Pelin

"Eight months of the same stimulus is one month repeated eight times" is going to stay with me. I had been treating consistency as the whole job.

The mirror thing is real and it is probably most of why the subject reacts more strongly than you do.

You have seen your own face mostly reversed, tens of thousands of times, and that reversed version is the one that feels like you. A photograph shows the unreversed face, so every asymmetry sits on the opposite side from where you know it. It is unfamiliar in a way that is hard to name, which is why people say a photo "does not look like me" rather than "my nose is on the wrong side".

The practical test, which is fun to do with someone who hates their photos: show them a mirrored copy. Most people prefer it instantly and cannot say why. Their friends usually prefer the unmirrored one, because that is the face they know.

This is why front-camera apps that save the mirrored preview feel flattering and the unmirrored file feels wrong. Same photo.

Question 2 has a specific answer: practising one piece slowly is training that piece, not reading.

After the third repetition you are no longer reading — you are recalling, with the page as a prompt. That is a good way to learn a piece and it is nearly useless for sight reading, because the skill you want is specifically the one you use on material you have never seen.

The fix is uncomfortable and simple: read new material every day, and never repeat it. Something far below your playing level, one page, once, then move on. If you can play it perfectly it is too easy; if you break down it is too hard. Aim for material where you get through it with mistakes but without stopping.

The rule that makes it work: do not stop to correct. Sight reading is the skill of continuing. Stopping to fix a note trains stopping, which is what makes it fall apart when both hands are busy.

For question 2, split it into this year and next year, because the answers are opposite.

This year: no. Nests are annual. A queen founds one in spring, it grows through summer, and the whole colony dies in autumn — every worker, and the old queen. Nobody overwinters in the nest and nobody reuses one. So nothing will move into that corner for the rest of this season.

Next year: quite possibly, and not by the same wasps. New queens produced at the end of summer mate, overwinter somewhere sheltered, and each founds a fresh nest in spring. They look for the same qualities your shed corner had: dry, sheltered, out of the wind, with a small entrance. Those qualities do not change over winter.

So you are not at risk of a repeat now, and you are at slightly elevated risk in April — not because of any scent trail, but because the location was genuinely good and will be judged good again.