It was great - except for David Vine

For thirty years I skied. Then, a couple of years ago, acute wheeziness caused a sudden skill migration and left me looking for the downlift. I told myself it was a hard resort (Zermatt, close to the Matterhorn) but I knew it was time to pack it in. Happily ski-ing is dominated by technology.

SKI SHAPES Shorter these days and severely pinched at the centre to resemble elongated hour-glasses. Pressed into the slope by the weight of the skier they embrace its contours and make it easier to turn. Turning is the essence of ski-ing.

BOOTS Agony until you find the right pair. Unyielding for a purpose – to lock your ankle/calf into a forward-facing angle, the basis of the optimum stance. That’s the theory. But a steep slope makes you lean backwards. With no weight on them for control the skis surge forward…

LIFTS Four main types. Gondola Pro: Travels long distances with fear factor reduced to zero. Anti: Skis have to be removed and you have to stand. Chairlift Pro: Comfortable, out in the open, transportation. Anti: Getting off is a frequently varying art. Novices can cause chaos. Poma (skier bestrides a disc attached to metal pole) Pro: Solo skier gets to commune with nature and his fears. Anti: Ruts can be a worry. Going downhill (a rarity) can be terrifying. T-bar (two bums share the inverted arms of the T). Only Switzerland clings to this anachronism. It’s all anti.

One reason why I blog

I’ve touched on technology and aesthetics before but clumsily, not getting to the heart of the matter.

Take a power drill. One can enclose the works in a multicoloured, smoothly shaped plastic shell making it prettier. But that’s simply giving a doll a new set of clothes. What I’m struggling for is something that looks good because of what it does.

My poor old metalworking vice – not used much these days as you can see – is, of course, required to hold workpieces securely. More interestingly, it must be designed so that I may get to any oddly shaped workpiece with a saw, a drill, a file and so on. To ensure this accessibility unnecessary metal is removed from the vice jaws.

As a result both jaws emerge from curving neck-like structures. The shape of these structures is functional but pleasing. The curves are there because those type of curves work best. And that premise is often a useful definition of beauty in other unassumingly attractive objects.

I'm ashamed about the condition of the vice, though.

Nuts and bolts not bad for your intellect

I am gritting my teeth. In seeking to right an oft-repeated wrong I must first claim some liberal arts credentials. Well, I left school at 15 for journalism and that was a good start. Since then I have read Proust, listened more than once to the Grosse Fuge, bought a quintet of Almodovar DVDs and would kill to own a Turner.

Does that do it? Now let me turn on the idiots who made this self-aggrandisement necessary.

Most reviewers, notably those doing TV, major on liberal arts. This is obvious when something technical crops up. If the guy driving round the world in a Deux Chevaux describes how he bodged up a broken suspension, that’s boreeng darlings. Tell us more about your fears, your incipent gay-ism and what you feel about all those colourful natives. Feelings count, not track rods.

It gets worse. It’s not just antipathy but a celebration of ignorance. These people, limited to a book-bound world, revel in not knowing what a track rod is. As if knowing would diminish their crystal-pure thoughts on Derrida. Needless to say they were all at sea when “Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance” was published.

Am I finished? Yes, that’s it. Track rods resume soonest.

How to soften a rude subject

NEW READERS: Please read the third comment before the post itself. Just to spare my blushes.
I am a connoisseur – though not an intentional user – of euphemisms. We call it a loo while Americans call it a can. That says a lot; genteel plays hard-nose. Ironically the American seeing someone (vs going out with in the UK) hints at an occasional Yankee preference for gentility.

My brother (DIY perfectionist and good cook) has a caravan. Now he’s completed the Land’s End to John O’Groats walk he is taking it to Scotland as a base to resume his assault on the Munros (peaks over 3000 ft). There are some 240 and he’s down to the last twenty.

To limber-up he was in the Brecon Beacons and we had lunch. Afterwards, driven by my taste for euphemism, I inspected his caravan. In particular the technology of the bathroom – the middle-class US alternative for can. Fanatical design effort ensures that when he discharges accumulated waste from his temporary home the caravanner only handles advanced and utterly hygienic products of the plastics industry.

This system is called a cassette. Think of the images that evokes and you’ll agree with me it’s a perfect euphemism.

Knowing what not to fear

Some people have an instinct for technology. Richard, one of my earliest friends, born a week before me and only a mile away, dead these last ten years from horrible motor neurone disease, had that instinct.

The proof could take a terrifying form. When my brother ran the bearings on the engine of his Morris Minor Richard supervised the removal of the engine, its dismantlement, the replacement of the crankshaft and the bearings, the reassembly and the reinstallation. My only contribution – other than the loan of my bathroom floor to accommodate this work – was not to drop the engine when it was put back into the car and my brother and Richard were unable to contribute any further lifting effort during the last foot or so of the transfer.

Here’s where the magic happened. With everything connected and a sump full of new oil, the engine was started. Brmmm…brmm. Fine, apart from the oil light glowing bright red on the dash. Alarmed, I reached in to switch off the ignition but Richard shook his head. Dipping under the raised bonnet he shook the engine on its mountings - vigorously. And the oil light went out.

