My IT world is all set to undergo a bit of a seismic shake-up, and as is usually the case with these kind of things, it all stemmed from the culmination of a number of events.
For work, my employer-provided lap top was starting to show its age – I’ve had it for over six years now, and I got it roughly around the time that I began working from home in 2018.
To say it is creaky is a bit of an understatement!
It takes an age to boot up in the morning, and its ancient microchip struggles to deal with the operation of those modern work-place apps such as Teams and Outlook.
During a recent team meeting, it short-comings came to the fore – I had raised the laptop lid to activate the camera (yep, the team-leader now wants to see our faces!).
Once the daily stand-up was over, I turned off the camera, closing the laptop lid. What I was expecting was the screen display to switch back to my trusty monitor, and to be able to continue working.
What actually happened was that my errant IT device crashed out of my Virtual Protected Network (VPN) session, after which it sulkily shut itself down!
The above saga convinced my team leader that I had a case for a new laptop, and after a bit of due process, not to mention some gratuitous form filling, that is exactly what happened!
One recent work-practice is our weekly ‘day in the office’ – one day a week my team members and my good-self all converge on the company office site in Guildford, with team building being the name of the game.
It was on one of these ‘office’ days that I turned up at the IT Department to pick up my new IT kit.
Overall I was quite pleased with the result.
I got a new, up-to-date laptop, a mouse, the mandatory power cable, and a plastic block that formed a hub – basically it provides lots of ports that allow the connection of all those peripherals like mice, headphones and key boards.
It was the provision of this new hub device that sealed the fate of my trusty 17 inch monitor:
Dinosaur IT!
As you can tell from the above pic it’s a bit ‘Jurassic Park’ – I bought it back in the year 2k which makes it even older than my old works laptop!
My brand new hub device has a HDMI Monitor connection – the decrepitude of my monitor means that it comes with a very old fashioned pin connector. As it stands I have no way of connecting my new laptop to my ancient monitor screen.
My old monitor could have its lifespan extended by buying a HDMI/Pin adapter that would allow new and ancient technologies to merge, but I am leaning towards the ground zero option – replacing the 17 inch with a brand new large screen monitor with a HDMI cable.
When this happens, it will be the end of an ancient IT era.
Whilst searching out a new monitor, I also need to continue my quest for a new laptop for home use.
I am painfully aware that my time window for achieving this New Year’s resolution is shrinking, and shrinking fast! See my post ‘Groundhog New Year’s Day … almost!’ of 19th January 2025. I can’t believe how fast this year is going.
My apologies to any tech-phobic readers who stuck with this post to this point.
Over the next few weeks I will be a man on an IT mission!
For me, the answer has been badly, with those record temperatures having some real side effects on the old lifestyle …
Last Sunday was a case in point.
The afternoon had been taken up doing one of my pet hates – gardening! The prolonged tropical conditions had once more wreaked havoc in my back garden.
The growth of the weeds was truly turbo charged, and they were sprouting tall and proud from between the flagstones – my yard was back to its jungle-like formation as outlined in in my post Backyard rescue of 26th June 2023!
As I toiled away with my trusty secateurs, I was rapidly forming the opinion that the thirty degree plus temperatures did not really make for gardening weather.
My back-yard gradually re-emerged from below the foliage, and by the end of it, looked more or less back to normal.
The only fly in the ointment was that my front-yard also needed some attention – the weeds were making their presence felt in the front garden too, popping up between the bricks on the yard floor.
I was feeling pretty hot and tired by this point, so I opted to leave the front yard for a later date – it wasn’t quite the rainforest that the back-yard had been, so I didn’t feel too bad as I made my way back to the family home.
Another thing that thirty plus temperatures aren’t suited for is Squash training.
This has been a regular fixture for my Sundays for a while now, and this happens at the mighty New Malden Sports club.
On this sultry evening, the waves of on-court drills just totally wiped me out! By the time we got to the squash games at the end of the session, I felt like a dead man walking.
