Sunday, August 22, 2010

Cut off

For days this has been my view in the mornings from my writing desk here in Wales, and as a result I haven't had much internet access. In the past I've thought it was the clouds that interfered with the signals (I think they're bounced back off the ridge in front of the house, as at the back we're shielded from Caernarfon and the masts by a hump of the hill and slate tips, and the ridge attracts cloud), and at other times I've thought it must be the wind. Well, we've had both this week, and as you can see we've been right inside the former. I've lost text messages and emails I've tried to send as a result of signals cutting out half-way through sending them, and for most of the time the web has been impossible. Today though, touch wood, the weather's better and last time I tried the connection was pretty good.

I managed to put yesterday's post up only after a lot of hassle. When I sat down to write it, I couldn't access Blogger at all, so I composed it in Word and when I got a connection pasted it in, and what a palaver that turned out to be: blogger simply wouldn't accept Word HTML, and I had to go through the whole thing deleting and replacing it all. They call it 'mobile broadband', but really, it's worse than dial-up used to be on my old groany desktop computer. And then, I discovered today, my latest version of the post hadn't published at all, although I'd thought it had...

Not surprisingly, I have ended up a lot of the time not even bothering, especially when I've got my novel pressing and that's the main reason I'm here. And I must say, I'm getting plenty of that done. And I've got another 10 days or so before other family members arrive here to join us...

2 comments:

Rachel Fenton said...

As someone with oft dodgy internet connection - I sympathise!

I wish you much typing speed for getting your novel tapped out before your rellies arrive!

Elizabeth Baines said...

Thanks, Rachel!