Right, so, a week after installing Service Pack 1 on my one month old Windows 7, Dell Inspiron laptop, after restarting and hibernating/waking up successfully several times, on Saturday evening it decided to die. It wanted to enter Windows Error…

It’s tiresome driving anywhere in the UK these days. Planning a journey can be a combination of trying to avoid interminable queued traffic, bone-jarring potholes and suspension-stressing speed humps. Whilst satellite navigation systems can be set to “avoid motorways” and…

I confess I am writing this largely to try out my new Linux (Ubuntu flavour) blogging client, Blogilo. Weird name. It supposedly means “blog tool” in Esperanto. Terrific! Not so terrific was the fact that, after downloading for ages and…

Carol is much better at scouring a magazine than am I. That, I suspect, is largely because she’s a faster reader than I. It’s also because I often can’t be arsed (a.k.a. bothered). Let’s face it, most magazines are filled…

My dear ol’ dad was in the building trade. Having served his apprenticeship as a carpenter, he became a roofer before the days of ready-made roof trusses. Here’s another one of my unforgettable revelations from childhood: my relatively newly qualified…

In the days of yore, we didn’t have to make choices when it came to parcel deliveries. We had a state monopoly in the form of the GPO (General Post Office), latterly the Royal Mail. Whilst the Royal Mail may…

If joining any chapter of the worldwide cancer club can be said to be lucky, then I consider myself very lucky indeed. First of all, I was fortunate enough to have early symptoms of a malfunctioning prostate and aware enough…