Barn Doors

It’s been a funny ol’ day. I need to back up a little, though.

Yesterday we trotted off to McD’s for a dose of McWiFi to post some blog entries, all of which were lurking in Windows Live Writer on my Dell Inspiron laptop. I switched on said laptop and … nothing, nada, nichts, not a single wireless network showed as being available. Meanwhile, Francine was tapping away happily on her Sony Vaio laptop with not a care in the world. We both tried everything we could think of, all to no avail. Mr. Grumpy’s blog entries remained unposted.

Back chez le camping, Francine fiddled again, apparently with magic digits and lo, a couple of very weak wireless networks appeared, though none to which I could connect because of security. We left the settings exactly as they were overnight and, heartened, this morning returned to McD’s expecting success. Expectations, sadly, were short-lived; I switched on and … nothing, nada, nichts, not a single … well, you know. Wisely, as an erstwhile seasoned professional, I had taken the precaution of copying my blog entries from my recalcitrant heap of crap Dell machine to Francine’s much more reliable Sony, courtesy of which blog entries were posted and spam emails deleted.

We’ve had some heavy overcast all day so photography wasn’t featuring high on our menu. We did, however, toddle up to a high point to see if any paragliders were going to glide past photogenically – paragliding is a popular form of entertainment in these vertiginous parts. Alas, no paragliders were present. This, however, did drift past below our vantage point on a pair of those barn doors I mentioned in a previous post and, furthermore, Francine had her camera out with the correct lens mounted as it did so. This is one of the local population of Griffon Vultures (Gyps fulvus) captured on pixels and, though there isn’t a handy size comparison in shot, believe me, it’s BIG. Well done Francine! [Maybe Francine is a professional?]

It began raining shortly afterwards. We returned to Guillaume for the afternoon.

I may have to drive over this piece of Dell rubbish, accidentally, of course, or trip and fall into the Dourbie river with it. Maybe I could stumble and fall on it on my way out of an abortive McWiFi trip to McD’s? It’s only 6 months old; I’ve had to re-install it three times already, Windows keeps saying the hard drive is about to fail and the wireless is now playing up. Maybe I should use it as a portable wheel chock. It would certainly do a better job than it does as a portable computer.