Anyone want Gmail?

I have five Gmail invitations to give away.

Should you fancy one leave me a comment with any old reason why and I'll do my best to oblige.

I am of course open to bribery :o)

The 'Ikea experience'.

Ikea Edinburgh

Well, as you see above we made it! PG was devoid of excuse number 89 or any other it seems, though in true 'man style' general rumblings about tiredness after a day at work, other things he needed to do with the time (golf no doubt) and general malaise, began at about half way there!

I am bound to say, though I hate to give him further fuel for any future fire, I wish we hadn't bothered! The place was in more than it's usual state of disarray due in the main because just about every display seemed to be in the process of a rebuild and the one or two things we could agree on were out of stock. Necessary items of purchase were bedroom furniture, blinds and a light. The bedroom furniture is a long running 'issue' in the gemmak and PG household and as yet an agreement on style and type still evades us. Having disagreed yet again on what is required we chose to differ once more and tolerate for a while longer the current installation.

Blinds? Don't go there. I did find a suitable light and of course the obligatory re stock of candles but having arrived at the checkout the queues were abnormally long even for Ikea and in a sudden loss of any further patience we ditched the said items and made our escape. Even I am not going to queue for an inordinate length of time to pay for just £20 worth of goods!

Each time we make this trip we promise ourselves we will not fall victim to the 'restaurant' ( I use the term very loosely here) but as ever hunger and a lack of anywhere else to eat in the locality forced us to weaken. The usual luke warm and slightly aged fare was on offer. We suffered bravely! Ok, at £10 to feed two one can hardly complain but haute cuisine it is definitely not!

The decision was made that to rescue the day we would drive home on the coastal route rather than hit the A1 with it's inherent problems. This route is beautiful, along the Firth of Forth, toward North Berwick and Dunbar and as dusk was falling the colours and textures of the sea and sky where something to behold.


Firth of Forth

Relaxation began to melt away the 'Ikea experience', perhaps too much so. PG who was driving averted his forward gaze momentarily (well he claims momentarily, hmmmm) to take in the spectacle of Bass Rock and failed to notice we were hurtling toward a sharp right hand bend!! Amid impressive sounds of screeching, the smell and sight of burning rubber and a sudden feeling of things happening in slow motion we eventually came to a very abrupt halt, with perhaps 2cm between my car, various signage and the possibility of some serious 'off-roading'!

It was not good, PG who rarely admits error in driving and is as cool as a cucumber in most situations fell very quiet, uttered one loud expletive of relief, pulled the car back onto the road and sat quietly for a few moments! Not one excuse did he make!! The silence spoke volumes. When a guy doesn't offer excuses for a close call you just know it was bad! There was no need for the usual feminine lecture on the finer points of driving, he knew, we both knew! Credit where credit is due, he is one of the better drivers I have know usually, my car has no ABS and he controlled it well........I would have 'lost it' without doubt with consequences I don't wish to imagine. Had I been at the wheel things might have been very different. As it is I have a stiff neck this morning.....we were very lucky.


Bass Rock

You what??

I thought I had heard everything until I read this!!!

Is it for real or have I, as is my way, proved my gullibility yet again??

Just because.......

....they are beautiful.


Mute Swans © Laurie Campbell

"The Tweed estuary at Berwick is one of the largest herds of Mute Swans to be found in Britain, especially between late July and September.

Their numbers dwindle in the winter months but those that remain are then joined by Goldeneye, Red-Breasted Merganser, Pochard and other wildfowl."

© Northumberland County Council 2004

One of those days.

Yes, I'm having one of those days, bought about in this case, I suspect, by my predilection for not going to bed at any time my mother would deem remotely sensible.

I have sat here for the last hour surfing aimlessly, taking very little in, my mind is a complete blank. Last night, when I eventually did the horizontal thing, my head was full of ideas which seem to have shuffled off with my dreams to an obscure place and are not in any hurry to be dragged back to the vaguely operating part of my consciousness!

So that's it for now, I'm off to do some of the 'domestic goddess'stuff for a while, though I doubt that will inspire me. This afternoon we are off to Ikea, assuming of course that PG doesn't come up with 'tangible excuse number 89' in his much practiced, PG authenticated, list of '101 reasons not to go to Ikea' and I'll hopefully be back later slightly more compis mentis!!

Fish and chips.

Dusk toward Scotland. 31.08.04


Dusk toward England. 31.08.04

Yesterday evening PG and I had arranged to visit a colleague of mine to fix her computer. I add hastily here that in the main it is PG who does the hardware fixing, he is good at it, where as I fumble around in a none too confident manner. If only I could grasp the intricacies of the software aspect more fully we would make a good team! He should in my opinion and that of many others be working in the field but that's another story and I digress.

