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It’s still rather inhospitable out there, and forecast to remain that way for the next four days, easing off towards the weekend. Beyond that, I don’t know.
I have to go out anyway, even though, search as I may, I cannot find my big red waterproof, and all I have in the way of water-proofery is a horrid green plastic thing I bought in Carmarthen when we lived in the first Welsh cottage. And, though I’d started out on the portly route back then, and have a photograph to prove it, somewhere, I have portled rather more over the intervening years and the green thing will no longer fasten down the front; I keep it in the car against emergencies, not for serious wear.
“You must have left it on the back of a chair in a café somewhere,” Graham said.
“I’ve come to the same conclusion.”
“Well, never mind. It had got really grubby over the years, and needed chucking out. We’ll get you a new one next time we go to Debenham’s.”
“Good. Next week, then?”
“Only if you feel up to the drive.”
This’ll be the third waterproof over-coat I’ve had since retiring 20 years ago. The first, a Barbour, wore out. This one, a Maine, from Debenhams, was a Gor-tex thing which, while it was guaranteed to last until the sun goes nova, attracted grime like something that attracts grime a lot. The next one, unless I lose that one, too, will doubtless last until I’m beyond need of weatherproof clothing.
Actually, going back to the subject of a trip to Somerset, I’m not too concerned with my own fitness to drive there and back. It’s Dolly that bothers me. She’s perfectly fit and healthy for her age but I’m not sure it’s right to submit her to a three-hour drive. She’s not as young as she used to be and I’m not convinced she could take a three-hour yowl.
I shall have to think about that, and discuss it further with Graham, but I think that spending much time in the caravan is not going to be possible this year. A couple of days out will do me no harm, though, and Dolly will manage the quite happily. Last time I swear she hadn’t noticed I’d been away.
Yesterday evening I watched a snatch of a programme on Twitter. I was horrified.
I’d looked at Twitter, of course. Goodness knows there’s enough flutter about it among the chatterati, and my curiosity bone is still functional. I’d decided that it wasn’t for me, though, and gave it no further thought.
But this programme gave me the shudders. There was a party, in a dimly-lit room, populated with Twitters, all twittering on their iPhones and Blackberries. In silence. Like the characters in some horrid Dean R. Koontz novel, just before the hero, his dog, and his girl-friend leap into action and grind them into zombie-paste. Like I say: Shudder.
I know I’m going to get some stick for this, but someone has to stand up for sanity and the British way of life. I hereby declare myself firmly and finally on the side of the Anti-Twitters. I may no longer have much of a life but I’ve better things to do with the residue than spend it Twittering. Mis-quoting good old Kai-Lung:
None but the nightingale should Twitter merely to emit sound.
So there.
I haven’t twittered (tweeted?) or facebooked or beboed or anything else. I’m finding it increasingly worrying being on the computer at all. I fear I am being left behind……
I’m lucky that I’ve enough time to view my favorite blogs and do a small blog, myself! Along with e-mailing friends, etc.
I don’t think I want (or need) to know every thought or every little thing that someone is doing. I also don’t want a gazillion ‘friends’, or to hook up with people that I haven’t spoken to, or seen, or even thought about, in 40 years, on FB. Call me crabby and/or ‘out of the loop’. But that’s the way I feel.
Perhaps, not a bad idea to leave Dolly home, eh? If it was a shorter drive – it might not be so bad.
It’s sure to wonder if we ever are able to live up to a nightingale, no matter how much we twitter. But heavy rains and +16° C in July really makes one emitting sounds…
I have never twittered and I have never followed anyone’s twittering and I can’t imagine ever having any desire to do either. I very rarely even use texting on my cell phone.
(I’m not even that fond of instant messaging but that may be because I once had a manager who said that if he looked at the messaging status and didn’t see someone logged on during the day he would assume they were taking the day off, so I tend to look at the messaging system as having a hint of Big Brother about it.)
I agree with all of the above. I’ve been “invited” to join Facebook (no thanks) and know several people who twitter all the time. No thanks. Do you have a neighbor who could look in on Dolly while you are away?
That reminds me of “back in the olden days” when we first got hooked on the WWW. One of the jokes going around was “You know you’re hooked when you go to the bathroom at 3:00 in the morning and you take your laptop with you to check your e-mail.” Fortunately, I didn’t have a laptop then and I’m long past that stage now. I’m with those who don’t “do” any of the so-called social networking gigs with their warped concept of what constitutes Friends. As for Twitter, I see enough about Sarah Palin’s use of it to turn me off for life. (sigh) John, your Dean Koontz scenario is chillingly evocative. Enough so to make me yowl like Dolly. (smile)
I was invited to Facebook and as I have stated before ‘no thanks’. Having a blog and a journal and a secret blog to really rant in occasionally is quite enough. I’ve seen the twitters the ex Gov. of Alaska did and thought, “Good Gosh Almighty!”
Curious if your rain gear makes you as hot as mine does. Mine I’ve seldom had occasion to wear.
I admit I facebook, but so do all my grandkids. Ah excuses. No Twitter here tho. I don’t have enough time to write or read blogs of interest, where would I fit Twitter in. Yuck.
No time or inclination for Twitter here, either. Isn’t that what ‘twits’ do?
I do have a page on Facebook, mostly to post short items of interest to my kids and a few friends. I’ve found that I can contact some friends quickly when I need to, via FB. But, honestly, e-mail is as good for most folks.
Amen. I hope twitter dies. Facebook is intrusive.
No twittering for me, however I have to admit I did name my new kitten Tweet!
The thing that I realized about Twitter, and only just recently, is that it is in fact IRC, in your pocket.
Imagine just how quiet geeky gatherings would have been back in the heyday of IRC, had there been an option to chat there on a mobile device?
I do really like both Twitter and Facebook. They’ve been good ways for me to keep up with several friends, and to get to know a few new people. I find both to be much less potentially intrusive than instant messages (I keep myself permanently signed out of FB chat), by the way.
Douglas Adams knew a thing or two about new technologies, if I’m allowed to add a url… http://tinyurl.com/2xdra
Thank you very much for the verb ‘to portle’ I never knew that’s what I was doing!
Ha. Doing a twitter is tweeitng apparently which is, if anything, a bit sillier. I actually do it and push the result to my facebook account. I follow twitter and facebook and wonder if it has affected my blogging output or if my blogging has just reached a stagnant point anyway where I only attend to the (mostly pictures) Austin, Texas Daily Photo and not to the more introspective (or at least prone to chronicling things such as what I eat and wear) Visible Woman or the (hilarious but almost never updated) Journal of Unintended Consequences.
My submission to tweeting, however, is effectively curtailed by the present state of phone technology in our house: we have no phones on which to tweet or follow others. So when we leave the house…we leave it alone. I hope when smarter phones arrive in our life (as they are sure to do) that I continue to respect some boundary!