Letters and numbers

One more week of Olympics kept us entertained, up to but not including the Closing Ceremony. No, we didn’t wait up for the speeches.

Jenny, Liam and the children sent us some sunshine from Menorca.

Our own travels took us as far as Northenden. Leslie and I joined about 15 others for the regular wander through Kenworthy Lane Woods. After taking Leslie home, I caught the bus into Manchester for another walk, starting at Aviva Studios, home of Factory International. I looked around for familiar faces, but saw nobody I knew. I decided sit and wait and while browsing Instagram, I saw a message telling me this walk had been cancelled. Well, I thought, that’s disappointing. So, had a nice cup of coffee, enjoyed the music being played in the background before setting off on a walk around town.

I didn’t have a route in mind but I saw a couple of birds waddling along and decided to follow them. And then, around the corner, I came across a whole gaggle of them, leading me all the way to Castlefield.

There are some activities that I haven’t enjoyed since I was a child, and I was delighted to relive some memories this week. Our fresh veg box included peas and my mission, which I chose to accept, was to pod them. I used to pod my Dad’s home-grown peas while sitting on the back doorstep. Today, I just sat on the sofa, indoors, enjoying the feeling and the scent of fresh peas.

Liesel, Leslie and I joined the regular walk through the woods and parks of Wythenshawe, followed by a nice cup of coffee. Except today, I had a mango and passionfruit cooler instead. Well, it was a warm day and even hotter inside the café.

Shelling peas qualified me for another job at home. Martha and William enjoy making bracelets with beads and some of our beads have letters, so they can spell their names and the names of some school friends. My mission, which I chose to accept, was to sort these letter beads in order to determine which letters we are now short of. And what a fiddly labour of love that was.

As you can see, unlike old Letraset sets from fifty years ago, there is no shortage of letter Ds here.

Another major achievement this week was, after several months of trying on and off, completing the 2048 puzzle on my phone.

2048 is a single-player sliding tile puzzle game. The objective of the game is to slide numbered tiles on a grid to combine them to create a tile with the number 2048. When you slide tiles up, down, left or right, neighbouring tiles of equal value merge into one, Two 2s become 4, two 4s become 8 etc. Each move also results in a new tile appearing in a random location, with a value of 2 or 4. Hours of fun.

Watching TV late on Thursday afternoon, suddenly I felt really cold and shivery. I went to bed and turned the electric blanket up to 11. This was the start of a more than week-long illness, during which time, I have not left the flat except for a couple of medical appointments. First thought was flu, but no. And the covid test was negative. Sordid details on request only, in triplicate and countersigned by a member of the aristocracy.