Fabulous day, terrific weather and I'm too tired to write about it so here are a few pictures for you. I haven't edited or added titles to the pictures - what you see is what you get. Enjoy (I certainly did) Hands up all of you who thought that I was going to write about the VOLUMES of rain that have fallen recently? What about all of you who thought that you might be allowed to VIEW the picture we all painted yesterday? Well you are wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong! It's that time of the month again... YES! It's time for the letter of the month and that letter is "V" (Coo - have I really been doing this for twenty two months now?). Last time we started off with my likes so this month it better be my dislikes.
Here we go...Things that I hate beginning with the letter V: Volvo Drivers! - Right at the top of the list. They are such bad drivers because they drive such safe cars, they know that they can't get hurt. Viruses - Whether they be medical or computer based, they are just plain, simple bad news. Vampires - Not the bats or Dracula. The sort of shimmering, effeminate nancy-boy things that appear in the "Twilight" books / films. Vampires are supposed to be scary, not Justin Bieber lookalikes. Vindaloo - When a curry is so hot that you can't taste the flavours, it is a bit of a waste of time in my book. Value - The dreaded cheap foodstuffs from Tesco. Thankfully now defunct. Vox populi - Asking the common clay for their opinions (see the first few minutes of this Dick Emery link) Things that I like beginning with the letter V: V bombers - The Vulcan, Victor and Valiant Various portions of the female anatomy beginning with V - One declines from putting any links here - got to keep it clean! The Verve - Bittersweet symphony - The video from which the dreadful Vindaloo (see above) was ripped off. Vocabulary - As wide and deep as you can make it - it helps if you can use and understand words such as vacillate, vindictive, vanquish and vituperation. Vauxhall Viva - My first car. Sigh... a grand little old banger. Vegetables - Yum... just yum. Or then there was this Spitting Image sketch that made me grin! I was going to add Vodka to the list of likes but then I am ambivalent about the stuff. Right! That's enough for the day. It looks as if I am going to be in London tomorrow. I am off to the RAF museum at Hendon to take photographs and to see the "Face of Courage" exhibition so I don't know what the blog entry will be like (it all depends on how soon I get home, I suppose) ![]() The painting commences! Click for a larger picture. I have had a killer day! I have been taken out of my comfort zone, I have met some smashing people, I have fought to get my own way, I have... had a BRILLIANT time! I have had so much fun and now I am tired. I would like to say a big thank you to Saran and Jessica, curators and historians at East Grinstead museum, I would like to say another thank you to Lesley, the professional artist for her guidance. I want to say thank you to Ruth, Shirley, June, Michelle and Jake for taking part. I want to say "Boo!" to the person who failed to turn up with no excuse and to the other person who ducked out "Meh!" (they might have had a valid reason. A terrific time was had by all and there will be some pics of the day's doings tomorrow but I won't be able to show you the finished result just yet because I have agreed not to until the exhibition "goes live" at the end of June. Now it is time for a glass of beer or two to relax and celebrate an excellent day and to remember all the brave men who fought to save our country and joined the Guinea Pig club as a result. ![]() I am seriously impressed with the phone cam. Click for a larger picture. Following yesterday's trials and tribulations, today was so much more satisfying and different. If the weather stayed fine I would have to do the ironing and hoovering and then meet HH at Nyman's gardens for a good old chinwag, a walk and tea and a bun. If the weather had been bad then I would still have had to do the ironing and hoovering but HH would have visited me at home and there would have been the chinwag and coffee but no bun nor walk. As it was, the weather was nice enough in a diffident sort of manner that we decided to go for the Nyman's option. As luck would have it, when we first met at about eleven o'clock, the erstwhile reasonable weather gave way to a shower but thankfully it was brief and none too heavy. We swapped goodies (there is always something to be swapped - books, music etcetera) and HH very naughtily had put a bottle of red wine in my goody bag. As we entered the door, HH started meeting some of the people that she used to work with and it was a real pleasure to see just how much they thought of her. There was then a break whilst we had our coffee