Saturday

Busy day ahead. After scraping myself out of bed this morning, and wandering down for a shower and shave, I discovered a box in the hallway. Amazon had somehow already managed to deliver everything I ordered yesterday.

Inside the box (a box of boxes, in typical Amazon style), there is a wall mount for a television. For the last several weeks a huge flat-screen TV has been propped against the wall of the junk room - it’s going to be hoisted onto the wall above the computer monitors - allowing me to watch all manner of streamed rubbish instead of getting on with whatever I should be getting on with.

Also inside the box is a “desk shelf” - turning the desk the Commodore 64 is currently on into a “double decker” desk - giving me room to put monitors above the computers and keyboards. The hope is the Commodore 64 will become a bit easier to use, and I can leave the Raspberry Pi plugged in - pretending to be a Commodore Amiga until the FPGA based Amigas arrive (next year?).

Finally, the box also contained a DVD player. It looks just like a laptop until you open it up - I imagine the creators figured out a crafty way of re-using laptop hardware to turn them into DVD players - removing the keyboard, and most of the internals. You end up with a portable movie playing device that allows me to play the collection of DVDs I’ve held on to for the last decade - that I couldn’t quite part with. Most of our CDs and DVDs went to a recycling service called Music Magpie many years ago.

This is where I admit to having the box sets of Melrose Place, Dungeons and Dragons, Buck Rogers, and various other TV shows. Oh - and most of the Studio Ghibli movies. And yes, I’ve been looking at the box sets of Masters of the Universe and She-Ra.

After building the shelves, hanging the TVs, and whatever else, I also need to go cut the lawn. It’s on a knife edge between being “a bit unruly”, and being “an impenetrable jungle”.

I’m sitting in Spoons, if you were wondering. An English breakfast just vanished - now I’m burning time until the market opens in town - to get some freshly baked bread, and a few other bits and pieces before heading home.

The book shop is just down the road from Spoons too - I can almost feel it’s magnetic pull. Maybe I’ll go take a look (we know it won’t just be a look, don’t we). A little voice on my shoulder is whispering about books to read on holiday...