Not the Which Report on kitchen equipment

How gratifying to receive a commission. Commenting on my post about pencil sharpeners, Lucy asked if my research team could investigate garlic crushers. I was delighted to comply but hadn't realised what an emotive subject this is. There was a hint that it might be in Plutarch's comment nominally also about pencil sharpeners.

My senior consultant (Guess who?) reacted noisily and definitively. "They're all rubbish. We've had several and none of them worked." By which she meant that anything calling itself a garlic crusher was to be avoided. However garlic can be crushed - by lateral thinking.

The perfect tool (on the right) is the Krups Type 203B which, oddly enough, is made in France. Garlic crushed in this very serious chopping mill stays crushed. But there are two disadvantages. Cleaning after use means sticking your finger into a cavity dominated by a sharp, twin-edged blade. Given its size it was also hideously expensive and was to some extent superseded by the food processor. My wife passed it on to me when I was going through my coffee-bean-grinding phase. I avoided damaging my finger-tips by cleaning it with a redundant pastry brush. Eventually I tired of its high-frequency shriek and I now use pre-ground coffee which I keep in the freezer.

Now, chez nous, garlic is crushed with the marble mortar and pestle. This is not only efficient but resonates with my wife's atavism and her aesthetics.

If it's a button - whatever turns you on

When married couples split up and divide the household spoils, the husband tends to take the hi-fi. Which explains why a hi-fi looks the way it does. Rather than disguise the knobs, switches and buttons, the designer turns them into a virtue - emphasising their technicity - supporting the belief that men revel in an amplifier's appearance while women simply use it to play the CD.

I must confess I did the choosing and the buying when we acquired the twin-drive CD player and the tuner/amp (left). And I love them both. The 700 - 800 CDs are another matter. Dividing them would be impossible. They could be part of the glue that holds us together.

Confirmation of the men/hi-fi link occurred on a ski-ing holiday when I shared a chalet populated by solicitors and doctors. I mentioned the above thesis and one male doctor became thoughtful. Then he looked at his wife, another doctor. "Tell you what darling, if we split up you can have the hi-fi," he said. Obviously he saw a split-up as an opportunity to buy a new hi-fi - with even more switches and buttons!

In any case I used a PC

Guess which is the better pencil-sharpener. That's right, the one on the right. It either came in a Christmas cracker or cost tuppence-ha'penny at Woolworths.

The other has settings for four different points (stubby to stiletto), a clamp to hold the pencil secure, a sliding tray to catch the shavings and a glass porthole on top so you can watch the grinding bits at work. But you could tell from Day One it would disappoint. Underneath the base is a rubber sucker which is supposed to attach it temporarily to a table-top. It never did.

I can't imagine what it cost because I was given it as a douceur when I was still a working journalist. Luckily I approved of the source beforehand and so my copy was published uncorrupted.

There's a moral here somewhere.

Test your intellect and endurance

Previous gap in transmission due to our - by now - mandatory attendance at the twenty-first Hay-on-Wye Festival, described by an earlier speaker, Bill Clinton, as "the Woodstock of the Mind". No technology but plenty of adult grist. Professor Steve Jones on how the theory of evolution will apply in the future, Gore Vidal being silkily provocative (Q: Mr Vidal, what message have you for today's youth? A: Grow up! (long pause) It's inevitable), Christopher Hitchens continuing his jousts with God, and Professor Richard Holmes showing how history should be taught with a masterly address on Marlborough.

I'd urge everyone to attend Hay at least once but, alas, this recommendation comes with a monstrous caveat. Hay, just over the border in Wales, is in the lee of the Black Mountains and enjoys its own micro-climate. Perhaps "enjoys" is not the right word. Last year's Hay was run at the same time as a Test Match (that's cricket for our foreign readers) which experienced the dubious distinction of the coldest day in the history of Test Matches. This year I have only seen rain heavier at RAF Changi on the island of Singapore. Also, Hay is a tented festival and when you're not being frozen and/or drowned you're straining to hear what's being said against the uproar from hurricane-blasted canvas. It can also be warm.

But as Michelin says: Il vaut le voyage.

Bouncing better than being bruised

Long ago when I was less aware of my own mortality I used to go rock-climbing. During that period climbing technology took a giant step forward.

Previously climbers had been linked by hemp rope, a material better suited to public hangings than sport. To achieve the strength required to hold a falling leader, hemp needed to be quite thick. Thus heavy. Since it was absorbent rain made it heavier. Hemp also deteriorated although it was hard to spot the evidence of this. It tangled easily.

Once nylon climbing rope became available in the early fifties I imagine most hemp rope was converted into oakum. Nylon was stronger per millimetre diameter, didn't absorb water, did not deteriorate and was less prone to tangling. And it had one further special quality. A long fall arrested by hemp rope often bruised the climber's waist. But nylon stretched!

