How do I know I’m back in England?

• I’m using my beloved Pismo.
• I’m wary of wearing my lunghi.
• People piss in the street while walking into Cheltenham station. I think the lout in question was a Birmingham city fan. So he didn’t have much to be proud of.

Moments of Panic 1
My ecosse.net mailbox has been full for the past few days. (Yes I know I’m a magpie!) So one of my first ‘sorting-out’ tasks yesterday was to try to boot up the Pismo. I can’t express the horror I felt when she wouldn’t start up, despite being plugged into a known-good socket.

Some panic later, rational thought set in:

• The Pismo had been left unplugged for 6 months.
• So the main battery would be completely discharged, as would be the PRAM battery. (I found that there wasn’t enough charge on the main battery to even work its charge indicator.)
• So leaving the Pismo plugged into the mains should start to charge the main battery. (I think the PRAM battery isn’t rechargeable. We’ll see when I disconnect her from the mains, de-boot and remove the main battery, replace it and then reboot.)
• So while I endured Moment of Panic 2, the Pismo charged and eventually rebooted about 2am this morning.

Moment of Panic 2
While looking for the spare Pismo battery I now appear not to have, I noticed that my Palm wasn’t where I’d left it in February. I knew the data wasn’t lost – it’s backed up on my Pismo’s hard disk! (The Pismo is also backed up to two external hard disks.) However, I felt comprehensively electronically buggered!

Much searching later, I found the Palm in one of my brother’s drawers. I think it had been put there when I asked my dad to look up something on it in March. It didn’t boot at first. Some charging later, it booted at factory state: it had discharged enough to lose all my data from the charge-dependent memory.

By now, the Pismo had booted so I could synchronise the Palm with the data stored on the Pismo. I think this happened about 3am.

Serendipity
I’m not sure why my dad had reverted from using my router to using his USB ADSL modem to connect his PC to the internet. However it’s probably a good thing: I would have sat up even later filing the emails I’d received while I was away. I got to sleep around 4 this morning.

I’m now as awake as I’ll ever get, wireless internet has been restored and all the email has been filed. Most of the laundry has been tackled: I’ve even washed the lunghi!

Work Of Heart – Roy Harper