Chateau Keyboard

Saturday, April 12: I see no chips

Up and out earlier than I'd like to start the class this morning.
We get Audrey's HP desktop and LCD screen plugged together and feed in the signal from the VCR she's also brought with her, playing a fine video of La Traviata. We can hear this on the PC monitor but it won't show any picture or record anything; her chosen video editing software, designed apparently to be able to copy videos onto DVD, doesn't recognise her video card as an input.
Hmm. New drivers don't cure this one and it's only when I finally read up the machine's specification that I realise that this is a video OUT card, not a video IN model. Aha! and other phrases indicative of the fact that PC Mongo done gone sold you a duffer, madam.
See, when you go into, well, any large computer store really and tell them what you want to do - e-mail, web surf, process words, edit home videos - it's no coincidence that they happen to have exactly what it is you need right here, right now, in this very box and all for such trivially easy monthly payments you'll think you've fallen off a log instead of opened your cheque book. The reason they have just what you want and all the other yadda-yadda is because they're on commission. They don't sell anything? They don't earn anything. So, no matter what you want, this is it. No really. E-mail? No problem. Surf the web? This button here. Edit videos? Plug the lead into this thing round the back, S-Video it's called, that means video dunnit you stupid or somefink, give me a cheque and we'll pack you off and tuck you up nice and proper.
Not that I'm cynical or anything, you understand, but spending the best part of an Archer on a PC should entitle one to something one was expecting, rather than whatever the spotty yoof could bundle you out of the door with.
So we devote the rest of the day to improving Audrey's Windows XP skills; I have a box at home with an ancient but serviceable TV-In card in it, so I'll bring that along tomorrow to demonstrate the possibilities.
Out to dine in Cannes at La Table du Couvent this evening, with the usual splendid repast; fresh foie gras poêlé and then some home-made confit de canard. Oh, home made? I say in such a way that Jean-Pierre takes it to be expressing some doubt, so he drags me bodily into the kitchen to meet his wife who's even now simmering the duck in a giant cauldron on the stove. So, home made it is.
Fresh gariguette strawberries in Muscat from Lunel for pudding, a bottle of Viognier to start and something red and gorgeous from Puech Haut to finish with and, well, that's me for the night.
Except, of course, I have to drive home - having only carefully sipped from each bottle, I hasten to add - and an hour or so doing e-mails and questions before yet another late night.