At the Folks' - a bunch of odds and ends

In case anyone's wondering where I've been the past few days, I'm now here (oops, did I accidentally hit the space bar?) in sunny Cambridgeshire, where reside my parents.

This means that I'm unable to go visiting the usual suspects' blogs, and am missing out on any fabulous action at Ren's, for example. In some ways, I'm glad not to be involved any more in the trainwreck of a thread over at The F-Word where Caroline wrote about sex workers' rights and the need for decriminalisation of prostitution. Last I saw, it was getting really yucky, and my brain is the better for not being tempted to engage with it any more! I should probably have left it as soon as I finished writing my first response over there anyway (which got a "for the win" post all of its own from Caroline - how awesome!) I wrote my letter to my MP and sent it by email before I left home on Wednesday, so my little holiday has not come at the expense of doing what little I can to help in that area.

I've been roped in by my little sister to her book group with our first book being Lorna Doone by R. D. Blackmore. Apparently the plan is to work our way through a list of booksellers' perennial best selling titles, or something. I'm struggling with it so far, though, because the writing style is somewhat scattered, making the development of the story a little tricky to follow. There doesn't appear to be much discipline in the structure. Maybe things will make more sense as I get further through the book, though.

Every so often, the members of the group will be asked to nominate books to add to the list. I am sorely tempted to suggest The Story of O, except that one isn't allowed to suggest books one has already read - and besides, I don't think anyone else in the group would enjoy it the way I did!

I've decided I am going to have a real go at renewing the family tradition of scrapbooks; we have a family archive that runs roughly from my parents' wedding back in the mid-1970s up until the mid 1980s when I and my siblings were just starting school, but then there's a gap and not nearly as comprehensive a narrative since then. I'm going to see if I can revive the tradition at least to tell my own narrative and family stories, and hopefully to tie it in with other family members' stories as well. I missed out on some big family events in 2008, maybe this would be an added incentive to not-miss-out in 2009 (and onwards). I'll start by filling in what little data I have for the intervening years, and then take it from there. Oddly enough, this idea has nothing to do with it being the new year (even though it obviously sounds like the sort of thing that a new year would bring to mind), but came instead from meeting with Harmonygirl and showing her some of my photos of recent holidays.

I've been teaching Dad about how to use his computer, how wikis and blogs work, and so on and so forth. Once again I am struck by how clumsy a PC feels compared to my Mac (although Dad is still on Windows XP, so maybe Vista is a bit closer). Dad is a very difficult pupil, because he insists that he has to do it himself if he is to learn (which is fair enough), but then when a new window opens, or a new page appears on the web, or something, he tends to see a lot of different things and he'll say, "Oh, I don't understand this", and immediately click on things that are most prominent apparently in the belief that that's what he's supposed to do. He does this without waiting for me to explain that which he doesn't understand, which is incredibly frustrating. Also, his clickage often tangles things up for me and I then have to figure out how to untangle them, without ever being given access to the keyboard and mouse in order to do so! After all, it's not like Windows is my natural habitat, so I'm not instantly going to know what's going on anyway! Anyway, we seem to make progress eventually.

I have been taking photos of The Unchanging One, and when I get home I will post a comparison piece so you can all see just how similar these photos are to the ones I have from 15 years ago, and see why she does indeed deserve the name I've given her!

That's all from this bulletin, I should see you all again in about 5 days' time - hugs and kisses to my regular readers (even you, anonymous fat-hating stalker!)