“You’ve got all that time,” they said. “Why not learn something new?” Great. An opportunity to finally study Cornish. I have downloaded lesson one. There are 48 lessons. Lesson one will take me like about a year. At least. It is unbelievably complicated, especially for someone like me who has zero ability at languages. I passed French O level second time around. I even got a half decent grade but that was because the results were worked out on a curve of natural distribution and I was sitting it with all the others who had failed (remember the days when you could fail exams, instead of getting a grade 1 for putting your name on the paper?) the first time round. I did Latin for two years before it gave me up. It wasn’t even the sort of Latin that might be useful in an historical context and I have long since forgotten how to say, “take the spear to Caesar’s camp.” In my defence, when my daughter did French, I was amazed how much basic vocabulary I had retained after 2½ decades. This proved to be a disadvantage when we were in Canada as I could translate ‘Beware of’ but not the following word that specified the particular hazard, in this case deer, as I found out later. My one attempt to ask for directions in French was met with stony silence.

So what have I learnt today? The honest answer is nothing. The spelling is totally counter intuitive and apparently ‘mutates’ – please don’t ask. Oh, Hello is Dydh da. I will have forgotten that by tomorrow – or probably in about ten minutes time actually. Might do what I did when the children were learning to read and stick post-it notes on the furniture. The only consolation is that it makes learning the piano seem like child’s play. Now to remind myself how to spin.

Really pleased that there is a special version of the Christmas Puzzle to entertain us, though I am struggling to fit all these activities in.

So today I am a year older than I was yesterday. To be fair, my birthdays aren’t usually a riot of celebratory activity but under normal circumstances, I would be with one descendant or another. Martha had acquired yesterday’s shopping delivery for me. This meant that she had control of the list. When it arrived (with only one item missing) she had added in various birthday goodies: banners, a badge, balloons, party hats, daffodils.  We duly had a virtual cake cutting ceremony. This was in two parts as Edward couldn’t wait until afternoon for his cake. The grandchildren wore their party hats and helped me blow out candles.