Pillings Lock Marina 2010 #11

Pillings Lock Marina 2010 #11

Saturday 8th May and Wifey’s new flowers enjoyed a good watering overnight. While she was out with Marion on Thursday, she found some rather nicely coloured Cape daisies, or rather, Auntie’s daisies, because Auntie Bob had some in her garden in Wales. The pots of them that Sheila found are an orangey pink colour.

Yesterday, at a princely cost of £120, I retrieved the car from the repair shop and, since I supplied the parts, they only charged for labour and, since I paid in cash, I escaped the dreaded VAT. Lovely!

Once again though, when I delivered it to them in the morning, I had no problems, either in slow traffic, or at a comfortable speed. When they had replaced the sensor and other bits and took it for a road test, they had no trouble either, so I still have no idea if it has been cured of the idling problem.

Hopefully, if the car behaves itself, we’ll pop along to the local nursery and pick up enough plants and soil to fill the two flower boxes. I am still working on the flower painting of the side panels, but they are coming along nicely. Mind you, this is not a quick job and could take several weeks to complete.

Monday 10th May.

This morning began with a thick frost fog, so doggy didn’t go out very early, she had to wait for me to enjoy my cuppa first. On the way out any we came across seven adult Grey Lagged Geese, along with 16 goslings of various ages. From what I recall about these birds, they tend to stay together in mixed families, with the adults forming a kind of crèche where the young are kept a beady eye on.

I had hoped to list the book on eBay over the weekend, but the laptop is now so slow that I’ve now decided to contact Comet and have it taken in for repair. It seems I am dogged by problems because, despite having finished the book, I am still unable to put it up for sale.

I was studying the print-on-demand websites yesterday and, even though I know this is the way to go, I find the sites to be not quite as helpful as I expected. For example, on arriving at the Home Page, you are invited to sign up and immediately start compiling your book. This would be perfectly OK if advice was first given as to what format your book files should take. As a result, you only get past the first couple of pages and are obliged to save your work whilst you organise your files.

I next went to Kunaki, with a view to selling the book on CD – these people have a programme to download, with which you use all the necessary files to make a CD or DVD and, after doing the necessary, you are able to see exactly what the case and innards look like on completion. Unfortunately, in order to sell your wares through the company; which they will do for any quantity for just $1 each; you need your own website. Of course, with a website you also need to advertise it. On top of this comes postage and packing costs.

Amazon will also sell physical and electronic books, and you don’t need to have a website. They will also make the physical books, but they also take 80% in fees. Yeah, right! So, until this laptop is repaired and I can start listing on eBay, I won’t be making money with it any time soon.

On the plus side it seems the car is finally running properly, which means we can go shopping at Morrison’s today and take a run out to Melton Mowbray tomorrow morning, which is their market day.

The frosty fog has now lifted and it is now bright and sunny. Whoopee!

Incidentally, although it is very slow going, I am making good progress with the panels for the flower boxes. Once they are done I’ll take photographs of same and email out to you all. It appears that I do have some talent where canal-art is concerned. Even my neighbours have commented favourably. Sadly, because of the time involved – I’m not a fast worker in this – I could never make money at it. Even so, it’s a lot of fun working on the panels, so I’m sure I’ll do some for the doors and the side hatch sometime.

Tuesday 11th May and another frosty morning presented itself when I crawled out of my pit. I thought it was summer!

Yesterday I spoke to a nice man named George, who’s the first contact at Comet’s when a customer has trouble with a computer. He explained to me that, although Comet sell laptops, they do not hold the Warranties, these are held by the manufacturer. His suggestion was, as I expected, to take this offending article to my nearest Comet store and ask them to carry out a diagnostic test, over the phone, with Toshiba.

Alternatively I could telephone Toshiba myself and do the same thing. However, since I don’t know which type of Warranty I have – is it a Carry In and Pick Up, or is it Pick up and Return – the former means Comet, or myself, carry the cost of having it sent to Toshiba for repair, whilst the latter means Toshiba pays all expenses. Personally I prefer the first one and so I will be dropping it into Comet in Loughborough on Wednesday.

Of course this means yet another full back up, just in case they decide to carry out another recovery before they repair the thing. So, sometime later today, after our trip to Melton Mowbray, I will try to post this blog. Goodness knows how long it will be before I get to write and post another one.

Meanwhile I have the dubious task of installing Nero Backup, a programme that came with the latest external hard drive. I’m doing so because I don’t fully trust the one that comes with the laptop. On several previous occasions when I have done so, we have found some files have been corrupted, and they were Wifey’s Money files, which she was not too pleased about.

OK. Lest I forget, I’m going to post this now.

Do not expect another blog for a while, goodness knows how long Toshiba will be in repairing this thingy.

Cheers for now

Dave and Sheila and Doggy.