BT – Page 5 – derrickjknight

If At First You Don’t Succeed

Yesterday’s rain was magnified today. Looking out of our windows I thought the limited visibility was mist. It was the deluge. All vehicles on the A31 had headlights glowing, falling raindrops adding hazy coronas. Undeterred, I walked the loop taking in the two underpasses.

Pebbles on a beach revealed by a receding tide gain, until dried out, an enhanced depth of colour. So it is with leaked petrol, as seen yesterday, and with leaves, lichen, and moss, not that these latter fruits of the forest have much chance of drying out at the moment. Gravel in the beds of streams glistened invitingly.

Roads and footpaths were again flowing with water. The uphill stretch of the A31 was a torrent. Ducking to avoid dripping branches as I walked along its verges, simply meant that spray thrown up by lorry tyres hit my face a bit sooner. The extra gusts of wind these vehicles created as they rushed past seemed more unsettling than usual. My choice of route was beginning to seem a less than good idea. However, to borrow from Magnus Magnusson’s ‘Mastermind’ catchphrase, I’d started so I would finish.

Once safely on the soggy heath I made my way to the Stoney Cross underpass. One of the pony trails led to a fresh waterhole being rapidly and plentifully replenished.

In 1978, Denis Healey, Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer, famously said of his friend and opposite number in the Conservative Shadow Cabinet that ‘part of his speech was like being savaged by a dead sheep’. Geoffrey Howe was not dead, but he was certainly Wet in political parlance. Seeing a wet sheep this morning attempting to gain some shelter, I thought of these two amicable rivals.

After lunch I attempted to start a new life with my new iMac. The first step was to sort out a password problem with our Broadband. We managed to get our Windows laptops connected to our Home Hub when we first arrived here, but now are often automatically connected to Wi Fi, requiring us to disconnect from that before connecting to the Hub. Recently the password has been rejected. This did my head in because we had written it down. Maybe we were looking in the wrong place. So I rang BT and had the man take me through resetting the password, choosing the very same one as the old one for the replacement. It worked. When pressed, the adviser admitted that there had been an internal problem with BT Yahoo. That annoyed me even more.

I then tried to get on the Internet with the new Apple machine, and kept being told I was inserting the wrong password. So I rang the emergency support line which comes free for 90 days. The technician confirmed that the password required was the BT one and not something specific to iMacs. I put it in again. Three times. It was rejected. Three times. I couldn’t bear to go through the BT phone system again, and settled, for the time being, for the insecure Wi Fi route. So I moved on to the second problem I had discovered. The scroll bar for moving up and down the text of this post disappeared as soon as I looked at it. This was a comparatively simple adjustment, so I was able to edit this document on my new toy. But why does the M on the keyboard look exactly like an upside down W? After a thoroughly frustrating afternoon, my head was already spinning enough. I’d rather face any amount of dead sheep and savage terriers than go through that again. But I guess I’ll have to do so tomorrow. Robert the Bruce learned from a spider that one must try, try, and try again.

My final effort today was to stick My Passport into the back of the computer and try to look at all the pictures I had transferred yesterday. This needed all my willpower. But, surprise, surprise, it was achieved in seconds. Elizabeth’s set of ‘Derrick through the ages’, does not appear chronologically, but I have decided to leave it that way. Today’s offering is from 1958. This was taken by Mick Copleston during one of our billiard sessions in his front room at the top end of Amity Grove. Since he always won, I can’t think what I was looking so relaxed about. Maybe I was just trying to look dreamy.

Speaking of relaxation, it is quite amazing how getting one process to work reduces the tightness around one’s head and lengthens the temper.

Feeling more optimistic, I decided to go for broke and transfer 1263 pictures direct from my camera Scandisc into iPhoto. No problem. As if this weren’t enough enough to lift the spirits we were able to watch a full-screen slideshow accompanied by gentle modern jazz music on a loop. Magic.

Tomorrow is the grand rugbyfest day, which will be fully explained then, and for which Jackie has been preparing food since this morning. It therefore seemed only right that I take her out for a meal this evening. Her choice was Imperial China in Lyndhurst. We enjoyed a marvellous and plentiful set meal, accompanied by T’sing Tao beer in her case and a Georges du Beouf red wine in mine.

