autobiography

Weird Wednesday – Mind Boggling

~ tidalscribe.com ~ 26 Comments

Do you find new technology mind boggling? By new I mean anything that you did not personally know about this time last week. Do you find recent innovations mind boggling? By recent I mean anything that has happened since you left school.

You obviously think you know about technology otherwise you would not be reading this on a device of some sort, but do you know how it actually works? If you do, please let the rest of us know. For most of us the mysterious workings are akin to alchemy or the dark arts. Chips are involved and are made of silicone, rather than potatoes and silicone is made from sand. There is plenty of sand on the beach, but what happens next?

On line workings are supposedly run by AI, or computers as we used to call them, but how come these logical beings have a very human urge to deliberately annoy us?

I can do all sorts of things on line, but Arty Imp lulls me into a false sense of security and confidence. Browsing wallpaper on B&Q’s site on my desk top ( I like to see everything on a large screen ) it offered to send samples for a small remuneration. I put several into the shopping basket, already I could picture how my attic office might look. I put in my order as a guest, it wouldn’t let me, it seemed I had joined B&Q Club when I bought one garden chair on line. I looked up my little notebook and typed in my email and the password I had presumably used last time. It did not recognise it. No problem, just pretend I had forgotten it. Nothing would enable me to get a password they approved of, links were sent to my email, texted to me… I gave up, it would be easier to take two buses to my nearest B&Q where I would not see the wallpapers I liked, because they had already told me they were only available on line… Anyway, not as if it was important… but thinking outside the box later I decided to pretend I was a new customer and use my other email address, Not join the club, say No to being on the emailing list. I did not want any sort of relationship, just the wallpaper samples. My purchase went straight through with reassuring emails and they soon arrived in the post. Of course, obviously if I choose one I like they will not actually let me buy a whole roll…

To check how Tech Savy you are take this simple test.

You want to send money to your nephew for his birthday. Do you

  1. Use face recognition or finger print to do a bank transfer on your phone
  2. Get on the bus and go to the nearest town that still has a branch of your bank open and talk to a human behind the desk.

It’s your sister’s birthday today, do you

  1. WhatsApp her to arrange a time to Facetime
  2. Ring her on your landline.

You have not heard from your elderly aunt for a few days, do you

  1. Play a round of Words With Friends on your phone and see if she plays back.
  2. Call her house phone from your house phone which is firmly tethered by a wire.

You need a relaxing evening after dealing with technology all day, do you

  1. Stream a box set of a new drama and stay up all night binge watching
  2. Look in the newspaper or Radio Times to see what’s on BBC before the ten o’clock news.

If you answered A to all the questions welcome to the first quarter of the 21st century, but beware what you will face in this next quarter.

If you answered B every time you just might be able to cope if all the electricity is switched off, perhaps…

But how is the present matching up to the future predicted in the 20th century? We are not sitting at a phone table with a curly wire attaching our phone to the wall and a little TV screen showing a live picture of our relatives on the other side of the world.

The first ‘mobile phones’ most of us saw were on Star Trek, some of us watching in black and white. Their hand held flip up devices could Teleport them down to a strange planet, but they could not take photos, text their friends, watch videos or Facetime with friends on the other side of the universe. It may have slowed the plot if they had to play back on Quiz Planet before stepping on to their platform.

On arrival on the new planet they stop to take a selfie together in front of a strange volcano so they can put it on Instagram. Then Captain Kirk pauses to take a picture of the Aliens who have crept up without them noticing. He wants to WhatsApp a picture to his mother billions of light years away.

Meanwhile a junior officer has not noticed the aliens as he is bending down to snap strange plants using the plant recognition App.

His colleague is glued to the screen exclaiming ‘210 points for OXO, how did he do that and I’ve got all vowels’.

Captain Kirk is now on Google maps, having failed to understand what the Aliens are saying, their language is not coming up on his translation App.

