What I call a triumph

Was dreading today, with its gruelling schedule. As it turned out, the day was not half so bad as I anticipated.

Isn't that the way? The overthinking, overfretting of seconds that loom ahead; when we reach the moment, it's like a nothing. But the fraction that slips by as a barely-recorded insignificance, then evolves to become the point life changed. Now there's no looking back.

Anyway, the gruelling schedule was to deliver Shark, Squirrel and Tiger, on time, at the British Library for a two-hour Sacred Texts workshop, then arrive at the British Museum for another assault on the Pompeii exhibition, before collecting tickets at the National Theatre for an evening performance of Othello.

When I'm stacking these activities up in the diary, sat at a cool desk under a skylight, it is all effortlessly easy. Slogging through heat-grimed London, where the Spanish-language group - a noisy gaggling mass of elbowing 14-year olds - casually knocks me into the gutter to be set upon by a taxi, twenty pigeons and an overheated Squirrel looking to vent some agro; the reality of a happy day in London should teach me a lesson. It just seems to be one I never learn.

But, surprisingly, it all went smoothly. The British Library educational workshops are first class; I assume so, anyway, as they kick the parents out. I slipped to the bookbinders in Victoria to pick up my delightful memory paper, then made it back in time to take the gritlets to the British Museum, where the magic card worked again and no-one kicked us out the Members Room at tea time.

And then Othello. It is a must see. Rory Kinnear and Adrian Lester are superb in the roles; Iago connived to make us laugh, sourly, regretfully, against better judgements, but still, I laughed; then for one terrible moment I thought it had all gone horribly wrong and Othello really had killed Desdemona. (Thank goodness she came on for the applause.) The military setting perfectly snapped the language in place, and the design of the whole reinforced the mood of a brutal, macho environment; an innocent Desdemona never could have stood against its power. Seeing theatre at its best would have justified the pain of the day. (Had there been any at all.)