Friday Again...for my sins

So, I realise I’ve missed a week’s Blog. As I have written before, if I’m up at my Mum’s house then trying to connect to the Internet there is a losing battle. It’s like a Black Hole that sucks everything in and nothing can escape. And since I’m exhausted by the time I get back (God knows why since I rarely do anything while I’m there) I don’t feel like doing any more typing on the computer – plus I don’t really like declaring myself- it could all be reaction to the acupuncture and travelling back home. To all and sundry. It’s one of the reasons I get so narked off with myself. I go out for two hours in the afternoon and I’m too exhausted to go out again in the evening, and especially on days when I should go out – particularly to City Voices – I haven’t the energy. On the plus side, this Tuesday’s Creative Writing Group was quite good. Mainly because I kept my mouth shut. Oh I can go ‘off piste’ with the best of them; and I find it very difficult to stay on subject. You might talk about Julius Caesar and I will automatically diverge into the history of the Roman Empire; Mark Anthony, Cleopatra, Caesar Augustus (he took over from Julius) and why the members of the Senate felt that they had no option but to murder Caesar himself. All very interesting information, but when you only have about 5-6 minutes to make your point the fact that I can waffle for half an hour on divergent subjects can be a bit infuriating. I appreciate this – it just makes listening harder for me – I rather suspect that I like being the centre of attention. Not a lot one can do about that either I suspect. Writing is a good start – I probably should have auditioned for RADA or somewhere like it.

There is so little news from my neck of the woods. My Romance Novel is trickling along. I’m having a few problems with the monetary situation, mainly because I can’t get my head around the pre-decimal system. For example I know:

20 shillings = £1

5 shillings = a Crown

2s/6d = half a Crown

4 Crowns = £1

Edwin has been valiantly trying to explain the intricacies of ‘Old Money’ to me and I feel like my head is going to explode. I know that it isn’t really necessary for my hero/heroine to be seen using/handling money, but I should have some inkling of how it works and the price of daily living. That is proving to be the biggest bugbear. It will all work out I hope, I know that other people don’t really grasp why I need to understand, particularly (as they say) I’m not actually mentioning money, but my logic comes from something an author said to me once, that you should research far more than will ever go into your novel, simply because. Thankfully Dad bought me the Dragon Dictation System about 18 months ago which has proved a Godsend. The only downside is that it doesn’t work for MSOffice (Well MSWord actually) 2016. There seems to be no ‘patch’ for it and new editions cost £279. If I’m going to spend that much money on Speech-to-Text software, then I want it to work on my latest Office Software and not have to trawl the Internet for fixes. I adore Dragon. It’s fast, it learns from your voice, it’s fairly easy to use, but I’ve no guarantee that it will work with my system. A lot of money to shell out. And I can promise you that there is a whole host of other things that I can spend £279 on rather than Speech-to-Text software that may or may not work! Okay, whinge over.

My new AlphaSmart device arrived two days ago and I’m gradually getting used to it. I had a Dana AlphaSmart which was wonderful but it suddenly died on me and despite resets it simply refused to work. The new one I have now isn’t quite the same, the keyboard and screen are similar but rather than a stylus and memory card holders I have a list of keys at the top of the keyboard marked file 1, file 2 etc up to file 8. I can simply press any of these to take me to the relevant file and the Neo will save the document I was working on. For example, I can be typing this on File 2 and then press File 1 and this Neo AlphaSmart will save File 2 and I can continue on File 1. No doubt I shall get used to it, one can get used to anything, but I miss my old Dana and I’ve no idea what to do about the memory cards. There is probably nothing I can use them for. I suppose I can insert them into my computer and use them like USB Sticks, but it seems an awfully complicated way of going about things. I miss being able to use italics, underline and bold, I miss being able to use whatever font I wanted and you can’t do any of these things with this device. No doubt it is to simplify matters but one can’t help thinking that by removing some of the functions, they’ve also removed some of the pleasure. Probably in about 5-6 months I’ll think that this is the best thing that I ever purchased, who knows. This ends my Blog for this week. I hope to have more news of my struggles with this piece of kit in later Blogs (I promise they won’t involve screaming swear words at it and throwing it across the room.)

throwing it across the room.)