Beast no more

The snow went about as quickly as it had come, fortunately, so life is pretty much back to normal, including the fact that the car is utterly filthy.  Well, it may stay so for a week or so, since rain is forecast most days. 

A visit from the window cleaner is always guaranteed to bring the rain, and today's was no exception.  Bad news: he managed to bring down the solar-powered irrigation pump (which I ought to have taken down in  the autumn, of course), breaking the fixing loop in the process, so we'll have to do some work on that.  Good news: full of shame, he volunteered to clear a blocked downpipe for us, and hoiked up a rather relaxed gutter end.  We don't do long ladders, even if we owned one, so he earned a little extra.

Shareholding registrars, chapter 97.  The papers for the third and last bunch arrived the other day, and the completed transfer form was in the post back to them within the hour.  Oddly enough, they didn't require signatures in blood, proof of colour of grandmother's eyes etc that the other lot need.  Maybe because of the minuscule values involved.

Domain registrars promised me faithfully that they would set up the automatic redirection of hits on the Historia web site, and that they would refund the web hosting fees, since we no longer need it.  I was alerted yesterday to the fact that they had failed to do the former, so rather than spend ages on the phone, I took a deep breath and went and found out how to set up the redirection myself.  It worked, so you can now reach the new Historia web site using the old url of www.historiatheatre.com as before.  Phew.  Why do I find such jobs so stressful?  Must be my age.  No sign of the promised refund, I need scarcely add.  A job for a day when I have nothing better to do.

That largely brings to an end my work for Historia, my having handed over the trusteeship to someone far better placed to contribute, the regulatory side to a former Charity Commissioner and the web site management to someone who knows what the hell she's doing.  I set up the old web site using Microsoft Frontpage, which current versions of Windows do not support.  That left me having to maintain it with a freebie .html editor that just about worked, and a separate .ftp uploader.  Much more straightforward packages are available these days: shame I didn't latch on sooner. 

Next project is to sort out the rather decrepit front garden.  It doesn't get a lot of light, so the grass is full of moss, and the plants along the front are full of grass.  There are a few subjects we'd like to keep, such as the red-barked cornus and the box hedge and bush.  I have some box cuttings rooting nicely, so we might edge it all with them (though whether I survive to see an identifiable hedge is a moot point).  A job for the big strong boys, whatever, so our tame landscaper is coming along next week to kick some ideas around.  I feel some tons of gravel coming on....