Cold Comfort Farm by Jan Needle (no relation)
Where’s this ruddy spring, that’s what I
want to know. It’s been a long, gruelling winter what with one thing and three
others, and I’ve had just about enough of it. Packed the grandkids and their ma
n pa off to some damn theme park or another today, and it’s so cold out (Pennines/Lancashire/Yorkshire
border) that they’d have been better off staying in bed.
Not that they’ll think that, of course. I
can remember days at Alton Towers (not where they’re going; apparently they
charge £20 a day for the use of a wheelchair, which sadly now is needed for one
of
the party) when it rained so hard the waterproofing of my skin gave up and I
filled me wellies from the inside by osmosis. Honest! You ask Donald Trump.
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| Spring is sprung? Come to't sunny north! |
And the
children? They never noticed it. Just demanded more ice cream…
Talking of wellies, my darling Mac rendered
it as ‘willies’ both the first time I typed it, then again just then (which is
poetry of a sort, n’est-ce pas?). Correcting the self-correcting facility.
Well, it passes the time, doesn’t it?
It also rendered ‘gruelling’ in the first
paragraph as ‘grueling’. Probably another presidential influence. Did you read
about the woman who was bumped off her Airbnb booking an hour before she
arrived in California for her holiday?
She asked the people why, in a text, and
they actually replied: ‘One word – Asian. We have Donald Trump now.’ Had she
been on United Airlines they’d have tossed her out of the window, one imagines.
In case you think that I’m obsessing, let
me get to the nitty gritty. Which is that I’m actually so cold (one jumper, two
jackets) that I can’t get me brain to spark up on all four cylinders. In fact,
I’m not sure I’ve got four left anymore.
And I’m very busy, I promise you. Me and a
mate called Andy Lynch, who with whom I used to work on Brookside, have
got a couple of cracking ideas (we think so, so please don’t bring me down; leave
that to the telly companies) which I should be working on.
I’ve tried (to spark the brain cells) but
without too much success, and then I saw the date. April 12. Significant only
in the fact I have my blog to do for the fifteenth. What should I do? Panic, or
go back to bed? (It’s two minutes short of midday, which would make it pretty
shameful, though.)
Aha, thinks I! Too cold to knock out
pitching-docs for TV execs to blow their noses on, or worse. Too depressed by
the hell-in-a-handcart world to turn on the radio in case I hear the news. Too
idle to go downstairs and make meself a cup of instant coffee. No milk, anyway.
Much too cold to drive downhill and get some from the Co-op.
So here you
are, sensation-seekers! A day in the life of Ijan Whatsisfaceovich! Fulfilling, exciting, illuminating!
And another
thing, as well as changing my English words to American – up until yesterday,
if I wanted to find a word anywhere in a document, I clicked Control and F, and
a box dropped down the left hand side. I’d type in the word, and it would
appear, and I could change it where it was, or replace it with another word
throughout the whole shebang.
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| Lots o' lovely lasses - and all the sarsaparilla you can drink! |
What I’ve got
to do these days, I discovered (another son, another phone call) is go up to a lickle window in
the right hand corner, and type in replace or summat – and the box drops down
just like it used to. Progress, no doubt. Bloody progress. Have they never
heard of the greatest engineering principle ever devised?
If it works, don’t fix it!
Ooh, I feel
much better now. I think another coat on, and a stroll down to the pub. And
bugger Bognor, into the bargain.
Pip pip!
*Answers on a postcard please; and I’ll sue.
Comments
who with whom I used to work on Brookside with
and the computer, not noted for a sense of humour, changed it. The sort of subbing that's bringing the Guardian into daily disrepute.
Bah. Bumhug.