Difficult listening

One way, or another, I found plenty of time to practice playing the mandolin last weekend. I guess I was making progress, maybe learning another piece.

Monday and Tuesday the family went North, visiting. We dropped in to see the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight headquarters at Coningsby, where we were lucky to find all aircraft in the hangar and the Dakota testing an engine.

The weather has been very August this week. Never cold, or not biting anyway. Rain occasional and variable, torrential to light drizzle. Sun, occasional (never torrential) but episodically gorgeous; face the shining bright, arms outstretched and smile warm. The clouds have been dramatic and stormy, flat and high, fluffy and broken or cotton wool patches; never quite a Simpson's sky.

The range of insects is at a peak, butterflies, bees, hover-flies, wasps, blue, green, shiny, hairy. The spiders are having a ball.

And when I picked up the mandolin again, it was absent mindedly, carelessly, and I played something I had learned and I stopped to find that I wasn't practicing, I was playing. Playing for simple pleasure, even if not hugely well. I struggle to see technical progress (I know that I improve week by week, but the days are not always forward), but here there was a big step. I played and had enough self left over to be able to listen too, not just listen to the bad notes, the buzz, the accidental brushes of strings and the notes I miss because the left hand still doesn't talk to the right, or the right is off on its own. I heard myself play.

At the weekend I forgot my credit card PIN. I use the card half a dozen times a week for 8 years, then I forget the number. I got it third time; I know numbers, I remember them. I'd forgotten though and, faced with a novel terminal, the pattern just wouldn't arrive. Back in time to find the digit sequence, the digits were easy, but just how many possibilities are there? 4P4, 4! maybe that's why they only give three attempts. Easier than the lottery to guess right. My spare card expired a year ago, cancelled by the bank because I never used it. Maybe I should do something about finding a new spare.