and a bun which I wasn't allowed to pay for. I haven't been this spoiled by a woman (apart from Donna of course) for years! We had a smashing walk, I picked up a couple of second hand books, the sun came out and it was all just... lovely. All too soon, it was over and we went our separate ways. What a lovely change from yesterday. I felt pampered and spoiled and all I had to do was turn up and make small talk. It made me feel like a gigolo! Thank you HH for a super time. BTW there might not be much of an entry tomorrow as I will be spending most of the day creating a masterpiece in East Grinstead Museum. See you all later. Just time for a short animation... "d" We had a really nice take away curry and glass of wine last night thanks and by the time we turned in to sleep there were a mere five and a half hours to go before we needed to get up again. Believe you me, when you are used to getting six hours or so a night then losing half an hour is just dire. Needless to say, I wasn't feeling top notch when I went to see OE and having to reconfigure a network when the documentation for the router has been lost and there isn't anything quite like it on Youtube was quite a challenge but Paul triumphed again and OE was a happy bunny. Having sorted out the network and got her set up to use her iPhone over her wireless router and got her to download a couple of useful apps to prove it worked successfully I was just getting ready to go when she asked me what I knew about showers. So I spent a few minutes tinkering with her bathroom shower and resetting that. Now this is where the title of this blog is coming from. Up until now I would have put OE down as an independent lady who knew what's what and could deal with problems as they occur. OK; maybe not the router problem - that was a bit specialized and I was in a better position to be able to fix it having got some experience in doing it before. However, there are lots of other things that I have had to sort out for her that I would have thought were rather more mundane and every dayish. Simple things like cutting the lawn, she had no idea of how to go about it and when left to her own devices pushed the mower around like a hoover, in all directions, making a mess of the general appearance. Her idea of cleaning her bathroom is to pour large amounts of toilet cleaner into the bowl and use de-scaling fluid on taps. She seems immune to the fact that you need to use the toilet brush and rub down surfaces with a cloth - a little bit of elbow grease goes such a long way. Come to think of it, for a woman she isn't very house proud and shows no inclination or application when it come to such things. The same goes for cooking - it comes out of packets and if it needs anything more than just throwing into the oven, it gets relegated to when she has family staying. I'm not trying to be sexist here but if she isn't that technology minded (like being able to re-program her boiler timer unit) then surely with years of looking after her aged parents under her belt, she should be able to wield a yard broom properly or to keep house. She's a friendly soul who would do anything for you but whenever I go around to see her I get this wild urge to tidy up a bit or to clean the bathroom or cut the grass. Unfortunately she isn't the only person I have known who appears to be self sufficient but isn't really. I can almost forgive a bachelor because most bachelors are slobs but most of the single women I know and have known are normally totally immaculate and know that if a tap leaks, they either have to call a plumber or as is mostly the case, know how to do the job themselves. It is part of living on your own. Hell, I'm not even the tidiest person in the world myself but even I get to the point where a grubby bathroom looks me in the eye and says "Do something about it!" I suppose that it takes all sorts to make the world but I just don't know how some of those people survive from day to day. Donna is going to be back shortly so there is just time for a nice and gentle animation: "The Butterfly Dragon" Poor Donna has been delayed heavily by more 0lympic twaddle and paperwork so I haven't had the opportunity to even think about what to write about today. I've sat around looking at the rain fall from the sky ("little drops of water, little grains of sand" etc.). The cats have been grumpy as heck and have repaid all of my kindnesses by throwing up over their bedding (another laundry job has now been done) and have just demanded their suppers, presumably so they can repeat the act. The only achievement I can claim today was to bake a loaf of bread. Oh... and I downloaded a couple more apps onto my new phone. One turns it into a torch (or it can flash Morse code or emulate police lights for emergencies), one gives me access to a