As I was saying (or not at the case might be*)

First things first: that asterisk above (*). You might think the phrase is ‘as the case may be’ but from what I know of English - and I don’t claim it to be an awful lot - the phrase is conditional as in ‘it might be or there again it might not’. At least that’s how I read it, so I suggest it should be ‘might’. But as I’ve already confessed, my knowledge of English grammar/syntax or whatever it is - and not even knowing the right word is a case in point - is limited to such and extent that I have no choice but to be humble. Also, I’m not too fond of pedants.

Now on to more trivial matters. This blog entry must be classed under ‘non-specific inconsequential shite’ in that I am killing time. And one way of killing time might be to wow you guys and gals with a little bollocks. ‘Why am I killing time’ do I hear you ask? Well, it’s a longish story but as I am killing time, that might be no bad thing. Obviously, YOU might not be killing time and have better things to do than read these ramblings. In that case maybe you should scoot of an do those ‘more important’ things and come back here to read this rubbish when you are more inclined not to get irritated by inconsequential shite. That’s clear enough, surely?

It’s like this: I’ve just come back from a month in Germany at my sister’s (see blog entries passim). I took with me my Macbooks - or better one of my Macbooks, but I shan’t elucidate at this point - because I wanted to get on and get finished my Hemingway bollocks, but also because I wanted to watch English Premier League and Champions League football on NowTV (Sky) and BT Sports, which courtesy of a VPN is possible when you are abroad. However, the bloody think conked out on me with a few days to go.

So what did I do? Why, I went to the local Mediamarkt and bought a notebook, though I should stress that it was to get on with my writing more than watching the football as I can do that on my iPad. I wasn’t being quite as extravagant as it might seem because I bought a small, 11in Lenovo notebook, and Ideapad 1 which pretty much fitted the bill: it came (as I discovered) with a full year’s subscription to Microsoft 365.

More than that, I only paid €119, and the price was apparently reduced from €279. Well, I’ve since learned I should take that ‘reduction’ with a pinch of sale. Those €199 worked out at £178, but when I later looked up what that model would have cost me at PCWorld, it was sodding £99. That didn’t much cheer me up, except of course that buying it there and then in Germany meant that I had the use of it there and then.

Had I waited to buy it at PCWorld I wouldn’t have had it ‘there and then’ which would have defeated the whole point of getting one. Also, I wouldn’t have bought one once I was back in Britain, anyway, because I’ve got a sufficient number of laptops knocking around I can use. But ‘sshh’ on the point.

Obviously the keyboard is German by my initial plan was to bluetooth up the small keyboard I use with my iPad (and I’m writing this entry on that iPad with that keyboard now). However, while setting it up, I discovered that the keyboard and be programmed for different languages. Thus although the physical layout is German (thus with Ä, Ö and Ü keys and, unhelpfullyt the Z key where the Y key should be etc, once I had got the notebook to ‘be’ and English keyboard an, crucially, because I’ve taught myself to touch-type, it all worked out quite well. 

Well, not quite. The system can also be programmed to be English, but no all of it. Then I discovered, looking up Lenovo Recovery Media on the Lenovo support website that I can download a fully English version of Windows 11, install it and except for the bloody Kraut physical layout, the notebook is British.

The only thing is that downloading what I need, then creating a USB recovery stick is taking a LOT of time. I signed up and downloaded all I needed this morning, only to find that the USB stick I intended to use, at 14Gb, was too small. So off I went to buy a 32Gb stick (and did not opt for one at £34 one shop offered but went to a Robert Dyas and found a very good one for just £7.99 - these things matter). Back at my notebook I then discovered that there was no longer a trace of what I had downloaded.

After an abortive ‘help’ chat with some jerk at Lenovo, I then went to download it again, only to find there was no longer enough room on the notebook’s 64Gb SSD - because although I couldn’t find it, what I had downloaded was still there. To cut a very long and increasingly very tedious story as short as possible, I finally sorted out the space problem, download it all again, and am no in the process of ‘creating the USB recovery stick. THAT involves the notebook transferring al the files it needs - around sodding 30Gb! - to the stick. 

