The blogging adventure will continue again once I have moved to Hereford, end September 2022: August 9

Where the hell is my DELL?

I had hoped to have been writing this to you on my new super-duper DELL laptop, but owing to the fact that DHL decided that my address did not exist, it did not get delivered. Apparently despite this road probably being here for 250 years, and probably because you cannot drive a van up it, unlike UPS and all the other delivery companies that have made delivers to my door, I do not exist! The driver was probably too lazy to walk.

Of course I had tracked the package on the DHL-SCI tracking site, up to and including the address query at 17:21 on 20-08-2015 but on asking DHL where it was they said it was not their package and I need to provide a waybill number. I sent them the link to the DHL page and a copy of it and I was rewarded by . . . . silence!

I thought I would drop the nice Mr. Michael Dell of DELL an e-mail informing him of DHL's inability to deliver a simple package and denying all knowledge of it, I expect Michael does not work at the weekend so I am not expecting an answer before Monday. Better to travel in hope …….

I was already a bit cross in that when I purchased the DELL laptop the website said (in Spanish) ready for delivery in 2 – 4 days, and I duly got updates telling me that my laptop had been personalised to my specification and was due for delivery. What they didn’t mention was that deliver was from CHINA! So 2- 4 days is actually more like 2 – 4 weeks! Naughty! Especially as the cash was taken once it had shipped.

So no computer and no answers. Frustrating.

Corbynomics.

I have been much enlivened by the Labour leadership process, if you wrote such a farce people would never believe it, you really couldn’t make it up. I dutifully listened to the interviews with each of the four candidates on the world at one, and whether you back him or not, it really was Jeremy who was offering any kind of vision, and not simply nominalised waffle, (these tory-lite candidates should just hear themselves, there is nothing to believe in.)

Corbyn or JC to his friends (hehe) has a vision and when he talks he talks of I or we will do this and that and whatever, positive and focused on issues of import to what are traditional labour voters. With the Andy, Mrs Balls, and call me Liz, it is all “would like to see this and that” and it is all old wine in the same old bottles, previously used by the conservatives and rinsed out and filled with a lighter vintage (but it all smells corked). And probably nicked from Tony Blairs wine celler.

Corbyn has provided the catalyst for so many many things to crawl out of the woodwork. I never realised that the Labour Party big-wigs actually believe that abandoning socialism is a good thing. And the reason why 400,000 people have signed up is to remind them that maybe Labour values are socialist values (they can take the pictures of Maggie and Blair down now). Corbyn may not be 100% right, he may be idealistic, but he certainly seems to be what the people want, and he offers real change and a correctional push to he left!

It is interesting that with Syritza in Greece, Podemos in Spain, and other populist and left wing movements, there is a general surge away from Capitalism towards the left. With the terrible world situation, migration, wealth, commodities, something more "begnign" (and therfore more to the left) surely can't be all bad. The pendulum is making the "correction" as it swings back.

So, I registered, using my UK address, paid my £3 and voted. But I am now very worried as I once had a “green thought” which would appear to be enough to get me rejected. Dastardly deeds at Labour HQ if Jeremy Hardy is to be believed. Socialism and Labour have become "oxymoronic" - the sleepwalking has now stopped, and for some the nightmare has begun!

Meow meow.

I have had an unexpected visitor twice this week. The other night around 10pm I was tapping away at the laptop and notice something on the stairs up to my bedroom and the terrace,(no, not another man) but a black and white cat. I see this cat every day as it sleeps on the roof of the house at the back and we do the slow eye close look at each other.

Well it had obviously decided that I wanted to explore the roofs of my house and the house next door and the only way to gain access was via my house!

So, the cat disappeared upstairs and re-appeared 30 minutes later and (as only cats can) walked past, imperious and ignoring me, jumped up and went out the window, just as it had arrived. Being a cat lover, this behaviour struck me as completely normal. The next day the cat did exactly the same thing, but during the afternoon rather than in the evening!

Waiting.

But in the main this last two weeks have been “static” (I nearly put boring) I have been waiting …… waiting for the estate agent/conveyancer and waiting for Dell (not godot). But I was determined to see what would happen if I gave in and did virtually nothing for two weeks except to read, eat and think and not try to take on anything new. I have also hardly spoken to anybody, amazing to go two or three days in silence.

I spent a lot of time just sitting. Now after two weeks I feel that all that inactivity has sparked some real insight into much of what I wrote last time ….. all those “men not on the stairs” … I feel that I am almost ready to tackle them one-by-one. Kick them into touch and move on and doing this would be great on a new “laptop” for the new “me.”

One blessing is that I can get radio 4 on the laptop through the BBC i-player (for copyright reasons I cannot get i-player television) but since I haven’t turned the television on for almost 2 months, that is no great loss.

Amazing just how much can be done, whilst listening to the radio, or how wonderful radio plays and dramas are when you really sit down and listen internally so much more vivid than any TV production.

BUT, I also find the run up to my birthday a bit depressing and with one of two notable exceptions (especially my 50^th) always find birthdays to be a bit of an anti-climax. This year the plan is simple. Well I was going to go away for a couple of days but DHL have rather messed that up, so ……. I plan

A nice bottle of Cava and a huge plate of Paella for lunch with Rabbit, Squid, Mussels, Clams, and 2 or 3 really large fat Langoustines (the size of baby lobsters!) …… I am sure that will do the trick.

My computer will arrive (haha) and I shall commence the “magnum opus” on Tuesday (after spending Monday evening drunkenly trying to work out how to make the laptop work with Skype, etc)…….

The working title for the magnum opus is “yesterday, upon the stair” of course everybody writes the first book from life experience but I want to have some freedom so I am going to project my early life onto a fictional boy, I can then surmise what happened in the gaps of my memory and can, I hope, derive more insight for myself. In making stuff up maybe the real truth will emerge.

But, (and I cannot shrug this off) I have this “dread feeling” of a skeleton in a mental cupboard, long since locked away, and I feel this is "key" to some of my difficulties today …… Pandoras box? ....... Still lots of “carajillos” will, I am sure, make the journey all the more bearable. This has now become almost (?) an obsession.

Well today Sunday, 23^rd August is the last day of my 59^th year on this planet, tomorrow I am 59 and I start my 60^th year. And taking a leaf out of my good friend Martin’s book, intend this next year to be significant (well I have already started on some of that) so that on my 60^th birthday I can, well, actually, not sure exactly what, but I am sure it will be, well, significant!