19-01-01 Tuesday - Happy New Year!

Last night was the last party for some time. Which is a good thing, because I’m all partied out. We’ve had celebrations before Christmas, over Christmas, and then after Christmas; specifically, we’ve been drinking on Friday 28th, Saturday 29th, Sunday 30th and now New Year’s Eve. It’s time for a rest.  

It may be a month-long rest, or it may be shorter. I’ve been considering whether or not to participate in Dry January, which may seem like a good idea now, while I am mildly hungover, but it may not be so clever on a cold Tuesday in a couple of weeks’ time. I’ve been given some whisky for my birthday, and some rum for Christmas, so I’ve got all the tools I need to not have a dry January, in case I decide to go that way.  There are also a few bottles of wine and prosecco which will need tidying away, and I'm not sure that they will hang around for 30 days.  

Resolutions that I have decided on for 2019 include:  

• read more often: I get Private Eye delivered and I don’t read it instantly. I need to do something about that. I also have a load of books I should actually read and learn from. And, of course, I have a bookcase full of comics which I need to get to grips with.  
• cook more often: I should be more confident in the kitchen. I may start off heating up chicken steaks or pork loins, for instance, but I’d like to add some value to the food I make for the family. I think I should cook once a week and demystify cookery and baking.  

I’ll need to revisit these in a couple of months and see how I’m getting along 🙂.  

TTFN.

18-12-16 Sunday - PWEI @ The Slade Rooms, Wolverhampton on 15th Dec 2018

It had been a while coming; Ewan had bought the tickets back in June. And after a Christmas works do on Friday night, travelling from Worthing to Wolverhampton felt like an odyssey. But here we were, in Wolverhampton, about to see PWEI at a relatively small venue. We’d had a beer or two in The Giffard Arms, which had been described to me as “a rock pub”, and it certainly fitted the description. There was a lot of black and leather going on, as well as a ceremonial throne which Ewan tried to get a picture of unsuccessfully. Not only were there lots of musicheads about, but Wolves had beaten Bournemouth 2-0 so the town was full of celebrants.  

Once we’d girded our loins sufficiently, we headed to the Slade Rooms with our dancing shoes on. Beers were £2.50 each, which was lovely, and of course the first stop was to review the merchandise. PWEI always do a good t-shirt, and they hadn’t let us down in Wolves. I picked up a nice purple number, which started off being too small for me, so I had to exchange it. I think they’d given me a girl’s medium by mistake! But issue resolved, we watched a bit of the support, Cut La Roc, as he DJed a host of big beat “choonz”. He was good, but it was clear that the crowd were waiting for the Poppies to take the stage. We were right down the front, and I was considering moving to the back. But we were chatting, and time got away from us.  

All of a sudden, PWEI were on the stage and tearing through “Ich bin ein Auslander”, and I was pressed up against the barrier, with people pushing and shoving behind me. It was too much for me, and when I got the chance I headed to the back. The first song hadn’t even finished, but I was already pumped full of adrenaline. The Poppies have been going for a while, and this latest incarnation certainly know how to get the crowd going. The songs they choose to play from their extensive back catalogue all have pace and verve. They actually played quite a few from Dos Dedos, which I don’t have, so I shall have to keep an eye out for that. They obviously covered all the favourites – “Def Con One”, “Preaching to the Perverted”, “Wise Up Sucker!”, “Dance of the Mad” – and it got to the point where I didn’t know what they had left to perform during the encore. But they didn’t let us down, they had kept “Not Now James, We’re Busy” and “PWEIsation”. They also performed a tribute to Pete Shelley, which didn’t go quite to plan but was certainly heartfelt. And then, they were gone, and it was time to get a nightcap and then hit the hay. Since we are now in our late forties, Ewan retired with a cup of herbal tea, and we enjoyed the hospitality of the Wolverhampton Premier Inn.  

