There was an amazingly annoying, and initially elusive, problem though.

When typing, in Word, Twitter, or anywhere else, online or off, every few words the cursor would go skating up the page, and the insertion point would go too, leaving me typing blanks.

Simultaneously, my broadband connection would disconnect.

Failing to find a cause, or a fix – the problem would go away if I typed very slowly, but next day it’d be back – I wired the router to the Ethernet socket, disconnected wi-fi, and all was well. But was the cause the adapter or its software?

Anyway, what my life needed was fewer wires, not more, so the hunt for a fix went on. Then I noticed, when the wi-fi adapter’s software fired up (I turned it on to click through to the website) – back came the problem. So I deleted it, turned off the Ethernet connection, turned wi-fi back on, and all was well – I could type perfectly normally.

The wi-fi connection functions perfectly well without the software; better, in fact, as it now, as I said, connects automatically, whereas before I had to type in the damn network key every morning. Not a massive inconvenience, I’ll concede, but irritating when it shouldn’t have been necessary at all.

My wi-fi adapter is the TP-Link 300Mbps Wireless N PCI Express Adapter, No. TL-WN881ND. Other than for inputting the network key on first use, the software offers no other useful functions and can then be safely deleted, especially if you experience the same typing fubar.

However, resisting the temptation to take a swipe at whiny students, just consider how much poorer we’d be if people like Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, Shakespeare, Dean Swift, Pepys, to name half a dozen at random, had thrown down their pens, and cried, “Aaargh! My hand hurts! Bugger this for a lark, I’m off down the pub!” and never picked up a pen again?

Luckily they were made of sterner stuff than 21^st century pussies!

Personally, as one of those people who has gone through life with horrible handwriting (at school, I was always treated as if I was doing it deliberately, for some weird reason), I welcomed the arrival of the PC and its word processor as a more versatile replacement for my typewriter (once I left school and started earning, one of my first purchases was a Remington portable, followed, over the years, by a succession of office models blagged from employers), and these days I write almost nothing by hand, not even a shopping list, because ME has actually destroyed my muscle memory, and my hands can’t form the letters, not without major effort on my part. Though, at least, I do have the ability to do so, after a fashion, if all else fails.

Mind you, if that did happen I’d buy another typewriter.

For the young, however, now as always, actually learning how to write, by hand, and for possibly extended periods, is no bad thing. It is, in fact, a valuable skill that should be encouraged lest it be lost, and very few people should be 100% dependent on technology for written communication because, one fine day, it might well to go tits up if, for example, silicon-eating nanobots escape into the wild, or the petrochemical industry goes down the pan – then where would we be if people hadn’t learned to write? Or just sat around sucking their fingers and whingeing?

This is the letter (sorry folks but it is, of necessity, a bit long):-

January 24 2012

Dear Dr. Nxxxxx,

I’m pretty sure that the last thing you want from me is a long letter but I feel, in my own interests, I should make you aware of at least the pertinent part of my medical history as, from what I’ve seen of my hospital records, they’re pretty abysmal and, as you’ll see, I have no reason to suppose those of my various Wirral GPs, over the years, are any better.

* * * * *

Before I do so, though, there is something I want to be upfront about. I do regret this, but I’m afraid I have to decline the proposed double-cath angiogram as I feel that the risks, especially if you are going into the left ventricle from the aorta, are too great. (1) Even if not, the procedure is not without risk, and there remains the fact that I have a pathological fear of needles – it takes all my self-control to give a blood sample – and the prospect of another angiogram fills me with horror, as did the last one. I feel very strongly that the stress would result in the procedure doing me far more harm than good.

There is also the problem that I’m in far too much pain to be able to lie still – I haven’t even been able to lie down at all for a year, as it causes a great deal of chest  pain and impairs my breathing – even in APH last year, I had to sleep sitting upright in a chair, and a year on things have improved only marginally. I’m sorry, too, that this isn’t negotiable. If my life depended upon it it’s possible I would feel differently, but I have my doubts.

