azerty

Lyonlottie would like to apologise for the break in service and any difficulties that this may have caused you.

I had major computer problems, well it wouldn't start and in the end it was kinder to all involved to send it off to the great big recycling centre in the sky. I would also like to take this opportunity to thank all my (slightly more computer savvy than me) friends who put up with my phonecalls and comments along the lines of 'But it won't let me do that', 'What dialogue box?' 'Oh, hang on it's... oh, no, that didn't work.' and 'Nope, it's gone back to blue screen again.'

My old computer was an English PC that I brought over with me and to be fair, gave a good 7 years of service. Once I realised that he and I would no longer be working together and had mourned his passing, I treated myself to a swish new laptop that even makes the same sort of clicky noise when you tap the keys as you hear in the films. It starts really quickly in seconds, rather than the time it takes to make a cup of tea and makes my desk look positively spacious.

It is however and quite obviously, a French computer and has a French keyboard, hence the azerty combination on the top row. I think I have now got my head round the new layout and am grateful that I never learnt to touch type. Occasionally I will replace 'a's with 'q's and one time it switched itself to an English keyboard setting and I needed to zork out hoz to chqnge the keyboqrd lqnguqgue bqck to French. But we are getting along fine now and I can do really zappy things like write French words with accents in the right place. This really helps when use words like crèche a lot and that your facebook friends realise you are talking about wine and not flowers when you write that you would 'really like a rosé right now.'

It is kind of interesting to think that if I get another qwerty keyboard in the future will I have to retrain myself again? And will I enjoy throwing accents around that I'd stick with a azerty one? Time will tell.