Today we took things easy, and had a good hearty fry-up before another epic journey to get home, but I had slept okay and didn’t overdo the lagers last night, so I’ve been feeling okay. Ewan and I have agreed that we’ll have to find another gig to go to in November / early December next year, and so that is a plan.  And if it is half as good as the Poppies were last night, that’ll be a gig worth going to... 

TTFN.  

18-11-24 Saturday - Asus C302 - I've only gorn an dunnit!

So I took advantage of the Black Friday offer at Argos and got an Asus C302 for £399.99, which was on sale at £100 or 20% off. I also used my "Smart Spending" scheme at work to get a further discount of 6%. So, all-in, the laptop cost me £376.

It's impressive. The screen is bigger than the C101 I already had, but I'm getting used to it very quickly. Also, it's HD, which is noticeable. And the keyboard is backlit, which is nice.
Now I need to sell my C101 and get some money together so that I can pay for this beast. I might be updating this blog more often than usual, to ensure that I am getting my money's worth out of this chromebook. And I should be putting money aside to cover the bill when it eventually arrives, which means not going out, which means more time sitting in front of this and spouting inane waffle.
What a treat, I bet we can't wait...
TTFN.

18-11-13 Tuesday - Coming Back to Blogger

Well, I tried the sunlit uplands of a WordPress blog hosted by GoDaddy, but it turned out to be neither elevated nor sunlit.

I looked at what I was spending in order to maintain my domain ownership, and my quarterly Wordpress hosting costs, and then compared that against the vague ramblings I was / am publishing, and it didn’t quite add up.

To be frank, this is an exercise in vanity. No-one cares about it, least of all me, but I shall carry on regardless because that’s what I do.

Really this is just a note to myself; a record of what I was (maybe) thinking at the time. I’ve already surprised myself by looking back at how even-handed I was pre-Brexit whether to vote Remain or Leave, when it’s quite clear that Remain is and was the sensible option, and there may be other things that I can look back on and surprise myself.

What made me look at my costs, and the benefits? It was an email I received from GoDaddy, advising me that I had possible malware on my blog. When I looked at the files they referenced, they were all WordPress files. when I rang them to advise that I hadn’t installed any custom files, they responded that these files might cause an issue, but they could provide some security for about £80 per year. I realised then that my vague meanderings weren’t worth what I was paying to GoDaddy. I’ve been paying £6 per month in quarterly instalments for a basic managed WordPress account, and then I paid nearly £80 to own the .com domain for 5 years and £60 for the .co.uk domain. £140 for five years of vanity publishing, and (£18*4*5=) £360 for the WP hosting just doesn’t add up, in my view. I’m happy navigating the backwaters of the blogosphere, hoping to add a note of common sense here or there.

It took me a while to work out how to get back to viewing my blog on Blogger, I had replaced the theme with the Blogger to WordPress plug-in code, and so I set a new theme and voila! My blog reappeared almost like magic. I will take a few days, I think, to mess around with the settings and the look of the blog and get it the way I like it.

I shall continue to plug away on Blogger.com and be happy in chuntering away to myself here. I’ll update my GoDaddy hosted website (thatrobthorley.com) as long as I can, by copying and pasting, but really the blog of record will be this one, https://robthorley.blogspot.com/.

TTFN.  

18-11-01 Thursday - Asus C302 Chromebook

I have decided that I want an Asus C302 chromebook. I like my little Asus C101 Flip, and it is extremely portable, but I like the idea of a back-lit keyboard, a slightly bigger full HD screen, and the power of an M3 processor.  

The problem is that an Asus C302 costs £500. That’s quite a lot for a Chromebook, especially when I don’t really use it sufficiently to notice the difference between the 10.1” screen of the C101 and the HD 12.5” screen of the C302. I do a bit of writing in the evenings, and a bit of surfing, but not much apart from that.  

I’ve read some reviews and it seems that the C302 is the best value for money chromebook in town. With 4gb of RAM and 64gb of memory, it’d certainly be enough for my needs for a few years. I’m kind of hoping that there might be a special offer for Black Friday, but that would need the kind of luck I don’t get.  

