London on an April Sunday Pt. 4

Having turned from  Buckingham Palace we are now walking down the left hand side of The Mall.

Here we pass St. James Palace and Clarence House

London homes of Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall 

and the Princes William and Harry 

and now we pass this memorial to 

Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother

At the end of The Mall we go through Admiralty Arch

and into Trafalgar Square

(in the next post)

A Royal Giveaway

Here is my Royal Give away

An engagement souvenir tea towel

or for the USA folks a dish towel

Just leave a comment saying 'include me'

if you wish to enter

and I will draw on Monday 6th June

At last I am fully up and running with all my new equipment having installed and set-up the wireless printer last night

Now I have to catch up with the myriad of computer tasks

and learning as I go

Before signing off I am thrilled to say that we have had torrential rain  on  and off all day. Hopefully this will off set 2 months of drought in this part of the country

Three Weeks in the Life of a New Computer

Three weeks in the life of a new computer is just the beginning!

At last I am using my new equipment

I certainly don't need to do Crosswords to keep my mind active - this has been quite a learning curve and I still have a long way to go

I am using the latest H*P Env*y 17" wide screen laptop

I have never had a laptop before so I know it will be fun

For general use I have it linked to a

23" wide screen HD Monitor with a wireless keyboard

The wireless All-in-one printer has just been unpacked and I hope to get that in operation soon

More complicated than my last one as I can use it on the net and receive E-mailed photos without even using a computer

Add into the equation Windows 7, Windows Live mail instead of Outlook Express, Google Chrome instead of Internet Explorer, new Photo software, Office 2010, Skype and a host of other new computer experiences yet to be discovered on this new equipment I think I am doing pretty well for a self taught amateur.

At one point I wondered if I would ever get everything transferred from my old computer and my old external hard drive but I did.

Then it felt like disaster struck!

When purchasing I was pressured into taking out a £450 warranty. When reflecting at home I felt very uneasy about this and eventually realised that I could cancel it within 45 days. Phew!

This I did and 15 minutes later had a complete crash.

Explorer 9 update came onto my screen and I clicked on the download, momentarily forgetting that I was not using this search engine any more. After the download computer completely locked up and I could not even turn it off.

When the retailer said I would lose all my data if I wanted it restored I just could not believe it.

He then said they would charge me a minimum of £80 to retrieve data if I wished before restoring it.

I was not convinced that this was the right way to go

so contacted a friend who is very experienced in computer trouble shooting

  Within 10 minutes of taking my laptop to her home, all was well again. In the end I even benefited from the experience as she found a way to get my 250+ E-mail addresses transferred via. the net and a quicker way than I was using of transferring 270 bookmarks.

May be I will get my life back now!!!!!
Life has still been going on of course but mentally I have felt pre-occupied.


The fun will begin soon in sorting out my old computer as Alan is going to have it. Simple things like finding out how to get rid of my E-mail account so that my E-mails continue to come to me!


I am going to have a GIVEAWAY on my next post
then I will be back to sharing more on London

My Garden Comes to Life

It's amazing how quickly the garden comes to life

This Tamarisk hangs over from next door

And then there is the scaffolding

All this to replace the gutters

What happened to the good old ladder

When Alan replaced the guttering himself 33 years ago he did it with one ladder.

We did have some benefit though with the scaffolding left up for 4 days. Alan climbed up and painted the top third of the house and cleaned all the PVC

Will be back to regular visiting as soon as I have everything transferred from my old computer along with the many other tasks involved 

Spring at Pilgrims Hall

I was prayer walking around Pilgrims Hall recently and thought I would take some photos to add to the many I have already posted on this blog.


I have been asked a number of times if this is my church or what is  my connection  with the place. No, it is not a church as such but if one sees the church as a body of believers and not a building, then  yes, it is a church. It is a Christian retreat and resource centre, a place where one can come and be refreshed or rest awhile, be taught, counselled and a place of safety for the needy and hurting. 

There is a lot more to the grounds than we see here but the photos can be seen on other posts.

The wooded areas are full of wild flowers

Looking back towards the main house

A carpet of petals from the Cherry blossom

The old stable block

Pilgrims Way that runs along the side of the property

This was part of the route taken by Pilgrims on their way to Canterbury in days gone by. 

Hopefully one day I will post on some of the interesting history of Pilgrims Hall