Waiting for the World to Catch Up

At last. I have a new computer. It's wonderful. It does all sorts of fancy tricks that my geriatric laptop was unable to contemplate. That's the upside. The downside is that a week ago I was an acknowledged expert on all aspects of word processing and many other computer related activities. Today I am a novice once more. I am sure that Office 2007 is a huge leap forward in computing terms and once I am accustomed to it my fingers will fly over the keyboard as they used to but yesterday I had to summon the help page just to find out how to spellcheck a document. (No problem: press F7 like in Wordperfect from ten years ago.)

Another bonus is that I won't be wasting so much time playing games. No one has got round to creating a Vista patch for Scrabble Blast yet. Or Text Twist. Or Bejewelled.

I won't be wasting so much time chatting to people online either as my friends who haven't upgraded to Windows Live can no longer see that I am online. And I won't be sending my Word docs to colleagues as they won't be able to open them unless I remember to save them in compatibility mode. I think I know now how Alexander Graham Bell must have felt when he sat there waiting for his new phone to ring.

Care to Join the Karma Army?

Join Me | Home

Why not make every Friday a 'Good Friday?'

An opportunity for you to join the Karma Army. To become part of this phenomenon all you have to do is send a passport photo and you're in. Thereafter you are committed to random acts of kindness every Friday.

So perhaps as a way to start I'll teach my class the words to Bobby McFerrin's 'Don't Worry, Be Happy' this Friday instead of giving them a test on irregular past participles.

I can see that not all of my readers are natural 'joiners' and me saying, ' It's not a cult, it's a collective' might not carry much weight but I am confident enough in the integrity of my readers to suggest that within a week of reading this entry you should make a point of committing at least one random and unexpected act of kindness that will not bring you any immediate benefit.

Let us know how you get on but if anyone gets arrested you're on your own.

Join Me

BBC - collective - danny wallace 'join me' chapter one

An extract from Danny Wallace's book ' Join Me.'

Easter Greetings

It'll be Easter soon. It's sort of crept up on me. No sooner had the chocolate Santas been relegated to the bargain bins at the supermarket than chocolate bunnies and bilbies (that's the Aussie equivalent) began appearing on the shelves. It happened so long ago that I've already become used to mentally 'tuning out' the foil wrapped eggs and the hot cross buns. Thinking to myself that I'll look at them nearer the time. Then suddenly Easter is upon us and I haven't given any serious thought as to which egg to buy for my inner child. I don't kid myself that Jim will cough up for one but he might be persuaded to draw a face on a soft boiled breakfast egg.

As a youngster, I used to like Smartie eggs with cheerful purple foil wrapping and a little cellophane packet of Smarties hidden inside to be hoarded and sucked slowly when all else had been consumed. Ideally, of course, saved until my sisters had eaten theirs.

The Cadburys mini eggs were fun too. The trick was to balance them one at a time on the front of the electric fire, turning them carefully so that the chocolate inside became liquid but without heating the sugar shell to cracking point. It's a lost art and I think perhaps you have to be pretty stoned to fully appreciate it.

Of course, having been brought up in a Catholic household my first memories of Easter were of getting up on the Sunday morning and finding a chocolate egg waiting for me but with a message in blue Biro scrawled along the top, "Don't eat this, or you won't be able to go to communion."
In those days you were required to fast for three hours before going to mass if you were planning to take communion. I wasn't about to complain, as it had only recently been reduced from 12 hours. I believe it's only an hour these days. Perhaps, if there are any practising Catholics still amongst my acquaintances they can update me on current protocol.

What are your earliest memories of Easter?

What were / are you favourite eggs? Milk chocolate? Plain chocolate? White chocolate? Caramac?

Did anyone really hunt for eggs or is that just something they invented for Hollywood movies?