world of Internet radio stations (I have already located and saved one from Madeira and one from Menorca - both make me think of sunshine and warmth) and one turns the phone into a compass! All very useful. It's better than having a Boy Scout around although I doubt if the new phone could help little old ladies across the street. I am gearing up and preparing for another visit to OE's place tomorrow. She couldn't get her wireless network to go even with the help of the support team from her Internet provider so she took a rather drastic step and reset her router back to factory defaults (even though I advised against it) and this has now totally b*ggered up every device that she had attached to her network. So that means I have had to brush up on my Windows XP network creation skills and I hope that I can get it all sorted tomorrow. I've even dug out my old LAN cable that I took away from work with me and at a pinch she can use that to run her laptop until I can come up with some answers. It never rains but it pours eh? Quite literally! So I will be off to pick Donna up in a couple of minutes time and I will be taking her for a glass of wine at our favourite Indian restaurant and we will pick up a takeaway at the same time. Whilst I know that this will make for a longer day than expected, it does mean that we don't have to cook this evening and it is a lovely treat. There's even an illicit mid-week bottle of red wine waiting so that we can relax. After all, a seventeen hour day from getting up to getting home is a long time. So just to keep you amused until tomorrow, here is a delightful clip of one of the new donkey foals at the Sidmouth Donkey Sanctuary and a spoof film teaser on the re-release of "Titanic". Until tomorrow! It's not so much of a rant but more of a "sigh" today. I am a married man (sorry, that should be "happily married" man) and I know that a husband's place is in the wrong. Almost twenty five years of wedded blitz have proven that to be the case many times over. So much so that I can accept being wrong more often than not. However I hate it when I am right and someone tries to bluster all over me to prove me wrong. In the case in question, this morning I got an email, sent in error, from a colleague. Before I could respond, I got the follow up email telling me to forget the original and asking me how I was doing. So far so good. I responded and in return I received a similar email letting me know what that person was up to - a heavy burden it would appear. Once I had read his email, I knew that, because of something Donna had sent me during the week, I could assist him and take a lot of the load off his back purely because they were probably unaware of a similar project that is being done. I responded in a political manner so as not to upset the person in question by insulting their intelligence. That is a marked change for me because in the past I would have just said something like "Don't be bloody silly - someone else has already done this!" Thinking that I had done this person a big favour, I went off to town to deal with matters financial. On my return (via OE's house where I tried, with limited success, to solve a network issue with her home Wifi set up) I found two emails from this colleague. Basically, the first one was slightly brusque in its manner telling me that I was wrong about my supposition and that he would still need to do the work. The second email was slightly more apologetic and placatory. It would appear that this colleague had sent the first email rather in haste because the second one told me that I was indeed correct and that I might indeed have saved him a lot of work. <SIGH!> It's not being wrong that hurts. I can stand being wrong and then being corrected. What I hate is when I am right and I know it and then still taking some unnecessary flak. I might not be right on that many occasions but when I am I do try to be helpful and feel sometimes that I am being snubbed or ignored almost wilfully. <SIGH!>
I suppose it could be worse. I could get angry like the old guy on the subway (see the video below). The golden rule is, let the old boy have a seat. You know it makes sense. He was born in Turkey and was a soldier, a member of an occupying army. He stood up for the rights of the indigenous people in the country that he was a part of the occupying force of. This didn't endear him to the authorities and he was punished for his beliefs. In the end it was the death of him. Any ideas who this entry is about? Let me give you a hint. The picture below is synonymous with the man. He apparently slew a dragon. He is the patron saint of England (or "was" if you believe the Roman Catholics who had him de-canonized). Yes that's right. He is St. George. I only mention it because today is St George's Day in England.
