Safe in Paradise
Apr. 27th, 2015 01:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
todayiamadaisyColour your world with zirconia!, said the jewellery shop catalogue in the mailbox. Are they not colourless?
In yesterday's paper there was a special supplement called HomeStyle, which featured an article on the top ten bathroom trends for 2015. Apparently we are all going to have bevelled edges and coloured grout and timber-look porcelain tiles. And the number one trend?
1. Living room lookalikes
Gone are the all-tiles, cubicle-style pokey service rooms of yore in favour of sanctuaries of style to relax and rejuvenate. Add a chair and a book nook, elegant light fittings, fireplaces or vertical gardens, and the bathroom could easily be mistaken as an extension to a living area.
They illustrated this with a photo of a nice chair next to a hand basin. I can't behind this idea. My bathroom must be the least ambient room in my whole house. There is no room I am less likely to want a comfy chair.
(I think I have mentioned this before, but I once saw a house with a carpetted bathroom. Not just on the floor; this carpet went halfway up the walls to the dado line.)
Yesterday I had two phone calls. In the morning my mother's friend, Val, called. She said, "I hope you don't mind me calling you, but you were the only person I could think of who could help." I thought, oh, she's ill and her children are out of town and I'm the nearest person she can think of and what's her street number if I need to call the ambulance and and how will I get into her house if she's unconscious and what if she dies before I get there and... "I'm with my friend, Barb," said Val, "and her iPad won't work." Oh, well, that's all right then.
So I spoke Barb who told me that her son had set her iPad up with wifi and it had been working before but now it wasn't.
"Okay, Barb, do you know what I mean when I say the little wifi symbol in the top left-hand corner? Is that connected?"
"No, it's not showing any bars."
"How far away from the modem are you?"
"What modem?"
"The wifi modem."
"I don't need a modem, I've got wifi."
"Yes, that means you're wirelessly connected to a modem."
"Oh, I didn't know that."
"So you have a modem?"
"Well, there's one at home."
"Where are you?"
"I'm at Val's."
Problem solved! I got the impression Barb and Val were going to have a good session of tsking at Barb's son.
(Twenty years ago, my mother volunteered me to go and help another friend who had deleted a Word document and now couldn't open any other documents. This turned out to be because she hadn't deleted a Word document at all; she had deleted Word itself. I still don't know how she managed that. Well, I mean, obviously she found winword.exe and pressed Delete, but what process led her to that?)
Finally, my other phone call was obviously from a call centre, but there was something wrong with their phones. I picked up and said hello, and suddenly I heard a cacophony of people saying "hello?", except for one woman who said, "I'M ANSWERING THE PHONE, LOVE!" So that was fun.
In yesterday's paper there was a special supplement called HomeStyle, which featured an article on the top ten bathroom trends for 2015. Apparently we are all going to have bevelled edges and coloured grout and timber-look porcelain tiles. And the number one trend?
1. Living room lookalikes
Gone are the all-tiles, cubicle-style pokey service rooms of yore in favour of sanctuaries of style to relax and rejuvenate. Add a chair and a book nook, elegant light fittings, fireplaces or vertical gardens, and the bathroom could easily be mistaken as an extension to a living area.
They illustrated this with a photo of a nice chair next to a hand basin. I can't behind this idea. My bathroom must be the least ambient room in my whole house. There is no room I am less likely to want a comfy chair.
(I think I have mentioned this before, but I once saw a house with a carpetted bathroom. Not just on the floor; this carpet went halfway up the walls to the dado line.)
Yesterday I had two phone calls. In the morning my mother's friend, Val, called. She said, "I hope you don't mind me calling you, but you were the only person I could think of who could help." I thought, oh, she's ill and her children are out of town and I'm the nearest person she can think of and what's her street number if I need to call the ambulance and and how will I get into her house if she's unconscious and what if she dies before I get there and... "I'm with my friend, Barb," said Val, "and her iPad won't work." Oh, well, that's all right then.
So I spoke Barb who told me that her son had set her iPad up with wifi and it had been working before but now it wasn't.
"Okay, Barb, do you know what I mean when I say the little wifi symbol in the top left-hand corner? Is that connected?"
"No, it's not showing any bars."
"How far away from the modem are you?"
"What modem?"
"The wifi modem."
"I don't need a modem, I've got wifi."
"Yes, that means you're wirelessly connected to a modem."
"Oh, I didn't know that."
"So you have a modem?"
"Well, there's one at home."
"Where are you?"
"I'm at Val's."
Problem solved! I got the impression Barb and Val were going to have a good session of tsking at Barb's son.
(Twenty years ago, my mother volunteered me to go and help another friend who had deleted a Word document and now couldn't open any other documents. This turned out to be because she hadn't deleted a Word document at all; she had deleted Word itself. I still don't know how she managed that. Well, I mean, obviously she found winword.exe and pressed Delete, but what process led her to that?)
Finally, my other phone call was obviously from a call centre, but there was something wrong with their phones. I picked up and said hello, and suddenly I heard a cacophony of people saying "hello?", except for one woman who said, "I'M ANSWERING THE PHONE, LOVE!" So that was fun.