So, here I am in a Starbucks round the corner from my brother’s flat killing time.

Happy?

Done and sodding dusted: goodbye Hemingway! Well, up to a point

I am very pleased to say — very pleased! — that the web version of my sodding Hemingway bollocks is now completed. I have just posted the final two ‘chapters/essays’.

Here they are, In Sum - Part I: Something of a curate’s egg and In Sum — Part II: At the end of the day it’s each to his own.

The next phase is to turn it into a book so that I can get it printed up by Kindle Direct Publishing but that is more the kind of pissing round with laptops and publishing software etc I enjoy.

The ultimate irony of doing this Hemingway crap is that my reason for doing it had bugger all to do with Hemingway or his work or anything like that. It’s just that I decided to write a blog post about what a great writer he wasn’t after reading The Sun Also Rises and all the claims made for it, and it evolved.

My sole motivation was to ‘do a project’, and crucially to do it properly, not cut corners and to finish it. Well, now I have.

Well, I suppose in one sense these things are never quite finished, but as far as I am concerned I have fulfilled my self-imposed task and doing that was the whole point of the exercise.

New book review, Hemingway's rather silly novel To Have And Have Not. Bet you don't know whether I like it or not. Guess.

 Here it is.

New book review, Mary Dearborn's biog of Hemingway

 You can find it here.

The queen of England is dead, but then rather a lot of other people also died yesterday

A date to remember: September 9, 2022, the day a 96-year-old woman died in Britain. It was not unexpected given her age. She was Mrs Sarah Coady, of 83, Tosson Terrace, Heaton, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Tyne & Wear in the north-east of England.

She lived to a grand old age, did Sarah and she will be missed by her two sons Terry and Jim and her daughter Joan, her grandchildren Wayne, Kevin, Anthony, Louise, Meg and Liz. She will not be missed by ‘the nation’ and ‘the nation’ will not mark her passing with 12 days of mourning.

There will be no wall-to-wall coverage on TV and radio of her life and death and the newspapers will not carry page upon page of photographs of her, young and old. Finally, there will be no longwinded analysis wherever you care to look in the media of what Sarah’s death means for ‘the nation’ and what the future holds for her extended family. The reason is that ‘the nation’ did not know Sarah Coady.

If all that sounds a little sour — I’m obviously obliquely commenting on the death of the queen of England and there is, as far as I know, no Sarah Coady who once lived in Tosson Terrace (though I did, 43 years ago, at no. 105) — it’s because I am more than a little bemused by what is happening in Britain as I write and shall be happening for the next 12 days (though I did read Charles — sorry, Your Majesty Charles III — has ruled, as only a ‘king’ can rule, that there will be seven days of mourning after the funeral and that isn’t for a week or two yet).

I am sincerely trying to work out my lack of ‘grief’. I had and have nothing against Liz Windsor or any of her family. On the other hand I can’t get my head around the idea of ‘kings’ and ‘queens’ ‘ruling’ us their ‘subjects’. I’m nobody’s bloody subject.

Yet all my Facebook friends except one, my guitar tutor who is one of the saner men I know, has apparently gone to pieces over the queen’s death. But why? Did they really ‘love’ Brenda as they do their partners, children and family? I would be destroyed if anything happened to either of my children (one now 26 and the other 23 and off gallivanting around South America), but that is it.

For the media, of course, it is a grand opportunity to print or broadcast the dead queen’s life story (as though it had changed since the last ten times her life story was documented), print loads and loads of piccies we have all seen before, gush, gush, gush about the poor woman, but crucially a poor woman none of us knew.

From what I hear Elizabeth Windsor was an intelligent woman of character who was diplomatically talented in that she had to steer clear of politics and who furthermore had a gift for mimicry and could be very funny. And I admire her for that. But did I ‘love my queen’? No, I did not. Am I heartbroken that she has died (at 96, fancy! None of us saw that coming)? No, I am not.

Is there something wrong with me? Am I, in fact, saying what others also think but believe it best not to do so publicly?

Answers please on a postcard to the usual address.