'Tis another Monday, and in true Swindon fashion it's a grey foggy morning. The sky an anonymous pale stone grey that obscures the taller buildings.

My days are busier now, mostly concerned with the daily routine of searching for gainful employment and collecting rejection letters. So that's my day pretty much planned then.

Is that all that I am? Is there nothing more to life than endless letters and emails? In my post forklifting course world, what can I do to make life interesting?

Museum Of Old Stuff

In Swindon we are blessed with a museum of computing. No, really, we are. Displays of antique computers and calculators to thrill the soul and fill our hearts with joy as we wander around the shelves packed with little plastic boxes that lived and died in the Age of the Eighties.

Oh all right. I admiit it. I visited the place this weekend. Most people seem to think it's a computer shop and get very confused when their urgent desire to buy a new motherboard goes unrewarded.

On the other hand, I spotted the Sinclair C5 at the door. That was a sort of single seater conveyance, a bit like a sports mobility buggy powered by a washing machine motor. I remember one brave soul who bought one and actually used it on the road. Quite a traffic jam. He lasted three days before he grew tired of inclement weather, opinions offered by overtaking motorists, and a man walking sixty feet in front with a red flag. How could I resist a museum of technical things that sort of worked but no-one used successfully?

The worst thing of all was the realisation that all these exhibits were things I used to use as a younger man. They even had a Dragon 32, a delightfully primitive Basic computer in the days when you learned the art of loading and saving by cassette recorder. Sigh. I owned one decades ago. My first computer.

As simple as it was, the Dragon 32 was luxurious compared to the real trend setter of the time, Sinclair's ZX81 and its big selling descendant, the Spectrum. A tiny black box with multi-function rubber keys that destroyed so many lives. So cheap was the product that when one mysteriously arrived at our home, my father rang the supplier to ask if he wanted it back and they said no, don't bother, we can keep it. Then they sent us another, as a free gift for all the family. Wow. What incredible service.

That was real computing. Programmers were men in those days. Who else but a square jawed hero could possibly type in the indecipherable lists of code printed in hobby magazines? And get it work afterward? After all, one does not mouth off when computing, does one? Unless you mess up the typing and have to start again that is...

Then it hits you. Such is the pace of modern technology that these dinosaur devices are now museum pieces. Better move on, before I get picked up and labelled.

That's What Happens When...

One of the delights of living where I do is that you get occaisional passers-by who shout somethign out in the street at night for no possible reason whatsoever. Some people of course just like the sound of their own voice. Youngsters shout because shouting louder seems manly to them. If you shout louder, you must be more of a man, so the logic goes. Except the owner of the vocal chords tends to forget that it's whether anyone listens that matters, and who listens to a spotty twenty year old mouthing off?

Seeing as last night was Sunday, you would expect a relatively quiet night, and so it was. The sewer has been filled in, the road returned to normal use, and few people wandered by on what was a damp and dreary night. Except for one spotty youth mouthing off. As they do.

"That's what happens happens when you abscond from the services!" He shouted. Erm... What happens when you abscond exactly? I have literally no idea who he was shouting at. Can't be me. I was never in the services (though I did try), and none of the people I see living in premises nearby look anything like an absconded soldier. Most look like hells angels or teenage mothers and druggies.

Oh well. Never mind. Back to something interesting on the confines of my personal computer. Give it ten years and that'll be a museum piece too.