In hot water - or not!

This is as far as I have got with Christmas!  The wreath is nearly 40 years old and was purchased in the USA on our first visit there back in 1977  I thought it unusual at the time as it had just natural looking nuts and cones and no red or gold sparkle and over the years I have sometimes added different bits and pieces to it and sometimes left it au naturel.  This year it has a ribbon bow and some orange baubles.  I have posted cards to dozens of friends and donated money to Medicins sans Frontieres and Crisis at Christmas, in lieu of sending gifts to friends who know the plan so don't feel obliged to send me gifts either, but cakes and puddings have I none, the tree is still in the loft,I have no turkey ordered nor crackers bought.  It is just as well we have no visitors arriving for the holidays as today at long last the heating engineers arrived to install a new boiler.  Ours was getting very tempermental and old (rather like me).

We had an appointment to have the work done back in October but the chap who was to do the job phoned at the last minute to say he had injured his back and wouldn't be able to come.  No real problem we could wait but we did expect to be kept informed and as the weeks passed and we could never get hold of him to find out what the situation was and if he was better or not.  We eventually left a message to say we would have to find somone else to do the job unless we heard from him by that evening as although we could manage with kettles of hot water for washing occasionally not always being able to get the water to run hot for a shower was not ideal.  So it was back to square one and getting other quotes although by this time it was well into November and everyone was busy.  We did get a quote from a firm who seemed professional and to know what they were talking about and a date was fixed for last week but would you believe it once again it was postponed due to the engineer who was to have arrived having phoned in sick that day.  We were given profuse apologies and kept informed as to what could be arranged and today two young men duly arrived as had been promised, though like policemen they do seem very young and I wonder if their mothers know they are playing about with gas and dangerous electrical tools?!!  I guess everyone looks young to us these days and they seem to be getting on quite knowledgeably.  The job however does mean that we shall be without heating and hot water for a couple of days so it's fortunate that the weather is mild for December.

The lack of water reminds me how lucky I am to have water on tap (pardon the pun) and of how it used to be when I lived with my grandfather back in the '50s.  We had no tap indoors but shared a cold tap in an outhouse with the neighbours and so for hot water it was a case of filling a kettle, from the bucket kept on the end of the table, and putting it on the fire.  As you can imagine showers were not an option and a weekly "bath" or actually a wash down in front of the fire was as near as we got.  Hair washing was a nightmare entailing pouring of hot water with a jug over one's head whilst leaning over a bowl.  No wonder it wasn't done more than once a week.  Not having any plumbing meant of course that there was no sink nor plughole down which the used water might flow so every drop of water that was used had to be either carried outside and round to the outside toilet or flung over the garden - not much fun in mid winter!  At least I have water from a tap to fill the kettle and electricity to boil it so washing ourselves is no problem and having washed my hair yesterday it shouldn't require washing again until the shower is in working order again. 

Modern technology is wonderful when it works but when it goes wrong it can be a real problem and not one that we can solve ourselves so I do sometimes think longingly of a life lived off-grid when heating was a fire which I could deal with myself and there was nothing to go wrong the only problem being having the money to afford to buy coal or other fuel though even then a walk in the countryside usually entailed collecting bits of wood and fallen branches to burn.

Luckily my cold is better and the grey blanket has lifted again so that I can see the funny side of life once more!  Thanks for all your good wishes.

The simple life

About fifty years ago I bought myself a radio.  I wanted one I could carry round with me to listen to in the garden or in my bedroom and so I went to the shop in Sherborne and bought one.  I can see it now two shades of grey plastic and quite small and light.  I don't remember there being any complications to the purchase I just asked for what I wanted and paid for it and that was that!  I had that radio for years and when I met and eventually married Mr M he too had a radio of about the same vintage or maybe a little older so then we had two (neither is with us now though - mine got broken when some piece of furniture we were trying to move fell on it and we can't remember what happened to Mr M's) We can't remember ever having bought any other radios (though maybe we did but have forgotten) until Mr M bought me this one, which is also a CD and tape player, probably in the 1990s .....

...which sits on the lower shelf in the kitchen and is fine unless I want to change the programme when I need to kneel on the floor to be able to see the numbers when moving the dial.  Then when I want to return to Classic Fm - my usual programme of choice - I can't find it again.  I thought a smaller radio which could sit on a higher shelf and preferably one with pre set programmes would be a good idea and I could also take it with me when I go into my workroom to do some sewing without too much effort. Easy you might think - I want something small and light weight that can be preset to several programmes.

Yesterday being another blue sky day we went to Exeter for an outing - this is the car park at the station as we left.  As we were in Exeter I went into John Lewis to have a look at what they had.  Well there were all shapes, sizes and colours.  There were DAB digital and FM radios, some with clocks and alarms, clear OLED displays and an inputs for your iPod/MP3 player (not that that mattered to me not having either of them).  Some had built in Bluetooth and some had a listen later facility.  How was I to know which I wanted and what all this lot actually means?  I managed to find a salesman to help me but I really do think that people who do understand all this technology find it really, really difficult to conceive how it is that some of us really don't know our DAB from our OLED!  I hate this feeling of being a total nincompoop but I did eventually choose a radio and wanted to buy it and what do you know they didn't have one in stock!!  I think I will continue with the one I have and not bother with a new one after all!

The other thing I was interested in was a laptop - I use the desktop computer which I share with Mr M and  I thought it would be good to have something of my own and, as I like to write, something I could use whenever and wherever I wanted to - in the garden in the summer or at the kitchen table whilst waiting for something to cook and so on.  Once again I came unstuck as there was so much choice and all I knew I wanted was a keyboard that I could touchtype on easily and comfortably, but it seems they can do all kinds of things I might never want as well as some I might, they have different sized memories (so what?  Although I now gather they work faster the larger the memory) , they can be Blue tooth enabled (what exactly is Bluetooth anyway) some had 8GB of RAM (good bad or indifferent?) built in webcam (I do know what that is as I do use Skype!) and innumerable other specifications.  They don't come with any of the packages I would want such as Word and you can't buy said packages singly but only in a pack along with Excel and various others which I would never use but not with Publisher which I might like.  My mind was boggling with all this information and I decided to call it a day and maybe buy a new fountain pen instead!!

Then there is banking - not so long ago I received in the mail a new Debit card with instructions to cut up the old one and guess which one I cut up by mistake?!  No problem, I thought, I'll just telephone the bank and get them to post me another one.  Haa! - no such luck of course, and it took me over half an hour and left me in tears telling Mr M I must surely have the first stages of Altzhiemer's  as I really couldn't remember any of the stuff I was being asked for.  When I did eventually get myself set up with a new password I was told not to write it down - not write it down are they mad!!!  And then have to go through that experience all over again next time I wanted to speak to anyone about my account?  No chance - it IS written down if only I can remember where!

Life was so much simpler years ago- we had bank accounts and even cheque books or maybe just cash in our purses, the scale of choice was so much smaller and technology hadn't raised its head to the same extent.  Sometimes I can quite see the attraction of being a hermit living alone somewhere off-grid and having nothing to do with it all.  Oh for the simple life!!