Tuesday 11th March

Woke today to find that someone had had run a roller over the sea during the night, it was still flat but instead of a bright blue gloss finish, it was now a gun metal blue with a stippled finish and although it is warm, the sky is a mass of cotton wool clouds, with the odd patch of blue showing through. This is not the end of the good weather, it is not the beginning of the end, but it is the end of the beginning (apologies to Winston Churchill). Downhill all the way now (temperature wise) to Japan. Talks today Life and times in politics Michael Howard and Graphology (handwriting analysis) Dianne Simpson. Both very good and very entertaining. Michael had some very funny anecdotes in what we were expecting to be a rather dry talk. And Dianne mixed humour in with some very revealing aspects of famous (and infamous) people. She had samples of Peter Sutcliffe’s handwriting, from the days leading up to a killing, on the day of a killing and the days after which she displayed on the screen. As he was a delivery driver they had lots of examples, which they analysed in detail after he had been committed. And weirdly the same changes occur today when he approaches and goes through a psychotic period (though of course they hide all the potential weapons when he does). She had us all do writing under various conditions showing how our writing is influenced by circumstances and after having us write a sentence, accurately (in both mine and Carol’s) told us some of our character traits from things like the positioning of the dot over the i and the lead in (and out) tails on letters.