Translate

Showing posts with label The Great Depression. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Great Depression. Show all posts

Monday, April 20, 2020

LOCKDOWN CASTELLDEFLS - DAY 36 - Monday 20th April


It’s still raining!  This is the third day; I may as well be in the Britain – except I understand from resentful looking at the weather forecast for Cardiff that it has had the temerity to be fine in my native land!  What is the world coming to!

     I did manage to take my walk in a brief interlude of dryness between showers and then spent the rest of the day trying to edit my new chapbook, Coasts of Memory.

     Every time I read through the thing I find something else that I want to change.  I don’t mind the substantive editing where I am actually changing words, it’s the technical editing that always gets to me.

     I do have something approaching a final working draft, but I am nowhere near finished with the final product.

     The real problems have developed with the printing.  As I am trying to produce something in-house I am relying on one of the printers that we have to do my bidding.  This would be fairly straightforward, but I print out my chapbook poetry in A5 format, which means that I double side a page of A4 so that the final book is put together using multiples of 4 A5 pages to one double sided A4 sheet.

     The last time that I tried to print out a booklet I failed, but I failed with the expert help of technicians from Microsoft, Epson, Brother and Mac.  At one time I was getting on-line advice and help from three continents!  It was truly amazing how uselessly helpful true experts could be!  The end advice?  Buy another printer!  Honestly!

     The final resolution to the problem was to transfer all the files that had failed to my ever-trusty MacBook Air and print from that!  A solution that I am still using.  No matter that I have a state of the art printer in my study, it finds my up to date version of Word too difficult to work with!  Don’t ask!  I don’t understand either, but I do have a solution that works with a ‘vintage’ laptop and I am prepared to go with that.

     As I have added photographs to the chapbook, my current problem is that the printer refuses to print them in colour.  We have given up trying to get satisfactory solutions in the damp dark and I will wait for the bright morn to attack the recalcitrant printer.

     Toni has said that the reason the printer is not working is that I have bought a new Roberts Internet Radio to replace the white junk in the kitchen and the printer is sulking that I have a newer piece of gadgetry than  her!  Given my experience with insane pieces of electronics, I find that explanation for the non-colour printing of the document eminently sensible!



As you might be able to tell, I have embraced the problems with the printer as a way of thinking about something other than the Covid-19 crisis.  But alas, it has only partially worked.

     At the moment I am not convinced that any country in the world has actually got a convincing handle on how to deal with this situation.  I realize that we are in a dire situation: people are dying and are resenting social separation and while we are dealing with the medical crisis, the economic and social crises are gaining traction.  The story of the Great Depression is not an encouraging one, and neither is the long slog out of the Depression.  What is going to happen when the three months of government paying 80% of wages stops?  How far is this government prepared to go to ease the inevitable hardship that the complete dislocation of economic activity is going to continue to produce?

     The economy must be up and running as soon as possible, but at what cost?



Our Catalan class is stumbling towards some sort of new existence: I await developments with interest.



It looks as though it is going to be raining tomorrow as well!  I will have to lose myself in technical resolution.  So to speak.

     Tomorrow the colour many not be courtesy of the weather, thought I hope it will be courtesy of my printer!