Category Archives: children

The name game

When we had our first child we just couldn’t agree on his surname. I wanted him to have mine, my wife wanted him to have her’s. So we did that awful compromise and he became a double-barreled Booth-Farmer. I don’t … Continue reading

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Get down on your knees

Both exmonkey and I have noticed this: our jeans used to wear out at the crotch and now they wear out at the knees. Changing nappies, you see. Cyril Connolly is supposed to have said ‘the pram in the hallway … Continue reading

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Innocence lost

With a slightly heavy heart I’ve had to install parental controls on the computer in the back room – which meant upgrading the G3 Tower of Power from MacOS 10.3 to 10.4 (Tiger). The boys had been looking at some … Continue reading

Posted in Apple, children, computers, family life, lowendmac, MacOS X, thrift | 2 Comments

Dreams come true

I kept dreaming of a new kind of laptop. I kept drawing it and doodling it. It would be about the size of an A4 sheet of paper, have Wifi, run some kind of Linux and – crucially – have … Continue reading

Posted in children, computers, hardware, internet, Linux, thrift | 1 Comment

Tank Park Salute

Today on BBC 6 Music, Gideon Coe was getting listeners to vote for ‘great lost tear-jerkers’. Three tracks to choose from, including ‘Ship-building’ by Robert Wyatt and ‘Tank Park Salute’. I hadn’t heard ‘Tank Park Salute’ for years, all my … Continue reading

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