The training went on for a bit longer than usual, so by the time I was back at the family home, washed and showered, it was around 9.30 pm.
This left me in a bit of a quandary – normally I’d have headed out to Surbiton or Norbiton to a favourite hostelry, but the lateness meant that a drive was out of the question – drinking time would have been reduced to zero by the time I would have arrived at the pub.
Badly in need of a pint I decided to roll the dice and stay local! With New Malden firmly on my mind, I set off on foot, going under the railway bridge into Traps Lane, and after a very quick walk found myself at the Royal Oak:
The local taverna!
The interesting thing about the Oak is that it does have a bit of family history – it was my late Dad’s local, and when we were younger, it was the go-to place for the odd family meal, or an afternoon in the pub garden.
It has to be said my attendance at the Royal Oak had dropped off quite substantially since those far off times, but I always felt a bit of nostalgia whenever I go in there.
The look and feel of the main bar hasn’t changed that much – lots of wood and wood panelling (Oak?} which creates a snug area, boarded by a very low wooden door that leads to the rest of the pub, which is slightly newer in build.
They sell a lot less ales than they used to, just offering a choice of two – they have specialised more into lager and cider, which is the very much the modern way.
That Sunday evening there were plenty of punters around, who I got the feeling were regulars. There were also a few families in evidence, enjoying a pub meal – talk about blast from the past!
There was definitely a ‘family’ feel about the place.
They were also pretty firm about closing time – I was told very politely by one of the bar staff that I had to be out of the pub by exactly 10.30 pm!
It seemed fair enough – it was the same for everybody.
On leaving the Oak, I had a stroll back down New Malden High Street – I was in need of a certain kind of snack – I did feel a pang of sympathy for the McEmployees – it was Sunday evening at 10.40 pm, and they were still hard at work. McDonalds was still open.
As it turned out, I ended up having a very different Sunday evening in New Malden – it’s nice to know I still have a few options!
The answer to the strap line above is a resounding yes!
About two Friday’s ago I found myself at this place:
Euston, we have a holiday …
Euston Station (as per the pic above) was my starting point, and the plan was for a weekend break – the last time I’d had any sort of vacation was last August, where I was with the family in sunny Seaton, in deepest Devon (see my 27th August 2024 post ‘Devon sent?’ ), just short of a year ago.
Doesn’t time fly!
The idea for this trip had originated from my sisters. They both already had breaks this year, co-ordinating between them the care-cover for my Mother.
I was the last family member standing in respect of being sans break.
My sister, who is Mum’s main carer, said she could cope on her own for a weekend at the family home in New Malden.
My other sister, who lives in Wigan, provided the basis for my break by inviting me over.
After a rapid purchase of a train ticket to Wigan Northwest, I was on my way for a Wigan weekend – I was North England bound!
The Euston train made good time – just over two hours later I was greeting my sister on the platform of Wigan Northwest Station.
The last time I’d been to my sister’s home on the outskirts of Wigan, the UK was just emerging from life under COVID restrictions, and the ability to explore the locale and surrounding area was severely limited.
This time around, the plan was to make up for opportunities lost – we had a pretty packed weekend schedule!
One thing that struck me about my sisters place in Wigan Is that is very much car country – access to four wheels is an absolute necessity to get around, and on Saturday, my sisters first morning drive was taking us to the legendary Bolton Market:
Down the market …
It was a lot bigger and more bustling than the above pic suggests, and the indoor market was jam packed with stalls. All the goods sold were locally sourced, and my impression of the meat, vegetables and fish on display was that they were pretty much freshly produced that morning.
We bought some very tasty looking Sirloin steaks, and my sister got herself a really good deal – ten chicken legs for five pounds! With her dinner options for the next few days now pretty well moot, it’s just as well she is a big chicken fan!
The range of seafood on sale on was indeed impressive – whilst picking up some scallops from one of the fish stalls, I literally came eye-to-eye with one of the other products – I can’t really say if eel heads are a delicacy in Northern England, but I felt that having the food on your plate glare back at you with a weird, deathly stare isn’t really conducive to stimulating the old appetite!
