The Serpentine Twists of An Unexpected Life

Very often things don't go as you would want them or even as you would expect. The sun rises and traverses the sky for eight, nine , ten hours and then it goes dark and the moon may rise and for the rest of th eearth day you can sleep as the dark hangs around slowly dispersing into the next day.

I've still not got my roof fixed but last night I decided to get a takeway from The Diner in Fenham. My normal modus operandi is to order via their phone app, then walk up and pick up (it's probably about 500 yards from my front dooor) and pay by card (I could pay by card in the app but you have to put in your card number and loads of other details each time) .... except ...... their card machine was not working. There is no cash machine close by... so .....

I walked back to Two Ball Lonnen Post Office to get some cash but the cash machine was out of service, 100 yards up the road is a Nisa and that had a working cash machine. I then decided to walk back to The Diner though the estate and notied a van for Responsible Roofing so I photographed the phone numbers and went to pay for the pizza and curry.

I mentioned that I may have found someone to fix my roof and the guy at The Diner immediately told me about a local brilliant guy who did all their work and directed me to where I had seen the van , it was the same guy we were talking about. I have an appointment today with him so things are looking better.

So this is just a post about how unexpected twists can take you to a postive conclusion.

Just as an aside I'm still enjoying "The Illuminatus Trilogy" by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson, and found out the latter has thirty five books published on similar themes  which feature knowledge , lies , great writing, a sense of humour and a razor sharp wit so I have a feeling I will be purchasing more of his work.

So a perfect song would be George Harrison's excellent "Any Road" which basically says "If You Don't Know Where You're Going, Any Road Will Take You There" .

Enjoy this sunny Thursday

Control

I've mentioned how not having control of a situation can make you stressed. Manty times part of that is caused by not knowing what is causing the situation. So I have a bad leak in the spare bedroom , right above where the bed is. So I know the roof is leaking and I can't get in touch with my roofer. Last night I took the plunge and went into the attic and saw exactly what was happening. I can't do anything about it but I can now tell the roofer exactly where he needs to target. The attic is not a great place to navigate and one slip will see you dropping through the ceiling. Need to think about getting flooring in there, but that's for another day.

So I am (for me) whizzing through 2023 , it is very stream of consciousness and random ideas and will definitely not be to most people's tastes , but I am enjoying it. It's not something that is destined for the Charity Shop immediately, but how many books do you keep and never reread. I have quite a lot , and think , really I should let them go , I will never read them again and someone else could benefit. I have multiple copies of "Lord of The Rings" and "The Hobbit" , now there should be really no need for more than one copy of a book.

Similarly with albums although since music became digital multiple copies of exactly the same song (not counting remixes) is the norm. I remember the shock of discovering I had some Bay City Rollers songs. While "Keep On Dancing" (one of their early singles) and their covers of "Rock'n'Roll Love Letter" and "It's A Game" were good I had no desire to add the Bay City Rollers to my collection... but there they were on the soundtrack of "The Filth and The Fury" the julian Temple feature about The Sex Pistols.

So I found a "live" performance by The Bay City Rollers featuring two of their best cover.

A Laptop Stole My Week

I am still trying to update the laptop to Windows 10. This is basically because the software I want to run on it won't run on Windows 8. It seems that every time I get past one brick wall there is another one waiting.

Added to that the leak in the roof is still there, I tried getting into the rook but my biggest ladder is not long enough so, I've ordered a longer ladder although hopefully the roofer will turn up and sort it out this afternoon.

The skies are very grey and it is frustrating not being able to get into the roofspace , but the new ladder should help with that. Water is very insidious, yes we need it to drink and clean but it can find it's way through the most unexpected paths.

The laptop had some software updates which I applied and apparently there are 619 issues for it to fix, if I pay £27 for software to do him. I feel this is, to say the least, underhand Toshiba.

So I am still in this limbo , though I am sure I will I will eventually get my way with it. As I say if Cars and Washing Machines were like computers no one would drive or wash anything. I don't know where the "Limbo" thought came from but it gives me a chance to share "Sitting In Limbo" by Jimmy Cliff.