The web host wouldn’t let me on to the Add Post page at all last night, but tonight it seems to have changed its mind, so I am writing in the hope that it relents and adds this one to the site.
I have still not managed to come up with an alternative. I quite like the idea of having our own server. Certainly the electricity involved would be cheaper than the extortionate costs I am being quoted by other web hosts. For the uninitiated, a server is a sort of cyber-filing cabinet. A web host is, it turns out, just somebody with a server in their spare room or possibly the outside lavatory. They use lots of electricity but turn most of it into hot air so it doesn’t matter.
It might be an appropriate purchase. These pages could be said to be full of hot air already.
I am still investigating. We will have to see. Please be patient.
In other news, if this reaches you, I am sorry to say that I have declined to accept the offered employment with the funeral director. This resolution happened today, during the initial paperwork, which is something of a record for employment termination, even for me.
First, and to my absolute astonishment, they wanted me to hand over my personal log-in details for the Government Gateway. Now I don’t mind handing out my National Insurance number or evidence that I have a valid driving licence, but handing over access to my personal tax affairs and unlimited capacity to mess about with the Inland Revenue whilst quite possibly pretending to be me is, as far as I am concerned, an absolute dead duck.
As it happened I was talking to a friend this afternoon whose husband is a KC whose special interest happens to be employment affairs, and I could hear him yelling in the background Tell Her Not To! which was encouraging, because I had already declined.
The online form made lots of threatening noises at that point insisting that compliance was mandatory, which I ignored, and when the company wrote to me later they said chattily that they could see I had taken the option to opt out of providing that information.
This was rubbish because there hadn’t been an option to opt out.
The letter added that the uniform was mandatory, and was a blouse and skirt made of 100% polyester, which made me laugh.
Readers, that sentence concluded my employment in the funeral industry.
I amused myself on the taxi rank later by reading employee reviews of the company, and concluded, rather regretfully, because I had liked the interviewing lady very much, that probably I had made the right decision.
I felt a bit guilty about my continued lack of employability and apologised to Mark afterwards, who laughed and said that he liked me better when I was happy, and that he would far rather I stayed at home and wrote stories in any case.
I would like to do more of that, but it is difficult when the sun is shining, which it was today. This was a good thing because yesterday was so horribly wet that my boots still haven’t dried out. It rained so hard that the dogs would not get out of the car to go and have a walk, and when I did get them to go, kept turning round and setting off for home. I had to bellow at them and pretend to be chasing them to get them to skulk off up the sodden fells, tails between their legs.
There were several bits of the path where we practically had to swim for it.
Today was brighter, and Mark came to help me with the arch-building in the front garden. These are coming along very beautifully, if not very quickly, and my hands and arms are becoming increasingly scored with a thousand inflamed scratches. Mark keeps making me put Germolene on them, in case I get sepsis and die like the girl in The Archers, but I do not think that her problem was being allergic to chicken wire and also that living with Eddie Grundy might not have helped.
It is slow progress but very pleasing. In a few weeks we will have a beautiful garden and I can begin to consider manufacturing a fairy to drown in the water butt.
Life is full of these little creative challenges.
I am going to try and get this online now. I hope it reaches you.
Fingers crossed.
It did it. On the sixth attempt, just after midnight. It kept telling me I couldn’t add it, and then suddenly gave in to determined lobbying. Don’t hold your breath for tomorrow.