After a brief return to my sister’s homestead to store our food, we headed out to the town of Wigan itself:
Wigan town – comes with cathedral.
Again the above pic does not do justice to how many people were in the town on that day. I had to say I liked Wigan – it was about the same size as Kingston, was a lot cleaner, and had a cathedral!
Also it had a good selection of shops and cafes, and a huge shopping centre that dwarfed those found in SW London:
One of Wigan’s very own George Formby, famed for songs about cleaning windows!
The grand sized shopping centre didn’t disappoint – I got the latest Stephen King book called ‘Never Flinch’ in hardback at a very good discount.
In the impressive three-storey HMV, a good store offer allowed ‘Mission Impossible 7 Part 1’ and ‘John Wick Chapter IV’ both to be picked up on Blu-ray at a very reasonable price.
With retail therapy fulfilled (my sister had got in a good shopping haul too) we made our way to a cafe near Wigan Northwest Station. I was very impressed by the regal-themed seating arrangements:
Café of thrones …
It turned out to be a very comfortable coffee drinking experience indeed!
We ended the evening with a Chinese meal. The restaurant was a place called ‘Mr Wang’s’, which was just on the outskirts of Wigan. I was introduced to a new dish flavour called ‘Salt and Pepper’ which was really nice, but it also turned out to be really hot!
The portions were also very generous, which really didn’t help matters – we’d made the classic mistake of over ordering. By the time the main courses were bought to our table, we were both totally stuffed!
Sunday afternoon began with a drive to a picturesque little railway station called Hindley, where we caught a ludicrously small train (just two carriages!) to Manchester Victoria, which took just over forty minutes to get us to our Manchester destination:
The above pic probably gives the best feel of the part of Manchester that we arrived at. This was near the older part of the town, close to the Cathedral and an ancient library, which I believe was referred to on the street-map as the Medieval Sector.
A short walk away were the usual shops and malls, and we had ended up having lunch at this place:
Indian street food par-excellence!
The Manchester branch of Mowgli specialises in Indian ‘Street food’.
We both shared a starter called ‘Yogurt Bombs’, which are basically flavoured and spiced yogurt encased in a shell of batter.
The ever helpful staff explained to us of the best way to eat them – basically you just had to stick the whole thing in your mouth and bite.
Unfortunately, neither I nor my sister had mouths big enough to achieve this, so we settled for the not-so-ultimate experience – the side bite. Our hands got covered in yogurt, but the taste was great!
My sister (who had been before) got her favourite dish which had the unusual name of ‘Angry Bird’ – this was a spicy chicken dish on a bed of red cabbage coleslaw, which was delicious (yeah we mixed and matched our dishes), and I got a delicately cooked prawn curry with some Pilau rice, which really hit the spot.
Our food was washed down with the obligatory bottle of Cobra beer.
As you can tell I really enjoyed the Mowgli experience, and the good news is that there are branches in many regions of the UK.
After lunch we headed back to the Medieval Sector for a bit of sight-seeing. Being a Sunday, most places like the ancient library were closed, so we ended up at this place:
Oldest boozer?
The Sinclair Oyster Bar makes the claim to be the oldest pub in the UK. With its Tudor style beams and snug bar it certainly looks the part, but I was not that convinced.
That didn’t stop us having a pre-last train back pint there. As the bar was full we had to adjourn to the garden area – thankfully the legendary ‘Manchester Sun’ had subsided, with the gap in the rain giving us just enough time to finish our drinks!
So that was my weekend break to Wigan. Well done to those brave souls who made it this far down! This post morphed into another long one!
One thing that saddens me is that Mum couldn’t make it down – she is now too sick to travel. It looks like those family holidays of the last few years are firmly in the past. It is a shame.
I did thoroughly enjoyed my weekend break in Wigan – I just didn’t realise how much I needed it!