So having made this appointment we decided we would leave a little early and have fish and chips on the beach for supper. I wanted all my life to live by the sea and whilst we are in fact 12 miles away it is a damn sight closer than my previous places of residence, both of which were in the region of 80 miles from anything large and saline.

We duly made our way to the best fish and chip emporium in the town and then to the beach. I am, as they say here, a 'soft southerner' and so, the by then temperature of 6 degrees dictated that we sit in the car for this feast rather than actually venture onto the sand!

I could sit watching the waves, listening to the sound they make as they break onto the beach mingled with the call of seagulls overhead and looking into the massive expanse of horizon forever. Seagulls chattering away will always evoke in me an immediate feeling of happiness and of wonderful childhood holidays. They are considered vermin here, to the point that a professional bird handler is employed to fly his birds of prey among them on a daily basis. Apparently seagulls are fearful of hawks and it successfully keeps their numbers down!

Berwick upon Tweed is the northernmost town in England and has been variously 'owned' by Scotland and England over the centuries. In fact the most recent squabble for ownership was officially only resolved a few years ago though raging battles long since ceased! It still always amuses me as a newcomer that from where we where parked, in one direction is Scotland and in the other is England and that I 'cross the border' every day remains a source of strange fascination!

So, blissful reverie over we made tracks to the ailing computer. A pleasant evening of gossip, over cups of good coffee, was had by my colleague and myself and PG did his stuff over a bottle of wine.

Job done and it was home to a rather disgruntled Ditto who had been under house arrest all evening. We don't allow her out if we aren't in, she is not overly savvy and I fear for her taking on a badger or fox or some other inappropriate sparring partner and requiring rescue and medical attention, as has been the case on one or two occasions!

It was a good evening, made a nice change, I did of course park myself infront of this machine within minutes of arriving home and stayed put until the wee small hours. We had planned a visit to Ikea this afternoon but I feel a small siesta is now more likely and Ikea can wait until tomorrow! :o)

Somehow I think not.

My 'currently online' user counter is showing the grand total of 10 right now, yes, I said 10, a personal best and no one is more surprised than yours truly.

Yes, It could be that I am fascinating, marvelous, articulate, humorous in the extreme, beautiful, irresistible and write an impossible to resist blog but somehow I think not!

Given that it has shown this total for the last 3 hours and given that it seems unlikely in the extreme, that 10 of you have logged on and forgotten to log off for that period of time, I somehow think it far more likely to be yet another gremlin doing it's damnedest to disrupt something somewhere. I kinda feel like the person on the bus, you know the one, he or she who always seems to attract the drunk, flasher or 'unfortunate' individual into sitting right next to them. I think right now I must be the virtual equivalent! Lol.

Still, it looks good for now!

I wonder, will the day ever come where I log in and I find everything is working as it should be....... all at once?

Diana, Princess of Wales.

Diana

Today it is 7 years since the tragic and untimely death of Diana, Princess of Wales. The furore surrounding the event has lessened in that time but memories of an outstanding lady remain.

I have previously blogged on this subject and my experiences at length and for that reason will not do so again now, if you are new to my blog and would like to read it go here.

There will no doubt be a few who still make the annual visit to the gates of Kensington Palace to lay flowers and tributes. If I was still living in London I don't think I would be one of them any longer but I will take a few moments to remember the loss of a vital and special lady.

Hell.....

....Bank holidays are boring!


'Ditto'

Hurrahhh, Hurrahh, Hurrahh!!!!

At last, with the help of DKG and PG I am somewhere close to solving the 'disappearing trash icon' mystery!!

By a process of elimination and much head scratching it transpires that 'Nortons 2004' is to blame. The reasoning behind this is beyond me but having attempted to resurrect said icon many times while having turned off Nortons I had abandoned that line of enquiry.

As a last resort and after some information and help from DKG we last night completely uninstalled Nortons and hey presto....magically I had icons! It is of course not quite that simple because I need, like everyone else, to have a firewall.

To cut a long and boring story short we discovered that whilst the 2004 version still won't show the icons even when disabled the 2002 version will.

2002 was duly installed and now at least, albeit with the aggravation of disabling it and taking the risk that something will infiltrate my system in the mean time, I can delete comments!

The mere fact that we have discovered what was causing it in the first place is cause for celebration in my little world and there is an unexpected bonus......the pc appears to be running significantly faster with 2002 installed than it ever did with 2004!!

