Friday 13th

Its Comic Relief Day today, a great institution. There'll be plenty of silliness in places of work and education today. My daughter and son have gone to school wearing red clothes because paying a pound to charity means they can dress in non-school uniform. My daughter is also wearing her red wig - she looks a bit like Annie or Shirley Temple or Ronald MacDonald. I hope they raise a record amount of money because everyone needs cheering up in these hard times.

What else has been on my radar recently:

• Jade Goody - she has cervical cancer and it has spread, which effectively means that she is not going to recover. She became a celebrity after appearing on Big Brother 3 in 2002 and has since remained in the public eye due to some rocky professional and personal experiences. I haven't yet formed a solid opinion about Jade, I have heard criticism of her fund raising for her children however I'm not sure I wouldn't do exactly the same if I had to
• Spring-like weather - despite sometimes feeling very cold, the weather recently has definitely been changing more to mild and it makes me happy to think of Spring coming
• Colds - along with the weather change it is bringing the family down with coughs and colds as usual
• Swimming - I actually managed to swim 3 widths in the pool on Tuesday so I think I'm making good progress, I'm actually sad when the time comes to end the session, there are some nice people also attending the class so its nice in a social way too

That's about it for now. Hope today is a good day for everyone, despite the date! Have a great weekend!

Here it is, March...

My wife has lost a ticket. One of those times when we win something and the ticket goes missing. Actually, its not our winning ticket, she runs a syndicate. How can a ticket just disappear? Well, it has and cannot be found - believe me, we tried. It has gone into the ether, the thin air. So apparently has the 75 pounds along with it. To each person in the syndicate it is a small amount but any win is a win and it just so happens that a ticket with a Post-It note attached to it decided to get itself lost on the very week the ticket was actually worth more than it cost. So frustrating!

I'm feeling slightly more upbeat than usual this Sunday evening, next week I'm off work and instead am attending a course. I'll probably end up feeling really tired and stressed because there are exams at the end of it but really just lately I'll take any excuse to do something different.

This weekend I actually managed to sit down and catalogue our movies. I was supposed to be working but the computer was on and yadda yadda I ended up doing the cataloguing and then couldn't find the willpower to stop. So, do you want to know how many films there are? It's frankly disturbing but we have over 430 films ranging from the 40s to the 00s. That's 32 days and 11 hours worth of back-to-back movie going. Sheesh!

Well bless my soul! In the course of me writing this the ticket has turned up! It was in the smallest crack between the computer desk and the chest of drawers - but right at the back. How it got there is still a mystery but at least the ticket has been found and my wife avoids the embarrassment of having to explain about the loss. She found it, as I'm working on my computer upstairs.

My swimming is going quite well. I am starting to enjoy the water and I didn't ever think I'd feel that way. I can see myself actually swimming soon, it is just a matter of time and patience. I never thought I'd be able to. I think I'm so determined to conquer my fears this time that it will come eventually.