Improved comprehension

A quiet Sunday for me, apart from walking with Clare to St John's, to celebrate the eight o'clock Eucharist. It was a very cold day, and we didn't venture out after that. I found a book of charming folk tales in Spanish which Kath loaned me last year. I read a couple of stories and then mislaid it for a very long time. This afternoon, I completed reading it in one go, finding now that my memory for vocabulary and sentence construction has much improved, so I can read and make sense of text with only occasional references to the parallel English text for obscure ancient words. I was quite cheered to realise this. Obsessive daily Duo Lingo daily practice seems to be paying off. I wonder what else I'll be able to read with enjoyment when I get to Spain this time?

Owain was meant to come over yesterday, but his plans were thwarted by disruptions in the regular Bristol to Cardiff train service, so he gave up in frustration, and came over to see us for a couple of hours this afternoon instead. So, I was finally able to give him the bottle of Gamay de Genève, I bought for him in Duty Free when I flew home from there three weeks ago. He wanted to open it and drink it with me, but I sent him home with it, as I am off wine for Lent. It's not much of a struggle to do so these days as I seem to get more sensitive to the after-effects of wine drinking the older I get.

Owain has given his techno music and culture blog a complete makeover, with new graphics and user interface, to make his expanding content more accessible to his growing readership. It's very simple, not at all flashy. It works well. He is talking about moving the site to another ISP later in the year. At that point he'll have no more use for the server capacity I've been hiring from Servage.net for his use and mine over the past ten years. I stopped making use of it altogether when I retired, not least because free Google and Microsoft storage capacity became more readily available, and I had no new need to develop website management skills, or fill the server with content. All part of simplifying one's life.