Yesterday evening the S&H rang upon the telephone to speak to me. For those new readers (hello!) the S&H is my son and heir to all my debts, IRL senior IT person for a finance firm, father to my grandchildren and, most importantly, the (completely unpaid) web manager for this website.
He has been computering since before he could walk. At the beginning of having a computer at home in the early 1980s, the OH (Other Half) (hello again new reader) sold the sword which had been surrendered to his father in WW2 in order to possess a keyboard which plugged into the back of our small, cubical television, which emitted pictorial content in both black and white. The keyboard had another electrical lead which plugged handily into a cassette tape recorder, to save all the wonderful knowledge that was so painstakingly being acquired.
On Saturday mornings I went into the language college and taught a crammer class, leaving the OH with the custody of his son, who was six months old at the time. Upon the black and white television the BBC, ever aware of the interests of viewers, broadcast a programme, on Saturday mornings, which you had to be there to watch, (as no one had figured out streaming, or video recorders) lifting the veil upon the mysteries of the home computer. In as little as six half hour programmes, at the rate of one a week, the OH learned how to type words on the keyboard and make them appear on the television screen. At the end of the six weeks he had learned how to make
hello
appear on the television screen, at will. His excitement would have known no bounds were it not that, round about week three, the S&H, sitting on the knee of the OH, had worked out how to lean forward, press ‘break’ and clear the screen of everything, instantly, then, as he had not yet learned to walk, slide down the leg and roll across the carpet, laughing.
By the time he was at school the S&H had inherited the keyboard and the cassette recorder from the OH, who had moved on to greater things (‘It looks like these home computers really might catch on, Jane.’) Every evening the S&H ran home from school to type on the keyboard to make games appear on a screen. This was great until the elderly cassette recorder fell over. Then he had to run home faster and type everything in from scratch, as nothing was recorded. Thus it was that he worked out how to do shortcuts.
By the time he was seven other children were telephoning when their machines were on the fritz. He would listen to what they said and told them what to do until their machines were working again.
Without him there would be no website here for you to read. It’s a bit basic because, when he asked me what I wanted, I had no idea what was available. The purpose of it was to help Miniatura artists with publicity just before the show, so there were pictures and words.
The S&H has continued to help his technologically challenged mother, for free ever since. Round about now there are a couple of thousand readers here, so there’s at least a couple of thousand of us very grateful for his generosity.
The reason he rang me recently was to tell me that, as I must have heard, on the news, there was a problem with websites world wide, which had been detected by AI. I had not heard, but he had. He did all the technical stuff necessary, having emailed the right people, got a patch sent to me, retrieved it, applied it and all was well here, hours before I read on the front page of The Times that there might be a problem.
I can say with great confidence that you cannot catch a virus reading this. If you have ever bought anything from the shop here, any information about you is only available until I put your purchase in the post, after which it is deleted and unavailable to me or anyone else.
The contents of this site that you can read are actually stored in a facility in another country. There are a few very safe and sedate countries in the world which are home to massively guarded huge buildings containing enormous super duper computers, protected from everything and so solid they are likely to be the last thing on the planet.
Actually, that might not be true. A long time ago one of my collectors had a husband whose job it was to report on the environment for a famous newspaper. He had been to the far underground, guardedly guarded seed store in a far away, remote area of a chilly country. In this facility seeds from everywhere in the world are stored to reboot the planet, in case we need that to happen.
So, whilst there might be some panic generated currently about things in general, I am definitely not filling the garage with bottled water, which the OH proposes. Neither are we stockpiling baked beans.
Chocolate, maybe.
However, one of the disadvantages of the contents of numerous websites being stored in safe locations, is that only the important stuff gets stored. If you are depressed about the number of podcasts made by teenagers telling you where to put your lipstick, this is good news. If you were a new reader (hello, still here? My goodness, you do have staying power, well done.) maybe not so much, as, trawling through the last seventeen years of this website, you may have noticed that the pictures from older posts are missing. All the words are still there, I do occasionally go backwards in time and read them myself. It is exceptionally illuminating to understand how I felt about various things at the time they occurred. Even if I cannot see the pictures. What this means for you is that, if you particularly approve of a picture from this website, and wish to see it again, you may wish to record the relevant posting on your own device.
Otherwise, all is well here. Around us the world may spin. This site is here as it has been for the last seventeen years, thanks to the S&H, always on the side of the angels. We stick to the principles of the hobby of miniatures. We cannot control the world, we cannot control the bad people, but here, in our safe little world we can enjoy the things we make, share our interests, be creative, help each other and, thus fortified, return to reality and deal with it with grace and fortitude.
New readers (I promise I’ll stop in a minute) may have noticed that posts are a bit on the spare side just after Miniatura. This is because I am putting all the wheeled cases and boxes away. When I come back from the show I go through every case, starting with the one which holds the tablecloths. Every case is emptied, the contents cleaned and repacked, ready for the next show.
By the time I get up to the case with all the packaging in it there’s a lot of work making boxes to replace the boxes in which dolls were rehomed.
I’ve been doing that for the last week. Now the only box left is the one with the dolls in it. Making new dolls and sorting out the contents of that will take me the whole six months until the Spring show. I have some great ideas for new dolls. It has been difficult to ignore a couple of ideas and get on with the packing but I am nearly ready to start on the new things.
If you have been alarmed by news that the Internet is about to explode, or that someone can steal your shoes through your phone, I would just like to reiterate that this site is safe to read, to enjoy, to shop from, to waste happy hours reading (get a cup of tea first) and, as always, you can email me by clicking on: Leave a comment below. What you say will not be published, unless you want it to be. I will read it but no one else will. Your comment will not go through any agency and we can just chat about the things we care about.
And, as always, thank you for reading. I am here for you, because miniaturists asked me to be and the S&H facilitated it.
~~~~~~~~~~~~