My technical department now being in Spain, I had to use other means to contact him.
New computer, then. Go and see Currys/PC World for a laptop like another friend's, it can't be that difficult. But what a terrible salesman. He might have had me for a £300 laptop but he went for broke, told me that Microsoft Office is £80/year now, but he could do me a package worth £400 for £150 to keep me going for two years.
Does it fit this printer cable?
Printers are wireless now.
Mine isn't.
How do you store your photos?
On a stick.
We can rent you cloudspace.
No you won't.
It's got this security.
I've got security.
You can cancel that.
No, I won't. I was out of there smart-ish.
I ordered the same re-conditioned unit I have already, straight from the suppliers, by-passing Amazon. It came today.
It was just a
new screen I needed.
How was I to
know.
New computer
arrived. Set it all up. Still no good.
Went and got a
new screen. Set it all up. Still no good.
Accidently
touched the button that turns the screen on. Aha.
Went back to old
computer. Still works.
So now I’ve got
a huge new screen and a spare re-conditioned computer. But at least I can review Jane Glover's Handel in London and order books and records without the considerable rigmarole life in the computerless wilderness would re-impose.
Nine days without a computer. One can begin to manage without. Most importantly, I finished two Saturday Times crosswords without a wordfinder. I spent some time with Hermione Lee's biography of Virginia Woolf, I realized I'm not addicted to chess and did some dusting and arranged a few books a bit better on the shelves. Oh, yes, and I wrote a letter in handwriting. Amazing.
It was an informative long week and might have informed the forthcoming years few years that not quite everything happens on this screen. Much bigger screen that it is, e-mails arriving in an expanse of blinding whiteness.
