29 May 2010 (Saturday) - Beer & Eurovision

For some time my computer has been finding unknown hardware every time I turned the thing on. This morning, using skill and expertise (ahem!), I managed to update the appropriate driver and cure the problem. From what I could work out, my PC didn’t seem to realise it had a video card. I wonder how it was displaying anything on the VDU – using the mouse as a backup, perhaps?

However, I would still seem to have problems with my SM bus controller (oo—er!). It was disabled and was giving me a code 22, which the internet tells me meant that the thing was disabled. It said on the screen that the thing was disabled too, so I don’t know why it bothered having a code 22 alert as well. Probably to make me waste ten minutes looking up what code 22 meant. The obvious solution was to enable the thing, but when I did that I got a code 28 alert which (after another ten minutes on the internet) I discovered meant that there were no drivers installed. Which again was what it said on the screen. I clicked on the reinstall software button to no avail, and after half an hour I gave up and disabled the thing again. I hope that an SM bus controller isn’t vital to the computer’s function – it doesn’t seem to be (so far!). If any of my loyal readers have a spare SM bus controller they don’t want, I’m your man.

And then on with the business of the day. As the girls set off to Lenham to see an art exhibition, the bloke types set off to the town centre for a fried breakfast before walking to Willesborough for the beer festival. I’d been looking forward to sitting in the sunshine dinking beer for some time. In the event we spent the afternoon huddled under a tarpaulin shivering whilst hiding from the rain, with our faces painted. The nice lady had made such an effort to set up the face painting stall, and for most off the afternoon the only customers she had was fairy princess badger and Bat-Smurf. But once Enger-lund! had a go, so the punters started joining in too.

And I all tried fifteen ales on the beer list, ranging from “Yeah, woof! That’ll do” (for the Nine Gallon Guzzler) to “F*!* dreadful!” (for the Bateman’s G.H.A.), and as the rain slackened off to a medium monsoon, so the band started playing “Here comes the sun”. And seeing how they were making such an effort to make the most of the afternoon, it would have been rude not to encourage them.

And then to Andy & Heather’s to cheer on the UK in the Eurovision song contest. I say “cheer on the UK” – my vote went to Avon (from Blake’s 7) and a Gary Glitter look-alike who were squalling for Albania. After all was sung and done, the UK came last and a rather awful song from Germany won. I’d been scoring the lot, and in my humble (!) opinion the German song only got three points out of a possible thirty.

But a good evening was had by all. Was it really three years since the last time we had a Eurovision party…?