New Blogger Layout...what the...oh, actually...it's okay!

"Blogger will be changing in April."

Passive aggressive to the eleventh hour, I read and resisted those "try now" invitations.
As the songwriter Jimmy Webb wrote:
"Tomorrow comes, but it will keep"
As a callow teen, I found that lyric such a comfort, the night before a test at school!
Still pretty comforting at 50.
So I didn't rush into the irreversible tomorrow of the latest layout changes right away.

Until today.

After a week of hardly having strength or cognitive powers and concentration to read, let alone write, this week my body's generously letting me read more than a couple of sentences at a time and occasionally remember what I've read, as a bonus!

So I decided to take the plunge before I was pushed.

Did the same with Facebook.

Twitter changed without asking, which frightened the cr*p out of many. Both actually seem better in the end. I'm a laptop user rather that an iPhone juggler, which no doubt would bring a different perspective. People with iPhones seem to have a lot more trouble connecting and adapting to recent changes, though that may merely be because more people are using iPhones, of course. My old banger of a phone thinks predictive text is futuristic!

While some are still whining and lamenting over the new Facebook timeline, I actually find I quite like it, with the dramatic new "cover" photo.

The rest of Facebook is still just as irritating at times with its mindless "like and move on" mentality, depressingly focused ads ("Over 50? Try these frumpy fashions, dearie! Still got your own teeth? Try this stunning state-of-the-art teeth whitener, available near where we know you live! You clicked "like" for "dogs"? - here's pet insurance-r-us at competitive rates") and the photos of tortured cats and battered babies often photo-shopped to get the unwary
a) clicking on dodgy links
b) wasting energy on thinking they're making a difference to the tragedies and injustices of the world
c) both

But the timeline's okay by me.
Whether it is or not, it's not going away any time soon. I choose my battles, these days.
Better get used to it!
Put up or shut up.

So I took a deep breath and started to use the new Blogger interface and dashboard.
Guess what?
The world didn't stop turning.
Like moving house, once you learn where you've put things, you'll eventually stop opening the wrong cupboard and leave the coffee cups on a hook where you can easily find them!

The new Blogger looks cleaner, like anything does when it's pristine and new.
I can find my posts.
I can check my stats.
I know how to change my layout, as and when.
My reading list of other people's fabulous blogs is still there. Just as long and impossible to keep up with on a daily basis.

The labels feature is so much better. Before, blogger often switched to the (wrong) previously used label. The window showing the labels was so small, I often couldn't change or check labels till the post was published.

Now there's a way to drag the label window wide so you can get in there and rummage around to your heart's content. You can more easily choose from your saved labels. Scary to see them all there, actually. I'm a quirkier tagger than even I realised! Ball-pein hammer? Harlequin Rasbora? Pseudoacacia? Doubt half my tags EVER get searched for!

I'm glad my quirky, unfocused, but house-trained little blog is still here to pour my many interests into. If they connect with other people in random, happy ways, as they often seem to, all the better!

Yes, I know "Pinwheels & Rainbows" ("Pinny" to its friends!) defies all the rules! It doesn't deal with one narrow subject, as it was my firstborn blog. It's a crazy catch-all. Just as it says in the subtitle "Sense and Serendipity". More serendipity than sense, usually, and plenty of dippy but who's counting?

I'm just very grateful and glad for all of you who keep finding your way back here, one way or another!
Thank you, and watch this space!

Come on in, the water's lovely!

The plot thickens

Had one day well and strong enough to venture out this week. I'd overdone it last weekend attending a wonderful service at Talbot Lane which was soul-expanding and heart warming but crunched my M.E.-ridden crock of a body to a standstill with three long hours in the freezing cold (church couldn't afford to put heating on and lady near me was actually trembling and shivering with cold throughout!).


 I was one of sixteen ministers and communion stewards distributing the bread and wine at this Covenant Service for the whole Rotherham & Dearne Valley Circuit. It was a real joy to meet up with some friends I hadn't seen since I collapsed with M.E./CFS plus erratic diabetic hypos almost five years ago. How can it be that long? This time last year I wasn't even well enough to be at the service, let alone take part, so I have so much to be thankful about! The odd "good" day here and there is like a candle in a naughty world (to quote the Bard waaay out of context)!


So I went on a "good" day later in the week to Wentworth Woodhouse Garden Centre and Walled Garden with my Mum and a dear friend who I met through family history research (she's a very distant cousin). The weather was autumn sunshine, gentle and soft, dry and mellow. We explored the gardens, the cascade, the rock terraces, bear pit (not an icehouse, no matter what folk once believed) and the village. Met some Fallow Deer, lots of wild birds, fish, chickens and local tradespeople selling produce that has not even seen an aeroplane or, in some cases, a car. Had lunch in the Walled Garden Reastaurant. Local business at its best. Cappuccino and comestibles at their best, too!


Overwhelmed and humbled this week to have my third "Highly Recommended"/ shortlisting in four months from the team at "Writer's Forum". This time it was for my recent short fiction "The Butterfly Wall". The critique they offer on your work is invaluable and so helpful, I wish I'd discovered it before. I find one of my particular challenges is plotting. Anyone who knows me will laugh, knowing I'm not the most linear of thinkers! This is all challenging and inspiring me to tighten up on my plotlines and chronology.


I've a couple of a stories on the go at the mo. One's a humorous one provisionally entitled "The Surreptitious Biscuit" (say no more!) and another where the protagonist takes a phonecall from his grandmother in the middle of the night (based on a fragment of conversation I heard years ago from a friend whose gran rang him up and asked him seriously: "Is that your mother?"). 


Yesterday's crash on Facebook had me dipping my toe in Twitter and apart from a wet toenail and potential Athlete's Foot I don't know where that may lead. I do know that my "real" writing is often fed by my erratic blogging, facebooking and maybe even in future by tweeting. I'm also aware I need to use the little energy I have between the M.E. brain-foggery to produce more and more completed and focused writing. 


"You're my favourite waste of time," as someone in the charts (whose name temporarily escapes me) once yortled; but nothing's really wasted if you put it in your pocket, hug it and chew it till it turns to gold or dust!