Grrr.

On the one hand, great news as Waterstones in Middlesbrough have agreed to stock my two books. This is a major step forwards and I am so happy. They also suggested I might supply something that could be used as a bookmark. Excellent idea I thought. Yes, a little bit of publicity by the till, especially as the cover to “The Drowners” is so striking. (Forgive me but I think it is just great). So, off on the hunt for a print company who do bookmarks.
Found a good supplier, found a really good price for a large quantity, found an artist who put the designs together for me. All was going so well until – they needed a different format. Preferably Acrobat as, for some technical reason, this “keeps the internal integrity, dimensions and DPI of artwork and is resistant to digital compression when transmitted electronically”.

Now, I understand that, just about. My pictures were rubbish when they appeared at the other end. So I dug out my copy of Adobe Acrobat 7 and spent an inordinate amount of time trying to install it on my new computer. Only after several hours did I discover it doesn’t work with Windows 7. In fact, a lot of the software I’ve come to rely on doesn’t work so well with Windows 7 – or XP come to that. So, if I buy a new computer (as sometimes I have to) I’m forced into also buying a new (and different) operating system that promises oh so much – most of which I don’t want and never use. The stuff I do want and use I end up having to buy again.

So, seriously angry. It was bad enough finding all my favourite games didn’t run…but that’s another story.

And the bookmarks? Looks like I’ve managed it. I used a free on-line converter. Hah!