Monday 25th April, morning.

Another way is opening up before me: I can see it and must grasp it. The world is such a large place and I've simply got to be in it once more.

Disassociation. I've not felt I am looking out of another person's eyes in a long time... and I don't think it's a bad feeling!

This Leeds, this Pret, this seven to eight rush hour. This Monday of brief glances from those who have been hemmed into public transport for half an hour, an hour or several. Another working week yearning for the Carrot of Freedom. I have touched freedom and it usually sits on my shoulders, in the form of a rucksack, and distorting my tendons and bones and reminding me I am not a body!

At eight I'm heading to Wetherby for four nights to dog sit for Mo and Tony - Ruby. However mum's hip is playing up now - a consequence of the new knee - so I also have Lola along for the week.

Fifteen minutes to watch these comings and goings and 'people watch', a Bircher yogurt with seeds and a raspberry coulis. And suddenly the crowd has abated. The guys behind the counter definitely juggle in their sleep...

Certain authors inspire me. Especially the era between wars when things were changing into the modern world. Currently I read The Moon and Six Pence a biography of Paul Gauguin as a novel by Somerset Maugham. His style reminds me of Evelyn Waugh and he inhabits that class of Edwardian writers who wrote out of the experience of The Great War, whether they fought or grew up through it, for some reason the sun is always shining in the 1920s - lashings of ginger beer, the famous five and a dog called Nigger...