how old fashioned am i?

[mistletoe]

Now I feel decrepit on top of the migraine hangover I have from most of today which as a result has been a nightmare of epic proportions. Yesterday's word was spleenful, depressingly a word I actually use, meaning angry, peevish, fretful or melancholy. Well that sums me up nicely. Interestingly, for me at any rate, it was also Lord Byron's birthday. He may have been 'mad, bad and dangerous to know' but he also has connections to where I was brought up. I went to Byron Terrace Junior School; walked down Lord Byron's Walk to my secondary school and see a portrait of him at St Mary's church where we do our guided tours.

He famously married the local heiress Annabella Milbanke in the Hall that is next to the church. Sadly, the marriage didn't take and he soon hot-footed, or limped, off to his revolution in Greece. The marriage produced one child, a girl called Ada who turned out have inherited her mother's mathematical genius and her father's profligate ways. She was instrumental in the development of Charles Babbage's engines, writing what many consider to be the first computer program and thus was in at the start of computing theory about 200 years ago. She died of cancer aged 36. She never saw her father.
Thus ends today's lesson.

Today's word looks exciting: poosk I hardly care what it means it sounds so good: poosk. It turns out to be an excellent archaic word meaning to search for vermin on a person. Hands up if you just scratched.

Shocking news about Heath Ledger. I enjoyed his performance in A Knight's Tale even though it was a silly film, and though I never saw Brokeback Mountain I understand he gave a committed Oscar nominated reading. It is strange how some people find it difficult to cope with fame. They must lose a sense of reality particularly if they need a home and family around them. New York is a long way from Australia and I don't care how old someone is, they still need to feel safe.