1) Here's a fact (?) I read recently: an extra glass of wine today will shorten your life by thirty minutes. That's ridiculous. That's not going to stop me. I've already lived an extra thirty minutes, and then some.

2) Swimming pools I have known. Well, numbers one and two I have never swum in , nor ever will: the indoor and outdoor pools at Hearst Castle -

"Hearst Castle is a National Historic Landmark and California Historical Landmark mansion located on the Central Coast of California, United States. It was designed by architect Julia Morgan, between 1919 and 1947,[3] as a residence for newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, who died in 1951. In 1954 it became a California State Park.[4] The site was opened to visitors in 1958." (Wikipedia)

The indoor pool is gorgeous and big, great for swimming. I saw in my mind's eye, though, several various celebrities who swam there, guests of Hearst; I don't think swimming was uppermost in their minds. The outdoor pool, as I remember, is surrounded by statues, impressive lap-counters.

A private pool, that used to belong to friends of mine, evokes beautiful memories and unending admiration for Alan Waisman,my late friend who was an architect. He had a brilliant idea to avoid the swimming pool smell, acceptable perhaps in a Y, not so in a private home. He took the smallest size commercial green house he could find and put it up around the pool, accessible by a short staircase exiting from the house through a bathroom. I swam in that pool one early spring in Upper (what's it called?) Vancouver, above Howe Sound. The dogwood trees were all in bloom and I was enclosed in glass, swimming in a cloud of pink.

I love to swim, as you know, and not just in oceans or lakes; I have enjoyed hotel pools all over the world. I was a regular in one of my smallest pools ever, the one on the Insignia, the Oceania cruise ship I lived on for 101 days on that truncated Round The World trip I took three years ago. The pool was only 9 strokes long but on a choppy day, it was total fun. The water sloshed back and forth according to the dips and swells of the waves outside the ship. I'd be standing in knee-deep water and then it would gather up behind me and swoosh down like one gigantic tsunami (well, not a tsunami) and wash over me.

The abandoned quarry in St. Mary's Ontario, 14 miles from Stratford, was closed to the public but discovered and used by kids who snuck inane swam in the crystal clear, cold, deep water that had filled the huge excavation left after the stone was removed. St.Mary's is called the Stone City, from the beautiful Tyndall stone that built many buildings, both public and private, around the area. I guess some entrepreneur - the city? - figured out that the kids had something. So one end was terraced and paved and given a designated, paying entrance with change rooms and towels for rent. And lifeguards. And an allotted distance, roped off, within reaching distance of the lifeguard. It seas called the biggest outdoor swimming pool in Canada but that was then, one of my favourites.

Once we were living in Stratford and busy with the never-ending stream of theatre people, both the professional makers of theatre and the eager audiences, we didn't have enough time to get to the quarry, so we put a pool in our back yard. I was the official lifeguard and I had the best tans of my life then. We did that in those days, fried our skin. I'm still here. With thirty minutes to spare.

Coming soon to a blog near you....

But I'm not ready to deal with Dataism and BitRot. I have other stuff to catch up:

comity |noun (pl. comities), formal: 1 an association of nations for their mutual benefit.• (also comity of nations) [ mass noun ] the mutual recognition by nations of the laws and customs of others. 2 [ mass noun ] courtesy and considerate behaviour towards others. a show of public comity in the White House. ORIGIN mid 16th cent. (in sense 2): from Latin commits, from comus ‘courteous’. Hey, we could use this for the G6 Plus One!

jerboa noun: a desert-dwelling rodent with very long hind legs that enable it to walk upright and perform long jumps, found from North Africa to central Asia. ogg-legged jerboa ●Family Dipodidae: several genera and species. ORIGIN mid 17th cent.: modern Latin, from Arabic yarbū‘ .

quokka noun: a small short-tailed wallaby with a short face, round ears, and some tree-climbing ability, native to Western Australia.●Setonix brachyurus, family Macropodidae.ORIGIN mid 19th cent.: from Nyungar kwaka . I have a friend on an RTW (Round The World) trip who sent me a photograph of this little fellow ver cute. Never heard of it before last week. What a world !

anecdotage |noun [ mass noun ] 1 anecdotes collectively: a number of reports cannot be dismissed as anecdotage. 2 humorous old age, especially in someone who is inclined to be garrulous. it is not within many of us to emulate such a feat in our anecdotage.[from a blend of anecdote and dotage.] think I already covered his one; it's a natural, was to identify and I'm sure to use.

berm noun: a flat strip of land, raised bank, or terrace bordering a river or canal.• a path or grass strip beside a road.• an artificial ridge or embankment, such as one built as a defence against tanks. berms of shovelled earth.• a narrow space between a ditch and the base of a parapet. ORIGIN early 18th cent. (denoting a narrow space): from French berms, from Dutch berm . This is an easy, useful one but I haven't used it, yet.

anechoic adjective: technical: free from echo: an anechoic chamber.• (of a coating or material) tending to deaden sound. The Russians treat their submarines with anechoic coatings to reduce sonar returns. This makes me think of that line from A Lady'sNot For Burning: "Oh for a holiday in a complete vacuum."

anaphora noun: [ mass noun ]1 Grammar: the use of a word referring back to a word used earlier in a text or conversation, to avoid repetition, for example the pronouns he, she, it, and they and the verb do. I like it and so do they. Compare with cataphora.2 Rhetoric the repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of successive clauses.3 Christian Church the part of the Eucharist which contains the consecration, anamnesis, and communion. DERIVATIVES anaphoric adjective: ,anaphorically adverb ORIGIN late 16th cent.: sense 1, sense 2 via Latin from Greek, ‘repetition’, from ana- ‘back’ + pherein ‘to bear’; sense 3 from late Greek.

swather Scottish verb [ no obj. ]: be uncertain as to which course of action to choose: Leonard swithered as to whether he should enter the arts or commerce.noun [ in sing. ]a state of uncertainty. ORIGIN early 16th cent.: of unknown origin. ou can tell every once in a while that I'm reading Outlander.

bothy noun: (pl.bothies) (in Scotland) a small hut or cottage, especially one for housing farm labourers or for use as a mountain refuge. ORIGIN late 18th cent.: obscurely related to Irish and Scottish Gaelic both, both an, and perhaps to booth. (See above.)

gralloch noun [ mass noun ]: the viscera of a dead deer. verb [ with obj.]: disembowel (a deer that has been shot). ORIGIN mid 19th cent.: from Scottish Gaelic grealach ‘entrails’. Another one.

coppice noun: an area of woodland in which the trees or shrubs are periodically cut back to ground level to stimulate growth and provide firewood or timber. coppices of oak were cultivated. [ mass noun ] : much coppice is no longer managed as such. verb [ with obj.]: cut back (a tree or shrub) to ground level periodically to stimulate growth: (as) : coppiced timber. ORIGIN late Middle English: from Old French, based on medieval Latin ‘a blow’ (see cope1). Compare with copse.PHRASES coppice with standards chiefly historical managed woodland consisting of coppiced shrubs or trees, with scattered trees that are allowed to reach full height. it's a pretty word.

rootle verb: Brit.informal term for root2. the terriers scuttled off to rootle through the brushwood. I rootled around for ten minutes.ORIGIN early 19th cent.

vipassana noun [ mass noun ] (in Theravada Buddhism): meditation involving concentration on the body or its sensations, or the insight which this provides.ORIGIN Pali, literally ‘inward vision’. (Where did I read this??)

The computer is demanding to be updated. Anon, anon. That was enough, anyway.