10 Ways to Save Your Life

10 Ways to Save Your Life

Saved from Ourselves... again

How embarrassing to be asked for a link to your blog and then realise that you haven't added anything to it in months... Making up for it now, at least partially... just to say that I have finally gone back to Facebook after a three-year absence and am actually enjoying it this time around. Not that I have managed to find a way of adding my Facebook feed to friendfeed - I can't find anything I am told to look for - but someone will surely explain what to do in words of one syllable at some point and then I will be as happy as a ship's cat in a fun-fur tiger bed...

What can I tell you? We had an adventure a few weeks ago which was the subject of a half page in the Majorca Daily Bulletin and, tomorrow, a lovely lady called Nuria is due to come out and talk to us about a documentary she wants to make about us and our unusual lifestyle, or something of that ilk. Hope the cats have something interesting to say for themselves... next thing you know, they'll be asking for per diems during the filming... Bah! Humbug! Will tell you more when I have more to tell...

We are now enjoying some warm and sunny weather back at anchor where we belong... ah, some lovely young friends have just arrived on their jet skis so I must sign off... Back sooner than last time, I hope...

Back In The Real World Again...

Sorry for the lengthy silence - a combination of generator troubles, fuel prices, internet access difficulties, dead computers and real life getting in the way of the virtual thing have all conspired to while away a huge chunk of time... Still, I can get online once or twice a week for an hour or so most weeks at the moment so I have nothing to complain about!One of the hazards of having joined so many online communities over the years is that, as though leaving one blog fallow for years at a time wasn't bad enough I seem to be neglecting several blogs littered around the information highway. That being the case, I will split my latest ramblings between said blogs, if I can get access to them, that is.

You can imagine what I've been going through ever since I managed to wreck my second beautiful Vasari marine computer upon which my freeware password-keeping application, Multipass v2.2 by Franck Priola of GBSoft (http://gbsoft.free.fr) disappeared with the rest of my data, over a year and a half ago, apart from a period with no computer, when I finally did acquire one I had to start the interminable process of asking every site of which I am a member for my password, a toil as yet unfinished, before I could do anything. Why? Because I didn't back up Multipass to some external place of safekeeping, that's why! As Richard Bach said in his lovely book Illusions, "You teach best what you most need to learn" and if anyone should have known better it was surely me after all these years!If you want to hear more of my drivel when you're done here you'll find some advice I recently gave an artiste/lyricist starting his career at my MySpace page...

Meanwhile, amongst other things, we now have a second cat aboard the good ship Leopard Normand III... six-month old Honey Bun looks remarkably like Sweetie Pie did at his age although you wouldn't think it imaginable if you saw the great hulking brute now! This newcomer joined the crew a couple of months ago and was in a dreadful state but is fast becoming a sleek and handsome young creature. It seemed only fair to saddle the new kitten with a name just as silly as the existing cat was obliged to tolerate but, it has to be said, they both live up to their names admirably and are firm friends already.

We are still anchored off Palmanova in Mallorca, enjoying the plentiful supply of secondhand books available from several outlets within walking distance amongst other things. Unfortunately, the only way I can get WiFi access to the Internet is by going above decks which is frequently difficult in the winter months, what with rain and chilly winds, even when there is enough power available to allow use of the laptop, so I haven't updated any of my sites in ages, let alone my book site. One of these days...

What I need is a sponsor or two - a portable solar panel manufacturer with something that would power the secondhand Packard Bell EasyNote Argo C that I picked up for a hundred euros a few months ago and someone who manufactures a WiFi booster that would let me pick up the signal from the saloon of this fabulous schooner, both of whom want enthusiastic publicity for the joys of using their product aboard a yacht at anchor...If anyone you know answers that description feel free to point them at me, on Twitter for example (@linnetwoods) where I have a reasonable number of followers who would be very interested to hear how these items perform! If necessary, I would even rejoin FaceBook to spread the word further, although I have enjoyed a long holiday from their auspices...

Speaking of performance, which I was a moment ago, I must try and acquire a new battery for this laptop... the current incumbent is definitely underperforming...In the absence of sponsors, I will have to limp along like this until I win the lottery or get to grips with purchasing goods online. Since I don't buy lottery tickets and have been refusing to own a credit card for the last few decades (ever since I chopped up the first one I was sent, in the days when banks were embarking on their quest to enslave every man and woman in the world by tempting them with goods they didn't need and would still be paying for long after they were defunct) either outcome is fraught with difficulty, without even mentioning the fact that I live 600 metres offshore and have to make complicated arrangements to collect anything!

Ooh! I wonder if the gift vouchers representing my accumulated commissions at Amazon come to enough to get those things from them? Must look into that immediately! Meanwhile, if you'd like to hear an outpouring of thanks for gifts gratefully received from friends and acquaintances, amongst other things, it's over at one of my other blogs.... I'll come back on that one...

Identity Crises

It is beyond my comprehension why British politicians waste so much time talking about implementing an identity card scheme for the UK when, surely, it would make a great deal more sense to simply make it a legal requirement for all Britons to hold a passport.

The technology and infrastructure for the production of passports is already in place. Citizens could simply be compelled to acquire a passport upon reaching the age of 18 if they did not already have one; young offenders could be issued a passport as part of their processing and so on.

In order to spare people from having to carry the passport at all times, it could be agreed that a plasticated photocopy of the page containing the photograph and other personal details of the holder would be sufficient for the purposes of being identified in the street, provided that the individual were able to produce the passport itself on demand i.e. could go with police to their home to fetch it or produce it at a police station within a given period.

This is already done in several countries and seems to work perfectly well. Citizens would then have a passport ready if they wished or needed to travel at any time as well as being able to identify themselves. It seems obvious to me, but perhaps I'm missing something? What, I wonder, could that be?