The weather App was not much use either as it failed to predict the electric storm and downpour of acid rain. It seems like a good time to beam up, but their phones need recharging…

Did you score A or B or perhaps AB? What is your favourite 21st Century invention?

Closing Down

~ tidalscribe.com ~ 37 Comments

We are all used to seeing Closing Down Sales, perhaps going along and feeling like vultures, the short term thrill of grabbing a bargain, followed by the realisation your favourite shop is gone for good.

The closing down of well known and loved store chains has become a feature of this century, hastened by economic downturns, pandemics and the connected rise in the popularity of on line shopping.

My first simple shopping experience was the corner shop a short distance from our flat, the top half of a Victorian terrace on a main road. It was run by two ‘old ladies’, one of whom was called Dolly. I thought it a very strange name for an adult human, but assumed Dolly Mixtures, the only sweets I was allowed, were named after her. At some stage in my first six years of life I was seen across the road by Mum to trot up to the shop by myself. I knew the road was dangerous as a neighbour used to warn me; delighting in telling the story of a boy who ran out of his house and got run over.

When we moved to a new house in Farnborough, Hampshire shopping changed radically. No shops nearby, but there was a butcher’s boy who came on his bike, a box of groceries the milkman delivered and a greengrocer’s van. We were amused by the greengrocer’s strong Hampshire accent and used to do imitations – Oi’ve gut som noice roipe tomaters. This was a time of opening up, not closing down and in time a shopping centre appeared with new ‘supermarkets’ like Finefare and more importantly to me, a Woolworths. As well as toys you could buy anything. On each of their birthdays I would buy Dad a bag of nails, if I asked him what he wanted he always said a bag of nails as he loved woodwork. Mum would get a new makeup bag, probably the previous year’s cheap bag had worm out by then and some bath cubes. It seemed you could buy anything there from sweets to Ladybird children’s clothes.

When we emigrated to Perth, Western Australia when I was eleven, to another new house on another new estate, shopping changed again. The only nearby shop, up a sandy track that was the unmade stretch of our road, was the Greek corner shop. All the corner shops were run by hardworking Greeks and Italians.

On Saturday the main shops in towns closed at noon, so Mum and Dad left me in charge of my brother and sister and dashed to Victoria Park to do a Big Shop, the first time this expression was used in our family.

After a while, with new houses and families arriving, Tom The Cheap Grocer appeared up the road and evolved into a little shopping centre and we encountered our first delicatessen. 

When I returned to England for my six month working holiday, that I’m still on, Woolworths was still going strong in every town. I thought they would be here forever. When we were married and bought our first place, having to sell the car to afford the mortgage, our nearby town was so dull it did not even make it into the ‘Book of One Hundred Crap Towns’, but it did have a Woolworths, whatever else closed Woolworths remained. There was also a Big Sainsbury. After dropping my son at school and my daughter at playgroup I would sprint with the baby in the pram and dash round grabbing the many items that were cheaper than the little local shop.

Then a big shopping centre was built on the other side of town and we heard that our Sainsburys was closing down. I could not believe they could do that to a loyal customer like me. It was to be replaced by Wilkinsons, never heard of them, coming down from the north. I said I certainly would not be shopping there. I was reminded of my words often as I became a keen shopper in Wilkos, where you could get everything, gardening to gadgets, cleaning to cushions…

When we came to Bournemouth in 2004 sure enough there was a Wilkinsons in Bournemouth town centre and in Boscombe, which also had a TJ Hughes, already well known to us from holiday breaks. You could buy anything from shoes to suitcases and like Wilkinsons it was a godsend for students needing cheap crockery and bedding.

In Bournemouth Square there was a Borders with a basement full of CDs and of course a floor full of books. Open till ten pm, very cosmopolitan. We had three department stores and a BHS and Marks and Spencer.

I won’t bore you with the order in which all these shops disappeared, some chains collapsing completely, others with branches surviving elsewhere. Woolworths was the biggest shock, we had a branch in Southbourne Grove.

