Monday 22 November 2010

November

It appears that nearly a month has passed since I last blogged here and yet it doesn't feel that long. I've been doing a fair bit of cooking and blogging on my Frog End Food blog, but there never seems to be any really interesting news to post here.

There have been floods in our part of the country this last week, but luckily we weren't affected. Otterton Mill (where we're having our wedding reception next summer) was nearly flooded, but although the carpark went underwater we're pleased that recent work by the bridge over the Otter paid off and the main buildings didn't flood.

Our main contract with the company for the winter came to an end prematurely, but luckily we've had interest from several other potential clients so hopefully we'll have a new project to work on soon. In the meantime I'm having fun making a demonstration website containing an interactive map of my favourite nature reserve: Askham Bog near York. I'll post a link from here when the site's online.

Now that the family visits are over for the year we've brought some boxes down from the loft for sorting. I'm getting rid of all my old video tapes - the ones recorded from the television, but we're having fun watching some of them before I throw them away. Ian has brought down many of his parents papers and artwork (his Dad designed hovercraft) and I shall begin scanning them as soon as I've finished scanning my old photographs.

Ian and I have begun an online memory course. It's quite a long and difficult course and could take several months to complete, but the testimonials from other people who've taken it are incredible. It even includes a section on learning foreign languages - the focus in the course being on Russian so I'm very excited that I will learn some more Russian during the course. Like most other memory courses the techniques require you to visualise things. I've never been a particularly visual person so I'm finding it more difficult than Ian who naturally thinks that way, but it's gradually becoming easier.

We've been quite worried about our cat William over the last week or so as he's been hiding under unusual items of furniture and not eating at all. Obviously his nose is bothering him a lot more, but at least today we've managed to get him to eat something. He was finding it increasingly difficult to get food from his bowl without touching and hurting his nose in the process so today we put his food on a piece of newspaper and he's eaten a good meal. I suspect we'll take him to the vets in the New Year to see if they can put him on some kind of painkillers, but for now we're just happy that he's eating again.

5 comments:

  1. It's really lovely to hear your news although upsetting to know that William's not so good. Old age can be highly over-rated sometimes.

    I didn't even know that you had a food blog. Or had I just forgotten?

    Mum had a memory course called Pelmanism but I am not good at pursuing these things and the books remain in my loft after years sitting staring at me from my bookshelves.

    I realised only fairly recently ie a few years ago, just how my lack of ability to hold images in my head has hampered me in some ways. I have little or no ability to see images in my head once they have been removed from in front of my eyes. Neither do I have any ability to envisage what something might look like if described to me. I have to hold an oral knowledge of something. It's been a really odd road of discovery this last few years.

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  2. If you find any thing on the video tapes that you want to keep, but you want to get rid of the tape, then I do have a USB device for recording video to MPEG files. I'm slowly working my way through our videos but would happily stick any you find on the pile.

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  3. Thanks very much Mark - I'll bear that in mind.

    GB: I'd not heard of Pelmanism, but it looks very interesting.

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  4. Sorry to hear about William - hope he's feeling a bit better. Perhaps he's just hankering after the good old days when fish and chips came in newspaper

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  5. We got William a plate to eat from and he's doing much better. Of course he pushes half the food off the plate and on to the floor, but at least he's eating again.

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