Patagonia continued. Fortunately we managed to postpone the trip to Patagonia until the end of September 2007. We were both fit after a couple of months walking in France and Andorra, nor recurrance of sciatica and it was about two weeks before we were due to leave for SA that Suzy developed a nasty cough. I seemed to have avoided it until a couple of days before the trip when I started to feel distinctly off-colour. She accused me of developing an allergy to holidays with her, in reply I lay on the sofa groaning but we went anyway. I can't say I enjoyed the first 15 hour leg of the journey to Santiago. The cough became chesty and I continued to feel off-colour for much of holiday. On return, the GP confirmed bronchitis. It's like the old granny used to say, 'never sleep with a diseased woman'. She was right. I've told her, I'm not going on any more holidays, they attract injury and disease, interfere with my climbing and in any case I'm definitely off airports. That hasn't gone down too well for some reason.
Saturday 17th November 2007. Nick's party and a good turn out of Grumpies and Grumpies wives and partners. Lots of excellent food, loads of booze and good company. Suzy and I managed to squeeze the campervan into a space behind Nick's house - very handy as we could stagger out of his back door, risk the garden and crash out within minutes. Notable exceptions were Mike and Marjory Mortimer and Dick and Mrs Turnbull. Rumour was rife that the restaurant rift between him and Nick had not quite healed. But no, he was unwell. Click on any image to enter the picture gallery. Picture 01 L-R Nick, Geoff, ?, Graham, Fenoula, Gordon.
Hah! Back on line, don't mention the 'd' word. D stands for that wizzy thing in one's computer except that mine stopped wizzing. I'll expand later.
Later. Yes, well while doing nothing more than staring at the screen waiting for the computer to read some files when suddenly, the screen froze and on trying to reboot was met with a totally blank screen - no cryptic message, no curser, nothing. A safe reboot also failed in a similar way. Panic began to creep in and I managed to find a Windows rescue disk, which gave the comforting message 'No Disk'. Fiddling with disk connections and CMOS settings produced no results and all the signs pointed towards a disk crash of some sort. Fortunately I'd backed up most things a couple of days earlier so not too much was lost.
So now I have a new computer running on Vista, well OK, I'll get used to that but it has meant installing lots of software, downloading Vista drivers and replacing some software that would not run under Vista. Grrr! However, the good side is that the laptop. which also runs under Vista now communicates with the PC and shares printers on the network, I suppose that I should be thankful for small mercies.
So what wouldn't work under Vista? Well, my copy of Dreamweaver (web editor) was quite adamant that it wasn't even going to try. It was a 2004 edition with upgrades so I wasn't all that surprised. It's only money (sob). The scanner driver, digital cameras software, monitor software, spyder monitor calibrator and the printer drivers all needed renewing by download, and the HP printer software is still producing unexpected colour casts despite dedicated Vista software downloads and comforting emails from HP. Grrr!
Grumpies Christmas Dinner Dec.13th 2007
The ladies in the Cafe Euro put on an excellent do for us, so thanks to them and thanks to Gordon who organised the whole thing. A late start was made at the Edge climbing wall, well late for some of us that is - 11am and we climbed (or what passes for it) until about 2.15pm whence grumpies started to drift into the cafe which is conveniently sited next door for aparatifs. There was a good turn out, probably the only ones missing were those unfortunate souls that are still working. Here's a couple of pictures, there are more in the gallery.
Picture 02 shows Gordon presenting Mike Mortimer with 64th birthday cake. Geraldine Taylor wandered in to see us later on but as no one offered her a glass of wine she wandered out again after giving the news that she may be joining us during the week as she is currently signed off work due to stress. Gerry is not feeling well.
25th December2007, Squirrel proof feeder part 1.
So, this is Christmas and what has Santa brought me? Well, brace yourselves mes braves a squirrel proof bird feeder and a bag of chocolate gingers. Well OK, I have to admit that Santa (Suzy) has also chipped in towards the new computer. The squirrel proof feeder, well unlike the birds, the squirrels are very interested in it and seem to be getting at the nuts. I think that this may be a grump. A couple of weeks ago Suzy won a seed bell bird feeder at a local wildlife group do. Not only did the squirrels monopolise it, they eventually ripped it off it's mountings, ran off with it and buried it somewhere. Suzy became almost apoplectic, rushing up and down the kitchen, frothing and shouting 'look at the little b******s, they've ripped my bell off' or something to that effect. I anticipate some slightly dodgy leaves appearing in the garden next year, with a bit of luck.
30th December 2007. Squirrel proof feeder part 2.
AAAARGH! They've chewed the bottom out of my feeder and all the seeds have dropped out onto the lawn! This is all that's left of the little perchy thing at the bottom where the Blue Tits are supposed to settle. Picture 03, Sue looking very grumpy, possible honourable member?