Exercised and tidied the house. Karaj greeted me with three hours worth of editing for the newsletter. I am not in the slightest bit excited about Sicily, and I won’t be until the newsletter is finished and I am sitting on the plane. During the course of the Sicily work my thoughts have alternated between what fantastic work it is we are doing and how beneficial it will turn out to be for all of us; and feelings of not being interested in doing the work with the other men. This comes about when I want time to myself, which I have had precious little of recently and will have none of now until the first day of rest on Thursday.
[Reading this, it is interesting to note that I ended up with more time to myself than I should have had on that Thursday. And it came at a price. Lesson: be careful what you wish for.]
Finished editing the newsletter and slowly I can begin to relax and prepare myself for Sicily. Just as we were putting the last-minute, finishing touches to Newsletter #8, Calvin and Sunil arrived. It was perfect timing. We still had errands to run and the two of them willingly obliged, with the result that we made it to the airport in time to meet up with the rest of the group. I was struck by how well it all worked out (I shouldn’t be surprised these days), because all the men checked in together and all the women did likewise. As we stood in the queue Robert made some negative comment and I picked him up on it straight away. It was important to nip his negativity in the bud, especially as we hadn’t even left England yet.
Throughout the journey the two groups kept themselves to themselves which was how it was meant to be. Karaj handed out the newsletters in the departure lounge and as I read it I realised that he had been right all along – it was a quality publication (again, why am I surprised?). At the hotel we checked in and before we went to bed Karaj had a drink in the bar. He was in a miserable mood and sat in his chair telling me what he wanted and how I should go about getting it. I took this, although I was running out of patience. Karaj later explained to me that this was nothing more than his preparation for the training and that it was only because he could rely on my full support that he could be like this.