Dear Friends, February 10
This letter is coming to you from my new computer, a birthday present from last year. My old laptop had so many extra devices hanging off the USB ports and PC card slot that Lucia felt it was time for an upgrade. I agreed. What I did suggest though, was that we wait until we moved to England where prices for electronic and computer are much cheaper – largely due to absence of the import duties imposed on such goods in SA. I spent ages poring over computer specifications on various websites and I was really struck by how few high spec machines come with a 14 inch screen. This was standard in laptops a couple of years ago, but it just doesn’t seem to be an option now. The choice is either a 15,4 inch or 17 inch screen which, to my mind, rather defeats the basic premise of a laptop which is mobility and portability. Just try and open a laptop with a 17 inch screen in economy class in an aeroplane and see how much space you have left. They’re heavier too. Stupid.
I eventually settled on a model with a 15,4 inch screen which just fits into my old laptop bag. Perhaps more surprising to those who know me really well is the fact that we bought a Sony Vaio. I had always felt that the Sonys were priced a bit too extravagantly for what was on offer. Two points here: 1) this one was on sale and 2) it was the same price as the laptop I had been looking at in SA, but bigger, better, faster with all the bells and whistles, including a Blu-ray disc. It’s zooty.
That isn’t to say that I didn’t have a few issues setting it up. For a start, it just wouldn’t work with the 3G broadband modem I bought two weeks ago. After fiddling around for two days, calling both the Vodafone and Sony helpdesks, I was eventually put through to someone who knew what he was talking about. The short answer to the problem was that that modem would never work with Sony, Dell, Toshiba or Advent. I would need to upgrade to the newer, faster modem. I went to the nearest Vodafone shop expecting to be told to go back to the shop where we bought the modem in the first place. But this is where I find service here in the UK so good. They were able to look up the sale on the network and they exchange the modem immediately, although I did have to pay a bit extra for the new model. Anyway, I took it home, plugged it in, logged on, and then it died. So, back to Vodafone in Leamington where they gave me another new one without a quibble. It’s still working, touch wood.
Then I tempted fate. I installed my Portuguese dictionary on the computer and it hit a snag straight away. Every time I tried to launch the dictionary, I received and error message (in Portuguese) saying that the programme wasn’t registered yet which I knew it bloody well was. I had to wait until the following morning to call the makers of the dictionary in Portugal, and asked in a huff and in my excruciating Portuguese why my dictionary wouldn’t work. The answer, in fluent English, was that it had nothing at all to do with their software, but was rather a security feature in Windows Vista. All I needed to make the programme work was to run it as an administrator. Stupid bloody feature.
Other than those two issues, I’m really pleased with my present.
But week hasn’t been entirely about computers. I visit the dogs and cats at their quarantine kennel every day, and stay with them as long as it takes me to read the paper after playing with them for a bit. I sit in a folding chair right next to Edgar and Hazel’s baskets, and they find a position where they can lean against me, or at least keep a paw on me. I do need, however, to correct the impression given by the photographs I mailed to you that there is a great big radiator in their kennel keeping them warm. The radiator you see doesn’t actually work. They get their heat from the light which is also an infrared heating lamp of the type you might find in a restaurant kitchen. It seems to keep them warm enough, at least I hope so. It’s been really cold.
On my drive to the kennels at the beginning of the week, I was fascinated the by machine cutting the hedgerows around the fields. It’s essentially a tractor with a big lawnmower attached to a mechanical arm which then drives up and down mowing the sides and tops of hedges. I’m not sure how I thought they cut the hedges (a couple of hundred people wielding garden shears), but I certainly didn’t imagine that it was done with a lawnmower. I stopped the car to watch the machine in motion and take some pictures, but then my camera wouldn’t work. By the time I got home though, the camera was miraculously working again. And the next day the machine wasn’t there.
