Mae'n bwrw eira - again!

And here we are again. The calendar says 'Spring', the weather says, 'Oh no it isn't! It's still snow time!'

As the snow is about 10 inches deep, there is no chance of Jake going out for a walk, as his little legs wouldn't touch terra firm. Paddy shows a distinct disinclination to go anywhere except a quick trip into the back garden to do what's necessary. 

Keith is equally lacking in motivation, justified in his case, as his ankle is very painful today, but he is also bemoaning the fact that the Sky signal is off, so he can't watch Formula One trials.

So, not all bad then!

Yes, I know, horrible, aren't I?

A Mother's Story: The three amigos

A Mother's Story: The three amigos

A portrait from the past

Yesterday was a day with Paul, his brother Nathan and Elder and Younger Daughter and today being Mother's Day, Younger Daughter had had a portrait of me enlarged onto canvas for my present.

There is a story behind this picture.

When I first went to college in Hull, back in 1967, I met up in the first few days with the friends that I would go through college with and one of these was a girl who was a little older than the rest of us, although to us 18 and 19 year olds, at 24 she seemed the height of maturity and sophistication. Her name was Ilona, known to everyone as Noni and she had worked at the Council of Europe before deciding to turn her sights to teaching.

Noni's mother lived in a cottage somewhere near Wellingborough, as I recall, her father having disappeared to the depths of Africa many years previously, allegedly to shoot big game, leaving Noni and her brother and sister to be brought up by their mother. 

The other unusual thing about Noni was that, in a time when no students had cars, she did; it was an ancient Austin 10 but to us, it was a valuable means of travel. Admittedly, it frequently ground to a halt but Noni had a fail-safe solution to that, which was to get tools out of the boot, spread them on the road behind the car and then stand there looking helpless in the hope that a knight of the road would pull up and solve the problem. As I say, it never failed.

However, back to the picture. On one of the first weekends at college, a couple of us were invited to go home with Noni and we did. The main thing I remember was the the cottage, even in October, was bone-bitingly, chillingly cold, but Noni's mother made us very welcome and, as she was an amateur painter, she offered to do our portraits. I think I was the only one who took her up on her offer (vain even in those days!) and the result you can see above.

Looking at it now - I haven't even thought about it for years - I am reminded of a group of friends on the brink of a new career, broadening horizons (for those days, anyway) and the promise of a life ahead of us which would meet all our hopes and expectations.

I doubt if any of us considered that we might, at times, have to take the scenic route!

Moonwalking to Fleetwood Mac

How about this for one clever pony!

Having a great evening

Every few weeks, Keith and I get together with friends, usually in their house, because Howard enjoys cooking and entertaining and because Keith and I never seem to be organised enough to remember when it's getting time to get together again.

Tonight was one of those times.

Over the past few months, Howard has had a few health problems, notably heart related but he is doing well at present. Howard is a great believer in herbal remedies too, as attested by his large box of packets of pills for various aliments, more than you could shake a stick at.( Some time ago, he recommended one such remedy to Keith for his leg problems and Keith duly ordered and took them, resulting in a couple of fountain-like bleeds from his veins, in turn, necessitating new stair and bedroom carpets, but that's another story.)

Tonight was blood pressure night, instigated by Keith's mention of feeling constantly tired and sleepy, which the rest of us thought could be a side effect of his current medication. 

The general consensus was that he should high-tail it back to the GP to discuss other options - which is what I have been telling him to do for the past fortnight, to no avail, of course.

This gave rise to Howard bringing out his blood pressure monitor and a general comparison of BP readings...

A great time was had by all but eventually, I had to wake Keith up, prise him off the sofa and lead him to the car for the homeward journey - a bit worrying really, as he was driving us home.

Seriously, we had a very pleasant evening.

Sixty IS the new forty, you know!

Caught in the Apple web

Keith has fixed the other Apple Macbook and then spent the whole of yesterday evening playing with it. He has loaded all his information, music etc on it, set up iCloud and linked to his iPhone.

Of course, he doesn't really have an iPhone or an Apple Macbook... 

He's just testing them.

Of course he is...

In praise of Apple

For Christmas, I was very, very lucky. Father Christmas, aka Keith, bought me a lovely new iPad, then Elder Daughter was upgrading her phone to an iPhone 5 and passed on her iPhone 4 to me and I was hooked on Apple.

Because the phone had a cracked screen, Keith set to and replaced it and there began a new string to his bow - buying non-working iPhones and repairing them to re-sell. It was but a small effort for me to direct his eyes to non-working Apple laptops and, before we knew it, we had taken delivery of a poorly Macbook and a Macbook Pro. 

Now the Macbook Pro was a bargain, sold as having a non-working DVD/CD writer but otherwise in great condition and with a 500 Gb hard drive. I pounced on it as soon as it arrived and soon had it up and running with all my stuff on it. Useless for Keith to protest that it was to be repaired and sold on. Forget it!

The operating system was Snow Leopard, which apparently could be upgraded to Mountain Lion. Yes, I realise all you Windows users out there are probably scratching your heads by now, but stay with me. The previous owner had wiped all his personal stuff off but it took a long time to boot up and I couldn't access iCloud, although I could with Mountain Lion OS, so I bought and downloaded Mountain Lion and proceeded to install it. Simple, right? 

WRONG! After 5 hours of frustration and angst, I was between a rock and a hard place and the only way out was to reboot it with the disc that had come with it - which was an earlier OS, so now I didn't even have access to Apple Appstore. Could I do a clean install of Mountain Lion, I wondered and went online to find out.

YES ....Oh,  but only if you already have Snow Leopard. Grrrrr!

Snow Leopard could not be downloaded, but had to be ordered and delivered by snail mail, so I rang Apple and spoke to a very nice man.

"I have tried to install Mountain Lion and it's impossible!" I said.

He reacted as if I had kicked his pet dog.

"Oh no, it really isn't!" he protested.

The Snow Leopard disc arrived the following day - great service!

I installed it and the associated updates with no problems and was now back to where I had been before my eyes had fallen on the dreaded Mountain Lion.

Should I?

"Go on, do it!" said Keith, so I did.

It went on like a dream!

So, should the man on the phone be among the millions of people who will undoubtedly be reading this, you were right and thank you, Apple for great service!

Oh and the best bit?  Somewhere  in the house of the previous owner, there is a small child who inserted a penny into the CD/DVD writer and then watched as his father wondered why it no longer worked. 

It works fine now!