• Well, I’m in another hotel, Plymouth this time, for another couple of days of library visits. I feel I’ve done absolutely nothing in the last few days. Just worn out from my visits in North Wales last week.

    I did make a decision though. I’ve got a new project to build myself a studio/office in the garden. We moved almost four years ago. The house suits everyone for various reasons close to town, room to have my Mother living with us but I’m not happy where I work. Maybe I’m too sensitive, but I hear and see the traffic in the street outside my office window all day long.

    I’ve cleared and measured up the site. Made a huge setsquare to mark out where the footings will go for the base, so I suppose that’s a positive move. It’s frustrating not being at home, where I could be digging a bit each day.

    I’ve got my eye on a door on eBay. It’s only 99p at the moment. I reclaimed a load of timber from an old carport, when we moved, so I’m hoping it’s not going to be too expensive

    I think I will keep a record of the building for anyone who cares!

  • Oh dear! My gorgeous, handsome Marmaduke died this morning and I’m quite devastated. I’ve never felt like this about a pet before. I can only assume that he was hit by a car. We live on a 30 mile an hour road. Our neighbours borrowed a police radar once and clocked up drivers going at 65. I’ve seen bikes going faster.

    I’ve buried a lot of pets in my time but today has been the worst. All the others have died of old age or sickness. You have time to come to terms with death like that, but this was so sudden.

    My neighbours found him on their driveway and brought him round wrapped in a towel. I couldn’t quite take it in. I didn’t want to take it in.

    Marmaduke was a one in a million. He wasn’t very bright but he was a wonderful companion. When he was young he curled up behind me as I worked, until he became too big to fit on the chair. He would on the bed in the mornings, watching, waiting for me to wake up, then he’d creep up close until we were touching noses.

    He was so vocal, always miaoued to say hello and thanks. Yes, he would say thank you too! We could spend hours just staring at each other, just being in each other’s company.

    Working from home, he was my daily companion for 10 years. Now I’ll have to trawl through this site and alter all the references to him. On Friday, I walked into a classroom and there was a picture of me and Marmaduke, from my website, projected on the smartboard. I don’t want to take the picture off, but I don’t know that I want that to happen again. Children who’ve been through my sitee always ask me about him.

    I knew all his little places. I knew where to find him at different times of day.

    I’ll miss him dreadfully.

  • Waving Ginger. Going back in time.

    This was my first ever animated thing on the internet. It really wowed people at the time! I just found it and thought I’d use it while trying to find out how to use this blog. Actually, back then, he didn’t wave as fast. The processors couldn’t quite cope with the speed!

    It makes me realise just how far the web has come since I first started playing around on it. I first showed my flash animations to a European Librarian’s Conference in Athens. There was quite a stir. They’d never thought of the web as a thing that could move, but as a sea of words. Infact some lunatic professor was telling us all to prepare for a voyage when we went searching for information. To have a map, to know where we were going and to know what it was that we were looking for when we found it.

    I said “Duh! why not point and click?” she hadn’t thought of that. Mind you there was no Google then. I think I used Alta Vista in those days.

    Crikey! Am I really filling up cyberspace with “I remember the good ol’ days” stuff?!