Broken Lifeline
on Carole Green (Sierra Leone), 09/Jul/2010 16:27, 34 days ago
In retrospect, yesterday obviously went too well. If you are an eternal optimist like me, then statements like this should never apply, apart from about yesterday. So I was about to host my first dinner party. I nipped home to get my laptop (its last ever visit to the office) and came back to the office. On this trip I managed to buy all the fruit and salad for the dinner… apart from apples (nowhere to be seen). I was looking out of the window contemplating the sea, thinking of my lack of apples and writing a letter on behalf of the Government of Sierra Leone to the Chinese Embassy about a topic I’d known nothing about half an hour ago... all at the time same ofcourse! Then a lady appeared out of nowhere, never seen her before, selling rosy shiny red apples and like Eve I could not stop myself from being tempted to buy, not one but three lovely specimens.I left work early in a good mood passing by the biscuit lady (peanut brittle and sesame snaps to go with the fruit salad) and the bread seller who had lovely fresh rolls at the office entrance (for garlic bread). By this point I was feeling very pleased with myself and my ability to buy everything so easily and in time and went home looking forward to putting together all these lovely ingredients into a sumptuous feast!Well the evening was a lot of fun and I went to bed feeling content, full, but still sober! However at 3am I’m wide awake, tossing and turning and eventually decide to answer a few emails as my laptop is lying in the corner of the bed. There’s no power and so very dark. I switch on the laptop and squint at the keys immediately realizing what a silly idea this is! So I switch it off and slightly push it out of my way to continue the serious business of sleeping and push it straight onto the tiled floor. So if I couldn’t sleep before I certainly couldn’t after smashing my laptop (it no longer works) and the sentence ‘just how stupid can I possibly be?’ going round and round in my head. I remain hopeful that somehow 4 months of photos and documents can be retrievedAs luck would have it, my work computer was fixed yesterday (yes the day did go well) after 2 months. I had switched it on one day and the button disappeared into the machine and… well, that was that! So today I have some access to the outside world in order to tell this sorry story and also to write to the Chinese Government!So what are the morals of this tale? Never buy apples from strangers in case your laptop breaks in a freaky bedroom accident? Or maybe don’t try and cure insomnia by answering emails, just drink horlicks instead? Whatever it is, remember to back up important stuff that’s for sure!