* * * * *

I have no idea if my medical records will reflect it – I sincerely doubt it – but I have had heart problems as a matter of record since at least 1986, and quite possibly, though unrecorded, a decade longer.

In 1986 I was hauled off the hills of the Peak District and taken to Stockport Infirmary with a suspected coronary. After an ECG, several blood tests and a long wait – I was there much of the day – I was told that what I had experienced was oxygen-deficiency angina. (2)

I had experienced similar but less severe events perhaps half a dozen times over the previous decade,** but had put it down to my respiratory problems (I’ve had bronchiectasis and asthma since age two, when almost simultaneous measles and whooping cough trashed my lungs), my knowledge of heart disease in the seventies being effectively zero, I never even suspected angina. I have since remedied that deficiency.

**Always triggered by the same hill (I would go to considerable lengths to avoid hills, but sometimes you simply can’t), Hollins Cross, the pass between Edale and Castleton, in the Peak District – a footpath as close to vertical as it’s possible to be and not actually require climbing skills – a serious, 800-foot, challenge for me, with a 45lb pack. It was a very rare event to reach the top without either getting chest pain, or severe shortness of breath and vomiting, or all three.

In 1978, camped in Edale village after another crossing of Hollins Cross, I woke the next day with severe, radiating, left-centre chest pain. In my 30s at the time, heart problems never even occurred to me but, instead of continuing the trip, we opted for a lazy day and just mooched around on the local train, doing nothing very much and, slowly, the pain faded away. With that wonderful thing, 20-20 hindsight, I strongly suspect, and have done for some time, that this was the first bout of angina that I can be sure of.

Anyway, back to Stockport Infirmary, where I was given a letter for my GP (Dr. Brace, at Devaney Medical Centre, at the time), told to see her as a matter of urgency, and sent home.

.

I did as I was told, only for Dr. Brace to dismiss the whole episode as rubbish, even though, as you can see from the footnote, oxygen-deficiency angina was known as long ago as 1956. Grudgingly, she did agree to an ECG after surgery but, while I was still wired up to the machine, she put her coat on and went home, leaving it to a passing nurse, who hadn’t even known I was there, to unhitch me. As far as I know the ECG went in the bin – it was never referred to again.

As things panned out, the condition that was ultimately diagnosed as ME put an end to my outdoors activities by Autumn 1986, but angina continued to recur, especially when I was stressed (which was a lot – I had not only my own rapidly-worsening health to contend with, my wife had extremely severe mental health problems – I spent the 5 years we were married effectively on 24/7 suicide watch – a real risk as she’d been thwarted in two previous attempts, and I lost count of the number of times I talked her down from a suicidal peak), but Dr. Brace and her colleagues refused to listen to me (one doctor did, the senior partner, Dr. Jones, who prescribed a GTN spray, supplies of which dried up when he retired).

At that time, Drs. Campling, Brace, and Onion, all at Devaney, began a 10-year campaign to convince me and anyone who would listen that I was not ill, was, in fact, a malingerer, lying to claim benefits (though Campling signed me off as permanently unfit for work without being asked), or I was mentally ill (in late 1986, the DSS doctor had no hesitation in sanctioning my DLA claim (actually, Mobility Allowance then), after a rigorous examination that put me in bed for days). I did, eventually, succumb to mental illness – they drove me into a breakdown and directly caused the end of my marriage. But, of course, I wasn’t having a breakdown. according to those three doctors, I was just upset because my wife had left me! “Upset” doesn’t cause visual and auditory hallucinations, potentially suicidal depression, and massive weight loss.

I still suffer from bouts of severe, but mostly mercifully brief, depression, which goes untreated – I won’t take tricyclics, as they shut my brain down, and that’s one of the few things I have left in full working order, and SSRIs make me cough so violently my lungs bleed.

Eventually, Dr. Onion moved on, and in 1995 I quickly saw his successor, Dr. Bates (or he might have been Dr. Jones’ successor, I’m not sure), before the others could taint his perception of me. He referred me to the ME clinic at the RLUH, where I was speedily diagnosed with ME,  enrolled in their research programme, and told that had I been taken seriously a decade earlier, I might have been cured. As it was, after 10 years neglect, there wasn’t a hope in hell.