A couple of weeks back, something occurred that was totally and utterly avoidable, and ended up introducing a disproportionate level of inconvenience and annoyance to my life.
In my defence it was the first time I had ever done it (a fact which didn’t really make me feel better) – in a moment of carelessness I suddenly developed the cunning plan of sitting on my glasses!
The bouncing of my doomed specs off the nearby seat into the path of my rapidly descending derrière was of course an accident (that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it!). The cracking sound, followed by the weird, squashy sensation as my behind made contact with the sofa, did not bode well.
The pic below perfectly illustrates the resulting devastation caused:
Trail of destruction …
As you can see, the right arm of the specs had sheared right off – my dysfunctional seating action had broken the hinge joint that connected the arm to the lenses frames.
What really wound me up about my current eye-frame predicament was that they are essential for my day-to-day existence – VDU work for my job, general reading, and most recently, driving – all rely on me having a working pair of glasses.
Desperate times required swift and decisive action, and as soon as I possibly could, I made my way to the New Malden branch of a well-known high street opticians.
Feeling a bit sheepish, I showed my poor broken specs to the very lovely lady who was the receptionist, and she confirmed that they were too badly damaged to be repaired – I would need a brand new pair of frames.
It turned out that my next eye test was due in only a few months’ time, so I decided to bite the bullet and move it forward to the present.
The eye-test revealed that my eye-sight had deteriorated since the issue of my last set of glasses a couple of years ago, and the optician formulated my new lenses prescription, which was to be applied to brand new frames.
The only drawback was that the preparation of my new specs would take two weeks. In the meantime I was stuck with the broken pair.
The lovely receptionist was very helpful – in true Blue Peter style, she managed to attach the broken right arm back to the lenses of my old pair of glasses using sticky-tape.
This worked quite well initially, but after a while the adhesive glue on the tape deteriorated, causing the right arm of the specs to suddenly drop off at random moments, much to the enjoyment of my co-workers at the office (I have to go in to the Guildford workplace once a week now) and my Kingston Hospital Radio colleagues.
Eventually I gave up trying to replace the broken specs arm, settling on using a strange looking ‘pince nez’ method of wearing them. As well as looking totally daft, it was not very stable – any rapid head movement could cause them to fly of my face!
I had to be very, very careful.
Eventually the day came when my new specs were ready, as per the pic below:
Sticky-tape no more!
Please note the presence of two fully functioning spec arms – not a trace of sticky-tape in sight!
It is such a relief to have a working pair of glasses again, and the new lenses prescription means that I can see better too. Having Varifocal lenses does make them costly to replace though.
I think the moral of this woeful tale is ‘think before you sit’!
Sorry folks, but the forthcoming ramblings concern a subject I haven’t blogged about since my post of 28th April 2023 Sign of squash decline? … yes, it’s all about the game of squash!
In an attempt to appease those non-squash fans amongst you, below is a totally unrelated pic of the view of Petersham from Richmond Hill:
Absolutely nothing to do with squash at all!
The lovely sunny scene above does not really reflect my current squash predicament – put quite basically, the struggle still continues!
My squash-game-winning hiatus from 2023 has been more or less on-going – out of the ten squash leagues hosted by the mighty New Malden Sports Club, I have been pinging around the lower league positions for quite some time.
Originally I joined at the 9th League (this is second to bottom), where my progress followed a very meandering upward trajectory to the 6th League, and this is where things got tough, as my game-winning hiatus really took hold.
I was finding it a real slog to get any points at all from a squash match, let alone working out a way to win one, and I only managed to stay in the 6th League by the proverbial skin of my teeth – the desperate scrabble for points to stay above the drop-zone was becoming a regular feature of my League games.
There was obviously something going badly wrong, but for the life of me, I couldn’t quite put a finger on what it was:
In terms of general squash skills, I didn’t feel there was a huge gap between me and my peers.
The COVID pandemic had hit me quite hard in respect of fitness, but my opponents had gone through pretty much the same thing.