When I started having appointments at Poole hospital, one hour’s bus ride away, I realised they had better shops, not to mention a proper shopping centre with nice toilets. I don’t actually like shopping as an activity, but after covid lockdown it was an exciting novelty to go shopping again.

Poole still had a Beales department store, a Wilko and a Marks and Spencer. No sooner had I discovered that Marks and Spencer sold post-surgery bras than they announced they were closing their Poole branch. Beales and Wilko followed.

Sometimes shops stay empty, sometimes the fun returns. Wilko reopened in Poole under new ownership? Debenhams in Bournemouth Square reopened as Bobby’s, which apparently is what the original store was called before Debenhams took over. Not as a department store in the traditional sense, it is an ongoing ‘reimagining of the concept’. That means you can’t buy clothes, bedding or curtains there, but it has had an art gallery, now a work space, had a pet boutique, now a Makers’ Market… and now a restaurant on the top floor.

Borders became a Tesco, New Look became a restaurant. Primark is still there and some shoe shops, but if you need to have a good look round for clothes you are out of luck. However, you can buy clothes for Teddy. Build-a-Bear is still going strong.

Meanwhile back in Southbourne Grove… Woolworths stores all closed in 2009. Our Woolworths miraculously turned into The Ludo Lounge, with its fun décor, old wooden furniture and games and books it looked like it had always been there. A café bar that appealed to everyone. On the roof garden you can still see the old Woolworths sign. We thought it was unique, but actually the lounge chain started in 2002 and there are now 250 lounges and you can get a lounge passport. Lounge fans enjoy visiting other branches. In Christchurch a large hardware shop became the Arcado Lounge.

Have you lost a favourite shop, or lost your job when a shop closed?

Silly Sunday – November Nothings

~ tidalscribe.com ~ 31 Comments

Random ponderings on First World Problems and out of world experiences.

Miserable November afternoon

Happy November morning, welcomed by a Robin singing his heart out.

It has been a discombobulating month so far. WordPress would not let me download new photographs; how could I go on any walks if I couldn’t use my photos! The naughty elf who runs WordPress seemed to be suggesting my gallery was too full. I deleted lots of pictures to no avail and causing havoc to my posts and pages.  To be fair to WordPress this was on my desk top computer which is still on Windows 10, now no longer supported, whatever that means. Cyberson2 had suggested I didn’t need to worry or at least there was no point in doing anything, as my old computer would not cope with Windows 11. He had downloaded extra protection when they were visiting recently… And hey ho, I have heard scary things about Windows 11…   So I created a test blog on my iPad and whoopee, pictures were accepted, so now I download pictures to the gallery then do my blog on the computer where my word documents are…

Anyway, back to real life. One of our local towns is in lockdown or gridlock… there are always road works somewhere, but this is work on the bypass that does not bypass the town, but ends at the roundabout. Only one side at a time is being closed over the next three weeks, but apparently locals could not drive or catch a bus with any hope of getting there. No problem for me, I don’t drive, don’t live in the town and I walk there.  But it turns out walking across the river to your writers’ group or coffee morning is not much good if nobody else is there. Like any group we arrive from all directions to a central point.

Meanwhile, no such problem in Southbourne for our monthly book club, only one person absent. The only problem being half of us had not read the book and only one person loved it, nobody else liked it! After the previous month’s enjoyable hardback in good print size, we were faced with a thick paperback in small print. This is a famous novel many people have loved over the years. Find out what it was at the end of this blog. With two lots of visitors staying and blogs to write, I started reading, but decided I must abandon it. I met one of the other members out and about and was relieved to hear she had not read it either.

It is looking like autumn, but too mild. I have just given my so called lawn its third final mow of the year. Talking of global warming, we seem to have heard too little about Prince William’s Earthshot prize and ten year project. While world leaders preside over wars and destruction, clever people are working and innovating to look after the planet.

