Bad Apple

My smugness since acquiring a Mac has been almost unbearable.
"It just works" etc.

And it does. Years of driving around in a Windows PC jalopy with my head regularly under the bonnet fixing, updating, scanning, debugging, reinstalling and rebooting made the experience of the Mac like stepping on to the bridge of the Enterprise.

Unfortunately I ran into the Romulans this week (keep up..) with Apple's latest software update killing off my printer drivers. This just as I finished my publicity leaflet for my two drama schools in the summer holiday. There's a way round it (I won't bore you) but it's annoying and switches me straight back to that computercidal red mist that was a regular feature of my week. If anyone has some photon torpedoes for this problem do let me know.

Info about the drama schools is at www.centrestagedrama.com

Coraline

Took Simon and a friend to see Coraline 3D on Saturday; a great adaptation of a gothic book by Neil Gaiman. 3D technology is used intelligently to bring stop-motion style animation to life and sensibly avoiding cheap frights. The story unfolds slowly, building the expectation and shifting into Hitchcock-like suggestions that all is not as it seems.

Was it worth the hour and a half drive into Edinburgh with 35 minute traffic jam at Leith on a nearly empty tank ? Hmm.

new house plan

Here's this week's plan from the architect. Reduced floor space means we spend less of the next 20 years working for the bank. Comments welcome. And yes, I know the door hits the couch in the TV room at the moment. One of them will have to go.

Second floor plan will follow when I have time to draw it up.

Fab

Last week the kids and I climbed the Scott Monument in Edinburgh. It's Thunderbird Three in stone, towering over Princes Street and only dwarfed at Christmas when the Winter Gardens ferris wheel goes up next to it. Four levels are accessed by spiral stone steps barely one person wide. In the windy crow's nest you see over the jumbled rooftops to the sea, the mountains. You can probably see seven counties, though these days they're called Regions or Authorities as in a soviet novel.

Below us were the excavated remains of Princes Street. The whole mile or so has been dug back to the soil to make room for Edinburgh's new tram system. It promises to give a character and elegance to this grand parade that really hasn't been there for decades.

Yesterday I walked the length of it, through swirling dust and raucous road drills, after a meeting about a Government contract to assist with education workshops. It's a nice little job to add to my modest portfolio, and I remembered my Auckland education job with fondness once again. The downside of self-employment is the endless self-promotion, but perhaps that's good for my soul.

The claustrophobic and vertiginous climb was worth it for the view.

You can't teach a chicken old jokes

We live on the edge of town, the magnificent southern uplands rolling away from just behind our house. Bonnington Road narrows from a broad avenue of fine Edwardian houses to a country lane winding deep into the Manor Valley. Skylarks overhead, rounded fields ploughed over centuries; cows, horses, sheep, occasional grand farmhouses, a ring of heather-patched hills and, of course, free-range chickens.

Simon and I have taken to cycling out here, taking the level road along Bonnington, puffing slightly up over the cattle grid mid-way, sometimes doing the full circle and mounting an assault on the Sware hill. A long near-vertical pushing a bike.

Yesterday we stopped, as usual, to view the free-range chicken farm where eggs can be bought from the honesty box at the end of the farm driveway. These chooks truly free range, radiating out from their giant shed across two fields, bobbing and scratching like so many clockwork toys. The artists and creatives amongst them can be seen in the farther fields, around the edges and less frequented rises and hollows. Around the corner, a ragged brigade had even escaped the fields, striding down the road, finding tasty morsels in the long grass. A troupe of wandering minstrels in their shreds and patches, they scattered noisily to the shelter of the verges as we cycled by.

Further on one was not so lucky; surprised by one of the infrequent cars it was food for crows, a bloody sight.

What a way to go though, for a chicken.