Catching up

If you are reading this (thank you) you may be wondering why I have not blogged for a week or so. The truth is I have been seriously ill. I have had an attack of PAR, which in the jargon means ‘Preparing Automatic Repair.’ This I think is my seven year old computer’s equivalent of rapid onset dementia. The loss of memory with no known cure, except a trip to the clinic (PC World) where for sixty quid you can entrust that part of your brain which is now called ‘the computer’ for some treatment. Naturally it is advisable to have made a back-up before this happens, then perhaps all is not lost.
 
Eventually, I foretell how we will all be able to make back-ups of ourselves, using all sorts of replacement limbs, brain implants and so on. Maybe in a hundred year’s time. It’s curious how we believe technology has built-in obsolescence, and my computer I suspect of that, but the greatest thing we know – ourselves – is the biggest victim of built-in obsolescence. We’re working hard to address that issue, but in the meantime it is very disheartening to find a simple machine like a computer locking itself into a loop in which it can only repeat the overly optimistic mantra ‘preparing automatic repair.’ Should you have the same misfortune as I have just experienced, your only recourse is to shout ‘You’re a lying bastard’ and take the offending miscreant to the correctional facility. On the return of the machine, it may work again, but you can bet your memory has been wiped.
 
What a week for a computer crash. Perhaps it crashed in sympathy with Theresa May, whose slow-motion car-crash predictably ended in tears. The country’s self-immolation continues. I listened to the Today programme briefly on the Saturday afterwards, on which prog Tory ‘leaders’ are lining up to show off their wares. Some chap called Hancock was insistent that he was a democrat and repeated the old idiotic shite about obeying the ‘people’s decision’ on Brexit. He also said how important it was that we avoid a general election in case Corbyn should be elected. Eh?  So we only need to acknowledge democracy when it suits our purposes? John Humphreys as usual was asleep at the wheel and didn’t challenge Hancock on his contradictory cock’n’bull. How surprising is that?
 
Being without an internet savvy computer is not the end of the world. There are various things I would be checking several times a day which I now can’t. All those things I never had a compulsive need to check several times a day before the internet came along. Computers do lend themselves to compulsive distraction disorder (or whatever it’s called, I can’t at the moment double check on Google). As I write, I’m using an old laptop (12 years old) which I cannot connect because it uses Windows Business Vista which is no longer security protected by Microsoft. For the simple task of writing, etc. this is perfectly fine. I am also pleased to say that I was able to repair its continually detaching screen using a piece of duct tape.
 
As things are going, if we have a manufacturer of duct tape in the UK post-Brexit, then said business should be designated a strategic security interest, which is to say we’ll need a million miles of the stuff, just to keep things going. If I were a cruel person, I might also use many imperial yards of extra sticky duct tape in the next two months or so to silence the ‘leadership’ contenders of the Tory party. But I am not a cruel person, and I would not countenance the scene so often portrayed in movies and Scandi noirs where the duct tape is suddenly removed from victims’ mouths with eye watering rapidity, being imposed on the current set of hopeless Tory charlatans. Nor should anybody else wish such a fate upon them. Ever.
 
As I write, tonight (26th May) has been one of those preciously delightful evenings, with crystalline (? - not sure if that's the right word but it will do) air, a sea speckled with gold from a benign declining sun and a horizon as sharp as one’s eyes focus might allow. For some reason, this heavenly atmosphere has put me in mind of the guy who used to supply me with tabs of acid (nearly 50 years ago), one Alan Wood, who lived in Malton at his mother’s house. I can only suppose I’ve made this connection now because a beautiful evening was often spent all those years ago thinking about how wonderful things were, as the acid kicked in. Now a sunset will have to do. I suspect it would be hard to find another decent dealer like Alan, who would always sit out a session to make sure that everyone else was doing OK. RIP Alan if that is the case, or if not, my God! You beat the odds!
 
By the time this blog hits the screens the EU elections will almost certainly be ancient history. It seems just over one third of the electorate bothered to vote and yet the media are treating the outcome as the most earth shattering news since Nigel Farago won a chariot race in ancient Rome in 12 BC. When did a Euro election ever anticipate the result of a general election? Lauded amongst the victors this time around, the Greens got 12 % - so not as good as 1989 when they got 15%. As for Farago’s Brexit party their vote share was not much different to UKIP’s in 2014. But yes – not a good turnout for Labour, so an immediate opportunity for the media to stoke up divisions within the party. Plus ca change.
 
Sitting in the garden, I occasionally here a tapping noise. It turns out this is a sparrow seeing itself in a mirror contained in a faux church window and trying to either attack itself or make love. I suspect the latter. That being so, I’ll call the poor narcissist bird Boris. Another phenomenon in the garden is the appearance of a wasps’ nest. It’s only very small, but I’m concerned that it will eventually lead to an invasion of wasps in the summer, as they all get used to the idea that is a natural place to set up home. Next thing you know, they’ll be swarming round my G&Ts. So the situation will require close monitoring. And in the meantime, I will call the nest ‘Central Office.’ Gardening analogies with our current politics aplenty here!
 
(28th May) It’s now five days without the internet. It is I admit getting a wee bit frustrating. Simple things that you want to check up cannot be checked up. I can use the mobile a bit but it is so slow it merely leads to frustration. Anyway, who wants to carry around a magnifying glass? I wonder quite how people watch films on their mobiles – what possible pleasure could there be in that? Or pop videos for that matter.  But apparently this is what people do, i.e. those who no longer look where they’re walking in crowded streets. They’ll turn into cyclops with over-developed thumbs, if they haven’t got them already. The growing alienation of our species.
 
With the expulsion of ardent Labour supporter Alistair Campbell (hang on – drop the word ardent) from the party because he supported another party in the EU elections, we now have a pivotal point for the final offensive against Corbyn. This is confirmed by the formal announcement today that the party will be investigated by the Equalities Commission for alleged anti-semitism. After the EU results, the objective is to kick Corbyn as much as possible, the only problem with this narrative is that the protagonists haven’t got the faintest idea what their eventual outcome ought to be.