I tried to work on the mentality of my game – the seemingly endless string of losses had seriously knocked my self-confidence, and the idea was to try and focus on playing the game and block out the detrimental negative ‘chatter’.
I also managed to up the regularity of playing Friendly games, with the view to improving my general fitness.
The above steps did bear fruit, and the improvement in my game play allowed me to move up to the 5th League, where I managed to stay for quite a while. Then, admittedly through more luck than skilful squash playing, a surprise string of wins facilitated an upward move to the dizzying heights of League 4!
My much sought after ‘Bounce back’ looked to have seriously kicked in!
As it turned out, like most best laid plans, my Phoenix-like rise from the flames of squash obscurity was cruelly thwarted.
It was at the family home whilst walking down the stairs one day where I picked up the knee injury – acute pains suddenly started up at the side and top of my right knee with every step I took!
It made walking uncomfortable, and running was just not an option.
This certainly put paid to any further squash League progression – even with a hurriedly bought knee support, hobbling around the squash court was not conducive to winning squash games – I was a sitting duck for my squash opponents, a real soft target.
As a result, I plummeted back down the squash leagues, finding myself once more back in League 9.
Over the following months, exercises to strengthen my knees helped fix the injury. I could once more move around the court pain free, though I still hung on to my knee support, which served as a kind of placebo.
Encouraged by the healing knee injury, I signed up for some squash training sessions at the New Malden Sports Club, with the view to revitalising my ailing squash form.
After what seems like eternity in the squash results desert, a glimmer of hope has suddenly materialised on the horizon.
It looks as if the above mentioned training is starting to take effect!
Currently I am joint top scorer of League 8, and am fairly confident of a move up to League 7.
Generally I am much more assured on the squash court, grinding out wins against opponents who previously used to wipe the floor with me, and even if an outright win is not achieved, I still feel better about the way I played.
Things look to be on the up – is this the start of ‘Bounce Back’ number two?
I was very much behind the curve on this one, and it was only through my friend Sue that I first heard the news ….the HMV store in the Bentals Centre, Kingston was back!
Sue turned out to be absolutely right – as you can see, it is very much alive and kicking here on the second floor of the Bentals Centre:
It’s back!
All seems very different to the events outlined in my post ‘Going, going …gone?’ of 12th March 2019 – six years ago, some failed leasing negotiations caused the Kingston Branch of HMV to close its doors, and all the signs were that it was gone for good.
I was pretty gutted at the time – for me, Kingston HMV was the go-to source for CDs, Videos (yep, I had been going to this place for years!), not to mention DVDs. My weekly visits had become an integral part of my life for as long as I could remember.
There was also no other store in my locale that could offer the equivalent variety and selection of music and films – Kingston HMV was sorely missed!
Things weren’t totally unfamiliar on entry to the newly reopened HMV store – those CDs were still on sale, but in reduced volume – Vinyl records now seemed to be king in respect of the preferred musical medium of choice.
The range of DVDs looked to have been reduced to the more main stream films, but they had been joined by the newish kids on the block, the Blu-ray and 4K Discs.
I’ll admit, as I approached the counter to make my first post-reopening Blu-ray purchase, I did get a bit of a ‘home coming’ feeling! It was all good though.
What surprised me was how low-key the re-opening of the Kingston HMV branch was.
Sue wasn’t sure of the exact date when Kingston HMV arose Phoenix-like from the retail ashes.
A bit of maxi-googling uncovered a local press report which revealed the planned HMV Bentals Centre return as being in ‘late November 2024’, which was the closest I got to finding an actual date.
If it did re-open in late November last year, it looks as if I wasn’t that far behind the curve after all!
You guys were spared this last year, but my mid-February rant is back!
Those of you who remember my posts such as ‘Valentine’s Day whine …decline’ of 24/02/2023 and ‘Valentines – losing its shine’ of 17/02/2022 will know that I don’t hold the perennial love-fest that is Valentines in very high regard.
