RANDOM JOTTINGS

A few months ago I purchased a brand new new dancing and singing printer, photocopier and scanner all in one.  I have used it for the first two tasks with no problems and when, over the Easter weekend, I started a job I had been promising to do for months, ie sort out my photos and start scanning and saving onto my computer, I decided to try the scanning part of this wonderful machine.

Well, could I get it to scan? No I couldn’t.  Lots of clicking and whirring and nothing happening so I hied me off to the branch of PC World from whence it came and sought help from an IT expert.  In other words, I spoke to a youth aged about 12 liberally endowed with studs and ear-rings. 

I explained my dilemma and he looked at me and said ‘Have you loaded the software on your PC?’  I replied in the negative. ‘Ah well if you don’t load the software on the printer just thinks it is still a printer and copier and won’t scan’.  I looked at him ‘How do I get the software then?’  He gave me that pitying, tolerant look that all the young give to middle aged ladies going soft in the head ‘You should have had a disk with the printer when you bought it’.  I was silent.  ‘You haven’t thrown it out have you?’  ‘DON’T be silly’ I replied with all the indignation I could muster and swept out the store and headed for my car.

Drove home thinking please don’t let me have thrown it out, I can’t go back there if I I have lost it, I will have to go somewhere else, oh the shame…  Got home and rummaged in my basket full of spare scart leads, telephone leads, other leads which I have no idea where they came from or where they are going and there, with a triumphant shout, I spotted the disk I was looking for.

To cut a long story short I popped it in the disk drive, followed the instructions, which fortunately were couched in terms that could be understood by a ten year old, ie me, and I had the scanner up and running. I will now be able to scan those prints that I really wish to keep and chuck the rest (have already filled up a bin bag with hundreds of photos that are really useless), but it is a task that will take a while.

One of the first pics I scanned was this one.  I took this at Abu Simbel a few years ago when waiting for the sun to rise.  This was one of the most amazing and beautiful experiences of my life.  The stillness and quiet while everyone just sat and watched the sun come up, one moment all was dark and then gradually the sky turned pink and as the sun caught the facade of the temple, the stone turned the most staggeringly glorious rose colour and then in the full sunlight, a molten gold.  I found my throat closed up and my eyes filled with tears.  I had wanted to visit Abu Simbel ever since I read a book in my teens all about the moving of the temple and how it was saved from the Nile and I had finally fulfilled my ambition.  Took me forty years but I got there.

There will be lots more to come – be warned…