The Story of the Browser Playing Dead.

On Monday 20^th July – four whole, agonising days ago – my browser had an accident and died of its injuries. No browser, therefore no internet. And so began the job of getting a new browser, the prosecution of which brought me into the frustrating business of trying to deal with BT’s new system of customer contact. It is, as usual, idiotic – or at least disturbingly deficient in thought and consideration – and the only way of dealing with the problem was to report a fault to the wholly automated system.

An engineer turned up the next day and I told him the story, finally asking ‘so how do I get a new browser?’ ‘No problem,’ he said. ‘I’ll order one for you.  You might get it tomorrow or at least by the next day. They’re very quick with browsers.’ It arrived today, three days later. I haven’t hooked it up yet so I’m nervous because I have personal experience of new browsers being faulty. I’m currently living on hope as I type this in Word.

And so for four days now I’ve been seeing my desktop image staring back at me from my monitor screen. Usually I see my Hotmail inbox because that’s where I park it when I’m not working. Seeing only my desktop image evoked a cold feeling of desolation and disconnection. It said: Something vital is missing. Are you sure you’re still alive? Are you sure you’re still breathing? Are you sure you’re still functioning? It’s a little like walking into a room and seeing walls normally festooned with pictures now bare of all decoration. The only reminder of more wholesome times are the faint grey rectangles around the edges of where colour and life used to be. I’m sensitive like that. I tried to read instead (Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle for the second time, and an anthology of shorts by Virginia Woolf for the first.) It helped, but only so much. Mostly I felt too tired to read.

And what all this demonstrated is just how reliant I’ve become on the internet to provide a portal to the outside world. The very few people I know are all either disinclined to know me, or too far away to be of help. Being a loner by nature is sometimes inconvenient.

I’m going to attempt to install the new browser now. If you read this you’ll know it worked.

Added Later:

The new browser is installed and working, but here’s what’s interesting:

When I plugged everything in I saw that there was no light on, suggesting that the new bit of kit was faulty, Not so. I looked at the back and discovered an on/off switch, a small, black, circular button all but hidden against the black background. I pressed it and voila: we have light.

I’ve had several browsers over the past sixteen years and none of them had an on/off switch. You just plugged things in and they worked. And bear in mind that the original new browser was fitted up by a BT engineer, not me. So I tried connecting the original, now ‘dead’, browser to the power and it lit up as a functioning browser should. It appears the old lad’s accident didn’t kill it after all, it just switched it off.

So much for the past four days. So much for silly old me. And it’s life and life only.

Incidentally, the two posts above this one were written for the sake of having something to do when I thought I had no internet. Just to avoid any confusion.

Shire Diary July '26.

The barley crop is now all harvested and the stalks bailed up neatly and awaiting collection. The wheat looks just about ready to me, and so the majority of fields will soon be laid to waste and awaiting the muck spreading, the tilling, and the sowing of winter wheat and barley. And so the changing colours of a mostly arable farming area will go through their annual transformation, from gold to brown and back to green. The cycle continues as it has done on these very fields for more than a thousand years.

Several of the fields here are owned by the Church rather than the estate, and on those the crop is maize. Maize is sown later than the cereal crops for harvesting in the autumn or even early winter. It’s growing rapidly through the warm weather, though, and the tallest patch on one side of Church Lane is now up to around seven feet in height and flowering well.

So tall is this forest that the view from Church Lane to the Lady B’s erstwhile abode is now completely blocked. Usually at this time of year the top of the chimney pots and TV aerial are still visible, but not this time. Too tall for a person of my height. People often smile and gaze at the forest of maize, you know. ‘Just like Lord of the Rings,’ they enthuse. Several early scenes in the Jackson film version show the intrepid four hiding and getting into mischief in just such a location.

As for the wild flowers, the persistently warm weather has sent most of them to bed early. There’s a premature brown and shrivelled look about the embankments, the verges, and the hedge bottoms this year. And the elder bushes which showed promise of a fine berry harvest are further casualties. Such berries as a forming are tiny, I suppose for lack of water to plump them.

And here’s the sad story: I’ve mentioned the flock of sheep which now occupies the big sloping field behind my house. I often watch them going about their lives slowly and peacefully, but this morning I saw them being driven en masse down towards the bottom of the field where it abuts Bag Lane. When I walked that way later I saw a large transport vehicle standing by the gate, and presumed that a journey of some sort was imminent.