Another big event was our first snowfall. Most our days have been bright and clear, and it has only been the very low temperatures to remind us that it’s actually winter. After many dire warnings on the radio and TV at the beginning of the week of terrible storms just waiting to sweep the country with destruction, we had 30 minutes of snow on Tuesday afternoon. And then the sun came out again first thing Wednesday morning. The inclement weather certainly passed us by. The snow was really pretty for as long as it lasted. Everything goes deathly silent as the snow damps and absorbs all the sound. Everything also takes on a fuzzy outlook as the falling snow blurs all the natural and man-made lines. But then, as I said, the clouds went away and the sun came out.
Shopping also continues to engage me. Those chicken breast fillets I was rambling on about last week are at least twice the size of anything I ever came across in SA. I was able to make a stirfry with just one fillet that was more than enough for two people. The pre-prepared foods that just need some time in a microwave to make them edible are often much better value than the similar product in SA. It’s just that shopping here requires a much higher degree of involvement than that which we are used to. Even buying a newspaper requires a mental choice every time made even more interesting by the goodies (usually CDs or DVDs) to entice you to buy a particular paper. I’ve been buying a different one each day, even the trashier tabloids. I suppose it could become tiresome after a while, but I think it will take me a long time. Much to my delight, I discovered that both Tesco and Sainsbury’s stock Mrs Ball’s chutney (at a reasonable price), something no South African kitchen should ever go without. The price of freshly baked bread rolls came as a bit of a shock though – 35p each. Each. They should come with share certificates attached. Tesco also offers the very novel concept of self-service checkouts. Now there’s something that might not go down so well in SA. That would be a bit like parking your car in Khayelitsha and leaving the keys in the ignition.
Shopping for clothes is just as much of a challenge if only because we don’t know which stores appeal to what market. So we have to go into all of them. So far, all we’ve bought is a rather nice Harris Tweed jacket for me which has already been put to very good use. It’s just too cold to go without a jacket of some sort.
We’re taking it easy today (Sunday) after a full day yesterday. To give you a brief run through, we went shopping in the Saturday market in Warwick’s main square, and then drove to our animals via Coventry. We had to go into Coventry to find the Job Centre Lucia must go on Tuesday to register for National insurance. From the dogs we went to meet Richard and Anne and their daughter Polly at Hanwell Castle near Banbury in Oxfordshire. Anne is a former Millward Brown colleague of Lucia’s. The castle, more like a very big house, has acres of beautiful gardens as well as an observatory that is open to the public. It has what will become the largest private refracting telescope in the country set in its gardens. After the walk went to tea at Richard and Anne’s home in the hamlet of Winderton in the Warwickshire dales. When we got home in the evening we decided to go out for dinner. Our path took us past the imposing structure of St Mary’s church where people were hurrying in the doors. On investigating we discovered that there was a concert on for which I had misread the date in the advertising fliers. So we went to the concert instead of going to dinner straight away. The concert was by the Oriflamme Ensemble (a smallish orchestra) in aid of Amnesty International with works by Fauré, Ravel, Vaughan Williams and Brahms. It was a thoroughly enjoyable event even if I became distracted by the conductor whose sometimes wild gesticulations bore no apparent link to the music being played. The oboe soloist also left me wondering if he was able to breathe in and out at the same time; he blew so hard and so long without apparently breathing in that I kept expecting him to pass out from oxygen deprivation. And then we went to dinner at a little Italian place around the corner.
Lucia has had a tough week finding her feet in her new job. They do the job differently here, and the ambience of a corporate office with 400 employees, as opposed to an office of seven people in Cape Town, is also entirely different and a bit alien. Also, most of Lucia’s work in SA was related to management issues, whereas her job function here again has a greater emphasis on research. And the first week in any job is likely to be tough as one feels for one’s place and role in the business.
And that was another week in Warwick. We’re looking forward to moving into our new home at the end of March; the little apartment we are in is very small compared to the space we are used to.
Love, light & peace
Llewellyn
