Windows is up to its old tricks again!
In a moment reminiscent of the frightening old days of Apple messages like “Fatal System Error!” complete with graphic of a round bomb with fizzing fuse a message flashed up as I was using Word which basically informed me that everything that I had typed was lost and gone and would ne're return.
I entertained a faint hope that the incomprehensible information which sometimes appears to the left of the Word page telling me that Word has recovered something or other would spring into action and allow me to find the typing which simply vanished.
No such luck. Word will not be mocked by mere faith that things will work out.
So here we go again.
Not only is the evil disseminated through the world by the ever diabolically resourceful Mr Gates now working against me through the mechanism of World but also my screen has not shown up in school.
In spite of producing a colour photograph of the screen; the price; the part number; the address of the firm; its web site; its dimensions and the colour of the managing director’s eyes it failed to produce item in the school. It eventually transpired that I had not written out the information on the correct order form. So nothing was done. When asking for the Correct Order Form I discovered that none were actually available in the staff room. And no one knew where they might be had.
After asking five people for the Correct Order Form and getting no further forward in my quest, I eventually found someone who remembered that she had seen one sometimes in the recent past or at least knew where one might be found.
Clutching the Correct Order Form I filled in exactly the same information that I had given on the previous sheet. And nothing happened.
I am now in the Harry and Confuse phase of my plan of attack in getting a screen. I daily and duly pester people who I think might have some leverage and ask plaintive questions about screens and arrival. Things have reached that particular form of stasis which comes when the whole life of an institution is challenged through the bottleneck of a single person whose dead hand slows everything to a funereal dead march.
At the moment I am using pens which are inappropriate for OHPs on transparencies which have been provided by one of my colleagues from a previous school augmented by a donation by me from a previous educational institution, ahem.
There are no OHP pens or spare bulbs and I lack the necessary energy to start a campaign for them until I have the screen safely in my room.
This may take some time.
I am beginning to appreciate the excesses of the city which gave its name to the adjective which exemplifies the Heath Robinsonianly unnecessarily impossibly complex: Byzantine. Our school would seamlessly fit into the bygone world of the dynasty of Palaeologus. I have discovered that both literally and figuratively Yeats’ ‘Sailing to Byzantium’ fits the experience of teaching in our school!
Imagine what I would have been writing if I had needed textbooks!
In a moment reminiscent of the frightening old days of Apple messages like “Fatal System Error!” complete with graphic of a round bomb with fizzing fuse a message flashed up as I was using Word which basically informed me that everything that I had typed was lost and gone and would ne're return.
I entertained a faint hope that the incomprehensible information which sometimes appears to the left of the Word page telling me that Word has recovered something or other would spring into action and allow me to find the typing which simply vanished.
No such luck. Word will not be mocked by mere faith that things will work out.
So here we go again.
Not only is the evil disseminated through the world by the ever diabolically resourceful Mr Gates now working against me through the mechanism of World but also my screen has not shown up in school.
In spite of producing a colour photograph of the screen; the price; the part number; the address of the firm; its web site; its dimensions and the colour of the managing director’s eyes it failed to produce item in the school. It eventually transpired that I had not written out the information on the correct order form. So nothing was done. When asking for the Correct Order Form I discovered that none were actually available in the staff room. And no one knew where they might be had.
After asking five people for the Correct Order Form and getting no further forward in my quest, I eventually found someone who remembered that she had seen one sometimes in the recent past or at least knew where one might be found.
Clutching the Correct Order Form I filled in exactly the same information that I had given on the previous sheet. And nothing happened.
I am now in the Harry and Confuse phase of my plan of attack in getting a screen. I daily and duly pester people who I think might have some leverage and ask plaintive questions about screens and arrival. Things have reached that particular form of stasis which comes when the whole life of an institution is challenged through the bottleneck of a single person whose dead hand slows everything to a funereal dead march.
At the moment I am using pens which are inappropriate for OHPs on transparencies which have been provided by one of my colleagues from a previous school augmented by a donation by me from a previous educational institution, ahem.
There are no OHP pens or spare bulbs and I lack the necessary energy to start a campaign for them until I have the screen safely in my room.
This may take some time.
I am beginning to appreciate the excesses of the city which gave its name to the adjective which exemplifies the Heath Robinsonianly unnecessarily impossibly complex: Byzantine. Our school would seamlessly fit into the bygone world of the dynasty of Palaeologus. I have discovered that both literally and figuratively Yeats’ ‘Sailing to Byzantium’ fits the experience of teaching in our school!
Imagine what I would have been writing if I had needed textbooks!
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