This Isn't Kansas

Bob runs a guest house over the road. He does accounts on a machine bought around 1999, running MS Works 4 under Windows 95. Since his computer started crashing (again) he's decided he wants a stable duplicate of his current system, running on a laptop. My job is to recreate his existing system using Works2002, under Windows XP.

His wife became deaf in adulthood, and both have become quite proficient in sign language. Odd that he can take a change like that in his stride, but regards it as a personal afront he might have to click a different icon, or use a new modem.

One of those people who expects technology to be forever simple and unchanging. A perpetual client or pain in the bloody neck, depending on how you look at it.
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The air is unpleasantly hot and humid. It's difficult to get any work done when my clothes feel like they're coated in grease.
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I can't understand people who cry at the television. When some character in a soap opera gets a long deathbed scene with their family, or the male and female lead in a light comedy show get to kiss after 12 episodes of circling, or the military commander of a doomed group of soldiers makes a soul stirring speech about glory in death.

Maybe this button pushing stuff doesn't work because I've got different buttons. More likely I've got roughly the same buttons as everyone else, but don't trust anyone who tries to push them.

But honestly, when Bambi died, when some old women insulted her dysfunctional family before going upstairs to die in Eastenders, when Delboy and Rodney finally got rich, when a plane was diverted from Lockerbie to Emmerdale Farm, when the ninth Doctor kissed Rose (after 12 weeks of circling).

These emotions feel prepackaged, predigested, automatically felt and soon gone. There is a lack of texture to them, I imagine them as smooth and glossy like plastic.
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There is a national two minute's silence planned for Thursday - I'm not sure of the time, or the organisers. There's a kind of 'peace rally' in London on Sunday, though I'm not sure I can attend that one.

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