7 Quick Takes: 17th January 2014

1. I started watching Sherlock after hearing lots of recommendations. After a false start when BBC iPlayer kept cutting out on me I made it through the first episode of Series 3. I think it would have been confusing even if I had seen the first two series but despite my confusion it was gripping and I'm hooked. Tevye, on the other hand, decided it was not his thing.

2. Marie is happy. She was part of a team of three who entered a public speaking competition for schools. Her team won their heat on Wednesday and now go on to regional finals (or semi-finals? she is not sure). Not only did her team win but teams from her school came second and third. I am hugely impressed as she has never done public speaking before and it is not something I would have expected her to volunteer for.

3. In the early days of county record offices in the UK they collected a lot of old (pre-1600) material, but it is now relatively uncommon to acquire new "old" stuff. This week we had a document sent to us which had turned up on the other side of the country. It is a list of tenants holding property in the county town, which dates from the late sixteenth century and is a hundred years older than the earliest one we already had in our collection. The plan is to transcribe it, though it will not be an easy job as parts of it are quite faded.

4. I went in to town during my lunch break on Wednesday to change some shoes. I came home with these. I blame the colleague who persuaded me that pink stilettos were essential!

5. As part of my gym membership I get an initial series of six consultations with a fitness instructor to go through my goals, get an exercise plan, do some personal training and so on. This week it was a diet consultation. He looked at my food diary and agreed that my diet was excellent and there was nothing I need to tweak! He also told me that it is very rare to see someone with such a "clean" diet. That doesn't mean that I eat perfectly - there was a caramel cheesecake in there, for example - but the overall balance of lots of healthy stuff to occasional treats is good. Part of me still can't believe that I have managed to get to a point where eating well is second nature.

6. My new year's resolutions are sort of happening but in a rather patchy way. Time is an issue but I think I also need to be more motivated, particularly with the decluttering.

7. On that note, if any kind reader has found a decluttering plan or way of motivating themselves to declutter that works, please share! Moving house would do it, but is not on the agenda.