I do love a new bit of kit though. I’ve been watching a few C302s on eBay and they tend to go for a fair sum. I probably wouldn’t use it any more than I currently use my C101, so it would probably be a waste of £500. I’ll probably stick with what I’ve got, to be fair. It’s nice to dream though. And I can always keep a lookout on eBay, just in case one of these turns up cheap 🙂.  

TTFN.  

18-10-28 Sunday - Our Girl @ The Haunt, Friday 18-10-26

Friday rolled around again, and before we knew it the weekend was upon us. This Friday had a different flavour though, as we had tickets to see Our Girl at The Haunt. “We” in this case was me and three friends of a similar age, all keen on live music. G and J had seen Our Girl before, I had listened to a couple of tracks on YouTube and was looking forward to seeing them live. G wanted to get there early to see the support band, Breathe Panel, as he was a fan of theirs as well, which was refreshing; sometimes people aren’t interested in the support, but I think it is all part of the night. The times I've had an absolutely clear view of the support and then been swamped by tall skinny indie kids five minutes before the main band take to the stage doesn’t bear thinking about. 

Breathe Panel had just started when we got there, and were your standard indie band – four lads, pretty proficient from the sound of it, and I’d be interested to hear their album. The second support act shambled on to the stage and honestly at first glance they didn’t look old enough to date my thirteen-year old daughter. On closer inspection they were probably in their late teens or early twenties, and all skinny rakes in jeans. They started playing and the lead singer was obviously channeling the spirit of the young Mick Jagger, all pouts and poses. But they played a pretty good brand of glam rock, and I for one enjoyed it. They managed to sound fresh and familiar at the same time, which is a good trick if you can pull it off. And their new single should hopefully find them a few new fans (me included!). 

Buzzard Buzzard Buzzard came and went, and then it was time for the main event – Our Girl. They formed in Brighton, being at Uni together, and it was the last night of their tour so it was a bit of a homecoming gig for them, I suppose. Anyway, they certainly impressed, knowing how to put a bit of space in their music. One of the stand-out tracks was, I think, called “Sub Rosa”, which was sublime, but they were all good. On one track I found myself thinking of Nirvana’s “Heart-shaped Box”, which I suppose is a good sign. I’d be happy to see them again, and I hope that they continue to make more music in a similar vein.  

On the way home we discussed the gig, of course, and also other recent and future gigs that were bubbling under. Miles Hunt is currently on his “Custodian” tour, and he is playing Brighton in a week or so – I might go to that. Obviously it won’t be a Wonder Stuff gig, but it might be enjoyable in a different way. And then there is a new band who are getting some attention, called TVAM – but they are playing the night before Courtney Barnett, and I'm not sure I can handle two late nights in a row. We’ll see though, it might be possible... 

TTFN. 

18-10-20 Saturday - A Musical Week

Last week was a bit of a musical week, for a change. It started with a trip to see Eek-A-Mouse at the Concorde II in Brighton, which was a bit different for me. Eek-A-Mouse is a big reggae star, and I was introduced to his music a couple of years ago by a friend. I've got one of his albums, and when I saw that he was playing so close by, I thought I couldn’t miss the opportunity to see him. The gig, as it happened, was okay. Eek-A-Mouse came out on stage in full Arthurian chainmail, tabard and crown, and wore that outfit all night.  

Eek-A-Mouse, wearing a crown and a tabard. Standard Monday night.

I’ve never been to a reggae night before, and I quite enjoyed it. I have to say, the crowd were shorter than I'm used to at indie gigs; I don’t know why that would be, but I did notice that I had a better view of the stage than I'm normally used to. The sound was good, and the crowd were into it and enjoying it, but it all seemed to be a bit same-y, there wasn’t a sense of building towards a big finish. Maybe because I only had the one album, maybe because I didn’t really know his music, I wasn’t on tenterhooks. I left a few minutes early to make sure I caught one of the last trains home.  

