We’ve dragged ourselves kicking and screaming into the 21st century and finally bought a Garmin satnav for the car. That makes it official: everyone in the UK now has a satnav – we must have been the last hold-outs. Actually, I think the reason we bought it was that we got fed up explaining to disbelieving people that we didn’t actually have one when they clearly thought one essential. You can take only so many quizzically raised eyebrows in response to saying, “actually, we don’t have a satnav”, subtext: “we still use our brains and a map.” The nice folks at Amazon dispatched our chosen Garmin 1340T early this week. After about three days, because I’m a cheapskate and always go for free delivery when possible, the pedestrian (in more senses than one) folks at the Post Office dropped it off at our door.

On a slow, wet Friday, having been left to my own devices and for want of something better to do, I decided to go out and take it for a spin. It wasn’t exactly Mazda MX5 friendly – the v. chunky power cable plugs into the cigar lighter which is v. close to the v. short gear stick – but once I’d relearned how to change gear, all was well. Hopefully the novelty soon wears off and I’ll start watching the road signs closely again. Relying upon Garmin’s speed advisories would be a v. bad idea. On the way back into town it was adamant that I was in a 60mph limit which is actually 30mph. +30mph is a loss-of-license offense for those not paying attention. Shortly afterwards I adopted my own route variation  – “recalculating!” – whereupon Miss Garmin tried to send me up a cul de sac. Cleverly avoiding the cul de sac using an old technology brain and local knowledge, I returned home in the hope that my included one free map update might cure a new technology glitch or two.

Some time ago our beloved Arcam Delta CD player decided to start getting a little senile. Well, it is very old. It still plays a CD perfectly well but that’s it – one CD. After that, the display goes into hieroglyphic mode and the unit is completely locked up; you can’t even eject the just played CD without turning the unit off and letting it cool down. Rather than another passé CD player, Carol fancied another 21st century solution [Aside: have you noticed how absolutely everything now is “a solution”] in the shape of a Brennan JB7. The JB7 music solution is a hard-drive MP3 player capable of holding much more than our entire CD collection. I’d describe it as a half-way house between a computer (which would be bitch ugly in the living room) and a piece of hi-fi kit. It wouldn’t look completely out of place beside my also v. old Arcam Delta amplifier. We ordered a 320Gb JB7 about 5 weeks ago and have since been waiting for Brennan’s production runs to catch up with the extraordinary increase in customer demand.

I know that last paragraph was a pretty sudden non-sequitur, dear readers, but here’s the point: Brennan had caught up with their production runs, built our unit and shipped it via the nice folks at City Link who, being much quicker off the mark than the pedestrian Post Office, had tried to deliver our new toy #2, Mr Brennan, while I was out playing with new toy #1, Miss Garmin. Typical!

We couldn’t wait for Monday for a re-delivery so we used new toy #1 to navigate our way over to City Link’s depot buried deep within MIlton Keynes to collect new toy #2. A while later I returned to MK, this time flying solo on brain and knowledge, to buy the necessary cables to connect new toy #2 to beloved old Arcam Delta.

We can play more than one CD again and they sound good! 🙂 Now we’ve just got to rip a meagre collection of about 400 CDs into Mr Brennan. 🙁

We’ve recently returned from a very enjoyable, albeit slightly wet on occasions, trip to the New Forest. Since getting a little distracted by our coastal path trips to the southwest, I’d forgotten just how delightful the New Forest is. Prior to our heading down, Carol found what turned out to be a very useful website, for Odonata enthusiasts anyway, called New Forest Dragonflies run by Doug Overton. As well as some of Doug’s terrific photos, his site includes a great Google Map of locations but there are lots of them. So, since our trip was partly (OK, mainly) to track down some late-season dragonflies and damselflies, I chanced my arm contacting Doug for some suggestions as to where we might best concentrate our efforts. He responded with three suggestions. What a friendly man!

