We woke up to a nice bright day this morning and although it was a little cloudy this morning, the day seemed to be set fair. In a wakeful period during the night, I attempted to use the cPanel system to investigate a couple of websites that I have. To my display, I kept on getting a ‘clogin not valid‘ message so I had to have a think about how to put it right. Eventually, I hit upon a solution which was to use my conventional FTP transfer program on my IBM portable where I was relieved to discover that an updated password seemed to be working OK. I am pretty sure that cPanel uses the credentials from an FTP program and this did the trick for me. Once I gained access to the site, you can have a fish around and use Disk Statistics to discern (up to a point) which applications and programs are taking up most space. There is also a utility called File Manager which enables you to explore features of the website not accessible to a browser. However, some of these are system statistics, log files and web statistics so some of these ‘housekeeping’ files can be deleted but some evidently need to be preserved. I managed to do a certain amount of tidying up and eventually recovered a little of disk space so now the I am using 1.5Gb of my 2.5GB allocation – so I think 1Gb should be enough for the immediate future so long as I keep an eye on things.
Meg and I had a pleasant walk down to the park this morning. Fortunately, the fairground activities of yesterday have all been packed away so we were relieved to enjoy the pleasant and more tranquil ambience off the park again. I collected our newspapers whilst Meg read the edition of yesterday’s Guardian and then we made tracks for home,knowing that our hairdresser was due to call at 1.30 so lunch would have to be delayed. By the time Meg’s hair and been done and my own fixed in-between sessions, we had to work out how to have a really fast but delayed lunch. This dilemma was solved by toasting some of the sandwiches we bought for yesterday’s afternoon the but did not use and this proved to be tasty warm snack finished off by a chocolate ice cream in which Waitrose happens to excel.
One little thing I did in between the hairdressing sessions was to get onto an insurance company who sold us some term assurance (i.e. they only pay out if you die before the end of the time) This ‘expires’ at the start of December and I needed to know exactly at what point the direct debit should cease – after all this was set up 20 years ago. The personnel in the insurance company confirmed that the direct debit should cease after the last payment had been made in the month before expiry which sounded reassuring – nonetheless, a bit nearer the date, I will probably do a check to ensure the direct debit is well and truly cancelled and the money saved diverted to a more worthwhile savings ‘pot'.
This morning as we went down on our walk we noticed that some of the relatives of our recently deceased neighbour are clearing out the contents of the garage. As is often the case of people who pride themselves on their handyman skills, the garage was stuffed full of tools some conventional and some esoteric collected lovingly and used over the years. As I saw tin after tin of god-knows-what get disposed of I did feel a quick pang – I am sure that some of the chemicals were out-of-date and needed a rapid disposal but I wonder what was going to happen to the clamps, lathes and sometimes faintly exotic (not to say quixotic) tools that were lurking within.
My son and daughter-in-law having returned from holiday are busy throwing things away, recycling them to charity shops and generally de-cluttering themselves of years of impedimenta. I suppose I ought to feel really inspired by their example and start to do the same. Up to a point the ‘mañana’ syndrome strikes and tomorrow always seems the better day to start. I had intended to get our lawns cut day and to do a little bit of pottering which means taking a few of the cuttings I have been nurturing and putting them into more conducive surroundings. But our French friend who we entertained in the garden yesterday brought along a beautiful little patio rose so I know exactly the spot in which I want that to grow. I have a series of herbs (coriander, basil and the like) that in theory you can start off on a kitchen window sill and then transplant out later but it is really getting a little late in the year, even for fast growing herbs like that.
© Mike Hart [2021]