Free yourself script with feather and birds

We played Shrewsbury on Tuesday to eleven people and a man selling hot chestnuts from a barrow, who stayed for the whole of the second half. Mr Calloway has finally sold the big top to a scrapyard in Crewe, so the canvas lies in a heap behind the lorries like a sail that gave up. The horses went first in March. Then the tumbling clown, then Dora, who had the knife-throwing act and was simply tired of being thrown at.

The doves are the last of it. Eleven of them, in the wicker cage by my bunk, and every morning Calloway counts them the way a man counts money he is not sure he has. Last Thursday he opened the door to check the water and three flew off over the car park before anyone could shout. I expected him to be angry. He just stood there with the bowl, watching them climb over the hedge, and said, "Well, there's the act, then." I have never heard a man sound so relieved.

I've kept one feather. It came off the grey one, Pilot, who was always first to the perch. I've tucked it inside the lid of the tin where we kept the ticket stubs, next to the photograph of you on the high wire in 1979, arms out, not a bit frightened. You were always the brave one.

Tomorrow we load for Stafford. Calloway says there is one more booking, a fête in a village with a church and a duck pond, and he has promised the vicar a flying display. I told him there's nothing left to fly. He said that was the point, and I think he meant it kindly.

Write soon. Tell me you're still up on the wire somewhere, even if it's only in your kitchen.

Love, Ada