Once Works Well was pure technology. Now it seeks merely to divert.
Pansy subjects - Verse! Opera! Domestic trivia! - are now commonplace.
The 300-word limit for posts is retained. The ego is enlarged

Thursday 4 March 2010

The computer bites back

I went slightly bonkers when computers were introduced (for word processing then for DTP) at my magazine. The benefits were such it is clear I rhapsodised too much about them chez Bonden. Mrs BB avoided the infection and only agreed to receive a laptop some fifteen years later. In the intervening two years she has used it regularly but conservatively.

Those who approve of poetic justice will enjoy hearing the gift has rebounded on me. Take birthday presents. Given our age neither of us hangs about once a need is identified; we go ahead and buy. Marking Mrs BB’s birthday, now only days away, has always been difficult since Hereford is not Regent Street. But the Internet gave me an edge. Not now though. Mrs BB forestalls me by impulse-buying on her own behalf.

Second. Should the laptop go on holiday to the Languedoc villa in June? No, we all agreed; we’ll never be off the damn thing. But time after time last year facts – maddening in their immediacy – needed to be verified, checked or investigated. When my desktop was the only available computer the question didn’t arise. This year the insidious Hewlett Packard may keep me out of the pool.

SONGS OF PRAISE poetry primer
A man that looks on glass/On it may stay his eye
Or if he pleases through it pass/And then the heaven espy.
The exploding metaphor

All may of Thee partake/Nothing could be so mean
Which with this tincture "for thy sake"/Would not grow bright and clean.
Whence came the quotes?

Christian, up and smite them/Counting gain not loss.
Muscular accountancy

Herod then with fear was filled;/“A prince,” he said, “in Jewry!”
All the little boys he killed/At Bethlem (sic) in his fury.
Steady hand on the bathos tiller

Novel progress 6/3/10. Ch. 16: 3422 words. Chs. 1 - 15: 67,628 words. Comments: Hatch starts earning his crust.