Back Up/Pack Up!!!!

"To a rising young screen poet this might have been a crushing blow but Pat was made of sterner stuff." (Quoted from "Pat Hobby's Preview by F. Scott Fitzgerald".) In my mind's eye I take out "Pat" and insert "Hade" (short for Hadriana). In other words - me! I think we all do that. Don't we?

"Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag and bury them beneath the sea!.....Don't worry about the cavalry!" (Quoted from Eliza Doolittle's very hummable tune [video of which is above] which keeps running around my head, ta da, running around my head, running around my head...to the delightful lilt of the song....)

"And Why? Pray?" I hear you all ask nicely and politely.

Due to some basic schoolboy errors (we each thought the other had backed up) we have lost two to three years worth of documents, data, work photos, personal photos  et cetera et cetera. Won't bore you with the teensy weensy details but my mantra or chorus has now become............

Back up your data in your old kit pen and bury them in every conceivable place! Every conceivable place, every conceivable place! Back up your data in your old kit pen and bury them in every conceivable place! Every conceivable place, every conceivable place! Don't tarry with the USB! Don't tarry with the USB! (To the tune of Pack Up!)




And so...."In the office assigned him Pat looked at the script of True to Two Flags. The first scene showed General Fitzhugh Lee at the head of his cavalry receiving word that Petersburg had been evacuated. In the script Lee took the blow in the pantomime, but Pat was getting two-fifty a week - so casually and without effort, he wrote in one of his favourite lines:

Lee (to his officers)

Well, what are you standing here gawking for? DO something!*

6. Medium shot Officers pepping up, slapping each other on back, etc.

Dissolve to:

To what? Pat's mind dissolved once more into the glamorous past."

(An excerpt from The Pat Hobby Stories, A Patriotic Short, by F. Scott Fitzgerald.)
* i.e. Back up and remember to back up as often as you want/need!!!!!

Even the data retrieval company has written off our hard disk as the data has got (or gotten) overwritten. There may be a 0.00000000001% chance that we can send them another hard disk which had an "image" of our computer written to it. But even that might not work.

So farewell then to...............

...................past deleted blog posts (unless they turn up on the internet at some point); photos of (and these are the ones I can remember. I'm sure there must be more): Center Parc holidays, Christmas trees at Lanercost, trip to Chesters last Summer with the friends of Segedunum, Senhouse and Maryport, Chill on Sill photos, Christmas at Bocketts, Desert Island Drive Photos, Lanercost again and again, Great Chesters, children at Great Chesters, photos along the Wall, Willowford in the rain with children, Whitfield Steam engines, Birdoswald, Mr.H.'s parents with children, Askerton Castle photos, Whitley Castle, friends in Newbury photos, Vindolanda, Walltown, Thirlwall castle, Solway photos and Edward I statue photos, Penrith, Salkeld, children in Surrey, Whitstable, Granda's 90th celebration photos, medieval Newcastle wall photos, Jim and Marj - Wall show photos, face painting, K's paintbox artwork, Cawfields, Alnwick castle and Gardens, White House Farm (Morpeth), zoo photos, santa photos, Carlisle castle, Hutton in the Forest. Lots and lots of documents relating to work we were doing for the B&B website. (We are writing the War and Peace version of it!) Serves me right for not writing stuff up to the blog quicker. Ah well. Ah well. She sighed.

These are just a sample.

Farewell! Farewell! Farewell!

Maybe in thousands of years to come in the scrapheap, midden of life future archaeologists will find a way to read our corrupted, beaten up, mashed up,chewed up, overwritten hard disk and take pleasure in those much, much, much cherished words and images.

I do hope so.

And I would say to them:

"Enjoy!" "Gaudete!" "Euge!"



Post Script: We do have other words, documents, photos in other locations. So we haven't lost completely everything. This allows me to keep my sanity. One minor advantage of living in two houses is that we have e-mailed a great deal of stuff to each other. So bits and pieces are out there in the internet ether. We'll also e-mail friends to make a photo appeal as well. Luckily my parents have taken masses of photos of the children. This piece has been cathartic for me. I have been having a few nightmares about this lately. So many thanks for reading this. Please do take it to heart and act on it. Don't assume that computers are foolproof. That they most surely ain't! I know we cannot keep everything in life and we cannot take pixels to the grave but I would say....try and save it for future generations. Don't keep putting it off! Say a very firm, stern NO! to procrastination!!!!