go to Keren for another week of workshops. This time, to 400 teachers in groups of 40 over six days (with no resources available, a book familiarisation workshop with no books, but that’s par for the course). The trouble was, we weren’t to get the back until next Saturday afternoon and buses from Keren to Asmara are notoriously unreliable at the moment. Usually this wouldn’t matter, it’s normal to wait 2 or three hours for a bus and if after all that you don’t get on one, you come back the next day. However , in this case we’ve got to be at the airport very early on the Sunday morning, we’ve got a three-week holiday in South Africa. I really wasn’t prepared to take the chance of not being able to get on a bus on Saturday and so said I could do the workshop until Friday. For some reason this wasn’t acceptable, and so now I’m not going to Keren at all. I feel really bad about it, as if I’m letting my colleagues down . Not sure what else I could have done. The atmosphere at work was very frosty for the rest of the day. I bought cakes for everyone yesterday and they’ve started talking to me again but still feel bad.

Having a games evening at Anne’s house tonight. My first game of Scrabble for months, I’m very excited.

Got chatting to a family last night, the mother and children had come for a holiday to visit her brother who lives here and has just been demobbed from the army. We asked where she lived and she replied Cambridge. Yet another surreal moment, talking about Cherry Hinton Road, just round the corner from where we lived.

C