Router Rescue

I had a phone call. A friend needed her router rescuing from its alternative drop-off venue. The doorstep. Of her cottage, In the Middle Of Nowhere.

I was the ideal person to help because that’s exactly where I live. Nowhere is a big place ergo the Middle Of Nowhere is fairly sizable too. Undaunted and ill-equipped I set off. It was a dark and stormy night. Which rapidly became a dark and stormy and foggy night. Undaunted and many miles of meandering, dark, stormy and foggy lanes later I found it.

The router was completely unharmed. I breathed a heavy sigh of relief.

I had been instructed to locate the spare and hidden key and put the rescuee in the house. The key was too well hidden. Or I had failed to remember properly to my instructions. No problem. There was a backup plan. To leave the poor lost router in the shed. The shed was also too well hidden. I was impressed by my friends’ ability to hide things. However the router was beginning to look a little despairing. I considered just leaving it where I had found it but my reputation for cruelty has yet to be established.

I muttered a few there theres and bundled the whimpering piece of electronics under my coat. I took it home and stored it cosily next to mine.

I have texted my friend ‘Router safe’ 

How Not to Communicate Successfully

‘Someone called me in the night! Woke me up!’

‘Oh?’ I said, trying to sound nonchalant. Not my best sound effect early in the morning.

‘Guess who it was.’ Said Man

My mind ranged from friends having mechanical emergencies, other friends having carpenterial emergencies, speaking clocks, ex-wives, and figments of his imagination.

However I have some experience in answering these sort of accusational questions. So I knew how to get a top score –

‘Me?’

‘Yes!’ Bingo.

‘I just called to say I love you.’ I covered adeptly.

‘It sounded like snoring.’ Now this was beginning to have a ring of plausibility. Snoring is what I usually say in the night. Hence Man not sharing bed.

‘I just called to say I love you’ I tried again

‘So I hung up and I could still hear you!’

‘I just snored to say I love you.’

Further phone investigation revealed that I had also reset the background to a charming picture of a blanket, played Enya, won three games of solitaire, called the laundry people, my dentist and an Unknown number. I’m hoping that Unknown better understood my message.

Alexa

The Physicist got Alexa for Christmas. For the uninitiated amongst you she’s a thingy. You tell her to do stuff or answer questions. Sounds jolly useful eh?

We plugged her in.

‘Alexa – turn on the TV’ Honorary Grandson. TV remains steadfastly off.

‘Alexa – um, er, um’ Honorary Grandnephew. Alexa cooperates in hesitation.

‘Alexa – turn off the lights’ Lights remains steadfastly on.

‘Alexa’, (you understand that Alexa is related to Simon and unless you address her by her proper name you lose). ‘Sing Happy Birthday’ Honorary Granddaughter.

I sing Happy Birthday, it seems expedient at the time.

These demands went on for some time. I began to pity Alexa.

‘I’m not currently connected to the internet’ Alexa finally pipes up. An excuse I myself have used more than once when harassed by over-jubilant holidayed-up children.

Not long after that Alexa retreated to the kitchen. Another well know festive season ploy that women have used over the centuries. The Physicist managed to calm her down and coax her into a few jokes and general sing songs.

The following morning I wandered into the kitchen. Alone. Confused. Then I saw Alexa. Yes! Just the woman I needed –

‘Alexa, why did I come in here?’

‘Alexa, what was I thinking?’

‘Alexa, what am I looking for in the fridge?’

‘Alexa, WTF?’

She had no idea. Just like me.

What the manufacturers and purveyors of Alexii have failed to communicate in their well cast advertising campaigns is that Alexa is in fact middle aged. And probably menopausal. She did feel a little hot.

Waiting for the Builder

I’m waiting for the Builder. His name is Dave. This works well for me (being memoryly challenged) because most of the men I know are called Dave. So when I call a man on the phone I can just say ‘Hello Dave’. There does follow the problem of what I’m supposed to be talking about. I’ve decided to stick with the opening gambit of ‘Hello Dave, the roof is leaking.’

Dave the builder understands this. Dave my boyfriend understands this (or understands me sufficiently to ignore random phone overtures). All my Dave friends know me well enough to respond by hanging up.

I’m waiting for the builder. He’s supposed to be coming to fix the roof. The roof is leaking. Mostly I’m not all that very house proud. I’m successfully ignoring the fragrantly rotting front door, the musicality of the plumbing and the interesting angles my ceilings construe themselves into. But leaking roofs are not good. I’ve seen the television programmes.

It starts with a leaking roof. Then the timbers get wet rot and dry rot and rot. Then the wall falls down. Your previously (and possibly aristocratic) family is inconvenienced by the lack of wallage. They leave the stately pile for the suburbs. You stay in the stately pile living in the only room where it doesn’t rain, accompanied by your mêlée of cats. Years pass. A television crew turns up to your previously stately pile (now transformed to a pile) wanting to know why you didn’t get the roof fixed. Your only response by this stage is ‘Meow’.

