Played some games with Jem today, found an old pairs/memory game in the top of the wardrobe when we were making room for large stack of new clothes (from her cousin). It used to be mine and looks like something out of the 1950's. I thought it may be a bit hard; there are 96 cards, but turns out she's really good at it. Its amazing playing it, actually, as you seem to remember things by magic, like another part of yor brain knows where the matching card is. I think its great for strengthening memory, if that's possible- I should play it more often, as mine's terrible and I think I'm losing it LOL.

We also played draughts- with tealight candles as we didnt have any draughts, apart from the ones that come whistling up through the floorboards, that is! I found this a bit difficult, it never seems to come to a satisfactory end. Maybe I was doing it wrong. My grandma used to beat everyone at draughts. At bedtime I told her about chinese chequers, that I used to love when I was a kid. My mum's still got the pegboard, but we can't go down there as Bren's car is not going to be fixed till Tuesday. I'm quite getting into the games thing ATM: must try Set, as I've just heard about here and which sounds like its going to be the latest craze!

Got quite into tidying and cleaning, which I always seem to do as a cleansing ritual around new year. When I lived in a council flat I used to turf all my belongings outside on NYE and only bring back in what I still wanted the next day, much to the amusement off passing neighbours. I must add that this was way, way before that awful program on telly where they force ppl to declutter their houses, but I suppose I was doing the same thing, really.