Delighted to hear you have another grandchild on the way, Roger. Congratulations to all!
Very sorry to hear about Diamond Lil though. I've actually been putting off calling you to enquire about her for the past few days, simply because she and I are the only two left playing the Beau Peep Quiz regularly in recent years, and whereas I do occasionally forget to play, Lil very rarely misses a day. So, I was beginning to worry that all may not be well, but hoping the reason was more down to her taking a few weeks' vacation in some bandwidth-poor location, hence my delaying the phone call. Please pass on my best wishes and hopes for a speedy recovery. I really miss the competition and look forward to crossing swords again soon.
As for books, I can't read them. Okay, that's a ridiculous statement, but it is also true. I used to be an avid reader in my childhood up until my mid teens, when I found so many other more interesting things to do with my spare time and hormones. By the time I got around to picking up another book however, I discovered my attention span for doing so had diminished to that of a gnat's (apologies to any gnats with exceptional focus). I found my thoughts constantly drifting after a page or two, and only able to get back on track by reading the same paragraph half a dozen times or more before it sank in.
My theory is that the fault lies in the fact most books for grown-ups don't have pictures. I tend to keep the untested theory to myself though, because any time I've tried to explain it people laugh. Mostly, because of my occupation, their first thought is that I should be able to draw my own, even if only in my mind. But that is actually the problem - I spend too much time doing just that, and my focus drifts off, as it does when I'm physically drawing anything in autopilot, so it doesn't actually matter then. Holding a story line in my head is a completely different matter.
If the books had pictures, like they did when I was a kid, I wouldn't have to spend time imagining what the characters looked like as I'd have ready-made references for that. So I don't/can't read them. But that's okay. I get by.
