Don't lose your parsnips

After a period of forcing myself to persevere with learning Welsh I have picked it up with enthusiasm again. I think it's because I seem to be getting the hang of it. Not the mutations of course. I keep telling myself they'll become automatic in time, but currently it's largely vocabulary I'm learning. Or forgetting if you prefer.

Now I might have mentioned this before but I am convinced the Duolingo Welsh course is sponsored by the Welsh Parsnip Growers Association. I can think of no other reason for their preoccupation with the vegetable that is an acquired taste I think.

The course is a mixture of listening, reading and translating. I'm better at reading than listening so when I struggle to translate a spoken sentence I try to work out logically, from my known vocabulary, what a word might be.

So I listened to this sentence being read - Mae Owen wedi colli'r pannas mewn gem - and tried to work out what it might be that Owen would have lost in a game. I did not think for one minute that he would have lost the parsnips. 

Similarly I didn't expect the Welsh rugby team to eat Owen's parsnips before the game.

In future, if in doubt, I will guess at parsnips.

Incidentally, yesterday, being unable to settle to what I wanted to do, I continued the never-ending job of filing photos. All my filing system was lost at some point so all I have is the Google collection of photos by date. Every time I want to find an old photo I have to go through hundreds. So yesterday afternoon I carried on copying, naming, and deleting photos. All afternoon - and I only managed to do 2004 and 2005.

However it is rather nice to find an old glamorous photo when you're feeling older, fatter, and rather less gorgeous!

From 2005