Quite a tumultuous day, at the end of it all. And it started off all so peacefully, with me going into the pottery studio. I have decided to concentrate on that much more in the weeks leading up to open studios at the beginning of July, and want to try and finish off all the buff clay I have by then so that I can move on to White St Thomas after that.

Unfortunately the reclaim clay I have this time is a lot harder than the last time I reclaimed some. I think I may have let it dry out too long. So centring the pots was a lot more arduous than it usually is. I only managed two pots and even they were not properly centred.

The morning was mostly spent desperately trying to find news stories for the email newsletters, but we succeeded in the end.

But the afternoon was when it started to get interesting. We were supposed to be having a brainstorming session which I had initially planned to go down to London for. Then it was moved to being online only, in light of the tube strikes. But when Sarah came on this afternoon she said the whole focus had changed because she had important news to tell us. Jenny was being moved to another magazine – had already been moved, in fact – and most of our design is being outsourced to India. She claimed it was not what she wanted but she had no choice. I said that at least Jenny was going to a marine title, and not to Horse and Hound, which she would not have liked as much.

All that meant that the little tutorial session we were down to have immediately afterwards, all about submitting copy under a new system, suddenly took on a whole new relevance. Unfortunately almost as soon as it had started a huge lorry belonging to Yorkshire Water pulled up right outside my front door and started making a horrific noise that went on for the duration of the meeting. I had to apologise and put my mike on mute. After the meeting was over I went outside to see what they were doing, and had only just come around to the back of their van when the water main they had been trying to unblock did unblock very suddenly and water splashed all over one side of me. Fortunately it was fresh water, not sewage, and so did not smell. I barely got an apology.

Then Kirsty announced that she was coming over after work – didn’t really give me any opportunity to say otherwise. We went out to Barbary’s, where we had three glasses of wine, and then she managed to twist my arm over comments I made about Cambridge balls – I am disappointed to find that Maddie is going to one this year after all – to come back and have another bottle of wine at my place. And yet she was driving!

Perhaps not surprisingly, given such consumption, the conversation quickly turned yet again to how sad it was that our marriage ended the way it did, and how I should just have been honest with her, although obviously if I had acted in the way that she claims would have been honest we would never have had Nathan and Maddie. Only this time her monologue went a bit further. She revealed to me that for several months now she has been in fairly constant contact with Rob, the Liverpudlian guy she went out with twice, the second time just before me. She even showed me love heart emojis he has been sending her on WhatsApp. He obviously wants her to start an affair, although she doesn’t want to because he is still married. I suspect that in her heart of hearts she has worked out that if she did go with such a guy he would probably only end up ditching her later on (although it might be fun while it lasted). I sometimes wish she did get together with someone like that, as it would put less pressure on me, although I do wonder there if I am being honest with myself and what I would really think.

So needless to say the evening did not end particularly well. She went off driving in her drunken way. I scrolled aimlessly for hours until I realised it was time to go to bed.

At least today I agreed with Maddie that I would come and see her on my way back from France next week and we will go punting. She has even booked a two hour slot on next Friday afternoon.