Monday, 30 November 2015

A new computer

Let us hope that this computer will last for quite a while and that my problems are a thing of the past.
 I went to the computer shop originally to ask him if I had selected a computer that was suitable, he told me that he had one, more or less the same specifications for a little less in price. I asked him if he would install it for me with the same sort of additions that he had put on the old one with the inclusion of a strong anti virus system. He asked me when I would be thinking of having it installed. I told him as soon as possible so he toldme that he would be at mine the next day.
Saturday arrived and I did my washing as the forecast was decent and the sun was shining. Around 10.00 am. the clouds rolled in and I went to put a jumper on the central heating radiator when I noticed that the man was pulling in on my drive so I opened the door for him.
  Anyway he bought the new computer in and asked if I could take the plug out of the socket which I did. He had suffered form Polio as a young child.
 A little while later my mate rang up to see if I had any news. The computer man had just told me that he was having difficulty connecting  to the Ethernet but I needn't worry as he would get connected. While my mate was on he informed me he was now connected to the Internet. I gave my mate the news and he rung off.
 the man then started to install many programmes and told me that because I had a slow internet connection it was going to take some time.
 After an hour or so he told me that we had to wait patiently as my connection speed was not good. 1.9 megabits.
  He started to talk about his life and how he came into computing. He had started out as a professional musician and had his own band. He then went on that he had met quite a few celebrities and in general they were very nice people. He told me of a guy who had been on T.V. the Comedians and that he was also a good singer. He said that his band used to accompany him when he sang but he always started off with jokes and his theme was the same, it was about his young days at home.
 I then told him that I had done my washing that morning and I had started to dry the clothes on my radiators.
  I then stated to him the wash day was all day, not exactly true but it took many hours. I thought he would know a little more about how it was because he is not young, I guess  20 years or so  younger than me. Anyway I went on to tell him that Monday was always washing day. It didn't matter what the weather was it was so. I told him that my Father used to light the gas copper up at 7.00 am when he was about to leave for work. The working week had just been reduced from 48 hours to 44. 1 hour was spent for lunch and 15 minutes was taken for tea morning and afternoon so one was at work for 9 hours 30 minutes as it wasn't convenient for him to come home at lunch(dinner) he had his warmed up later when he got home around 5.30 pm.
  My Mother would get up and made sure us kids were up. As Sunday was bath day we had clean underwear and clothes to wear. It was our job to take the bottom sheet off the bed together with the pillow case and take them down stairs. The common practice was then my Mother would put the top sheet onto the bottom and have a clean sheet and pillow case to make the bed up.
 I tiod him that it was common for everyone to wear their clothes for a week, hence there was always a shirt which were without fitted collars. They had detatchable collars which fitted with a stud at the back of the neck. When one bought a shirt quite often there would be 2 detachable collars with the shirt.
 My Mother would sort out the whites from the coloureds. Whites were in general, white shirts, bedding, pyjamas, towels, tea towels and those sorts of things. They were put into the copper with a good helping of Persil, bought to boil and left to boil for about 20 minutes. While that was boiling it was our job to half fill the dolly tub, a big tub to put the boiled clothes in to rinse. Needless to say the water we put in the dolly was cold. It was then that the dolly peg was used. I was used to rinse the boiled whites, it was hard work and after that it was to mangle the wet clothes. I wish I had a £1 for every time I trapped my Mother's hand for going to fast turning the mangle handle.
 After this was done, it was pegging out the washing. While that was going on we had to empty the copper and refill it so that the fresh water would be quite hot. The dolly tub was also emptied and the clean hot water was poured into the dolly tub. Then in went the coloureds and in went the soap powder. Rinso this time. It was always Persil for whites and Rinso for coloureds. It was like that for years. It was then time to work like mad with the dolly peg to make sure that the movement was good enough to clean the coloureds.
 The last job which generally happened around 2.00 pm. was to swill and clean the back yard with  the water so that everything was as clean as possible.
 I was surprised that he didn't know too much about this so that is why I am writing this down, just in case some youngish person reads my blog. This is exactly how it was and almost all of us working class youngsters went through this episode each week. When we was on holiday we had, naturally to help my Mother as it must have been hard work for her, especially as there were 4 of us children. More soon.

