Apart From Bombs And Stuff

With the aid of a printout of “Don’t Panic!”, SueWWeekly Prompts superb First Guide to the Blocks Editor printed two days ago, I spent some time this morning trying to understand rather than stumble through WP’s new scourge. Sue likens it to a modern washing machine which has loads of options that most of us will never use – rather like a mobile phone really.

I then took a few garden views from upstairs. In this one “Where’s Jackie?” (2)

The rest of these are further explained by accessing the gallery with a click on any one. Two portray Jackie drying her hair. To save anyone asking, it is all natural. Paul’s Scarlet is the red climbing rose.

susurrus has also been providing useful help on the particular theme I have managed to activate. Between these two blogging friends I hope to recover displaying my About page. I continued the struggle this afternoon.

Eventually I contacted WordPress Support. Their response was immediate and a chat was opened. I was pursuing this when I received a call from our heating engineer to say he was on his way. Consequently I had to close the chat intending to pick it up again tomorrow.

I haven’t mentioned it before, but we ran out of fuel oil last week, so we haven’t had any heating for a week. Oil was delivered yesterday but the boiler refused to reset, so Ronan from Tom Sutton Heating visited to do it for us.

Life was so much simpler in the 1940s – apart from bombs and stuff.

Before dinner we sat for a while on the Westbrook Arbour bench watching

the sprinkler spray clematis Dr Ruppel, and

light leave Florence sculpture.

Our meal consisted chicken biriani created from fried chicken breasts added to leftover chicken and rice from last night; mine enhanced by the hotter jalfrezi sauce. Jackie drank Hoegaarden and I drank more of the Shiraz.

91 comments

  1. I am glad you got a fuel oil delivery, and got your boiler fired back up! You can still use the Legacy editor, or default editor which is what I will continue to do after WP releases that awful block thing. Your header image is 4 megabytes, really large!

  2. Thank you for the tips on the new editor.
    I’m sorry you’ve been out of oil, but I’m glad you’re all sorted out now.

    Best line: “Life was so much simpler in the 1940s – apart from bombs and stuff.” That made me laugh!

  3. Well now Jackie your head of hair is delightful – mine never took a pause in going from dark brunette to completely white in the space of a few years beginning in my mid twenties! After that it was anything but natural until relatively recently. But it’s a good excuse for my absent mindedness – I blame it on all the chemicals I poured over my scalp for all those years 😀 Thanks for the biggifying tips. I’d forgotten about having to do that (see what I mean) scrolling down to find the instruction.

    Derrick, Jackie is lurking about in the shadows…… and so well done with the title connection of this post 🙂

    1. Thank you so much, Pauline. My hair followed your pattern. I was once asked if I had highlights put in it, and a cry of “get the old bloke” was heard in the scrum.

  4. I’m most grateful for that link to the explanatory pages that Sue provided. I actually found a couple of WordPress videos that were helpful with bits and pieces, too. I found that certain things dear to my heart — like the ability to choose the color for my text — still are available, if a little hard to find. Still, like many people, I have need of only a few functions. Once I have those sorted, all will be well. I’ll learn how to use the block editor, and then go back to the classic until 2022!

  5. HA! “Life was so much simpler in the 1940s – apart from bombs and stuff.” Very funny! Thanks for the laughs, Derrick! 😀

    WordPress and all of it’s changes are NOT da’ bomb* (*as in excellent, the best), but it makes my head go ka-boom sometimes! 😮 🙁

    I hope all the WP Woes are cleared up soon!
    Sue’s posting on all the WP changes is very helpful! I’m so thankful to her for helping us all! 🙂

    I found Jackie! 🙂
    Jackie, your hair is so beautiful!!! 🙂
    Mine is about as long now, and the grey hairs are creeping into mine like a creeping vine. 😮 🙂 I’m letting them in…no coloring for me. I earned everyone of them! 😉
    (((HUGS))) 🙂

  6. “Life was so much simpler in the 1940s – apart from bombs and stuff.” …and being so cold that ice formed on the inside of your windows and having to eat margarine and whale meat….and being knocked about by teachers as well as other boys at school. Those were the days.