Even back when I was in a relationship, both my girlfriend and I found the cloying and patronising nature of the Valentines marketing a real turn-off.
These days, the mockery of my current singleton status by those in-your-face Valentine’s Day events means that I’ve never been that enamoured by the prospects of the 14th February celebration.
This year, though, the run up to the day of all-things-love was very different – there was a ray of hope!
My friend Sue had discovered the return of an anti-Valentine’s event – it was loosely termed as ‘You don’t have to stay in on Valentines if you don’t want too’.
The idea was that sanctuary would be provided for anyone who fell foul of the Valentine’s Day stipulation that everyone had to be in a couple – from my past attendance of such events, there always seemed to be a sizeable number of folk, who through no fault of their own, had ended up being sans relationship.
It was the perfect antidote to the usual over-hyped, over-blown mid-February slush-fest, and what’s more, it was back!
This year it was being held on the 13th February (nicely contra-Valentines!), and it was to be hosted in the SW London town of Teddington, which was a few miles down the road from New Malden.
Sue was going to pick up the tickets, and the plan was to be Teddington bound on the evening of 13th February.
As is the case with most best-laid plans, there turned out to be a few flies in the ointment.
There must have been quite a bit of attendee information on the website that was used to make the ticket booking – it turned out that the ticket prices rocked in at a whopping £28.00 per head, and Sue reckoned we would be the oldest people there on the evening.
We decided to bail!
All was not lost though – a plan ‘B’ was formed – on the 13th February we switched to this place:
Our plan B!
Yep, our anti-Valentines stand was taking place at the mighty Rotunda complex in Kingston!
We were off to the Odeon cinema.
I met Sue at the Cornerstone pub, which is just in the main entrance of the Rotunda, for a pre-film drink.
The film we were seeing was called ‘The Companion’, which was billed as a black comedy sci-fi thriller set in the near future. It starred Jack Quaid (son of Denis) and Sophie Thatcher, who play a couple who go to stay with friends at a remote cabin, where they end up getting embroiled into a plot involving a Russian gangster.
It turned out that Sophie Thatcher’s character is actually a sophisticated android, designed to be the perfect companion for her boyfriend, and with part of the story-line focusing on the relationship between the couple, it actually turned out to be a very apt Valentine’s Day movie!
We both thought ‘The Companion’ was an OK film, and I think Sue, like me, was glad to have got out over the Valentines period.
For me, the trip out helped to take the edge off what usually proves to be a really irritating and unpleasant annual celebration.
I hope all your celebrations for the 14th February went well – a belated Happy Valentine’s Day!
For those of you who remember my post ‘2024 – promise more?’ of 22/01/2024 will be getting a serious sense of Deja vu!
Yep, it’s yet another belated New Year’s post, and what’s more, my most recent New Year’s shenanigans ran a pretty close parallel to the ones for January 2024!
The first week of the New Year was covered by my annual leave – I had to work through Christmas week, so this was effectively my Yuletide break.
My early evening New Year’s Eve journey also had that familiar feel – I was once again aboard the mighty 213 bus, Norbiton bound, bagged bottle of Prosecco in hand, making my way to the home of my mate from squash and his wife to see in the New Year.
More coincidences followed – we were joined by another couple who were also around for our New Year celebrations of 2023!
What really compounded the ‘Back to the Future’ vibe was the venue set to mark our passage from New Year’s Eve to the first of January 2025:
The Glasshouse … almost where it was at …
Talk about history repeating!
The Glasshouse in New Malden was the hostelry where we saw in New Year’s Day 2024, and a very good night it was too.
Unlike last year, there was now no need to book in advance – we were advised just turn up on the night and grab an available table. The good news was that there was no fee – entry was still completely free.
With a view to staking an early claim to a table, we drove back to New Malden (using a designated driver, before you ask!), getting to the pub just after 9.00 pm.
It had to be said, the Glass House was lively that evening – it looked as though other New Year’s revellers had taken a leaf out of our book and decided to take advantage of the liberal booking policy and make the most of the free entry fee.