Tuesday, 24 November 2015

Geese

A little over a week ago I was out in the garden when I first heard then saw a flock of geese heading south.  Some time later another flock flew by just as the neighbour next door was hanging out her washing. I told her that this was a sign of wild weather to come. She asked me how I came to that decision, I then told her that many years ago my late Mother had told me this tale and nearly every time a few days later the weather turned nasty.
 This happened to be true as a couple of days later we had severe storms, not that it affected us too much but on Friday night into Saturday morning it was dreadful. I noticed that there was damage to next door's fencing panels, one which seems to be non repairable. While the guy was here repairing my computer we had the first snow for well over a year. Last year was the mildest I have ever known with no snow at all. It came down heavy for a while, so much so that he asked me if he would be able to get back home. I assured him that it would have stopped by the time he came to leave.
 Mentioning my Mother also brings to mind this true story.
 We were poor and my Mother always used to say. "I don't care who hears this but nobody was more hard up than me".  Mind you when I mentioned it to folks  in front of her many years later she would request me to be quiet.
 This is one of her stories. She said they had to save everything they could and a treat was to go to the local Fish Shop and ask if they had any yesterday's fish they had not sold. Sometimes they would and if this was so she would buy a piece of yesterdays fried fish for a penny. She  would then heat it up in the oven and she told me it was beautiful.
 I decided to try this. I don't know if I mentioned this but the young lass who serves me in the local Newsagents told me she works in the fish shop on a Saturday. Anyway I decided to go and get a piece of Cod, no chips as I am getting like my late Father about 4 chips would suffice. Anyway when I did get the fish it was far too large for me so last Friday I went to the fish shop and ordered a Cod. I would have gone on Saturday but the man was due to repair my computer and it's sod's law that if one goes out one misses a call.
 Well I cut the fish into 2/3 1/3 pieces and ate the first large portion. I then left the other on a tray.
 Saturday morning I prepared my dinner with potatoes and vegetables with the fish being the substitute for my meat.
 I put the fish in a hottish oven for about 15 minutes while I cooked the vegetables. The outcome was that it was not bad at all and I could understand why my Mother enjoyed it so much.
  Finally for now, I went to call on the repair man in Mablethorpe for I wished to ask his advice but unfortunately he was not ope, it was quite early around 9.45am. and it was dull and rainy, so I will call again on Thursday or friday after having my haircut.
 I must admit that most shops seem to have an open time of 10.00am. and that is during the Summer months too. More soon.

