Another Day in the Life......

Life changing moments come out of the blue.  You walk innocently under a bus, war breaks out when on holiday, your team loses to Hibernian, a disaster of such depth is never expected.  When I worked in the Infirmary the most common comment each day was !I never expected to be here today," but they were!  The other day I rose early and headed into the day.  I scanned the papers online and considered shopping for breakfast at 'Tesco's' more interesting.  When I returned I switched on the PC and sat mesmerised as smoke drifted slowly from the back of the brute and curled its way towards the dirty spot on the ceiling.  My brain numbed in the way politicians brains numb when asked to be honest and I cogitated ruefully on the disaster beside me.   When the smoke cleared, the burning smell abated, an aroma not dissimilar to my last stew I must say, I considered my options.  This I did in a mature manner. I curled up into a ball on the floor and let out a Munch like scream for an hour or so.  


The days following passed like a ten year jail sentence in solitary.  I did steal obtain a laptop, which it turned out required a 'wireless connection' which I don;t have.  That took days to arrive, locking me into an 18 month contract via an hour long call to Mumbai.  Using 'Windows7' it failed to link up with my e-mail, it does not connect with the printer, is desperately slow, distorts every time a car passes, took hours to install 'Windows Live' as an e-mail client which would not work, told me to verify, then told me nothing could be sent for several nonsensical reasons, the buttons are fiddly and this keyboard has keys in the wrong place for my fingers, hurts my eyes, and I have to re-install almost all my links, not counting the things I lost. 


The emptiness without contact with the real world!  Things were so bad at one time I went outside and spoke to people!  The radio, limited to the old set in the corner, gave me what it wanted, not what I wished to hear.  With no TV I could not see the meaningless empty guff that I would not watch anyway, but I could not use the BBC iPlayer where I can find things to watch, like football!  Life was almost dead, I felt bereft.  There was no help around, the only expert I knew left a while back to start a new life in the Orkneys!  However I have managed to get back online, send an e-mail telling folks to use the 'Google Mail' address, and discovered the 'Windows Live' sent out all the e-mail it told me it did not send out!  During the operation to set that piece of junk up I managed to use words I last used at Firhill Park, Glasgow in 1969!  On that occasion Partick Thistle beat us by five goals to nil, but they had the ball in our net TEN TIMES!  I did not realise those words still existed.  Of course 'Windows7' not connecting with my e-mail meant searching through the ISP to find it.  They, naturally, went down!  It took until today to find my mail and I had to sift through pages of stuff, and using a very poor system in comparison to 'Outlook Express' I must say.


The problem was I had no spare pc as backup.  The problem was I use the internet for everything now.  Research, blogs, e-mails, keeping in touch, reading intelligent folks like you, searching for work, sending out CV's to people to delete, listening to the radio, watching football, so many things go through the web that when it died I was at a loss.  It was as if I had gone deaf, blind and been locked in a desert island, a cold one at that!   Still I have some sort of connection now, and I can use this laptop from my bed rather than be trapped here all day, says he trapped here today.  


It shows I spend too much time on here, I managed to read vast pages of books during this time, in between curling up into a ball and bawling loudly enough for the neighbours to call the police twice.  That reminds me, I must thank that doctor who allowed me a double dose of Valium when he thought I was about to jump of that ledge.  The web is a place in which to live life.  Everything is here, good and bad, that an individual wishes for.  The only thing missing is the way to make money to cover the expenses incurred amid curses and tears over the last few days.  That is a problem I must now face.  The situation also reveals the weakness in our stuffed,self satisfied society, cut the electricity and we die!  Well, at least I almost did!

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