Similarly with the Battle of Britain where the Germans are denying that it was anywhere near as crucial as it appeared to be to British eyes. Likewise Operation Dynamo, the rescuing of the troops from the beaches of Dunkirk. The small ships contribution is being slowly and mercilessly squashed. Operation Chastise, the Dambusters raid, is being viewed as an act of terrorism. Operation Jericho, the release of French resistance prisoners from Amiens by low level attack using Mosquito aircraft and specially designed bombs - Pfah! It wasn't much good according to the non-British races. This, my friends, is what is truly terrible; the denial of anything that made or makes Britain great. Can you imagine the fuss if we told the French that the storming of the Bastille was in fact a bit of a damp squib and done for the wrong reasons? (It was) That our Gallic neighbours can't celebrate the fourteenth of July any more? They would stamp their feet, wave their arms and shout a lot and probably deny us the use of their aircraft carrier. As the bard said "The game's afoot: Follow your spirit, and upon this charge Cry 'God for Harry, England, and Saint George!'" So let's do something frightfully English and patriotic shall we? "Jerusalem" from last night of the proms followed by the national anthem. Everything seemed better today. The weather, myself - just everything. Donna wanted to go for a walk in the woods at Nymans because she wanted to spy out a suitable dog walking route for next Saturday when she and a friend of ours, Sabina, are going to take Sabina's dog, Daisy, for a walk. I won't be going of course. Why not? Don't I like Sabina or her dog? No; I like both of them but next Saturday I am going to be off doing something else very important but I am not going to tell you what it is until nearer the time. This means that Donna is going to spend some time doggy walking and talking and I won't be there to do the honours to act as a guide. Not that it is awkward and it is almost impossible to get lost in the woods if you stay on the tracks. Plus, if she remembers to take her new smartphone with her, then she can get to google maps and see exactly where she is.
Full of the joys of life we returned to Cowfold with not a sign of any idiot drivers on the road (we are still awaiting the delivery of our dashboard camera) and it was so nice that we decided to do a little bit of work in the garden. Well, it is Earth Day again and we wanted to get our tomato plants in so it seemed like a golden opportunity. I have added an extra trough on the side of our garden hut so that we can have even more tumbling tomatoes - they seem to do very well in our garden and we have had some excellent results over the last couple of years. If you want a recommendation then "Tumbling Tom Yellow" is a good one. It seems strange to have yellow tomatoes but the flavour... Mmmm! What with that and cutting back the dogwood shrubs and a bit of re-potting, the afternoon has just flown past and it is time for me to contemplate a nice cup of green tea and what we are going to have for supper tonight. So with that happy thought (and the suspense about the important thing that I will be up to next Saturday) I will leave you with this rather strange clip. It is a video of people doing stupid things but it is all shot on a Phantom Flex camera so it is in beautiful slow motion. It makes for compelling watching. My apologies for not adding an entry to my blog yesterday. That's twice in two years now. Twice that I have forgotten or not bothered. The worst thing is that the first time was but a couple of weeks back. In my defence I will say that I have been a bit off colour these last couple of days. This normally means that I sleep a lot more than I should do and during the day too. I have certainly been doing a lot of that. Yesterday was just one of those days when I had a zillion and one things to do and only the one thing got done. By the time evening rolled around and I had picked up Donna, it was more or less time to get something to eat and then turn in. The only pleasant thing we did was to watch Rowan Atkinson in "Johnny English Reborn". It's a thoroughly amusing romp but I don't think that it will beat the original. Although some of the humour was so close to the truth that it was almost not funny (British Intelligence has been outsourced and is now "Toshiba British Intelligence" and their motto is "Spying... for you") Still... never mind. You may have noticed that there have been fewer links recently than of late. This is due, in part, to time constraints and also I haven't been finding the quality of links that I would like to have of late. One site that used to provide me with the starting point for finding things has been repeating a lot of old links which I have passed on to you already and another has started producing fewer interesting things on only four days each week. However, I have collected together one or two of the more interesting ones for your