27th August 2017
I took a long drive down to Whitney-on-Wye to see my friend Martin.
Martin suffers from Tourette’s Syndrome, which apart from some colourful language, and some crazy conspiracy theories,he also has some great natural skills, and a great sense of humour.
I met him at a furniture exhibition at Earls Court, back in the early nineties . He had designed some metal chairs, and was keen to demonstrate a stool made from an old spring. I tried to avoid him, by pretending to look at some interesting castors, but he was having non of it. He insisted that I try it, which I reluctantly did. It was indeed like sitting on an old spring, but I managed to mutter something encouraging, although I can’t remember what it was. I then got shown all the other examples of his work, which were very unique, and very well made.
We exchanged business cards, and a few weeks later, he called me, and invited me to visit his workshop.
I thought it would be interesting, so I drove up to Essex to see him. Cutting a very long story short, we established a friendship that has lasted over twenty years.
In those years, he has been furniture in steel and wood, built hand made clocks, that wouldn’t be out of place in a Lord of the Rings film set, and become a surrealist artist.
Martin also carries around a lot of mental baggage that is depicted in his paintings.
Often I have to help him with some issue with his I-mac. It is generally the blind leading the blind, but usually it starts simple and ends in more problem, and today was no exception.
It started with a google log-in box that kept appearing that Martin would have to keep cancelling. This was the result of some help I had given him once before. I went through some of the different passwords that I had noted. It was easier for me to be his back-up than to expect him to remember them.
Fortunately one of the passwords I had, worked, hurray for me!.
He then asked me to install Flash, which I did.
Afterwards he noticed that his home page did not appear. This to Martin was a disaster, everything he used was displayed. He started to pace the floor fretting, and muttering. This put pressure on me, as I desperately tried to find this home page.
Eventually I found it in his favourites, so wiping my brow, I called out my success. However things were not perfect, it did not automatically appear when he hit the Safari icon. This was a big thing, and I explained he could find it by hitting the “Bookmark ” tab, and click “Favourites”. We went over it a dozen times, and because of his learning difficulties it was a hard adjustment for him to make.
I promised to find out how it could be “saved” but it was time to head home, exhausted.
Another Lifetime to go 