On holiday soon

Here I am, last post before going on holiday to Cumbria for a week. Long ago I thought I'd like to become a writer, and made some tentative steps in that direction. One of the bits of advice I was given was to write every day - it didn't matter what, just write something. At the time, I felt on some days there simply wasn't anything to write. Now I have more rubbish to put down than there are hours in the day, and I don't think it's because my life is inherently more interesting.

Christmas passed very pleasantly - when I went to lock up for the night, I discovered the front door still locked from the previous night. The pheasant was delicious; we didn't eat the guinea fowl at the time but it's good cold too. Both taste similar to chicken but with an extra something. The state of the kitchen wasn't too disgraceful at all, but I'm still washing up.

Most interesting present was the Internet radio (Mr A's idea). We now have more radios of various types than is strictly necessary: three ordinary tuners (in my room, the living room and the garage), three digital (bedroom, Mr A's room and kitchen) and a spare with shortwave for holidays, in a drawer somewhere. The digital reception in the kitchen is so bad that we sometimes can't use that radio, so we are trying the new Internet one there. It works off the wireless router, there's a delay while the station buffers, and the sound quality is a bit tinny, but at least we can listen to Radio 4 whenever we want (as long as broadband is there). An added bonus is the ability to Listen Again whenever a radio station offers this feature. The downside is that you have to press a LOT of buttons to change to a channel that isn't preset, select 'listen again' or whatever. If it works out, I get to try the digital one in my room.

Today I need to assemble belongings for the week away, and with no pressure to revise I'll probably do more revision that I've done in the last week. It's going quite well; I've done about half and it's about halfway through the holiday. As the actual exam dates approach I expect that extra tension that should allow me to concentrate a bit better, and in Cumbria I won't have the Internet to distract me, just Mr A and Lola II. And Marcus. And Helen and Gail...