Reggie Thomson’s Diary

Outlook seems to crash this morning. Fortunately, I had backed up my data about a week ago. I decided to restore from backup, losing perhaps a few days worth of Digital Darkroom Answers. It seems to have cured the problem.

I deflated my bed and put all the bedding in the cupboard upstairs.

I wandered round Cambridge for a bit, but all I bought was some Deet in YHA shop, and some blank CDs at the computer shop opposite Staples. The gentleman in the YHA shop asked about my sandals. I had given him one of my cards. It makes the shopping experience more pleasurable. I had to pay with my bank card, even though I am down to a few pounds in that account, because I had left my Gold Barclaycard at the computer shop.

So, I was a little late getting to Andrew’s to pick up the car. He explained the documents to me, and showed me the operation. It can’t take unleaded petrol. He has also left a spare back axle in a box in the back.

Back home, I looked at my emails. Dad has written. It seems that they wouldn’t be happy with me staying for much more than a week, and the project of copying the old photo albums cannot go ahead - life consists of ownership and permissions. Shared, or family ownership, is not a consideration, even though permission to take photos is the presumption of parents.

So, I set off at 2.30 p.m., feeling slightly down. The Morris was great - because it can’t go above about 65, I felt no need to rush. I have entered a slower world. I sauntered along the A45.

Just as I pulled into the garage after Bar Hill, I was engulfed in a huge cloud of smoke. I pulled over at the first stopping point, grabbed my gear, and jumped out. The smoke soon subsided. I couldn’t figure out where the bonnet release was, but didn’t want to stand too close in case the car exploded. I telephoned Andrew, but only got the answering machine. In the shop, I changed some more money, and phoned again to say I would contact him every hour on the hour.

As I sat in the car, someone with a trailer paused as he went by. He thought the problem was a blown water hose, as it was steam coming out, not smoke. I felt a bit reassured. I read the manual - it was the only thing I had. I can’t use the computer, because the battery doesn’t work.

An idea occurred to me. I asked in the shop if I could plug in the computer for five minutes. I was able to get Andrew’s mobile number. When I called him, he was in Norwich. “It sounds like you’ve blown a water hose.” The passive would have made it less personal. He suggested I left the car their until he could get there. I noticed a sign saying that you had to pay £6 for leaving the car over two hours. I couldn’t find the pay and display machine. It had been taken away.

I walked back to Bar Hill and stood near the bus stop. Several buses went by, but I didn’t take them. A car with three, maybe four, youths slowed down. “Cambridge?” one asked, and as I turned round, the sped off, amused that someone seemed to believe them.

Finally, someone gave me a lift to the bottom of the Huntington Road. I could have walked home - about two and a half hours, perhaps. On the way, I bought myself some chocolates.

I did some emailing. Andrew logged on, so I sent him an MSN message. He came round, so I brought my belongings in case we got the car going. By now it was beginning to rain. Andrew repaired some hoses, but didn’t think that was the problem. We had difficulty getting enough light as the sun set. Another gentleman in the shop lent us a torch. He had had a Morris at one time. Hamish phoned, but I couldn’t say definitely when I would be on the road again. We finally got everything going, and put some more water in. Andrew drove it to Girton, and I took his Rover.

At his house, there seemed to be a hissing noise from the engine. Andrew drove it around for a bit more, while Sarah offered me some tea, plus more anger at Andrew just leaving the garage door open. We couldn’t solve it. Andrew drove me home, but I left my bicycle and the pictures at h is house. I spent fifteen minutes pumping up my bed again.

If I am going away, and will be using my camera a lot, it needs to be repaired. Under one of my 500W lights, I took it to bits, but couldn’t get the rear panel off. Then, I cycled to Maplin to buy a soldering iron, solder and some light wire. On the return journey, I called in at Tesco to purchase their half-price cream eggs. At first, I couldn’t find them.

After soldering one of the broken wires in the swivel display, I began to reassemble the camera. However, I was unable to fit the memory card door back together again. I decided to leave it, rather than become frustrated.

I set the computer to defragment last night. It didn’t change the pagefile.sys, so I reduced it to 2Mbytes, and set the computer going again. I had to leave it running when Andrew came to collect me.

He drove the MG, while I followed behind in his car. Cambridgeshire villages aren’t quite as quaint as their Suffolk counterparts. Perhaps that’s the Baptist influence. At Wisbech, we dropped the car in an MG garage. I noticed it would cost £1000 for one rusted car, or £4000 with a completely new body. Apparently, someone noticed that the MG company had kept the dies for the body parts, so bought them up.

On the return journey, a pheasant walked out in front of the car, and hit with a bit of a bump. Andrew stopped to go back and put it out of its misery - but we couldn’t find it. Maybe it wasn’t badly hurt.

Andrew has sold a car to someone in N. Ireland. I suggested that if necessary, I could deliver it. I would have to check up on the cost of the ferry crossing, and getting a cheap flight back. On the web, it seemed to be about £100 for the ferry from Stranraer to Belfast, and maybe £60 to fly back to Heathrow. Ryanair doesn’t fly out of Belfast or Aldegrove.

At the Barn, Vlasta was asking about strawberry picking in Scotland. I mentioned that you can “pick-your-own” in Histon. They weight the punnets afterwards. You can eat as much as you want to. Perhaps they weigh you as you go in, and then afterwards. Maybe it’s best, half-way-through, to go to the toilet!!

It was a chocolate evening. Sian had brought a group of Japanese from the Central Language School. There were lots of “wows” on seeing some of my namecards.

I switched off all my spam checking last night, and left the junk mail in my deleted folders. By the end of the day, I had about 60 messages.

My CD program (Easy CD) seemed to have crashed. I went back to the original disk to recover. I backed up my C: drive - or portions of it. I was down to 100Mbytes of free space.

I wonder what I was doing on Photosig? Probably just browsing the forums. The empty thumbs are causing angst. What is the value of value? An empty thumb is a statement that your words are useless, worthless, as determined by a computer.

Razmik tells me that I am too harsh on Adrian in my diaries. It’s the British way to be critical, I’m told. Maybe I’ll be sued for libel. It’s funny that what sticks in the memory after seven days is usually something negative. I would never take photos in the way I write - I aim to cut out all visual ugliness, but finding verbal beauty that is memorable is a struggle.

I did some work on Rob’s website www.robbaker.org. The difficult part is trying to define a style. I chose the music sheet lines rather than the piano keys. There’s lots more to do, and I will need to get the text to fill in the gaps.

The curtains fit the colour scheme in Adrian’s room, but there is a slightly unfinished hem. I took them back to Debenhams and was offered the choice of replacing them or having them repaired. I chose the latter.

I emailed www.register4less.com, because I thought that there might be problems transferring my barninternational.org account. Shortly afterwards, the emails came through requesting my approval. Someone replied, saying that it was the fastest transfer he had seen. I’ll still have to wait for my DNS cache to be updated in NTL. If it is anything like the Photosig site, it could be up to ten days.

At last, I can see photos on Photosig. I migrated my account to version 2. Now I can see who has been rating all my critiques as “Not useful.” I was most surprised to discover that IceRock, from Iceland, seems to have gone through with some sort of vendetta. I had thought better of him.