In the Local, Parting with One of My Babies & Weird Weather

I was contacted by our local newspaper the Lincs Free Press today who want to run a feature on our Blue Skies support group. I had expected them to simply print the photo they had taken at our mental health awareness evening on 1st March but the woman I spoke to wanted to do a larger editorial. This is great as publicity is always a problem with any type of group and I'm hopeful that the group will become known to a larger number of sufferers and professionals across the county.

As an act of charity, I have decided to part with one of my DVD recorders and give this to one of our group members. He has a DVD-Video combi machine and asked me to look at it for him as the discs were failing to load. I disassembled it and found that the tray had become jammed. Being made almost entirely of plastic, it's just a matter of time before it wore out. Sadly nothing is ever built to last nowadays. It is possible to replace the drive as everything inside is modular, but a new drive would cost £200 plus shipping rendering this option void. I feel sorry for him. OK he didn't pay much for it in the first place - just £5 from a charity shop. He uses it to transfer films from his camcorder to DVD.
Over the years, I have collected various items of equipment, much of it obsolete as everything I want to watch can be downloaded from the Internet in a matter of minutes and put straight onto DVD if needed. It occurred to me that I do have a couple of DVD recorders. One I use solely for its inbuilt Freeview tuner, the other I tend not to use. As much as it pains me to part with it, I have decided to donate this to him to enable him to continue transferring his films to DVD. It's a good solid machine, and works well.
My wife will tell anyone that when it comes to giving away equipment, to me, it is like losing a family member. She is right in a way. I do become attached to things and I get used to seeing things in certain places. In some ways it is a comfort. I do though feel good about what I am doing. I know it will be going to a good home and I feel good for being able to help someone.

Is it just here or are we having some pretty wild weather at the moment? As I sign off from this post, it has become very dark and we have a sort of hail storm with tiny snowballs now covering the garden. A few minutes ago we had bright sunshine...