The previous week I had finally decided to buy Shigeto’s album, “The New Monday”. It’s been out a while, but I had heard the first track, “Detroit Pt. 2”, and it had wormed its way into my brain with its stripped back beats. So that arrived, and on Tuesday evening, while TW and the girls were out at rugby, I got some time to listen to it at some volume, and enjoy it. I liked the whole album, it’s really nice, mellow, with some insistent beats and jazzy too.  

Saturday night bookended the week and brought another trip to Brighton, to see another band I’d not seen before – Halo Maud. I’d received a promo email from Melting Vinyl referring to her “fantastic sets at the Great Escape”, and as the tickets were only £8, I thought it might be worth a flutter. And an added plus would be not having to sit through Strictly and X Factor at home. As it was, they were fantastic. They reminded me a bit of Sheen, who I saw supporting Cud at The Garage a few years ago, and also Cocteau Twins, in a way. I certainly enjoyed their set, to the extent that I bought their album, “Je Suis un Ile”. Having listened to the tracks again at home, I think I made the right choice. They are an enjoyable collection of tracks, and I am sure I'll be listening to them frequently in the future. 

I also bought some tickets to see “Our Girl” next Friday, and I have a number of gigs coming up over the next couple of months – Courtney Barnett in Brighton, Cud in London and then, in December, PWEI in Wolverhampton. And I've just seen that Kristin Hersh is playing Worthing in March 2019, so next year is beginning to shape up nicely.  

TTFN. 

18-10-06 Sunday - A Month of Sundays

I love a Sunday. They are normally quite relaxed, and things tend to happen around me, if I manage it right. Today has been no exception. TW brought me a cup of tea in bed which was very pleasant – normally it’s the other way around. But then I wake up early and don’t like spending time in bed when I’m awake. So a cup of tea in bed for me is a rare occurrence.  

After enjoying my tea, I got up to have some breakfast, and made myself some toast with home-made marmalade. We have an Amazon Echo, and I asked Alexa to play some Cocteau Twins. None of the girls were up, so it was just me, my toast and the Cocteaus enjoying some early morning sun in the kitchen. What a pleasant way to spend time.  

Then it was time to pop to the Co-Op, since we’d run out of milk. Last week I managed to pick up a Mexican half a chicken on the bone, reduced from £4 to £2.40. I managed to get one again this week, as well as some southern fried chicken steaks and some chicken breasts, all reduced. And the milk, of course, which was what I went for in the first place.  

On a Sunday morning the girls normally play rugby and today was no exception, so we headed off to the rugby club. It was a lovely sunny morning, so it was a pleasure to stand around in the sunshine. Then once the practice session was underway, it was time to indulge in another guilty pleasure of mine – a sausage bap. The sausages they use at the club are delicious, and more so when smothered in a blend of brown sauce and English mustard. I was overcharged for my diet coke, but I let it slide – this time, at least.  

Back at home and Dad popped round for a cup of tea. He and Mum have just been on holiday in Cyprus, so it was good to see him and it was good to hear that they had a good time. Once he left, TW mowed the lawn in the back garden, and I pulled a few weeds. And now we’re on the countdown to Dr Who. It would be nice to have a relaxing beer, but I think if I had one, that might turn into several, and I don’t want to start the week with a hangover. It might be time to cook that Mexican chicken now... 

TTFN. 

18-09-29 Saturday - Any Questions

Two weeks ago Any Questions came to Worthing. TW knew about it in August, I’m sure one of her Facebook friends told her, and she let me know, and I booked a ticket. It was at Worthing College on Friday 14th September, which was nice. 

As part of the ticket reservation process, they ask you to submit a question or questions, since it is the audience who make the show. I had a question in mind, but when I put it to TW she couldn’t follow it, so I knew I needed to make it more succinct. It wasn’t as though my question was going to be read out on national radio, though – that would be silly thinking.  