Whilst not being completely packed to the gills, it wasn’t far from it – most of the tables were taken – we just managed to grab the last available one by the door!
It took my mate a bit of navigation to get to the bar, but he made it eventually to get the first round of drinks in, which included a pint of beer for me and a bottle of Prosecco for the ladies.
The pub DJ was certainly making his presence felt – he was vociferously pumping out those club classics at a constant rate, and boy, was he loud – and I do mean LOUD!
At the risk of sounding like one of those proverbial moaning old-timers, I literally found the music sound levels way too high – everyone in our group was just sitting around the pub table – no one could speak over the music.
My mate and I took our pints into the pub garden for some relief from the incessant din. He wasn’t too happy, and – like me – he felt that he would not be able to last the couple of hours to midnight for the New Year’s chimes.
On the way back to our table, we were met by my mate’s wife – she said that they had all had enough – they couldn’t cope with the music either – everyone wanted to return to my mate’s homestead back in Norbiton.
There was nothing else for it – it was time to abandon ship!
I finished off my pint, my mate’s wife grabbed the remains of the bottle of Prosecco, and we all piled back into the car and headed back to Norbiton.
So, this is near where we eventually saw in the New Year:
The Triangle, Norbiton – near where we actually ended up seeing in 2025!
The above pic is of the Triangle in Norbiton, which is near my mate’s house.
The remainder of our evening celebrations went a lot better. We had some more drinks and followed the TV coverage of the chimes of Big Ben ringing in 2025.
As well as the spectacular televised New Year’s Day fireworks from London, the sky above my mate’s garden was awash with local firework displays – the fireworks were coming from three directions! It was spectacular stuff indeed.
At about 1.30 am on New Year’s Day 2025, I eventually started my journey back home to New Malden – it was a whole lot longer than if we had stayed at the Glasshouse, but I managed to catch one off those all-night 213 buses back to town.
How did your New Year’s celebrations go?
Unfortunately, I failed in my quest to complete my 2024 resolutions in time – there was just too much stuff going on in the run-up to Christmas.
I have decided to roll last year’s ones over to this year.
Just for posterity, I will note my recycled resolutions for 2025 below:
Get a working laptop – I need some functioning IT!
Arrange for some repairs to be done to the bodywork on my car to return it to its former glory.
There is no room for any more slippage – the above are definitely getting done.
May you have a very good 2025, everybody – I wish you all a very belated Happy New Year!
That’s something which I’ve been finding harder and harder to do in recent years (see my post Merry Christmas Whirlwind of 24/12/2023).
So far, for Christmas 2024, it is proving to be no exception – in fact, you could say that the ever-shrinking time-window for getting those pre-festive preparations done has been narrowing at an increasingly bonkers rate!
Despite the manic pace, some things have been completed:
Christmas tree done and dusted …
A big thanks to my sister for getting the tree done – if it had been left to yours truly, it would look as if it had been pulled through the proverbial holly bush backwards.
The combination of my local Building Society branch and the change machine in a well-known supermarket chain ensured that the contents of my coin bottle got cashed very quickly indeed – my Crimbo funds were literally ready to go!
This allowed me to pick up my Christmas cards, and for the completion of that ever-essential Yuletide-booze shop.
After this very promising start, the progress of my Christmas catch-up push has kind of … stalled!
The reason for this latest waylay was all to do with the status of the family TV – the 43-inch Plasma screen set had been in place at the family home for over twenty years.
Whilst pretty much still going strong, it had begun developing little quirks such as the odd screen flicker or picture blackout, which I took to be red flags symbolising its descent on to the path towards extinction.
The prospect of being sans telly over the festive season was for me a risk too far, so I was definitely a man on a mission as I made my way to a well-known department store in Kingston one chilly Sunday afternoon.
After a bit of procrastination, I ended up sticking with the devil I knew – I ordered a 55-inch OLED TV set and decided to replace our Jurassic DVD player with a modern Blu-Ray device.
