Memorandum Monday

"You need to make a list," she said. "If you are planning on learning something new, or doing something for the first time, every weekend, all year, and writing about it at the beginning of the week, you should make a list. A sort of bucket list for Mondays. A Mucket. If you'd been thinking ahead, see, you could have checked on your list for an appropriate activity for this week: a St. Patrick's Day activity."

She had a point. But, with no list I could only turn to my googler

Within about three seconds I'd learned something I've spent my whole life not knowing. St Patrick is not only the patron saint of Ireland; but also of Nigeria. I would have been born in Nigeria, where my parents were teaching, if they hadn't at the last minute decided to come home and make family life here instead. And in all that time since, in the Yoruba words my dad and I used together when I was little, in the souvenirs which decorated our home and in the stories we heard, in none of that had I ever discovered that we shared a patron saint. 

So I'd already learned something I didn't know before. But something new to do? When in doubt, fall back on a new food, we thought; and having already adopted Guinness crisps as a part of our staple diet a couple of years ago, we had no other choice. We headed to the seaside and bought a tub of local Bailey's Cream ice cream. We rushed it home to the girl with the heavy homework duty: little bit runny, it was, as you can see, but then that's when the flavour comes through. 

"Mmm.." she said. "When you make that list, how about you just write try one new icecream every week all year. Wouldn't that work?"

It might. But then if I hadn't arrived at the icecream through a roundabout route, I would never have remembered about the scrapbook. always the scrapbook. which I made when I was growing up:

There's a lot of cutting and sticking in this book. In fact, if I could work out what I used to stick, I'd quite like to try some of it again today. I wonder...

Did you try anything for the first time this weekend? Learn something new you didn't know before? We'd love it if you shared! Last week

 Deb, Barbara, Helena, Eileen, Miriam, Mitra, Mary-Lou, Susanne, Maggie, Melissa, Jane, Cheri, Sheena, Fiona

all posted about their revelations. Go on, give 'em a wave! And go see what they found out: you never know how useful it could turn out to be. Have a good week.