In praise of life's small mercies.

It is quite odd how small, insignificant details can please us. A day or two ago, I wrote about my growing collection of laptops and why I bought the third: the first was slowly misbehaving and I decided I would try to sell it before the malfunction, whatever it was, set in properly. Unfortunately, that seemed to happen far faster than I had anticipated, so that for the past few days, the cursor on this laptop — I am writing on it now — would freeze and the only way I could get to use the laptop again was to reboot it. Things looked even bleaker when I rang an Apple dealer in Kensington who told me that the fault probably related to the logic board, that I would most probably need a new logic board, that I was looking at spending around £200 and that as far as he was concerned it wasn't worth it. He did, however add — and this will put his downbeat analysis rather in perspective — that the dealer he worked for would give me £100 of the price of a new Macbook is I part-exchanged the iBook. What made it all the more galling was yesterday the laptop even stopped recognising that it had a built-in airport card, one which was supposedly brand-new when it was fitted just over a month ago.
Then, researching (a posh word for 'looking up') possible remedies on the internet, I came across a process called 'repairing permissions'. This is quite easy to do, and I did it. And it seems to have cured whatever is was amiss. Such little things can cheer you up.