The store delivered the above items the following Friday as planned, but it was only after the new kit was set up that an issue became apparent – the picture quality was very wavy and unclear.
The reason for this was that the TV signal was reaching the TV via an absolutely ancient digital recorder, whose archaic technology was unable to cope with the high-definition data being sent through it.
There was nothing else for it. The next day I headed back to the well-known department store after my Saturday afternoon show at Kingston Hospital Radio and splashed out more cash for a brand-new digital recorder.
After I set this up with the new TV and Blu-Ray player, all the bits of kit were working as expected.
This resolved the picture issue, but due to the extra cash-spend, the old finances ended up a bit stretched!
Below is the result of my TV assembly efforts:
Christmas-themed BBC News bulletin on high-definition telly!
In the spirit of copyright problem avoidance, the programme being shown is a festive-themed early evening BBC News bulletin.
At the time of writing of this post, the Christmas food shop is still to be done – once this has been completed, the pressure should be off – all that remains to be done is just to ease into Christmas.
How are your Christmas celebrations looking?
For me, the prospects are for another quiet one with the family. My sister from Wigan is joining us for Christmas week, so we will all be together with Mum over Christmas.
Thankfully, our Chrimbo dinner is once again a turkey-free zone – roast chicken is the bird of choice, and what’s more, there won’t be a sprout in sight! Keep away from those evil, spheroid vegetables, people!
Potential highlights are raising a glass of Christmas cheer when watching the King’s Christmas speech with Mum, and once more getting immersed in that strange, twilight world that is the Christmas TV Schedule.
Have a great Yuletide break, everybody – I’m sure your pre-festive season planning went a whole lot better than mine!
The strap line above pretty well sums-up the total free-fall of my will-power over the last few months – where this leaves my New Year’s resolutions is becoming disturbingly clear – my failure to obtain them looks increasingly likely.
Roughly around this time last year, the 2023 resolution situation could not have been more different – back then I had really smashed it!
My dream of a monster-sized telly was very much turned into a reality:
Telly-tastic achievement!
My second 2023 target of replacing the old lime-encrusted kitchen sink taps was eventually realised – see my post of September 2023 ‘The turn of the tap?’ to find out the outcome.
Flushed with these 2023 successes, my two pledges for 2024 were made with a huge surge of optimism. Confidence was at a high!
Now, with the realisation that the start of the final month of 2024 is just around the corner, I can reveal that the number of resolutions achieved is … zero!
My first promise for this year was to get hold of some working IT. The creaky old laptop that had served me for years finally went to the great IT dealership in the sky, with its ancient computer chip giving up the ghost – it was all it could do to boot up!
As a result, I have been without effective internet access for over a year now.
The mighty New Malden Library were on-hand to help. My library membership allows me the use of their PC network, which offers blocks of an hours-worth of free internet access at a time.
This has allowed me to carry out those vital tasks such as building/administering the Kingston Hospital Radio Website, and writing and maintaining this blog, but it is far from ideal – a modern, up-to-date laptop would make my life a whole lot easier.
Whilst purchasing a new laptop may not seem like a particularly onerous task, getting around to picking one up has proved to be – more urgent, pressing matters have taken up my free time these days, such as helping out with the care for my Mum.
The second New Year’s pledge was to do with fixing the body work on my car. Four years of car ownership has taken its toll in terms of picking up the odd dent and scratch – whilst these don’t look too bad overall, it does make the car look a bit on the shabby side.
For me, the urge to return my motor to its former glory is strong, and the idea was to book my car into the local bodywork specialist, sited conveniently close to my home.
The only flaw with this plan was that the bodywork repairs could take over a week to complete. I rely on my car a lot – doing my radio shows, making it to the sports club for those all-important squash games, visiting friends – all would be a lot harder to do if I was sans car.
So, that’s the state of play nearing the close of November 2024.
There is always the vague hope that at least one of these lost causes may get done before the end of the year.
If I was a betting man, my money would be on the laptop replacement.
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