Diary

Before I go out tonight, I have the strongest urge to say Thank you.

I'm not especially sure why; something to do with having spent the last ten days with my family, and being so happy.

Something to do with going into 2018 with two new scars: after the replacement of my right knee, and the insertion of a heart pacemaker under my left shoulderblade.

The mystics say we should give thanks for everything. I don't think I'm quite ready to give thanks for the suffering these scars represent. But I am grateful that I live where I do, and so these operations have been possible, and for the hope that the new knee will help me walk better, and the pacemaker will stop my heart beating at twice the normal rate and exhausting me.

And grateful that somehow I managed to fit these operations and the recovery from them into the whole complicated process of finishing my EVE with Chris Goode and then rehearsing and performing her with the help of Susan Worsfold and the amazing National Theatre of Scotland in Edinburgh's Traverse during the Fringe and then at the Glasgow Citizens' afterwards.

I am so inexperienced as an actress that it amazes me I can do such things at all, never mind hold audiences and take such profound pleasure in doing so.

And thank you the Queen Jesus Companies in Scotland & Brazil & Uruguay & Argentina for supporting me as I performed the show in English at the beginning and the end of the year.

For your courage in Brazil, Renata Carvalho and Natalia Mallo, in keeping on performing the show all year in spite of the hatred the show inspired and all the attempts to stop it happening.

And thank you, Fabiana Fine, for your courage in stepping out into the unknown, and performing the show so beautifully.

It was amazing that us three Jesuses could be together in Buenos Aires and Montevideo. I hope somehow it happens that we can perform together next year.

And I loved working the Royal Exchange and Graeae on the production of my translation of The House Of Bernarda Alba. It was so hard and so satisfying to make that show fully accessible to everybody and I'm so proud of how it turned out.

Proud of all three of my Lorca translations in the one volume published by Nick Hern Books.

Proud to be named one of the eminent women of the year by the Saltire Society and Glashow Women's Library.

Proud of my daughters and my sons in law and my grandson and the wee bump the size of a cabbage kicking away so vigourously in my daughter's womb.

I can't wait to meet her. Happy to greet 2018.