Email, a dog and a demo

June 2021

Despite not having a full time permanent job, I feel that I have been stretching myself too thinly by agreeing to anything that I'm offered to do. It's been a long time since the last blog post and much has been going on. I have been on a demo (more on this later), had an interesting discussion with the dentist, played badminton, attended a lovely day with my Buddhist group, started running again with the help of new shoes (no knee problems so far), did an 11 hour vaccinating shift, and entertained another guest at the weekend who came to a gig with me. 

I also achieved a significant step forward with the website work for Mr MXF, and simultaneously deactivated my family email. I have been working out how to move a number of domains that Mr MXF hosts for friends and family from a flaky unreliable server to a lovely new home. We were getting very close, the new server was all set up and all the test domains were working, so it was time to do it for real. What I hadn't understood, and maybe you won't either, was the the old host included a mail server and the new one didn't. Which is why the email broke when we moved.

I had to spend quite a lot of time moving that one domain back to the old server to make the family email work again before considering how to fix the problem. The first attempt to fix it didn't work because the mail client used by mum and dad is very, very old (1997 vintage) and I don't want them to have to learn a new interface. The second attempt was successful, and what's more the new way of working means much less spam reaching the client end. I once heard a transplant surgeon describe how happy he feels to see urine passing out of a new kidney after a transplant, and my delight at seeing emails being sent and received was probably similar.

Before all this happened, I was honoured by a visit from mum, who was conveyed back and forth by Lola II. She reviewed all the changes wrought by the LTRP and pronounced them very fine, we ate, drank and were merry and had brunch in Leamington on Sunday which was very tasty but very badly served. The very next day Sister D came for a visit, and helped me a great deal by listing on Freegle all the superfluous items that I retrieved from storage in the loft. In return I treated her to a much better lunch at a different establishment in Leamington (which had been full when we tried going there with mum). Nearly all the things we listed have now been collected, and I have also collected a second hand dog bed and dog bowls, so I'm ready for my first canine boarder.

Yes, I went to the Guide Dogs centre for a training session - training for me, not the dog, which was five weeks in to its programme and doing pretty well except for not wanting to sit when asked. I learned how to get it in and out of the car and quite a few other commands, as well as how to stop it pulling on the leash. I was very happy with how it went, and so was the trainer, and my first dog will be coming to stay very soon.

The demo was outside the House of Lords to support the second reading of the Assisted Dying Bill, organised by the Dignity in Dying organisation, and there were probably more than 100 people there. We were offered a T-shirt or a hoodie with the Dignity in Dying logo, and a placard, and I chatted with lots of different people who were there for all sorts of reasons. I met someone who also lives in Leamington Spa, and I'm told by other friends that a woman was there who went to the same senior school as me. Many had personal experience of helping a family member to travel to Dignitas in Switzerland, and there were doctors and palliative care workers and a few speakers including Baroness Meacher (who had put forward the Bill). George Carey (former Archbishop of Canterbury) came out towards the end of the debate to say how confident he was that it would pass because the vast majority of those who spoke had been in favour. Getting it through the House of Commons will be a whole lot harder, though.

Now I'm going to have a couple of days off to do all the things that have been waiting for my attention, but I'll do them slowly and have lots of breaks!