I have yet to isolate exactly what in Nortons is causing the problem so that I can rectify it properly but hell....after weeks and weeks of investigations, fiddling and frustration it is a breakthrough!

Oh how I wish I truly understood the peculiarities of things virtual :o)

So it's off to work for me now..... the Bank holiday hordes await, home mid evening and then four days off!

Longhorn longhaul

It is reported that Microsoft will not now have their new operating system, 'Longhorn', ready for release until late 2006!

I doubt too many of us will be greatly surprised by that nor by the fact that even at that late date this long awaited o/s will be minus some quite significant features.

I won't pretend to understand the business that our beloved (not) Bill Gates is in or to understand the technicalities involved in producing such a piece of software. Given my struggles with the day to day operations of a home pc I assume it is a somewhat massive task but I have to admit to a degree of disbelief.

Does Microsoft not have the revenue to employ the very best minds in the execution of this massive task? Surely Mr Gates can afford to have on his team only those at the very pinnacle of their field and to remunerate them suitably? Yes there are shareholders to amuse and placate but come on...5 or 6 years and then to roll out an incomplete piece of gear seems a little questionable.

Forgive me then for having the fleeting thought that just maybe this has as much to do with squeezing the last drop of blood from XP as it has to do with any technical problems and difficulties encountered along the way!

Beads.....you can keep 'em.

Well, my day off has been spent in the main feeling sorry for myself. I was feeling a bit 'off colour' last night when I went to bed and by this morning whatever heinous bug it was inhabiting my body last week had returned with a vengeance!

PG was playing in a golf tournament all day so I set about fiddling with HTML this morning but my heart wasn't really in it and I abandoned most of what I wanted to do at about the half way stage.

This afternoon I took to my bed again, curled up in the duvet did more feeling sorry for myself and slept like the dead. The healing power of sleep seemed to evaded me though, I woke feeling worse than ever so ran myself a deep, hot, pampering bath and settled down with Ditto for a long soak. Ditto I might add, was not actually soaking with me, rather perched precariously on the edge watching, as is her habit when one or other of us is in the bath. I have to say it is slightly off putting, not that I display unusual levels of modesty where cats are concerned, rather that I have some reservations regarding the whereabouts of her razor like claws should she ever slip in!

So the bath was going well until I opened the new body wash I had saved especially for times of pampering. All thoughts of gentle soft bubbles where eliminated in one swift moment as I applied said potion to my body. I had not noticed when purchasing this luxury item that it contained what is marketed as 'exfoliating beads'. I hate exfoliating beads, they bear more in common with a coarse grade sand paper than anything bead like. Had I wanted something resembling those childhood grazes we all suffered at one time or another I would have turned to Black and Decker or Bosch.

Do I care if my body is weighed down with a layer of loose skin cells, do I care if I feel invigorated or revived?..........no I most certainly do not! What I care about is having a luxurious bath without having to spend inordinate amounts of time extracating a multitude of 'bits' from various unmentionable parts of my body and trying to relax lying on a bed of sand. So my apologies to all the manufacturers of generally overpriced 'luxury bathing products' but miscellaneous bits in my bath are more reminiscent of childhood scrubbings 'post beach' visits, administered by my mother, than a luxury hour or two of pampering.....and you can keep 'em!

A big thank you......

.....to DK Goodman for allowing me to utilise his HTML wizardry.

I really must learn to do that stuff myself!

And DKG....should you ever find yourself at a 'loose end' feel free to turn your wizardry to solving the ever present delete comments icon issue!

I fear I am pushing my luck now! :o)

Mice are nice.

Hot mouse!

Well you asked for it so you got it.....I must be mad. As if trailing around work all day dressed like a mouse isn't enough humiliation now I bow to the pressure and post it on the world wide web!

Yes I said 'mouse'. After yesterdays frantic scrabbling though bags and bags of costumes it turned out not to be a monkey at all!!....... I was a mouse! It was still as daft and as unbearably hot but I prefer to be a mouse than a monkey! Mice are nice.

I have no idea at this stage how much we raised for our charity but the general level of amusement we sought seemed to be achieved and along the way we did, I have to admit, have a lot of fun.

Oh and I probably lost half a stone sweating....nice thought eh? Not!

As 'luck' would have it, today was probably the hottest day for weeks here, if not all summer. The sun shone all day the customers donned their tee shirts and shorts and I was dressed from head to toe in fur for 8 hours!

Oh ..........and I got tomorrow off, Wooooooooo... I got that 'Friday feeling'.