Anyhoo (yes "anyway" was already taken).

Aren't relatives great? Especially those who ring with queries about how to use their new camera with their new computer? Trying to talk my eldest surviving relative (golly, she's only my aunt, and she's not old; in possession of a large amount of age admittedly, but not old) through how to delete pictures en masse from her camera using her computer is such great fun. It was actually going reasonably well once I'd calmed her down, got her to turn everything back on and plugged back in, talked her through menus, improvising ways to get to screens because she can't see or can't remember the obvious way. Of course after far too long of blindly guiding her I realise what she said very early on when I asked her to read out a menu: Vista. No wonder I was making little headway and my aunt was getting a little frustrated; it hadn't occurred to me that she wouldn't see what I expected her to see. Oops. Upon realising this I gave up trying to do it the simple, knowable, logical, USB-as-drive way, instead telling her that it's a Nikon, it'll be in somewhere easy in the menu.

Of course having fixed one clash between the pensionable and modernity, my mother then required help as my father had hit the "completely buggers everything up/remote access via expensive non-existent kit enabling" button on the router, which is handily directly above on/off, whereas the more useful reset button can only be reached with dexterity, a pin, and good eyesight. Should I be worried that I can visualise the exact settings needed? I don't know what they mean, just what the values need to be.

Some while later I found myself in a car with my parents, joining the Friday exodus, being asked to navigate round the blockages broadcast in staccato eruptions through Radio 3, silently glad to be rid of the shrieking woman, even if she's only been replaced by a matey, dippy girl with a West Country accent who insists on describing the conditions on every roundabout in Bristol, while flirting with someone who sounds like her father. The navigation is of course reliant on atlas which does not expect one to veer off the motorway. Being asked whether the turning's before or after the school is not helpful when the map only shows a duck laid across half a suburb. So instead of the usual route we take the path less signposted, which is slower, but less congested, or at least it is until we met the pigs. And the ponies (who have been known to eat unprotected vehicles).

Through various towns, navigating by feel, and so slowly westwards.

And once again I've left this too long and so have half forgotten what was going to be in it. Basically bad music, good music, bizarre music, bad dancing, good dancing, bizarre dancing, bad people, good people, but mostly bizarre people. This also included my parents trying to set me up with a Morris family's daughter. Their rather dumpy daughter who, in the best folk traditions, is named after a shrub, hasn't yet learnt not to pick that huge spot in the middle of her forehead which is currently imitating an angry bindi, or how to shave. But she does know all the steps to every dance, and even calls half of them her favourite (folk-logic), plus she didn't stamp on my foot once, which gets her ranked above some of the other women there, including she who charged me down the length of uneven and splitting dance-floor, onto the grass at the end and then wondered why I was having problems avoiding the stage and the band as she went back the other way.

You may have noticed there was some degree of duress in the weekend. I was only there to admire the doctor's eldest (who regrettably does not sail despite looking chewily edible in a wetsuit) fulfil my duty to God and the Queen, to help othe... Club and Commodore, to help other people and to keep the fleet upright.

While checking, I just found out that the last line of the American version is:
To keep myself physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight.

Because none of that would be covered by duties to God or country. I also can't help noticing what it reads without the adjectives (or are they adverbs? Look, the promise doesn't mention duty to the cause of exact grammar).

So I went for the sailing, had folk foisted upon me, then ran away blackberrying, then actually managed to go sailing, whereupon I stabbed myself repeatedly with the new and improved, thus longer, tiller extension. But I'm not doing well on retelling it all, so just see Flickr (even though I've not put all the photographs from then up yet): Go left.

And that was about it.

Anyhoo,