And talking of the planet…

Years ago my husband came back indoors one night and said he had just watched the space station fly over Ken’s garage. He had asked another neighbour why he was staring above Ken’s garage. We hadn’t known we could go on line and track its many differing orbits. After that we were obsessed for the period it was passing over Southbourne, or Dorset or England…

The International Space Station, that shining beacon of humanity, science and international cooperation is coming up to retirement or abandonment. My scientific knowledge usually comes from tuning in to the middle of intelligent radio programmes, so it may or may not be true that a space station does not stay in orbit of its own accord and is reliant on the occasional blast of propulsion, worked by the Russians. To bring it down safely to some remote Mexican desert is not guaranteed, dependent as it is on international cooperation. Russia’s MIR was successfully brought down in the desert, but Skylab was scattered over Western Australia in 1979. To have a piece of ISS come down in my road would be blogworthy, but possibly more inconvenient than work on the bypass.

Possible scenario of bits of ISS falling on Bournemouth seafront.

The novel was Catch 22 and the person who loved it also loved my novella Pandemonica and gave it a five star review on Goodreads, so she is obviously a good judge of books...

Have you read Catch 22… or Pandemonica?

Have you spotted the space station or perhaps even been to the space station?

Train Trip Tips

~ tidalscribe.com ~ 31 Comments

ONE   Buy a cardboard ticket at the ticket office, preferably in advance. There was an outcry when it was suggested money could be saved by closing all the ticket offices. Few passengers understand the complexity and pricing of tickets, so it is easier to just tell a human being where and when you want to go. At Bournemouth mainline station they are used to holiday makers, overseas students, seniors and perhaps other passengers who would try the patience of a saint. I always find a friendly face to suggest the best route and give handy tips, such as your sister from Australia can have a senior rail card as well.

TWO   Get a rail card if you are eligible, there are all sorts, from students to senior, you pay for them, but soon make a saving with a few journeys.

THREE   Travel to and from a mainline station if you can. Trains are more frequent and you may catch a faster train that does not stop everywhere. There is also a better chance of getting to your destination or back home. When our train from Waterloo was abruptly terminated at Southampton we were pondering what problem had arisen, when it was announced that the next train was for Bournemouth only. Pity the poor passengers who were heading for tiny stations in the New Forest. When I was going from Margate to Victoria we were late leaving, then somewhere along the line it was decided time could be made up by not stopping at most of the stations! Unless you were going to Bromley or Victoria you had to get off at the next station and wait for a slow train.

Apart from the above, there is also the travel experience to consider. My nearest station is dire with MPs, councillors and locals always fighting for improvements. There is a long flight of stairs, fine for keeping fit, but not with buggies and luggage. No lift, no café, no toilets, mostly no staff and a record of suicides – the visiting pastoral care team will tell you to stay away from the edge of the platform. Meanwhile at Bournemouth there can be delays or problems, but plenty of staff to ask; even if they don’t know what’s going on either you can have a friendly chat. There is also passenger assistance to get on and off the trains. For the writer or photographer there is always plenty of Life going on and passengers even weirder than yourself.

FOUR   Now you have arrived on the day of your journey you will see why it’s good to buy a cardboard ticket in advance. People are waving their phones around trying to get a signal for the ticket on their phone so they can get through the barrier. Others are causing a queue at the ticket office because their phone has run out of power and they can’t get at their ticket and their train is going in three minutes.

FIVE   Ask for help from a human. Even following my advice there can be problems. One time my ticket went in the machine, came out, but the barrier did not open. Staff let me through, but the ticket was for two train rides and the Underground, what if it didn’t work on The Tube? It didn’t, but there were staff at the barriers, cheerful staff who said that was always happening. If you are battling with luggage or a rucksack larger than yourself, they will let you through the gate.

