Friday 13th October, 2017                         1940

It was only when typing the above I realised the significance of the date. And rather apposite it is this time too! More later.

Yesterday Annie was coming for her dinner. It was to be nothing special, just mince’n’totties but then Pat said she would come to clean at 1700. Ok I thought, the mince is limited (need to travel to buy that) so I will buy more vegetables to bulk it out. Later Pat said Ariel wanted to help clean too. The reality of it is that she doesn’t trust me enough yet to be alone in my home with me. That’s fine and eminently sensible, no problem with it but unless we were going to eat a vegetarian mince and potatoes with a teaspoon of meat apiece I needed to alter the menu a bit sharpish!

I rushed out for some chicken breasts and opted for curry and rice. I also decided to try my hand at making chapattis again - the last time was when I was at sea on curry nights when after my watch I would take a six-pack to the galley to share with the cook and produce “chapattis to order”! I’d forgotten how ridiculously easy they are, in fact getting the pan the right temperature and the dough off your fingernails are the hardest parts. Not bad fodder and afterwards we went to English corner.

Nobody stayed too long, it was held outside and the nights are decidedly chilly now.

A full day of classes on East Campus today with a computer still producing intermittent sound, meaning decamping for period two each time to the training room where it works and then home to find an email from my VPN provider. Large scale disruptions occurring from the Firewall Police, update to the latest version.

I tried to but received a message saying my computer OS was outdated and couldn’t receive the latest cunning program.

And then I lost all internet again completely.

It took an hour of restoring, rebooting, unplugging, plugging, cursing and generally fuming before I not only got basic internet back but “proper” uncensored internet as well. I am having to bite the bullet.

Tomorrow Lanzhou Alice is coming with me to buy a new laptop and an external hard drive. She is speaking to her friends to ask where best to buy a Compaq (this one has lasted 12 years I think so why change?) and I hope she will be able to ensure it is given to me set up in English instead of Chinese and also with instructions printed in my language. I also hope she can negotiate a decent discount.

I have no choice if I want to stay connected - Friday 13th culminated in yet another complete webfail combined with the prospect of not being able to access any meaningful sites unless I can update.

Now I can look forward to blundering about trying to transfer all the data from this old crate to the new one and hopefully setting that one up correctly. Geek I definitely am not.

BUT, I shall buy a much slimmer and lighter one that I can also buy a keyboard protector for (they don’t make them big enough for this one) which will keep my cigar ash out of the gubbins.

AND. The g, h, @ and other temperamental buttons will work! I am that used to having to check every letter now that I also do it when sending a text on my phone! Speaking of the phone, a new one of those can wait a month, it only needs charging every fortnight so I shall live with removing the battery to zap it for now, I just need to time it to leave overnight when I don’t need an alarm in the morning.