Flindt on Friday: How to avoid farm office drama at work
© Kathy Horniblow Listen to Charlie read his column or read the text below.
The first day of March started OK. I’d got the “white rabbits” routine done just in time, got up, got dressed, fought my way through a pack of idiotic flatcoats for whom every dawn is a joyous miracle to be noisily celebrated, and told them all to bogger off outside before their excitement got too much for their full bladders.
It’s a well-oiled routine after all these years: slide the huge kettle onto the Aga hotplate, rest a hand on the right corner to check temperature (too hot after five seconds: perfect) and pop through to the East Wing to turn on the computer before starting breakfast.
See also: When is it time to upgrade your farm computer?
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Some time later, after the last of the Earl Grey washed down the three-course spread (I’m on yet another diet, you see), I headed back into the East Wing.
“Hold on a minute,” I thought. “That’s not what my computer normally looks like when it’s fired up.”
The “screensaver” – my favourite tractor picture – had gone, and been replaced with a bland landscape. And nearly all of the “icons” which have made their way on to the opening screen over the years had gone, too.
Panic stations
Not many years ago, one would have shrugged one’s shoulders and set off for the tractor barn, but modern farming – and life – is so dependent on these little boxes sitting in the office, whirring away, that a slight panic sets in.
I tried my emails, and found that my default browser had been ominously replaced. Every time I tried to open up a program, the computer assumed it was the first time I’d used that program, and started on a long list of questions.
All the settings that you spend a year or two tailoring to your requirements had gone.
What about all the stuff stored on the disk? A million photos, 10,000 articles, all that farming stuff, 50,000 words of Book Three? Were they all permanently consigned to the cyberdustbin?
Too late to moan now about not using “the cloud”, whatever that is. The “documents” file was completely empty; if I could name a file, it could be found, but only once. Try a second time, and no such file existed.
Luckily, in a previous life (and a life she sometimes misses when being mobbed by over-affectionate heifers) the lovely Mrs Flindt was a computer whizz, and she pointed out that hitting the keys harder was probably the least effective technique for solving software issues.
She suggested I grab a coat and four dogs (who by now were beginning to cross their post-breakfast legs) and head out in the deluge for a bit.
She would sit down and apply her years of experience to the problem. And not just thump the keys harder.
IT girl
An hour later, as I was towelling down a tumult of dogs, she emerged from the East Wing – not triumphantly, but with an expression of satisfaction at a job well done.
Yup, she’d sorted it. I asked how. “I turned it off and on again.” Really? That’s not just the catchphrase from The IT Crowd?
“Nope. And all the documents are still there, but I’m doing a long-overdue hard drive backup. It was a failed update.” I pretended I knew what she was on about, and thanked her profusely. What a relief.
Modern farming, eh? Thirty-five years ago, eight o’clock was spent leaning against the door jamb on the tractor barn.
If there was a technical issue it would be a non-starting Ford 6610, or trying to light my second Camel of the day with a dodgy Bic. Simpler times.