HAPPY NEW YEAR TO EVERYONE!

You may all wonder what these pictures are, but I thought it might be useful to put them somewhere on the Internet for posterity. The years they were taken are sometime between 1974 and 1976-77. They are mostly Alex, as this little album that I came across was about him. I am still looking for the one that is mostly Stephen, I am sure it'll turn up soon. Obviously they are priceless not only for baby pictures, but to see how thin Roy and I were all those years ago. I don't know whether to be pleased or cry??!!

Today has unfortunately been a bit of a nightmare for a variety of reasons. Our visitors (all 20 of them) have finally departed, which was great, however, this time there was a fair amount of damage, which is not nice. We have lost at least 4 palinka glasses, which would not be too much of a problem, except these were special ones Roy was given by Kati in the pub and as she has since left the village it's a shame. I suppose we should have put them away, but how could we know? Other damaged items include a completely shredded standard lamp and one broken bed leg. One wonders what they were all getting up to over there? The glasses are obvious, but the other two not so much. I wasn't well enough to go hiking with them, but I don't think I missed much as they only went out once and then to the Andesite columns which I have been to a thousand times before.

Today's extreme frustration included one of my computers which has never been much good, but it certainly outdid itself today. I put one of the mobile internet dongles into it and it took exception to it. It wanted to reinstall the software from it, which was already installed, then it never managed it, so after about half an hour of the hourglass going round forever I turned it off. That was the big mistake. When turned on again it did not want to boot. It got to the Welcome screen and no further. It took me over 4 hours of trying to manipulate it in Safe Mode: uninstalling the offending software did nothing and doing a complete hardware diagnostics found nothing wrong. Then I did a System Restore, that also did nothing. When I was just about on the verge of chucking it out through the window I remembered that somewhere in the hundreds of pages I read it said that if one System Restore does nothing, you should keep going back and back to earlier dates until you find a previous state that does. I never believed it would do anything useful, but tried in anyway and finally that is how I got my poor machine back. It is still totally unstable, has hiccups all the time and is as slow as an army of snails, but at least it boots. (Sshhhh, touch wood and all that!!!)

Roy is currently roasting a piece of pork with the most delicious crackling on it you have ever tasted. As you know I do not eat meat, but have been known to fall off the wagon for a piece of crunchy crackling. Well, today I have sinned again and it was extremely delicious too. Must go now, as the same useless computer mentioned above has finally started doing anti-virus software updates, but with the mobile internet being seriously slow I left it alone to chundle along for about and hour and half. It must have finished by now, I hope, so I am off.

Very Happy New Year to you all! Speak to you soon!