Anyway, the week of the broadcast came, and I realised I needed to submit my question, so I did. I think I'd been subconsciously considering it, because when I concentrated on it, I was quite pleased with the brevity of the question, considering its complexity. So I’d put that to one side, and the main thing then was to attend the broadcast and enjoy the political to-and-fro. 

On the Friday night itself, on the way home from Brighton to Worthing, I caught the London train from Hove to Worthing, and happened to be in the same carriage as two of the guests, Bernard Jenkin and Wera Hobhouse, which I took as some kind of omen. Well, whether it was an omen or whether I was just starstruck, I’m not sure, but it was certainly notable.  

The other members of the panel were Lord Andrew Adonis and Sherelle Jacobs. 

Later that evening, I arrived at the college and settled in for the show. As expected, there was a bit of a pre-show warm-up, which consisted of the production team “geeing us up” with stories of other shows and encouraging us to participate vocally – since, naturally, we were going to be on the radio.  

Then they got to about 7:50pm, ten minutes before the show, and they called out the people who would be asking the questions. There was an empty row at the front of the room, which I thought might have been reserved for “local dignitaries”, but actually the row had been reserved for the questioners. The production team called out a number of people and I thought that my chance had faded, but then they called my name! I was number 8 in the row of questioners, and I thought it unlikely that I would get to ask my question on-air. I listen to Any Questions, and they rarely get through as many as eight questions... Never mind though, at least I would get to sit on the front row, and get a clear view of the panel.  

The first couple of questions were unrelated to Brexit, but then inevitably the questioning turned to Brexit. I believe it was the third question which was asked. Someone mentioned something about trade deals, and I thought “ooh, my question might run on nicely from that”, and then Jonathan Dimbleby said, “On that point, let’s take the question from Rob Thorley. Rob Thorley?” It took the Production Assistant a moment or two to find me, because the question was being asked out of order, but I did get to post my question: given the number of trade deals we currently enjoy as part of the EU, how long will it take to get back to where we are now, once we’ve left next March?  

Sherelle conceded that it would take some time, Bernard Jenkin said we’d see benefits of leaving within months, and Lord Adonis made the point that next March we won’t be party to the existing EU trade deals any longer. And of course, Wera sided with Lord Adonis. I got the answers I was expecting and the answers that I wanted. And I got to be on Radio 4! How exciting! I think it was the most controversial question of the evening, but then of course, I would say that, wouldn’t I? 

TTFN. 

18-08-27 Monday - The Dentist and a Filling

Friday 17th brought a trip to the dentist. One of my fillings had fallen out while eating some jam, of all things. One of the fruit seeds had inveigled its way between my wisdom tooth and the filling in my second molar, which had only been in place for 18 months or so.  

It had been difficult enough to get in place the first time around; I'd been for a check-up and the dentist identified that I needed a filling, but when he tried to do it, the anaesthetic didn’t seem to be working that well. The dentist had to give me a temporary filling over Christmas and then I went back in January to have it finished off.  

I have a pathological fear of dentists. Well, it may not be a fear of dentists. I have absolute trust in my dentist. But I have a fear of people messing around in my mouth with whirry things like dentists’ drills and scrapy things. I don’t think that I've ever been hurt, but it is the anticipation of pain that drives me mad. My heart rate increases, I start sweating, I grab onto the arms of the dentist chair tightly and have to be talked down before I can let go (almost).  

On this occasion, the dentist agreed with me; the filling had fallen out. In addition, he said, the tooth was cracked and broken. It was in a pretty bad way. He attempted to refill the filling, which was a bit traumatic. Mr D used two different drills; one felt almost pneumatic, like a road-drill or something. The other was a finer, more high-pitched drill which really penetrated my skull. He had to remove the existing filling, bore out more of my tooth and then put in a bigger filling.  