While we were down investigating one of Doug’s dragonfly locations, another chap came wandering through the forest armed with a carrier bag of ceps (Boletus edulis) – highly prized and utterly delicious mushrooms. Clearly the man had good taste. Seeing what we were up to, he asked if we after dragonflies. Yes, though Carol had distracted herself with some of the other abundant fungi that the forest fills with at this time of year. In our new acquaintance’s other hand, the one not carrying ceps, was a very nice looking Canon EOS 7D upon which was mounted a Canon EF 100mm f/2.8L Macro IS Lens. The key letter in all that gobbledegook is the “L” – though not a grey lens, it did have the subtle red ring around the lens barrel and was one of Canon’s professional range lenses. Clearly the man had very good taste.

He’d been snapping away at fungi and, whilst chatting to us, showed Carol, our plants specialist, some of his shots. He proceeded to give us a quick introductory lesson to New Forest fungi. What friendly people the New Forest has. I continued dragonfly spotting while Carol went off to find more fungi to snap.

A couple of other key letters in all that lens’s gobbledegook are “IS” – Image Stabilized. Fungi live under the forest canopy which keeps out considerable amounts of light. Wider apertures and image stabilization would come in very handy. Carol already has a basic macro lens and she was being very good but I could see that she had a new love.

Fortunately, last Sunday was her birthday. It took a little while for our collective hearts to overrule our collective heads but the delivery man turned up this morning with a parcel from those nice people at Warehouse Express. Someone seems very pleased with her new toy.

Happy birthday … Christmas … birthday …

If I can get close enough to a dragonfly without scaring it off, maybe I could borrow it? 😉

Originally, mobile phones were about the size and weight of a house brick. Who can forget the memorable image of Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon tearing across a bridge with a brick-sized phone in one hand and its briefcase-sized battery pack in the other? Technology advanced, as it does, and a few years ago mobile phones became a sensible size – one that would fit a pocket and not be a drag to carry around.

As many will know, I am not a great user of a mobile phone. I think there are three main reasons:

1. I never had a company mobile phone when working so didn’t develop “the habit”;
2. not possessing a handbag, I could never be arsed to carry a heavy lump around in my pocket;
3. I don’t blather for hours about absolutely nothing on any phone.

Though not a fan, I couldn’t deny that a portable phone is occasionally useful though rarely critical. If I was going to have one, it had to be an unobtrusive one. I eventually bought a Nokia 2630 which was only 11mm thick and weighed a mere 65g. I could slip it in my trouser pocket – sometimes I even remembered to turn it on first – and hardly know it was there.

Therein lies the problem; my phone’s unobtrusiveness was also it’s shortcoming. Some while ago I forgot about my unimportant Nokia 2630 and left it in my trouser pocket. My trousers went the wash and got treated to a 40C wash cycle. The phone did not survive [Ed: what a surprise!] though, fortunately, the SIM card did. I bought a replacement Nokia 2630. At least now I had a spare charger. 🙂

On Saturday, having been washed after returning from a trip to the New Forest, I put on a cleanly laundered pair of trousers. Our neighbours announced the arrival of their very fresh and very first granddaughter. I thought I send Carol a message to let her know, having been knitting for the expected infant. Where’s my phone? Ah, in my trouser pocket. Whoops! Nokia 2630 mark 2 had also been laundered. Fortunately, once again the SIM survived. I couldn’t get another Nokia 2630 but I did get a Nokia 2330, slightly thicker and heavier at 14mm and 80g. Phones are getting bigger again. Why? And quite why a more modern phone should have a lower number than it’s outmoded predecessor is completely beyond me. It doesn’t matter, I’m just curious.

The phone is actually amusingly called the Nokia 2330 Classic. “Classic” seems to be marketing mumbo-jumbo for “basic”. It’s classic in that, being a phone, it makes phone calls and sends text messages. Most people, of course, are now buying larger devices that surf the Internet and have countless “apps”. Their pockets are filling up again.

It’s a good job I keep washing cheap phones. Though, maybe if I had a big expensive do everything job, it would make me remember that it was in my pocket.

I’ve got three chargers now.