5 things to cheer you up

Entering a short story competition and being longlisted. The Oxford Flash Fiction Prize. Better still being shortlisted. I’ll have to wait for the short list in a week or two, to find out whether I’m in the running.

Discovering WORDIPLY- the Guardian’s answer to WORDLE. An excellent word game, especially if you’re suffering from wordle-fatigue – 13 letters.

Good for the brain.

Snowdrops are out in woodlands. Castlefields in Calne can easily join the shortlist of local spots worth visiting,  including Lacock, Bowood, and Drew’s Wood, Devizes.

Unexpected cultural experience in Chippenham. If you manage to find a space in Borough Parade car park in the town centre, which I did, having watched someone reverse into one of the bollards, I had a quick Waitrose fix, and a lightning visit to Waterstones, to see if Jon Snow’s The State of Us was out yet. Really looking forward to reading it. I had time to walk up the High Street to the museum. A neat little exhibition Contemporary Print & The Ink Paper Press in the gallery, along with a couple of Art Fund pictures on loan.

Having fibre broadband installed, and not having to wait ages for the computer to ‘warm’ up, and your docs and files to sort themselves out, before allowing you the privilege of looking at your own work. Less buffering. What a lovely phrase.  Chez moi-  Buffer-free zone –  19 letters- and as Wordiply announces  ‘smarty pants’ if you beat the 100% score for the longest common words, I feel good.