… will recall that I’ve been having certain issues about music and entertainment here in my little apartment. But today I’ve made a great deal of progress which has gone a long way towards dealing with the issue on a temporary basis.
And as we know, there is nothing more permanent than a temporary solution.
You may recall that a couple of years ago I bought an “old, new laptop”. They were on sale at give-away prices because although they were new and in working order, they had various defects and were sold “as seen”.
I have one of these data readers for modern vehicles that you plug into the vehicle’s data port to read off the fault codes. It works with a CD-ROM, which I didn’t have on my notebook (it uses an external DVD reader that runs off the mains) and that’s no good for out in the yard, and so a laptop with a working DVD reader was an essential.
The rest of the laptop wasn’t important, so when I ended up with one in which the mouse didn’t work, I wasn’t all that bothered. But then, of course, my plans all changed.
Many years ago, when I lived in Belgium, I rigged up an office with an in-house entertainment system that had a really good speaker system – a huge deep-bass speaker with a couple of all-round stereo treble speakers. And the sound was excellent.
And so today, I rigged up the “old, new laptop” with the speaker system, and it works a treat. I can play all of the music, whether CD or *.mp3, and DVDs, And with the USB Cassette machine that I bought a few years ago, I can even play cassettes through it.
There’s also a USB record deck here, so I can play my LPs on it too.
I’ve dug out an old desktop monitor too – quite a large one, and when I obtain an HDM1 cable, I’ll have large-screen film facilities too.
So having had an early night last night, I managed to raise myself from my stinking pit at about 06:10. It’s my aim to be up and about in between the two alarms as you know.
I’d been on my travels too. Back in Brussels, I was selling my final apartment somewhere on the north side of the city. It was laid out somehow like the place at Hankelow but, obviously, in much better condition. I’d bought it a few years ago but never done too much with it. With me was a girl, something like Cecile, and my solicitor. I was far too ill to take part in the proceedings, being confined to bed, so the solicitor and this girl did everything. After the sale had been completed, the solicitor came in quietly laughing. He told me that the woman had been lamenting about her son, and how she’s just saddled him with a mortgage at the age of 36. I was meantime adding up th cash on hand after selling all of my three places, and how it came to something like half a million pounds, and how I was too ill to spend it all.
I went down for a baguette a little later on. There is still the depot de pain in the newsagents here and the owner remembered me, which was nice.
Back here, I pottered around for a while, and … errr … had a little relax too – which led to a somewhat late lunch. And did some of the unpacking too. But only “some”. I need to gather up my strength to do the rest because it really did take a lot out of me, going around North America like I did.
Tea though was another one of my aubergine and kidney bean whatsits – with no olives because I seem to have run out and I forgot to buy any yesterday. There’s enough left over for three more meals.
So now, despite my early start, my little repose during the morning means that I don’t actually feel tired right now. It will take me a while to readjust to my habitual way of life.
