Anyone for a leather balaclava?

I won’t lie to you. It’s been a testing week here at Techno-Dunce Towers. Still with the image problem. I just want to decorate my site, in the manner of chucking a couple of scatter cushions on the sofa for a Whole New Look. Doesn’t seem too much to ask. But it appears the only way it’s going to happen here in TechnoWorld is if I strip down the bloody sofa with my bare teeth, insert coiled springs of fury and give it a supersoft new filling of nothing but my own tears and foaming bile. And then put the cushions on.

I’ve trudged the endless grey corridors of WordPress Help, WordPress Advice, WordPress Support, WordPress Sympathetic Nodding, WordPress Nice Cup of Tea & A Little Lie-Down, WordPress Put Your Head Between Your Legs & I’ll Get A Bucket … and tried again and again. Literally hours of my life that I will NEVER GET BACK. The only activity that would be less rewarding at this point would be if I just sat here punching myself repeatedly in the face. (Yeah, I know what you’re thinking and that’s not very nice, now is it? Penny in the Bad Thoughts Jar.)

Then I stumbled across NicoleontheNet. Aaah, Nicole. She’s a lovely lady somewhere in the ether who’s taken it upon herself to upload tutorials aimed specifically at people like me (i.e. sub-remedial). She’s got a soothing, Good Nurse voice like a nice fleecy blanket that immediately reassures you eeeeeverything’s going to be fine. (Not a Bad Nurse voice like that night shift bitch at C&W in 1999, all snippy and ‘You think I haven’t got better things to do than change your drip? Can’t you see I’m in the middle of reading Heat?’. And before you ask, Tony, no, she wasn’t a Hot Bad Nurse.)

So here’s Nicole with her lovely voice, and the stuff she’s teaching is so basic (as she keeps reminding you – ‘this is very, very basic. Veeeery basic.’) that she actually – I shit you not - yawns in the middle of saying stuff. ‘So there, you can see all you need to do here is cut and paa-aaaaAAAaaa-ste it back into your post’. Like she does the proper stuff in the morning when she’s a bit more perky, but she can afford to knock this out lying down in bed with a cup of cocoa. Do I care? I do not. God bless you, NicoleontheNet.

And what does Nicole say about my header problem? She says this:

I need to download a gimp.

I’ll pause there, shall I? I just don’t think I’ve got the strength.

But now I’ve found Nicole, things can only get better. Surely. They can, can’t they, Father? For you, me and Tiny Tim? Please say it’s so.

[Post update 15/02: Huzzah! Cracked it - no gimp required. Houston, we are fully visual.]