Thursday: I was rung up by a very polite Indian. After a few attempts I understood her to be from Telstra. No, no, let me out of here!
Telstra Person: For why ave you returned your modem? You didn't like it? Did it not work? Do you want another one?
Feral Fliss: No, I'm sure it was fine. But you had already sent me one which is working very well. I didn't need another one.
TP, dubiously: So you don't need it? What is your birthday?
Doh.
Friday (yesterday) morning I was contemplating what I would write, while growing goosebumps in the ridiculously cold day, when my computer crashed. After months of being without proper Internet I now had a terrific connection - and my computer utterly refused to talk to me.
I rang daughter El, who said to leave the machine to cool off for the day and try again. Nope. No computer. After figuratively banging my head through the study wall, I rang El and wailed. With a huge sigh she said I had to take it in to her in Warwick. Wouldn't she come here? No. I had to go to the mountain.
Saturday, this morning. I followed El's instructions and drew a map of the back of the computer as I detached the assorted spaghetti that the leads always create of themselves while they quietly breed at the back of the desk. It being a pretty antediluvian computer it weighs as much as an obese six-year-old child, so I creaked and groaned my way down to the car with it. I grabbed an old blanket to wrap around the computer, to protect it from falling over. That blanket is essential so often, usually wrapping bales of hay so I don't end up wearing lucerne in my hair by the time I get them home. Anyway, I additionally bolstered the unstable heap with shopping bags so I could stock up for the next week or so while El operated.
Cody hopped in the car eagerly but Mischief was rummaging around in the pumpkin patch, to my consternation. Aha! She had it - an old and soggy ball she had secreted there and which was essential for her comfort in going out. Right. Dogs fastened. Me fastened, and off. This journey was different from the last post-flood trek to Warwick, because 'they' have now closed off the back road at the Warwick meat-works. So now, one goes around the back loop to avoid the washed-out main road section and then diverts along Lyndhurst Lane to West Warwick. I wish I could have seen the floods that closed that route as they must have been totally awesome, from the flotsam festooning surviving fence posts beside the road. I feel sorry for the folk who have to re-fence, but the water must have roared across the flat there, a torrent fed by the hurtling waters of the Condamine River.
Cutting out the details of the next few hours, El tested the various cards and evicted a large spider with web, that was indignant at being disturbed (how on earth it got in, who knows). She found the graphics card was loose, so tightened it. She also found some bits of lucerne hay had transferred themselves. Oops.
With huge gratitude I reclaimed my hefty and now functioning computer and made an uneventful trek home. You don't want to know about how a whole basket-full of fruit leapt out of the car when I was unloading, distributing assorted precious items all over the driveway,do you? I thought not. My language wasn't nice as I scooped up lychees from all compass points, and mourned my bruised pawpaws. Like I said at the the beginning, it's been a bad few days...
Fliss
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