Scan Ship Sell Easy? (Nope)

We’ve all seen the adverts over the past few years, simply scan your item’s barcode, box it up and the courier chappy with a cheery smile will collect it and ping, money appears into your account. It’s a great way to sustainably handle your unwanted items, it’s easy to use and sounds all very shiny.

Yeah. Right. Now regular readers will know I am highly dubious of anything that describes itself as ‘easy’, ‘simple’, ‘quick’, ‘straightforward’ etc. with my impending move, knowing I will have to be ruthless with the cull, I thought using these options would make disposal of my books, cds and DVD’s reasonably pain free.

I should have trusted my gut 🤦‍♀️

I am already in an emotional turmoil, feeling overwhelmed with all that has to come together before this impending move. While BFF was here we went through my assorted clutter and I downloaded a few apps to use. It was a nightmare! The first hurdle is that the scanner works so quickly, without realising I’d scanned the same thing multiple times because you’re not sure whether the darned thing had scanned the bar code or not (some apps are better than others). Then there are the number of items it rejects because either it doesn’t recognise the barcode or it announces with sniffy attitudes “We are not interested in this item at present”. But by far the most utterly diabolically demoralising aspect of the process was the pittance they offered.

More than half of my collection of media was rejected. What it did accept they were offering prices between 4pence and £1. Out of 70+ items it graciously accepted I had amassed the grand total of less than £15! The potential for insult doesn’t end there, because when you box and send off your goods they then check and ‘adjust’ the offer (downwards) depending on condition. So utterly not worth all the efforts – it’s all going to the local charity shops.

My curiosity got the better of me and went deep diving about the internet. One of my pristine unwrapped DVD’s specials was being sold for £12 and I was offered just 27p……..that’s taking the ‘p’.

I hate all this.

 

Just Ignore Him – Alan Davies

It was with a degree of trepidation that I began this read, a curious reason to choose to read the book at all you may think. You see, I had read many glowing reviews and critics praise, so often I find them so over hyped and the opposite to my own conclusions, and also because I enjoy Alan’s skills and abilities as a comedian, panellist and actor across many years and I was intrigued and eager to hear about his history.

Thanks to his “As Yet Untitled” series on Dave and of course QI I had gleaned a few snippets of info, I know Australia featured strongly, that his Mum had died when he was very young, that he had a turbulent relationship with school and so forth, but not the core happenings, the fundamentals that form our foundations. His journey that took him from a child to adulthood, from innocent exploration to working family man.

This memoir is not a chronological diary of life, picking out those highlights or significant events that either helped or hindered his progress through life, interspersed with whimsical anecdotes. This is an honest, touching account from a survivor of life as a sexually abused child. It is phenomenally well written, at no time is Alan portrayed as the hapless, silent victim, but the confused child, struggling to comprehend weighty issues, in an environment of isolation, by which I mean alone within his own family as well as in a crowd.

Reading and understanding how his fathers behaviour towards him across many years affected his every moment through out life was incredibly enlightening. The conflicting emotions and signals, the ‘special secret’ versus being ignored or intentionally reprimanded. The feeling of displacement and disconnection around him. At the core there is this influential figure, a father, the person you have an instinctive affection towards, who is supposed to protect you and teach you about life. Realising the perversions of this authoritative presence and the extent of them and how they still prevailed in his dotage.

It has left scars, fractured the family somewhat, still rearing its ugliness on Alan to this day. Taking the brave step of reporting his father’s behaviour to the authorities must have been such an incredibly hard thing to balance in your own mind, the tugging to and fro with the pros and cons. He has my continued admiration.

It was powerful to read about his misbehaviour, the antics that some may say was attention seeking, maybe it was, maybe not having the nurturing, caring, maternal aspect at home he was seeking it from somewhere else, in some misguided fashion to fit in a place comfortably. All children have phases of tantrums and boundary pushing, it’s a process of learning and growing, but it can also be a red flag to something not being ‘right’ there is more to this behaviour than growing pains. As adults we are incredibly blind to spotting the subtle signals of difference.

I hope Alan has found calmness within himself as his adult life has progressed, getting the support and understanding from his wife, a fresh fun zest in life as his own children grow. That he knows he has value to other people.

 

Spring Like A March Hare

I say spring, more like enthusiastically lurch……. well I say enthusiastically but it’s more like begrudgingly shuffle…….. hmm begrudgingly that’s on point and shuffle, hmm yeah, kind of outch, dawdle, mosey.

