Isita had a fabulous day today with a wonderful stream of visitors starting with Tante Joosje, then an artist who came to do some lino printing, a mobile library, then Dorothy and Chantal, whose electronic devices she ruthlessly commandeered.

She was free from all her tubes all afternoon so I took her down to the Lagoon café and then we wandered down Lambs Conduit Street in the afternoon sun in her pyjamas and bunny rabbit slippers. 

Back in the room she conked out after only a couple of chapters of the book I am reading her. Called Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls, it is an occasionally inaccurate but nevertheless engaging collection of vignettes of women and girls who have taken their own path in life. 

Some of them have made a big impression on her. She liked the story of Joan Jett because people told her band the Runaways they were too young.

 “So what” the band shouted.  And too loud: “they just played louder”. 

 Now as soon as she can get hold of my mobile, Isita opens the Subway Surfer app and plays it to a sound track of the Runaway’s 1978 punk rock classic ‘Cherry Bomb’. Of course she has learned the words:

Hello Daddy, 

Hello Mom,

I’m your ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-cherry bomb.

Hello world,

I’m your wild girl.

I’m your ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-cherry bomb.