Reggie is staying with me this week and no doubt my step count will increase. Victoria returned to Twickenham after lunch, it will be her last week at school before the Easter break. As I had Reggie staying, I decided to abstain from Bridge, it will be the same next week too, as we will be in Portugal for a few days holiday.

It was a good week on Maximo Secrets. I posted ten articles on Linear, not quite bringing that subject area to a close because I have one more article to finish off, a long one. Each weekday I was over the one thousand views per day for the first time. I thought I had just fallen short on the Friday and then there was an adjustment some days later and I noticed Friday had just scraped through at 1,002 views. I have had several weeks where four of the five days were over the one thousand views, and annoyingly a couple of them where the day falling short was not the Friday which traditionally is the lowest day of the week. It was also a new record for the number of visitors in a week, nudging just above the 1,800 mark.

On LinkedIn I finally got to 2,500 followers. It has been stuck one short for more than two weeks and to put that in perspective normally 10-15 followers are added each week.

On ‘The Diary of a Digital Nobody’ website I found a way of reversing the blog posts so that the diary now starts from Week 1 rather than being reverse chronological, showing the latest post first. I also spent a while peering at images to see whether I could see the difference between an original image and one that had been compressed by GIMP, one of the growing software applications I’m needing for my podcast. The compression does make a difference to the file sizes and to my eye and on my laptop, there is nothing noticeable, and so as the pages will load faster with compressed images that will be the way I shall proceed from now on. Now that I have reworked the logos and the few images, I can now think about adding compressed photos to each of the weeks in the diary to give each page a little more interest.

Over a couple of midweek evenings, I finally sat down and documented my podcasting objectives. In first place is the desire to create the digital scrapbook, in second the weekly diary, and then my podcasting journey and Maximo Bite Size, you might say third equal. It will be interesting to revisit this in a couple of months to see whether anything has changed. My biggest challenge will be actually getting down to recording the podcast rather than just writing what I would say.

This week I’ve been looking to make some additional payments to my pension and to consolidate some ISAs. You can go back and use any pension allowances for the previous three tax years but only to a limit of £40K per year, which is fine by me. Working out what to do and then falling back on the help from another Andrew who helped set up the pension, it looks as if it will all go through before the end of the tax year. Then in a couple of weeks I’ve got one final ISA that matures to move into something that will give a little bit more interest, but which is still probably losing value against the rate of inflation by 4%, or more. Better to have it, than not.

I’m determined to do my tax return early this year instead of in the last week of January just before the deadline, and I’m determined to try and get an understanding of the various pension pots that we collectively have from the various employments over 40 years. I don’t think it is enough which is why I will carry on working for a few more years. I’ll also need to see whether it is worth deferring my state pension, someone told me recently that if you start drawing down on a pension then the maximum amount you can put into a pension is very much reduced. I ought to know all of this, state pension date in now less than two years away.

In the garden something has been nibbling the primroses breaking them off the stem just below the flower. We have a lot of primroses in the garden, and last year was a bumper year. Most of the areas haven’t got going yet but several of the ones in the newly weeded bed have been stripped bear, very annoying. One night just before bed as the dogs were in the garden, I heard something over on the new path, quite a large hedgehog, have you been nibbling the primroses, I thought.

On Thursday I looked at the bird feeder on the way downstairs and there was a Great Spotted Woodpecker, much bigger than the sparrows that were also feeding. I also saw my first butterfly; I think a Red Admiral but can’t be sure. Thats just reminded me, Paul our neighbour sent a video of the local barn owl that came flying up from the bottom of our fields at dusk and then turned to the left to head down our garden hedge, most likely to their roost in the loft area above the stable block. Unfortunately, the video is no longer available, it is no longer on my iPhone, unless it got automatically downloaded to Apple Photos. Downloading photos and sorting them out is another thing I ought to get to grips with especially if I am thinking of upgrading my phone at the end of the year.

Victoria arrived back early evening Friday with Badger, Olivia’s black Cockapoo. Olivia is off to Mexico for a couple of weeks, and we have Badger to stay until Harry and Olivia come down for the first half of the Easter weekend.

On Saturday morning it was sunny first thing, with no wind, and I made my mind up to get back in the garden. By the time I started I needed two jumpers. I’ve started to clear the grass from the lawn edging working from the corner of the house down and up by the side of the patio. There is not much to show for four hours on my hands and knees. Clearing the paths will be needed if I am going to start to use up the stones that are still on the driveway.

After lunch Victoria left to visit Polly in Bristol leaving Reggie and Badger in my care. They hung around the back door for a couple of hours waiting for Victoria to return and resting from playing together all morning.

Now with my new website up and running I’ll start to build it towards becoming my digital scrapbook. Back in 2013 and 2014 I started to learn about blogging with a site I called Paperback Secrets. After an hour or so I managed to find and connect to the old site and started copying over the first couple of reviews I did, including the shorter review I posted on the Waterstones site, the largest bookseller in UK not to succumb to Amazon. Working out the formatting took a while, but I am now set to copy over the other book reviews.

In the late afternoon, the dogs and I went to inspect the valley. There is nothing new to report, signs of a few primroses, quite a big area of wild garlic, and a bigger area of nettles, and other things which we’ll have to wait for more growth before being able to identify them. I’m hoping that there will be some bluebells, I think Spa Wood has some. The new hedge is showing signs of growth, but I can’t tell yet whether all the saplings are still alive.

Mixology will be one of the other pages for the digital scrapbook. I made myself a Grasshopper on Saturday and then when Victoria had returned on Sunday, she had a Cosmopolitan and I tried a Cherry Alexander. Photos have been taken of each cocktail, but the Cherry Alexander will probably look like I am drinking milk or cream, I think the palest tinge of pink will be lost.

Step count for the week was just over the 70,000. Without the golf I would be woefully short, and that was even with Reggie staying the week. I’m thinking I should create some Fitbit targets particular in the weeks when I am in Filleigh on my own, alternatively get out for a late round of golf, the clocks went forward this morning, soon it will not be dark until after 8:00p.m. The golf on the East course in the wind was not too bad, mostly bogeys, four pars, a couple of bad holes and a few monster drives again, a score in the low 90s.