He also warned me that if this filling didn’t take, he’d probably have to extract the tooth. The tooth was in such a bad way, he said, that even a root canal probably wasn’t worth it. That was depressing news, and bothered me for several days, to be honest. But actually, the filling hasn’t ached so it’s been okay. I’m not even sure that the filling is there any longer, but it’s not painful so I’m going to leave it. I’ll be back for a check-up anyway before I know it, and if necessary he can extract it then. At least if it is extracted, there won’t be any future requirements for fillings – in that tooth. One down, thirty-one to go.  

TTFN.  

18-08-05 Sunday - Films

Yesterday we went to see Mama Mia – Here We Go Again at the Dome Cinema in Worthing. I say “we”, I mean the kids & I, since TW was off at a beer festival in Wapping. I actually quite enjoyed it. It was nice to walk into town and then sit in a cool air-conditioned cinema for two hours. The film is pretty much the same as the first, so if you enjoyed that, you’ll probably enjoy the second one. It was completely unbelievable, of course, but then you don’t go to see Mama Mia for its cinema verité style – or if you did, you’d be disappointed... I didn’t recognise most of the songs, but then I’m not a big Abba fan, and they’d probably used most of the recognisable ones in the first film. Having said that, though, Abba probably have enough of a back catalogue to soundtrack six or seven more films.  

The film was showing at the third screen which is new. It’s quite small; it can seat about 40 people. I didn’t notice the size of the room though once the film started, which was a good thing. We walked in and out of town, and on the way home we stopped at Greggs for a snack. The girls liked that, sometimes it’s the little things that please the most.  

Last night after the girls went to bed or otherwise vacated the living room, I watched The Adjustment Bureau. This was much more my type of film. I had a couple of beers to accompany the film, and enjoyed it. Matt Damon and Emily Blunt were good in their roles, but also the guys from the “Bureau” were also well-cast, especially Anthony Mackie. Looking at the wikipedia entry, it was based on a short story by Philip K Dick, and that makes sense. It did kind of feel like there were a few bits missing, but it skipped along with some pace and was there were a few good set pieces. The film was actually included in my Amazon Prime subscription, which was nice; I think I need to start making more use of that. For instance, I know Outlander is there, and that is supposed to be quite good, and there are a number of films I could quite easily lose myself in. So you might see more of these sort of posts in the future – assuming you’re reading this now (spoiler: no-one is). 

TTFN. 

18-08-05 Sunday - Camping Disaster

Last weekend we went camping, up in the Cotswolds, with some friends, I&H and their kids. We'd seen that the heatwave that has covered the country since early June was due to come to an end, but that didn’t bother us, we’d been camping in bad weather before. And the forecasts weren’t predicting bad weather, as far as I could see; they mentioned that the weather would be “changeable” but I didn’t see anything more concerning than that.  

TW & H had identified a very nice campsite, which was actually a field behind a pub – The Duke at Clifton. It was on a slight slope, but they had built up flat areas, and the grass was kept short. There were sinks for washing up, and the showers and toilets were actually inside the pub building – and accessible 24*7 with a code. They were very clean and a pleasure to use.  

We set up camp on the Thursday, it was baking hot & sunny. If it had stayed like that I would have been very happy – but unfortunately, that wasn’t to be.  

Friday was predicted to be the hottest day of the year, so we spent that at Banbury’s open air swimming pool. It wasn’t actually that hot, but it was warm, and the pool was nice. In the evening when we got back to the tent the wind had picked up a bit, and it looked like gusts might be as strong as 40mph which equates to a gale force 7, according to the website I looked at. Sleeping Friday night was a bit difficult, because the tent was flapping in the wind and being noisy. But no problems, overall. When I got up on Saturday morning I saw that another tent had been pegged out very neatly and tidily, and all the guy ropes had been used. I did make a mental note to do the same for our tent; it would probably make sleeping easier and less noisy, but unfortunately I never got around to it.  

