Six, two and one are, I have no doubt, all excellent numbers in their own way. If I had six BAFTAS, two Oscars and one Queen’s Medal for Poetry, I would be a very happy man. However, if you list them in that order and display them on the screen of a clock, they are less good. They are particularly bad when it is your day off and you set the clock for 8.30. What’s the point of having a day off and not having a lie-in?

I spent a disturbed night, with recurring dreams of bleak horror that would, I suspect, make a really good screen play. Written down, my dream could be the work that wins my first Oscar. However, experience suggests that I need to check what was on TV last night between 11.30pm and 2am. I was asleep in the chair at that time and I have been known to absorb the plot of a late night film as I snooze.

Today I am going to research some articles, write some bits for the Numismatic Society Facebook page and knock some submissions into shape. It feels like an industrious sort of day. However, many of them do and many of them don’t make it past breakfast. That’s why I am currently starving – I daren’t stop in case I lose that enthusiasm.

The sky is a lovely blue this morning, with just a few shreds of white cloud. Add the cloud to the movement of the trees and I suspect it is a bit breezy. It also feels a bit nippy. I’m tempted to put the fire on, but that would be a bit nesh.

For those of you unfamiliar with the term the Etymological Dictionary defines it thus:

“tender, delicate, weak, physically soft in texture,” now a Northern England dialect word but it was common in Middle English, from Old English hnesce “soft in texture”

I used the word because it is the one that fitted my purposes precisely, and I included the definition because I suspect it isn’t widely used.

Unfortunately, I just spent ten minutes lost in the dictionary, and am likely to return to it later. That is, as I have said before, the lure of the internet and the peril of procrastination . . .