Tuesday 13 December:

A good walk along lovely Kata Beach, a light breakfast (dieting, dieting, dieting!) and then internet office to catch up with everything.

In the afternoon met Khun Somchai, Linda Cruse's right-hand man out here, who is holding the fort tour-wise out here while she is in England seeing all sorts of important people. Somchai is lovely, but his English is only basic and our Thai is non-existant, so we struggle to communicate, but get there in the end.

The venues for the Thai Tour seem to be mostly schools, so we won't be working Saturdays and Sundays. In Phuket it looks like 2 schools a day (plus some Safe Houses/Orphanages, Sea Gypsy village, etc.) where we will only be able to do shows as the numbers are very large. But at the disabled school and the autistic school and one or two others like the Safe Houses, where there aren't so many children, hopefully we will be able to fit in some workshop stuff as well. (Having carted the parachutes and badges all the way from Sri Lanka, I am very keen to use them at at least some of the sessions!)

For the Khao Lak and Krabi/Phi Phi legs of the Tour, it looks like just one school a day, which means we could run 9 am-3m going something like: 1st part of our show, parachute games and workshops, lunch break, parachute games and workshops, Talent Show by children, final part of show from us.

I will be seeing Linda on Sunday, once she gets back from England, and we will finalise everything then. Despite the necessary date changes because not working at schools during weekends, we have still managed to fit in 23 days of touring, mostly with 2 large schools a day, so our child figures will be high. Have bunged off long email to Linda just to check that the venues Somchai has suggested really are the most needy ones. We can't do everywhere, but we must do the most important places.

Then yesterday evening I did an interview with Andy, a really nice journalist from the Phuket Gazette ( a local weekly newspaper). They will send a photographer out with us next week and then interview me more fully and do a big double-page spread in a couple of weeks, which will be very useful. I was able to pick his brain about a lot of things, which was incredibly useful - indeed I probably interviewed him more than he interviewed me - very helpful!

Wednesday 14 December:

Light breakfast and back (yet again!) at the internet office - unfortunately it is a very hot one, but it is the nearest to our base. Sending long emails off to Linda Cruse (our tour organiser)Steve Groh (Bangkok circus skills workshop leader, who is hopefully joining us for some of the Thai Tour), Trent Ark and Martha (excellent performers who are hopefully joining us for the Khao Lak and Phi Phi/Krabi legs of the Thai Tour) and Zahid Ali (manager at the lovely hotel who are going to putting us up free of charge hopefully 20 December until 10 January on Phuket Island).

My daughter Jessica must just be waking up in England, and getting ready to be collected by Chris's partner Steve and taken to Heathrow to catch her plane to Bangkok and then on to Phuket (at my personal expense I hasten to add!) She will arrive tomorrow, 15th, and be with us as a volunteer until 1 January, which will be brilliant. I haven't seen her since 15 November when I set out for Sri Lanka and I am extremely excited about seeing her again. Planning lovely massages and diving trips for her before we start work on the 20th. Am going to buy her a "welcome" lei of flowers too!

Haggis is practising his juggling on the beach, prepping up for the shows, and once I have finished here at the internet office and had a good walk along the beach and a swim, we are going to the tailors to see about getting a new show costume made for him.

Probably won't write diary again till Sunday evening when I will have seen Linda Cruse and be able to put up our finalised Tour Itinerary.