Trouble All Round

Friday 3 July 2009

Since I bought my new computer in January I have, on the whole, been quite satisfied with Vista and its over-protectiveness in a lazy, can’t-be-bothered-to-make-the-effort kind of way.  I’ve reached the stage with my computer where I just want to turn it on and watch everything run smoothly.  No longer am I inclined to reformat on a regular basis to keep my programs tidy and running smoothly.  As long as they run at all, who cares?  Certainly not me.

However ………….

After I returned from Spain I turned it on and it informed me (in that cute panicky way that Vista has) that I needed updates.  Lots and lots of updates!  Updates to Vista, Internet Explorer, Firefox (my preferred browser), Incredimail (my preferred e-mail program) and AVG, to name but a few.  Off it went, gathering information from various sites and I left it alone to complete whatever it felt it needed to do.  I figured that the less I interfered with it while it went about its housekeeping chores, the more smoothly they would run – and they did.  Except now, things are conflicting.  Firefox opens and promptly crashes with flashing banners and error messages that ask whether I want to report this crash to whoever it intends to report it to.  Internet Explorer does the same so a large part of the time I’m struggling to even look at websites.  AVG seems to be the cause, but it might be Vista which keeps sending me threatening messages about my computer being under attack from something that’s going to ruin all my data.  If I open either browser it will either immediately disappear or hang there glumly with a ‘non-responding’ message on the taskbar.  I’ve turned AVG off but it hasn’t made much difference, so if anyone else has encountered this and can offer advice, I’m all ears.

Along similar lines, since the thunderstorm last week I’ve been struggling to hold on to an ADSL line.  I complained yesterday to BT once I’d got past their thirty-minute queuing system.  A nice chap said he’d test my line and ring me back.  He did, just as promised, and told me there wasn’t anything wrong with my line – it must be my server so it might be worth contacting them.  They have a thirty-minute queuing system too, but they play really irritating music, so I’m not prepared to go down that route unless absolutely necessary.  Oddly enough, ever since then, the ADSL line has been as steady as a rock!  Isn’t that a coincidence?

Or am I just being paranoid again?

Back Again

1 July 2009

I’ve gotten out of the habit of writing as I’ve been gone for such a long time.  So many things have happened.  Lots of thoughts have gone through my head and promptly left again before I’ve had a chance to write them down anywhere.  That’s to be expected I suppose.  I won’t go into too much detail about mum’s funeral, which took place last Friday, other than to say that we decided to have a Humanist Funeral Celebrant rather than a minister.  Mum wasn’t particularly regligious and hadn’t attended church for a long time, so we thought she might have preferred this.  Having never been to a humanist service before we weren’t sure what to expect, but we certainly weren’t disappointed.  Almost ninety people attended and afterwards many of them commented on what a lovely service it had been.  The Humanist, Fiona, spoke eloquently from notes she’d made of a two-hour conversation we’d had with her immediately after mum died.  She’d captured the humour and love we grew up and it was the general opinion that it was a celebration of mum’s life.

I came back from Spain last Wednesday having had a relaxing holiday.  I kept in touch with the girls and my sister via my friend’s computer, thus proving to myself that it really IS a small world nowadays.  It was possible to hold exactly the same typed ‘conversations’ from Spain as it is from my own computer.  Gordon enjoyed his time there too and even went as far to suggest that perhaps we should do this again next year!  Finally, after eighteen years of no holidays, he appreciated time away from the farm.

I took lots of photos of course – in fact, here are some:

Look at that blue sea!

Our view from the car park

Beach Huts

More beach huts

Blue door

Hibiscus

I’m In Spain

Wednesday 17 June 2009

Thank you for your really kind comments, both here and sent to my e-mail address.  It still hasn’t hit home yet, although the majority of the arrangements for mum’s funeral have been made.

Several months before mum became very ill Gordon and I arranged a Spanish trip to visit our friends Janine and Paul who live in Javea.  Mum was adamant we should still go as it’s the first time we’d been able to book ourselves a break from the farm together in eighteen years!  If she’d still have been ill we would have cancelled, but since we’ve done all we can for the timebeing we decided to go ahead. 

So, that’s where we are.  In Javea!  It’s very hot here but my friends have a beautiful house and we’ve just finished tea by the pool.  I’ve snuck away to catch up on my daily computer fix, but best go back now before someone comes looking for me.

I won’t be able to post photos as I didn’t bring anything to connect my camera to her computer, but will save them for when I get home.

RIP Mum

Sunday 14 June 2009

Mum passed away on Wednesday evening following her twenty-month battle with cancer.  She slipped away peacefully in her sleep with dad holding her hand.  I know people say it’s a blessed release, and in her case it probably was as she was terribly ill at the end, but at the moment that doesn’t help too much.  I’ll be back when I’m less emotional.

Tuesday 9 June 2009

The days are beginning to blur a little lately, I must admit.  They normally do when we’re silage-making since we do the same thing over and over until it’s done, but visiting the hospice on a daily basis has the same effect.  Every day we express amazement that it’s only been a little over a week since mum was taken there when it seems so much longer and every day she gets a little worse.

Yesterday morning we had no news from the hospice so decided to carry on with the silage-making until the afternoon then go for our normal visit.  I’d only just got into the field when my phone rang to say mum had deteriorated so much and could we go straight away.  Gordon and Daniel rallied to take over and we were off to Taunton, collecting dad on the way.  When we got there it was plain to see that mum was a lot worse so we sat with her until about 6.00 pm before coming home again.  Dad stayed the night after they moved her bed into a side room and this morning one of mum’s oldest friends is with them.  By all accounts, mum is still as we left her yesterday so we’re going to have another go at clearing one field at a time.  It looks like it’s about to rain, but if we don’t do it in instalments we’ll never get it done at all.