edification and enjoyment. Here they are: How long is a second? Watch this short film and see the beauty of a second. Here are some stunning shots of cathedral ceilings. Do you like practical jokes? Here are ten simple but effective ones. We all think of China as a land full of rice and pagodas but have you heard of the towers of Kaiping? What is your favourite food? A quick snack of roasted venomous spider anyone? When you think of things that you find at the seaside or in the sea, what do you think is the longest lasting? These animals are disappointed in you. Really disappointed as you can see from their faces. There; I feel better now. Finally, a fun animation. "Reflexion" Réflexion from Planktoon on Vimeo. A swift post today. This morning I made the first of what will be regular trips down to see Donna's parents. I have arranged to pop down every ten days to two weeks so that I can cut the grass and do odd jobs around the garden and house, run errands, ferry them to hospital appointments etc.Today was a busy day of lawn mowing in between the showers and making trips to the local amenity tip in Gosport to get rid of stuff (three old televisions for example). Then there was a quick trip to fill up Ruth's car with petrol (she worries about doing it) and then a little blast up and down a stretch of the local motorway to warm the car through. Where it normally only gets a two mile trip up the road, it barely gets the chance to come off choke (or the electronic equivalent) so I blew a fair amount of carbon out of the engine and got things running tickety boo. Not too much to be disheartened about there but there is at their home. Ben is going through a very low spot at the moment (health-wise) and the worry has taken its toll on Ruth. Weight is dropping off her at the moment (that's partly due to her recently discovered thyroid problem) and she looks very drawn. This is all very worrying. Ben looks like he is at death's door and Ruth isn't far behind him from the look of things. Into all of this I have to try and inject a note of optimism and to cheer them up but it is difficult and after a day of doing so, I am worn to a stub mentally as well as physically. Of course the news hasn't exactly cheered Donna up either. Sorry to appear quite so glum but we just don't know if this is just another passing phase or if this is approaching the end game. The only positive note that I can inject into this entry is that today was their nineteenth wedding anniversary (yes, they got wed after us following a prolonged "living in sin" period). Now I am going to sit back with a glass of beer and try to put my mind in order. A slightly macabre, but clever, animation for you today but it sums up how I feel. "The boundaries of Life and Death" is based on a quotation by Edgar Allen Poe: "The Boundaries which divide life from death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins?" Every once in a while I like to get on my high horse about something or other. Sometimes I prattle on about the lack of common sense that seems to prevail these days, the paucity of modern education or the stupidity of today's youth in general. I have even been known to have a dig at Volvo drivers (GAAAAH! Just GAAAAH! Don't get me started...) but in general I like to think that I can be fair minded and see both sides of the coin... apart from the business with Volvo drivers that is. So why is it that I see so many people being utterly stupid every day? The weather for the last couple of days has been... come on... hands up... anyone? Jenkins? Yes. It has been wet. Now... if you needed to get from A to B in the wet you would what? Take the car, Watson? Well, yes, or the bus or a taxi. What would happen if you had to walk or cycle? You would take some sort of protection. No Smith AJ, Not a condom, even though carrying them might be a prudent idea for the more promiscuous amongst us. You would have some sort of waterproof protection, wouldn't you? If you are making a short dash from your car to the office then you might get away with a small umbrella. If it was further then a macintosh, anorak or coat of some variety would be a good idea. If it has a hood then so much the better. So please explain to me why I see people of all ages but mostly the young and those into their thirties without any form of waterproof coat or umbrella when it is belting down? In some cases they might just be unlucky to have been caught out in the rain sans anorak as it were but I see whole families without coats in all weathers at all times. Youth seem to swear by their hoodies but these are made of a porous material. In the rain, it ceases to protect and acts more like a sponge, holding cold and wetness close to the body. Now lets add a breeze, anything from a slight zephyr to a howling gale and still people go about their business without a coat of any sort. Do younger people even own a coat or perhaps it isn't cool to wear one. Certainly the difference between being cool and suffering