Wednesday 19 February 2025: A full day’s work?

I was up with the poet yesterday and I downloaded 2 free apps to help me with my move-my-body challenge. Okay, so there isn’t an official challenge, but it does seem to be a bit of challenge for me at the moment.

First I aligned my spine, then I did my 6 floor exercises, aligned my spine again, did my 3 chair exercises, and then did my 1 step exercise (changing leading leg). I fed the birds, hung up some washing, and had a dirty cup of tea whilst catching up with the morning’s news. Oh yes, and I lost another quarter of a pound. So that’s 3¾lb lost so far.

I put some big girl clothes on, got my big girl car out, and drove to Maltby for my first errand of the week. I didn’t get everything I went for, but that’s okay because I’m going on another one today, but today’s is the mid-week shop. I got songbird food, sunflower hearts, a de-icer each, and some tin foil. This also gave the car a run, got me out into the fresh air, made me move my body a bit more, and I had to people. 

When I got home, I unloaded the car, put the car back, closed the gates, checked to see if the blue bin had been emptied (it hadn’t), got changed, and made another dirty cuppa.

Phew! I felt like I’d already done a full day’s work by then! But there was still more than half the day to go. So I booted up the Mac, finished and posted yesterday’s blog post, and started today’s. And by that time, it was time to ‘break’ my fast. I made porridge with honey and berries and had another cup of tea, but this one wasn’t classed as ‘dirty’ because it was within my 16:8 eating window.

I couldn’t resist, though. I had to go in and collect the rest of my books, change the names, delete the remaining duplicates, then copy them all over to my Google Drive. While I was waiting for everything to move over (it took AGES as I have more than 10,000 books in my Calibre library), I had a bit of a surf, and I found out that some of us are *apparently* getting our knickers into a right twist over this latest development.

*Apparently*, there’s a lot of misinformation flying around social media and some self-professed experts are saying we’ll still be able to copy them from our Kindle devices to other devices via usb once we’ve ‘sent’ them to our registered device. Some reckon we don’t need to back our books up to our computers as they’ll always be available.

Well, there I think it’s they who are spreading misinformation. Loads of people have had their Kindle libraries whipped out from under them and there’s nothing they can do about it. Also, lots of people still have older Kindle devices that don’t have the latest internet technology, and lots more don’t even have a Kindle device apart from on their phones. And have YOU ever found out where Kindle stores your books on your phone? I use an android and I haven’t been able to find them for years.

So while I do hope I am getting my knickers in a twist over nothing, I’m afraid the bluff old cynic in me would still far rather err on the side of caution. As soon as I knew Amazon were even able to close down accounts at will and retract entire libraries people believed they’d bought, without recourse, I’ve wanted to protect my library. If I was paying a heavily discounted rate for ebooks it would be easier to swallow. But in a lot of cases there is barely any difference between the price of a real book and the price of an ebook, other than 99p/99c/free promotions.

Can you imagine buying a tangible paperback or hardback and then having it taken off you on a whim? Or being told you can only read it in your dining room? Or that you can’t take it on holiday or to work? Or that you have to give it back? (For the record, that last one’s a library, folks.)

I *do* think that ebooks should be cheaper than real books that have production and distribution costs associated with them. But I also think that if you’ve bought that book and paid a proper price for it, it should be yours to do with as you will. There have always been book pirates. Does anyone remember when books had covers missing or copyright pages missing? Those were pirated. But there are way more genuine consumers in the world who just want to read their books in the way that suits them.

So, ahem! That took up the rest of the day again until I realised that I can’t convert books on the Mac in the way I could on the PC. I can still convert them on the laptop, but the laptop display isn’t working and I have to plug it into the desktop monitor. Perhaps we should look into getting it fixed. In the end, I purchased an Apple app that does enable me to convert books. I wonder how long that will last, knowing Apple…