In 1996 I was admitted to APH with a suspected coronary.

I was there for 2 weeks, watching all the other suspected coronaries being taken off for echocardiograms – all except me. After two weeks, the consultant told me I’d had angina, and I was discharged (it wasn’t angina, it was far worse, but if it had been, why was I kept there for 2 weeks?). It took me over six months to recover from that alleged angina, which strongly suggests it was actually a coronary (enzyme tests can, and do, throw up false negatives), and in January last year an ECG while I was in APH with pneumonia and empyema, and of which I have a copy, revealed damage to my heart that can only have come from the 1996 event.

Also while I was in APH at that time, I was diagnosed with severe heart failure. It wasn’t recorded. I also had a long talk with a pharmacist who tried to persuade me to try a beta-blocker that “might be safe”, after I’d pointed out that with my asthma, they were contra-indicated. Later I was told Digitalis had been prescribed. It never reached me and none of that was recorded either – I have my complete and unredacted records for that period, obtained under an FoI request. They are mostly a work of fiction and, other than the significant ECG contain nothing useful at all.

Another event which you won’t find on my records took place on my second day, that could conceivably have killed me. My lungs were so full of fluid I could hardly breathe, and, faced with blank looks from some very young doctors, I suggested Furosemide, expecting, given my condition, an i-v. I got tablets – better than nothing but only just. However, while I was half asleep that night, some lunatic plugged me into 2 litres of i-v saline. I woke up with my breathing even more severely impaired from the 300ml that had already gone in, and made them disconnect it immediately. Had I stayed asleep, and received the full 2 litres, I have little doubt that I might well have died, and I sincerely doubt that gross stupidity would have gone on my death certificate.

On discharge, being unable to get to the surgery, I wrote to Dr. Nuttal asking him to pursue the question of heart failure. After two months and two more increasingly angry letters, Dr. Nuttall arrived at my home unannounced, examined me, admitted that I had what sounded as if it could be heart failure (at that time my legs were massively swollen from my toes to above the knee, something which has begun to diminish only recently as I made a unilateral decision – Dr. Nuttall, after that one visit, hasn’t returned, though he’s in the building several times a week (I live in a supported flat), and I still can’t get to the surgery – and increased my Furosemide by adding to the 80mg in the morning another 40mg in the afternoon.

Some weeks after Dr. Nuttall’s visit I got an appointment at St. Cath’s with Dr. Abdelmouti (and I’m sorry, but a GP with a “special interest in cardiology” is no substitute for the consultant cardiologist I needed). Dr. Abdelmouti, before even examining me, subjected me a 15-minute harangue on all the reasons why, in her view, I couldn’t possibly have  heart failure, yet within seconds of eventually deigning to listen to my heart she was frantically rummaging for a form to arrange an urgent echocardiogram.

After the echo, which took place a week later, she again went into her “you can’t have heart failure because I say so” routine, while admitting that she hadn’t the slightest idea why, were that the case, I had all the symptoms of heart failure, nor could she explain why I deteriorated if I stopped my heart failure meds – yet if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and looks like a duck, it’s a damn duck. You don’t jump through hoops, as Dr. Abdelmouti did, trying to prove it’s a hamster! Oh, and Dr. Abdelmouti let slip that she’d been told I had self-diagnosed heart failure – that can only have come from one source, and I know who, and it’s a lie. It is, though, par for the course for every referral to come out of Devaney since the mid eighties, every one of which has gone belly up.

Of course, what the echo showed was aortic valve calcification, and the literature is quite clear that, asymptomatic, it’s a minor problem, but with the symptom’s which I had, and still have, my life expectancy is rather less than wonderful – the 2 year survival rate being 50%.