Which was kinder when you fell but alarming when you stepped down on to the rock face to begin an abseil (eg, see the indented clipart).

All this and a closer view of Saturn

The most beautiful place in the world (Sorry, San Francisco... Lot Valley... Brecon Beacons... Banff national park... Zermatt... Goat Tarn... etc, etc) is unimaginatively labelled Port Underwood Sound on the east coast of New Zealand's South Island. No competition, I'm afraid. Imagine a fiord defined by tree-covered cliffs, a sea surface broken into a dozen colours, a tendency towards violently pink dawns, huge skies, smooth lichen-covered rocks that predate time and the type of silence that can only be bought from real remoteness.

Access is via 25 km of unsealed roads and a notice discourages those towing caravans. Caravans! How about anything other than four-wheel-drive?

It also proved to be a dream destination for this techie enthusiast. Our B&B hosts were former Americans, now naturalised Kiwis, who'd built their own beautiful - and beautifully functioning - house overlooking the Sound. He now sculpted animals in pewter but before that had designed Formula One and Indy cars for Mario Andretti, Mark Donohoe and others.

Pan-fried terahiki was accompanied by Cloudy Bay sauvignon blanc. Then we stepped on to the balcony and inspected Saturn through his powerful telescope. Gradually the earth's rotation caused the planet's image to ease itself out of the viewfinder. Hmmm.

I wonder what's behind this door?

Does this label mean anything to you: “Track changes”? Or this one: “Online collaboration. (Meet Now. Web discussions)” ?*

If so you’ve delved more deeply than I have into Microsoft Word’s “functionality” (I love the IT business. Never use one syllable when you can use five). But which of us belongs to the majority?

I think there’s an unwritten rule about software development. As version follows version more features are added and they’re used by fewer and fewer people. The aim must surely be to add a feature which no one uses. But it mustn’t be useless. The rule is it must be (a) unexpected, and (b) almost impossible to define under Help. The equivalent of the programmer shouting down a well and hearing echoes of applause from other programmers in recognition of the purity of his achievement.

Not that I’m complaining about Word. I wouldn’t be without it. In fact I have a sneaking suspicion I couldn’t be without it. What I don’t need is its next – and here’s another one of those written blurs – iteration.

* If you’re curious, they’re under Tools.

Blazing inferno a source of joy

The electric stove in our rented house in Pittsburgh was quite old. One day ceramic insulation broke away from a hob coil, exposing the bare wire. A multi-amp arc leaped from the wire and punched a hole in the base of the frying pan. Oil in the pan ignited and set alight the wooden kitchen cabinets.

My wife told our two daughters to leave the house, closed the door on the inferno, retrieved the cat who - awkward as ever – was basking somewhere unexpected and left the house to await eventualities.

I was elsewhere at the time and had chance to reflect. Yes, I’d have attended to our daughters, yes I’d have closed the kitchen door… but the cat? Upstairs I had a half-written novel in MS. Happily we’ll never know.

The fire was confined to the kitchen and the landlord had us cooking again within twenty-four hours. When he installed new cabinets he paid for us to eat out. US landlords were like that.

The wrecked pyromaniacal stove was put at the end of the driveway and my older daughter had the inexpressible delight of seeing it slung into the back of the garbage truck and crushed as flat as a pizza by the truck’s powerful jaws. She told me this with shining eyes that evening. I was glad. The tiny publishing company I was working for was “going down the toobs” and we were short of money for things like family entertainment. Ah the benefits of technology!

A journey to the middle of the patient

These days hospitals explain but do not show. The Comfortingly Maternal nurse told me my throat would be anaesthetised "with a lemon-flavoured spray". The guy who was going to do the work, and who seemed younger than the average 125 cc racing motorcyclist, said the anaesthetic "would taste of lemons". When the spray nozzle was inches away the Comfortingly Maternal nurse reminded me to expect "lemons".

Informational overkill on the local which tasted like aloes. But not a sight of the endoscope. A shame. Hospital equipment is always superbly fit-for-purpose and comes in authoritative stainless steel. Also an endoscope has a neat little joystick so that the viewing head can be rotated... well, deep down.

I submitted to a procedure which could be likened to a course on sword-swallowing but without the theatricals. The joystick manipulator chatted to an aide, mercifully not about soccer, and I imagined myself stripped to the waist, wearing ballooning red silk trousers, standing on the stage and raising a World War One bayonet high above my head. Shaved armpits! Yes, they would be a must.

The endoscope appeared to print out results automatically. Mine said, in effect, that if terra australis incognita existed it remained incognita. I resented not seeing proof of the trip the endoscope had made. Hadn't I provided the venue? Pregnant women get to view their babies courtesy of ultrasound. Why not a DVD for endoscopees?

