What a day! It was so nice to learn at 8:30 am - after a not too great night's sleep - that our clients from theUS would be here Monday, not Tuesday. Evidently everyone was expecting me to send them an agenda for three and a half days of workshops yesterday! Sadly, as I am not clairvoyant, I did not do this. Suzette agrees with me that we didn't know this, and we would both have killed Madame Lead Architect, had she been there. I apologised in fifty different positions to the client and told them that I would have killed me too, had I been them.

You would think the day would only get better after learning that I have about a hundred hours of work to do over the weekend. But no, we start the workshop really well, with everyone rubbishing my slides and the billing expert stomping out because it was a waste of time. After that, in fact, we started to make some progress, because they decided Suzette and I - mostly moi - were so stupid that they had better explain the whole thing in words of one syllable. So they do this in French, andI translate word by word and finally we each believe that we understand. Which is a pretty giant leap forward, so I am not altogether displeased with today. It was just very exhausting.

Then I went to the Post Office just before it closed and picked up the three parcels I have been worried about:

- Hillside Samplings tray with accessories
- Queen's Heart from just Nana
- Lady Scarlet bug needlecase and the GAST colours ofAmerica in the third package

I am far, far too exhausted to take any pictures of them, so this is a treat in store for the weekend. I just took the Lady Scarlet bug out and fondled it a bit.

I also spoke to Madame LA - in fact she called me to see how the week had gone - and instead of saying f..., f..., f.... (please remember that I used to work exclusively with men who had a fine command ofAnglo-Saxon, not the ladylike types with whom I am presently surrounded) I explained relatively rationally what was going on and told her I would have killed her at 8:30 am, but things seemed a bit better later on. I've kind of accepted that each day will bring something new and probably horrible that will mean hours and hours of work. Suzette and I have agreed to try and regard it as character-building.

The other person I spoke to was Mr Resources Director, because I had a bit of a moan at him the other day, and he called me to make sure that I hadn't slit my wrists yet. He agrees that I am handling this correctly, and says I can moan at him if I need to. Which is good, he is a person I can say practically anything to. And I think he has the worst job in the place, because everyone moans at him, sometimes for entirely specious reasons.

With that, I will sign off for today. This evening I think a little gentle stash fondling is in order, accompanied by the wine that is in the fridge - Listel Gris, a very nice pale rose - and the smoked salmon also. That may restore me enough to contemplate tomorrow.