There are still a few things that baffle me. Before I was admitted to APH last January, I was, in fact, very well (for me, anyway), and felt better than I had in years – yet I came out of there a virtual basket case, barely able to walk round my flat most days, with zero energy and hugely swollen legs, since when little or nothing has changed.

Oh, and for the record, Dr. Newall, other than at the chest clinics, you are the only consultant at APH who has taken me even remotely seriously in 27 years. Since I moved here from Bootle in 1984, my health care has been somewhere between indifferent and positively dangerous. Even Dr. Silas, after my “angina attack” refused to accept I had COPD, even though the early stages of emphysema had been identified at least a year or two earlier, and that record should have been in my file.

So concerned was I by the fact that nobody took me seriously**, on one occasion, I paid my £10 to get access to my records, as I was convinced that I’d been labelled a hypochondriac at some point. I found nothing, of course, which meant nothing either as anything that might “upset” the patient was allowed to be removed, rendering the whole process futile. And yes, I do realise how paranoid this sounds to someone who doesn’t actually know me.

**A few years ago, I was referred to ophthalmology at APH. There I was told that the vitreous fluid in my eyes was hardening and fissuring, tearing my retinas as it did so. When I asked the consultant what could be done, he said – and bear in mind I was in a wheelchair – “Avoid bungee jumping!”

That episode sums up perfectly the disgraceful standard of care I’ve received at APH to date.

Yours sincerely,

Ronald W. Graves.

PS. On the day I saw you at APH, I was sent off to the Path Lab to collect the bottle for my urine sample. I explained that this was further than I could safely walk (I was already exhausted simply from going to the adjacent room for my ECG and spirometry, the latter contributing largely to my exhaustion). I might as well have saved my breath, and I was left with no alternative but to walk to the Lab (that or forego the test).

Since then I have suffered a serious relapse, my breathing is worse than ever (I suffered acute left side chest pain during spirometry, after a bout of coughing violent even by my standards; it took several days to abate), I feel profoundly weak, and I have no idea at all when I shall be able to return the bottle of urine (currently in my fridge where, as the temperature is 2C, it should be safe), as the walk even to my front door, for a taxi, is beyond me right now – walking from the entrance of APH to the Path Lab, and back, of course, would be quite impossible, as is using my chair (it takes less effort, but I still need to breath better than I currently can).

Sorry to moan, but I needed to explain why I still haven’t returned the urine bottle. And why It’s possible I might have the same problem with the 24-hour heart monitor – my life is utterly unpredictable in terms of how much (or, in reality, how little), I’ll be able to do on any given day.

RWG

(1) American Heart Journal

Volume 148, Issue 1 , Pages 41-42, July 2004 Should we cross the valve: the risk of retrograde catheterization of the left ventricle in patients with aortic stenosis     Trip J Meine, MD,  J.Kevin Harrison, MD

(2)  This is just a reference point to indicate that the condition, by 1986, should have been sufficiently  well known to have reached my GP. Dia Med. 1956 Sep 20;28(68):2074-9.

[Oxygen deficiency as the cause of pain in angina pectoris and myocardial infarct; technic and determination of oxygen therapy].

[Article in Spanish]

BELMES PG.

PMID: 13375393    [PubMed - OLDMEDLINE]

***

And that’s where things are for now.

The consultant, currently on holiday, has some tests planned, though

I’m not convinced they will accomplish anything much.

His theory that there might be a hole in my heart, albeit a small one, does hold water, as my breathing has always been far worse than spirometry suggests it should be, the more so as I’ve got older – a hole would explain that (though if it’s big enough to affect me, I’d have expected it to show on the echocardiogram – maybe it did and no-one told me – after all, the same doctor who reviewed that argued that I didn’t have heart failure! At my age, I’m not interested in major surgery to repair it, if it is there – I wouldn’t live any longer as a result. In fact, given the state of my health, I doubt surgery would be offered.

