Honest(l)y



"Spot of bother Sir?"  "No not really, just another boundary dispute."  "Should I bring you your red tunic, Sir, you know, blood and all that?"  "Thank you.  Oh Corporal! My brown trousers as well, please"  "Very good Sir"

It´s not that I have been lazy with the blog, it´s just that I have been so busy.

One big problem was my laptop dying.  I would like to blame Bill Gates and his crappy software but, truth be known, I was stupid enough to play football indoors with Alex and he scored a direct hit on a full bottle of beer which emptied itself over the keyboard.

Now kids don´t like to see adults scream in panic, this sets off a sort of primordial chain reaction that only expensive therapy can calm so it was with immense self control that I confined myself to an,´Oh Gosh!  Hang on a sec Alex, just let me mop this up…´

Well, it was stuffed and Angola is not the place to be with a stuffed up laptop.  I rang an Angolan mate of mine who arranged for two engineers from the local IT store in town to come out and take a look.  Bring a caddy drive that´ll take my hard drive I told them before they left.  When they got here I knew I was doomed.

I know it is very wrong to judge individuals by their appearance and the fact their laptops are covered in inane cartoon stickers but even for Geeks, they were off the flaming wall.

´Did you bring the caddy drive?´ I asked.

´Don´t need one´ they said, ´We´ll just pop your drive into this laptop´.

Now all this was especially bloody frustrating as my bother will be visiting from Germany within the next month and has already bought a brand new laptop for me complete with all legal software which he will hand carry out.

´Will it fit?´ I asked.

Well of course it didn´t.  The dickheads didn´t even have the right tools.  I just wanted a caddy drive then I could have hooked it up to Dominic´s laptop with it´s vast hard drive and transfer all my info and use that until the new laptop arrived.  They wanted to take my laptop away.  No way was I letting it out of my sight.  I made them ring NCR and ask about a caddy drive and, having done so they said NCR was out of stock so I had best let them take my laptop.

To cut a long story short, I lost my rag, sent them packing and lashed out on a new laptop.  When Marcia came back with it the next day, bought from NCR and guaranteed to accept my old hard drive, she also had a caddy drive which the helpful man at NCR said I would need…

Of course, my hard drive was incompatible with the new $1,000 laptop.  But the $50 caddy drive worked.  We tried to take the new laptop back.  I had been fastidious with keeping all the packaging intact but was told that opening the back had invalidated any guarantee.

Oh, there is so much more I can tell you.  Just when I thought I was getting fit and healthy again so spent a day filling my raised beds and planting 100 palm tree saplings, Marcia found me collapsed by the door and sprayed enough Nitrolingual down my throat to leave be bouncing off the walls with eyes like bastard saucers.   Doggy gave birth to ten pups in a hole in the bush so I made a box up and placed them all in the restaurant bar, they are all doing well but I fear Number Three is up the chuff as well so am expecting another load soon.  The argument over territory with the locals continued to rage so after the last fiasco of plant drowning in the river I decided not to mess about and hired a bloody great excavator which worked intimidatingly for precisely three hours before throwing its fan belts and expiring in a cloud of steam allowing the locals to come in during the night and plant their posts.  Since I am not made of the same stuff as Lts. Chard and Bromhead, I did not dig out my regimental sword and wade in but meekly observed, ringing Marcia instead.  Of course, at 4 o´clock the following morning and with a gutful of whisky, I was all for it but by then the locals had gone home.

I was, therefore, in absolutely the right mood to read, once I managed to get on line again, Bambi Basher´s article on Telling It As It Is and then Cameron´s prevarication over his pre election commitment to a referendum on Europe.  So I sent the Prime Minister an email telling him how badly I felt he was letting the side down and he wrote back immediately (clearly he has a bit on his mind as well and can’t sleep either) giving me the following link to the e-Referendum on Europe he had just set up:

Europe Referendum: YOU decide!

Now I thought that was pretty damn sporting of him.