What I wailed inwardly would I do when my computer misbehaved in Herefordshire?It
Posted in General on 17. Oct, 2010
What, I wailed inwardly, would I do when my computer misbehaved in Herefordshire?It happened on day one. My Mac had been disconnected by the removals men, and I couldn’t work out which wires went where. With a heavy heart, I phoned a computer supplies shop in nearby Leominster As I’d expected, they told me they didn’t make house calls. What, I wondered, would Errol from MR Systems charge for a trip up the M5?But the man on the phone suggested I call Ross at In-vision, the telly shop Forlornly, I did so Ross said he thought he could reconnect me. I asked when he might be able to come out from Leominster? He pondered the situation. “I could probably be with you,” he said slowly, “within the half-hour.” He was.
And not only did he sort out my computer, he also retuned the telly and got the stereo working Two cups of tea and two hours later, I asked what I owed “Let me see,” he said. “Is £25 OK?” I would have kissed him, but I didn’t want word getting back to the King’s Head.So far, we have had lots of encounters like that. Far from country life underlining the conveniences of city life, it has been the other way round: what we thought was good service in London, now seems both inefficient and expensive.Of course, it’s early days And it’s summer. We’ve already had the water cut off for a couple of hours, which I gather happens pretty frequently hereabouts, and must get a trifle taxing in mid-February And the insect life can be a bit overwhelming. Nobody told us we’d be sharing our house with 800,000 flies, and moths built like prop forwards, with big, leering faces But regrets, no Doubts, no Yellow ragwort, yes.
Apparently it’s jolly poisonous, and it’s been spotted in the neighbourhood. We’ve been asked to look out for it, something else that never happened in north London.I still feel, as I survey my few acres and bat off the flies, as if I’ve meandered into someone else’s life. For six years we dithered, on and off, over whether to leave the metropolis, and never truly thought we would. On occasional weekends beyond the North Circular Road we found ourselves lured by the plaintive siren call, “come.. this is what you can get for your money out here… come…”, to the window of Scylla & Charybdis, estate agents. Or perhaps it was Knight, Frank & Rutley.One weekend, we went to Bath. “We could definitely live here,” we thought, and signed on with Jennings & Co.