Rain! Rain! Rain!

Ever since we came back from France, it seems as if it has been raining. Some days a little, some days a lot, showers, drizzle, storms, gales, thunder and lightning, we've had it all. To look on the bright side, at least I am not still in school, struggling to contain stir-crazy classes of pupils through endless wet playtimes. Come to think of it, given our unpredictable climate, I have never understood why schools in Britain are not built with a verandah so that the children could at least get out for some air on rainy days, but that's another story.
Looking back before our holiday, we don't seem to have had many dry days since Spring either. In fact, I feel as if we are still waiting for summer and it is now nearly winter. Two months from today it will be Christmas, next week-end the clocks go back and we will return to dark evenings and soon afterwards to foggy evenings, frosty mornings and, eventually, no doubt, ice and snow.
Meanwhile, the leaves on the trees are beautiful in their autumn colours and there is an indefinable tang in the air at this time - but not when it is raining all the time! Too much of the wet stuff is beginning to affect everyone's mood. Customers are irritable and complaining, staff (in other shops, of course, not ours!)are impatient and disinterested. To add to the problem, Wales is earmarked for yet more storms mid-week - when will it end!

The font

The altar in St Beuno's chapel

St Beuno's and Rupert Davies

We had a very interesting find on our travels today. We set off towards the Lleyn Peninsular, going over the mountain from Bala to Trawsfynydd and somewhere en route, we came across a little village called Pistyll and a tiny chapel, whose sign proclaimed that it was called St Beuno's. I was aware of the Jesuit church and retreat centre of the same name near St Asaph, so I was curious to see this one, not Catholic but Church in Wales. We got out of the car, wandered through the little cemetery, where many of the gravestones were inscribed in welsh, and found the door of the chapel. I tried the handle, fully expecting it to be either locked or to open onto a derelict building but what a surprise! Inside was a fully furnished chapel, complete with a dressed altar, pews, font and even a visitor's book. As you can see from the weblink, it is kept decorated with herbs etc throughout the year, so the last time it was decorated would have been early August. Stepping into the chapel was like stepping into a moment frozen in time; it reminded me of Miss Haversham's house in 'Great Expectations' yet it seemed well cared for and not a bit neglected. Unfortunately, there was no-one around to talk to about it so we had to wait until
Outside in the cemetery, another surprise awaited us. We looked at some of the more recent gravestones and suddenly discovered Rupert Davies' grave. If you were born since the 1960's his name may not mean much to you, but for us, he symbolises the 60's TV series of Maigret in which he played the title role. Looking on the internet this evening, we discovered that he was also one of the voices on the puppet series 'Joe 90' which I didn't know before.
So, all in all, an interesting day out and to finish it off, there was a lovely rainbow on the way home.
To see today's photos, look at my Webshots album, Bala and Black Rock. There are a few photos of the chapel and cemetery there too.

Computer whizz kid!

In my other life of teaching, we did a qualification similar to the ECDL but geared to the needs of the classroom. I even have the certificate to prove it! The problem is that when you are not doing something regularly, you inevitably forget how to do it, so Excel remains pretty much a closed book to me these days, although I did have a nodding acquaintance with it at that time.
Today, I was compiling a list of addresses to use for a new mailshot but, of course, I needed to put them on labels for the envelopes. I vaguely remembered doing something similar last year for the children's name labels on their exercise books.
"Nothing to it," I thought. "I should be able to remember how to do that."
After some hours of looking up reference notes, retyping the addresses into Excel from Word, etc. because I'd forgotten that's where they needed to be, I was successful!
It did occur to me that during the time spent completing this little exercise, I could have hand-written the envelopes at least 10 times over! A steep leaning curve! :)

Customers!

There are good days and bad days in any job, and a computer shop is no exception. We have our fair share of customers who think they are experts and show themselves to be anything but as soon as they open their mouths, although, to be fair, 99% of them are very nice people and a pleasure to do business with.
Yesterday, however, we had a double wammmy:
First a phone call from an irate young lady wanting to speak to the manager, (Keith) who wasn't available, about her mother's computer, bought from the shop two months ago and which now had 'major problems.' My mind trawled through processor/memory problems plus a faulty hard drive all in one from her attitude of barely concealed fury. It turned out that she was blaming the shop for loading pornographic diallers onto the computer, which, however, had only just made their presence known. Anyone who surfs the internet knows how one gets pornographic diallers on their system - and it ain't from the people who built the computer!

Second was a customer who had acquired the Trojan worm on his computer and harassed us with phone calls all day because he wanted it fixed yesterday. His wife came to collect it at the end of the day, furiously protesting because we had had the audacity to charge for removing the worm, which also entailed rebooting the system. "It's still under guarantee!" she proclaimed. "That covers hardware only," we said, "no computer supplier anywhere covers software too."
To cut a long story short, she claimed to have no credit cards and no money except a £10 note, which she grudgingly gave us, maintaining that she had to have the computer that night for her daughter to do her homework on. Husband was suppose to pay the balance today.......We're still waiting!

Shall I or shan't I?

I noticed the item on Blogger dashboard about National Novel Blogging Month. Seems like a very interesting idea and I am very tempted to sign up. But then, I wonder if I would have the time to devote to it. 50,000 words in a month! That's a lot of words! Keith thought it would be easy. He would have no trouble writing 50,000 words, as long as they were 3 letter words. He was quite crestfallen when I explained that, not only could they not only be 3 letter words but they also had to make sense - i.e. be in sentences!
(Oh well, back to the drawing board :0)
So, working full time in the shop, doing my counselling course, which includes homework, ordinary blogging and reading other people's blogs, of course, a few moments each week devoted to housework - would I also have time to write a novel? Decisions, decisions!

Oh, and........do I have anything to write about?