Dear Petra

As I got into bed last night I thought of Mr Tiki and Betty out on the rocky shores of Australia, expecting their first child, building a swimming pool, and surfing.

Here in F-Park it rained all day, I went out for lunch as usual, and walked around Grey Town Suburb in the January drizzle. Later I received an email from Deb telling me in detail about 'The Photographers' treatment for breast cancer. Still can't quite believe that two people I know have this disease, that an old school friend of mine is dieing from it. I left work at about 6.40.

Vimco has been suffering from severe depression this week, there isn't any thing I can do. He says he doesn't know what is wrong.

Where as you and power pack seem happy to be getting old, I think Vimco and I are finding it hard to face up to. I keep looking back to the carefree days of my 20s, before fibroids, and cancer and Grey Town Suburb...

We dream about leaving London.. a cottage near a beach.

I spend the weekend working on my sculpture. I feel better when I'm working on something, keeping my hands busy.

Saturday night we went over to Walthamstow to see Ronnie and Donna who have both recently bought houses out there. We could sell our flat and buy a house with a garden in Walthamstow, but I decided I never would. If I'm going to live in a city I might as well live as close to the heart of it as I can. It took me long enough to get out of the suburbs in the first place. Despite it all we laughed a lot and it was good to see my old friends again. It feels like Ronnie and I have at last patched up and got over the fight we had 4 years ago. Donna has a new boy friend and seems to be very much in love, he cooked us an amazing vegan meal. As I sat in Dona's smart new house with the matching cutlery and white walls, I had to laugh and say: ' look at us we're all grown up' because it did seem like it at that moment.

Ronnie's new house was the other end of the scale to Dona's it had obviously been decorated by someone with very bad taste at the end of 70's then left to rot. They had started to pull off the wall paper and the plaster comes off as well... There is a lot of work to be done.

The sculpture has been photographed and the photos emailed to the judges in America. I've started to work on a record sleeve for a small release lathe cut 7" inch single. A lathe cut is a record cut on a lathe.. (rather than what ever they are usually cut on.) There is only one guy in the whole world that makes lathe cuts and he is based in New Zealand, the process enables him to be able to make very small runs of records. There will only be 50 of mine. I like the idea of this, and the fact the sleeves will all be hand made.

ms gunn