TECHNO-ART For a perfect example of technology metamorphosing into art, go to Marja-Leena's website (http://marja-leena-rathje.info/). Under Photoworks click on Found Objects. There, on a beach, is the remains of a car over which a thousand tides have washed. The photos give new meaning to the word bio-degradable. In another twenty years the car will be gone but in the interim there is a tug-of-war between the forces of corrosion and the engineered details of this most typical of man-made structures. Aesthetics is winning. The straight-line members of the chassis are softening into irregular shapes. The gearbox has become a blob, parts of which seem to be carved from soft stone. Only the steering mechanism still proclaims its earlier function but its defiance is clearly doomed. Compared with the slam-bang speed with which the car was put together its decay is much more long-term and therefore strangely poignant. The sea wins.

TECHNO-ART Easily my favourite TV viewing in the sixties was a fictional series called "The Plane Makers". Just that, a British company engaged in manufacturing passenger - later military - planes and a perfect vehicle for the chunky, pugnacious actor, Patrick Wymark, who played the MD. I left Britain for the USA in 1965 and the series continued for a year or two after. When I returned I paid a tourist visit to Highgate Cemetery and came upon Patrick Wymark's grave. I was sorry he had died but pleased he had passed into this particular version of Valhalla.

On reflection, "The Plane Makers" was less about manufacturing and more about the business of manufacturing. But that doesn't really matter. It's closer to real life. A plane that is manufactured but not sold can hardly be said to have existed.

No longer the victim of second thoughts

Newspaper journalists in my youth wrote straight to the typewriter. A rate of 1000 words/hr was considered the norm, which meant that in later years - when style also became important - I had to learn how to slow down.

If you type at 1000 words/hr the most frequently used letter is x. That's how you delete. More than three major deletions in the opening paragraph (known then as the "intro") and you tore the paper from the roller and threw it crumpled on the floor. Restarting was tedious because of the need to include two sheets of normal paper and a sheet of carbon paper. Occasionally you inserted the carbon in wrong way up. Bad news. The photocopier had yet to be invented.

Can you imagine the impact the word processor had on the way I wrote? I could test a sentence. Test combinations of sentences. Delete the lot and adopt a completely different approach. Words became like putty rather than accusatory wrong things staring up from wasted paper. The word processor had been created for writers who believe that revision demands as much time as the original draft. Except that there was no original draft.

Some writers still write with pens and/or typewriters. No doubt they're better at it than me. Better able to get their thoughts into gear beforehand. Good luck to them. Me? I thank the engineers who devised the perfect writing tool - the computer.

A garden is a toilsome thing

I'm a lousy gardener because I lack faith in what I do around the garden. This moral crisis hardly fits in with the aims of my own blog so I made a full confession on that of a friend who pursues horticulture and other ennobling matters. One of his commentators provided me with a partial absolution and I'm now doing as well as can be expected.

I also hate gardening toil and with good reason. Our present plot has a sub-stratum of builder's rubble which makes planting even a single petunia a Herculean proposition. Removing the rubble would mean first killing off all the plants and bushes already installed and I don't have that kind of vision.

It's taken me a decade but I have finally eased the digging problem somewhat. A spade with a narrower blade is much more useful for getting rid of buried half-bricks. I suspect this is first and last gardening tip to appear on Works Well. For a more uplifting point-of-view on the world of flowers try my friend's blog http://bestofnow.blogspot.com/

A sewage works can seem beautiful

DERBLUH-VAY-SAY. Part two. Why did my wife recommend I pay any price to have our French house connected to the main drains? (see Where there's muck there's mind expansion, May 12). In retrospect, the alternative hardly bears thinking about.

Access to the septic tank was via a trapdoor in the bathroom floor. The moment when the concreted cavity reached capacity was unmistakable. Time to contact the emptyist.

He arrived by tractor towing a large barrel on wheels. In turning into the adjacent alley the trailer brushed against the corner of our house causing a vent at the end of the barrel to open. Unspeakably.

A hose had to be passed through the bathroom window but was too wide for the protective bars. Why not, I suggested, widen the bars with the thingummyjig for raising a car? The emptyist's eyes widened. "Ah, un clic!" Which was a first for me.

The bars were bent slightly and the hose lowered into the unspeakability. A pump started up on the tractor. In the bathroom the emptyist's father, staring avidly, watched the level drop, reciting "Impeccable. Impeccable." - each syllable separated as if it were part of a liturgy. My wife was at this time wandering through fields probably a kilometre away.

The connection fee to the sewers was the predicted £2000. Neither of us complained.

The cost of instant pictures

No such thing as a free lunch, no such thing as an unpaid-for leap forward in technology. A digital camera removes that delay between "Click." and "Ahhh." but the price is a niggling awareness of battery inadequacy. I mentioned this to a photographer working for the local newspaper and he pointed to a lumpish box attached in some way or other to his Nikon. Even this awkward device supplied juice for no more than a day.