Monday, 23 November 2015

Up and running again

Over a week ago I had severe troubles with my computer. Over the weekend I tried and eventually found a couple of people who would repair the computer by visiting the home.
 So last Monday I contacted a shop in Alford and he told me that he would come out but it would be after 5.00pm. Naturally I switched all the lights I could so that he could find me easily. 5.00pm came and went so did 6.00pm. I then guessed correctly that he would not be calling.
 I rung him up the next morning to inform him  not to bother, he was naturally apologetic but I reminded him that he could have given me a phone call.
 On Tuesday I went into Mablethorpe to do some shopping and I knew there was a Computer Shop on the main street. Naturally I turned the wrong way and walked to the North end of the road, turning round and walked another 1/2 mile or so. I began to wonder if I had missed it when I did see the place. In I went only to be seen by a Lady. It turned out it was the Owner's Sister and told me that unfortunately her Brother was going to a funeral but she would give him my telephone number and would contact me as soon as he could.
 To be honest I had a most pleasant time chatting away to her, she too was pleased of the company for the weather was dank and dreary so there were no people around. I stayed there about 30 minutes and only left because I was feeling cold.
 True to her words her Brother contacted me and informed me that hopefully he would call to see me on Wednesday but also warned me that if it was not that day it would be on Saturday. Unfortunately this happened so Saturday it would be.
 My mate rung me up on Saturday late morning to see if I had things sorted but I told him that up to now nobody had contacted me so I was going to have an early dinner and wait.
 Just after 1.00pm. I had the call I was waiting for saying that he would be at mine in about 15 minutes. I waited for a few minutes then turned on the computer.
 He arrived when he told me he would, we shook hands then I showed him the troublesome computer and he started.
 This was the sort of things he said. " We'll try this, it doesn't lie that, we will try this then. Still the same. Oh! I've never seen that before. We'll try something different then." This conversation to himself went on for a while then he started to gain some access to the computer.
 An hour or so into his work he suddenly started by saying, "Look at this? 3.5 gigabytes of junk files. That is 3500 megabits of rubbish on your computer. We'll get rid of this lot for a start". This took about 5 minutes but he did that. I noticed that he was gradually getting some things back to work. He did tell me that he suspected that I had quite a few viruses. Needless to say he was correct.
 He was a man around 60 years of age and wasn't a whizz kid and typed in reasonably slowly so that I could follow some of his actions.
 He tried Ccleaner but it still wouldn't perform so he delved further. Of course he had some programmes that he had on his dongle but also knew just what to type. He did tell me he had a great programme that allowed him to see ALL activities I have had on this computer. He even told me that Windows 8 was still on the machine but was not using any space really.
 I did ask him if he could install Real Player Real Times for me, he asked me why I wanted that for he knew a much better player of videos and music than that. He installed the one he recommended for me and it works great.
 Eventually he managed to get everything back to hopefully where it was originally and he left just before 4.30pm. Well over 3 hours of continual work. He did explain to me that if I had a better Internet connection than the 1.9megabits he would have been finished sooner.
 However I was delighted that I am back in the living of Computer usage. More soon.

Friday, 13 November 2015

Cauliflower

My mate called yesterday and I sent him an e-mail asking if he could bring a cauliflower at a reasonable price because when I went to buy a cauliflower at my usual place they had none.
 True to form he bought a lovely looking cauliflower, large too, he also bought back my watch which he had picked up originally from Argos , the metal strap being too large and he had tried to adjust it but didn't have the tools to do the job.
 Well he bought it back, I don't know what he thinks but the first thing was I couldn't  open the box that it was in, he mentioned that I had trouble opening it before, next came the watch. I couldn't open the strap to see if it had been adjusted right. He had to also show me that. I'm definitely getting a little senile I am sure of it. The strap though had been adjusted perfectly.
 That was the limit of our successes for I had mentioned to him that my videos were showing about 1/3 of the screen size. I had informed him that prior to getting Windows 10 the picture used to fill the screen. I am not a film buff but as I said to him there was no way that one could watch a film with that size of picture.
 He spent about 2 hours trying to figure what was wrong. He tried to get into Windows Media Player but couldn't but what it showed was the videos there but when he tried to play them it said something like it couldn't play them because they were a different format. With Real Payer Real Times it played them alright but only with a small screen size so he went online and downloaded the latest version but to no avail.
 To be honest had I known what problems I would have I would never install Windows 10. It seems as if it doesn't support anything but Windows 10 and Windows 8 was the last one before10.
  The upshot was that we had dinner a little later than usual and the crackling on the leg of pork was a little too crispy. Still he enjoyed it also the cauliflower which was very nice.
 Out of respect for he knows who I will not post the latest photo of the meal.
 Incidentally since he has tried several things the computer is going slower than ever. I couldn't access my mail for it kept informing me that  I  was timed out. This morning is a little better but still very very slow. Heaven alone knows what he would think about it as he was fed up with the slow speed of my Internet. Let us hope it will gradually improve to my usual 1.9 megabits maximum. More soon.

Tuesday, 10 November 2015

Gales

The other day the young man from next door came to see this picture of my mates dinner plate. He couldn't believe just how much was on his plate. I must admit that both him and me don't eat a large meal. In fact I have never eaten a large meal
. I honestly think I am in a minority.
 I will tell a tale now. I worked on the railway and NEVER had Christmas Day off. The first year my Parents had a turkey and reluctantly let my Brother-in-Law do the carving. After he gave everyone all they required, he then asked if anyone would like any more and when all said they had enough, he then took the remainder of the carcass and proceeded to demolish it all. I think it was about a 10lb.  From then on the Christmas Day dinner was put on hold until I came home to carve. Well that is the picture. My mate thoroughly enjoyed the meal.


