[Jayne Osborn]

I'm tired of talking about the referendum, Brexit (some people's friends and family are still not talking to each other since the result), the new UK Prime Minister election, the new US President election, immigration, global warming, the economy, blah, blah, blah . . .

Just for a change, how about relating some nice little snippets of personal news (and not "Accomplished Members" type of stuff)? We all must have had something pleasant happen in our lives recently, surely? Even small things lift the spirits.

Well, in case anyone's interested, I'll kick off with mine. My daughter and her new husband bought three scratch cards and they all came up trumps (!), I mean 'won money' - totalling over five thousand pounds...

Edited in on Feb 1st 2018: Dammit! I just tried to edit a small typo from this post and half of it has disappeared! I can't retrieve it, nor remember what I originally wrote. I hope this doesn't mean trouble, like another hacking!!

[Roger Slater]

I swam in the ocean today for the first time this summer. It was wonderful.

[Charlie Southerland]

I just saw a portly groundhog pass by my front window in the driveway and before I could get the .22 rifle to dispatch him, he got away.

[Max Goodman]

My wife and kids get back this week from a long trip abroad! I'm cleaning, and making other preparations, including, if all goes as planned, piling the kids' beds with balloons.

And

What You Will
a Shakespearean Travesty

written by rearranging thousands of snippets cut from Shakespeare's plays, will get its premiere in June 2017 . The prologue was workshopped here. In preparation, I'm working hard at polishing. I will probably bore you all frequently about this between now and June.

[Janice D. Soderling]

Last week I had a lovely afternoon and evening on a roof terrace overlooking Stockholm with four people I love including one daughter and two beautiful grandchildren. And a delicious supper there with grilled tuna and an excellent white wine.

Then I went with one of said beloveds for a week in beautiful Ålesund, Norway.

Also I slept until past noon today.

Also I bought six books today.

[Jayne Osborn]

Ah, it's not all doom and gloom, as I suspected. Thanks for sharing your happy moments, Bob, Charlie, Max and Janice.

Max,
You're being very modest. What You Will is a BIG thing, not a little one. Congratulations on its world premiere next year.

Bob,
Lucky you. Swimming in the sea is indeed wonderful.

Let's hear more happy little events, please.

[Charlie Southerland]

A nice buck, three does and two fawns are in my yard just as the sun is setting which highlights their reddish coats, and the sun really sets off the fawns spots. Eat your heart out Remington and Rockwell.

[Norman Ball]

I saw a baby skink twice yesterday. They are far too fast to grab let alone photograph.

[W.F. Lantry]

There were two raccoons washing their little raccoon paws in the guard-dog's water bowl on the back porch this evening. Guard dog, a border collie, was cowering in her igloo. I had to clap my sandals together to chase the miscreants away.

I used to think they were cute, but they eat chickens. The good news? They hightailed it back to the forest!

[Ann Drysdale]

I sing of the joy of the Great Discovery; the moment when something suddenly makes itself known. Like my first day at school, when the teacher called me to the front of the class, introduced me and then said "a little bird told me you can read". I can recall the terror - I'd always been told that school was where you learned to read. Then she handed me a little card, buff-coloured with scruffy corners and a two-tone illustration - "can you tell me what that says?"...

Mo-ther see kit-ty. Kit-ty can play ball. I can play ball too. See me play ball with kit-ty.

And she smiled "Good girl! You can read really well."

I can still feel the clunk of the epiphany. Reading was only another word for "telling a grown-up what it says" - like the label on the sauce bottle, like the headlines in the Daily Herald... who knew?

And last night it happened again. A new laptop. Thin as a crisp and already agog with Windows 10. Switched on - to be confronted with an empty screen and a sniffy exhortation to wait while the system was being updated, to expect switchings off-and-on and not to interrupt. I didn't.

Then, when that was all over, I found a desktop screen that bore no resemblance to anything I had ever seen before and no apparent way of getting at any of the stuff that it had assured me was there. There was a link on the toolbar to something called Cantona or Cantata or something (I don't know for sure because I accidentally killed it) but no way of finding the programmes I had had installed by the local expert. Audacity? Auslogics?

I clicked and clicked, getting lists of things like Amazon and Booking.com and ways to access x-boxes and online solitaire. I clicked again and again on the pale approximation of the Windows logo and nothing suggested access to my programmes, never mind creating desktop shortcuts. Then, right at the bottom, I saw, and clicked "all Apps" - and there they were!

I know technology has to advance and I am grateful for what it can do, but why tinker with the established language? When did programmes become Apps? And - hey! - have Apps really only been programmes all along? Aha!

I've still got to find a way to make shortcuts and how to prime its innards with flash-driven history, but for now, rejoice with me! I have found that which was lost!