welcome back

Dear reader, I would quite understand if you had lost all faith in me and felt that I had abandonned you completely - it is 6 whole weeks since I last blogged. I could claim "Fab Al Diaries not responding" which is the sort of message I seem to get continually every time I turn my home computer on (and for some reason my Trustees get upset if they find me blogging at work).
However, if truth be told, it is the immediacy and ephemeral nature of FaceBook that continues to tempt me away. A quick post here and a quick post there, the odd photo (some very odd) and catch up with everybody's news, somehow there is never time for the more considered art of blogging. The quick fix, as exemplified by FB, is the curse of the modern world. No one seems to have time to take care or concern, the days of the craftsman (or craftswoman if I am being pc [that is politically correct not personal computer]) seem to have passed by and the rule of the day is non servicable parts and repairs that are alleged to cost more than replacement. Replacement of course means buying something that is a different colour, or shinier than the thing that has just broken, costs only a few pounds more (or even less) and will last an even shorter time than the useless lump of metal and plastic you are probably holding as you stand before the sales person (see I got it right that time [if you can really be bothered to care about such niceties])
FB has its many advantages, not least increasing the number of people you feel you know, including some you have never met and may never meet and others who you may come to know less and less as you commune electronically with their avatar. We all had imaginary friends when we were young, some of us still keep these friends well into middle and later age - the only sensible relationships we may have and sadly more enduring than many real time ones.
Where is all this meandering going you might well ask and with good reason as I have rather lost the thread myself but it does bring me into the world of Sat Nav - yes there is a connection
We have a virtual friend, Mrs Claus and I, who we shall refer to as ****** as that is her name. In fact this is an electronic menage a cinq as we are also friends with **** who is ******'s pet and very friendly with reindeer Hugh. Some of you may remember that we converted pixels to reality earlier in the year when we went to see ****** and *** at their house near the sea. The first visit was a great, if sometimes misunderstood, success and ****** agreed it would be worth risking a second visit
Bodybuilder being away for a while I decided to use his Sat Nav since I had never used one before. The twisted logic that says why don't you use a navigation aid to help you get somewhere you already know how to get to was kicking in. This electronic aid and I had a reasonably civil relationship with mild disagreement about which way to go and one near miss when, fortunately, I had already made the correct turning before the female voice with which it is endowed bothered to tell me that I should be doing something. With scarcely a heated word we had successully got within less than a mile of our destination and entered a small complex of streets where such guidance as can be expected from a mapping aid would be really useful, when her poor electronic circuits went into meltdown, swiftly followed by my own. At least once I could actually see the house we were going to whilst she was frantically sending me in the opposite direction - "left, left, right", silence whilst you pass three streets including the one you should have gone down then"recalculating" by which time I had thankfully parked outside our destination. I am reminded of the scene from Three Men in a Boat (I think) when one of the party sat down on a bench in Hampton Court Maze and decided to wait for the other two to come round again since he was convinced that the bench and previously spotted bun had been passed on several prior occassions
There were other things, important matters, that had been floating round my brain to talk to you about but like all ephemera they have flitted on, perhaps to be recalled and shared with you at a later date
If you want to see how our visit with ****** and *** went then look on my or Hugh's FB pages. If you are not already a friend perhaps you would like to become one and we might even come and visit you one day.
On the other hand, if you are already a friend and are no seriously asking yourself why than thank you for your friendship to date at least