We are tuning up nicely for the 15th.

We tested the building last weekend with the families and friends of the Bluecoat's staff and all those that worked on the building project. While the kids ran around the garden and the central hub, climbed the furniture and drew in the garden room, the espresso bar poured tea and coffee and served cake while ‘upstairs’ the restaurant bar was humming (my early lunch time favourite is the poached egg with mushrooms on toast).

9 days to go and the line between ecstasy and agony is very fine.

I came to work to find Lynne, who looks after our tenants, in the middle of the front courtyard grinning like the Cheshire cat. The first tenant was moving in. One of our creative retail tenants, Landbaby, was starting to fit out their space.

Standing in the hub I can see through the window a tree moving, not swaying, but moving from one side to the other. Rushing to the window I find that the garden has arrived and three new small trees are the first soft planting.

Do you want to open the Bluecoat? I asked a few weeks ago in my blog who should open the building and as no one fancied a celebrity, we thought the best idea was to put a ribbon round the building and let everyone cut it and so that is what we will do. All we need now are people to do the cutting.

Crumble or crème brulee, which would you serve at a dinner for funders of the redevelopment?

I’ve just had a test meal after which we had to decide what to serve. Not a bad hours work you would think but the chef is so amazing and the food is so good that you aren’t deciding what you like, I loved it all, but having a weird conversation about what guinea fowl and steak might ‘say’ about the Bluecoat. It reminded me of the exercises you do at re-branding, ‘if the Bluecoat was a pudding what would it be?’.