July and the weather starts to change. Southern Europe is experiencing drought and temperatures soaring into the 40+c but by the 14th we are cold, wet and windy. What a change!
And July saw the arrival of “OverEasy” our very first Mini, and our very first automatic too! We spent several Sunday mornings in June on driving to and from Aberdeen to locate the dealership. Navigating Aberdeen and it’s ring-roads is no joke. So much has changed since we left several decades ago. Where we recognise the street names, we find they look nothing like what we remember when we moved out in the 1990s. The hard work and false turns all paid off in the end, and Mike managed to drive us safely home with no problems! The rest of the month was a period of getting used to the car, and how it works!
Like everything these days it is all built around the computer system. And the driving seat feels like a airplane cockpit … with so many functions, so many things to learn! And (again as usual) the manual is very little use, as every actual car seems to vary.
Learning can be scary with today’s impatient drivers and poorly maintained roads!
But we did manage to drive safely to a few our essential places, such as Fyvie loch and gardens! Seen through the lens of an infrared camera … which gives quite an alternative view of the world to the one our eyes see!
I decided to dedicate this month’s Journal to the world of technology, and how it has impacted my/our lives, especially since the pandemic – though the changes started a while before with the move from Windows XP to Windows 10. It has been a seismic shift for so many of us, and a shift that will be permanent, I think. The speed of change that has been forced on us has been hard to keep up with.
I considered myself quite ‘tech-savvy’ before Covid hit – I’d been running websites since the mid 1990s, both personal and about the developing hand-held computers … the forerunners of mobile phones. I was interested in the personal computer dimension more than the phone aspect, as I was disabled and housebound. So I bought the very first iPod Touch.
The operating system was the same as the first iPhone, which made life easier later on! Seen here with earbuds and several iPods, crammed with music.
By the time mobile phones really took off, several operating systems were familiar to me!
I’d also had a keen interest in the technology of CDs, DVDs and their tape-based forerunners. I’d been a Walkman user since the early 1980s, and a keen user of digital music ever since …. taking music with me wherever I went.
Music, podcasts and radio recordings were loaded onto my iPods, and played through speaker ‘docks’. Of course the ‘docks’ usually needed to be plugged into a wall socket – so not really portable!
So by 2019 I was well equipped with digital machines, and quite familiar with a range of home and online services and personal players. I’d even ditched my old Nokia phone, and moved to the iPhone, starting with the iPhone 5! We had just bought our first smart TV, and our PCs and laptops were all hooked up to the internet. I’d been posting to the photographic website Flickr since 2012 – so I guess I was quite well prepared when Covid hit us as 2020 began!
Now the world changed in ways we weren’t expecting, and the pace of change accelerated. Shopping online was something we were used to – living remotely it was always an essential for us. So we had some existing accounts we could use. But with lockdown it became essential to order everything online, even the weekly grocery shopping trips were forbidden! We were all now prisoners in our own homes. We were luckier than most, in having a good sized garden for a little exercise. But being in the ‘shielding’ group, at least initially, we couldn’t ‘stray’ further. And the links to the outside world by phone and mainly by Wi-Fi broadband became increasingly important. Online banking, online shopping, emailing – all had been part of our lives before – but they became the only means of conducting our lives.
Perhaps the biggest technological ‘leap’ came with the development of the smartphone Apps. There is now an app for almost everything! I didn’t expect to be conducting banking business, or paying bills by smartphone. I was used to using the computer for financial transactions … but surely not my iPhone? But yes – it has become possibly the most essential piece of technology most of us need to function in 2023!
My Apple ‘kit’
It has been an accelerating (and very expensive) journey through the Covid years! And now, in what we call our “post-covid” year(s) I find myself fully equipped with an iPhone that can ‘talk’ to the world, read the news, alert me to the next refuse collection, or local roadworks, pay bills and play music, listen to the radio or watch TV. A watch that can monitor my health as well as tell the time, tell me the weather and alert me to emails, iMessages and so much more. Airpods that can give me all the quality of sound reproduction I could get from a speaker dock, and silently so as not to disturb Mike. All told, 2019 seems a long time ago, and another way of life!
I am more focussed on the after-effects of October’s latest bi-valent vaccination. Put together with the latest winter ‘flu jab it makes a powerful challenge to my body. Already weakened by decades of Post-Viral syndrome (which is in reality a pre-covid Long Covid state) my body has been asked to cope with so many Covid vaccines, topped up with annual ‘flu jabs too. Prior to the pandemic I refused the annual ‘flu jab, as it wiped out too much vital energy. I relied on Mike’s vaccination to protect me through the ‘flu season.
But Covid has been a real game-changer. It meant a year ‘shielding’ before the medical wonder of the first vaccines began to appear. It was 2020 when I started this online version of my Journal, learning WordPress so as to revive my long dormant website. I thought the highlight of the achievement would be the luxury of putting my photography together with my written journal. Little did I know that it would become my personal Journal of the 21st century Covid pandemic!