On a lighter note, I had to alter one of Lindsay’s comments on an entry a couple of days ago where she mentioned that the ball cock in her toilet was broken.  I made the two separate words one after an assortment of very strange spam comments, obviously picking up on the latter word!  Fortunately they looked like Russian or Greek words so I couldn’t understand exactly what they were, but the ‘addresses’ gave me quite a clue!  Of course, now I’ve included it in my entry I’ll probably get another batch!  Search engines are odd things really, aren’t they?

Updating

Thursday 4 June 2009

I’ve been told off as apparently my blog is the only way my friends are able to see what I’m up to at the moment and I haven’t updated it recently.  So sorry.

Mum is at the hospice and getting worse by the day.  The doctors have warned us not to expect too much.

The forager went really well for two days then the clutch burnt out!  Gordon has spent the last couple of days fixing it, waiting for parts, etc.  It looks like it’ll be ready tomorrow.  The joys of buying a second-hand, unknown entity of a forage harvester!  When he stripped out the clutch it was severely cracked.

I’ll keep you posted.

Absent

Saturday 30 May 2009

The last couple of days have been spent visiting mum in hospital where’s she’s been now for about three weeks.  She had another operation to check out why she was unable to eat but other than being told she had ‘kinks’ in her small intestine, we don’t know much else.  Yesterday she was moved from the hospital to St Margaret’s Hospice and Terri, Steph, dad and I visited in the afternoon.  It’s beautiful there and couldn’t be further removed from hospital treatment.  There are more staff per person and the room mum was put into is much smaller with just three other patients.  She looks out over the garden which is quite soothing for her.  We were offered a cup of tea and dad couldn’t get over the fact we didn’t have to pay to park!  A somewhat controversial subject at the best of time it was costing us a lot of money to visit every day.  Even a short stay of no longer than two hours cost almost £3 and if we’d wanted to stay for the whole afternoon it would have cost over £7.  Add that to the cost of petrol to Taunton everyday and it was mounting up.  Of course, despite the cost we still wanted to visit, so it just gets written off.  Such is life.  It is nice to be able to park for free though.

Whilst we were at the hospice yesterday Gordon and Dan made a tentative start on the silage-making to see what the conditions are like.  We’re all chomping at the bit to get going so today Gordon will start mowing.  The forecast is good and if we have a couple of dry days it would help.  I’m not sure how this will fit in with visiting mum, but we’ll worry about that on a daily basis, as usual.  Long term plans are difficult at the moment, so one day at a time.

If I disappear for a bit at least you’ll know why.

A Man Possessed

Monday 25 May 2009

Following on from the flies in the office and a discontented grumble to Gordon about how his rubbish at the end of the room was taking over, possibly concealing anything dead, he decided to ‘tidy-up’ yesterday.  His things that have resided in the corners of the room since we moved in thirteen years ago were turfed out and the majority was instantly binned.  The cry of ‘freecycle this’ has rung out all this morning with an accumulation of things behind me now waiting to see if anyone wants them before they’re disposed of.  He also keeps suggesting I list things on Ebay, but after examination I decided that I wouldn’t buy it even though I know its history, so why would anyone else?

Not content with concentrating on one room at a time he then spread to the spare room upstairs and the end of the hall, supposedly to look for shelf-brackets, but flinging things at me with reckless abandon!  The girls watched with bemused expressions and Alex asked what exactly I’d said to him to start him on this flurry of activity in the house.  I’m not too sure myself, but it’s most unlike him.  Fortunately, he seems to have purged his system of the tidying bug for the rest of the day and has assumed his normal position when not outside working in front of the television.

So far, a most strange Bank Holiday!

Flies

Saturday 23 May 2009

Some of you may remember my comments about flies here at the farm, particularly the biting ones that invade the house every year which was the reason I bought fly screens last summer.  They’re up again and working nicely, so how come my office currently looks, feels and sounds like something from a gothic-type horror film, and is literally swarming with flies?  I think something died in here – or was brought in dead then abandoned by one of the cats, somewhere not immediately visible to the naked eye.  In old houses such as this that could be anywhere really.  There are lots of corners, nooks and crannies where dead things can be stuffed by the resourceful cat and left to become breeding grounds for flies.  You may also remember that cleaning is not my most favourite thing to do, but I do have standards (albeit reasonably low ones) and try to keep the place at least non-toxic, so I’m surprised I haven’t smelt whatever it was.  Thank goodness for fly-spray, that’s all I can say.  I’m off to bed now, but not before giving the room a jolly good squirting with Raid and shutting the door.  By the morning the current horror of flies on every surface should be restricted to flies on the floor with their little leggies in the air.  That way I can get out the vacuum and suck the little devils up.

Ugh, I hate flies.

Hunters in the Grass

Thursday 21 May 2009

The grass at the front of the house hasn’t been cut this year as Gordon was planning to dig it up and redo the pipework underneath.  Not surprisingly, it’s a work in progress which could continue for an indeterminate length of time.  I’m used to things taking this long.  As Gordon says, you can’t rush a good job.  Personally I sometimes think he abuses that privilege, but there are lots of other things that need doing too.

The cats love it as it brings out their hunting nature.  I wonder if they imagine they’re ferocious beasts on the trail of something a bit larger than mice and insects?

This is Thomas

and this is Gizmo.