They could replace the damaged aortic valve, I suppose, and that can be done via keyhole surgery, but that’s expensive, and major surgery – getting both hands in and rummaging around – is cheaper. Recovery, of course, is very much more expensive, but accountants are notoriously short-sighted. Both are high-risk, and there’s a question of whether I’d survive either version in my weakened state. All things considered, I’d rather have one crappy year – or longer maybe – than a few short and futilely pain-filled weeks. Or nothing, if it all goes pear-shaped.

I’ll go along with whatever tests he has in mind – as long as they’re not invasive, and as long as I’m able to. At the moment, there’s  half a gallon of pee in my fridge (24 hours worth, for a cancer test). I have no idea when, or even if, I can take it back to the hospital. I think if he wants to do it again, he’ll have to admit me to the day ward for 24 hours.

So far he’s arranged for a 24-hour heart monitor in 3 weeks – not much sense of urgency and I could do without the £30+ taxi fare. But the same problems obtain as with the bottle of pee – I can’t be sure of getting it back the following day, always assuming I can get there in the first place. It’s one thing getting a taxi to the pub – quite another to be faced with a quarter-mile walk at the hospital, which is the reason I’m a basket-case now.

He wants a CT scan at some point, too, which will show almost as much detail of my heart as an angiogram. An MRI scan, of course, is the gold standard, but treated here as if the machine actually is solid gold and they’re frightened of wearing it out.

But, whatever happens, there’s no getting away from the fact that the 2-year survival rate for my heart problems is 50%. I’m in my second year (as far as I know – nobody has yet explained why I went into hospital, last January, perfectly fit by my standards, yet came out a complete wreck), so there’s an even chance there won’t be a third.

We’ll have to wait and see.

“I am delighted to welcome McDonald’s announcement of new jobs.

“McDonald’s has a great record in investing in the UK and providing excellent training, apprenticeships and opportunities for its staff.”

Ironically, and, I would like to hope, not entirely accidentally, below that article is a link to a July 13 2009 page, which says:-

McDonald’s to move European head office to Switzerland. US fast-food chain is latest company to quit the UK for a more favourable tax regime overseas.

How’s that for investment, Cameron, you hypocritical prick?

Yesterday evening something blew the main circuit-breaker here, and it took me ages to figure out that it was my just-out-of-warranty fridge-freezer. I changed the fuse, which was clearly burnt, plugged it back in, but it still kept tripping the breaker – until suddenly, it didn’t. It was however, as silent as the grave, and clearly not working.

It’s a giant, American-style model, with enough food for at least two months and, desperate to try and rescue at least some of it, I emptied my other fridge-freeze, the one I keep my bread flour in – I removed about 50lb of the stuff, boxed it and moved it out of the way – then felt so appallingly ill I thought I was heading for a coronary, or a stroke, hence my tweet last night.

I still feel pretty awful but, hey, I’m still here, and feeling so bad last night gave me the impetus to write this blog post, the subject matter of which I’ve been flirting with for almost 2 years (don’t know why, but I seem to write better the worse I feel).

Anyway, back to the fridge-freezer, and at some point last night I realised it was actually working, but very quietly. It’s always been a noisy bugger, which was annoying as it lives in the living room, there being no room in the kitchen, but now it’s nice and quiet.

I can only assume that when I thought it wasn’t working, it was at the coldest part of its cycle, and had turned itself off for a while, before restarting uncharacteristically quietly.

Looking at the burned fuse, I did wonder if there’s been a power surge (in the middle of the night, last week, something tripped the circuit breaker for the lights – never figured out what). All my electrical stuff is connected via surge protectors, except the fridge-freezer – I really must do something about that.

And this post is my 1,500th…

I believe, as I’ve said, that he’s using his late son as a benchmark against which our degree of disability is judged, and found wanting, or he hates us for still being alive. Or both. Probably both.

Now, though, he really has slipped his clutch, losing all contact with reality.

In Monday night’s Telegraph (hat tip to @langtry_girl), he says “don’t complain about welfare cuts, go and find work”.

This from a man whose government, for the last 20 months has been deliberately pursuing, at his behest, policies which are creating many hundreds of thousands of jobless people, for most of whom there simply are no alternative  jobs.

