I was going to do a blog today about the changes in my garden since Spring galloped through with indecent haste here in Lewes in the UK but downloading the photographs caused an irritating computer log-jam just as I was printing off a multi-paged document which then decided to print itself off again and all this whilst my freshly-ground Colombian coffee beans were mellowing in my cafetiere two floors below. I am not naturally hysterical (well, let’s just agree on that for the purpose of this blog) but I was beginning to despair at the waste of time, the annoying characteristics of computer technology and my own incompetence when a 21st Century  “person from Porlock” rang me on my iMac computer’s excellent inbuilt visual telephone system, FaceTime, and there he was sitting on my computer screen next to Horace, the spider, who acts as my permanent screensaver.

Actually, he wasn’t a person from Porlock at all (the surpize visitor who interrupted Coleridge when he was writing Kubla Khan), he was David, my old friend from Liverpool and, annoyingly, he was drinking a cup of coffee.

Well, he saved me from over-heating. he waited whilst I went to pour out my own coffee and we talked for much too long, a kind of water-cooler moment, so that there was no time for the planned blog. Sorry about that but look in tomorrow if you are interested in my garden. Needless to say, walking away from the computer problems gave the machine time to sort itself out.

Meanwhile it is goodbye from me, David and Horace. Have a nice day!

The post What to do when your computer plays up and you want to jump out of the window. appeared first on Wolfie Wolfgang.

I don’t think I am more neurotic than the next man but others may disagree. Mostly I am quite calm about things or so I like to think. Maybe I am wrong. So I don’t want to go on about this for too long but, as you can see in the photograph, I work at a perfectly adequate desk with a spankiing new and totally wonderful iMac computer and I am just fine as long as I have a cup of strong black coffee to hand.

There is excellent light from the window here at the top of the house with a view over my little Lewes courtyard garden and a prehistoric, greenery covered, earth fortification, Brack Mound, from my window.

If I am lucky one of the local blackbirds will sing and my personal wren usually adds some reassuring twitterings. It is a fine place to work and I look forward to coming up here every morning after some tranquil if demanding kungfu and taichi in the garden before breakfast….

…and even the rather damp English weather hasn’t put me off my stride. I haven’t been flustered by the odd piece of accidental barefoot snail crushing either. Take yesterday, for instance – a day like any other when I came up here to my room a bit damp from the rain but happy. My morning routine of writing this blog for you guys was completed and I started work on a new poem with more than usual ease.  Often I start a poem on my writing pad using a pencil because I like the immediacy and the highly physical act of scribbling over errors and writing in improvements with a very visible flourish of enthusiasm. Yesterday, for some reason I decided to write straight onto the computer, my wonderful new one. Everything was fine until the dreaded thing happened……

… the phone rang. It was a well-meaning relative asking if I was alright but unwittingly her call sparked off the fault in my broadband connection and my computer crashed taking that poem into cyber oblivion.  “I am fine, thanks,” I answered through my teeth, “How are you?” “Fine thank you” came the answer and that was about it. Fortunately I have a pretty good memory so I picked up my pencil and rushed through the echoes of my morning’s work and got it, or most of it, down onto the pad where I should have written it in the first place. Why does knowing would you should have done after something goes wrong always make it feel worse? Don’t give me the answer because I already know.

This fault has been with me for some time, no, I don’t mean my impatience or my dread of technology, this fault between the telephone and the internet. Some of you may find computer technology fascinating but this is not the place for a nerd discussion and, before you tell me, I did go, last week, to buy a new broadband filter with surge protection and a small police blue flashing light thinking that this would sort the problem. It sits at my feet under my desk and for a while gave me a false sense of security.

I know what I have to do and that is the real problem. I have to ring my broadband supplier, in this case a company called BT, and, after some waiting on the phone, talking to someone who will tell me to check my filter and then to unplug the system and wait for a few moments before plugging it in again.

I have one all this not becaue I thought it would make any difference but so that I could tell the engineer that I do not need to do it all over again. Then I will spend several hours whilst he will try to fix it at his end – or her end, sorry.

Meanwhile, my brain will fizz just like it did when my poem disappeared.  I know I should make this call but I keep putting it off until I have nothing better to do than sit all day on the phone listening to someone telling me things that I don’t understand. I just want my fairy godmother really. She could pick up that crushed snail, wave her wand over it and turn it into an unbreakable and constantly up to speed broadband hub and, even more wonderfully, she will disappear without saying anything.

I am sure that my poem is never going to change the world and I hesitate to compare myself to the great romantic poet Coleridge but in the midst of my cyber rage I remembered his story of “the person from Porlock” about how he was interrupted by this person on a matter of business when he writing what remains of his wonderful, maybe drug-fueled poem Kubla Khan. Sadly, when he returned to his room he couldn’t remember the rest of his inspiration.

Sometimes I wonder what the completed poem would have been like but the fragment that Coleridge left has been an inspiration to me ever since some reckless but happily remembered days as a university student studying English Literature. I know, instead of ringing BT, I will dig out a book of Coleridge’s poetry.

The post A peaceful day in Lewes interrupted by technology but inspired by a drug-crazed genius. appeared first on Wolfie Wolfgang.

I notice into today’s newspapers that the Grand Ayatollah Nasser Makarem Shirazi has issued an edict which will send dog lovers into a panic – especially if they live in Iran.

The Ayatollah has condemned Iranian dog-owners as misguided people infatuated with decadence and who are “blindly imitating the West.” He warns us all that owning a dog will lead to “evil outcomes.”

Well I know about the rather unfortunate and evil smelling canine outcomes that I have to dodge sometimes on the street or in the park, not here in Lewes I hasten to add, but I am not quite so clear on what the grand old man is getting at.

We are all aware, I am sure, of those people who take their love for their pet to extremes but generally speaking dogs are great additions to our lives who deserve all the love that we can bestow on them.

Ayatollah Shirazi goes on to say that one of the “evil outcomes” of loving your dog is that you might start preferring them to your husband:

Your wife:

or even, just imagine, your children:

Well, Ayatollah Shirazi,  I like dogs and human beings too – maybe you should stop all this hating it can be very stressful.

The Iranian government takes their Ayatollahs very seriously though so they have announced, on Shirazi’s advice, a ban on all advertisements for pets, pet shops, pet food and other pet products. It is amazing what you can ban when you put your mind to it.

Now, ladies, don’t look at the photograph below……

Last week, another Ayatollah warned women against watching wrestling on television because it can “sow the seeds of lust.” You have been warned.

Now, for those of you who have been following the story of my computer problems, you will be pleased to know that this the first blog that I have written on my wondrously beautiful new iMac computer but don’t look at the picture below, it might sow the seeds of lust – I am already in love with it.

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I have taken the leap into the unknown after many years of using various Microsoft pcs, I have finally gone over to Apple and, yesterday, as the clouds emptied torrential rain onto me, I went off to my local Apple shop and bought my new computer…an iMac 27-inch 16.9 widescreen computer.

There were cheers from my Apple enthusiast friends and cries of wow from some of my Microsoft relations who think that I will never be able to cope with the different Apple system and who dread hysterical cyber-angry cries for help from me when things get confusing.

Well, time will tell. At the moment my exciting new machine is still in its box whilst I type this on my microsoft laptop.

Wish me luck and, I hope, a lot of fun, whilst I try to get started.

In the meanwhile, here is a short intermission from a more innocent time with some handy tips for a happy and healthy life….enjoy.

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