Harry The Grape

There is nothing more certain to do my head in than to try something either new or that I haven’t done for more than a week on the computer. You will therefore be able to understand why I have been putting off moving my Apple computer to Minstead from the Firs. Well, to be more accurate, setting it up at Minstead. Elizabeth persuaded me to remove the Mac some time ago, but I have deferred the satisfaction of actually getting it to work. I had to feel very strong to tackle that. So I spent the morning at it. Getting it plugged in was straightforward enough. Turning it on worked out all right. Then came the wireless mouse and keyboard. No idea. The box on screen said they weren’t discoverable. Perhaps the batteries needed changing. They did. That did the trick. Now for the internet. Couldn’t get on. We have a home hub, but can’t remember the password or how to set it up. Ah, but I can remember Elizabeth’s. Tried that. That got me access to a BT hotspot. Which will have to do for the moment.

The reason I bought the Apple in the first place was for photography. I also bought a professional negative film and slide scanner, and printer capable of producing A3+ size photographs. The ever practical Jackie has rigged up a wheeled platform housing these that can be brought from the bedroom wardrobe cupboard to the computer in the living room when I want to use them. For everyday printing I have a smaller printer/scanner that works well enough with the Windows laptop. But it wouldn’t work with the Apple. Of course not. The software disc must be loaded in. Where was it? After about half an hour I found it where it should have been and where it actually was in the first place and I didn’t find it when I looked. It was quite a long process to upload this, but I managed it. Then I printed a sample picture which had lines all over it. That meant the nozzle had to be cleaned. Simple enough on the laptop, but it took me ages to manage it on the Apple.

One last task would suffice for today. Downloading the digital photographs from my camera to Windows Vista laptop works like a dream. But could I do it on the Apple? No. That computer, bought in 2007 is too old, for goodness sake.

It was almost a relief, after lunch, to walk to Lyndhurst, ahead of Jackie to meet her there, via Emery Down, where The New Forest Inn was making good use of at least one chimney.

On the way through Minstead I stopped and chatted with a couple on a walking holiday. Thinking I recognised their accent I asked where they were from. It was Spalding in Lincolnshire, which is not all that far from Newark.

On the road down to the ford a male pheasant scurried across my path. ‘Why did the chicken cross the road?’ is a hoary old question to which there are numerous humorous answers. I don’t know why my bird crossed the road in the first place, but I think he turned and recrossed it because he had seen me get my camera out, and, proud of his plumage, wished to prance about and pose for me.

Molehills abounded in the fields and on the verges. I have never seen a live mole, but I am sure I would know one from E.H.Shepard’s marvellous illustrations to Kenneth Grahame’s children’s classic ‘The Wind In The Willows’, which was one of my favourites. So inspired was I by Mr. Toad and his friends that, in my teens in the mid-’50s, I began to make a comic book called ‘Toad in the Wild West’. That original masterpiece is long gone. But here is a rough sketch of the eponymous hero.

Perched on the hilltop as you approach Lyndhurst from Emery Down is the rather splendid Victorian church of Saint Michael and All Angels.

In its graveyard lie the ashes of Alice Hargreaves, nee Liddell, the inspiration for the reverend Charles Dodgson, otherwise known as Lewis Carroll. His ‘Alice’ books are also timeless classics.

A steep set of stone steps winding down to the town carpark is made from old gravestones, almost all the inscriptions of which are completely obliterated. One would hope that these erasures were the effect of centuries of wind and rain, rather than of recent footsteps.

Jackie’s complete lamb jalfrezi meal was reprised for our dinner. I finished the Carta Roja while she drank Orange Hefeweizen beer from Kitchen Garden Brewery in Sheffield Park, Uckfield. This is a Sussex outlet which seems to have some provenance for Jackie. Some years ago Jackie picked grapes for the friend of a friend who ran the Sheffield Park Vineyard and Nursery. He was Harry the Grape. Harry Godwin would be beyond retirement age by now. So has he or his son branched out? Or are there now two different enterprises? Answers in a comment please.

Episode 2 of ‘Call the Midwife’ followed our meal.