THE CRANKY LAPTOP SPEAKS . . .

I have inherited an old cranky laptop. Occasionally, I try working on it but things don't go easily. I am very bad at adjusting to new spatial patterns and the difference in speed between my PC and this slow, cranky laptop annoys me intensely.

However, I am feeling very kindly towards the laptop right now and therefore I have begun practicing with it. Why?

For a start, the weather - even here in Yorkshire - has been so wonderfully hot that I have been able to sit outside at a table in the garden, typing slowly away. I admit I got a little used to the keyboard or at least stopped cussing. 


The long extension leads had to be trailed out there as well because the Cranky Laptop's batteries die quickly and with little warning. Even so, sitting out there and listening to birds singing in the sunshine was delicious. My heart started softening towards the crabbit grey object that made working this way so pleasant and possible.

Then, today, another joy. I was pondering about various oddments, when suddenly the device upped and shouted a new blog title into my head. Call it THE CRANKY LAPTOP! Do you hear? Unmistakably a good idea. Yes! I thought, A title I can live with! Yes! 

(However, because in no way can I help with IT or computer problems, dear imaginary reader, I added the word WRITES on as a disclaimer, just so there are no hopes of possible IT support here. If there are any difficulties, they will be mine, of which more, no doubt, anon.*)

So - ta-da! - I had been gifted a brand new blog title: THE CRANKY LAPTOP WRITES!

It certainly fits me better now than the title I began with when school and library visits were a constant in my life: Penny Dolan's Diary. Now that school budgets and public libraries have been scarified by government austerities, author visits have become, shall we say, somewhat well-spaced? Visits are fun when they do occur, of course, but they no longer work as a main reason for blogging, or offer a main audience.

So I am migrating, but quietly .  .  . 

THE CRANKY LAPTOP WRITES feels a good new place, somewhere I can write in my own voice and about my life now and probably just for me. Nobody reads blogs any more, I've been told, which actually feels like a kind of freedom. Sing as if no-one's listening.

So, right now, my plan is to call in here now and again, purely for the sake of writing things and/or remembering things and noting down a few random witterings, mainly because there's more than one cranky item around here.  

Farewell for now but speak again, soon!

*Anon, anon? A Shakespeare moment there, but very relevant. I have booked to see the AlmeidaLive theatre production of RICHARD III at my local cinema. More news, as they say, anon. Though maybe not promptly and directly.

Onwards, determinedly!