Saturday 8th August 09

Quite an early start as I had planned on getting the 8.57 tram down to the station, but I was 5 minutes from Ali's house when I suddenly thought 'where's my hat' and realised that I'd left it at Ali's house. So I rushed back and found it and asked Janet, Ali's PA, if she would ring a taxi for me, as I knew I'd never reach the tram in time and there's only two per hour, so the next one wouldn't get me to the 9.44 train on time.

So I got a taxi, had a good chat to the taxi driver, and was at the station by 9.20, in good time to buy a ticket to Warrington. The journey was pretty smooth and quiet until a couple got on with a large plastic pet carrier, which didn't contain a pet, but did have a handbag in it. This caused quite a few humorous comments. I hope they picked up their kittens and got them home safely. I enjoyed chatting to Jean, half of the Jean/Martin/Petcarrier couple.

I rang Philip, my Warrington City Centre management handler when I got to Warrington at 11am, and he met me and we walked up to the place where I was due to work at midday for three hours. There was a little gazebo up, in an area surrounding a circular water feature... it looked good enough for me. I had my sandwich at the nearby office, got changed and started work before 12. I had a reasonable response, not a huge crowd, but a good trickle of people all the time, many spending quite a lot of time with me, including one couple who spent at least two hours sitting on the edge of the water feature and they both joined in from time to time. Philip hovered around for much of the day, seemed happy that I was engaging enough people and doing what I was supposed to. The giveaway balloon models were a big hit, I had to restrict them to people who had given one of the skills a try. So lots of people trying the four-wheel unicycle, and several got as far as the one-wheeler! I had one new juggler who came to me with the ability to juggle two balls in one hand, and saying he couldn't do three... but left with a good three-ball cascade ability, and a couple of potential devilstick newbies who were pleased with their new-found skill.

I worked non stop, and at 2.40 Philip nodded to me, but I continued til 3 as I knew that the train wasn't that soon after 3 and the station was very close. I had an ice cream and a fruit juice drink at the station, to cool off... The train was at 3.44, destined to Scarborough. Chatted to Danny a tattooist, then to Nanda a software tester, and at Leeds my good friends Roswitha and Peter got on, which was a real treat for me. So the journey home went really quickly, and I was home at about 6pm. A very enjoyable day working.

And how lovely to see my family, who were all fine and Gill had made pizza for us all for tea.

I sorted out my email password problem, mostly. Thunderbird is still demanding a password and not accepting it, but allowing me to get my emails anyway! Very odd.