Yes, I scrupulously avoid long periods of screen viewing and always carry re-charged batteries. And always curse when the camera goes dead a nano-second after the Low Battery warning. Any tips?

And yet, and yet... What would a blog or a website be without pictures? In colour too!* My experience of publishing dates back to when including a colour pic on an editorial page demanded an appointment with the company accountant. Nowadays there are blogs where colour photographs outstrip the text. Which reminds me of a different way of interpreting the cliché "A picture is worth...": a picture can exclude a thousand words. Frequently, a good thing too.

* Though not here. The only colour images on my outdated clipart disc are only too obviously optical cameras.

DIY in France; science class in Luton

Following my younger daughter's recommendation that I celebrate the sheer painlessness of the DVLA's online tax disc sysem (See, Goodbye to the golden era of vehicle licensing, May 12) I have two suggestions from my older daughter.

Tell them about the set-square, she says. Another Anglo-French moment. Yet again I was engaged in DIY at the house in Loire Atlantique and needed a set-square. A translation exists (l'équerre à dessin) although it looks suspect - sounds more like a T-square. Anyway I didn't have the translation to hand. At the bricolage, I described a set-square's appearance and - rather more demandingly - its function. The assistant listened then said, charmingly,"It sounds like a good idea." But admitted he hadn't got one. There was one in a bubble-pack at the next bricolage.

My older daughter is a teacher's assistant on the science side and her second suggestion relates to my post on Ohm's Law (see Introducing two mega-stars, May 6). Teacher: "Resistance boys, what is resistance?" Class: Blank looks, silence. Teacher: "Imagine I'm outside Burger King and I want to get to Debenhams. At 7 am this would be easy. At 3 pm on a Saturday it would be much harder. Do you see what I mean?"

My daughter adds the coda: So when did resistance have a proportional relationship with time?

NOTE The set-square shown is not the jazzy yellow and chrome one I bought in France. This one belonged to my grandfather, possibly my great-grandfather.

If you open tins here's a must

So why is the Brabantia tin-opener so good? One reason is that significant forces are concentrated at the notched wheel (which drives the opener round the rim of the tin) and the disc blade (which is pressed into the tin end and does the cutting). On cheaper openers the spindles on which these two components rotate wear quickly and both wheel and blade become loose. When the play is so extensive it is almost impossible to squeeze the handles together sufficiently to drive the blade through the end of the tin.

The photo can't show how securely the notched wheel (on the right) is mounted but I can assure you the spindle diameter is twice that of cheaper openers. But the key to the design is the mounting of the blade (which has its own idling notched wheel to grip the other side of the rim of the tin). For one thing the spindle is mounted at an angle. Thus when the driven wheel and blade are squeezed together they operate optimally. Second, even when spindle and blade begin to wear, they are held in position by the curved spring which engages with the free end of the spindle.

I'm afraid it's all a bit wordy. The qualities are easier to understand when you see the Brabantia "in the metal". It only remains for me to add I am not in the pay of Brabantia. I simply like things that work, and this does.

Learn on the couch, not in the car

SATNAV - Part three No, I'm not in thrall to this technology and freely admit it has some way to go. But it's had an undeservedly bad press from people who've tried it for an afternoon, failed to realise its potential and - a particular bête noire - have written delightedly about their inability to penetrate its workings.

One accessory worth acquiring is the cable/transformer that allows you to plug the satnav in to your house supply and play around with it in the comfort of your own living room. You learn far more in this unstressed environment. When you try similar experimentation in the car it always seems too hot and your sweaty finger-tips skitter over the controls.

I think that's enough about satnav. To tell the truth I respond more viscerally to maps but satnav's proof I'm trying to be a child of our times.

TECHNO-ART Other than documentaries which are outside my scope I find TV rather barren of examples in which art fuses with technology. One exception was "Das Boot", the German multi-episode series about life in a WW2 submarine. Here men were surrounded by technology and threatened by it from above. Big batteries were big, too. But I'd appreciate an explanation about that greenish light emanating from small windows - apparently - on the side of the diesel engine cylinders.

Trains - it's not all bad news

"Descanting on his own deformity", Richard III points out he was not shaped for sportive tricks. What I'm not shaped for is mass transport. At 6 ft 2 in. I'm at an immediate disadvantage but the real killer is the distance between my patella and my buttocks. Notably on Japanese Airlines where the relevant seating dimension is a Procrustean 29 in. (vs. 32 in. on the US airline United). A cheap JAL flight to Christchurch, NZ - broken humanely at Tokyo after a mere 11 hr - was paid for in much personal agony.

Buses in Britain are even worse but at least I only use them for short hops. British trains not only cramp my legs but offer minimal space for my feet. Size 10½, since you ask.

Or so I thought for trains have moved on. A perfectly acceptable twin-coach diesel recently took me from Hereford to Newport where a gleaming blue First Great Western monster wafted me painlessly to Paddington.