On the one hand his government is creating vast battalions of the jobless, while on the other hand it’s removing state benefits that would tide them over until they could, eventually, find work.

And these people are now being told to shut the fuck up, and get a job? Seriously?

Where? Exactly where, are these jobs, you deranged fuckwit? You and your cretinous Bullingdon playmate are destroying the economy – THERE. ARE. NO. JOBS, you smug fucking arsewipe.

So tell me, people, given the disparity between the reality of the actions of Cameron’s government, destroying lives and livelihoods wholesale, and his increasingly crackpot opinions, in what conceivable universe would he actually be considered sane?

And I mean that quite sincerely. I say it not to disparage him, though god knows he richly deserves any disparagement that comes his way, but because he is truly dangerous.

Dangerous to the country, as his actions will almost certainly lead to a general strike, if not outright rebellion, and dangerous to the people of this country, for whose welfare – for whose very lives – he cares not one iota.

Not for the chronically sick; not for the disabled; and definitely not for the unemployed.

None of us, in his world view, are real people – if we are then we’re in worse trouble than I thought, and Hitler had better make room for one more in his special corner of hell – he sees us merely as ciphers. He cares not at all if his policies make us homeless, or penurious – or both. He’d be quite happy if we died, and stopped fucking up his lunatic plans.

And make no mistake – if this madman gets his way, die we most certainly will, from the cold, from starvation, from sheer despair, and by our own hands.

And bear this in mind – there will be barely a single extended family which does not have at least one member whose life will be wrecked by this over-privileged, detached from reality, shitweasel. So don’t think for one moment it’s not your business, because even if it’s not right now, odds are it will be at some point.

The question is – what are we going to do about this madman, before his divisive policies, IDS’s lie factory, and the right-wing press, turn this country into a 21^st-century replica of Nazi Germany?

He only hates us now – how long before he decides that the country will be better off without us?

Have a nice day…

A guy on Twitter last night was getting his knickers in a twist over George Osborne selling off “our” water to the Chinese  (who bought into 8.68% of Thames Water – hardly a buy-out).

For openers, the basic premise isn’t just flawed, it’s about 30 years out of date. Thatcher sold off the family silver,  privatising the publicly-owned utility companies, including water – it hasn’t been “our” water for a long time.

This BBC article  does suggest that Osborne is directly responsible for the deal, but it normally takes weeks, or  even months to set up such a transaction, not a few days, and for it to happen now it must surely have already been in the pipeline. However, if Osborne really is forcing through deals like this in a matter of days, that would be a gross misuse of his authority and would bear close investigation.

And why get uptight about the small Chinese investment in Thames Water anyway, when Northumbrian Water is already owned by a Hong Kong investment company? Indeed, foreign investment in, even ownership of, UK utilities is long-established, as this BBC web page from 1998 shows clearly.

While I, personally, feel that foreign ownership of utilities such as electricity, water, and gas, on which our very lives depend, is fundamentally wrong (see this article in  Utilityweek ), it is very much a fait accompli.

So, the same guy on Twitter went on to say that we must renationalise, and failed utterly to understand, when I pointed out why this is one genii that cannot ever be put back in the bottle.

No government, now or in the future, could ever afford to take the privately-owned utilities – water, gas, electricity, railways – back into public ownership – there simply isn’t, nor will there ever be, sufficient spare cash to do so. Nor will it ever be feasible to take them back into public ownership without compensation, or at, say, 10p in the pound – those days of state piracy are gone, consigned to the history books where they belong. Not least because what was acceptable, say, half a century ago and more, would not now be tolerated, and the government would be embroiled in litigation pretty much forever.

Thatcher dropped the ball, and very badly, in not configuring the law to make privately-owned utilities non-profit organisations (or non-profit above a certain figure, thus allowing the buyers to recoup their investment and make it worth their while), but that ship too, has sailed. Those who bought the utility companies have bought cash cows at bargain prices.

