Saturday, February 20, 2010

Quinn’s fourth birthday.




Got back yesterday from five days freezing in England.  Arrived at Candy’s last Sunday evening. RyanAir did their usual nonsense of playing a fanfare when we arrived at Stansted proudly proclaiming that yet another flight had arrived on time. We then spent fifteen minutes waiting for the steps to arrive so that we could actually disembark. Just imagine if your train arrived at Paddington and you then had to wait for a quarter of an hour before you could actually get off! On our journey back I was told at the gate to put my carry-on case in the container which checks that your luggage isn’t too large. It wasn’t, but pulling it out of the container ripped the stitching on the front pocket. God, I hate RyanAir.
   On Monday we went to Wisbech looking for a mother-of-the-bride outfit for Pat. Quinn and I went to the Bygones Café where I had an all-day breakfast and Quinn had a sausage sandwich. Pat began painting the wainscoting in Candy’s bathroom.
   On Tuesday - Quinn’s birthday - Candy, Pat, Quinn and I went to the SeaLife Centre in Hunstanton in the afternoon, and had a birthday tea at Candy’s in the evening. Shen and Linda, Milshen, Kelly, Jessica and Amber came. Phil brought Quinn a rather super cap-gun.
  On Wednesday, Pat and I went to Colchester to look at more mother-of-the-bride outfits and met Deborah there. Had lunch at the Lemon Tree. Starter and pudding was nice, but the main course was rather a disappointment.
   On Thursday Pat finished painting the wainscoting and I assembled the computer desk which Linda, Shen, Naz and Milshen had bought Quinn for his birthday. It was one of the most straightforward flat-pack kits I’ve ever assembled, having clear and comprehensive instructions. I played doctors with Quinn - he was the patient who died and resurrected everal times. In the evening I went to the Lamb and Flag with Richard and Jane.
 It was 16 degrees in Ancona when we got back yesterday, a pleasant change from the two degrees in England.
  Click here to see a video of Quinn’s birthday.

Saturday, February 13, 2010

A good death?




Ever since Norman Painter died on October 29th, I’ve been waiting for Phil Archer to snuff it. And yesterday he did. Jill came home from an outing with Peggy and Christine to find Phil sitting by a recently  emptied teacup with The Dream of Gerontius playing on the gramophone. 
  It was a moving moment, particularly for those of us who’ve dipped in and out of the Archers since its inception in the 1950s. ‘I’m glad they gave him a good death,’ said Pat. And by today’s standards it was.
  Our mediæval ancestors would have thought it the worst of all possible deaths:
     ‘A subita et æterna morte, Libera nos Domine,‘                    they prayed. 
And King Hamlet would have concurred:
    ‘Cut off even in the blossoms of my sin,
    Unhousel'd, disappointed, unanel'd,
    No reckoning made, but sent to my account
    With all my imperfections on my head’
If this is the only life we have, the scriptwriters gave Phil a good death; if it’s not, I’m not so sure. 

Thursday, February 4, 2010

Fighting corruption.





Synchronicity strikes again: I have spent the last ten days battling corruption in both my virtual and actual lives.
On the 25th of January I composed an item for my blog. When I came to post it I got the message that there was an unknown error preventing its being published. I was not unduly concerned as I’d received the same message once before some months ago and had solved the problem by repairing my permissions file. This time, however, that strategy didn’t work and after scouring the forums and ‘chatting’ to an Apple employee I found that my domain file had become corrupted. I could read the file but couldn’t publish it. And I hadn’t backed it up! Consequently, I’ve spent the last ten days copying the material from the corrupt file into a new domain file via Pages. A bitter lesson learnt: always back-up your files.
   Meanwhile back in the real world my Mighty Mouse had given up the ghost and I’d ordered a Magic Mouse to replace it. On the 27th I tracked the order, only to discover that according to the couriers it had been delivered on the 25th and signed for by someone called Mancini. I assumed this was a made-up name, but when I looked in the ‘phone book I discovered that it was my neighbour Mimi’s, surname. However, when I called round, Mimi knew nothing about the package. I therefore contacted the couriers, explaining that the package hadn’t arrived and Mimi hadn’t signed for it. They promised to investigate. That afternoon the package arrived, brought not by an employee of the couriers but by a chap in a van belonging to a computer company. He ‘explained’ that the courier had asked him to bring it as it was snowing in Montefalcone. True it was snowing; but it hadn’t been on the 25th! When the couriers rang me later that afternoon I told them all about the dodgy circumstances attached to the package’s eventual arrival. I guess someone will be getting fired.