I’m still waiting for the builder. This isn’t the first time. I suspect it won’t be the last.

Shedheap Challenge – Or How Not to Move Your Shed

I have decided to move the shed. Mostly because it is spoiling my view of the mountain. The mountain is much prettier than the shed and it doesn’t leak like the shed does. There are a number of problems involved. It isn’t a little shed, measuring about 3m x 10m, it is in fact a large shed. It was built sometime in pre-history of a solid wooden construction. It has been re-roofed in the not so distant past in an insubstantial plastic sort of way.

This isn’t the big problem. The big problem is all the stuff in the shed. What do I do with all the precious junk I have accumulated in the last 20 years? Items like surf boards, doors, desks, chairs, a fitted kitchen, thousands of tins of paint, another thousand tiles of no matching genre, plant pots, garden tools, a large assortment of bits of wood, sixty double glazing units that got mis-ordered when the house was re-glazed, and a number of wasps’ nests.

I’m a big fan of Scrapheap Challenge so I’m going to do Shedheap Challenge. The challenge is to make a new shed using only the items stored in the old shed in order that I might empty the old shed to make a new shed to store all the items in the shed.

How Not to Become a Recluse

I’ve been training to be a recluse. Which may be why no one has heard from me in such a long time. Or it could be the weather.

Being a recluse is considerably more difficult than I’d anticipated. Hence the training. The actual word recluse is derived from the Latin ‘recludere, which means "shut up"’. I read this on Wikipedia. The first problem becomes fairly obvious. This shutting up lark, although fine as far as it goes in terms of blogs, is quite tricky when it comes to shopping, asking neighbours to feed cats and answering difficult questions posed by cats. I’m hoping that talking to oneself, inanimate objects or foodstuff doesn’t count.

Having failed to find a proper school for potential recluses (or is that recluii?) or even a decent online resource I have been left with having to invent the training for myself.

I understand that a good recluse will try and stay away from people.

On Wednesday I had to go to work so I encountered a number of people. I was suitably grumpy and refused offers of coffee, chats about unpaid invoices and any further unpaid invoices. Funny how no one ever wants to chat about the invoices you’ve actually paid, which, at any given time must considerably outnumber the unpaid ones. I put this down to an unhealthy interest in current affairs.

On Thursday I managed to speak only to 2 cats, 6 plants, a hummus sandwich (only to mention how gorgeous it was), and my boyfriend. I’d like to point out here, that Dave, the boyfriend (we like to call the over 55s boys these days in order to appear younger and more girlish oneself) is also a recluse or at least a potential recluse with some outstanding exceptions we won’t go into. This was my best day this week.

On Friday I was all set to talk only to 2 cats, an undefined number of plants and probably a bowl of pasta when someone rang. I answered the phone, essentially breaking the first rule of reclusive-in-training but not having got over the first rule of motherhood and assuming that if the phone rings it’s a daughter with some very important crisis. It was neither. That was the earlier call that I’m not mentioning because it’s not relevant. It was bestest friend from school. Telling me that an old chum from school days was now Paul McCartney and there was a gig on in a park in Bath. I encountered over 2000 people. This has put my training back by approximately 743 years. But one of them was Paul McCartney and I always fancied him. However since he’s well out of my league training starts in earnest again tomorrow: 2 cats, an undefined number of plants and an intimate tête-à-tête with a particularly nutty muesli.

How Not to Have a Secure Income

I have made a decision. One of those life-changing yes-now-I-like-olives of decisions. Some are born decisive, some achieve decisiveness, and others have decisiveness thrust upon them. I fall into all three categories but mostly at the moment I’m having it thrust upon me. And perhaps not in an alluring sort of way.

For the last little while, or year, I have been working every afternoon as a child-minder, house-keeper, ironic-ironer sort of person. This was very jolly and I got paid every week into my bank account so that, in the usual way of the world, the council, utilities and suppliers of totally necessary chocolate cake could remove it from the aforementioned depository. Redundancy is being thrust upon me. Possibly because the children are all grown up, the house has decided to become independent and the iron has made a bid for freedom in eternally lumpy wrinkled sort of places.

I have made a decision. A career change. I am going to be a writer. Now, this may sound familiar. As I am actually already a writer. This time, however I have decided to become a PAID writer!

All my writerly friends will probably wonder what in the world I’m talking about. Surely we do it for the love of the craft, our addiction to verbiage and our attempts to break the world record for Rejection Letters from Publishers Received?
That was when we had other incomes, or husbands or faith. Now we are not so well endowed or faithful. A bit like husbands. I have a cunning plan to prostitute my art. I have been on the internet. These are the jobs that writers can do if they really want:

Blogging about things you have never heard of (some education will come free with this).

Ghost-writing stories of people whose lives really make the rest of ours look like a energy-saving lightbulb.

Advertising copy for selling stuff we may never have heard of (again good sideline in education.

Writing random things in the hope that someone will host a related advert. I can already actually do this with this blog and you may all note the lovely ads.

Feel free to click.