These photos are just to show how many leaves have fallen on my garden from next door's tree. As you can see the majority have now fallen but it is a bit of a disappointment that the wind seems to blow from the south west whenever the leaves are ready to fall. With my orchard being gravelled it is not easy to rake up the leaves. I suppose I should get one of those modern leave blowers. I heard a noise as I was taking some recyclable material and as I was wondering what it was I saw the lady blowing some leaves then sucking others. The big trouble with me should I think of purchasing one is the length of cable. I must be well over 25 yards from the nearest point to the front edge of my orchard. More soon.

Wednesday, 4 November 2015

Cricket and pineapple

A couple of days ago I was watching on Eurosport a one day International cricket match between Sri Lanka and the West Indies and the commentator informed us viewers that the match was coming from Colombo. I immediately thought I have been there, not for many many years and the Country was then called Ceylon. This was back in 1956.
 I had been called up to do my National Service in October 1955, did my basic training then was posted out to Hong Kong. So off we fellow N.S men went. We left Southampton in early March 1956, it was snowing went we left. The first port of call was Port Suez. We stopped there to pick up water, then traveled through the Suez Canal to Aden, where we stopped I think for provisions. Then it was through the Red Sea and into the Indian Ocean.
 After a few days I began to feel a little unwell but decided to carry on as usual. A few days later we reached Ceylon and for the first time was allowed to disembark for a few hours.
 By now I was feeling poorly but my friends coaxed me to go ashore as it might make me feel better. Unfortunately it didn't and I guess I held them back a little but we did go for a walk through a park with well kept gardens.
 Soon after boarding the ship my pals took me to see the M.O. He immediately admitted me to the Hospital on board ship. I was put on a course of penicillin which in those days was administered by injection in the rear which after administration left you feeling uncomfortable because it left a sort of bruise reaction. These I had 3 times a day for a week but after 3 or 4 days felt a lot better.
 While I was in Hospital  the next port of call was Singapore, quite a few had been posted to Singapore so they disembarked but also those who wished to go ashore for about 2 hours were free to do so.  Unfortunately for me I was not allowed as I was still in Hospital but my pals went ashore.
  They must have thought about me for when they called in to see me they produced about 4 pineapples. They said they were dirt cheap and they were also plentiful
 Now remember this was 1956 and exotic fruit, as we called it was almost non existent. We had tasted pineapples but in tins only and in general tinned fruit are nothing like fresh fruit but these pineapples tasted almost the same as tinned fruit.
 What I remember most was that I shared them with the other lads in Hospital, I think there were 5 altogether. We all suffered the same sort of reaction. What we found was that our lips felt as though they were chapped. I guess that was due to the acidity nature of fresh pineapples. Mind you, they were nice but I have never eaten a fresh pineapple since.
 Soon after I was discharged and about 5 days later reached Hong Kong my home for the next 17 months. More soon.

Monday, 2 November 2015

Leaves and more leaves

On Friday and Saturday the windy weather meant that I was picking up many leaves and soon found that I had collected a bin liner full.
  Sunday turned out to be a very warm day for the beginning of November so I decided to dig a trench where I have my runner beans and place the leaves  in and cover them up. Sounded easy but I am getting old and found it very hard to complete the task. eventually I made it but it makes me wonder if I will be able to do the same work next year.
 I ate the last runner beans on the last day of October, not bad since I started to eat them in late June. Now I have a few leeks, my carrots and some cabbage so this means I will be buying some vegetables during the late winter into Spring, this is normal for me as I don't freeze my vegetables, well only broad beans as the other vegetables don't freeze well.
 By the looks of it, I will be picking the odd tomato for another 2 or 3 weeks. Will be well satisfied if this is so.
 Like a fool, I bought another Victoria plum tree and another gooseberry bush, recent years have not been productive with the gooseberries.
 Today has been different again to yesterday very foggy and a lot cooler. I had my first delivery of the winter of LPG. The local supplier has been taken over by Calor, I don't suppose that the price will fall even if all other fuels have dropped in price. More soon.