Eeek!

In which the Laptop of Heavenly Perfection contrives to scare me spitless:

because I did everything that I ought to, this morning. I woke and rose and cleaned my teeth and abluted and so forth; I fed the cats; I made coffee and drank a pint of it, and put the other pint into Stanley the vacuum flask. And copied the Alexandria story [which, weirdly, still doesn't have a title] onto the thumb-drive, and packed that and Stanley and a plain chocolate KitKat and the LHP into my shoulder-bag and walked into town. And thought about the story on the way, specifically about how my favourite Viking would wake unaccustomedly alone in a strange bed after a long sea-voyage, and find a strange boy squatting in the corner of the room. And arrived at the Lit & Phil, which is so often the end of my journey; and went downstairs to the Silence Room, and unpacked everything, and pressed the power-button on the LHP.

And nothing.

And I pressed it again, and twice more. Still nothing.

So I packed everything up again, and walked home, thinking just three things. The third of them, the most desperate, was that the John Lewis department store still has an LHP for sale. It's way more expensive than I can afford, but (given that I have no money at all, and that therefore all prices are alike to me) it is my last resort. The second thing I thought was that my own LHP was still under warranty when I bought it, and there is still a chance that that hasn't expired yet, tho' my memory says it was good until sometime this month and most of this month has gone.

The first thing I thought, the thought I clung to most fiercely, was that I last used the LHP on the train; specifically I had used it for an hour and then read a book, and it was not at all impossible that I had put it aside without switching it off, on the principle that I might go back to it later. And this particular iteration of Linux doesn't have an auto power-down, so it was not impossible that I had simply let the battery drain itself entirely...

And I walked home, and brought it straight upstairs and plugged it in - and lo! We have power, we have diligence, it is fully functional when plugged in. And now I have switched it off and it seems to be recharging quite happily, so I'm guessing hoping that my first thought was a true thought and there's nothing wrong at all, its only problem is myself.

But still. I was very scared for a little while there, for about the length of time it takes to walk home from the Lit & Phil; and as you may know, I am not pretty when I'm scared.

In other news, Mac has just fallen off the windowsill.

Nothing but the best

I made meat-paste sandwiches for my lunch.

It may be my greatest invention.

When I was a kid, meat-paste sandwiches were a regular part of a child's diet, at least around our way. Shippam's meat-paste, to be specific: a soft grey-brown oozy stuff that lacked any identifiable texture or flavour, spread on buttered white pre-sliced bread.

I thought I had grown away from it for ever, except that shortly after I got my first flat in Newcastle, twenty-some years back, a couple of friends turned up unexpectedly, newly back from travels overseas; and she refused coffee and asked for meat-paste sandwiches, and thus I deduced that she was pregnant.

And no meat-paste has passed my threshold, let alone my lips, from then till this. But lo! This is a fine thing:

Take cold poached brisket, chop it into chunks (whoops! a couple of chunks just slid off the board there - but fortunately, there are cats circling below...) and drop it into your hyper-special new blender. Whizz to a soft pulpy paste. Mix in lots of freshly-grated horseradish from the garden, mayonnaise and mustard. Salt and pepper. A bit more horseradish. Like that, until yummy.

Spread on buttered granary, and eat. Fighting off cats the while.