I’ll confess to taking comfort from ‘to-do’ lists. Most of my lists are very long and get lost or abandoned well before they have properly outlived their usefulness. But when I’m feeling over-whelmed by the backlog of tasks that I should already have tackled, a ‘to-do’ list can ease the anxiety. To lift my spirits I generally start the list with a number of jobs that I have already completed, so that I can award myself the immediate satisfaction of ticks on the sheet.

So, if you are like me and have been considering learning some Welsh, you might be reassured by the discovery that you already know more than you thought you did. You are not starting from scratch; your vocabulary book already has some words in it that can be ticked off as ‘learnt’:

Whether you live in a fflat or a castell you’ll be able to point to the

• soffa
• ffôn
• carped
• and the teledu (if you have one).

And if your taste in food extends beyond plain old-fashioned cooking, your Welsh vocabulary may also already be quite extensive

• stêc
• sbageti
• salad
• banana
• ries
• (for starters).

Welsh for Beginners by Angela Wilkes and John Shackell is published by Usborne and is linked to a number of language teaching web-sites at http://www.usborne-quicklinks.com. It was through my exploring of this site that I came across Derek Brockway, the BBC Wales weatherman. I love him. Go and look for him on:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/cymru/cymraeg/yriaith/tudalen/welsh_phrases.shtml

I’m sure you will love him too.

The book I have photographed on this page is on sale at Oxfam Wilmslow for £1.99. The new revised version of this course, however, will cost a bit more. It comes with an audio cd and brilliant reviews on Amazon. You’ll be able to get it from Fishguard’s Seaways bookshop.