Tuesdays are the days when we meet with our friends in Waitrose so after the carers and myself had seen to Meg, we breakfasted and then hastened down the road to see who we would see today. We did meet up immediately with the ex-hiker friend of ours (so-called perhaps in her youth she had probably climbed every Lake District mountain that was worth climbing, as well as staying in the majority of the youth hostels) We were shortly joined by another friend (the chorister) who we had not seen for a week or so and about whom we were starting to get a little concerned as we knew that she had to spend some days in bed with a chest infection. Anyway, whatever it was the doctor had zapped it with some antibiotics and then she had a bout of arthritis to contend with.But although she is 90 years old, this particular friend is very doughty and will struggle through all kinds of adversities. I think that all three of us (four including Meg) feel a little the same way and Tuesday mornings are quite important to us and we value each other’s company. This morning, each of the ladies got presented with a bunch of tulips, no doubt left over from Valentine’s day last week, so this will help to complement the large bunch of roses that were donated to us recently. Then it was a case of buying one or two items that we know that Waitrose sells and then making for home. As Tuesday is my Pilates day, a carer arrives to look after Meg whilst I am out of the house and so I attended my session, having missed last week. I find that even after a gap of a week, I feel it a little so I am sure that the various stretches that we do must have some kind of alleviating effect. Then as soon as I get home, I put on a ‘quick’ lunch which is nearly always fish cakes and some quickly microwaved vegetables which means that lunch can be cooked as quickly as practicable.
In the early afternoon, I received some welcome news in the form of an email from the company which I use to purchase webspace and domain names. After I had supplied photographic and up-to-date address information (I believe called Type A and Type B identification) the company had reinstated my access to my various records. I had first to supply a variant on my usual email address which was no real problem and then go on and reset my password but all of this worked. Then, as I had come to suspect, the whole of the website that the company uses for its products has been redesigned and things that used to be easy are now somewhat hard to find. For example, many users will want to get access to the ‘Control Panels’ which they used to control aspects of their domains and/or websites but I had to hunt round and click on a little homunculus symbol to (eventually) give me access to what I wanted and needed. The company itself admits that its site is still being ‘migrated’ and some features such as sorting on a column by clicking its name do not seem to be properly implemented as yet. But I have got to the stage where I can find the domain names that I want and then edit the re-direction details. All of this used to be second nature to me and I have done it constantly over the years but now I am faced with quite a learning curve and re-familiarisation. But my irritation at having to jump through all of these hoops again is alleviated by the pleasure of getting things back which I thought at been at risk. I must say that the redesign of the website seems to have motivated by the possibility of selling you add-ons and services that you do not really want whereas the more essential maintenance functions see to be much less transparent than they were before. So ‘upgrades’ to portals such as this sometimes turn out to be bad news for those of used to a certain way of doing things. I always suspected that my logon details that failed to work a few days ago were more due to the changes at the company end rather than anything I had done – and, indeed, even the words ‘log on’, which seem rather fundamental, seems to have been relegated to some obscure initials. Having got my head around the bare essentials, I am going to need to do a certain amount of playing about so that I can maintain my websites in the ways to which I have become accustomed over the years.
In the late afternoon, I received a couple of phone calls. The first was from the widow of our newsagent who had died as I particularly did not want her to feel neglected and forgotten by former customers. I really wanted her to accept an invitation to come around for a meal but do not feel she is really ready for this just yet but I have hopes for the future. The second phone call was from the care agency looking after Meg with the news that our favourite carer had had a car crash and would be out of action for several days even though she was unhurt. I explained that I was quite happy to assist the other carer scheduled to see us tomorrow morning and am sure that we can make a good ‘2 person team’ until our other carer is in a position to return to work (hopefully, without any delayed shock reactions)