I commend the seat designer. The accommodation is dense but without menacing my kneecaps or my gluteus maximus. And the seats are cantilevered leaving dance-floor space for my feet. But what I wasn't prepared for were the three-pin sockets, proof that I haven't used a train for yonks.

For years I had noticed people using laptops on trains and assumed they were more confident about their batteries than I have ever been. And then I saw my neighbour's computer was plugged into an unobtrusive 13 A socket. Did he pay for the power? I asked. Oh no.

Just think, I'd be free to compose my blog offline interspersed with innumerable excursions into Solitaire and Columns (a simplified Tetris), both beyond me when I'm driving a car. I may in fact let the train take the strain.

TECHNO-ART Another novel but with a name you'll always remember. "The Gold-bug Variations" by Richard Powers links the technicalities of Bach's music with the application of DNA. The latter field is one I've had difficulty absorbing although I found "The Double Helix" a real page-turner all those years ago. Gold-bug's proposition seemed daring and I read it with interest. But with less understanding. I needed a second opinion and had Amazon send a copy to a friend of mine with a physics background. When we next met he didn't volunteer an opinion and so I was forced to ask him outright. He sighed: "Well, it's very long". I changed the subject.

Why electricity and water don't mix

When you write for the Web you're allowed second thoughts. Typically, I've tweaked the blog explanation on my home page at least half a dozen times.

My piece about Ohm's Law ("Introducing two mega-stars", May 6) deserves a coda. The law itself - current equals voltage divided by resistance - is easily understood. But it's harder to grasp the nature of current and voltage. And, alas, I'm not about to define them. To do so within the confines of this post would be to run up against a barrier in teaching any technical subject where the elements are, and must be, invisible.

Electricity is good and invisible so the instructor uses analogies. "Think of electricity as water flowing through a tap. Voltage is the amount of water flowing, current is the pressure the water is subject to." Are we discussing electricity or hydraulics? And that's as nothing when the instructor must find analogies for coils (inductance) and capacitors (capacitance) which have no useful parallels outside electrical circuits.

It's going to sound like a cop-out but the answer's what you suspected all along. As soon as is humanly possible the instructor junks the analogy approach and starts attaching numerical values to these phenomena. Then he invokes a relationship like Ohm's Law and plugs in the appropriate values. Finally we have a cool clear sentence - as it were - that makes sense. And the language it uses is, of course, mathematics. Not terribly hard maths to begin with. But by the time it's got rather harder the initial maths has been digested.

This sneaky revelation doesn't invalidate my piece about Ohm (and John Donne). His law remains neat and concise, its effects are easily understood and I love it to bits. The next post will be about hammers and nails

More technology but it's getting more distant

We moved to Hereford ten years ago and this is our fourth phone system since then. Each has offered a - time for a cant techno-phrase! - step-function improvement over its predecessor. This one is part of a wi-fi trio and was acquired for two reasons. It stores thirty names and numbers and a small screen allows me to check the name of the person I'm dialling rather than rely on my vagrant memory and just the number.

More important I now have the luxury of a phone on my bedside table and can sleepily tell those who phone with a rising note of panic in their voice when it's still dark that, no, I am not Hereford Gas Services and why not dial 272329.

Parenthetically, the relationship with Hereford Gas Services has endured the full ten years. It reached its peak eight years ago when my shared-line fax (now surely as relevant as an illuminated manuscript) started cranking out an invoice for some gas parts one afternoon. I phoned HGS, not in anger - I enjoyed the illusion of a wider social life from these misdirected numbers - but to ask what they wanted me to do with the fax. After I'd explained things the telephonist wondered whether I might consider becoming one of their paid agents.

Back to the phones. They cost a mere £40 and have all the bells and whistles I need for the moment. What they don't provide are the extra memory cells whereby I can recall the procedures for activating these bells and whistles. I still haven't successfully transferred a call to one of the other phones.

Goodbye to the golden era of vehicle licensing

My daughter read this blog for the first time today and said, "Tell them about doing the car tax disc". And she's right. It's so fashionable to berate computer systems but with the DVLA website it's almost a pleasure to hand over the cash.

Especially if you can cast your mind back as far as I can. Standing in a long queue at an office in central Bradford, nervously checking that I'd brought the Certificate of Insurance and not the policy, fingering the dirty cardboard folder that represented the Log Book for my elderly BSA Bantam, shuffling forward a little and trying to imagine a reason why my application would be turned down.

Yes I'm well aware of all those Big Brother warnings but reducing this particular ritual to a two or three minute communion with the computer is possibly worth the sacrifice of a certain amount of personal privacy.

Where there's muck there's mind expansion

DERBLUH-VAY-SAY. Part One. Maintaining an oldish house in France is a good way of expanding your French vocabulary. I spent much time discussing things with the menuisier (rather grander than a carpenter), the macon (builder), the plombier, the zingueur (roofs), Société Générale des Eaux (water), EDF (electricity) and Trésor Publique (local taxes). None of it in English.

