I finished Katharina Blum in more or less two sittings. It’s the third really great short book I have read this year, coming after Perfection and On the Calculation of Volume I. I think it could easily be made into a funny play.

I also went to Chandi’s circuits. So that I can get back to paying on the first of the month I have decided that I will only pay for a day pass each time I go to the gym between now and the start of April. I know that is a cop out, but I could try to get more things done in the meantime.

Then I spent most of the rest of the day planning my trip to Scotland. This proved to be a great deal more complicated than I thought it would be. I had imagined that I would be able to hop from one island to the other going northwards, but, given the ferry routes and the timetables, plus the fact that I will only have the motorhome for ten days in total, I have decided that this is not going to be possible. So I have scrapped the idea of going to Islay and Jura, as they were the two islands I was less interested in (although I would like to see George Orwell’s house on Jura). I will concentrate on Arran, plus Mull and its associated lesser islands. Maybe a bit of Oban and Kintyre too.

I got around to reading Rachel’s contract too. I do not know where she has got the idea that they will not be asking for references. It clearly stated that background checks will be made. I also had not realised that American contracts also seem to stipulate how many sick days you are allowed each year. In Rachel’s case here it will be seven. Given that she had six days off in just two and half months before all this gall bladder problem started, I think she might find a total of seven i a whole year hard to stick to.

I rang Mary to tell her about Rachel’s revelations. We both agreed that her lack of focus is to a great extent down to the kind of bullshit upbringing her father and his siblings had when they were growing up in the 1960s – when they were told that the only thing that mattered was that they should just do what they want to do. I hadn’t realised that shortly after Rachel tried to top herself by jumping into the Hudson and spent time in an institution as a result, loads of relatives on her father’s side started emailing her with ideas about what she should do with her life that were just completely impractical. Mary had to get quite forthright in telling them to stop, and that only engendered a message from Joel reprimanding her for being rude to his relatives. But that only puts Mary in a poor light. I don’t know why she bothers listening to what the old wanker has to say.

Catherine thinks that if Rachel does indeed take up the job in April I should regard her as having been deceitful from the get go, concocting a plan to come back to England to impose on me and do a PGCE she wasn’t really committed to. I think she is probably right.

Paul came back in the evening for round two. This time we were more successful, and he left contented.