Things can be problematic

As a very mature Senior Citizen, I encounter many situations that I never expected or encountered in my younger years, but I am required to deal with today. Sometimes many of them arrive at once, to whit; over the past ten days I have had to deal with a scanning failure,a camera failure, a car failure, and a microwave failure,

Starting with the first one, the scanning failure: my oldest daughter, while in Thailand recently, visited the memorials to those who had died building the railroad as reported in the book and movie “The bridge over the River Kwai”. It so happens that my god father, who was also her sisters godfather, was one of the survivors for a while of the P.O.W.s working on the railroad. Research by one of her sisters surprisingly told us more about him and his experiences. His journal of his time in the camp is apparently in the Imperial War Museum in London. I remember him as a friendly occasional visitor, who Introduced me to musical theatre, and the technique of getting back stage!

Geoff was an artistic draughtsman, and a talented one who could make anyone look glamorous. His letters were elegantly decorated in many colours. and the one he sent to me at Malvern almost gave thoe housemaster a heart attack, until I explained. The family wanted to know more about him, so I earched my “files?” for anything relevant and found two of the the three photographs I thought I had of him. And then tried to send them by email. About 25 years ago I purchased a large and expensive scanner that dissappeared years ago, My next scanner was designed to work with a computer no longer in my possession, and I bought a printer that would also scan, that has since died. My new printer is meant to scan, but I cannot convince it to do so. Never mind you say, you can photograph the pictures with your cell phone and send them that way. Unfortunately while I have an old I phone donated by a daughter, I have not mastered it to the point that I can get it to email its photos.. I I do,of course, have a digital camera with a card that loads into one of extension cords that have to be used to connect with my computer: so I decide to use it. Unfortunately the camera refuses to turn on. Undaunted I carry on and discover that one of the four double AAs required to operate the camera is dead, so I have to replace it.

That dealt with the camera and scanning failures, now for the car: On a very cold morning the car refused to start, so I called the CAA, thinking I would et my moneysworth for my subsciption. In a relatively short time their truck came round and their guy got the car started quite easily. The following day I encounered exactly the same problem, and he came back, and asked me to demonstrate the problem, once again the car would not start. He then pointed out that I was meant to press the brake and not the accelarator when I pressed the starter. Another problem solved!ed inrsolving my problem

And now the microwave. I just stopped working, nothing worked, nothing lit up. Based on experience I headed for circuit breaker board where I fould no indication of a failure on the part of the marked circuit. I then phoned the maintenance support team for the development who said they would deal with it. When noone showed I called again and was told that there was a leakage problen using the staff at the moment and it would be another day before I would get a visit. While I had a perfectly good electric stove so I could cook while I waited. Later in the day I was talking to some other tenants, and one of them described a similar problem, and pointed out that the interruptor on the plug was very stiff, and was hard to press. As I had not even ben aware that it existed I went to the kitchen and succeeded in solving the problem myself. Strangely I received an email asking me to fill in a questionnaire on how they had resolved the problem I had reported to them.

Life is so simple these days