pneumonia is one that surely the most fashion conscious of youth will recognise. As for the girls who walk along in these wet and windy conditions in nothing more than flimsy pumps and with bare legs must be asking for some illness or other (n.b. these same girls were wearing thick, woolly leggings and fur lined Ugg boots at the height of summer last year - Candida, Chlamydia and Thrush during the summer, Pneumonia, Hypothermia and Emphysema in the winter - if this is the definition of fashionable then count me out). Perhaps the coat manufacturing industry in this country should start an advertising campaign. What was that? We don't have a coat manufacturing industry any more, it's all gone to India and the Far East? Perhaps that is part of the problem then. That's enough rant for the moment. Here's a treat for you. The entire 1986 Queen concert live at Wembley. So all you fogeys sitting there in your macs - enjoy! Over the years I have utilised "To Do" lists. Not because I am unaware of what needs to be done but normally because there is such a wealth of things to do that if I don't itemise them and tackle them in some form of order then sometimes I just don't make a start on them at all. This means, at the moment, that I need a To Do list. I started the day with six things, some as trivial as remembering to remove a protruding nail from the rear fence before someone (i.e. me) from catching themselves on it right through to a major task such as doing the hoovering which I freely admit that I have rescheduled for tomorrow. Not because I don't like doing it (I positively hate it) but because (a) the cats hate me hoovering and shoot outside and I didn't have the heart to put the wind up them because it was heaving with rain and blowing a cold gale first thing and (b) something even more loathsome came up that prioritized itself right at the top of the list. Why is it that no matter how well planned your day is, something will come along to throw a spanner in the works? I'm only asking because insinuating itself right at the top of my list was a blocked drain. Not any old ordinary drain, oh no. This is the kitchen drain - the one that takes waste water from the kitchen sink, dishwasher and washing machine. If you care to watch this clip, it might give you some idea. I tried various things to gouge and prod any blockages but in the end I had to use my hand to clear debris and empty the drain before putting in the sulphuric acid to dissolve the blockage (the usual collection of fat and detergent accumulations) a very unpleasant task that I needed to perform, like "Uncle Jack" from "Ripping Yarns - The Curse of the Claw" (continue after the video) Thankfully I had finished all the other odds and ends I needed to do because straight after the successful unclogging, I stank like a polecat. All my togs went straight into the washing machine for a boil wash and I went for a shower. Two showers actually and I still have that unmistakeable odour of drain about me! So what started as a reasonable day has ended up with me smelling awful and being clapped out but my To Do list for today is now complete. In the words of Frank Sinatra "Do be do be doooooo!". I'm done.
A couple of weeks back I told you the tale of a Volvo driver who denied me my right of way and almost caused an accident because of his stupidity. Well, it isn't just Volvo drivers who do this. Just last week, an older driver in a people carrier almost totalled my car at a set of traffic lights. We had waited for the lights to change and I progressed through the road works only to meet this 'gentleman' coming straight for me through his set of traffic lights. Strangely enough everyone else in the queue he was in was still waiting (as they should have done because the lights were red at that end.). I wound down my window and asked him if red meant 'go' in the little universe he came from and he was unbelievably rude in return, blaming me for the 'almost pile-up'. That is when I started to have doubts. Had I just mistaken the change from red to red-amber to green of my lights? Three things told me that I hadn't jumped the lights and was in the right. The first was that Donna was so taken aback and that she said "but our lights had gone green!", there were a couple of cars right behind me and as I said, the rest of his queue were waiting still. Still, we all managed to get past without scraping anything. Then at the end of last week as I was driving through Lindfield right where the High street narrows, I was minding my own business when a lady in a white Suzuki tried to overtake a parked car just as I was passing it in the opposite direction. Again she should have given way as the parked vehicle was protruding into, and obstructing, her side of the road. She didn't, she took a very wide berth at some considerable speed and it was all I could do to brake, move over as far as possible, avoiding touching the cars legally parked in bays on my side of the road. As it was, we still