Have you tried installing the java thingy which appears at the bottom of the screen, Jim I had the same problem after the switch until I reinstalled the new version.

Marina

Yep, done that, Marina. Couldn't get in at all beforehand, and I now wonder which situation is worse!!

Cheers,

Jim

Tumbleweeds....that's me, that is!

There's me again, wading through the slurry to try to communicate with dear old Mr C.

I'm immortalised, I am. Oh yes! I've never been in a blog before....what happens now?

....what happens now?

Just looked in on my way to examine the paint on the scullery door. Nice to see you, Mr A.

As to what happens now, well, it all depends. Innit.

There goes that bloomin' bundle of vegetation again! Bloomin' tumbleweeds - life gets teejus, don't it....

Hoagy!

There is a school which I visit once a week. Many years ago it had a headmaster who was considered by staff, pupils and parents to be an ogre. I found his soft spot - I used to sit at the piano and play 'I Get Along Without You Very Well' or 'Old Rockin Chair's Got Me' and he would be there, dabbing a tear from his eye and loving every note. What a softie!

Hoagy!

No Sir! 'Twas Carson Robison (sic) who drawled that song about the futility of effort - were you thinking of Mr Carmichael's "Lazybones", perhaps? Mind you, I've always loved Hoagy's "Rockin' Chair", especially in Louis Armstrong's version....

Jim

Another illusion shattered!! Where will it all end?

I was thinking of 'Life Gets Teejus' as sung by Hoagland on an old 78rpm record which I play on my wind-up portable. I had assumed that he wrote it too.

Well, as Hoagy did say: "That old music master simply sat there amazed!"

For heaven's sake, this gets worse and worse! I've just had my better half scrabbling about under the stairs where the old 78s are kept and, stap me vitals, it isn't Hoagy singing at all!!!!!

It is an incredibly weary Peter Lind Hayes with a backing of the Stardusters.

This particular music master is just sitting here 'a-dazed'.

I must blow the dust off and see what other gems we've got. (Apart from Clara Butt singing 'Land of Hope and Glory' - she passes puberty half-way through!!)

Durn! It's hot in here - and quiet...

I remember well Slim Whitman's 1950s record of Tumbling Tumbleweeds - have a copy beside me on a 1980s CD compilation - but I did a bit of checking and found that this was a hit in 1934, and again in 1948, for Roy Rogers' group Sons of the Pioneers - Mrs A didn't find a copy of that one in her understairs rummaging did she?

Roy left the group to pursue a very successful career in Hollywood in 1937; the group continued to sing and record for many years afterwards. Among their hits were Cool Water - keep a-movin', Dan, don't you listen to him, Dan, he's the devil, not a man, and he spreads the burnin' sands with water.... - and Cigareets, Whuskey and Wild Wild Women - they'll drive you crazy, they'll drive you insane ... - but the title I like best was a 1945 hit Stars and Stripes on Iwo Jima.

Jim

Talking of Slim Whitman - there was a very silly and very funny film, in the early '90s if my memory serves me right, called Mars Attacks. Ludicrous plot - sending up, maybe, the 'nice guy' aliens of Close Encounters ...; these aliens were green and baad! - and giving a cameo starring role to Tom Jones (as himself).

Any way ... some how it was discovered that the aliens were allergic to Slim Whitman's singing, and they were defeated by blasts of Slim singing Indian Love Call from the musical Rose Marie.

When I'm calling you-oo-oo-oo-oodle-ooo-oo

You will answer too-oo-oo-oodle-ooo-oo etc

Rose Marie - one of my Mum's first records (after South Pacific).

Carousel, the Big Ben Banjo Band and The King & I soon followed.

Writer's block is a terrible thing. Terrible I tells ye!

Writer's block is a terrible thing. Terrible I tells ye!

A terrible thing, indeed - we're all doomed, doomed we be.