In which the Rodent plants bulbs and plays the flute.

I don't know whether this is my fourth or fifth lesson. I'd practised, but I am just not getting those eight-count blasts of noise, so that is my homework. Bizarrely, I can't read notes right after the rest, at least not when migrainous. The rest turns into an extra line or even two, and it makes it difficult to read the note straight after, especially if it's a minim. The solution turns out to be pencilling in a vertical line after the break to halt the bleeding of one mark into another.

This problem solved, we played on and I turned out to be spectacularly inept at C. This, alas, I cannot blame on my migraines. Sometimes I just am bad at something. :0) I have to be able to produce C easily too. If it's for 8 counts, this will be a bonus. Alex aims for one note per lesson and I am falling behind. I am still enjoying it. The tunes I produce may not be exciting, but they're tunes and I am sight reading them.

Since it was a nice day, I finally planted the bulbs I bought just after the January New Year. Then I rested and ate before my friend arrived. She helped me with the DLA forms, which have long ago run past their deadline because I've had no one to help me with the forms. This need for help was starkly realised within a page or two - left alone, I would have given up. As it is, I need to find a dozen pieces of paper and I am not sure I can. One page where everything was a stark YES I need help was communication. To those reading this blog, this might seem odd, but it's true. I avoid letters, forms and telephones because they hurt. Without Pol to pay the bills, I'd be sunk.

In between this, I fed her on wild boar sausages, steamed broccoli (florets and thin slices from the stem), raw carrots cut into matchsticks and thin slices of celery in crescents, with ketjap manis in a tiny little shot glass as a dip bowl.

The headache started waxing at about the time I sat down with the forms, lunchtime, which is amazingly late in the day for me. Usually I've had at least one by the time I have been up a few hours. As it is, the same headache is now pounding away at my head six hours later, which is all par for the course. I took cocodamol when it hit. I resisted taking it again just now, but I think actually I should if I am convinced that many painkillers mean fewer migraines in the long run. I have just trained myself to put up with the pain.