I’ve always been good at ‘wasting’ time. Nowadays, as a retired old lady with no real work to do beyond preparing a meal or two a day and watering a few hanging baskets in the summer, I find I have lots of time to waste!

The newspapers and magazines on my iPad allow me to waste time finding out what is going on in the wider world. I spend from an hour to an hour and a half reading what terrible things are happening in the world, particularly what the man in charge of America is doing and saying. I refuse to call him ‘president’ and am loath even to say his name.

After my indulging myself with the news, I see what’s going on with visitors to my blog. Last week, for some crazy reason, quite a number of new subscribers appeared on my subscriber list. I am pleased that 23 new readers want to see my words but am confused as to why they all chose that one day last week to join such an exclusive group as those of you who automatically receive each post. I must say, they all have very strange names followed by lots of numbers and all seem to have the same avatar showing that they are reading on gmail. Several others in my list have the same avatar but they didn’t all join on the same day!

Occasionally when I go to my blog site, I see a ‘prompt’ that gives me an idea of what to write – as did today’s prompt, as happened today.

After this waste of time which can take anything from 2 minutes to over an hour, I move on to Wordle. I’ve been doing the game called Wordle for some years and am reasonably good at it. After I have finished that one to my satisfaction (or, occasionally dissatisfaction), I try the NYT mini crossword and Connections. I’m not great at either of those until I’ve had my coffee and maybe, also, have had my lunch. For those games, I need to be able to think clearly and sometimes, only an hour or two after I’ve got up, my brain isn’t working as well as it does later in the day.

With those finished I go on to the Solitaire game which I must have downloaded in the 20teens. Nowadays they do a one-off Daily game which I have a go at. Luckily, it allows me to start over if I haven’t been successful. I’m amazed at how many times I can play the same game but can do it slightly differently each time and, after 2 or 3 or 6 times, can ultimately succeed! This is how I have wasted the most time – I won’t tell you how many DAYS I have wasted with solitaire! (They add all the seconds, minutes and hours up and I can find out but I don’t do it too often. It’s a bit scary how much time I have spent over the last 10 or so years at this particular game!)

Until around 2016 I used to go to the swimming pool in Ramsgate 4 times a week where I spent time in an aqua aerobics class. Then, in their wisdom, the swimming pool and gym were demolished and I started to go to the ‘new’ Ramsgate pool in the middle of town. Strangely, I – and others I know from that group – preferred the old pool! I can’t figure out why. Anyway, on and off, I went to the class there but, when I gave up driving, I stopped.

Now, my exercise is walking Lola. The older I get the worse my breathing is, though, so our walks are fairly short. Instead, I carry on looking at stuff on my iPad or I pick up a puzzle book and work on a Codeword.

If you haven’t seen these I’ll give you a brief description. You have, in front of you, what looks like a crossword puzzle but each white space has a small number in a top corner. The numbers equate to a letter of the alphabet so go from 1 to 26. You are (usually) given a letter or two or three to help you on your way, so you go through the puzzle adding those letters in the boxes. For example, they show that all the boxes numbered 23 will have a D in them, all the boxes numbered 2 will have an A and that all the boxes with 13 will have an S.

I’ve always felt that the next thing you should do is find out where the Es should be. This is because E is the letter most used in the English language. Sometimes it’s possible to work it out by just looking to see which box number is the most prevalent, though this doesn’t always work and sometimes it just doesn’t seem worth finding it because it’s not obvious. Strange how some numbers stick out and you can see them easily. For example a 1. Even if there are lots of letters already filled in, it seems quite easy to see the 1s. But a number like 23 isn’t (necessarily).

In the early days of my working on these puzzles, I could take an hour to finish one. Once in a while I come across one where I have trouble getting into it but once I’ve cracked the code, so to speak, I can finish it – but it looks untidy! Usually, though, I can get through one in 20 minutes or so.

My other time-wasting time during most days is reading a book. I have loads of books that I haven’t read yet, on shelves in my bedroom and in the conservatory. I also have a Kindle app on my iPad so can buy books to read that way. In fact, most of the books I read are ebooks which I mostly buy when they are offered at 99p on Apple and Amazon. I am sent an email every day by a site called BookBub which tells me which are the books on offer each day.

If I see a book by a favourite author, I go to Amazon (or Apple) to find out what the book is about and whether I’ve read it already. If it’s a book by someone I’ve never heard of, I read the ‘sample’ which is usually the first chapter of a book. If it pulls me in, I might buy it. In this way, I sometimes find a new favourite author!

Well, I’ve wasted a bunch of time today and have just been reminded that we’re going out for lunch! I hope you enjoyed finding out about how I waste time and if I remember anything else, it might give me the start to another post. Off I go to enjoy a delicious Sardinian lunch!