Monthly Archives: January 2009

My rejuvenated DVD drive got a good work-out this morning when a free DVD arrived from the mail order plants men Thomson & Morgan.  I’m a sucker for pictures of garden flowers.  Viewing summer gardens stuffed with flowers came as a real tonic.

“I wanna go to a garden centre,” I said.

“Well, I do need a can of stump-killer,” Graham said.  ”When do you want to go?”

“Now.”

“But I thought we were going to Sainsbury’s.”

“No problem.  We can go on the way.”

“What about lunch?”

“We’ll get it at the garden centre.”

“You really do want to go to the garden centre, don’t you?”

So, off we went to the Wyvale garden centre at the Swansea Enterprise Park–a landscaped retail and business area with lakes and a river and general pleasantness.

Lunch first, then Graham’s stump killer, then a tour of the centre.

It’s good therapy, doing a garden centre in the winter.  You have the central core, heated and busy with all kinds of garden supplies, then an outer temperate zone, under glass but open along the sides to the elements, and then, finally, the raw outdoors.

And gosh but it was raw.

“Not quite gardening weather yet,” I said, shivering into my fleece.

“Give it a couple of weeks or so and things’ll be jumping.”

“Can’t wait.  Meantime, let’s get back in the warm.”

On the way over to Sainsbury’s I enthused about my little treat, saying how much I enjoyed going out and see places, just once a week or so, rather than staying home.

“All work and no play…” I said.

“But work is play, if you do it right,” said Graham.

“Grrr.”

The annual Norton System Tools update time came round again this morning, so I disconnected my computer from the Internet and deleted the 2008 copy in readiness to install a complete new copy.

That was when I discovered that my DVD drive had gone kaput.  So, off to the big retail park outside Swansea.  PC World had sold out.  Maplins had a drive but they also had a very good offer on a 22x external drive.  Graham said that, since I’ve been talking for some while of upgrading my system, the external drive would be a better idea.

Done.

Back home, we discovered that the new drive didn’t work with my system, either.  Much cursing and cussing.

So, over to Graham’s computer for research.  Nothing wrong with the new drive.  Nothing wrong with the old drive, either.

Questions to Graham’s techie friends around the world.

“It’s a known Vista fault,” came the answer, along with a short script of how to correct the problem in the Registry.

Soon done, and the new drive is whizzing around happily, and has done a fair amount of work, enough to persuade me that it’s fit and happy again.

It took all day, though.

Pesky computers.

The house heating switches on at 07:20 each morning, having switched into ‘frost-stat’ mode at 11:00 the previous evening.  This morning Graham was up and about early and came into the study shortly before 07:00.

“Have you had the heating on this morning?” he asked.

“Nope. Haven’t needed it.”

“So it’s been off since last night?”

“Yeah. I’d have turned it on if I’d needed it.”

“Bloody miraculous this insulation game, ennit.  Do you realise we’re saving at least an hour of heating a day, quite apart from the boiler running less often when the system is on?”

“That’s what I told you the day after you finished the job.  It’s going to make a big difference to our bills.”

“Great.  Makes it all worthwhile.”

I cast my gaze out of the window to where the ice glistened in the light from the street lamps.  The sky was still dark.

“Now if you could only find a way of insulating against daylight loss, you really would be worth your weight in gold.”

“I shall work on it,” he said. “Marvellous what you can do with mirrors.”

Dolly the Mega-cat opened one eye, sighed mightily, stretched out full length, and curled up in a new position.  She’s happy.

Observations:

• It’s cold
• It’s mostly sunny
• It’s been raining rather a lot
• One of our neighbours has a new puppy–pale labrador–and is wreathed in smiles for it
• You can’t watch TV or listen to the radio without acquiring a case of recession wearies, PDQ
• Mr Obama has spoken to our Mr Brown on the phone for ’45 minutes’.  Can’t imagine speaking to anyone for as long as 45 minutes.
• Our quince tree is budding out all over, but taking it slow and steady, just in case
• I asked Graham what we’d done today.  ”We went to Sainsbury’s,” he said.
• Yeah. Yeah.

To the clinic for taking bloods.  Nice phlebotomist, well set up office.  I’m getting more impressed with the practice each time I have contact.

Not that I’ve had any physical contact since the start of the ‘flu.

Then, across the way to the civic centre in Neath where we inspected the plans submitted by one of our neighbours wishing to extend his house.  We’re satisfied there will be no adverse effect on us or our property, so we’ll not be lodging objections.  I rather doubt the likelihood of the project getting through the planning and building regulations process, however, so it’s likely to be an academic question.

And then, oh blessed relief! to La Baguette du Jour as was for coffee and a large breakfast pannini.  It wasn’t a long fast, but just knowing you’re forbidden tends to liven the appetite.

Home, lunch, and a long, long nap.  I’d slept well enough but had woken on the hour every hour to check the time so that I was not late for the clinic. Silly practice but I’m resigned to it and don’t expect to escape in my lifetime.

Still watching out for Mr. Pres., and he’s doing fine.  Looks to be weary to the bone, though, and I hope he’ll be able to put his feet up and relax over the weekend, leaving subordinates to work on the detail.  It’s all very well hitting the ground running but there’s no need for the man to martyr himself to it, is there?