For the times they are a changin'

I wrote out a couple of large cheques this morning to pay our central
heating chap and our roofer, for major repair jobs we've had done
recently. I noticed in the cheque book stubs that I'd only written
one other cheque since Xmas ... all our other payments had been made
in cash, online or by using our "flexible friends".

Just yesterday, I ordered a load of photos online from Snapfish,
paying the £30 bill online with our credit card - one which gives
us a little cashback - using cheques never gave us any cashback.
Mrs C had a brilliant idea to make up photo-albums for each of our
grandchildren, based on a selection of photos from my Flickr site.
This job took me / us 2-3 days to select them and then to find them
in my large CD-Rom collection.

Anyway, coming back to my main theme, it won't be long before writing
cheques will become obsolete ... which is what the banking industry
is planning to do, as you may have read in the press.

We are also using our video machine less and less these days, thanks
to the brilliant catch-up service we're getting with the latest TV
technology ~ BBC, ITV and Channel 4 I Player available now with our
free Freeview box from Virgin Media, and also via Broadband internet.
How amazing is that! Yesterday, I saw an advert promoting watching
football matches on your mobile phone... that's something I wouldn't
wish to pay for ... I'd wish to see it on a much bigger screen.

At the weekend, Mrs C and I went to an interesting exhibition at the
Djanogly Art Gallery at Nottm University. It was all about looking
"Without from Within", though windows mainly. I particularly liked the
ones by Vanessa Bell and Raoul Dufy ... lots of gorgeous colour in the
paintings. I have used this framing technique for some of my photos in
recent years ... I'll use it more often.

Here's one of my holiday snaps which I took with this idea in my mind ...



Here's a Mini story ... she and her mum were sitting in Costas in
Wimbledon's Centrecourt this morning. L had bought her some mini-
sized Easter eggs. Mini offered her a yellow one, saying: "This one
is same colour as your teeth!"