Saturday we spent looking around some local attractions, and bumping into old friends of TW. It was windy, and the clouds were fair speeding across the sky, threatening rain one minute and bright sunshine the next. It certainly was “changeable”. Unfortunately, when we got back to the campsite, we saw that the side of the tent had blown in. I hadn’t expected that! One set of poles had buckled, and the tent had a small rip in it where one of the guy ropes had pulled away from the tent. And the weather was turning for the worse as well... When the rain set in that evening, TW & I decided that cowardice was the better part of valour, and we retreated to TW’s mum’s house, which by luck was only 20 miles or so away. I was the first to suggest that we should go to the MiL’s, but TW was a bit reluctant to leave I&H and their kids. I&H were in a caravan though, and not “at risk” as we were. But after I’d popped up to the facilities in the pub, and the rain seemed to be properly set in, she agreed it was probably the best option. We were there and dry by 9pm, and sleeping indoors again, despite being on a camping trip... it was a little weird.  

We had agreed that we would see the MiL on Sunday anyway, so I&H came over for lunch and a nice relaxed day. I (from I&H, not me) advised that we probably wouldn’t want to sleep in the tent that night, as there were puddles of water in it from Saturday's rain, so we stayed with the MiL on Sunday night too, but got up early on the Monday and headed back to the campsite for breakfast. 

On Monday we visited two National Trust properties – Upton House and Charlecote Park, both of which were lovely to look around, and it was a relaxing day. We haven’t been to a National Trust property in ages, so it was good to get some use out of our membership – otherwise, what is the point of the monthly direct debit? 

Monday night was nice, we ate in the pub. The hamburgers were delicious, and we were all sated. It was a shame that, after we went to bed, more rain came. The majority of it came at about 5am Tuesday morning, and we were all awake. Because the tent had blown in on Saturday afternoon and the poles had twisted, the integrity of the tent had gone completely on one side. Instead of the water running off the top and sides of the tent, it was pooling on top of the tent, and seemed to be creating a lake more than anything else. TW shook that off and the rain seemed to stop.  

There was no point in taking the tent home, so once we had packed up the contents on Tuesday morning, we bagged the tent and threw it in the bin behind the pub. We laid our tent to rest in the Cotswolds, and I hope it is happy and peaceful there.  

TTFN.

18-07-25 Wednesday - The Wordpress White Screen of Death

I tried to access my blog on Saturday, but encountered a white / blank screen. I didn’t think too much about it at the time, I was considering writing something but I didn’t have anything concrete in mind. Then on Monday I tried again, while I was at work, and I got the same result. Hmm, that was a bit odd. I might not have worried about it much, except that I had just paid GoDaddy for five years of blog hosting, which was a big deal for me. So I called them. I spoke to a very polite & courteous chap who was clearly based in the U.S., and he advised that probably my plug-ins were causing an issue. There were two ways to address this; I could either SFTP into my account and try to fix it myself, or I could pay another healthy £37 to get premium support, where an expert would fix my issues for me.  

It goes without saying that I chose the DIY option. I googled a few things and then went into full-on problem solver mode. I downloaded an SFTP client, FileZilla, and accessed my account without issue. There are some troubleshooting guides on the net, so I followed those; I disabled all my plug-ins and then my themes, but unfortunately neither of those steps resolved the issue. I was logged into my WordPress account on my chromebook, so I logged out to see if that was the issue. It wasn’t. And that meant that I couldn’t log into my account at all, which was a blow. I repeated a few of the steps to see if that would change anything, and I was getting more and more desperate. I renamed my .htaccess file, and looked in my config file to check if debugging was enabled. Debugging wasn’t enabled, so I tried to enable it but I think I buggered it up: the config file didn’t look the same as it did when I first looked into it. And the message had changed – I was now getting a 500 error message when I tried to access the wp-admin page.  

I was considering giving up, and potentially re-installing WordPress from scratch, but reading through it, it seemed a bit more complicated than I wanted to try. Maybe some time in the future, eh? So as a last resort I started clicking around my GoDaddy account pages, and I spotted that there were back-ups. Back-ups? I didn’t know about those. The polite GoDaddy rep never mentioned back-ups. And I knew that my last blogpost that seemed to work was on or about the 4th July, so if I could go back to before then, I might be in luck. If it didn’t work in totality, hopefully my config file might at least be repaired.  

