The week started as usual with bridge on Monday and Tuesday evening. We started badly in both, more so on the Monday where we picked-up too many outright bottoms. The second half of each evening was much better rising to fourth of eight but still below 50% on the Monday and just under 59% on the Tuesday.

I need to get my digital diary working with a page for bridge notes so that when I make mistakes, I have a place where I can make some notes. Inverted Minor would be one of the first posts. I do have a Microsoft Word document that I created a few years back with 40+ pages of bridge notes, which I would like to convert to a set of posts. However, the big challenge will be how to create the symbols for the four suits, I just tried a cut and paste, and this didn’t work.

The podcasting week seemed to go backwards this week; I didn’t get My Podcasting Journey written on time and it has taken me a few weeks to write this note. Perhaps this was a reaction to the effort of getting the website for ‘The Diary of a Digital Nobody’ operational.

One positive aspect of the podcasting week was the Office Hours session on Tuesday with Cesar Abeid which finished just before I had to sign on to bridge. This was great and inspiring, Cesar thought that ‘The Diary of a Digital Nobody’ would get more listeners than ‘Maximo Bite Size’, we’ll see, I’m not sure where the audience will come from.

There didn’t seem to be many listeners, and I was waiting for others to ask a question, and so I asked another and somehow, I took over the role of the interviewer. At the end I rashly offered to write the notes. I got just as much enjoyment from listening to the recording and there were several occasions where I felt a smile, or I had a little chuckle.

Another positive was that in my semi-conscious state on Sunday morning I felt the bed move, Victoria was laughing as she read some of the earlier weeks of My 2022 Diary. She thought it was very good but could be made better if I removed some of the boring pieces about bridge and golf and considered a more comic choice of words to turn a smile into a laugh for the reader or listener. “It’s just the sort of thing Mr Pooter would say”, she said. Well, I understood her point and perhaps I can tweak the text when I start to turn words into a podcast episode, but I do not want to make myself look ridiculous, I thought.

Maximo Secrets hit a new high water mark this week. I thought I was going to get over the line on Tuesday, but I fell just short of my previous best which had been set two years before. Tuesday eventually recorded 1458 views for the day, but Wednesday broke this by some way, 1763 views. I think this will be my record for some time; I’ll just be pleased to get over 1500 again this year.

I was hopeful for the views count for the week, but no record was set although I did get over the 6000 mark again. I’ve still not managed to have a whole week where Monday to Friday have each exceeded 1000 views.

Martin came over to discuss a potential project with me on Monday. I can’t really talk about it here but hopefully if I can pull it off it will keep me gainfully employed for a few more months. At the end of the afternoon, I took him down to the valley and back up by the new hedge which is showing signs of green activity. He thought it was great.

Victoria was down with Reggie on Friday night; I had just finished work the moment they came in through the door. It’s been hard work all week working on a bid with IBM where we had been squeezed with the time we had for our response. I’m so close to finishing the set of articles on Linear Assets after so many weeks, I just want to get it finished, and move on to something new, but the bid will cause a delay.

On Saturday I continued with the weeding of the beds around the patio, now starting in front of Vic’s wing. I think I’ll have to start with the path edging so that I can get some of new stones down, I still have thirteen tons to shift. It was nice to be out in the garden with a bit of sunshine, although four hours seems to be a limit, I think more than this and I’ll be too stiff for golf the following day.

Around the garden there are splodges of yellow and white where the early daffodils are reaching their peak. The bulbs planted along the new path are beginning to turn from green shoots to flowers, the Winter Aconites around the old Rhododendron are giving small patches of yellow. The Snakeshead Fritillary in the bulb area near the treehouse are doing well, Muscari Armeniacum are beginning to show a bit of blue, after a few tentative weeks the red camelia is now pushing out more flowers, and the big Magnolia by the front porch is beginning to put on a show, now we must pray that we don’t get a hard frost.

On Sunday afternoon it was golf as usual, and particularly windy today. Not a good score, 48 out on the East and the same on the back nine for a 96 score, one lost ball and five pars. On the return, the wind had started to drop off, but it was still assisting. I managed to smash a 300 yard drive down the 18th when no one was watching, past the black and white marker post on the left, I managed to make the par. While overall I thought it had been a poor round considering my more recent scores this year, making five pars, and hitting a few giant drives made me feel it had been a good afternoon.

We were all over to Pog’s house for dinner on Sunday evening, but because I was late back, we had gone in two cars. This was my first introduction to Frankie a French bulldog puppy recently acquired. It has a distinctive face; I can’t imagine it would be at the top of the list on the most desired breed of dog, I even think Reggie was wondering what to make of her. She was asleep for most of the time we were there.

Reg, Pog’s partner from the Philippines is a chef, so the food was great. There had been substantial progress on the house renovations since the last time I had visited, the second reception room with wood burner had been converted to a library with all round shelves that our carpenter Steve had put in, an excellent job, housing many of Pog’s books, mostly historical hardbacks. I was tired by the time I had driven the 45 minutes back home from Lynton.