Over the last few days I have used every spare moment, of which there have been not enough, volunteering to put together the programme for an English/French/Polish dance event taking place this weekend. I sighed in relief as it went to print this morning but I badly want to run a workshop for performers about photo resolution. None of the 17 photos that the dancers and musicians sent me was print quality and when I explained the problem, I was sent only one that was OK. Of the rest, the largest was 87Kb and the smallest was 9Kb. I have this problem again and again and again with creative people who don't know how to promote themselves.

From Friday, I will be hosting one of the dancers. She's from Grenoble and I have never met her before, so I planned that today, after a delivery over the back wall of more sand, cement and slate, I would tidy and clean. My shed contents are only very gradually migrating from the kitchen floor into the relocated shed, and the inside of my house has taken a battering over the last few weeks with all the mud walked through, the materials wheelbarrowed in and the rubbish hauled out.

But that plan was ditched when my brother phoned to say he'd come over to Oxford to look at the bricks I've offered him for his new building project. It was brilliant to chat with him and go out for lunch together. Then we measured, counted and photographed my three piles of red bricks which other people would find indistinguishable (yes, we share both nature and nurture). It seems he can use all of them. Of my spare bricks that were fit only for making paths not walls, I've given away all but 25 so now I just need to sell the spare yellow and orange ones and my garden will start to seem a bit less of the builders' merchant it's looked like for the last five years.

Right, tidying and cleaning...