Zen and the Art of Shopping Cart Maintenance.......

I have always associated Zen with a calm, meditative state.

Zen Cart however, is designed to promote the very opposite.

That is, a state of frustration, interspersed with periods of intense angst and heightened anxiety.

In short, a state as far removed from Zen-like calm as you are ever likely to encounter.

Just why an e-commerce shopping cart programme designer should choose to call it Zen Cart is difficult to fathom. However, ours is not to reason why.

Etc.

Having completed the installation of the Zen Cart programme, accompanied by much wailing and gnashing of teeth, we then attempted to change the basic template to something a bit more conducive.

I now know why website managers charge upwards of £30 an hour for 'support'.

We spent most of yesterday repeatedly failing to install the template, admittedly because the instructions were complete rubbish. Eventually by a process of trial and error (mostly error) we did manage to change the template, and although there is still a long way to go, it does feel as if we're making progress, albeit very, very slowly.

The upside is that we're learning lots and lots of stuff about the back end of websites and control panel and FTP and PHP and Apache and MySQL and other assorted acronyms. Of course by a week on Thursday we will have forgotten it all but that's not the point.

So having spent the first two days of the Bank Holiday Weekend submerged in website stuff, we decided to take the day off today and mosey down into town to observe the Hastings Jack-in-the-Green festivities.

And very festive they were too.

If you happen to like green.

The procession of The Jack, Giants, Sweeps, 6 foot tall Ravens, Morris Dancers etc through the Old Town was, as usual, strangely surreal, accompanied as it was by the addition of tens of thousands of leather-clad bikers mingling with the crowds.

Happily the rain (mostly) stayed away, the sun (intermittently) shone, while we wandered through the revellers to a little cafe right at the end of the beach road where we ate the best beer-battered freshly caught fish and chunky chips I have ever had. The cafe was chock-full of burly bikers, two of whom squeezed onto the chairs beside us, still in their full leathers. The one next to me sported an eclectic collection of tattoos, while his mate bristled with piercings.

PP and I, thirsty from our peregrinations, ordered a beer with our fish and chips, while the bikers carefully perused the menu. Finally, the one with the piercings very politely ordered a latte, much to the disgust of his tattooed chum who gruffly intoned "Oh he's always showing us up like that! Can't take him anywhere."

Now that we're home the skies have come over all black, and the rain is just starting to fall. However the first photos are already hitting the web so you can see run up to the fun and games over the course of the weekend HERE, along with today's procession.