Rushed off my feet this is as good a way to end the week as any. I write mid flight 2,000 miles from where next these feet touch earth: Africa. The SA Times announces the arrival through a writer whose percipience startles. Alongside me across the aisle is Nadia Javed my stage and lighting manager and behind me Gill Lloyd my project Manager with Chief her husband and Zani their daughter.

We have left the wintry aesthetic of London for the matter of fact beauty of South Africa. Something Dark is what brings us together. It’s on stage six nights a week for six weeks from October 27th at Market Theatre, Johannesburg. As the plane descends onto African earth I think to myself there is no other place on earth I would rather be.

The week behind has been a moving one. Kate Daudy’s war dress is going up at the Southbank centre where Poetry International is about to begin. I spent a wonderful afternoon with Tracy K Smith. I have attended two of Jude Kelly’s World Of Women meetings and they have been mind blowing: Listened to a talk by a woman who was Bob Marley's tour manager. I had a great dinner with the Childrens Commissioner Maggie Atkinson. Cape Farewell have returned to our office – The Riversde Rooms – from their Arctic excursion. It's the first since I travelled there with them. The final thing to say about the last week is I have succeeded as far as possible in getting New Deal OF The Mind to come to South Africa through its head Martin Bright and his incredible benefactor.

The plane lands and I pick up the car at the airport and drive to my apartment which is two streets from where Mandela lives in his more salubrious Gauteng residence. It is the perfect time of year to be here. It is the time of the Jacaranda trees of Jozzie and they have burst into full proud purple bloom and even laid a carpet of jacaranda blossom in the driveway to greet me.