However, the most demanding exchange occurred when the mayor needed to explain the future to me. Ironically he was the only person in the village who had ever said anything to me in English. Encountering my brother and I moving an unwanted French AGA-type stove from the house to the garage, he asked, “How may I help you?” The question was rhetorical. He had no intention of sharing our quarter-tonne burden.

And English was off the agenda at the Mairie. We were about to see our fosse septique replaced by a connection to the new système d’assainissement d’eau; in short the unloved, concrete-lined cavity underneath the bathroom floor would be filled with sand and our lav would go online. Now there is much I do not know about sewage so all this would have been a sweat in any language. But after a barrage of technicalities I began to recognise that cash rather than plumbing was the real subject to hand.

“It’s going to cost two thousand pounds,” I told my wife afterwards, “but they say this is a heavily subsidised figure.”

“Pay it, whatever it costs,” said my wife with undisguised passion.

And the reasons for her passion will be covered in Part Two

So sharp you won't cut yourself

Yes, I confess, this is a staged photograph. Our kitchen doesn't look like this though, if it were big enough and one of the corners could be veiled off, this is what you might see behind the curtain. It's all to do with that urban (domestic?) myth that you're more likely to injure yourself with a blunt knife than a sharp one. A dull knife means you need to exert more pressure and that pressure may get misdirected.

Our arsenal of sharpeners starts with the steel in the foreground. It was quite expensive and the blade is embedded with diamond dust. It's OK for toning up a knife that has merely lost its edge but it's not the device you'd use if, for urgent reasons, you needed to convert a butter knife into a carver.

To the right is a Carborundum stone held in a wooden frame. This is slowish but eminently controllable and I would use it to transform a really blunt knife if it were also necessary to maintain the appearance of the blade.

Finally the double grinding wheel with the non-optional safety glasses. Brush one side of the knife blade against the wheel for five seconds, then the other side. The device is ugly, surprisingly cheap, belongs in a workshop and is frighteningly efficient.

TECHNO-ART "Rififi" is a French burglary caper film that predates the word caper. Famous for the 15-minute passage without dialogue. It's particularly good on the technology of burglary. Entrance to the target room is made down through the ceiling and the thieves need a method of preventing debris from dropping on to the floor below and starting the burglar alarm. Simple - insert a folded umbrella through an initial small hole then open it up. Immobilise the burglar alarm? Squirt the contents of a fire extinguisher into it.

Don't need it, never have punctures

Can you say - hand on heart - what the pressure is in your car's spare tyre? I can't but then I don't have to. Over a decade ago I was given an electric pump that plugs into the car's cigarette lighter socket. It seemed like a utilitarian gift at the time but down the years I've used it a couple of dozen times.

Because otherwise a spare tyre can be a delusional form of re-assurance. Puncture in the middle of the Massif Central and a half-deflated replacement is only slightly more valuable than no tyre at all. Worse if you're tempted to use it in that state.

The pump has a further benefit. It's easier to bring tyres up to the correct pressure in your own driveway than on a harassed garage forecourt (where you may also have to pay for the privilege). It's not all gravy, however. The pump is noisy, in my case the car engine must be running and it seems to take an inordinate length of time to add 2 - 3 psi. Also, the gauge on the pump is not accurate enough and you need a separate traditional gauge. But it beats thumbing a lift.

Plaudits for a three-hander

TECHNO-ART Normally my Techno-Art bits are appended as two-sentence feuilletons to something bigger. But Michael Frayn's "Copenhagen" deserves a full-scale post.

I don't for a second understand atomic physics but - as with very difficult poetry, Ezra Pound say - I think I love its shape, its size, its sound or its very obscurity. The great thing about "Copenhagen" is that the hard stuff is at the very heart of the story. Bohr and Heisenberg have been wrestling with a third character, the atom, and they get to talk about how many rounds they think they have won. And they do this in the persuasively allusive language one might expect from professionals.

There are moral issues too but these are interwoven with the darkly fascinating study of what was then - perhaps still is - science's last barrier. On the whole, the theatre (other than masterpieces and then mainly Shakespeare) frequently disappoints me but not on this occasion. Nor did it disappoint my sister-in-law, who accompanied my wife and I, and who had never heard of "Copenhagen" before entering the theatre.

To get there, go by way of punctuation

SATNAV - PART TWO The technology may be imperfect but the achievement is huge. Nevertheless familiarity is the key to getting the best out of the system. Especially in France.

I was aiming for Villeneuve-sur-Lot. By the time I'd keyed in "Villen-" the predictive software had come up with Villeneuve. I accepted this, inserted a space and put in the "s" of "sur". Another prediction offered just two Villeneuve variations. Now anyone who knows France is well aware there are lots of Villeneuves. It took me a long time to realise that the machine was waiting for a hyphen.

