We might have managed to banish the hacker.
I have a very clever friend.
He knows what a configuration page is, and even how to find it and cross out the unwanted line of malicious code.
He has done this on my behalf this afternoon.
He sent me an email about it today, and then we talked briefly on the telephone.
It is very embarrassing to be so utterly ill-informed. I tried very hard to sound like an intelligent denizen of the twenty first century, and he very patiently did not laugh or lose his temper, but by the end of it we both knew that one of us was an idiot and it was not him.
Afterwards he went off to go shopping, and I tried to put something called an Https on the website. I do not know what this is but the Mighty Internet assured me that it would help.
The instructions were so utterly incomprehensible that they might as well have been telling me to ‘varda the nice man’s cartse’. Even the video tutorial started off in a part of the internet which I would not have been able to find even if I emptied the filter on the washing machine and went down the back of the sofa, so I still do not have Https, which keeps ringing in my head to the tune of I’m H.A.P.P.Y.
I came downstairs from a perplexing hour on the computer to discover that one of the dogs had been sick on the floor. I do not know which dog it was, there was plenty of choice. Number One Daughter had just extracted their dog, but he could have done it before his departure, by way of a memento, and Pepper was visiting for a play-date with Roger Poopy, because their guest house was having a viewing with somebody who might want to buy it. The Peppers felt, sensibly, that it might sell rather better without a large hairy tail-waving hooligan in occupation, and brought her to our house to be out of the way.
If you want to buy a guest house then theirs is very nice, and they are going to take the dog with them when they go.
I do not think it was Pepper who was sick on the floor really. I think it was Roger Poopy’s tiresome father, who does that sort of thing, and who is not very well. Mostly the problem is that he is old. Also I gave him a bath today, due to a very noticeable pong, and he spent the rest of the day shivering on the sofa in an ecstasy of misery.
I felt very sympathetic but was not pleased about the sick, especially since the back door had been open and presumably he had just not wanted to bother with the long walk out into the back garden in the cold.
I know that it is August but it is actually still cold here. Number One Daughter and her husband, who live in Surrey, were shivering nearly as much as the wet dog when they visited, and I envied them their sleek brown skins and collection of lightweight shorts. I am in the taxi now with a shirt, two jerseys and a thermal vest on, and it has never even occurred to me to wonder if I might try my luck with a suntan. Mark got sunburned on his bald patch when he forgot his flat cap the other day, but that was it.
It’s grim, up North.
I have been having a difficult evening due to having stupidly chosen a book about how the Arab world has developed its current, inclined-to-be-repressive attitude to sexuality. It is an interesting sociological tome discussing the reasons that outside organisations, like governments or religions, feel the need to interfere in personal lives.
The problem is that it has got the word SEX in big letters in the title.
Somehow every single customer has managed to notice and make a tediously ribald joke.
I am not going to bring it again. I am going to leave it at home and make it my last read of the night whilst Mark is in the shower.
I am not sure I want to leave a book which says SEX on the cover on my bedside table either. Mark would be most surprised and very likely get entirely the wrong idea. It is a very interesting book but not quite the impression I want to give after a day spent cleaning the house, followed by a ten hour shift in a taxi.
Incidentally, talking about the taxi, I am taking restaurant staff home after the first day of the Have Dinner On The Government scheme.
Here is a tip from the Inside.
If you take advantage of this, do not be an embarrassing skinflint. The staff will loathe you if you scrutinise the bill suspiciously to see if they have forgotten to add the Government subsidy. They haven’t forgotten. They have had it thoroughly explained to them before they started, after which absolutely every idiot who has walked through the door has been reminding them.
Tip well. They are having a hard time.
That’s all.
