We continue to cope in the weird limbo that the world finds itself in. I’m definitely keeping Amazon busy, mainly with items in the following categories:
- Office & schoolwork supplies: erasers, felt pens, pencils, pencil sharpener, inkjets, mouse mat, stencils
- DIY/housework-related: insulation tape, telescopic squeegee, paintbrushes, new kitchen plugs (when you do the washing up umpteen times a day, you see how scruffy the old ones were)
- Lockdown specials: crème de mûre (as the local small Sainsbury’s and Co-op, which are our entire universe of bricks and mortar purchases, do not stock such a thing, unsurprisingly) and some hair clippers.
I reflect further on our fortunate position. For example, having several laptops around the place – 5YO gets to have one basically set aside for her school connectivity, so reduced stress in the work timetable as neither my wife nor I have to share ours. Then there’s my other laptop which I’ve had to keep because it’s the only one that knows how to talk to the printer (this is weird, I realise, and I’ve tried to install the relevant drivers on other laptops, but they just won’t have it – I accept this is a failure on my part).
Inevitably, 3YO was upset she didn’t have a laptop when it was time to work. So I dug in the garage and found my old Sony Vaio, which I mainly used in 2006 with Windows XP. A beautiful machine, but slow and small. I had installed Vectorlinux on it a few years back in a whimsical moment, so 3YO could use a calculator and a text editor. Although I’ve lost all any memory sticks I once had…
Even then, I became a bit upset with the treatment that 3YO administered to my wonderful old computer, so that was another Amazon purchase – a Frozen 2-themed piece of crap (to be clear, it met my expectations entirely and I have no complaints) shaped like a laptop, which works in English and French and has a load of completely un-Frozen 2-themed games playable on its tiny monochrome screen. Bought two, to minimize drama with the 5YO…and of course neither of them play with them anyway (fortunately, £20 a pop means it’s not the end of the world).
Timsformational 