Having spent most of my working life picking up such punctuative pedanticisms I might have been expected to appreciate this nicety. But the map I was using in conjunction with the satnav (when navigating always use all forms of assistance) spelled out the town name without hyphens.

I have since checked my big Michelin road atlas and hyphens are in. Which means it wasn't the technology that failed, rather the human cartographer who labelled the map. Also all this happened in France. I suspect that any reasonably Cartesian Frenchman would claim to be able to recognise V-s-L pronounced with and without hyphens.

Marvellous mathematical moment

Radios used to depend on valves (tubes in the USA). When switched on these glass cylinders glowed bright red. To the left is a hysteresis curve. Such curves show graphically how valves behave when they are doing their job. I’m flirting with your boredom here, but bear with me.

If you change the electrical values associated with the valve the shape of the curve changes. For me (an unwilling National Serviceman in the RAF) this was a half-opened window on how mathematics – so feared by liberal arts people (like me) – can not only describe the real world but to all intents and purposes is the real world.

Here’s a hint. The initial curve looks like part of a hill and – like a hill – has a gradient. Zoom in to a tiny part of the curve – so tiny it becomes a straight line. Incorporate that tiny line into a right-angled triangle. Does that light up a bulb? Pythagoras? Tall trees? Our long-lost friend trigonometry.

Fiddle with the values (angles, side lengths) of the triangle and the others change in an exact relationship. Simulating the effect of changing the electrical values associated with the valve. Using only paper and pencil (at least in those days – now we’d use a computer) we have designed an electrical circuit which will, for instance, help us amplify the tiny electrical signal picked up by the radio’s antenna so that it agitates a loudspeaker and we hear Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time. Or Amy Winehouse

Casserole arrives like royalty

Our Neff double oven (plus ceramic hob) cost a fortune and when we were asked whether we wanted the telescopic extension rails for the oven shelves - at a further £60-plus - we very nearly said no. Which would have been a terrible shame.

Now the pain of writing the enormous cheque has dulled we both feel it was money well spent. The two ovens do exactly what was claimed for them and the hob not only responds as quickly as any gas flame but can be cleaned in 20 secs. Nevertheless the real joy is the way the shelves glide in and out under mere finger pressure even when supporting a full-size Le Creuset filled to the brim with Irish stew. A perfect example of well-studied ergonomics - the science of ensuring an efficient relationship between the worker and his (or her) workplace.

Funny. I only owned one BMW (satisfyingly replaced by a Lexus) and the most memorable detail was the way the windscreen-wiper stalk worked. In a lesser car it would have been simply off and on. But in this case there was a tiny increase in pressure as it was switched. Difficult to explain but a genuine tactile pleasure.

Carving the impossible

To expand Stephen Fry's TV programme about Gutenberg they got a craftsman to build a replica of G's original printing press. This required him to carve a huge screw out of wood and both the end-product and the sawing/chiselling process were a delight to contemplate. But a screw is no use if it has no mirror-image to engage with and even the most adept carpenter would find it difficult to carve a thread on the inside surface of a hole. But those medieval woodsmiths knew a thing or two. Drill a pilot hole and introduce a shaft embedded with three metal blades. Rotate the shaft and, providing the measurements were correct, the female thread emerges. Voila!

TECHNO-ART You may not recall the name of the painting but chances are you'll recognise it when you see it. Totes Meer (Dead Sea) by Paul Nash is a moon-washed seascape cluttered with the wreckage of Luftwaffe planes. It's the authenticity of the latter that gives the painting its power and memorability.

Introducing two mega-stars

In seven very famous words ("Oh my America, my new found land.") Donne evokes the thrill of a distant country, creates a combined pun and metaphor and reports on his progress during a love-making session. Aso, unmistakably, he writes a line of poetry.

Georg Simon Ohm used only three symbols to formulate Ohm's Law: current equals voltage divided by resistance. Concise, easy to understand and still at the heart of virtually all forms of electrical activity. Circuit-breakers pop open (and fuses blow) in obedience to the law which also predicts that electric kettles will heat water. Houses may burst into flames because of a set of circumstances which the law explains.

I read Donne off my own bat (another Northern expression). The RAF forced me to learn the significance of Ohm's law. I'm lucky. Many people turn away from technical stuff thinking it to be too knotty - especially when there's maths in the offing. I did myself until the RAF revealed the range of punishments it kept in store for those who chose not to understand Ohm's law.

As I say, I'm lucky. To me Donne and Ohm are not in competition they're names in the same pantheon. And that's part of the reason for this blog.

