I have just had my second day on the taxi rank without financial reward.
I did not exactly mind this, the taxi rank by the lake, which somebody told me holds the accolade for having the best view of any taxi rank anywhere in the country, is a nice place to sit. Indeed, it is a splendid place to sit, especially with a good book and a flask of tea, there can be no greater contentment.
However I think I would rather be earning money, and even though it is Bank Holiday Weekend, things are not looking very hopeful. Certainly this afternoon there was almost nobody here. The piers were deserted and the boats were empty. Even the buses were empty.
It is a troubling state of affairs, because I have a renewed interest in earning some money.
I am trying to save up for a new computer.
Once again, my flat taxi computer thing has reached the end of its life. It is still functioning, and therefore not quite deceased, but it is beginning to wag its terminally declining cyber-last.
When I write on it, it has to think so hard about what it is supposed to do that the letters take ages to appear on the screen. Sometimes they take so long that I get bored waiting for them, and switch it off to go and gossip to taxi drivers instead. It keeps losing its signal and forgetting what I have just written, and in short, it is becoming senile.
I have had several second hand computers, which over the years have probably cost every bit as much as Mark’s shiny laptop, which is still doing just fine, and so on the whole, I think, this time we will have a new one.
We have resolved to save up.
This is an encouraging development, and in the meantime I have been looking at Apple advertisements.
I have not been doing this on my flat taxi computer thing, because it simply does not have a sufficient concentration span. I have been looking at home, on our big mainframe computer.
As it happens, Apple have got a new flat computer thing coming out this very month. It looks very exciting indeed.
The advertisement shows users whirling through an dazzlingly spirally cyber-universe, with modern pop music energetically blasting away in the background. It looks to be a truly magnificent technological accomplishment, except that the advertisement does not actually explain any of the puzzling things that they were telling me, none of which I understood in the least, like what is cellular 5G, or an eight core CPU and GPU of its M1.
I did discover that it is extremely dynamic and features a breathtaking 1,600 nits of peak brightness. That is jolly well not to be sniffed at.
I looked further down the advert and was disappointed to learn that the one I am likely to be able to afford only has 600 nits. I do not think that can be nearly as good, although obviously I do not have the first idea what a nit is, and am astounded that their advertising department allowed them to choose a technical name that means ‘head louse’. I do not know how many nits my existing flat thing has got, probably about four, and it makes me feel slightly itchy just to think about it.
None of the users were shown sitting on a taxi rank getting cross about the lack of telephone signal, which I thought was a good sign, although at one point one of them seemed to be waving a teacup just like mine. After an excited moment I realised that this was in fact my own reflection in the bit where the sun was shining on the screen.
I spent some time trying to find out if I needed a cellular computer, indeed, what cellular actually is, I had a vague impression it was related to having a fat bottom, but it would appear not. None of the adverts, nor, indeed, any of the explanatory web pages helped at all, and I am still no wiser. I am not worried about this, as it is going to take me ages to save up, and I expect somebody will have explained by then.
Nevertheless, my mind is made up. I am going to have a new computer, possibly even one with nits and cellular.
There is a bright spot in my future.
Have another picture of a country walk.