When I returned from my walk I heard much bleating as I walked up my garden. It was more plaintive than usual; it had a hint of desperation about it. And then I realised that all the bleats were adult ones. No kiddie bleats; no question and answer sessions between mama sheep and baby sheep. The impassioned bleats, it seemed, were the sounds of mother sheep either calling for their now absent kiddies, or simply vocalising a sense of sorrow for their loss.

The final sentence would have sounded like vegetarian propaganda, so I omitted it.

Time and Changes.

For some reason this evening my mind has been filled with recalling people in my past, from friends I had in primary school right up to people I connected with more recently on this blog. I particularly remembered one boy called Howard Graham. I got a little confused sometimes because I had trouble remembering whether his name was Howard Graham or Graham Howard. And it often occurs to me that most of the people I knew as a child are now dead.

*  *  *

And then I took a look at the website for the theatre where I used to work. It had a large picture of the restaurant and I was curious to see how different it looked. For one thing they’ve removed the carpet and installed parquet flooring instead. Why would they do that, I wondered? Well, maybe they had Christmas in mind and considered the practical benefit. During matinees for the Christmas Show the place was invaded by hordes of school kids, and there was always one who treated us to the sight and smell of his or her half digested breakfast steaming on the restaurant floor. I suppose it’s more easily removed from wood than carpet. (And did you know that the smell of vomit can be nullified by pouring tonic water on it?)

*  *  *

After that I wrote my daughter’s birthday card. I hate writing longhand now, you know. I blame the ubiquity of keyboard communication which has greatly reduced the manual coordination required for such a feat. It leaves me full of admiration for those writers of old who constructed significant tomes, mostly using a quill pen and in longhand. And impeccable cursive, to boot.

In the Language of Sheep.

I was outside having a cup of tea in the sunlit garden this afternoon when I heard the deep bleat of an adult sheep the other side of the hedge. It was followed by the higher pitched, juvenile bleat of a lamb nearby. And then the ewe bleated back and the lamb answered again. And so it went on and on for about five minutes until I was quite sure that this was a mother and her kid having a conversation. OK, it might just have been:

‘Where are you?’

Here, mum.

Oh, there you are.

Mum.

‘What?’

I’m here.

‘I know. I can see you.’

Mum.

‘What?’

You’re not looking at me.

‘I don’t need to look at you, dear. I can hear you well enough.’

Mum.

‘What now?’

What are you doing?

‘I’m grazing. What does it look as though I’m doing?’

Oh.

It’s a conversation of sorts, isn’t it? And it might all be in my imagination, and I might be guilty of anthropomorphising a couple of animals, but as long as it makes you smile it doesn’t matter, does it? And the kid reminds of me when I was that age.

A Parking Issue.

When I returned from my walk at lunchtime I was surprised to see the narrow lane beyond my garden lined with parked vehicles for a distance of around 200yds. Evidently there was some sort of end-of-term event going on, and it isn’t unusual to see cars parked on the lane during the progress of such events. But in twenty years I’ve never seen as many as there were today. And the car park was also full, of course.

I’m curious to know the reason for this. Has the school had a major increase in pupils, I wonder? (Have you noticed, by the way, that in the UK we mostly use the term ‘pupils’ for people in primary and secondary education, and reserve the term ‘students’ for those in college and university? Students are young adults, you see.) In any event, it seems to me that the school needs a major extension to its car park.

I was, however, pleased to see that the Lady B’s car was parked with precision in the car park (lording it over a tiny, Mk1 mini, I might add.) But then it always was a feature of the Lady B that she was inclined to park cars with fine precision in car parks. (I love that woman, you know. Sometimes it even hurts a bit.)

And I do realise that this post is boring and of little interest to anyone but me. I just felt like writing something before making lunch, so I did.

A Recommendation in Fruit.

I saw a woman I liked in Ashbourne today. She wasn’t good looking, she wasn’t young, she didn’t have a model girl’s body, and I never spoke to her. And so I asked myself: why do you like that woman? The answer was simple.

She was eating an apple. I realised that a person eating an apple looks wholesome and healthy (just as a person eating a Big Mac looks gross and unfit.) It even suggests honesty, which probably has nothing whatsoever to do with George Washington. It just does for some reason, maybe because there is something sweet and unassuming about the humble apple. No ego, you see.

The fact that the woman looked thoughtful also helped. I’m generally well disposed towards people who think, and I gather the skill is becoming rarer.

Imaginings and Partings.

