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w/e 2021-06-06

I didn’t achieve a great deal this week, not helped by three mornings lost to headaches/migraines (two more than average), waiting for the magic inside a tiny Zolimitriptan pill to take effect. 🤕

I was recently prescribed 10mg of Amitriptyline once a day to see if that prevents the headaches/migraines but not so far (previous attempts with Propranolol and Pizotifen have also had little effect). On the plus side Amitriptyline is also apparently prescribed for depression and sleeplessness, so it sounds like a wonder drug, aside from the very long list of potential side effects. 💊


§ This felt like an achievement, although I haven’t had to do anything to achieve it recently: a transfer of my SIPP from The Share Centre to Vanguard completed nearly four months after I initiated it. 💷

I have no idea how moving some numbers from one company to another can take so long, but it was similar the only other time I’ve done it. Both occasions featured a slightly alarming few days towards the end when money has disappeared from the first account but not yet appeared in the second. In neither case has any of the companies involved shown much interest in keeping me updated on what’s happening. 💸


§ It felt a little like things were getting back to normal this week. We went to the in-laws’ for a barbecue one evening, and had neighbours round for dinner another. And, during a brief trip to Ledbury, we sat outside a nice cafe and had lunch. It’s been a long time since we had a meal out. 🥚

I still dislike going places at the moment though: the wearing of masks, the urge to leave shops as soon as I’ve entered, the walking carefully trying to keep distanced, the constant levels of slight anxiety, etc. We did buy some nice cheese though. 🧀


§ Over the past few years I’ve used Duolingo, Memrise, Deutsche-Welle, and Lingvist to learn and practise German (mainly). I am, no doubt, slightly better than when I started, with my terrible school-level German, but I still can’t construct many useful sentences. But it’s a vaguely useful brain-stimulating habit, like doing crosswords or playing a very dull phone game. 🧠

Lingvist was quite good for learning vocabulary through repetition, with learned words reappearing with decreasing frequency. But, after a year with it, the number of previously-learned words lined up for me to review jumped from the usual dozen-ish to 570. Ugh. I couldn’t face crawling through those before getting anything new. It turned out to be a bug but, by then, I’d cancelled my subscription and am now trying Busuu. 🪲

I’m liking it so far. It’s a bit more structured than Duolingo, which suits me. It also has quite a nice feature in which the more free-form answers (to prompts like, “Ask the waiter if there is a free table, and then order some drinks for your group”) get corrected by other users. People are helpful and encouraging — and I try to be the same in return — and it’s quite a nice little place so far. No idea if I’m learning anything though, because Busuu graded me at a beginner A1 level and I’m currently comfortingly repeating things I have learned several times before. 🇩🇪


§ I hope you had a pleasantly eventful week. Why not have another?


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