The Past is another Country - they do things differently there.

Why do people buy a historical novel and expect it to have the attitudes and values of modern times?  I have known of authors who have written a modern story, picked it up and shoved it into some historical period where the values of modern times would not happen.

One of my favourite books is Gone With the Wind and although Scarlett O'Hara must be one of the most unsympathetic heroines in literature, one of the things I love about that book is its historical accuracy.  Scarlett pretending to be not very bright to catch a husband, not knowing what Charles Hamilton was doing to her on their wedding night. Not showing her bosom in the morning!  Wow!

Yet it seems that people read historical novels and expect attitudes to be those of today.

One silly woman declares that a book set in the sixteenth century has no respect for women.  Well, yeah!  The fact that women were the property of their husbands seems to have escaped people like that.  If you want respect for women, don't read an historical novel.

The daft thing is that today women are expected to leap into bed with a man they hardly know and will never see again, and they very often do, and if that is not disrespect for women, I cannot imagine what is.

Domestic violence is still common today, despite the law being on the side of battered wives.  They still keep going back for more, even though they have rights, which they certainly never had in the middle ages or even Victorian times.
I remember when they made rape illegal within marriage, though I can't recall how old I was then, probably in my late teens.  Before that, there was no such thing as rape within marriage, it was the man's right to have sex with his wife whether she liked it or not.  Even today, many men don't seem to realise they no longer have that right.
There was also no law against a man beating his wife even up to the early 20th century, and even then the police took little notice. Given all this, why on earth should anyone expect a novel set in the sixteenth century not to have these attitudes?

My Windows 8 Saga!

My pc is ancient, takes about fifteen minutes to boot up and that is after I have to press function one to stop the threat of disc failure.  Also it is a pc, which I have always preferred, but sitting at the desk all day is doing my poor back no favours. 

I thought I would try a laptop, so I could sit in the sofa instead.  I first bought a second hand one on Amazon to try, little 12 inch screen, second rate processor, no optical drive, Windows XP.  All good enough to see how I got on with it, if I could actually touch type on the thing.  It was ok and was helping my back, which was the important thing, so I decided to buy a new one.  That is where the fun started.

 

I took myself off to PC World on Saturday, purchased a Hewlett Packard Pavilion, very nice, purple colour for £329.  Now I didn't want to pay any more than that and I did want the Pentium 3i processor at least.  This one had that, as well as 500 gb hard drive, DVD RW drive, 4 gb memory and everything else I needed.  Great.  I set it up and it was all going fine.  Sunday morning, set up a few other things, email etc, then the keyboard stopped working.

 

I phoned PC World helpdesk who told me to do a back to factory settings system restore, which was no surprise.  Hours later when that had finished I set it up again, which I was able to do because the keyboard worked fine for that, then found it still didn't work.  So I took it back to PC World, damned nuisance as it is 12 miles away and I am doggie sitting my daughter's spaniel this week.  I couldn't leave him alone with my bears as it is not his house and although they get on fine, it could be a disaster.  Also he barks when I leave him, a lot, and Ferdie, my newfie boy, howls because he doesn't like his barking.  So I had to take him with me and leave him in the car, which meant I had to find a space in the shade.  I have a disabled badge because I can't get out of the car unless the door is wide open, so I also had to find a space with two empty spaces beside it and hope nobody parked there.  All the disabled spaces were in the sun.

 

PC World did not have another in stock, and the only other comparable one was also out of stock, so I asked for a refund, came home and went on Dell's website.  Found one on there, rang them to ask a couple of questions, ordered one from there, much cheaper though almost the same, and it came the next day!  Great!

 

Set it all up, and guess what?  The keyboard didn't work!

 

I thought I was trapped in a Stephen King novel - just could not believe it.  I rang Dell, who of course suggested the system restore;  that did not work.  They decided that as the keyboard worked for setting up, it must be a software problem and they sent me a recovery USB stick which came today, Thursday.  They rang, as promised, went through the whole business of re-installing Windows, downloading drivers, all of which took most of the afternoon.  I had to plug into the internet with an ethernet cable because the drivers for the wireless were not installed, which meant sitting on the dog food box as the router is in the spare room.  That did my back the world of good!

 

Wow!  The keyboard worked - for about fifteen minutes!  So I emailed the lady at Dell, told her it had gone caput again, and I was not prepared to waste more of my precious hours trying to fix something which should not need fixing.  She rang me and kindly informed me that they would collect it and replace the keyboard!  This is the same keyboard they already said had nothing wrong with it!  I told her they were not replacing anything except the whole machine.  She did not think they could do that, so I quoted the Sale of Goods Act at her, whereupon she went away to consult with her supervisor.  She returned after a few moments to tell me they would replace it and it would take about ten days.  Considering the original one came literally overnight, I thought that was a bit much.  I said no, that was not good enough, I would have a refund.  Again, she didn't think they could do that, so again I quoted the Sale of Goods Act at her.  Now they are arranging to collect it on Monday, a refund will take about seven to ten days, and I still don't have my new laptop.  After all this, I am not sure I'm not better off with the second hand one!

I would also like to add that although the woman in India at the technical help section seemed to know more than most of her ilk, she was extremely rude and kept interrupting me.  Not impressed with that at all.  I should not have to demand a replacement from a big company like Dell;  it should have been offered.

 

Remember folks, in the United Kingdom the Sale of Goods Act states that an item has to be fit for the purpose for which it was purchased and if it isn't, you are entitled to a replacement or refund.  Do not let them tell you it is not their policy;  their policy is irrelevant. 

 

Another warning for Windows 8 and 8.1 - even if you don't put in a password when setting up, it will still ask for one when you try to turn it on.  That is what it did to my son.  I don't want a password to log in, and neither does he, but because he cannot read it is more than a nuisance for him to have to copy out a password every time.  The result was he could not get into it again after it went to sleep, so we had to wipe the thing and start again.  I am hoping there is a way to get rid of it;  damned stupid idea if ever I heard of one.

 

Not amused today;  not getting any work done, my new novel is only one chapter in and I have been trying to buy a new laptop since Saturday!