Return notes

After two weeks in Europe I can’t say I’m absolutely elated to come back. I’ve seen the best museums and tasted the best cheeses in France, eaten the best cured hams and paella and drunk the best sangria in Spain, shopped at the finest store in London, read quality newspapers that (finally!) didn’t have English mistakes in them, and visited my university city, Bristol.
The last thing I wanted to do upon coming back was to fall ill, but my throat became sore after leaving the plane yesterday. And I wasn’t the only one. Today, my PowerMac G5 refused to start, showing the grey screen of death every time I started it up. I went to our family iMac, downloaded various instructions from the Apple Support site and tried them all out. Finally, pulling out the power plug for 15 seconds seemed to reset the system and it has gone back to normal (for now).
I did wonder if it was a heavenly sign that I was meant to purchase my MacBook Pro now. I was fingering the individual keys on the new MacBooks a few days ago at the Apple Store in Birmingham, wondering if I could buy one and claim back my VAT.
However, I did not receive a confirmation from God, and the G5 has since been fixed, so I will hang on until those new Intel processors and Mac OS 10.5 emerge.
[A side note – after this happened to me, I tried to back up more data to Strongspace but the service was also down! Looking at the forum, it seems this has been happening lately. Murphy’s Law.]
I will backdate my blog posts to cover my visits to Paris, Madrid, London and other areas. You can start by viewing Paris day 1 here, along with photos of the Louvre and Orsay museums.