I post quite a lot of photos on Facebook. It’s not a particularly egotistical thing. I don’t think so anyway. I don’t post selfies. That whole “here’s a famous landmark with ME in front of it” business has always struck me as a bit annoying. But I do like to take pictures when I’m out and about and then share them with others. Some of my friends tell me they appreciate them And I appreciate the pictures they take. One friend tells me it’s the only contact she has with the countryside at the moment. So I’m doing a bit of good at the same time. It’s a way of keeping in touch without needing to say very much, especially at a time when we can’t actually do a great deal.
So you can imagine my surprise on Saturday when it stopped working. I tried to post a picture or two and up popped the message “Taking longer to connect that usual”, followed by “Post when connected”, followed in turn by “Your picture will be posted”. That last was a lie - none of them were posted later, or indeed ever!
A friend sent me a message asking if I was all right. “No photos!? Are you not well?” Well, I suppose that at the moment you never know what might happen to your friends. It’s nice to know people care. I reassured her that all was fine ... apart from my posting problem.
I investigated all sorts of possibilities. I clearly hadn’t been banned as ai could post links to newspaper article. I switched everything off and started again - it works with most IT things! Not this time. Then I remembered that my iPhone had been updated at the weekend, one of those routine updates it can only do when your phone is plugged in and connected to internet. Yes, that was it! The update had switched off my Facebook access to photos! Everything works fine now I’ve switched access back on. It did feel a little bit as though artificial intelligence was beginning to take decisions on my behalf!
It could have been worse, I suppose. At least I didn’t have to learn a whole new operating system!
Here’s another Michael Rosen comment on our world:-
“Viruses, like fish, have nationality.
The virus that's about to 'wash up on our shores'
(Johnson quote)
is an illegal asylum seeker.
The variant that first appeared in the UK
and has spread elsewhere
Johnson calls just that:
a 'variant'
so clearly it's not acting illegally.
It doesn't 'wash up' anywhere.
This is 'science',
government style.”
I am heartily glad he didn’t die of Covid.
Reading Alice Munro’s collection of short stories, “The View from Castle Rock”, a mix of her family history and stories she has made up, embellishing events, I came across something called the “cutty stool”. It’s all to do with paying public penance for your “sins”, as perceived by the church, probably Presbyterian.
“They were called up for their sins to sit on the cutty stool and beat their shame - usually for some sexual matter, solemnly referred to as Fornication - in front of the congregation. James Hogg was summoned there at least twice, charged with paternity by local girls.”
So I looked up “cutty”, which basically seems to mean small or short.
“A cuttie-stool, or cutty-stool (also -stuil), was a type of three-legged chair used in Scotland. It was a short stool, often having a round seat on the top, but the word also designates a larger piece of furniture associated with public penance in church.
Such stools were often used for milking and domestic purposes, and afforded little comfort other than to provide balance to the worker concerned. They were cheap to buy and easy to make, and their three legs made them stable on uneven floors.” .
The word pops up in the name “Cutty Sark” the ship named after the nickname of the witch Nannie Dee in Robert Burns’ 1791 poem “Tam o’ Shanter. She received the nickname because of the short shift - her cutty sark.
And apparently “cutty” is also used as a term for an “immoral woman”. Isn’t it funny how a woman who enjoys sex is immoral, often in the past a witch, probably because it gave her power over men , while a man who enjoys sex is often just a “bit of a lad”?
Getting back to IT stuff, Facebook keeps sending me an advert for a gadget that will “improve your drawing skill”. You lay the picture you want to copy on a screen and switch on so that it is back-lit. Then you put your drawing paper on top and follow the lines of the original. We used to do this with tracing paper as children, and if you had no actual tracing paper your mother’s greaseproof paper would do at a pinch!
Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!
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