All that shimmers is not gold!

11th June. Where did THAT come from? I think someone's got a big tombola drum full of dates and is plucking them at random. It can't be 11th June already, surely?! (And I didn't call you Shirley)

Well, according to the calculations of Eratosthenes, today marks the anniversary of the sacking of Troy in 1184 BC - so beware Greeks bearing gifts! (The actual quote is “Quidquid id est, timeo Danaos et dona ferentes” - or “Whatever it is, I fear Greeks even when they bring gifts.”) That thought prompted me to take a photo of my Trojan Cow...


A fair few years ago now, well Summer 2004, Manchester welcomed the CowParade - it is a huge international event held in over 50 cities worldwide since 1999 including Chicago (1999), New York City (2000), London (2002), Tokyo (2003), and Brussels (2003). Dublin (2003), Prague (2004), and Stockholm (2004), Mexico City (2005), Sao Paulo (2005), Buenos Aires (2006), Boston (2006) Paris (2006), Milan (2007, and Istanbul (2007). Possibly odd concept, but great fun: life-size model cows are decorated by local people, artists, schools etc and placed around the city, outside shopping centres, at airports, abseiling down the side of buildings (seriously). Huge fun to try to spot them. Lots of money raised for good causes too as they sell off the full-sized models afterwards. I think there is currently a parade in Hong Kong, with planned events in Rome and Lima, Peru, on the horizon. If you're interested, the main web page for more information is http://www.cowparade.com/ and more details of the Manchester event can be found at http://manchester.cowparade.com/ which includes some in-situ photos just in case you don't believe me. Actually, hand on there just a cotton-pick'en minute, I can do better than that! When David and I went on holiday to Gran Canaria in the Summer of '04 there was a cow at Manchester Airport - Alphadite - the Goddess of Shopping! Some of them have fantastic names - I've mentioned the Trojan Cow, but how about TutenCowMoo-n, Moo-lin the wizard, Al Cow-pone the gangster, one celebrating local Salford 'Matchstick Man' LS Lowry - Cow-ry, D.I.S.C.O.W. - resplendent in gold sequins, which stood in Canal Street, Moo-dolf the red-nosed reindeer, Cow-liflower, Moo-lin Rouge... the list of pun names goes on for ages, a bit like me really! You can buy porcelain and plastic miniature replicas of some of the designs. We've got a whole collection of them although sadly at the moment they are mostly kept in the loft.

So, I bet you are all waiting with baited breath to hear how my new relationship is panning out. You know David and I are currently opening our partnership up a little, for some variety and extra excitement. We both now have 'significant others'. Things seems to be going better for David than for me. I think he is falling in love. Me, its not so easy. You see, David likes to have a good fiddle, he's not afraid to try new things, be adventurous. With me, well, I'm happy enough to plod along, better-the-devil-you-know style. My new commitment, I have to say, isn't turning out too well. Maybe just the strangeness of unfamiliarity, or maybe I'm just too darn old to embrace change. Of course I'm talking about the iPhones here. What did you think I meant?

I'm not a bunny of the happy variety. Having loads of problems syncing my phone to iTunes, which either times out or just hangs. I'm not trying to do anything clever at all - just sync my calendar, contacts and a single playlist, and be able to transfer photos between the laptop and the phone. Simples. That is what it is supposed to do. I've not fiddled, I've not installed anything that hasn't come directly from Apple (like they let you anyway!), I'm really not asking it to do half of what it is supposed to be designed for. It's like having a dishwasher that you have to coax into working each time, stroking its ego, telling it how beautiful it is, and then only washing mugs in it, in case it doesn't like pans or cutlery! I knew this was all a huge mistake. Took me ages this morning to tease the Cow photo off the phone. Gentle persuasion, screaming and in the end a threat to throw the whole thing in the compost bin (the best place for rotten Apples if you ask me) and eventually, with obvious resentment and massive reluctance it deigned to let me have MY photo!

That said and to be fair, I had other problems last night following a Windows update which screwed up the right speaker on my laptop - made a rasping sound every time an audio file was played (so every ping of the computer was followed by the PC equivalent of a hacking cough). Had to rollback to a previous backup from prior to the update. What is more, David discovered that this was a known issue with the update, but MS had decided to roll it out anyway. Well thank you very much Mr Gates, you annoying little American Twerp.

Two pairs of knickers today hanging in window of "Chinese woman opposite". I'll not try to take a photo - you KNOW I'm telling the truth and I don't think my nerves can take another battle with the shitePhone! I need a cup of tea.