Yep, I'm back

Hi everyone. Sorry again for my delay in blogging.

If you've been experiencing the British weather, you'll be aware of
how wet it's been in the past 2 weeks or so. Devon and Cornwall were
badly hit with heavy downpours/continous rain. We were there last
week but between all the showers, we did manage some visits to local
towns and beaches ... Bideford, Bude, & Padstow (aka Padstein),where
we sampled some of Rick Stein's delicious fish & chips, and built
sand castles on the beach until rain stopped play.

One of the children was ill most of last week with bad ear infection ~
that was Little A. She got worse on the Monday evening, and fortunately
we got an evening appointment with the local GP. Unfortunately, the
doctor didn't carry any antibiotic samples, so we ended up going to
Devon Docs in Okehampton, to see another doctor and to get a bottle of
amoxycillin (some of you may know the banana-flavoured kiddies medicine).
Her dad and I spent 5 hours that evening travelling between surgeries
and waiting to see the GPs. Oh, the joys of country living!

We also visited a local farm for a "cream tea" (fresh scones, strawberry
jam and real clotted cream plus a pot of tea ... dee-licious), and to see
the animals ... ponies, lambs, hens, ducks & rabbits, all of which
Little A loved.

I'll put some photos of all these activities up on my Flickr site soon.
On the site where we were staying, we had frequent daily visits from one
of the resident peacocks, which we fed with bird seed and left-over bread.
A very tame bird. During that week, it plucked out most of its long tail
feathers, some of which I've brought home to photograph (and perhaps give
away to a school/natural history museum soon).

This week, I've been busy putting together a Powerpoint presentation on
various aspects about emailing, comparing Gmail with Hotmail & Yahoo Mail.
Gmail is my favourite for a variety of reasons, but I've still got accounts
with the other two.

I've also been busy putting the finishing touches to a website all about
using Gimp and Komposer (plus Weebly), to help other U3A members set up
their own websites. I'll be mentoring a small group of members in the
next 2-3 months, who are keen to get new websites up and running.

Next year, I'll starting a group for us all ... "Nerds Anonymous",
plus a support group for their long-suffering partners, on how to put
up with nerds in the home.

I'll finish this post with a funny story about my 89 year old MIL, who
phoned up Mrs C yesterday with some family news plus a huge complaint
about Wednesday's crossword puzzle in The Guardian....

"I spent a whole day," she said, "trying to get the answer to the clue:
"SLIGHT DEFECT" ... and there was a letter T in the answer ... and I'm
feeling very miffed that the answer in today's paper is "tunnel vision".
How is that possible?".

"Oh!" said Mrs C .... "Well, perhaps the clue was SIGHT DEFECT?"

We're off on our holibobs

We're off to North Devon for a week's holiday today ~ staying
at a self-catering holiday complex with one of our daughters
and her family, which should be fun. Sunshine & showers are
forecast for the next few days, and then it will be dry but
cooler on Wednesday.

We're used to summer weather being as wet as this. It often
pours down during the Glastonbury Festival, so everyone ends up
tramping through a load of mud ~ that's not my cup of tea.

As it will be a computer-less holiday, I'll take a few books
and some old unread newspapers with me, not that I'll have
much time to read them with two little children with us.

It's Mrs C who's keener than I am to arrange these family hoiidays,
and having invited one of our girls, we then have to think about
inviting the other three to join us on other holidays. And then
we sometimes feel we need another holiday to recover from the
one we've just had. So next year, we're likely to be going on our
own, without the youngsters.

Now, where's my bucket and spade?

Enjoying the hot weather?

We're in the middle of a heat wave here ... not so nice in the daytime,
but glorious warmth in the evenings. It reminds me of summer evenings in
the south of France or in Italy (though the light is not as fabulous).

One of my U3A chums is off to Verona next week to celebrate her 40th
wedding anniversary, which they spend watching Verdi's Aida ... how
lovely. I recall spending one fab summer's evening there watching the
opera with Mrs C and S, one of my daughters. It was S's 19th birthday ~
a truly memorable evening.

The other day, I heard a radio presenter poking fun at people who moan
about the dismal, cold and wet days we get here ... and then say it's far
too hot for them on hot days (like today). "You can't have it both ways,"
he said.

This reminds me of one of Mini's conversations she had with her mum
recently (Mini is one of my granddaughters, living in London). She was
getting frustrated with some small stickers that were losing their
stickiness (she has had daily temper tantrums about this). She asked
for her mum's help and then refused it (as little ones do).

L. said to her: "One minute you're asking for my help, and then next
minute, you don't want it ... you can't have it both ways!".

Mini replied: "Yes, I can!"

I've had a marathon session posting photos onto Flickr in the past couple
of days ... you'll see my efforts in the Flickr badge on the right hand
side. Hope you'll like some of them.

News Bullletin

As some of you might have guessed, I've been off-line for a while,
but thanks to an excellent service from Vigin Media, I'm now back
online. Hurrah! One of the problems turned out to be an ancient
modem, which was not working properly ... a brilliant engineer
came round this evening with a new one (and set it going within a
few minutes). Wonderful!.

I was starting to get severe withdrawal symptoms without my all-day
internet drip-feed.

