My daughter showed me a course brochure that was not the one I had been leaving on the table. I wanted to look pleased and must have looked surprised, because she started explaining very quickly why it interested her. That made me sad. I have worked so she can choose, yet she was defending her choice to me before I had even said anything. I did feel disappointed for a moment, not in her, in the picture I had already made of her life. Then I got curious about what she liked in this other course. We talked for a long time. The brochure is beside the kettle now, hers on top of mine, and I'm glad she brought it out.

I took the longer walk to church and the air was good on my face, not the warm, busy air of the machine hall. My arms swung instead of reaching for fabric, and for a while I could feel my whole stride rather than only the part of me sitting at the machine. I wasn't hurrying for a taxi, which made the distance feel different. By the time I arrived I was warm enough to sit without my cardigan. During the singing I stood straight without reminding myself. Then I came home hungry and ate before starting anything else. My mother said walking must have done me good. The food did some of the work too, and I was not interested in separating their contributions.

I keep remembering one sentence from a meeting where we tried to prevent retrenchments, as if there is still time to offer it differently and keep one more person in a job. I can remember the figures, who spoke, where everyone sat, but the version I argue with at night always leaves out what the company had already decided. It makes me both more responsible and more powerful than I actually was. Knowing that does not stop the replay. Tonight I was meant to read something else and found myself drafting an answer to a manager who is not in the room. I closed the notebook. The argument continued without paper for a while, perfectly capable of wasting time on its own.