Serves me right

Well, the snow came so that was good.  At least now we feel part of the general breakdown of the system ... obviously the ploughs and gritters haven't been through the village and yesterday the weekly rubbish collection which we all religiously put out was still there at the end of the day and there was no hate mail post either.

Having stamped round in the snow a bit, checked that the birds had food and other various snowy jobs, by the afternoon the excitement had worn off, so I decided to tackle my Mac.  Mid August as we were in the process of moving and when I needed access to important emails, my .mac account just disappeared.  One minute it was there and the next - gone.  I twiddled around a bit, but with about a week to go before moving out I didn't have the time to waste trying to sort out the problem, so moved everything to my gmail account and just hoped that all the important paperwork I needed ended up there.

Yesterday in a moment of rare stupidity genius, I thought that if I put in the install disc and reinstalled the system, saving all the other stuff, I would eventually find my .mac account again.  Press all the right buttons, the Mac whirs away and bingo ... nothing.  Everything had gone.  Totally everything.  The Mac has been completely lobotomised.  Oh yes, I have my mac email page back but all mails are through gmail but four years of work have disappeared totally, utterly and completely.  And more importantly, four years of photos.  Gutted.  I am just hoping that somewhere inside my machine they are tucked away and that some brilliant person will be able to find them for me.  The police seize computers and manage to extract information from them, so I am sure someone, somewhere will be able to rescue my 3500 photos ... at what price?  But that will have to wait until 2011.  Apart from that, there is a load of design/artwork that took me hours that has also disappeared in a puff of smoke, and tons of other stuff which I can't remember but will when I need it.

And after all that messing around, any mail sent on my .mac address just gets thrown back in my face - I don't exist, address not recognised, error 20009987333, whatever ... so until the snow melts perhaps I will go to the geeky Apple site and see if there is help to be had.

Stupidly courageously got the car out last night to drive to the pub as I had run out of cigarettes it's the only place where you get a mobile 'phone signal and catch up on the days excitement - who had/hadn't been to work, who had crashed their car, whose heating had broken down, usual sort of stuff.  Funny how 4WD cars are regarded kindly when the weather is rough!  Although down here at least half of the cars are 4WD, so no-one is rude about mine!  I was slightly nervous as the roads through the village are in fact lanes with passing places and stone walls on either side seem to be de rigeur - not ideal on snowy, compacted driving surfaces.  However the motor behaved well and we got there and back without transforming it into a Mini.  GW has to go to town today as he has run out of heart pills (quite an important thing to have around when you need them) so we will see if we get there and back without transforming the car!

Where is it?

I love snow.  You don't live high in the Swiss Alps as we did if you are allergic to the stuff.  Okay, Dorset is not reknowned for metres of snow but it seems the whole country apart from us is covered in it.  We had a dusting last week which is still here thanks to zero temperatures and that bitter northerly wind, but now I want to see evidence of why we are freezing.  I am lucky in that I don't have to venture out the house to go to work and find that there are cars skidding everywhere or that the trains have been cancelled, so I can enjoy the snow.  I still have all my Swiss gear but have yet to lay my hands on a decent pair of gloves or one of my silly hats so perhaps it is time to dig deeper into the removal boxes ...

I'm not quite sure how we would get out of the village if we did have snow - I don't think snowploughs or gritters will be seen here.  The lane into the village is extremely steep so no-one would get up or down that without reshaping their car - there is the lane that leads south from the village which is fairly flat so I suppose everyone uses that.  How we get out of the drive is possibly another concern - it is very steep with stone walls on either side and at the best of times I have a foot either side of the car - if the motor goes into a slide ...

The birds are looking rather hungry, so I am out making sure they have enough food - when I put it out there seems to be no-one around but within two minutes all my locals are there gobbling up food as fast as they can.

So I will spend the rest of the day scrutinising the clouds, checking on the temperature and watching the weather forecast - perhaps I ought to go and do some shopping before we get snowed in!  And of course buy some cat litter - not that we have a cat, but to keep in the car as it is great if you have tyres that are whizzing round and going nowhere.

 Just a photo of Angus when we lived in Switzerland - like most dogs he loves snow.  Throw him a stick and he just looks at you - throw him a snowball and he becomes demented!

NYE Music

Down the pub the other night ... for New Year's Eve everyone has to choose three songs that they want to hear during the evening - these will be put on a CD and sold with the profits going to charity.  Everyone managed to write down their songs in a twinkling of an eye - not me!  My favourites?  Popular? Susan Boyle?  (no that is a joke).  Not classic that's for sure, probably not jazz either, rather a few wrote down their football team's song ...

Suggestions on a postcard please.


It was a glorious albeit freezing day down here and whilst out shopping this afternoon I saw lorries full of salt - nothing going on the roads though.  Perhaps they were off to Bodmin Moor.  I have just found my electric blanket so it in on the bed, plugged in and it will be warmer than sitting here!  Bonne nuit!