SIX   If you are going on the London Underground check the map and the signs telling you which direction for your station. Don’t go the wrong way round on the Circle Line or north on the Northern Line when you are meant to be going south. If you notice you are going past the wrong stations, get off at the next station, looking like a cool regular alighting at your intended station. We did this on the Metro in Paris and did manage to end up in the right place… Do not panic, just make your way to the right direction platform.

SEVEN   Don’t lose your ticket. Keep your ticket and your phone in a money belt, under several layers of clothing if you are neurotic, but easily accessible so you don’t look like a nervous traveller.

EIGHT   Don’t do everything I tell you. You might well get all sorts of bargains in advance on line by booking yourself on specific trains or discovering it is cheaper to buy three tickets for one journey staying on the same train.

What are your handy tips for train travel?

Silly Sunday -Just Chatting

~ tidalscribe.com ~ 43 Comments

Visitors coming and going Chez Tidalscribe, but here’s something to think about while I’m busy…

While I was away I was idling away a few minutes on my phone and was surprised to get on ChatGPT. I had no intention of asking it to write my novel for me, but I would just see if it would make a picture of flowers and bees, perhaps a picture of a woman enjoying gardening ( age inserted ) – doesn’t look like me.

How about a beach hut, me at my beach hut, ask for purple hair and round down my age...

She looks fun, but it’s not me.

I’ll ask Chatterbox how to use my own photos… oil painting that looks better than my real garden.

Now my nineties friend wants a painting of her garden and thinks I’m very clever… I tell her AI is the clever one.

This is fun, could be addictive…. I have so many photos I could transform into art.

Or I could become an avatar. This really is addictive, I could turn all my family into Avatars, all my local scenes into an art gallery…

BUT of course this is dream land and it comes with guilt. We’re all using electricity and The Cloud is not really fluffy white and Artificial Intelligence uses a lot more power and water for cooling… Not to mention the ethics of presenting ChatGPT’s words as your own. Chatting to real people, it seems people are using ChatGPT for all sorts of useful things; asking it questions instead of Googling information, writing reports…

The above is all I have done on ChatGPT, using my own photos, except the one of me…

A real drawing by a human boy, Alex.

Have you used ChatGPT, if so how? Is it any different from all the other tools we use on line to create our blogs etc?

Home From Home

~ tidalscribe.com ~ 35 Comments

Staying in someone else’s home is the topic I chose for our writers’ group when it was my turn this week. It covers a wide range of experiences from world leaders being the guests of royal families, to school children going on sleepovers, so I am expecting them all to have come up with a piece.

I have stayed in many homes, sometimes those of strangers. As the eldest in the family I was often farmed out to make way for visiting friends and relatives. Looking back now, senior me would be appalled at the thought of sleeping on a stranger’s living room floor with several friends. Last week I did sleep in an office; modern working from home means spare bedrooms have become offices. However, the sofa bed was very comfortable and I did have exclusive use of the shower room next door, except when boys were having showers or going for a …

How kind were the many people who put me and friends up on various travels. Nowadays I prefer to be the hostess not the guest and we have had many people to stay over the years.

Whether you are staying or having visitors, the bad experiences are more fun to write about.

Worst Sleepover

My younger son and his best friend, plus a boy we had never met, were taken to the speedway by BF’s Dad. They enjoyed the evening and the sort of takeaway food you can get away with when there are no mothers around – this fact is relevant to the story.  They then came back to our house to get settled into sleeping bags in our son’s room.

At 3am our bedroom door was flung open and son announced that the ‘other boy’ had been sick in his sleeping bag.

Worst Christmas – also involving vomiting.

My friend and I left Perth, Western Australia, having cadged a lift across the Nullabor Plain with a family friend. Our final destination was Tasmania. My friend being a laid back Aussie country girl assured me her various relatives would be happy to put us up. Our first stop was her aunt in South Australia for Christmas. They had an apricot farm near the Murray River and another aunt lived across the road. They also owned a shop down in the town – relevant fact.