Protection against red-eye

In the home page picture (top right) I'm wearing my Maru goggles. Swimming crawl means immersing your head for much of the stroke cycle and you need to protect your eyes from the irritative effects of the disinfected water. Initially I used goggles made by a more famous manufacturer; they looked flashier but they lay over the eye socket and (it's only a theory) water entered - almost capillary fashion - via the eyebrows. The Manus fit into the eye sockets like a pair of monocles and remain waterproof for the full mile.


To prevent steaming up use a drop of washing up fluid on the inside of each lens, half rinse and let them dry overnight without wiping. Manu has changed my life.

Imperatives of bath enclosure

I am not a shower person - showers inhibit reading. The douche in our French house was quickly replaced with a bath and I then had to cover up its vitals. I made a wooden framework and went off to the bricolage for some boarding-off material.

I explained my needs and the man nodded. Use faience he said, which in this context translates as tiles. This would have meant first boarding off the bath so there was surface to which the tiles could be glued. More than that I was struck by the formulation he used. His reply employed devoir which can mean "must" in English.

I paraphrased: "So I must use tiles to enclose the bath?" He nodded. Any alternative? He shook his head. But tiles would complicate a simple job. He stared at me. Tiles, he repeated, and ostentatiously looked around for another customer.

I left enraged. Elsewhere I found compacted panelling in pretend-wood that was perfect (Ask for lambris). Then I simmered down. I've been taking French lessons for decades and this was proof, if I needed proof, that they'd last the rest of my life. Language is not just words, it's culture and that's much harder. Confirmation too that France is a foreign land.

TECHNO-ART The second-best play with a technological basis is called "The Affair" and is based on a C. P. Snow novel that pre-dates the Strangers and Brothers sequence. It concerns a scientist who fakes his crystallographic results. It's OK but the technology is somewhat peripheral. There is, of course, a much better techno-play which became a West End success. We'll get to that later.

Miss Prim's such a comfort

SATNAV - PART ONE Has satnav done the job? Artics are still getting stuck in green lanes in Devon. Even enthusiasts (like me) admit that intelligent awareness is better than blind faith when Miss Prim says: "At the roundabout, take the second exit".

But consider the skills required to create even an imperfect system that maps the backlanes of Britain and France and receives guidance from man-made planets. All contained in a cough-drop box and retailing for about £250. Surely that's worth a tip of the hat.

Forget direction-finding for a moment. Switch to ETA mode so that the device calculates - and updates - the time left before you arrive at your chosen destination. Strangely comforting to see the minutes tick off, even on motorways.

The picture shows a satnav holder made by my DIY perfectionist brother, presently doing Land's End to John O'Groats on foot. Without electronic aids.

TECHNO-ART Technology in literature? Well, let's start with fiction. Neville Shute helped design the R101 airship before turning his hand to best-selling novels in the fifties. Best-known probably for "A town like Alice" and the apocalyptic post-nuclear "On the beach". In others nuts-and-bolts were the heroes - as for instance, "Trustee from the toolroom", which suggests - unfairly - that titles weren't his thing.

The unforsaken merman

Already I'm cheating on my stated aims. Can swimming crawl possibly snuggle under the umbrella of technology? Belatedly I open the dictionary. The first two definitions are predictable, the third offers a Damascene moment: "The totality of the means and knowledge used to provide objects necessary for human sustenance and comfort." That word objects - surely it has an intangible well as a tangible meaning: goals as well as things? For me crawl works, it's the most effective form of aquatic self-locomotion. The hard bit is learning the breathing. After that it's pure sensuousness. I experimented with my kick this morning: kicked hard and felt the resistance to my arm stroke diminish in the water. Joy.

Here’s how you hoist up the John B sail

This lovely thing is a Meissner Classic winch and is intended for hoisting and releasing a yacht's sails. It withstands enormous forces as becomes apparent if you incautiously unhook the rope from that beautifully shaped securing device and leave your fingers in the way. Engage a crank in the top and the mechanical advantage allows a human to haul with the power of ten. A ratchet prevents the wind-filled sail from biting back. That's all there is, really. Yet those on my brother's yacht cost £700 each. A matching pair would look good on your mantelshelf (as they say in the North).

Car door needs protecting from physics

Remember the law of levers. The longer the lever the greater the force that can be applied. My car door is just one example of why you should always stay on the right side of this particular law. When open, the door's edge extends some 1.5 m away from the car body. Far enough for the weight of the door itself (no lightweight) to deliver plenty of destructive force at the attachment point to the car. The idea of a driver leaning on the top of it while chatting to someone in the car park doesn't bear thinking about. Which is why the hinge (one of two) in the centre of the photo is extremely substantial. I'd be overdoing things if I called the hinge pretty but it has its own rugged charm. Rugged and reassuring. I glance at it with pleasure every time I get into the car.

TECHNO-ART Which painter made best use of technology as a subject in an acknowledged masterpiece? Answer: Turner in "Rain Steam and Speed". Closely followed by his poignant canvas of The Fighting Temeraire being towed to the breaker's yard by a steam tug.