Tuesday 23^rd April, 2019 1030

Yesterday was Marlow Monday and I kept it relatively simple, or so I thought! The simple part was a chilli & rice with a garlic baguette. What was supposed to be equally simple was my first attempt at making American chocolate brownies.

The recipe looked to be falling off a log personified and so it proved to be. However the recipes never tell you it takes hours to clean the goo off the mixer and bowls! I even managed to get the perfect combination of slightly crusty top and moist sub-layer. Served with my guests' preferred choice of chocolate ice cream, the remaining slabs at the end of the meal were snaffled and placed in containers or foil and spirited away with them when they left. With a pound of sugar in the mix perhaps it was for the best they only left me one piece!

Unfortunately, during the meal, Alice gave me the terrific news that my wine-soaked laptop had now had the motherboard replaced but to no avail. The only remedy would now be to replace everything bar the actual casing and that, as you may well imagine, would cost more than buying a new one.

I have asked her to enquire, more in hope than expectation, if they can by any means recover the information from the hard disk but I fear the worst. I do have a dated back-up on an external hard drive, dated because of the worry that restoration from it would disable Windows on any new set, seeing as the old one screwed up on a system reset.

It is just a royal pain to lose some of the stuff, although I have most of my film library stored on USB sticks that I take to class. With the expense of buying a new laptop and my impending relocation, my summer plans are in tatters. Singapore will have to wait a year. I still hope to squeeze in a few days in Shanghai if I can though.

After dinner, despite swearing that I would never do it again, and because it was a nice warm evening, I went to English corner for an hour. Eli and Annie still refuse to sing but the former is very talented on the bagpipes and choked a few tunes out of the bladder, much to the delight of the students. I obliged by getting the assembled gathering organised and singing the chorus of “Botany Bay” and was highly rewarded when it actually went well.

I didn't stay until the end and as anticipated, my walk back home was a trial. When I am certain my innards have fully healed (according to my research that should be in fifteen days time – that will conclude four weeks medication) I may look at restarting the NSAIDs with perhaps ongoing reduced dosages of PPIs but at 103¥ per seven-day supply they alone will cost around double the price of all my other drugs combined!

The joys of advancing years!

As I heard someone say once, no point in bemoaning getting old, you can't do anything about it!