A Sad Person

I guess I'm a bit of a sad person. I have just taken delivery of a new ...

DICTIONARY

... and I'm really excited about it.

I've owned a number of dictionaries during my lifetime. I can remember the excitement of getting my first dictionary when I was about 10. I think it was a Collins Dictionary, but I'm not exactly sure now because being 10 was a long time ago. I later received an English-French dictionary, followed a year later by an English-Latin dictionary, and then by an English-German dictionary. Studying foreign languages up to GCE 'O'-level was compulsory when I was at school. When I was in the Sixth Form, I was given the opportunity to study Russian in some of my spare periods, so an English-Russian dictionary was added to the bookcase in my bedroom.

Fortunately I was taught spelling when I was at primary school; every Friday morning for all the years that I was at the school, there was a spelling test. It taught me to love the English language, and it also taught me that it had a lot of tricks that it could play in order to catch the unwary. When I started working, I didn't need to use my knowledge of English to begin with, but as I moved up the ladder, the type of work that I did changed, and the use of English became all important. At work I had to use the Concise Oxford English Dictionary as the arbiter for spelling and definition. Each time a new edition came out, our library staff had to order a number of copies so that the editors all had their own copy for reference. However, at home for help with crosswords, I had a copy of Chambers 20th Century Dictionary.

I haven't bothered to get a new dictionary because I didn't think I would need one. I can always use the spellchecking facility in the various applications that I use on the computer, so I have stuck with the dictionaries I already had. But I am doing the last two modules for my second degree, and for one of them The Chambers Dictionary is a set book, and a brand new edition has just been published. So for the first time in about 20 years, I personally own a brand new dictionary, and it is full of lovely words like blog, blogger, and blogosphere.

You can hardly blame me for getting excited, can you?

You Don't Realise How Much You Rely On Something...

... until you don't have it anymore. I survived for years without access to the Internet at home, but when I started working towards my Master's with the OU I had to have Internet access and I now rely on it for so much.

I do Internet banking, I order my monthly large shop online and have it delivered, I use the Internet for buying a lot of other things too, such as wool for my knitting, and supplies for my card making, and I have managed to get some real cross stitch kit bargains on ebay. Amazon is a lifesaver when it comes to buying all those books that are necessary for my studying, and at lower prices than I could get them on the high street always supposing that I could find a decent bookshop.

So I am finding it a nightmare at the moment to be having horrendous problems with my Internet connection. There is a problem with my phoneline so it may be that is the reason that I can't surf and blog as I would like to, although the problem with the phone existed before the Internet connection suddenly disappeared. I have been told that my phone line will be properly operating by Monday 8pm at the latest, so I guess I will have to wait until then to see whether my Internet connection returns too. If it does, all well and good, but if it doesn't I guess it will be a long phone call to the ISP's phone helpline because I can't log on to the Internet to be able to use their very helpful online help facility. Now correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it just a little bit silly to put all those pages of help on their website, if you can't access the web to be able to read them.

Anyway, it means that I will probably have to continue using the facilities in my local library for an hour a day until I have got everything sorted out and up and running again. I shall have to pop down here early tomorrow morning and try to sneak on for an hour to catch up on my email and have a quick look at what is happening on the blogosphere, and I live in a very enlightened part of London where the libraries are open on Sunday too, so I can come in then if necessary. The library is only about five minutes walk from home so it's not as though I have to make a long journey to get there.

Perhaps there are benefits to my living in London after all.