A weeks break at Ovingdean.

Eileen in the lounge on the 4th floor , taking in the great view of the sea and the Downs.

Joh and his daughter relaxing in the garden and taking full advantage of the lovely sunshine.

Ken, Eileen and Lily enjoying the sunshine in the garden at Ovingdean.

Ken sat in the garden, perhaps thinking about what he has ordered for supper.

John in a happy mode, could it be he has spotted his whiskey coming.

Ovingdean St Dunstan's Hone mear Brighton. The big house on the side of the Downs with a lovely view out to sea. Rather a steep walk up from the beach.

A call to our welfare worker Maggie and it was soon arranged for we three St Dunstaners with our carers to spend a week at St Dunstan's home Ovingdean near Brighton. The holiday was to be from Monday to Monday. Transport was arranged to pick us up at our various addresses, the driver phoning us beforehand to tell us what time he would call to collect us. First he collected John and his daughter Evon, fifteen minutes later and right on time he arrived at our house to collect my wife Eileen and myself. The luggage and Eileen's wheelchair were securely stored aboard and we were off to collect Ken and his wife Lily. The vehicles are very well appoointed to carry seven passengers and their luggage in great comfort and safety. Before we moved off the driver explained that news had come through that the M40 motorway had been closed by the police and that it would be necessary to make some detours, he added that should we feel the need for a stop then tell him rightaway and he would stop at the nearest convenient place, a comforting assurance since five of our group are well into our 80's. However all went well and we put many miles behind us before we stopped at a Travel lodge to have lunch and an hours break. We decided what we wanted for our lunch and when we were all fininshed and ready for the off again the driver settled the bill and away we went on the second leg of our 260 mile journey. The St Dunstan's drivers are excellent and the jouney went smoothly and we arrived at Ovingdean at 3.45pm. At the reception desk we were given the keys to our rooms and no soomer had we got into the room than our luggage arrived, so we had time to sort ourselves out before we went down to the dining room for our evening meal.. One feature of Ovingdean is that you get plenty to eat, the routine is breakfast at 08-15,at 10 am tea and coffee etc with biscuits, 12-30 is lunch and at 4 o'clock in the aftermoon tea and coffee etc with cakes and biscuits, at 17.30 a good meal is served as supper and then at 20.30 hot drinks and biscuits are served in the lounge.

During the day ,tips with trannsport, are arrangeg to areas around Brighton, Most evenings in the lounge between 7 and 8o'clock something will be taking place, it could be someone rading short stories, bingo,doninoes or a musical session. One evening we gathered a group together for a crossword compertition. With crossword experts like Eileen and Evon on the team we did Manchester proud by winning in record time. On another evening we took part in a quizz session , we also won that one, for that we were awarded drinks all round from the bar. We also entered another evening quizz but we only came second in that one. On one of the aftermoon trips we went to Worthing, it was a really sunny day but the wind was rather strong. Because we missed our tea in the lounge the St Dunstan's carers with the trip arranged a lovely cream tea at the pier cafe. There is also a very mice garden at Ovingdean with lots of tables and chairs to sit around and this we did several times. While sat around it is always very easy to get into conversation with other people for everyone is so friendly. I'll give mention to just a few like Ron, Betty and Helen who it turned out served as a WREN the same as Eileen. There was also Alan and Lorraime ,younger than most of us, Alan had served in the Glousters. He was down there on an IT training course and was hoping to be able to get a job soon. Good luck to you Alan, may it all go well for you. I did manage to enkoy a session in the great swimming pool, it showed me how short of practice i am.

The week past all to quickly and there we were packing our things for the Journey home, We stopped at a service centre on the way back to get something to eat and there we were brought right back to raslity for although we were carrying our white sticks we were pushed and shoved and encountered lots of young children around our feet. Where have all the good manners gone? How pleasant it had been at Ovingdisn. Our most sincere thanks to all the staff in Ovingdean for makeng our stay there so enjoyable.

Oldpaper news

Once again it has been a little slow in getting to this point!

Never mind As you will all know the A G M for Henshaws is to be at the town hall Altrincham in the second week of September! Due to refurbishment! So we might not be in to at least that date, what due the rest of the zoomers think.

Replies in triplicate please

Launchy

Launchy is a clever little program which allows you to easily start any program on your start menu. You just bring up the Launchy window using a shortcut, and then start typing the first few letters of the program. Before long, Launchy guesses which program you want, and you can just press enter.

In fact, Launchy can do a whole load of other clever things, but to start with, here are some instructions for downloading and installing launchy, how to use it, and how to change its appearance so that it's easy to read.

Just leave a comment if you have any problems.

To download and install Launchy

1. Click this download link: Download Launchy
   
2. A file download dialog opens. Press Save.
3. A Save As dialog opens. Choose somewhere to save the file, like your desktop, and then press Save.
4. At the end of the download, you'll get a download complete dialog. Press Run on this dialog.
5. A security warning dialog opens. Just click Run.
6. The Welcome page of the Launchy Setup Wizard. Click Next, or press ENTER.
7. On the licence agreement page, click the I accept the agreement radio box, and click next or press ENTER.
8. On the Select Destination Location page, just click next or press ENTER.
9. On the remaining pages of the Setup Wizard, the defaults are fine, so you can just press ENTER.
10. The last thing the wizard does is to start launchy, and open a readme file - ignore this if you want.

Using Launchy

• To bring up the Launchy Window, press ALT + SPACE
• Start typing the first few letters of the program you want to run. As you do this launchy predicts the program you want to run and displays its icon and its full name.
• Press ENTER to launch the program
• If at any stage you want to close the launchy window, just press ALT + SPACE or ESC.

Changing the appearance of launchy

By default, Launchy uses small fonts, and is also a bit wide for using with a screen reader. However, you can change this appearance by using a different "skin".

To download a more suitable skin:

1. Click this download link: Download Contrast Skin
2. A File Download dialog opens. Click the Open button.
3. When the file has downloaded, Windows Explorer opens showing the contents of the downloaded file contrast.zip
4. In the task pane on the left hand side of the Window, press Extract all files.
5. An Extraction wizard opens. Click next or press ENTER.
6. The select a destination page opens. In the first edit box, type the following path:
   c:\program files\launchy\skins
   or alternatively, click the Browse button under the edit box, and navigate to this folder in the tree.
7. Click Next at the bottom of the page
8. The Extraction complete page opens. Click Finish, or press ENTER.

Before telling Launchy to use the new skin, log off, and then back on again so that Launchy can find it. Then:

1. Somewhere on the right hand side of the Launchy window, right-click to bring up a shortcut menu, and choose Skins.
   
2. A Skin Chooser dialog opens. Select Contrast from the list, and Click OK.
3. Launchy now has a new skin!
   

Clock watching

Hi Folks Seeing that I have at last got into blogger I might as well make a little use of it! I shall only be useing words I can spell! So I will sign of now, well in a moment or two. I do not know if anyone else finds it a little nail biting getting in to blogger, because for me the time goe's by before one's eye's. Bu-cket 5 Is there anyone out there!!