Between blotch and blok

The hens are soggy. Mrs Fred, especially, loses her extreme fluffy buffness and looks much reduced in volume. Jack, however, does the water off a duck's back thing: the drops that gather on top of her glossy black feathers do look like little crystals. Time methinks to put the larger winter cover over their run.

The weekend, apart from forays to Looby Loo's music class and a pleasant lunch at Efe's, was rather dominated by adaptations of 19th-century novels. I'd missed the beginning of the rebroadcast of the 1990s BBC Pride and Prejudice space (when are they going to do the proper one from the 1980s? Colin Firth is not my idea of Darcy), but enjoyed watching most of the last three episodes. Looby Loo was captivated, so I may have to acquire the relevant DVDs (yet again, she shown just how girly she is). I guess she'll have to watch the repeat of Jane Eyre too. I don't think it will be any more frightening than Doctor Who. I suppose if she can enjoy having Sherlock Holmes stories read to her, Jane Eyre wouldn't be too difficult either. (I think I'd heard it on the radio before I read the novel myself when I was ten or so.) Of course, as with Jane Austen's works, I don't actually own a copy. I read those books when I could still borrow the copies from my parents' bookshelves (300 mile long arms I do not have). Having watched the programme on romantic novels on BBC four, I'm rather tempted by the "revamped" covers on offer for the Jane Austen novels. I assume that a similar reissue of Jane Eyre. (I'm impressed today by the Dragon's ability to cope with book titles and authors names with almost no intervention. I really don't need to type very much these days.)

I'm back to my terribly inaccurate typing (so slow too) whilst I optimize the dragon. Speak to you all soon.

Dragons obviously have very strange tongues. Still, I seem to be coping quite well. In fact, I wish that many people I know listened as carefully as the computer does.

So far. I've tried:

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• FrameMaker (not too successfully).
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• Writerly (needs more work).
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• Opera mail (not too bad).
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• Semagic.
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What I don't have, or haven't learnt yet, is complete control over menus and editing. I need shortcuts for smileys too : -) (They're a bit cumbersome, spelled out as punctuation names.)

I think I need a new pair of teeth too. I'm having particular problems with "ch".