Italiano

So I have begun my mission to learn Italian. This has been helped by being able to download various fun and furious apps onto my I-pad enabling me to indulge in various fun and furious games which are basically making me learn the language through sheer panic. So far I am fluent in various words to do with cars - una decappottabile, un cofano, benzina and una serratura for example - and words to do with animals e.g un ape, una gallina, un gatto, un cane etc, so I shall be okay if I break down in a car near a farm.

I have tried to get to grips with counting which involves playing a game about stopping fish drowning but this proved traumatic and noisy and today the only numbers I can remember are uno, tre, sei, sette,otto and nove. Anything in the teens was too complicated - I murdered many fish trying to learn those.

I know the games are being successful because I woke this morning and the first things that came into my head was Italian vocabulary!

Exploring the apps one can get for the I-pad has been an eye opening experience. There are educational ones, like learning languages, various types of diary, many free and quite awful books, ones for tracking stars and, bizarrely, one for recording one's bowel habits. I passed on that one (!) So far I have downloaded a diary, a novel writing one, two learn Italian ones and one for English teachers. And I have invented two of my own, but Andy is doubtful they will catch on. One is called 'Peticure' in which you can enter your pet's illness symptoms and do your own diagnosis, thereby cutting out the middle man, and the second is called 'Gwhat-a-mole' for recording and tracking your moles. The beauty of this one is that it is dual purpose i.e you can record the moles on your body AND the moles in your garden!

Be warned - now I am in an inventing mood, there may be more on the way...