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Tuesday, January 01, 2013

Where have the meal free days gone!


Family festivities do not leave much time for escape with a computer and self-indulgent typed reflection.  The most you can do is surreptitiously read a Kindle or at least an iPhone and lose yourself in another world.  A better world!

The visiting season is now over.  Well, almost.  One more meal to go and then escape to Castelldefels.  Given the number and extent of the meals with which I have been faced, it is impossible to leave the table without the bare necessity of eating something and politeness means that I have been stuffed for the last week!

Roll on the days of austerity when we are back to something approaching normality – around which a new enthusiasm for swimming must manifest itself!

Far be it form me to make New Year Resolutions, it is, after all a little late in the day for me to kid myself that such things ever have any chance of becoming anything more than fatuous puffs of idle breath – but, I have recently seen exactly how much I pay for my membership of the swimming pool and I have realized that I should be there every day and for most of the day to get my money back!

I suppose this is the time to voice a half-breathed desire to get to know how to play padel and actually to try it as well.  I am after all paying not play it at the moment!  This hybrid of squash and tennis looks quite interesting and is something that I am sure that I could get into – if I haven’t left my active participation in racket sports too far behind me!

I am getting to know my new phone.  I have given in and purchased an iPhone.  I did manage to stop myself purchasing the most expensive version, but it was still ridiculously expensive.  After my latest jaunt in the sticky arms of education I felt that I deserved a new gadget or three.

I am now fully Mac-ed; from stand-alone to Nano I am all Mac.  Toni did ask me to lay out in front of him my full holdings of Apple manufacture but I was far too ashamed to do that.  If you count up the various versions of the iPod that I have bought over the years I shudder to think just how many months of taxed work are represented in well-designed thin metallic cases.  With what I have spent they could afford to replace the lost bite from the logo!

However, I have to bend my mind to the next task which is to link seamlessly all my different devices in the way in which Apple shows in the advertisements is possible.  Unbelievable, but allegedly possible!

I have managed to convince myself that the purchase of the new iMac is essential because for my OU work.  The MacBook Air was because I needed something portable for school; the iPad was because . . . um . . . because I wanted something to take on holidays and the iPhone . . .  because I wanted one, so there!

If I stop and think for a moment about the total memory storage and computing power I now possess compared with what was available when I was a boy then I suppose I could have controlled the world were I able to go back with what I have now.  And what do I use this power for?  Basically ensuring that I always have a book at hand to read!  And to think we got to the moon with the computing power that was less than that generally found in a Smart Phone today! 

What a glorious waste of resources my electronic holdings do represent! 

I remain unrepentant.

Now back in Castelldefels and as tired as if we had both been running Marathons (or should that be Marathi?) rather than dragging ourselves from one meal to another!  There must be a better way to celebrate Christmas and the New Year than this. 

And in a hotter climate too!

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