Thursday 19th 11.30pm

This evening, for the first time in a couple of days, started feeling better, so hope am over the flu hump. Felt rough this afternoon, but went round to my friend Patricia’s flat and drank herbal tea. Talking about Blasted, parts of which she’s translated for the workshop, and the curious quantity of things she’s crammed into the last ten years of life. She and her husband Ron, who’s currently in England, run a language school. At the age of 15, when I first met her, she already spoke English like a native speaker – when I first met her I thought she was British, although I was the first English person she’d ever met. Now she has two kids and enough history to last a lifetime. She’s also broke. Her phone’s cut off, Ron can’t afford to fly back to Uruguay, but she doesn’t seem overly concerned, saying she’s a bit stressed, but confident it will be OK, having been through far worse.

Didn’t start rehearsing until 7.30 and for the first half an hour Ana and I just chatted and caught up, which was good as we’ve hardly actually talked to one another about anything apart from the play for weeks. At 8 V arrived and we did work on 3, then ran the scene. Felt as though the 40 second pause they were taking at the front of the scene was perhaps a little indulgent. At the end of rehearsal, Ana and I had a slight misunderstanding about whether we’d ever do a full run of the play before production week, but it resolved itself. I blamed her lack of clarity… with her and V noting that of course it had nothing to do with my still faulty Spanish…

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