Whether it is the decline of my physical abilities, the endless endurance of the shielding lockdown, the cold fingers of winter or a mix of it all, I cannot seem to shake off the shackles of winter oppression and awaken, find the joy in things, the pleasures in purpose, everything feels exhaustingly ::sigh:: As I said to BFF I cannot be bothered to be bothered.

There are the tentative hints of improvement. Doesn’t it make the day seem nicer when there is sunshine? It has an extra energy, almost an optimism. So in that fashion one might dare to tackle a bit of a to-do list.

• Add crochet border to red cat blanket
• Start the Alan Davies book
• Check domain registry dates
• Go through iTunes genre
• File images accumilated

A chunk of that involves my desk, which is dependent on who my carers are and the times they are due here. Plus the sitting position isn’t the most comfortable.

The ‘remote’ app on the iPad that controls iTunes on my Mac is working really well, but as I scroll about trying to decide what I feel like listening to I find I tend to choose a genre and let the device shuffle. When I am at the desk I usually select an album or artist to listen to. As I think I have mentioned before my choice can be influenced by what I am doing, classical while html coding, rock/metal while photo editing, Rhythm/blues while dealing with accounts and numbers, etc. The automated comes-when-you-upload info of a cd can be a little odd, there are a few tweaks I would like to make and there are those with no genre tagged at all. Hardly a vital necessary task but it fills the time, like finding album covers and adding those.

My original iPad (gen1) has been struggling to deal with life for a while. When I purchased my new one I repurposed the old one to the bedroom for iPlayer, radio, audiobook usage, but many of the apps need an operating system it cannot cope with so I was using the browser, but even that struggled. Anywho, I took the decision to buy a refurbished one from MusicMagPie, it came today and so far so good. I’ve spent a couple of hours setting up and logging in, tweaking to my preferences, selecting display images etc.

Must think of more to blog about so it’s not eons again before I text lyrical.

 

2019

To say that 2019 has been an absolute horrid catastrophic year would be a cavernous understatement. Never at the beginning could I have foreseen the end, nor the hell in between.

I usually feel odd at the end of any given year. Many see it as a fresh page, the new beginning, the marker to strive forward. I just see it as another day, no different to the 31st, 17th or 4th. However, I’m not ready to let go of 2019, I don’t want to let go of what’s been lost. 2020 will be the first year without my Big Sis, and I am way far being ready for that. 2020 will be a year of more forced change and adapt as I try and find somewhere new to live and all the fraught difficulties that brings.

BFF and I are already planning some fun, hopefully when she visits we will over night in the city and revisit some old haunts and enjoy some reminiscent foods. I’ll still be crocheting blankets when the strive strikes. There are online projects to get stuck in to and ongoing business to fit in. I should get back to nightly reading.

Still, it will be what it will be and hopefully we are all still here by the end of it.

 

Lost All Logic

Once upon a few decades ago I was an avid puzzler, except crosswords I’m hopeless at them. Occasionally I’d buy a compendium of puzzles and eagerly work my way through the searches, fits, join the dots, silhouettes etc and logic grids.  With the World Cup taking over all sanity for the next few endless weeks my eyes were drawn to a book of logic puzzles to exercise the brain and fill some time.

Only thing is, I’ve lost my logic. I even made a mess of the three grid when once upon a decades ago I could handle a five grid with ease!  Maybe my concentration span has shrunk, or atrophied like my muscles, or am I just more easily distrac…….oh look, a red arrow trailing blue smoke just flew by, wow (for real, there’s an air show today at the beach).

Okay, okay, let’s get to trying again ……… do I need a pee ….. concentrate woman ….. hmm, I could go do the dishes ….. no they will be done while you’re poaching the salmon ….. concentrate ….. okay, humbug is kept in the sock draw, Peter asked the weetabix eater if he’d seen any sugar lumps.  Hmm.

The tennis at Queens starts tomorrow :o) 

 

Frustrated Technically

 

The question seemed simple “Can I send a PDF file to my Kindle?” Of course my first course of action was to ask the great oracle that is Google. The first page of potential answers contained those comforting words “easy” and “simple”, that should have sent the klaxons of doom going off at ear splitting decibels.

Apparently it’s just three manageable steps. 1 make sure your email is added to the accepted list  in ‘manage devices & settings’ [done]   2 find your kindle’s email [done].  3 send email with attachment from your accepted email to your kindle email [done] …… Aaaaand ta-da, all done.

But it didn’t.

Of course, it didn’t, any “easy and simple” instructions aren’t.

