Well…blog readers who don’t use Facebook must have wondered if I’d popped my clogs, as there was no way of letting you know the reason for the absence of them! A few weeks ago, my ageing laptop died. With some kind help from friends, I was able to replace it. There’s no point in my buying a cheap and cheerful one, as, with all the travelling I do, it’s constantly taking a beating, on planes, in cars, in and out of the computer travel bag…

All was well, until three weeks ago, on day 2 in Romania, the new one died…. 🙁 In the middle of using it, it suddenly froze – not necessarily unusual in Romania, as even these days, power fluctuations occur. But it didn’t start to work again, so I tried to restart it. It wouldn’t. So I did a ‘hard’ shutdown, holding down the on/off button. It came back on but… nothing worked. The mouse moved about, but little else. I tried ‘safe’ mode, then system restore, then tried to take it back to a full windows re-install…. nothing. Panic phone calls to my genius friend Lee in England seemed to suggest a major hardware failure. But…I was in Romania for 2 more weeks, and PC World is in England. So…no computer.

Straight off the plane to PC World: explained the problem. It seems that, on this machine, there’s a ‘HP’ restore/refresh/re-install option – AND a Windows one. The obvious one is the HP one. It needed the Windows one, and, voila! – it’s ok again….Lost everything I’d done on it, the programmes I’d installed, the data etc…. but, it’s ok.

So my apologies for silence!!

Romania was a good time, low-key as usual, but busy, effective, lots of one-to-one/small group times, equally demanding in many respects to the more overt higher-profile meetings in Colombia etc. and I arrived home pretty bushed. With just 60 hours at home before a 5.15 am ‘get-up’ to be at the airport to fly to France. Which is where I am right now, preparing for a very busy few days with the ‘Louange Cote Ouest’ conference, always good, but tiring.

I’d really value your prayers for the weekend, and for the ongoing financial battle I’m in – still (9 months now!). I’ll keep you more informed in the coming days as the laptop allows!