  7. I’m stumbling through the new WP block system this morning Derrick (Sue’s article has been a great help)…. I’m afraid has made for a very slow start to my day….like ‘sunshine and rain’ gradually I’ll get used to it…. .. Your Florence sculpture looks lovely in the sunshine

  8. I’m glad I’m not the only one who laughed out loud when I saw how you worked in the title. “apart from bombs and stuff.” Thank you! I really needed a laugh today. I love Jackie in the garden with long hair. The purple clematis is breathtakingly beautiful. Hope you didn’t get too cold with the oil out. Glad it’s fixed.

  9. I loved the epigrammatic remonstrance about life being simpler in 1940s. I could say the same about the later half of the 1970s in India, till the time Soviet Republics tumbled like a pack of cards. Nothing particular about the USSR, but that does remind me of the Second-Hand Time by Svetlana Alexievich. No, I am not inviting you to read that book, it makes for a difficult exercise. Back to our common pet peeve, WordPress will never tire of testing us.

  10. Are they forcing us to the new editor now? I have changed over but it drives me nuts because I installed proofreading program and it won’t work with the new editor. How annoying! I liked being able to switch back and forth to correct my stupid errors.

    I love that line about the 40s….except the bombs. Ha. True, I imagine.

    1. Thanks very much. The default will be the new one from 1st June but we will have the option to revert. It is driving a lot of us nuts. Glad you liked the line.

  11. Jackie has lovely long hair! These are beautiful photos of her working in and enjoying the gardens.

    Glad to hear learning the new editor is coming along. 🙂

  12. Firstly, thank you so much for your mention and positive comments about the Guide to the Blocks.

    Your bird’s eye view of the garden is just stunning, beautiful photographs!

    We have run out of oil so many times and each time the boiler has dragged through sludge that needed cleaning out.

    Oil-fired heating was new to my son-in-law when they moved in with me, and after they forgot to re-order the oil he ended up watching the heating engineer so he’d know what to do next time. Next time has happened a lot!

    All the best with the chat with WordPress today – such bad timing!

    1. I now have a problem with e-mails – at BT’s end. I don’t think I can face pursuing WP issues again today – so I’ll probably carry on without solving the theme thingy until later. Thank you very much, Sue

      1. Oh, no! It’s one thing after another right now. Deep breath and make a cup of tea! Soon it’ll be wine time ??

  13. I’ve not been able to trace it but I bet there’s a story about Dr Ruppel somewhere. I bet he’s the discover and namer of Ruppel’s Warbler which lives in Greece and Turkey and the African Ruppel’s vulture which has begun to nest in Spain recently with the effects of climate change.

  14. Oddly i had a conversation with my MIL yesterday along the lines of ‘life was better in the 1940s’ when she was growing up on a farm in rural norfolk. I wasn’t really winning my argument that that was errant poppycock until we broached the subject of toilet paper. I think that gave me a sneaky away goal to take into the second leg.

  15. I remain nervous of the new editor. WordPress upgrades are notoriously full of bugs. I will stick with classic if it remains available.
    Do you need has to f right now?

      1. I remember. What I thought that I said was ‘Do you need heating oil right now?’
        Keyed in now via my PC.
        I kept getting a rejection statement this morning via the PC – ‘comment not allowed’
        Every time I log on the site tells me that ‘The new editor is coming’ – it is like some kind of threat!

  16. I checked out Sue’s blog and the instructions on Don’t Panic. I’m beginning to wonder if it’s all worth trying to learn it.

    1. I’m with you, GP. So far I’d say perhaps not. My main reason for wanting to persevere is that the galleries make it so much quicker to load pictures.

  17. I am not sure about the new ‘new’ wordpress either. It’s a pain in the tuchus. As for my smart phone, its not smarter than me -I found the power off button.

  18. Wonderful, pensive pictures of Jackie in the garden. She looks like the Spirit of the Garden that she is. Good luck with WordPress. Sounds like things are going a little better.

  19. Hi Derrick – the garden looks beautiful 🙂 I workaround having to use Blocks as much as possible as it messes with my paragraphs. I think blocks must be aimed at people doing cool things with their photos.

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