Old Friends

We've just got back from the weekend at my parents and I'm absolutely knackerd.  It's a long old drive up there (for me anyway) and there was quite a bit of traffic on the road both going and coming back.

After lunch on Saturday I said I would have a look at my Dad's laptop which he said was running 'a bit slow'.  Now, I have to say that I'm very proud of my Dad.  He had asked me to help him buy a computer for years and I was a bit worried as he sometimes has difficulty working the TV.  But he's had it for a year now and, on the whole, he is doing very well with it.

I say "on the whole" as he does have an annoying habit in that he buys PC magazines with cover DVDs crammed full of free and trial software.  And he installs it all.  So, looking at his 'bit slow' laptop I discovered 3 anti-virus programs and two firewalls running and, somehow, he had added a second monitor so most of what he should have been seeing was actually hovering in virtual space about a foot to the right of his actual screen.  There is still a problem with it in that (after I removed a phantom second video controller that had mysteriously appeared) when you save things to the desktop they vanish.  Still at least it is useable now and I also set him up with an email account.  So Dad, if you are reading this, drop me a mail to tell me!

In the evening we went to the Bell and Bear pub and met up with Colin.  It's always great to see him and I don't get to spend time with him often enough.  I was on Diet Coke all night due to the diet so I sat and watched Hamish and Colin get slowly pissed which was amusing.  While we were there Paul Bliss, an old friend that I haven't seen from school 24 years ago, turned up.  To be honest I didn't recognise him until Colin pointed him out.  It was really great to see him and I hope next time we are up we can spend a bit more time with him.

This morning we had a drive out to locate one of the only Waitrose's in the West Midlands (they do a good trade in Aldi and Lidl up there) and then had a rather splendid lunch.

After lunch we had a wander round the garden and Dad showed us the shed he is all but rebuilding.  The garden was looking wonderful, as always, and most of the plants there have been grown from seed by my Dad which is fantastic.

I'm off to bed now as I am so tired so I will leave you with a couple of photo's of some of the plants in Dad's garden.......