It should have been so simple, but this is us, or rather me, therefore it all went very pear-shaped. Sunday morning started as a normal day in that I walked to the local shop to buy the papers and had breakfast reading them before washing the car and checking tyre pressures etc. The plan was then to sort out some online stuff for Judith’s dad (he’s 92 and not a person to embrace this modern digital malarkey, but that is okay because he has got us) and all was going well until after our late morning coffee. Upon going to bed on Saturday night, I had left the laptop plugged into the TV in the lounge (that is how we watch some streaming services) and knew we would need it again on Sunday lunchtime to watch the footy and F1. So after coffee, I moved the laptop back into the man cave for us to connect back to the internet. We had some of own stuff to sort out before tackling George’s, but at ten to one I went into panic mode as not realising how quickly the time had past, and believing the football kicked off at one, I hurriedly reconnected the laptop to the TV in the lounge, only to find that the match did not kick off until 2pm. What a dumbo! I was an hour early but the planned schedule was now out of the window. Nothing for it, but to prepare lunch and read some more of the papers before grabbing a beer and settling down to watch the footy. It was a great match with some wonderful goals, but at half time, because Utd were getting thrashed by City, we decided to turn over and watch the F1. Good job Judith had left the room for the cars were already on lap 19. I had ballsed up for a second time and quickly turned the footy back on. The F1 would have to wait for the highlights programme later in the evening.
After the footy it was time to post the days reel on Instagram. It was already saved as a draft, so (in theory) just had to recall it, add the hashtags, and Bob’s your uncle as they say. Upon checking the post we discovered that during the upload something had happened to the background music i.e. it had gone and all one could hear was a loud hiss. Nothing for it but to delete it and try again. Now here’s where it all started to get very annoying and two tired people started to get shirty with each other. I went back into my drafts to call the video up again only to find it had gone. We learnt that deleting the post also deletes the draft. FFS. “No problem, we’ll just have to do it again”. Judith was doing the voice-over for this video and was none too pleased to have to do it all again. Well, you can image the atmosphere when the second attempt to post the video had the same result as the first. It was not good. It needed one of us to say “forget it until tomorrow”, but neither of us did, instead we got more annoyed with each other as I tried to sort the problem out. I posted a different video and all was well so did not understand what was happening. Third time around, I sent the video to Judith’s phone where we edited it and successfully posted it. Thank goodness for that, but it was too late to rescue the day. “Tomorrow is another day” as they say.
We were both better rested by Monday and as rain stopped us going to tennis, we were able to put our heads together to discuss our book marketing campaign, especially for Instagram where we felt a different approach was required. Judith had discovered an American author posting some really effective funny videos and we have decided to go down the same route; Judith has had some good ideas that we will be trying and the results should be appearing soon. Keep a lookout on our Instagram account (link on the Home page) and let us know what you think.
Tuesday morning is another social tennis morning for us, and we had some good matches under ever darkening skies before returning home to discover two parcels on the doorstep, even though there is a big grey box with the word “PARCELS” writ large upon it stood right by the door! Anyhow, one was a book Judith's stepson had recently read that I had asked to borrow, and the other was my cheap Chinese made camera tripod: perfect. We could now experiment with our recording Judith’s concepts. I have to say that first results are encouraging and we plan to post the post of the new style reels on Sunday (fingers crossed).
Today was a pack (for the party), shop, meet up for our monthly U3A tennis lunch and then put our feet up for the afternoon. Thursday, we are heading to Bristol for the weekend as Judith’s youngest son and his partner are having a joint ‘significant’ birthday party (they tell us it is in lieu of a wedding because that is never going to happen).
See you all next week,
bye for now,
Phil
PS I have been reading on twitter today that lots of users have seen the number of their followers dropping by, in some cases, quite large amounts. Consensus points the finger at Elon Musk and his possible takeover; it is believe the bot-accounts are being removed.
PPS Our ordinary posts on Instagram are getting up to 6 ‘likes’ within nanoseconds of pressing the post button, so we are guessing it is bot-accounts doing this? As stated previously, social media has been a huge learning curve for us.
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