We’re stuck with what we have now, though I would have little compunction about stripping foreign, state-owned, utilities of their UK holdings and taking those back into public ownership and screw compensation, a state-owned company being, I feel, better placed to stand the loss than a private company (being dependent on gas from Russia, for example, is insane, though as we are no longer self-sufficient, we’ll have to import it from somewhere but I just don’t trust Russia).

Almost inevitably, someone else said that we must also renationalise the NHS. I agree, but there is a massive problem, and it’s the same one that precludes the renationalisation of utilities – money, or the lack of it.

The changes to the NHS have gone too far to be reversed without a massive injection of cash to buy out those who have, quite legally, bought in, not to mention breach of contract liability. An article in the Guardian, a few days ago, suggested the changes have gone too far to be reversed at all, a view that I share – creating the NHS from scratch was far simpler than restoring it could ever be.

And, of course, renationalisation of the NHS pre-supposes a government willing to make that choice. Come 2015, the way things are going, we’re likely to get Cameron back with a majority. But even if we get Labour (the Greens might replace the Lib Dems as the third party, I doubt they’ve a hope in hell of a majority), under Ed Miliband they are simply Tory Lite – about as socialist as the government of Saudi Arabia.

I’m sorry to say it, but the NHS we’ve known is gone for good, for better or worse and, based on my experience in hospital exactly a year ago, dear god, it would be hard pressed to actually get worse!

I don’t yet know what the answer is to the problems of the NHS, I doubt anyone does, least of all Lansley, but I’m quite certain that restoring the status quo ante is not remotely feasible.

You must have seen those dorky ads MS used to run, with people claiming “I’m a PC!” and that they were personally responsible for elements of Win 7? Well, if they were responsible, it must have been on the days when they were let out of the asylum for a bit of fresh air.

Not to mention the ads which boasted how much Win 7 held your hand while you were using it because, quite obviously, MS thought you were a cretin.

Windows 7 is designed for people who either hate PCs, or have never seen one before in their lives, so don’t realise how shit it is. For this experienced user it’s purgatorial.

First problem came with installation. Computer claimed that the files were corrupted. A quick search on Google, for which I had to reconnect my old XP PC, revealed that this is an old, and well–known fault with Win 7. You’d think, then, that Microsoft would have fixed it, but no. They do provide a tool so that you can copy the ISO images to a USB drive, and install from that, which works perfectly but – and it’s an important point – how would their target market, newbies and the inept, know either of those things? And why should they have to?

And once installed, Win 7 is proving way too fragile. My new PC has a 2.8GHz processor and 6GB memory, so it’s no slouch, but ask it to multitask, and Windows Explorer crashes in flames. True, it repairs itself, but only after hanging for half an hour or more first, before flashing an “Oops, I’ve fucked up” message, and slinking off to pull itself together.

And if you connect an external HDD, as I did, ignore it if it tells you the files are corrupted and it offers to fix them for you. What WILL happen is that Windows Explorer will crash and burn, and you’ll be locked out of the external HDD until you reboot your PC. And no, I have no idea why!

But by far the most infuriating aspect of Win 7 is the fact that some genius decided to abandon the Quick Launch menu – I had a load of regularly-used apps in there, every-day ones in view, the rest hidden away out of sight. It took up very little space, was immensely useful, and now it’s gone. The alternative is to pin frequently-used apps to the Task Bar, which is an inelegant and space-consuming solution as you could wish for.

I’m also – god help me – finding my way around Word 2007, a more perverse piece of software I’ve yet to meet. All of the absolutely vital controls are hidden away in dark corners, with bugger all indication of where they’re hiding or, even, that there are dark corners to look in – who would suspect that clicking on the upper left logo reveals hundreds of settings? Well. OK. me, but only because |I already have it on my Netbook – come to it as a newbie, and you’re seriously screwed. And it’s not great at punctuation, even when you’ve found the settings that tinker with it. For example, it doesn’t recognise the ellipsis (three dots, usually with half a space between them (when typed in a word processor), like this …  except in doesn’t insert the spacing, as you can see – it just remains 3 periods in a row. And while I’m typing, the fucking insertion point keeps vanishing, leaving me typing nothing until I notice. Seriously, people, WTF?

