Monday 8 August 2011

Hassle Avoidance

As you will know, if you have been kind enough to keep up, the latest post was called "Hassle". It turns out to have been the toe of the Giant's shoe, the hair on the elephant's head, the tip of the iceberg. Since then, I have been subjected to the Emperor, the Juno, the ultimate definition of all hassle. The Wizard of Cyberspace came and stole everything. My emails, my googles, my Mystery Shopper work, my profiles - that's what Guru says; I wouldn't know a profile if it was sitting on my lap as I write - all disappeared. Even the seascape wall-paper I enjoy during the wait for things to warm up upped anchor and crossed the channel. Worse is to tell. My blogposts had gone. Every single one, ab initio. The short version of the outcome of the last four days is that Guru has been able to restore its basics but everything is much more complicated to access than before and I have to wait patiently - I know, I know, patiently is not what I do best in many respects - until he has a window to come here and mend it in situ. (I tried lugging it to him. That was the just partial success I have described). He has had two - at least two - identifiable reactions. 1)He is delighted that I have become so computer-dependent (not even secretly delighted) 2) He is increasingly, but quite sweetly, impatient with my, to him, incomprehensible panic and demands on him. He knows everything is still there, somewhere. I have nothing but my faith in him.

The crisis rather pre-empted my scheme. I had intended to write, straight after the latest post, a piece about hassle avoidance. So I shall move on from the above red ink outburst and give you the suggestions that came to mind. Hassle can be avoided in numerous unsuspected ways. For instance, take the lock off your mobile phone. Instantly, you have one less step before you can activate it. Guru is concerned about what an unlocked phone may get up to in womens' handbags. Take a chance. Live dangerously. Live longer with one hassle less. If the number you rang is engaged, use the 'ring-back' service. It saves your dialling finger and you can go on with the ironing while you wait. (I don't do this. I don't have patience enough to wait, nor ironing since Guru left.) I called in an electrician to arrange for a ground floor switch to operate a lower ground floor corridor light, left on for security, so that I didnt have to 'run' down the stairs every night to switch it off. I have two gadgets to operate the radio in my bedroom, which is also where I've installed my desk and the computer. Why? Well, so I have neither to get off the bed to find it beside the desk, nor leave my desk to find it by the bed: simple, no? My hair-dryer, which used to lie on the floor in the cupboard I call, with all seriousness, my dressing room, now hangs from a hook on the wall. Why? so I don't have to waste the expenditure of an eye-watering sum of money spent on acupuncture continuingly bending down to pick it up. There is a land-line phone in every room. Now you know why: so that I don't have to rush round looking for one. I have been known even to throw money at a problem, so great is my hassle-avoidance drive. Well, taxis, if you must have a for-instance. Yesterday, caught in an unexpected down-pour, I bought an umbrella from a shop I was sheltering near. It makes the 23rd I own: honestly. But no getting wet hassle. Having been advised by the Chinese doctor responsible for the above acupuncture, to sleep with my ankles higher than my hips, I have put redundant phone books under the mattress rather than spend the night chasing the pillow I was supposed to put directly under them - my ankles, that is. I even put nine days worth of tablets in to little pots so I don't have to search them all out, one by one, every morning. (Because that is the number the tray will hold, since you ask.) The list is endless, obsessive even. But I have only so much energy, I am considerably more than three score and ten by now and every little helps. Clearly then, the most efficient way to avoid hassle in my case, would be to throw the computer out of the window. There I've said it. The Wizard is listening. You are listening - I hope - and that's the answer: I am accustomed to having you out there. I don't want to have to do without you, so I shall go on avoiding little hassles in order to keep enough hassle-capacity to cope with the technocological revolution that keeps me in touch with you, Dear Readers, and with loved ones on islands off islands in the far north. Anyway, by the time I have found the key to unlock the padlock that holds the grilles across the window and moved the table to reach the grilles and the window and struggled to open it, the feeling has usually passed. Prynhawn da.

A ps to amuse you: listening on the radio to a pianist playing as I typed, there were about five seconds when he and I were fingering in precise tandem. Awesome.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

It's good to be back, and again to be reading something serious and funny. Bleass you.