To my intense relief I managed to track down my old laptop yesterday. I wasn’t very impressed with the shop; they didn’t give me a receipt (I vaguely thought I should ask for one but I was distracted) they said they’d give me a ring and didn’t, and it was clear when I got there that they hadn’t even looked at it. So I took it away again and a different shop will get my custom. There are three shops on the same street in Loughborough, all offering the same services, and I had to trawl them all before I found it. Anyway it’s back home and will be sorted when I have the money. Today a friend of ours is filling in some holes in the downstairs bedroom (the estate agent told us not to bother but people have said the house needs too much work so we thought it would help.) We’re having the drains looked at tomorrow to check for any subsidence and we have reduced the price slightly so we’re hopeful of moving things on.
So with the laptop still not sorted I’m back on the old chrome book and slowly getting to grips with google docs. It’s like a foreign country; they do things differently there. Otherwise things are OK except for my mouse. I have an optical mouse; not just any mouse either but a left-handed one specially moulded for us south-paws and with the buttons reversed. I got it from freecycle – a real find. We understand each other very well, this mouse and me, but for some reason it doesn’t get on with the chrome book. I changed the batteries yesterday but the cursor is still refusing to move until I jiggle the mouse whereupon it jumps about in an arbitrary manner. So I’m having to use the mouse pad which I’m not so keen on.
In other news I actually slept well last night! I decided to banish OH and the Persistent Snore to the spare room and I slept brilliantly; didn’t wake till nearly eight. So I think I’ll hold off on contacting the doc for now. It’s lovely sleeping on your own once in a while; a few nights of this and I’ll be human again instead of half-Dalek and half-Triffid. I always think it’s funny how the word Dalek has penetrated the language without exterminating it; I often wonder whether it’s known in other English-speaking nations. I suspect not; Doctor Who is, as I’ve mentioned before, a peculiarly British phenomenon. Which brings us to the other flaw in the world-view of Nineteen Eighty-Four which I forgot to mention: in the novel English is being reduced word by word and replaced by NewSpeak. But language is not a block to chip away at; language is a river, ever-changing, ever-evolving, where words are lost and new words being added all the time. Which is why organisations like the Academie Francaise which try to ossify la langue, are on such a losing wicket. Just look at this list of English neologisms from last year:
… from which I am delighted to see that the Simpsons-invented word ‘cromulent’ which OH and I often use, has made it into the dictionary. Neologisms are not just the province of the educated but are the product of inventive minds; some of the best ones relate to very ordinary things. Mither and gradely are two of my favourite dialect verbs and cockney rhyming slang is brilliantly inventive. Chalfonts is probably my top word there (Chalfont St Giles – piles) though I’m not entirely sure if that was original or made up by the scriptwriters of Minder. Anyway, my point is that language is always evolving and no matter how much the Party may delete words from it, neologisms will always pop up. And in my opinion the Proles are the most likely people to be inventing them.
I’ve lost my thread now. But no matter. Today I am 99% human with shades of Martian and a touch of Cyberman. Tomorrow, 100% human. On Saturday (my birthday) a demigoddess. Onwards and upwards.
Kirk out
Sarada Gray 
The TV shows like Minder, Only Fools and Horses, and Eastenders have a lot to answer for. They have reinvented London rhyming slang while casually obliterating much of the original. I understand that language evolves, but as a Londoner, I really treasure the history of genuine rhyming slang. There are some good examples to be found in early episodes of The Sweeney.
Best wishes, Pete.
Do you think so? I think the original thrives – but then I haven’t lived in London for a long while now.
My regular MacBook is old [2011] but still works well, generally; notwithstanding a wobbly G key, which I had to glue back in place, after I slightly damaged its retaining clip when removing it to try and remove the coffee I had spilt on the keyboard, before giving in to the inevitable and putting the whole shooting match in for replacement of the gizmo under the keyboard. I am encountering instances of apps not being compatible with the venerable operating system, which was annoying this week when I was trying to find a free video-editing app to make a new showreel. I used to use a right-handed mouse, but in my left hand [I’m right-handed] and a wireless keyboard with my older MacBook, but I don’t bother with either now. I don’t mind neologisms per se, but the inexorable intrusion of Americanisms & American spelling does annoy me [“reach out”, “touch base”, “artifact”, “practice” as a verb]: I can only assume that spelling isn’t being taught these days, and everyone is too dependent on their spell-check which uses American dictionaries by default. I’d better stop now before a young woman throws a milk shake over me 😉 Cheers, Jon.
Lol