1May1997

My dear folks,

Wot a scorcher! The hottest day of the year, we’re told & I don’t doubt it for a moment. I delved into the eaves to find a fan which is nodding back & forth in the corner of the study, bringing some relief. My day waited on the washing machine repair man who failed to turn up early as promised to fix a problem in the ground floor flat. When he did, it was to discover that the company had provided him with the wrong replacement part. Fortunately, he had the necessary part in the van & was able to mend the machine. The bad news was that he’d failed to put sufficient cash in the parking meter over the road to last the distance. He saw a meter man coming & rushed out to feed the meter, only to get done for “feeding”. He wasn’t a happy repair man. He reckoned that meter people’s parents weren’t married.

There’s a problem with the plumbing too but my fixer didn’t think he could get a plumber until the morning. So I took the car up to Kilburn (cursing the traffic) to look for a table to extend my desk which has become congested beyond endurance (with the fax, computer tower, keyboard, monitor, speakers, printer & scanner). I wanted something portable & extendable as well as inexpensive. An hour of tramping the pavements led me to think that the exercise was futile. What was available ran into three figures. It was at a second hand furniture shop that I chanced on an ancient fold-up table with a holey baize cover that was going for a tenner. I carted it off in triumph. It’s been dusted down & is already earning its keep.

Back home to find my neighbour about to walk her dog & to learn that the plumber had called in my absence & departed in a bad humour when he couldn’t get in. Hasty phone calls found him within reach & brought him back. He did some puzzling & concluded that the system should never have worked at all, it was such a mess. He’s to return tomorrow to try to do something about it. Said he comes from Kent but has to travel to London to find work – and that most of it is putting right the cock ups wrought by London cowboys. Rings true enough.

I must confess that I have finally settled on a new desktop computer. After months of studying magazine comparisons, visits to showrooms, quotes & telephone conversations about options, I have ordered a fairly potent desktop model with some useful bells & whistles, not to mention a hard disk capable of putting away a London bus. The decision required a lot of examination of conscience, with Jones’s “do you need it?” whispering in my ears. I’m not sure that I do. I can certainly get by with what I’ve got. Yet, even though it’s been heavily upgraded in the 27 months since I bought it, it no longer even meets “entry grade” specifications. I’m in two minds about whether to hang on to my current model or flog it. The industry has reached the stage where a week away from the latest developments means that you’re a week out of date. Kinda scary!

Still a couple of hours before the polls close. It’s going to be an interesting night! There was a trickle of voters when I went around mid morning to vote at the school round the corner. As I write, I’ve half an eye on the most awful pictures of dying refugee children in Zaire. The correspondent says these are the acceptable pictures; those of starving children being eaten alive by maggots are untransmissible. One bit of me says that human history is the history of misery & that’s just the way it is. Another bit asks me why I’m buying new computers. I don’t know. Makes me very grateful for loving wife and family.

I count my blessings.
T