So here is my news in brief...

We went to Leeds to see one of our daughters, on Sunday 14 June, and
went on to visit Bolton Abbey in Wharfedale, with B and her partner.
It was a gorgeous hot sunny day.

Last weekend we spent 4 days in London visiting another of our four
daughters, her fella and their two daughters. We had a good day out
at Wimbledon Fair and another brilliant day out visiting a National
Trust house and gardens ~ Polesden Lacey in Surrey. The road traffic
back on Sunday evening was very bad on the M25 nr London ... it took
us an extra hour to get past Heathrow and up to the first M1 Services
at Toddington.

I've been busy drafting a website tutorial on how to use Gimp ... I've
found it quite difficult to transfer my Photoshop skills over to Gimp,
but having done so, it's brilliant.

Here's something I created this morning using Gimp, having a bit of fun
with the "drop shadow" ...


click on this to see a larger image

I've got stacks of photos to post up on my Flickr site from the last
two weekends ... I hope to get round to doing so, fairly soon.

Having a go with Inkscape

I've spent the past few hours having a play with Inkscape.
I've added some text to the new banner above (but I haven't
yet found out how to edit the font). I've noticed that
Blogger tends to make the text on my banners rather fuzzy
~ it's happened again with my Inkscape text. I suspect those
of you who use Wordpress don't have this problem.

The banner is one of my photos of Tegensee, which I took last
summer during our trip to Germany.

Also with Inkscape, I've created a button for website use,
with the help of the YouTube video I mentioned in my last
post.

Messing about, as usual.

I've been busy in the past month or so, building a few prototype
websites, latterly with Kompozer and with a new service called
Weebly dot com. Amazingly, this one is advert-free, and yet is
free to use, so if you'd like to have go a building a simple
website for yourself, you could try out one with Weebly. My only
criticism of this site is that it takes twice as long to put a
website together, compared with Webs dot com.

I've also been having a look at Gimp (for photo-editing), and in
the past 24 hours, I've been checking out Inkscape, which is a
free graphic design program. There are some good videos on You-
Tube on how to use both of these. I'm thinking of making one or
two buttons for one of my websites, just for a bit of fun.

Here are a few sample videos for you ....

Firstly, a video all about a few Gimp basics.

Here's one on how to use Weebly dot com.

Here's a link to a YouTube video, on how to make a shiny red
button with Inkscape.

I'm a Doubting Thomas

Yes, I’m a Doubting Thomas if you were to ask me if I believed in God,
Jesus Christ, the Pope, Heaven/Hell, fate / destiny, faith healers,
fairies, astrology, and that storks bring babies into this world.

I don’t wish to sound patronising when I say this, but if other people
believe in the existence and power of God, then I’m happy for them to
carry on doing so. Everyone’s entitled to his/her opinions/beliefs.

As I mentioned in my comments to LOM a few days ago, I don’t think
that our lives are mapped out for us in advance by some supernatural
force or being. I think that we all have a series of choices in life,
which we might take or leave.

A whole host of circumstances led to my meeting my wife, Mrs C, who
happened to be the daughter of long-standing friends of my parents.
Her dad and mine went to school and to university together, and
shared a lot of literary and musical interests. Her mum helped out
my mum for a couple of weeks, when my mum took ill with mumps, and
my future mother-in-law bathed me when I was a baby … how bizarre
is that?

When I was a lad of 14, we spent some time over Christmas in 1963
with Mrs C’s family, and then in later life, in the early 1970s,
there were a few more family meetings, during which time Mrs C
and I fell in love.

It was our choice that we decided that we should continue the
relationship, but I think it did help that our parents were very
pleased when it blossomed. It was fortuitous also that neither of
us was in another relationship at the time, and that we were able
to get married and live together about a year later.

Was our relationship pre-destined? I don’t think so.

And what about career choices? Are these pre-determined in some way?

Well, I decided just before going into the 6th form at school that
I would aim for university medical school entrance … encouraged by
my parents and following on my older brother’s example (who was in
his 5th year at Med School at this time). Getting into a Med School
was very difficult for me, owing to some poor O and A level results
(and I suspect a poor headmaster’s report also) .. I was put on a
“waiting list” for Med School entry at Leeds University the
following year, pending my getting better A Level results second
time round. I also had a bash at the Oxford University entrance exams,
which with hindsight was over-ambitious … I got to interview for a
place there after the exams, but I was one of 6 good candidates for
one place at Pembroke College, and didn’t get it. The following
summer, I achieved high A level grades and was offered a place at
both Edinburgh and Leeds Universities. I chose the latter.

My life might have turned out differently if I’d accepted the
Edinburgh place … different teachers, different friends and possibly
a different career choice, if I’d chosen a hospital speciality, or
if I’d gone in for dentistry or pharmacy instead. So these were my
choices, which I don’t think were decided in any way by fate/destiny.

I've been thinking that I might have some choice as regards my
after-life, if I were to convert to Christianity not long before
I die … so I could have a chance of going to Heaven rather than
going to Hell.

Some of you might be thinking: "Well, he's hedging his bets, the
cheeky bugger! He hasn't a hope in Hell!"

No doubt God or St Peter will decide my fate.