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Meme 5 Things About Me

This comfortable couple are my maternal grandparents, Florence and Josephus.

Yonks ago Charles Dawson tagged me for 5 Things About Me. I have only just found it Charles so, belatedly, here I am.

1 When I was a young teenager I sprouted up very quickly and towered over my peers. Within a few years everyone caught up with me and now I am average at 5'6" and a bit (I have shrunk since I was 5 feet 6 and 3/4 inches), but I have this imaginary body image of being tall and willowy. Very wrong.

2 I like living alone. I may change my mnd or age may change my mind for me.

3 When pissed I revert to broad Yorkshire/Derbyshire. Not just the accent but also the sentence structures and vocabulary*. Due to Lupus drug regime, it hardly happens at all these days; just a whisper when a glass or two of Champagne or very very good red wine tempts me off the straight and narrow.

4 I yearn to throw off this country life and have a cool contemporary pad in London, or a small villa in north west Crete. I do, however, recognise that I have 'come down in the place that is right' and am content.

5 Despite it being twenty years (20 ?!?) since I was harried ... (that was a typo for married, but being a follower of Jung I will leave it in as a Freudian slip) ... and an important love departed ten years ago, I do believe that love 'is as perennial as the grass'. This belief does not conflict with No. 2 above.

* Memories: I can hear him now ... "Ger up. Thar'll get chinkcough in tha bum if thar sits on that the-er step."

Thanks for the enjoyable Meme Charles.

Now you 5 others out there - tag yourselves - but come back and let us know you have done so.

Coming soon: The Meme of 10

Why has it sunk to the bottom ?

Today's picture is the Chalice Well at Glastonbury, Somerset UK.

The gliche inspiring this post's title question has nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with Blogger forcing me to upgrade (but I am still a bit prickly about the lack of choice). The gliche is that my right hand side column appears to have sunk to the bottom of the current page. In case it is not visible to readers at this stage of their reading, scroll down to the last visible post for all the usual including list of previous posts, my links 'People to See' and 'Places to Go'. Basic stuff. Sometimes all of it has sunk to the bottom, sometimes just half of it so that the picture and basic profile is at the top, but the links and archives are at the bottom.

Please tell me what you see when you read my page. Do you, dear reader, see the same as that which I see ? Or do you experience an alternative universe - how would we know ! And if anyone else knows this template, which I like and don't want to change, is there something I am doing wrong, or not doing, that results in the sunk right column ?

Is it perhaps connected to how I used to publish a new post in Old Blogger; I never did understood the difference between the options. Now those options have disappeared. I have looked at my template, and found the point in the Html at which the side bar begins, but do not know (a) where it ends, or (b) how to move it back or even (c) where to move it back to. New Blogger gives me an option to fiddle with the template, but says I have to opt into their new template and start over. I'm tired ! And - I am a creative little flower for goodness sake, and way back in '72 at ICL in London I decided computer language was not for me, and I just want to blog, ok ! and make it look like I know what I am doing. Steep learning curves give me vertigo.

So while I have been away Blogger has reinvented itself and forced me to do the same. I will get over it. But where is the choice in all this. And, just checking, the content is MINE - isn't it ? What happens if I decide to make a £million from publishing it, between two hard covers, via a printing press, a publisher, and a book deal and resulting healthy bank balance - fantasy land I know, but there is a principle to understand here. If I did - would Blogger pounce and demand the takings or a slice of the action ?!

I have considered composing and saving first in Word, then copying it onto Blogger, but when I tried that the creative juices did not flow, I was just the work-a-day-ordinary-everyday Sally that the Muse has a hard time getting through to.

It is the knowledge that I am putting it out there beyond my perceived boundaries, that makes it work, for me.

By the way, this new facility to add labels, has let me let you know when my blog reality is really just fantasy. Just in case new readers came upon The Elusive Dorset Dragon and wondered !

The Jinx May Be Over, For Now

This picture on my laptop desktop, is placed here to celebrate finally being back in the land of the living, connected to this essential bit of life; the wonderful www and blogging. This is from my garden looking west/north/westnorthwest. Not a recent picture as I don't have a camera, well not yet.

I have been at this damned laptop (with meal and sleep breaks of course!) for three and half days, after IBM finally backed down and sorted everything, the engineer replaced the hard drive, ensured the wireless adapter worked, and that this time he had put every screw back in the right place and in the right order. Then the broadband security didn't like the look of the new operating system and sulked, until I found a lovely BT technical chap in India who took over my computer remotely and un-glitched the security glitches. That took most of today: from 12.37 to 19.10. We had to keep giving each other 'comfort' breaks. Weird. He: and how is your weather today please? Me: Very windy, rain, but mild, about 6 degrees C. How is your weather ? He: oh yes it is very wet we have it raining too and when it is not raining it is hotter but now it is colder in the rain. ( Wonderful !)

So, here I am - Fingers, toes and anything else cross-able, crossed; quietly sneaking back in, hoping the fiendish gods who have been on my back these last few weeks, don't know I am up and running, and attempt more jiggery-pokery on my life.

On the way to the library twelve days ago to use their online facilities, (as then I was still awaiting resolution of all laptop problems) I met a neighbour hobbling, who I had seen days before at the hopsical, and we exchanged the usual: "take care". If only I had taken notice ...

I bashed my car. Never did make it to the library. Nothing dramatic. Travelling at less than 2 mph in reverse gear I touched a bit of metal protruding out from the post I was maneuvering round to get into the disabled bay that was partially blocked by a county council library van. My whole rear windscreen crumpled silently into a million pieces, held together by my countryside alliance stickers and a blue badge expanded to A4 size with the message '3 metre access ramp - keep clear' which was totally ineffective in keeping 3m of tarmac clear, but held the glass together pretty well. When the glass shattered I didn't hear or feel a thing. Weird. However, when I called the library van driver over and told him, yes politely honest, that he had caused this, he slammed shut my car door, and the whole rear windscreen collapsed into the van all over (and into) my wheelchair. I crumpled. Tears, shaking, felt very sorry for myself, and a little afraid. Then thought: hang on, this is not on - so I phoned the police for assistance - and they were wonderful and helpful and stayed with me until the RAC arrived.

Three hours later, home, for the duration, without a vehicle to transport my wheelchair, I was stuck. The hire car, arranged through Motability, was designed for salesmen on motorways as an extension of themselves, and it offended me but I did enjoy the mighty acceleration and it got me to Southampton very smoothly for my Neuro osteoma check up - but the electric wheelchair stayed behind and my PA had to push me in a NHS manual chair - a shock to both our systems and not smooth.

And the washing machine broke down.
And two of my three pairs of specs broke.

Always look on the bright side of life (anyone got tickets for 'Spamalot' ?) ...

If my claim against the county council is successful, and they have already, readily, admitted the library van driver was at fault and the metal post was making life difficult for disabled people trying to use the disabled bay; not only will that pay the insurance excess ('cos my Income Support certainly won't) there should be enough for a decent digital camera.

Silver linings and all that.

Busy few days coming up, so it will be some time before I can catch up with everyone, but bless you faithful ones who have been visiting while I have been gone.