The good news is that the vet’s happy with Puss’s progress, and doesn’t need to go back.

There is no bad news.

Poor puss has to go back to the vet this morning, after her dental work earlier in the week, for a check-up. She seems fine to me - back to her usual self.

Our poor little pussycat has been mercilessly starved and grounded since 7 p.m. last night. She wasn’t even allowed a drink of water this morning.

Why all this cruelty? She’s having a general anaesthetic to have a tooth out, bless her. She’s also getting microchipped, while she’s there - they give a discount if you get it done when they’re under the anaesthetic anyway.

It’s all for her own good, and only because we care.

The Hubster didn’t shout at me after all - he wasn’t really bothered because he never uses it, and also he seemed impressed that I’d got the printer working with the desktop, so that’s ok. Nevertheless, I still want the poor old laptop fixed.

Luckily, my brother-in-law is a sys-admin type, so I emailed him, and he replied with some instructions, which I shall follow tomorrow.

The good news is that the printer now works with the desktop with XP on it. It had all sorts of not-workingness going on before, and absolutely refused to work. But, thanks to necessity (see the bad news), I had to get it to work, so a little googling later, I discovered a way that might just fix the damn thing. Luckily, I have a copy of the drivers already downloaded from the Lexmark website - they don’t seem to have them there any more for such old printers as the X75. They just want to brag about their shiny new wireless printers. I followed the instructions, and lo and behold, it worked. I will have to remember to write that up on my tips page so I can do it again, if need be.

The bad news is the reason why I had to unplug the printer from the craptop. Let me explain why I am making such a fuss about unplugging the printer from the craptop: it is because despite it being plug ‘n’ play, if the printer is unplugged from the craptop, it refuses to work when you plug it back in again; you have to uninstall the driver and reinstall it. However, I had no choice about the matter, because I needed to print something off, but I seem to have done something bad to the craptop. It now only wants to run a limited version of GRUB.

A plumber came this morning, amazingly, and fixed it. He was an odd plumber. It needed a new washer, what with the old one having disintegrated somewhat and come out through the tap itself, while it was gushing away last night. I’d have thought a plumber would have a million washers either in his tool box or in his van, but he said he had to go and get one from some shop along the road somewhere. He went out, then came back, having forgotten something, then went away and came back later, fixed it, then went away, and I had a feeling about this, and lo and behold, he came back later, with a ring thing that he said he forgot to put back on the tap. He put it back on, said that was definitelyit this time, and left again. He’s not come back, so I assume that’s it fixed.

The Internet is working fine, now.

The Hubster will be most glad to hear this, as he’s been fretting, bless him.