In the 14 months that I’ve been doing this I’ve never missed a day but today has been an exceptionally toughie. I’ve been out at work between 8am and midnight and have only been outside for fleeting moments as I’ve dashed from one place to the next. For some reason, everything I’ve done has been more complicated than it first appeared to be and so has caused me to end up dashing from our office to Cheam (a suburb of London around three miles from our offices) in time to meet our client at a viewing studio there.

Unfortunately all didn’t go to plan and the studio was all locked up when we arrived and the owner wasn’t due to arrive for another hour or so….we’d not let them know we were planning to meet there early. It gave us a good excuse to pop to the pub for an hour and this sign was just outside the door of the pub. It has been the only photo I’ve taken today.

I get loads of grief from David when I can’t spend time planning and taking superb photos every day – the difference between his work and mine is that I have huge time pressures each day and I work very long hours, whereas he works relatively short hours and, no matter what he’s got on he seems to be able to find time to do this thing. So, you will see the quality of my photos is patchy – sometimes good, sometimes weak but always sharp and always relevant to my day.

I am glad to have had the chance to record that I was in Cheam because I do feel that I have had a real triumph here today.

My professional life is hugely stressful and I have to deal with people with all sorts of illnesses and hear their experiences. I have covered subjects as diverse as the emotional impact of terminating a pregnancy right through to what they think of a new ad for an indigestion remedy.

Today I have been fretting all day about moderating a group discussion with seven men all with an extremely embarrassing condition (that I can’t mention). It could have all gone horribly wrong. It could have been that they got there and then got tongue tied and too embarrassed to discuss it with me, a younger woman. One of my colleagues, when I told him we were going to tackle this subject in a group environment, said ‘I’d NEVER cover that subject in a group – you need to persuade the client to do depth interviews (one-on-one). I felt we couldn’t do that so went ahead with groups.

In the event my seven men were fantastic. We had a bit of a joke about football at the start and from that moment on, they were away. I barely had to prompt them, they just splurged out their experiences and feelings on the subject. In fact, they seemed to find it cathartic. One man said he’d never discussed the subject with anyone before, not even his wife. I came away feeling exhilarated that I’d been able to ‘pull it off’ and with a couple of very happy clients.

It’s about 40 miles from Cheam to my home and after leaving there just before 11pm and a small detour to Bracknell to drop my client in his hotel, I arrived home just shy of ‘pumpkin hour’. Today will be much the same. I will be working until 11.30pm and then up at the crack of sparrows to pull together a fast-debrief for 10.30am tomorrow morning – I’m not sure quite why I agreed to that one but I did so that’s that!!!

I guess you’d say that’s the price I pay for being a ‘corporate whore’.