It does seem, so far, anyway, that Word 2007 is capable of learning – it eventually stopped disappearing the insertion point, for example – so maybe there’s hope for it yet. One thing I really love, though, is its contextual spelling checks. I have a problem – linked to my ME I’m pretty sure – of typing entirely random words on occasion. Normally, I have to read stuff assiduously to correct crap like that, but contextual spelling checks flag most such errors, making life just that little bit more pleasant! It also snags our old friend the aberrant apostrophe that so often finds its way into the possessive “its”.

It did have an initial problem inserting a dot in every space. Just a formatting mark, it didn’t print, but I looked in vain for a section called Format or something similar, so I could turn it off. Then, having exhausted every logical possibility, I looked in the section called Display – to find it full of formatting stuff, with the space dot enabled by default, for reasons that elude me, as does the mind-set of some Redwood numpty who thinks Display is synonymous with Format!

As for the troublesome ellipsis, Word 2007 has now changed its mind and accepted that it’s valid punctuation – nothing I’ve done.

I’ve used several versions of Office over the years – 2000, XP, and 2003 – and the latter was by far the best, and most intuitive. As far as I can see, 2007 has reverted to the unintuitive clunkiness of earlier versions (the introduction to Outlook is straight from the Office 2000 playbook, offering various options instead of email – you can’t have them as well as email). And there should NOT be a learning curve as steep as the sodding Matterhorn, just to type a simple document! Though, to be fair, now I’m past that, I think I’ll get on with Word, especially as I now know where most of the functions I need are hidden. Not all of them, by any means, but it’s only been a couple of  hours, and I’m getting there.

However, I’ve had to make a formatted document which I’ve saved, containing all the settings I favour, as when I open Word I’m presented with a virgin page that I have to format all over again, which is so bloody stupid, and didn’t happen in Word 2003!

So, in conclusion, unlike Word 2007, I shall be very surprised if I ever get to like Win 7. In some respects it’s positively simple-minded, in others needlessly baffling** – though not as obscure as the Basic version on my Netbook! But why MS thought it necessary to cryptically rename functions – and it’s far worse in Basic – when long-term users, like me have their old names carved in stone in our memories, is beyond me. It’s OK for PC virgins, they don’t know any better. But I do, and I’m pretty sure it’s going to piss me off for a very long time!

**Just remembered I have a copy of Win 7 For Dummies!

One good point, though – it seems to be capable of learning that what I ask it to do really is what I want it to do. And when I say pin this app to the Task Bar, I don’t bloody well mean until I turn you off – I mean til hell freezes!

So I can tolerate it, but like it? Nope – never gonna happen.

Apparently, if I apply online I have to provide one of the following, in the form of a “certified photocopy” whatever the hell one of those is. Certified by whom? A notary? (Where do I find one?) The Vicar? (I’m an atheist) Some bloke in the pub? (Works for me!) Buggered if I know, because – just a minor detail – they don’t fucking say! And at this point it fails, dismally, to be an online application, as it can’t be completed if I have to provide further documentation.

The thing is, I have none of those. I had to give up driving some years ago, so surrendered my licence; all but the first two are irrelevant to me anyway, as my birth certificate, and marriage and divorce certificates, along with half a lifetime of paper, were destroyed when the stupid bitch in the flat above me ran a bath, fell asleep pissed, and forgot about it, flooding my flat, wrecking my desk and everything in it, among much else.

But the thing is, I shouldn’t have to prove my identity to my local authority – the buggers know me. I’ve lived in the borough since 1985, got married and subsequently divorced here, lived at this address for almost 16 years, and been in receipt of CT and HB benefits since 1986. I’ve had a Blue Badge most of that time too. Yet now I have to prove I am who I say I am? Screw that – those buggers have more paper proving who I am than I’ve ever had!

And I still don’t know what a certified photocopy is, or, if it comes to that, what the point of an online application process is if it can’t be completed online!