This month I have been mostly...

Doing:

My main passion at the moment is visiting the local beaches to collect sea glass and pottery shards. I've been having great fun, finding lovely things, getting exercise, and all without spending any money! And at the start of the month I went to a vintage kilo clothing sale in St Andrews where I was able to get some great bargains! Other than that I haven't been doing much as I had the flu cold that's going about (stealing an expression from the Chalet School there!).

Sadly my auntie's dad died this month, and I attended his funeral. He was a lovely man who we used to see every Christmas at my auntie and uncle's house, and I thought of him like an honorary grandad after my own grandad died.

We were face-fit tested for our dust masks at work and it was rather a surreal experience. Imagine wearing a large white hood over your head while bowing over repeatedly - we felt like we were being inducted into a secret society! And all the time you are breathing through your mouth to see if you can detect the bitter vapour that is being pumped into the hood!

Reading:

I have finally finished two books that I have been reading for a very long time! Fingers in the Sparkle Jar by Chris Packham was full of such descriptive language that I felt I really had to take my time over it, and I've been reading it since about October! And, even worse, I had started reading Josephine Tey: a life by Jennifer Morag Henderson a year before that! It was such a well-researched book full of interesting information, that it took me a long time to get through it, although I really enjoyed both of these books! I finally succeeded in finishing them by committing myself to reading 5 pages of each a day, keeping one at work and one at home. This meant the task seemed less overwhelming.

I have also been continuing my Chalet School re-read, and have now reached the final 10 books which is making me a bit sad! But I can always start at the beginning again. I'm on track to finish them before May which is a year since I started.

Watching:

I'm keeping on the nostalgia theme by continuing my re-watch of Knight Rider, and my parents and I have been watching the first two series of Teachers. And I'm loving Back in Time for Tea which was filmed near my friend Margaret's family home! 

I thoroughly enjoyed Spiral as usual, and am glad to hear it may be coming back for another series (though how they will go on from the situations some of the characters are in, I don't know!). I haven't got fully into Modus, I think partly because some of it is in English and I keep missing the dialog when the subtitles disappear! I'm undecided on whether I'll continue watching Marcella.

I've been having early nights ever since the flu cold thing, so I've fallen behind on Call the Midwife and haven't even started the new series of The X-Files!