I’ve been trying to install Linux on an old Windows laptop, which is running too slow. I was hoping Linux would speed it up, because I need a laptop to work in the library, and I refuse to buy one. It’s such a waste when a computer is unusable after five years.
I tried Linux Mint, but the sound didn’t work. Linux is horrendous for drivers. If a driver doesn’t work, you have to stop there. If you start searching for how to get it to work then you enter a frustrating and time-devouring labyrinth, going one forum to the next, and one article to the other, with people pointing you in different directions saying, “It’s simple. You just do this”. But each way is a dead end. You have to be kind to yourself, and choose another Linux distro. I did, and it didn’t even boot. I’ll have to use the slow Windows for now.
In the late afternoon, I drove up to Castle Camps church. I like it up there – it’s quiet and isolated. The church is down a singe track lane outside the village, on a hill that was an iron-age fort.
I arrived too late to go inside the church, but the bench outside was in the sunlight, so I plonked myself on that. I looked idly around the churchyard: the low sunlight streaked through the gravestones, and a thistle seed eddied through the air and snagged on the grass. I closed my eyes to enjoy the warmth on my face, and found myself listening for cars. I couldn’t hear any, just the leaves muttering, and the cheeps and chatters of birds. I began to doze off.
I was stirred awake by an aeroplane above. The church must be on the flight path to Stansted, because the sky was streaked with vapour trails, most of which had spread into long thin clouds. The aeroplane rumbled into the distance, the sound swelling and fading as it vanished behind a tall tree by the churchyard wall. For a while, I watched the tree swish in the breeze and then, from inside it came “Hoo hoo! Hoo hoo!” An owl at quarter past five in the afternoon. The bench was out of the sun now, and it was time to go home.
Here are some photos of the outside. Not thrilling pictures, I’m afraid, but just a bit of practice.