They welcomed us in the lead up to Christmas and we planned to leave on Boxing Day. Christmas Eve proved eventful as the aunt across the road was having a miscarriage and my friend commandeered our driver to take Aunty to hospital. I was left alone to look after her other children, who I had never met before, in a house I had never been in and feed them.

Christmas Day was very pleasant, but that night my friend and I were awoken by the most horrendous noise. Our driver had food poisoning… what we subsequently discovered was that other visiting relatives had noticed one of the freezers in the family shop was dodgy and had warned each other not to touch the chicken.

We set off for Melbourne the next morning with my friend assuring our poor driver he would be fine. We made it, but I succumbed to the food poisoning the following day.

At some stage we bade farewell to our driver and went to stay with another aunt and uncle in a posh house. After a couple of nights we took a coach to Sydney where we stayed in a Girls’ Friendly Society hostel. We had to sign back in before midnight, even on New Year’s Eve. We then returned to Melbourne for a planned second short stay with the aunt and uncle before our flight to Tasmania, but they had mysteriously disappeared on holiday!

With no money set aside for accommodation we wandered into a respectable Christian bookshop in the city and asked a young shop assistant if she knew any cheap accommodation. She replied that her father had just gone away for a few days and she would be delighted to have some company to stay as she did not like to be alone.

What are your best or worst experiences of staying in someone else’s home? Take this quiz to find out if you are a good guest.

Your host is lactose intolerant, vegetarian and teetotal. Do you arrive with

A  a homemade vegan cake you have made especially

B  a lovely bouquet of flowers

C  a bottle of wine, box of chocolates and pork pies from ‘our lovely farm shop’.

One person in the family has to get up very early and catch a train to work. You always wake up early so do you

A  Check the night before what time they go out the door, so you do not get in their way. Hide under the covers not making a sound in case they worry they have woken you up.

B  Dash in the shower and hope you are out before they want to come in the bathroom.

C  Get up to make a cup of tea for both of you and take the chance to have a nice catch up chat.

Your host is cooking the evening meal, do you

A  Peep round the kitchen door say ‘You don’t want any help do you’ and retreat quickly.

B  Ask if there is anything you can do and keep out of the way of the cooker and the cook while you peel the potatoes as requested.

C  When the cook says ‘No you go and watch television, I don’t need any help’ insist on helping and showing how you usually do the potatoes and catching them up with all the latest events in your life.

All Cs, I am away that week, sorry, though I do like chocs and wine…

All As and Bs I’ll just check the calendar…

All As  You are welcome to stay

Silly Saturday – Strange Shopping

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I’m busy with visitors, just time for a quick trip to the shops for a few essentials.

Shopping makes you tired so it’s handy to have somewhere comfortable to sit.

And if you take your visitors shopping make sure you choose somewhere easy to find to meet up if they get lost…

...or you never know where you might end up...

...or what you might end up buying.

Your visitors will need a cup of tea after all that shopping.

What is your ideal shopping experience?

Friday Fun – Beach Hut Life

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How you imagine Beach Hut Life.

It’s better with the sound effects of howling wind – when you realise you might not be going for a swim today…

Don’t lean on the fence to look over…

WHOOPS…

But the sun is still shining…

…and you can have a paddle.

Smooth sand and rough sea

Perfect weather for some…

We had an evening photography club shoot at my beach hut and were lucky enough to see the mythical White Goat.

And a treasure hunter who was obviously looking in the wrong spot for a pot of gold.

What are you preferred beach activities?

Sunday Stroll – Sobo Grove

~ tidalscribe.com ~ 26 Comments

Busy, busy, busy, formatting the garden, watering visitors and expecting a new paperback… only time for a little local stroll and perhaps a coffee. Enjoy a wander.

Is it going to rain? No, it’s always sunny in Southbourne-on-Sea.

Local volunteers have been busy planting.

Outside, inside or on the roof…

Yummy, picnic time, wonder what they sell? Answer at the end.

There is always someone watching you…

Answer – the funeral directors…

Where did you stop for coffee?