Today we have naming of parts. Yesterday,
Henry Reed, from “Naming of Parts, 1942
We had daily cleaning. And tomorrow morning,
We shall have what to do after firing. But to-day,
Today we have naming of parts. Japonica
Glistens like coral in all of the neighbouring gardens,
And today we have naming of parts.
Here’s the inner mindscape of a Second World War soldier sitting in a stuffy room in early summer learning how to fire a rifle, but completely absorbed in what’s going on through the window. It’s a poem that – to my schoolboy mind – completely justified my inattentiveness when it came to applied maths, and also calls to mind Hannah Arendt’s description of Adolph Eichmann’s trial as “The banality of evil.” Nowadays the slaughter is often conducted by drones, controlled from industrial units a thousand miles from their targets. But putting that baleful thought behind me for a moment – although it’s never far from my mind – today has been a rather extraordinary one.
In the real world of apple blossom and orchards and spring I’ve been asked again to bless the cider orchard in Littleton on Severn. If you read this blog regularly you’ll see how much I enjoy this annual get together of the village and the Cider Club, but attached to the invite was a flattering remark about the way I always go about it. Presumably that means using the 150 word script that I wrote years ago, in as non sectarian, non denominational; oh alright as non religious a way as I could.
The trouble is, Madame shredded the script a few weeks ago before the invite arrived, because she didn’t think I’d ever need it again and when I went to the laptop I couldn’t find it anywhere. I found the filename on my old MacBook, but the file itself was empty. Just turning the blessed machine on had been an adventure since the batteries had died years ago and in any case I’d forgotten all the passwords. It was like breaking into Fort Knox.
My adventurous migration from Apple to Chromebook and thence to a Pixelbook came as a result of a conversation with one of the geniuses at the Apple Store who held my Macbook as if it were carved from dogs’ turds and pronounced that it was far too old even to pass through the portals of the repair shop. I clutched it back and harrumphed out of the glistening palace of overpriced junk and only then wondered what to do next.
Luckily my son who’s a total techie had just been given an HP Chromebook as part of a deal when he bought the latest Pixel Phone and he passed the freebie laptop on to me, and showed me how to move all the files from Apple to Google Chrome. Like most of these procedures I only thought about all the files I’d saved onto Dropbox after I’d completely forgotten another set of passwords. Then after a year or so the HP Chromebook blacked out and we could do nothing to bring it back to life. Meanwhile I’d invested in a Pixelbook and so I just carried on. Today we were searching the data badlands for the missing script and when Madame plugged in the deceased laptop it spluttered and coughed a bit and sparked up as if nothing had happened. By this time I had two deceased laptops and one new one all working on the Potwell Inn dining table. I wonder, I wonder, I thought if one of them could be persuaded to cough up the missing Dropbox password. Such wild hopes tend to evaporate like the morning dew in the face of zealous protection of my privacy by the kind of companies that are perfectly happy to sell my details for a fee to the highest bidder.
However, after a great deal of muttering I managed to half log in with an old internet name and reset the password. The downside was that the moment I logged on I was reminded that I’d exceeded my allowance by a remarkable 2700% and would have to extend my subscription to get my stuff back. On the plus side the bank had refused to pay the subscription for a couple of years when my card was changed. So with the aid of a 30 day free trial for a service I was already subscribing to I got my stuff back – all of it including the missing script.
You will see by now that I have no techie instincts at all. My laptop is essential to me and yet I can’t remember an eight digit login let alone a line of code. My son can write lines of code and he uses an app that remembers all his passwords. I installed the app under his forceful instruction and promptly lost the password for that too. I am a hopeless case but in this instance I finished the day two laptops up and access to Dropbox restored. I felt I should take a lap of honour around the piles of books which I really prefer. Out in the hall there’s an IKEA bookshelf waiting to be assembled but I’m far too busy now, looking at all the photos I thought I’d lost forever. Happy days! – or should that be daze?