So here we are with “the pandemic is over” chorus from the UK government and Covid cases are rising, as are ‘flu cases, along with a few other winter visiting viruses floating around too. Statistics on Covid are very sketchy now, as the UK government is dismantling ALL the infrastructure and research labs etc. that could form the front line defences against the next pandemic that is forming somewhere out there. If there is one overwhelming lesson that Covid has taught the world it is that global travel is the sure-fire way to create and spread a viral infection! On the next level down, travel within your country is the quickest way to spread infections, and on the local level it is meetings in public spaces with little or no air circulation. So masks and hand sanitisers, open windows and minimal gatherings are our individual defences.
After the Spring and summer of drought we are now in a phase of torrential rain alternating with deep freezes! We used one freezing morning to tackle the large freezer. Stacking the baskets of frozen items on the patio, we used the steam cleaner to break up the ice that has accumulated over the past year. We ended up with both us and the carpet soaked, but about 25% more storage space in the freezer itself!
And another milestone. I decided to try out the “Scan and Shop” app for M&S at our local Food Hall. I needed help for the initial foray, but feel that I have got the basics sorted. Might as well use my smartphone whenever I can! Inverurie is our main shopping town (as we have no shops at all in the village). So Tesco and M&S provide the choices for groceries. Aberdeen is an 80 mile round trip – Inverurie just 30 miles.
But the big news for me came in the middle of the month. My brother, David has died. He is the first of us three children to die, and memories of my childhood, and my brother then, came flooding back. He was my big brother, and quite protective of me, being 8 years older. He helped me when I struggled (being undiagnosed dyslexic) and encouraged my love of music (we shared a love of opera). When your parents die there is an irrational feeling of being somehow an orphan. Odd, but so true! Those who knew you from the day you were born, and knew so much about you and your siblings that you had forgotten, are suddenly not there. All the unanswered questions, or sudden revelations that put a deeper meaning on a remembered event – those moments are lost forever. This is another feeling …. for me it brought home the years – decades – that have been lost due to the Post Viral effects that wiped out my life as it was in the mid 1980s. Finally with the advent of Long Covid there was the chance of an understanding of what had happened to me then. I always felt David hadn’t really believed in the extent of the total wipe-out of life as I had known it. And that made communications somewhat awkward and strained. Now that opportunity is forever lost too, along with all the memories of when we were young!
washing the car can be a wonderful visual experience
“A quick wash and brush up, Madam – to refresh the exterior?”
Last week we took my old car to the car wash. I admit it is probably more than 5 years since I’d been through the strange experience of sitting in a car while the automated ‘wash and brush up’ whirred, rattled and rolled all about me. As I had my iPhone with me I decided to shoot the experience from the inside. After all it might be another 6 years before I get the chance again ;o) So here is the journey into the surreal world of car wash. We were quite relieved to find a car in front of us, as we couldn’t remember how it all worked – so we learned as it went through ahead of us.
The car in front showed us what to do!
Once in the machine daylight vanishes. For an alarming moment you feel you might be in a crusher, as it feels the car body to estimate its size.
The world darkens and the journey begins
And then, goodbye world – hello soap! An amazing array of soapy abstracts began to unfold across the windscreen……
The washing begins. Lots of soap bubble abstracts
Then it really got interesting, and just a little scary (it was so long since I’d been there) The ‘brush up’ was beginning……
The ‘brush up’ begins, with a jolt!
But I was absorbed in the drama that was playing out on the screen before my eyes. Soap suds and that giant brush…..
soap gets in your eyes!
Then a quick rinse, and the world beyond the car wash was suddenly there again – but at the bottom of a watery pool…..
Seeing the world through the glass
Meanwhile the brushes were tackling the sides of the car. The inside was getting hot and the windows were steaming up…..
all steamed up! the side window view
And I found myself shooting myself in the side window …..
Mirrored in the side window as the brushes move past.
Then on to more wonderful watery distortions as the rinsing off began…..
A watery abstract as the outside world re-emerges
And some great abstracts of the brushes. almost an oil painting…..
almost an oil painting it the textures
And the final stage – bring on the hair-dryer! Another crazy sequence of ripples…….
the ‘hair dryer’ at work offering another kind of watery abstract
Finally the world outside starts taking shape again…….
the world emerges as we near the end of the wash
Yes – the sun is still shining out there, though it looks like a heavy downpour from here…….
As we are almost free to drive away, the world is taking shape again.
The whole process only lasted about 10 minutes, but I took over 60 shots. It was an ever changing kaleidoscope of almost abstract visuals – and enormous fun! I think I’ll be back before another 5 years slip by! There’s more to see on my Blog section and more articles: Talking Digital Photography
I live with notebooks even now – memory is not what it was, so any and all means to keep me on track!
I do try! Try to live the paperless life! I’ve got an excellent list-making app on my smartphone and on my laptop too. And they sync for added convenience. I’ve got Notes apps too. But I keep returning to my first love – actual paper notebooks! Oh … and Post-It notes as well I just love having real paper, and yes! a fountain pen too. I so enjoy discovering a new notebook – my latest find is Conceptum. A6 size and a pen loop for my favourite fountain pen. Purple ink this year. I stick in cut-out images, ideas, poetry and quotes I’ve picked up and enjoyed. I try to make it attractive, so I can enjoy it visually as well. Maybe I am just being old-fashioned and out-of-date? But this seems to be one battle that technology just can’t win – at least not with me ;o)