Back to Google, read through another dozen articles all giving the same three instructions. Try them again, still no document appearing on kindle screen.  Scroll through the archive list on Amazon (all two hundred and twenty titles) incase it gets put there [nope].  Read through another few articles, consider an online chat to find out the all important vital fourth step that’s missing.  Turn over and sleep on it.

Next day, look for answers on Google again, find a little added extra some add to step 3 put ‘convert’ into email subject line.  Step 4 Check ‘Doc’s’ on archive lists on Amazon ‘Manage devices & settings”. Step 5 send from archive to required device.

Guess what………………………..It worked!!!

It’s not just me, Is its? Not because I’m getting older and technology is getting younger? 

 

Jane Eyre Tour

It is a reasonably well known tale, orphaned child reluctantly brought up in disdain by Aunt, sent off to an ‘educational institution’ at the age on ten. Many years later the child as an adult is a teacher in the same institution, working for bed and board, wishing for something better. She secures a post of Governess at an isolated mansion for a child, where Jane for the first time has freedom, warmth from friendship, and a sense of inner contentment. When the master returns from his travels, his aggressive demeanour, their differing stations in life, her straightforwardness, fuel a tender passion. But there is a heavy secret, locked in the attic is his mad first wife. When Jane discovers the truth she runs away from the lies and the liars as well as trying to distance herself from the distress and disappointment, however something draws her back, and when she returns she finds the mansion in ruins and Mr Rochester blinded from injuries. 

Both my sister and I had seen several adaptations of this classic Charlotte Brontë story.  As this was a National Theatre production we knew it was not going to be the traditional theatrical setting, however as we took our seats the stage was set with what looked like a grown-up sized childs playground climbing frame. Slowly the auditorium began to fill but with just five minutes before curtain up, there were still more than half the seats vacant. The complete cast of 12 took up their starting positions.  Whilst the dialogue, accents and costume stayed close to the original story, the staging was contemporary and sometimes difficult to properly grasp its concept and symbolism. The introjection of music and singing sometimes felt disconnected. By the third act seeing the quiet cast move and climb up and down the various ladders and stairs without seemingly purpose, became rather annoying and children climbing in the playground.

This in no way means the performance was bad. The actors did a brilliant job of portraying the various characters, and by far the most enjoyable was a bearded gentleman who played the part of Pilot the dog, who often raised a mild laughter from the audience with his instantly recognisable dog like antics. The actor portraying the arrogant Mr Rochester brought with it a sense of distraction, of brooding resentment of how his life had been mapped out for him by his father without making him evil or wicked.

For us the thing missing from the production was the sense of a sinister secret. In everything we have seen or read there was always a sense of foreboding, of Jane being told not to go into the attic, of sounds and happenings that indicate all is not right. There was absolutely none of this at all throughout the whole performance, only twice was manic laughter heard. For us it was a significant element that was missing.

With a mixture of live music and recorded sound effects these had a tendency to drown out the dialogue of the actors, and on occasion I felt I had missed a vital piece of information that carried an element of the story. This is not unique to this production but something I have experienced at other performances at this Theatre.

 

Running Wild

Last night Big Sis and I went to see this amazing play, an adaptation of Michael Morpergo’s 2009 novel about the Boxing Day Tsunami in Indonesia in 2004.  Lily Macready was riding Oona the 12-year old elephant along the beach, but she was behaving awkwardly, wanting to turn away from the flat calm waters, her flight or fight senses took hold and she took off deep into the rainforest as the devastating wave hit the shores taking the lives of many and destroying countless buildings.  The story details how Lily learns to understand Oona and how this majestic animal protects and guides her young charge. Stumbling into the dark dangerous world of greedy gun wielding animal hunters and bullying farmers burning the forest to plant plams to make the highly profitable palm oil (used in many products from soap and shampoo to cooking oils and convenience foods). Eventually stumbling into an animal sanctuary, sunburnt, shot, dehydrated and exhausted and being reunited with her Grandma.

I was not prepared for the play to be so dark and violent in places, something which noticeably upset the young children in the audience. The plot brought attention to the environmental plight of the region, the global zealous need for commodities and the cruel lengths the ruthless go to exploiting that market. 

Oona the elephant is mesmerising, her puppeteers seemingly effortlessly bring life to this charismatic character. The orangutans were lively, cheeky and the babies (being hunted to be sold as pets) were utterly mischievous. Even the tiny details as the fire flies were completely believable. There was a palpable gasp from the audience as the tiger was carried into the hunters camp, dead, valuable as a skin, a trophy, medicine, even though earlier we had seen the same tiger attempting to attack Lily and Oona. 

