Mental gymnastics

I'm a great believer in the phrase "use it or lose it" when it comes to mental agility. I don't bother overmuch with physical ability, mainly because I never did have much to lose anyway. But I do like to exercise my mind.

For many years I have done the cryptic crossword in the Daily Telegraph. I say done, but I don't always (for 'always' read 'often') manage to get it completely done. I used to, but I suppose my mind has become less agile with age. My father started me off on it and we would compare notes on a weekly basis.

Another of my mental exercises is a fairly recent craze – sudoku. And on Sundays, over our morning coffee, the Old Bat and I work on the target in the paper. This involves finding as many words as possible from the nine letters given. Each word must contain the specified letter and must be four or more letters long. There is always one nine-letter word and it irritates the Old Bat immensely when, as happens occasionally (it did this morning) I am able to glance at the letters and have the nine-letter word just leap out at me.

I am being called to go Christmas shopping and am off to France first thing tomorrow, so that's probably it for a week or so.