I am Famous!!!

I had been asked to be the 'well-known player' in a future The Last Word (ABSP magazine), and on Tuesday I duly completed and sent back the questionnaire that David had emailed me. It is mainly about study techniques, and it prompted me to search out the spreadsheets I had made for studying the 6+1 and 7+1 stems. These will need updating in the near future - the switch from Chambers to Collins is going to happen in mid May. Unfortunately I had created them in my lunch hours when I was working at WDF, so I am going to have to start again from scratch.

Talking of being a 'well-known player' I was shocked and stunned to discover that I have an entry in wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Gipson
I made a couple of factual corrections to it... Paul then looked to see if he had an entry - but he doesn't :)

I have had a good solid spell of studying in the last week, continuing down the 6+1 stems without using my spreadsheets, just writing the words out from memory. It is definitely needed - I am quite rusty on them. I have been colour coding the stems - red if I make up any words, pink if I miss a letter combination, blue if I miss a word but it has anagram(s) that I do get and green if I am perfect. This allows me on follow up testing/revision to concentrate on the red/pink.

Paul was away again at the weekend playing bridge. He stayed with Colin and Maureen on Saturday night - and phoned me from the Chinese restaurant. He had noted that he always seems to be away the weekend that we run out of food in the house. I was surviving on cereal and toast.

Jen and Poncho get very clingy when Paul is away. I cannot move without them leaping up and trying to follow me wherever I go. They are generally quite good at not coming upstairs now. We removed the barrier from the bottom of the stairs over a month ago, and apart from the odd morning when they decide that it is time to get up they have waited at the bottom of the stairs. Not so when I am on my own - they wait until they hear the bedroom door shut and then up they run. I come back out, tell them off and back down they run. Bedroom door shuts, ...

It was a very nice day on Saturday here, warm for the time of year and the sun was shining, and in the afternoon I got out in the garden. I weeded the patch down the side of the drive - there are lots of primroses coming through now.

I stopped to take Jen and Poncho for their afternoon walk. When I went back into the house to get them I was greeted as if I had been gone for a week, not an hour. On the way home from the walk Janet was waiting for me at her gate. She asked if I was still needing jars as she had another friend who was wanting them for their home-made chutney. I said I had enough jars for the time being. She also inquired if I would like any more winter aconites and double snowdrops. Is the pope a catholic?

After the afternoon dog walk I got back out in the garden. I had noticed that most of my labels were fading badly and needed re-writing whilst they could still be deciphered. My garden marker pen had been on its last legs (or last ink), and at the end I had actually resorted to using a biro. On rootling around in the study for my spreadsheets earlier I had found that Paul had a pack of CD writer pens that should do the job. It took me an hour clambering up and down to re-write them all, and my legs are paying for it today.

I got back out today after lunch - I had noticed a large patch of snowdrops at the bottom of the drive spreading up to the back of our sheds, but almost hidden by more sticks of autumn debris. Surprise, surprise - this turned out to be more nettle debris. I have managed to clear most of it, although I was side-tracked by trying to pull out as much of the nettle roots as possible and then again when Mr Gore and Florence (golden labrador) came walking by. He said that he was surprised at how few snowdrops I had - until I showed him the high bank! My long term plans are to divide up the large clumps and gradually populate the long bank over the next few years.
He has kindly told me that I am welcome to go round to his and dig up some winter aconites as he has several large patches.

It started to drizzle as we were chatting so he went on his way and I went back to work. Shortly afterwards it became too heavy to ignore and I was forced back indoors. I was on to my fourth sack of rubbish, and hopefully it won't take much more time to finish clearing the area.

I had been going to go to Aldi yesterday as they had cheap mini-greenhouses as one of their Sunday specials. However, when I went to start my car the battery was dead. We do have a charger/jump start thingummy but I have never used it and I wimped out. I was very pleased to find they still had a few left today along with seed/potting compost and seed trays.