Pádraig has started to work with a new system of spelling. It’s still a start-up, in a way, and none of us has got all the details right, but I think we’re on to something here. His therapist talked to people using this system for some time now and they have managed, apparently, to spell more than thirty words in a minute.

The letters of the alphabet are organised in four quadrants. To pick a letter we ask “Is the letter in quadrant 1 – 2 – 3 – 4? Pádraig bleeps when the right quadrant comes up. Then we read out the letters and he bleeps when the letter comes up. It’s two bleeps to find a letter. We all will have to learn about how the letters a grouped but once we’ll have mastered that, it could be a lightning fast system to spell words.

When we tried it out today, we got the first letter wrong. We had asked Pádraig what he liked most on pancakes. We started again and to the word right. It’s lemon he likes most on pancakes.

We then asked him to spell just any word that he wanted to spell. Any.

Guess what he spelled? With a humongous smile on his face? – Exactly! L-e-m-o-n.

Finally, there is something in this photo that makes it special. Dolly came in today with a lovely flower on her collar, celebrating Valentine’s Day. I tried to get a picture of the flower, unfortunately it didn’t come up.

But it’s still a very special picture, I think. (Even if you’re not big into dogs:)