Changing Clocks

Thursday. 10.55 a.m. I've been to Asda. I wanted some coloured markers, because I'm editing some of my written work, and it seemed a good way to show what I am going to cut, rather than merely scrubbing it out in black ink, so I can't read it anymore. They seem to have a fairly good stationary department. I haven't been there in a while, and when I went there last time, I was surprised by how it's changed. I think because it is under new ownership. No longer owned by the American company Walmart.

Saturday. 11.20 a.m. Well, it's sunny and bright as I write this, but it was quite nippy when I went out with Alfie around 5 a.m.

That water feature I mentioned in my last blog post (being polite calling it that.) has come into its own, (ie: some sort of use instead of being a weird shaped thing stuck in the centre of the community garden) by being a place for birds to drink and have a splash. I saw a large crow on it earlier when I was standing washing up in my kitchen. 

Sunday. 7.35 a.m. The clocks have changed. 'Spring forward', as someone has said, so you remember to set your clocks an hour forward. It was on Friday that I realized that the clocks changed. My FitBit and computers (iPad and MacBook and I suppose iPhone.) change automatically, thank goodness. I just found altering my digital watch really difficult and the date was not accurate, merely because I couldn't change it.

Yesterday afternoon I watched a film through Amazon Video, 'The Good Liar', which stars Helen Mirren and Ian McKellen. I have to say I'm something of a fan of Ian McKellen and admire his acting. He's very versatile and goes from playing such Shakespearean characters as Richard 111 through to Gandalf in 'The Lord of The Rings' trilogy to 'X Men', from sitcom in 'Vicious', to appearing in 'Coronation Street', Widow Twankey in pantomime and then Harold Pinter and then a character who has a dark and sinister past in this low key thriller. Amazing. I can say I have actually been in the same space as Ian McKellen. In the early 1970s I was an A.S.M. at the Phoenix Theatre in Leicester. As part of the wide mix of plays that were staged, not just what I'd term 'Main House', or part of the normal season, they did late-night productions. Ian McKellen came to direct a production of Tom Stoppard's hilarious one-act play 'The Real Inspector Hound', which had two other great actors in it, Derek Jacobi and Edward Hardwick, who went on to play Watson in the Granada Television series 'Sherlock Holmes.'

It was somewhat foggy when I took Alfie out at around 6.30 this morning, which was something of a surprise.

Quite a few people at church have covid, so, as a result of this, it was decided to have the morning service on Zoom today. I'm not sure I could see how it worked, having around 27 people all peering at one another on a laptop screen. I attempted to have Zoom on my Portal TV which is set up on my Hitachi HD television set, but for some reason, I couldn't get the video to work, so I transferred to my MacBook, and it worked well.

Busy Doing Nothing!

Friday. 8.10 a.m. That isn't entirely true. I am busy doing something, but it made a good title for this blog post.

It's a still and relatively mild sort of morning, although there was some frost on the grass when I went out earlier with Alfie.

I have just found out that this MacBook Pro doesn't have U.S.B. ports. Neither does it have a slot for a smart card, which the old MacBook Air had. I now know the newer ports are called Thunderbolt and are for connection to the cable for powering up the laptop. I believe I will have to get an adaptor, so I can connect my Canon printer to it as well as my recently-acquired microphone and other peripherals. I am going into the Apple Store in Central Milton Keynes shopping centre to have a word with someone about this and possibly purchase an adaptor. When you buy a new computer or any other electronic device, you never get an instruction manual, although I am proficient with most things. You can always find out information via the internet.

10.p.m. I went into the Apple Store and purchased the adaptor for the MacBook. On setting it up later on the laptop, I accidentally broke my reading glasses. One of the arms has broken off, rendering them virtually impossible to wear, but I managed to find my older pair of reading glasses, which I am currently wearing when I write this blog post.

Monday. 10.30 a.m. I went to church yesterday. It seems that we're more or less back to normal with numbers attending, which is good, although it is still being streamed live via Facebook.

I got home and I hadn't been in the flat five minutes before the fire alarm went off. Just seems a repetition of the other week, when the confounded alarm when off at virtually the same time. I'm not sure whether it was a fault, as it often is, or whether someone set it off because of something burning in their flat, for example, toast or food they'd forgotten to take out of their oven. Might even be because they were smoking. I can definitely smell cigarette smoke, so I suspect someone in the flat below me smokes. May be why there is so much smoking. It certainly gets annoying when it never stops. Just get something for it or even give up smoking, which I doubt very much is going to happen.

I have been collecting free cards in Sainsbury's. The offer has since ended, but you got a pack of Disney cards each time you spent £10. They did a similar thing where the cards were connected to Lego. I also bought an album for them, and had intended taking them with me at Christmas to Worcester for the grandsons. But I forgot. I got something from Amazon which came in a suitably sized envelope, so it seemed ideal to post them off. I needed parcel tape to secure the parcel so went to Asda to buy. I went this morning and was surprised by how much it had been changed since I was last in there. I believe it is now owned by a different company. WalMart, the previous owners, had obviously sold the company.  A change for the better I thought. 

The parcel is now complete and ready for posting.

6.55 p.m. I was in my bedroom listening to music on Alexa when the fire alarm went off. It's so loud I turned the music up to try and cancel out the confounded noise, but, even with the bedroom door closed it was next to impossible to think straight. There was a blue flashing light outside soon afterward, so I assumed it was a fire engine. They were here only yesterday, so they must have a hotline (!) to Dexter House. I must say they got here fast. As I write this (6.56) the noise has stopped, but I can hear the fire engine idling outside. Thank goodness it's stopped. A door has banged shut, so presumably, they're about to drive away. I'm getting suspicious now, I reckon it's been set off deliberately to give the fire service a fee exercise, probably to check how long it takes for an emergency call to be responded to. Probably to fit the required 'target.' Who knows, or even cares?