Putting on the Ritz

Friday May 19, 2000

“I’m going to tea at the Ritz,” Graham said. “What should I wear?”

“You’ll need to go smart,” says I, as if going to tea at the Ritz was something I do everyday. “Wear your suit, black shoes and socks, but because it’s an afternoon thing, go for a blue shirt and a coloured tie.”

“Sounds about right. I’ll let you know how it goes.”

“You better. I want a word for word account of every cake.”

I got it, too. And I revelled vicariously in every morsel. Of course, if it hadn’t been the Ritz I’d have insisted he ask for a doggy bag to bring home the cakes and sandwiches that didn’t get eaten. But, really, you don’t go to afternoon tea at the Ritz for a doggy bag experience.

Meanwhile, back at the little ranch house, I was getting on with some of the jobs I’ve been neglecting these past couple of weeks.

First things first. Time to renew Dolly’s Pet Plan insurance. “Thank you for waiting,” a very pleasant voice said. “You are currently [mechanical switch] seventh [end of mechanical switch] in the queue.” Not bad for a Friday morning, but just in case I wandered back to the study so’s I could change over to the speaker phone. Tinny-sounding Mozart began to drift out of the little speaker, punctuated at intervals by a succession of very pleasant voices assuring me that all was well, I was still connected, and thanking me for waiting. Eventually, just as I’d got to third in the queue, up popped Breathless Brenda and the business was done. The first of the big ticks on the task list.

A glutton for punishment I punched in the number for Cellular Operations. We’ve had our cell phones for a year now and the contracts are coming to an end. I wanted to know for sure that we weren’t going to slip into another year’s commitment by default. Seems not. The deal changes, the monthly connection charge is reduced and our “free” call allowance goes up, but we’re now on a thirty-day’s notice basis. That’s good. I really don’t like being tied down to annual contracts unless it’s essential. And there’s no way a cellular phone can be classified as essential. Graham makes extensive use of his when he’s in London; when you’re in London, you have to go with the flow, and most of the people in the flow have a cellular phone glued to their ear. It’s like we used to joke about email — if you’re not on a cellular phone you don’t exist. Me, I can’t remember the last time I used my mobile. I said all along it was for emergencies only, and that’s the way it’s been.

Then I settled down to computer file housework, tidying up, clearing caches, deleting unwanted stuff, running the mirror program to secure a checkpoint backup, and then setting the whole lot a’whirring and clunking for a full defragmentation. Tomorrow I’ll burn a couple of CDs to make an off-line backup. When I got this machine, about fourteen months ago, having thirteen-and-a-half gigabytes of storage spread over two physical disks, seemed ridiculous. Who could possibly need all that disk space? Wrong. I’m getting very close to the point where I’m going to need more space. I’d thought of simply replacing one of the existing drives with a larger one but it looks like a better solution is to dispose of the internal Iomega Zip drive and use the IDE slot it frees up to install an additional hard disk. Currently it looks like being an IBM disk, somewhere between 22 and 44 gigabytes, which runs very much faster than the others. That’s the theory, anyway.

While the computer whirred and clunked contentedly doing its defragmentation thing, I settled back in my chair, feet up on the desk, to listen to some Handel. Dolly came bumbling in to enjoy the pretty music, jumped up on my lap and settled down to listen. She’s recently developed the “treading” habit, especially when I’m still wearing my towelling robe. Very tough on the towelling but so very calming and restful…

When I woke up the Handel had finished, the computer was waiting to be told I didn’t want to defragment any more disks. Oh, boy! Another couple of hours gone!

I never did quite recover from that doze. Even a trip to Taunton for M&S provisions and a coffee-and-a-sandwich lunch at Starbucks didn’t really get me going. When I got home I sat out with the cats for a while, nodding gently, all three of us, in the afternoon sun. When my head did the nodding-off thing I gave up and all three of us came in for a proper nap on the bed. Putting on the Ritz is all very well but us cats and poets will take a decent siesta any day.