Confessions Of A Technophobe

Blaim it on my Catholic upbringing (13 years in a fortress school ruled by anally retentive strict nuns) but I have some confessions to make...

I am completely useless when it comes to figuring out any new gadget...mainly because I am just too lazy to read the manual, tending to only consult it when things go awry. I take the same approach with recipe books....they're great for gleaming ideas of combinations of ingredients, but I find the weighing out and measuring lark far too much of a hassle....it reminds me of tedious lab work, and I thankfully left that behind years ago.

This technophobia/extreme laziness explains why I've had a new phone with camera (and many other unused but no doubt handy features) since last August and have just never worked out how to get the photos off it and into a useable medium. Then Natalie sent me on a guilt trip (another Catholic trait) yesterday when she asked if the photo of a rainbow in my last post was my own work.... I had to admit that it is not. I do, however, try and use my own photos whenever possible...and I knew that I had at least one picture of a rainbow stored on my phone.

So, finally.....drumroll and fanfare.....here are two (slightly less spectacular) rainbows taken by yours truly with the camera of my hTC phone...

Over a field near our house

Dunstanburgh beach and castle (Northumberland) 

And some bonus pics of sunsets - also taken with my phone camera....

Finally, a sunset and a rainbow taken last month in Norway with my Canon Ixus 990 camera...

There IS a rainbow there too....on the right!

The Weekend In Colour

It was a dismally grey, foggy weekend, yet I found a whole rainbow of colours....

Red – the sanguine hues of “Spanish” chicken casserole....I tried out an old family recipe that marinades chicken thighs in onions, red peppers, red wine, chicken stock, a hefty dose of paprika, bay leaves and whole peppercorns (Note to self: invest in muslin spice cooking bags as whole peppercorns may be delightfully crunchy for a moment, but soon become overpoweringly peppery, and fishing them out of the pot with a slotted spoon is the culinary equivalent of watching paint dry).

Orange – the brash tone (akin to the toxic E number 111) sported by a well-known no frills airline....I’ve booked cheap flights to Amsterdam for mid April to (hopefully) coincide with the tulips in full bloom.

Yellow – lashings of custard over sticky toffee pudding....catching up with an old friend over lunch in a cosy pub in Cambridgeshire, discussing life, love, the universe and everything else.

Green – the lush forests of the Canadian Rockies in summer, gloriously portrayed in glossy travel brochures...and the shade of B’s gills when he clocked the price of a fortnight’s holiday by said forests!

Blue – the colour the air turned when, after two months of searching and finally finding bathroom accessories befitting our newly renovated cloakroom (temple to the revered Gas Bill), an accursed screw snapped during the fixing of the “Stockholm” swivel chrome hand towel rail (not from Ikea!). We will now have to pay Handy Man to extract the broken screw from its socket, a job probably entailing knocking a chunk out of the freshly plastered wall, replastering and redecorating...which goes to show we really can’t be trusted to do any DIY and should just leave it to the professionals... or continue to live in an authentic 1970s hovel.

Indigo and violet – the high fashion shades of the bruise extending from my shoulder to my elbow...the result of an Aikido roll that went horribly wrong last night. I’m also limping with a badly stubbed toe, and my back feels like I’ve been left on a medieval torture rack overnight....that’s what comes from going up against Tattoo Man.

Hope your weekend was as colourful.