The rain in Spain

... falls mainly in Almuñecar it seems. The weather was absolutely dismal this morning when I went into town to shop and post a parcel. It changes quickly too though. In mid-afternoon the clouds moved on and the sun struggled through for an hour or two. I went for a blipstroll in the garden while I had the opportunity, and Mystère quickly found the only patch of sunshine on the terrace and sat in it until the clouds returned.

Other than that, a day to stay indoors. I've got to the frightening part of my knitting, where I have to separate the sleeves and the body. Hastily putting it aside, I acted on my recent frustration at seeing lots of Russian text in my Twitter feed, by signing up to DuoLingo.

Background: I'm not starting from scratch; when I was in the sixth form over 50 years ago, arts students at my school were offered the option of doing a Russian O-Level alongside the regulation three A-levels. Well, I'm obsessed with languages, so I signed up, condemning myself to two years of doing homework in French, German, Latin, and Russian, and only occasionally mixing them up (usually Latin and Russian, oddly enough).

Our teacher was an elderly Russian who'd left Russia as a child in 1917.  In our first lesson, five intimidated schoolgirls faced him nervously. He handed out textbooks and told us to turn to page 1. "I Will Read," he said in his impressively accented English, and read out the text on the page while we gaped uncomprehendingly at it. "Next week -- You Will Read." And we did! He taught us the alphabet and we read without understanding. And all passed our O-Level two years later.

I did enjoy Russian; it's a lovely language, albeit harder for us to learn than European languages. But with only two years, plus a little more at university, and no opportunity to practise, except for the time I met two Russian sailors on Charlotte Street, I eventually forgot it. I remembered the alphabet though!  To my surprise I got through the DuoLingo test with 80%, thanks mostly to knowing the alphabet, recognising a few words, and being able to make barely educated guesses for the rest. Bring it on!