clashed wing mirrors so no permanent damage done but it left Donna and I a bit shaken. So we have discussed the fact that we have had three too-close calls in the space of two weeks, each time when I have been (a) driving carefully and (b) with the right of way in may favour and we have decided that there is only one course of action to follow; we have purchased an on board video camera and we are awaiting delivery of it. It might arrive at the end of the month because as the website says "We are currently experiencing a huge demand for this product." It would appear that a lot of people are having the same idea; that it is becoming necessary to have video evidence of accidents for insurance purposes otherwise it is your word against "theirs" and insurers go knock-for-knock on that basis, which hurts everyone's no-claims bonus. The camera has a wide range of accessories including a GPS device so you know where the incident happens, google maps, an indication on how fast you were going, the degree to which the car has to brake / impact and it records all of this continuously, capturing a twenty second time frame in the case of an incident (ten seconds before, ten seconds after). If you want to see the sort of video footage it can capture then see here. If you want to see a full review (fitting, software, how it's used) then you can see that here. It grieves me to have to consider this but it is becoming a necessity these days. Anyway, here's a video of some Russian pile ups to keep you going... I was investigating the museum at East Grinstead some weeks back and I saw this bit of blurb on their website: "East Grinstead Museum is looking for 10 enthusiastic people to take part in a one-off, all day creative activity on Saturday 28th April 2012. Together you will work with a professional artist to create a piece of art inspired by items from the Guinea Pig Club Collection held at the Museum. The final piece of work that you have helped to create will go on display during the Museum's summer exhibition and will become part of the Museum's permanent collection. You will also be invited to the Private View for the official opening of this Exhibition. This creative activity is part of a wider regional project, that the Museum has been working towards since acquiring this collection, to celebrate the 2012 Paralympics and the legacy of the Guinea Pig Club." Donna suggested that I apply for the role, seeing that it was only one day and that I stood as much chance as anyone else in winning a place. Guess what? I received notification that I was one of the chosen ten people just the other day. Now, if I was an optimistic sort of person I would say that I was lucky but being the pessimist that I am, I reckon that they chose the only ten people to apply! My problem is that my artistic ability is second only to my musical ability and if I were to tell you that my musical ability is non-existent then you might get some idea of how good my art work is! Still, they are offering a free lunch and no matter how I look at it, it is something to put down on my CV (as long as I glitz it up along the lines of "worked alongside Mr or Mrs X, a professional artist, to produce an exhibit for the town of East Grinstead for the 2012 Paralympics" then I should be OK. So, I have begun a rapid research into the life and times of Sir Archibald McIndoe and the Guinea Pig Club (and fascinating it is too!) in the vain hope that it will give me some inspiration for the day to come. I wonder what lunch is going to consist of... On a lighter note, I have become totally addicted to my new Android smartphone and I have been busy downloading apps for it. It is just fascinating what you can do with it. I have a touchscreen keyboard called Swype that allows me to not type as much as move my finger and trace the words I want. Very fast and very accurate. I have downloaded Google Goggles which is terrific. To give you an example, I scanned a book cover and not only did it direct me to Amazon to that very book, it also directed me to the website of the artist who painted the cover picture! I have all sorts of useful things that I have added to my phone. I have a security system that allows me to sound an alarm on the phone, send spoken messages, report back to me about the location of my phone so should I lose it, or have it stolen then I can track it from a PC or use another phone to deactivate it, wipe it clean and so on. I can't believe that I have lived without a smartphone for so long! Oh... I have even used it as a telephone and it is so much clearer than the old phone. How time moves on and improves things. As I mentioned the Guinea Pig Club and the work of Sir Archibald McIndoe, here is a brief Youtube clip. I think that it is very important to remember the work of these magnificent surgeons and the courage of the patients. |
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May 2015
AuthorPaul Everest - Shining wit (at least that is what I think they said) |