I hit the “restore back-up” button. Then I closed out of Chrome, to refresh the cookies / cache. I took a deep breath and fired up Chrome again, and tried to log into my wp-admin page. The log-in option was there and I was able to access my account, finally. After about two and a half hours of faffing around with SFTP, it turned out that I could have solved the issue in a couple of clicks in the GoDaddy admin pages. So that was a wasted evening, more or less. And then, it was time for bed.  

TTFN.

18-07-25 Wednesday - Huawei Y7

So TW’s phone contract expired a few days ago and she popped into Tesco at the weekend to select a new phone. Everyone likes a new electronic toy from time to time. Before we went in, I was leaning towards suggesting the Moto G6 Play. It has a big screen and is cheap on a 24-month contract. I like a cheap phone, they tend to do most of the same things as expensive phones, but maybe not quite in such a flashy (I.e. quick) manner. The saleswoman recommended the Huawei Y7, she said it was quick and the camera was good. I’d had a P9 Lite, so I was happy with that as a recommendation, and TW took it.  

We picked the phone up on Sunday, and by Sunday evening TW was already complaining about the responsiveness (or lack thereof) of the phone, and the fact that the screen was dim and the camera was not good. To be honest, I wasn’t surprised. The Y7 had to be at least one step down from the P series, and although the screen was big, the phone didn’t look good. She was advised that she had 14 days to return it in case of dissatisfaction, and so she took them up on that offer. On Tuesday she took it back to Tesco and exchanged it for a Samsung A6. All credit to Tesco, they honoured their end of the bargain, they exchanged it without any fuss. Although the phone is slightly smaller and slightly more expensive per month, TW is happy. And in fairness the A6 performs better than the Y7. So there’s a tale for you; make sure you know what you’re getting in your next phone, and if you can, make sure you’ve got the option to swap it if you’re not happy with it.  

TTFN. 

18-07-24 Tuesday - Christmas in July

So, Movies 24 (channel 325 on Sky) has been hosting a “Christmas in July” season. And I’ve been recording a few of the films to watch. Normally I wouldn’t be that bothered, but a friend of mine hosts a “Half Christmas” and that has kind of infected me, I guess... 

Half Christmas is like Christmas, but it’s halfway between last Christmas and next Christmas. We have roast turkey, roast potatoes, red cabbage, sprouts, thick seasonal gravy, except there is lots of booze involved and if the weather is favourable, we get a suntan at the same time.  

So she (N) has lent me a couple of seasonal Christmas books and in addition to the Half Christmas festivities, it’s opened my eyes to the fact that Christmas isn’t just limited to late November / December. And when I saw that Movies 24 were running a “Christmas in July” season, I thought it would be good to watch a few of them.  

Christmas-themed films tend to be love stories dressed up in snow and mistletoe. They tend to be variable in quality, and to date there has been one which I didn’t bother watching to the end. That was due to the low production values, I think, rather than the story. The story itself was rather whimsical, it was suggesting that Santa Claus’s daughter was working with the USPS to answer letters to kids who had written to Father Christmas. And there was a single guy who had taken on the responsibility of looking after his orphaned niece, so there was a big hint about how the film would end. But the production values were poor and they reminded me of a kids’ show, and so I deleted it.  

At the other end of the quality rainbow, I’ve seen a couple of seasonal goodies starring Dean Cain (formerly of Superman fame). One was a skiing film, which was enjoyable, and the other was called “Broadcasting Christmas”, in which Sabrina the Teenage Witch (Melissa Joan Hart) was a co-star. That was a good one.  

Anyway, I’ve got a couple of films left to watch. But I’ve enjoyed watching a load of crappy festive movies, and I’d like to continue down this particular furrow. Unfortunately, this particular season draws to a close this Friday, so there’s only a couple of films left to watch. But it’s been fun.  

TTFN.