A MATTER OF LIFE ..... AND DEATH - COMPUTERS GET ILL TOO!

Like many of us when we get that ache, that niggle, that uncomfortable feeling that something's not quite right and we ignore it for a while, so it was when my computer began to go so sloooooooooooooow. I'd be typing away on the work-in-progress, totally in the zone, look up and see that the last half dozen words I'd typed just hadn't appeared - yet. Sometimes they'd then jump onto the screen and I'd think 'Oh, it's only a blip' then off I'd go again. Then it started to do it when I was doing emails. So ennoying. I did toy with the idea of getting Ian, my man-what-does, in with his version of a technical stethoscope but, I suppose, I was wary of it turning into a hideously expensive bill - you know, those bills you get when you take the dog to the vet for a thorn in its pad or something, and the vet says the pooch needs blood tests and an xray and then some horribly expensive medicine it's the devil's own job to get down its throat. So I didn't. I soldiered on. And then that niggle began to be bothersome. Especially at weekends when my grandchildren were playing games on Google Chrome. Alex came to tell me that the screen had died. It had blacked out - the computer equivalent I told myself of a human faint. I put it down to these games having so much content that it had decided to take a break from it for a while. Alex switched off, then switched back on again, and he and his sister were off again for an hour. It happened a few more times so I started to limit them to an hour, maximum - they'd be on there all day if they could! By this time the computer was still going very slow at times ... okayish the rest of the time. It had never blacked out on me when I was working on w-i-p. But then .... while I was answering an email it did it to me. Time to call in the cavalry. Ian - my man-what-does, remember - came and said he'd take it away for the weekend and bring it back on Monday afternoon. He gave me three options - a sort of computer sticking plaster, a bit of medication, or a transplant of a whole new hard drive. I went for the third option. He was, he said, going to Bulgaria for a fortnight on Wednesday. So, this was Thursday. As those who know me well will know I was dragged kicking and screaming into the computer age. I'm still not totally au fait with it all. I do Facebook and Twitter but that's because my publisher says I must, and I probably don't do it as often as I should. But my goodness, did I miss not being able to check and see how my books were doing, what some of my fave FB friends had been putting up, and being able to message people because I can get more in an FB message -and more quickly - than I can in a text message. I had to resort to pen and paper a couple of times.

So, the computer came back. Ian - my man-what-does - said, 'Linda, you have been very, very lucky. When I tried to transfer your old stuff to the new hard drive it kept dying on me. So I had to resort to the back-up.' Ah yes, the back-up. A couple of years ago it was suggested I might like to cough up £50 a year for a super-dooper external saving system. I had used memory sticks a while back but, well, my memory's not what it was and I couldn't remember what safe place I'd put them in so I gave up on that. I didn't understand all the technicalities of it but it sounded to me as though all my stuff was up there on a cloud somewhere and could be brought back to earth when needs be. So it was. All my files came back, including my latest w-i-p which was 50,000 words in at that time. All my photos came back. So far so good. 'But there has been one fatality,' Ian said. 'Your email address book'. Slowly I'm clawing those back but if anyone's thinking I'm ignoring them, I'm not ... I'm just living in hope you'll contact me so I can save your address again. Now then, I am slowly getting to grips with Windows 10. It is soooooooo fast compared to my old system. And a bit different in the layout. Icons that used to be top left, now seem to be top right. Some aren't there at all and Alex had to show me how to 'copy and paste'. Some things I haven't been able to master at all yet. I can download photos from FB posts or the internet but I haven't worked out how to add all of them to blogposts and FB posts - some do but some have a nasty red exclamation mark telling me I can't. So annoying, because I've spent ages looking for, and downloading, images for this blogpost. A stethescope. A computer game. Clouds. A poorly person in bed. But I'm afraid you'll have to visualise the images I wanted to send. You are all writers, after all, so I'm sure that won't be hard.

So, be warned ... like that cough that might be nothing, that pain that shoots through you something but goes if you give your leg a shake, it might be a good idea to get it all checked out sooner rather than later. I've learned a salutory lesson. Oh, and I'm still paying the £50 a year in case Ian - my man-what-does - has to get me out of another hole at a later date. Happy writing, everyone. P.S. Before whizzing this into the ether I had another go to get photos up. I didn't manage the clouds or the computer game or the stethescope, or the poorly person in bed with a themometer in his mouth, but I did manage two that had been in the old system. So I'm learning .... when Ian - my man-what-does - gets back from Bulgaria I'll ask him to give me a few lessons.