I saw a woman in the coffee shop today who looked very like my imagined image of the priestess. Same height and build, same approximate age, dark brown hair with a few highlights pulled neatly behind the neck, a discreet but apparently expensive gold bracelet on one wrist, bright and active eyes, no hint of apparent mood which suggested high self-awareness and practiced restraint, and eyes which left no doubt as to her East Asian antecedents. I’d say she was fully in control of her body, her mind, and her space. I doubt the priestess looked like that at the time when several future roads were beckoning in her maiden years, but this one fitted the mature entrepreneurial route perfectly.

I spent some time visually examining everything about her, and yet never once did she notice and stare, or even glance, back. That was where I got the ‘self-awareness and practiced restraint’ from. I wondered whether she might have been the actual priestess making an inquisitive trip to my home territory because she had nothing better to do. I rejected the possibility on the grounds that priestesses never have nothing better to do.

*  *  *

I signed out of my dental practice this morning, even though there are no other NHS practices in the area and I can’t afford private dentistry. It was an uneasy call fraught with attempted explanations and icy tones. And now I wonder whether I’ve been a little rash.I also wonder why I always have to move on even when there's nowhere else to go. I even wonder whether I would have left the much esteemed Lady B behind if she hadn't preempted the possibility.

Care vs Control, and Unrelated Bits.

Tomorrow I intend to scratch my name off my dentist’s panel. As far as I know there isn’t another NHS dentist in Ashbourne, so my future dental prospects will lie at the feet of my good friend, Lady Luck. The cost of private dentistry is so excruciatingly high that availing myself of such a ‘service’ stands not within the prospect of belief. (The greed of good old American-style capitalism, eh? Good old Mrs Thatcher.)

So why have I taken this decision? Well, it’s like this: Over the weekend I’ve received two text messages from the practice, and unlike written communications from other NHS bodies which speak the language of care, the ones from the dentist now speak the language of control: ‘You will!’ Acceptance of control is not in my nature, and though some might find my attitude excessive, I don’t. There’s a principle involved, and principles are very important to me.

This has been coming on ever since the incomparable Ms Medeea left a year or two ago (I suspect for similar reasons.) I felt it with the first appointment I had there after the fateful day. I felt the decline in the atmosphere. They also changed their name from the friendly ‘TLC For Smiles’ to the rather grey ‘Derbyshire Dental.’ I mean to suggest that they should have called it ‘The Vogon Spaceship’ or even ‘Resistance is Useless.’

*  *  *

And another, strictly irrelevant, point occurs to me: History is full of wise people using wise words to offer wise advice. Modern civilisation seems to be mostly run by unwise people telling us that the wise ones were wrong. And most people believe them.

*  *  *

So where do I go from there? Well, I’m often tempted to wonder why so many people allow themselves to be locked into cages of belief rather than striding freely across the airy headland of an open mind.

A Nature Boy's Dichotomy.

I used to think of myself as a true nature boy; a lover of all things natural in the natural world. Now I detect a certain dichotomy in my attitude 

I love the wealth of expression in the natural world; I love the bounty and the beauty; and I love the sense that I feel of the subtle energies of nature because that would seem to be the power behind the form of existence to which we are tied at this level. I’m even accepting of death because death is an integral part of the cyclical process on which all things biological function.

But being an idealist I detest the suffering in nature. And I’m not referring to cruelty. Cruelty is a matter of intent which seems wholly confined to the human animal. I’m referring to the suffering consequent upon predation, accident, and disease.

It came home to me last night when I watched a baby bird suffering, presumably through having fallen from a nest or having made a premature attempt to fly. There was nothing I could do to help, you see, and that added an element of guilt to my horror. I suppose I could have done an Agnes Gray and dropped a large stone on it, but how could I have known that my aim would be perfect, or the instrument of execution sufficiently powerful to despatch the little creature instantaneously? I couldn’t, and so I locked the door and hoped that the suffering would be short-lived.

And that’s why my attitude to nature is dichotomous.

Something Crooked Somewhere.

A few simple questions which might suggest a few obvious answers:

Why has the Jeffrey Epstein affair disappeared from public view? Why is there no high level investigation at work? Why are the world’s media not clamouring to re-open their own investigations? Why have I seen nothing on YouTube amid the pile of supremely unimportant tat that seems to prevail there? (I’m sure a serious video on Jeffrey Epstein would get so many hits that even the ne’er-do-wells in the advertising industry would be slavering uncontrollably. One video I saw questioned the veracity and cause of Epstein’s alleged death, but that’s hardly the point.) Who is keeping the lid tightly closed on this business, and why? And why am I the only person who seems to be asking these questions? I doubt that I am.

Maybe Trump’s juvenile antics and the football world cup are considered more important and there’s no air time or page space left to tackle more mundane matters. Is that it?