under another sun

Fell foul of the gods of IT. My main jobs today was watching 18 or 19 video interviews, and taking notes towards writing a film that pieced cuts of these interviews along with other bits of my own invention. Spent the first three and a half hours trying to find a way of watching them, on various computers, from different servers with two or three people helping. Videos only playing in slow motion and with no sound. Then my work computer they went on the blink with an intermittent fault, that meant I lost much of the afternoon's work. After seven hours on all this, I simply left to work on my own computer on the train, and in the evening at home.  Eventually to bed, shaking my fist at the IT gods.

Feeling out of sorts, and light headed today. However Lorraine and I went shopping in the car and I bought myself a new desktop computer, and iMac, as my old one is more than six years old and has been having suicidal thoughts, freezing on me and being weird. Amazing how quickly you can walk into an apple shop, ask for a computer and wander out with it in an unusual box, having dropped a four figure sum, all in about five minutes. They certainly are efficient there. Buying an apple product is a joy however. The packaging, the design and so on. Compared to the generations of Dells I specced up myself. In other news I bought some vests and socks. In the evening off in the bus to Hove with Lorraine and Betty to visit Rosie. A cheery evening eating takeaway Thai food, and drinking a few drinks. Rosie's got her place all nice now and really reflecting her personality. It includes a globular feathery light shade hanging down from the middle of the room like a cloud, which (being Rosi...

Tasks of small consequence Dell think there is something wrong with the circuit that starts the computer, after I held the phone so the man in India could hear the persistently beeping but dead as a doornail bastard. They will send another engineer to replace it. On the plus side this means that all the important parts of the PC will have been replaced, effectively giving me a new computer. If only it would work. However the conversation was done inside half an hour which was a mercy. With an imminent move, no working PC and no idea when the engineer will turn up, I began to feel myself drifting into limbo. So I repainted my green fence, chatted to Mark the trombonist about music, met Cath for a fast but enjoyable coffee as she was in town, had a haircut (skillfully avoiding the walrus-faced one and doging past the Police cordon outside the bookies which had been robbed), went to the gym and generally busied myself with tasks of small consequence. Naturally my computer started perfectl...

The glowering stars To the garden and fish centre, to get some plastic bags in preparation for moving my fish and for Lorraine to drift happily among the plants. We spent the afternoon in Lorraine's tiny narrow back yard painting a brick wall. This we painted white to reflect light back into her ground floor, which is large but lacks natural light. Turning dirty old bricks white was therapeutic, and it seemed to work, with the room seeming brighter even in the evening sun. I mostly used a brush and gave myself a finger blister on my first-against-the-wall-come-the-revolution hands. After these labours off for a cheeky meal and cooling pint of lager. Explained to Lorraine how today is badly-starred (sun square sun). This vindicated when I returned home this evening to find that, having worked perfectly all week, my computer simply won't start again. I want to smash it with a hammer. Tomorrow holds the prospect of another day wasted haggling with Dell. The computer has generous ...

Swings and roundabouts Finally the summer returned with a beautiful hot day. I woke up conscious next week is a big one for me. Once up though, my desktop computer did not start this morning with what appears to be a terminally doomed hard disk. Immensely depressed by this. Thank God though that I recently did a massive back up. However will have lost everything I have been working on for the last couple of weeks, and God knows how long this is going to take to sort out. Off to Lorraine's to, as Lorraine put it grimly, fill some ant holes. I briefly envisaged thousands of microscopic operation but I soon found myself up a ladder plugging two tiny holes from which ants are entering Lorraine's house. Lorraine not too happy with these ants and inflicting death on them at every opportunity. Anna and Anton and the bairns came by and we went to Preston Park, looked in the pond for newts and fish, had ice lollys and sat chatting in the packed playground. I was called upon to push both...

One for his knob Home to feed Calliope who, after greeting me with relief for five minutes, exploded into a flurry of bad behavior including her signature shredding the toilet roll, forbidden ferreting inside the airing cupboard and sitting at my desk to bite into my sleeves and shake her head in the vicious way reserved for the slaughter of small rodents. It is hard not to see this as anything other than simple recrimination at my absence. Otherwise as my computer is behaving sluggishly, I spent hours running diagnostics, virus checks, checkdisk , defragging , freeing memory, backing things up up etc. all to no avail. Then I filed bills etc. and noticed how almost everything utility is going up next year. Then I took some some time to brood on the futility of life as an unknown writer. Much improved by returning to Lorraine's house at tea time, eating cold turkey with pickles (including Pat's favourite, pickled walnuts) and bubble and squeak. Cleared the table to play several...

Nerdy tendencies Tapping happily at my laptop on the train this morning. And "alighting" at Victoria I bumped into Reuben, and we had one of our fast chats walking up to the tube. He seems to be doing well at his new job and we promised to see each other properly soon. Interesting and varied day at work, with the Gnome and me having a fairly good digital idea. A short walk at lunchtime, still unseasonably warm in London, to buy a cheap wallet. I have been using a disintegrating paper envelope since I lost my lucky wallet, which is not a solution with a future. The one I bought today was very cheap, but quite nice... Perhaps I should wait to see if this one could be a lucky one too. Had to stand up most of the way home on the train, which was a bit tiresome. Then hurried indoors, pausing only to buy Fish and Chips, to nerd around with my computer. I have started the teeth gnashing process of reclaiming my poems and other bits of work from various sources such as my work compu...