Pi wakes up and I wake up, walk sock-footed downstairs to the office to make coffee, walk sock-footed back upstairs to find shoes and a sweater: it's cold in the mornings, like camping. Coffee in hand, I count out 44 sheets of BFK and walk down the road to the barn where the guillotine and board chopper are. The guillotine is electric but ancient, iron, noisy; it was a little frightening at first (I like to be in control of the blade, thanks) but now I'm slicing through reams of paper like it's no big thing.

The aim is to get the paper cut and the damp-pack prepared in time to start printing when Laura comes in at nine: page four verso in the morning, page two recto in the afternoon, and then it will be four down, five to go. Maybe we should print a big one tomorrow, I say to Laura in the evening; maybe we should do a big one because then the big one can dry and we can see how long it takes to do a big one. Then we can plan better.

She says nothing for a minute.
It makes me laugh, she says next, that you plan things out in excruciating detail and then change your mind every five minutes.
Then she says: I think maybe you don't want to print the small ones because you'd have to cut more paper in the morning.

Three hours of printing together and already she has me pegged.