No shortage of shiver

I am delighted it has rained. No, really. Rain is good. Parks look nicer dressed in green. Things grow and such. All good, really very, very good.

I live in a very cold place, now. There is no lounging about limbs akimbo in the naked darkness wondering whether the buzzing in your head is a mosquito or the sound of the sweat sizzling on your skin. There is no slipping down the beach early before the sand gets too hot to stand on, then holing yourself up in a darkened room to watch the cricket until the sun stops doing its 'hammer and anvil' schtick on the pavement. There is no ritual slathering of sunblock before you step out the door of a morning, nor inspecting the sun-damage on your skin before you go to bed at night (a rather depressing aside: I look like a wisened hag, skin-wise, compared to the average person of about my age over there). There, if it should ever hit 25 degrees, the people go all pink and flustered and keep saying the word 'scorcher' to each other. I kid you not.

Don't get me wrong, there is a lot to like. There is (or at least was in my former residence and I trust will be again) curling up by the fire. Pubs with lead-light windows give of a friendly glow in afternoon darkness, and in summer you can stay in the glowing pubs until 11.30 and still stumble home in the light.

And the sky is big. There are places have small skies, but I don't think I could live in one. Snow falls, occasionally, which is hilarious. Besides, it makes the hills over the Firth go all white on their little rounded heads, and if the sun ever does come out they give a little blinding sparkle of joy. August (a.k.a. 'summer') was cloudy. Unrelentingly cloudy. There was not a single moment when I saw even the tiniest sliver of blue in the sky for the whole month. Not once.

To be fair, August was also reasonably un-cold. Nothing wrong with cold, per se, but in my new home there is rather a lot of it. It's cold all the time. I am cold all the time. There is cold a-plenty. My friends, I have no shortage of shiver.

So, despite being utterly delighted that the rains have finally come in the nick of time to save all of Melbourne, nay Victoria, from blowing away in a puff of dust, I must admit to being a little peeved about the fact that I ride in on the big flying horse this morning only find myself sitting at a kitchen table shivering. I had to rifle the cupboards of this house to find a jumper, because I didn't pack one.

Yes, I know, it's Melbourne. I should have packed a jumper as well as an emergency Heat-Stroke Resucitation Pack. I am an idiot. A shivering one.

The Definition of Panic

The definition of panic, dear friends, is when your stupid Windows Media Player (let the guilty be named) tells you that all of your music is on your computer twice, and then you remember that you put stuff in a 'public' folder, because your stupid computer thinks that your part-time worker self and your fooling around freelance self are two different people altogether (which they kind of are, I like to think, but I digress..).




The definition of panic, is when you do actually check, and Windows Explorer shows you a happy little list of folders in BOTH your 'music' folder and your 'public music' folder, clear indication in anyone's language that there are files in both. Deluded, I was. Deceived and deluded. So, in order to keep your little laptop the lean mean fighting machine that it needs to be in this dog-eat-homework world, you press 'delete' to erase the material in your 'public' folder, ignoring the little voice in the back of your head that is querulously murmering 'Hang on. No way is your hard disk big enough to fit all your music twice.'





The definition of panic is when the warning that the thing is about to delete 8,136 items makes no impression on you whatsoever except to make you feel rather smug and self-congratulatory about the fact you have accrued 8,136 items of rather eclectic and diverse musical joy. This vainglorious buzz lasts just long enough to quash any uneasiness prompted by your computer telling you that it will not put these things in that safe little Half-way House for Wayward Files, the Recycle Bin. It will instead delete them - completely and irrevocably - without further ado. This is precisely because it is a rich and lovely collection of such impressive volume. This is because you are now homeless and all your CDs are stored away in an asbestos-soaked shed in the middle of Brunswick, and your only access to your music, lovingly collected over years, is via your computer. Yes, it seems size does matter.


The definition of panic is when you check back in your music folder to find everything gone.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

Everything, that is, except one empty Beck folder. Oddly, the Microsoft gods decided to let that stay, as a hollow reminder of all that had been and was now no more.


But wait. No need to send flowers.



The definition of relief is when you realise that you acually backed up your computer before you left the UK, because you remembered that if your laptop got nuked by some feral device bent on protecting the world from Terror you are fucked, both professionally and personally. Professionally for obvious reasons. Personally because all your photos and music, and therefore the best parts of oneself, would be erased forever.



So, as I write, a shiny little back box about the size of a Moleskine notebook with a reassuringly steady blue light on the side is painstakingly giving my machine back its soul - or at least 6,812 parts of it. This is going to take it 59 minutes apparently, which seems a little unfair given that the accumulated musical wisdom of 41 years of listening pleasure took me a maximum of two clicks and well under 59 seconds to destroy. I am a little concerned about the mysterious attrition of about 1,200 items but, hell, seven eighths of a soul is better than no soul at all.


Back up, my friends, back up. Disaster is but a mouse-click away.

I told you it was going to be a nice sunset.

The Saturation Point of Bells

I probably owe you an explanation. But you're not going to get one.


There are some blog names that are so self-evidently right that not an iota of explanation is necessary. Take Hackpacker, for example. Now there you have a name that is neat and taut and witty and completely fit for purpose. I have but mentioned the word and off you go positively tingling with a soon-to-be-fulfilled expectation of the pleasures you will find when you mosey on by (which you should, by the way).


Alas, I can offer nothing so deftly apt.


At this moment, though, I would like to tell you that the storm clouds are getting angry behind the bridge and turning the harbour a shiny electric grey, boding well for a spectacular sunset. The sun still shines, though, making the little row of pink, purple, white and red spinnakers that are sailing past my borrowed window glow like birthday balloons.


It is beatiful here, and you gotta love a desk that requires sunglasses.