I would have liked Oona’s trumpet call to be a little louder, as compared to the volume and depth of the orangutans and forest noises it was almost overpowered. Also, we did not really get a sense of time Lily was missing, whether it was a couple of days or a couple of weeks.  But none the less it was a very engaging performance.

After coming home I took a look online to see if I could find out a bit more, and ended up confusing myself further. I thought the story was based on a true life event, although there was a story of a child being taken into the forest on the back of an elephant, Michael Morpergo’s book tells the tale of a boy called Billy, yet the play is a girl called Lily.  There was very little information about what Lily had experienced, or whether she stayed in Indonesia or returned to the UK, whether her father had died prior to the holiday and whether her Mother was killed in the Tsunami, key elements in the plot.

Never the less, I would recommend going to see the performance.

 

Granny & Death & Terry & Me

It began by chance, a book sent in error from a club, a blurb that struck a chord, that became a twenty year trek through the wit, the word play, the entendres, the sideways swipe, the unobvious parody, the literal and the Literal musings of a man’s meanderings of a fantasy land. I have no idea why Sir Terry caught my imagination, whether there’s enough reality in the fantasy to hold a ring of truth or I was just entertained.

When two of his books, Wyrd Sisters and Soul Music were made into an animated series, I practically wore the VHS out watching them over and over, the colourful characters firmly in my mind I could see and hear them as I read and reread the books. The dulcet tones of Tony Robinson reading the audiobooks often accompanied sleepless nights.  Later when tomes like Hogwatch, Going Postal and The Colour of Magic were filmed, they were top of my birthday/Christmas lists, staying close to the story, capturing much of the books comedic quality without tipping over into absurdity. 

Every one of the forty-one works has had its own flavour, often parodying cliches of religion, science, mythology, folklore, business acumen, dynasties and continents or authors like Shakespeare, Tolkein, Dicken’s and Potter.  A few of his notable characters have burrowed and set up home in my psyche, Granny Weatherwax and Death being the primary.  I can loose hours perusing numerous quotes or mini scenes. Such as (in exaggerated witchy hag voice), “When shall we three meet again”, “I can do next Tuesday” replies Nanny Ogg in her West Country tone; or “On nights such as this, witches are abroad.  Well, not actually abroad. They don’t like the food and you can’t trust the water and the shamans always hog the deckchairs.” In this time of election decisions I’m reminded of Ankh-Morpork’s take on democracy, “Ankh-Morpork had dallied with many forms of government and had ended up with that form of democracy known as One Man, One Vote. The Patrician was the Man; he had the Vote.”

With the death of Sir Terry and the publication of The Shepherd’s Crown, the final novel, something had an end. I delayed reading the book as I wasn’t ready to say good bye to this comforting friend. Last week I took up the book and began. The first few chapters were pure Pratchett even if the content was the death of my favourite character, but after that the book felt disjointed and unpolished. After the epilogue Sir T’s PA Rob added a letter, he told of their working methods and how books came together, but with the last book there had not been the time to fully work on the drafts, although often the final draft had to be crowbarred from his hands as Sir T was ever quite totally ready to say it was complete and done. It’s well known that this is not his finest, but it is his last and maybe demonstrates that despite his failing mental faculties he was determined to write to the end and not leave us hanging.

Farewell Sir T, Granny and all. 

 

Reluctant Read

For Christmas I received a long waited for book, The Shepherd’s Crown by Terry Pratchett. This is his final book in the Discworld series published after his death. It is sitting at my bedside but I find myself reluctant to start it.

I have been a fan of these books for many years, thanks to a mistake. Masquerade landed in my lap and I was hooked from the first chapter. I’d never consider myself a science fiction fantasy fan and I cannot tell you why this series of books have hooked me. I have my favoured characters (Granny Weatherwax, Death, Nanny Ogg, Rincewind, Nobby Nobbs, The Librarian, the list could continue) and I often re-read favoured titles (Wyrd Sisters, Witches Abroad, Reaper Man, Mort, The Last Continent, another list that could continue). I have many of the forty titles in both paperback and audio formats, as well as the dvd’s and all are well used and frequently revisited.

But I am reluctant to start the last book, maybe somewhere I see the last page as a true end to the series and once reached that is it, there really is no more, nothing new yet to be discovered and I’d hate for that to be an anticlimax.

Curious things us humans…..