Back in Brum

Tenby Beach

Hooray! I'm back in Brum and back to the civilised world once more. It is nice to see my Gran but being without the internet for four days isn't easy. You have to revert back to the old ways of getting information, like getting the news from the television or something called a newspaper - whatever one of those is. The weather stayed pretty good for the most part and was dry at least even if the sun wasn't shining all the time. Didn't get to go in the sea but then I was never a huge fan of it anyway, we managed a couple of trips into Tenby and saw all the usual sights and sounds as well as some new ones that have come as a result of the recession. New shops have arrived and taken over and lots are on their way out with final stock clearance sales all to common. We were a bit disrupted by the workmen on the lane digging up the road to mend some gas pipes and I was rudely awakened at about 08:00 each morning by the sound of diggers and pneumatic drills. We had to ask them to move about ten times in all so that we could get the car out.

View from the window

My Gran's house had changed too, and is finally being modernised after hardly being touched in forty-something years. The flat next door now looks like it could have been built yesterday although this digital switch over is causing her no end of trouble. The supposed 'expert' from the electrical shop in town came to have a look at the aerial to see why she couldn't get a signal only to find that - after about an hour and a half of "I've got no idea"s and tutting - the only thing behind the aerial socket was a piece of nylon string! I just hope he wasn't charging by the hour.

It seems to be a recurring theme this holiday as when we stopped off in Cardiff on the way back home - to see the other Gran - she had a similar problem. She'd had to buy a new TV after the old one had gone kaput, after just five years, and had now got built in Freeview. Well that should have been the end of it but then she wanted to record onto VHS. After about half an hour of fiddling around I managed to solve stage one of that problem and record the digital channel to video. Then we found out that the TV had to be on in order for this to work and therefore the whole point of setting something to record whilst you are out or in bed, kind of fell to pieces. In the end we settled for then programming the TV to turn itself off after 180 minutes in time with the 180 minute VHS and that's how it has been left at the moment. Although knowing my Gran she'll be wanting an HDD recorder soon enough and then struggle to work that. She couldn't seem to understand how if she bought the latest TV, why she couldn't do something as simple as VideoPlus+ or recording one programme and watching another. It took me at least two hours of her asking this same question under several different guises for me to finally get her to understand that VCRs are technology from ten years ago and simply aren't meant for the modern world.

Well that's quite enough techno-babble for one day. Anyway, today I went to collect my Leeds festival tickets, which had arrived whilst I was away so a trip to the sorting office was in order. Had to stop in at the Co-op on the way back too to collect some basics bread and milk etc. The rest of the day has been spent catching up on missed TV and emails really. One of these days I'll be earning enough to convince myself that I can afford a smartphone that will keep me in touch with these things wherever I am but mobile phones confuse me enough as it is so for the moment I'll stick with the one I've got. It was nice being able to keep slightly informed by way of Twitter. I had only just discovered I could access it for free and so that must have helped to keep me sane throughout the holiday.

Well that's your lot for today, more tomorrow.