How could he know that?

One foot on, one foot off

The hippety-hoppety antics required to propel a scooter (the children's version not a Vespa clone) surely rules it out as a serious mode of locomotion. Or does it?

The Swedes don't think so and they're pretty serious about most things. They use them for personal transport in high-bay warehouses.

The normal way of getting around a warehouse is by some kind of forklift. But that's wasteful if your journey doesn't require you to extract or re-install a load. Imagine instead a scooter rather like this but scaled up for a full-grown adult. Notably with larger diameter wheels. No brakes needed.

The floors of high-bay warehouses are deliberately made smooth so that forklifts can be aligned precisely with individual bays in the racking. Perfect for scooting. As I watched one dashing Nordic individual, with flowing yellow locks, hip-hop off into the distance it looked like fun. But perhaps that's also the drawback. In Britain we're not inclined to think of work as fun.

A hedge is much more than a fund

THIS IS FOR PLUTARCH. We're rather good at hedges in the Marches. This one is to be found at Little Brampton, also home of Aardvark Books. To techno-legitimise the inclusion of this pic here are three questions:

(1) Who on earth trims this hedge? It is over 100 m long and about 10 m high.
(2) What is the trimmer's strategy? The hedge surface is like a contoured model of the Peak District stuck on its side. Is each bulge and declivity faithfully followed?
(3) What tools are used? Given the hedge's dimensions a powered trimmer would seem likely. Given its surface variations manual shears would be more nimble.

The photograph only captures part of the hedge which acts as a boundary to the village church graveyard. It captures almost nothing of its grandeur. A mysterious aristocrat of a hedge.

Older people take more time

For the last eighteen months I have been editing a biography of Kevin Andrews, author of “The Flight of Ikaros: Travels in Greece during a civil war”, an American who supported the left-wingers in Athens during The Colonels and who took Greek citizenship thereafter.

I hold a master copy of the MS and the author responds to my editing (as well as providing his own amendments, additions and deletions) as email attachments of the transformed chapters fly between us. Just recently, long after the radical initial assaults on the MS were over, I discovered the perfect computer method for handling this.

Initially I saved the author’s latest chapters to a folder. To transfer his stuff I opened this folder and that containing the master copy and went cross-eyed moving from one chapter to the next incorporating his changes (helpfully marked in red). Since there are forty chapters much time was spent switching from one folder to the other.

Now I amend the file titles of his chapters with an X and save them direct to the master copy folder. The contents now look something like this:

Chapter One (Master file)
Chapter OneX
Chapter Two (Master file)
Chapter TwoX

I am thus always working in the same folder saving time and irritation and helping to cement the correct author/editor relationship. Another wheel rediscovered.

The techno-god of small things

Time for another legend about Monsieur Chauvel, our plumber in France and one of my techno-heros.

After he repaired the 50-year-old kitchen geyzer (see July 8) we had hot water for the hand-basin and shower in the bathroom. But neither my wife nor I are shower people. In my case I’ve never managed to adapt a shower to my main reason for practising ablution (ie, spending an hour reading).

And so M. Chauvel installed a modern electric water heater (huge and powerful) and a bath, and reversed the hot water flow in the pipe linking bathroom and kitchen. As a result the geyzer became redundant and was removed. All this was done quite painlessly while we were back home in Kingston. On our next holiday he paid us a quick visit to explain the workings of his new installation.

Finally he pointed to the spot where the geyzer had been. Its removal had required him to detach half a tile from the wall. But replacing it would be simple and he told me how. After this instruction he looked at my face and assessed the likelihood of my rousing myself and performing this simple task.

Yes, you’ve guessed it. When we next returned to the house the tile had been neatly replaced.

Refining technique improves pic

3D IMAGING This time I followed Marja-Leena's guidance. My £5 "swimming" Casio was scanned at 300 dpi (256 colours). Photoshop Elements was used to adjust the resolution to 72 ppi, to reduce the width to 200 pixels and to "save for web". The result is a 9 kb JPEG file.

It's an improvement on the flower (called Gypsophila according to my floricacious adviser) I scanned earlier. In this instance I left the scanner lid wide open; with the flower I propped the lid about 15 deg open to accommodate the black background card in an attempt to match the solid blackness Marja-Leena achieved. Fully open results in this maroon background; using the card came closer to black but, because the card was angled, caused unwanted reflections.

My conclusion is that Marja-Leena's scanner is optically superior to mine. Not surprising since it cost more than three times as much. What is pleasing is that I don't appear to have encountered the shallow depth-of-field problem that Lucy experienced.

This was purely an exercise to test the procedure. I'll keep an eye open for an opportunity which tests it for real.

Power drills - defining historical artefact

I distrust golden eras. The seventeenth century may have been great for poetry and playwriting but who cares if most of us only lived to thirty-seven. Or whatever.

The golden era of technology is today. In the 1960s we lived in an unheated flat in Stoke Newington and were so poor I had to save up to buy a power drill. A power drill! The basis of all home-based DIY. What’s more it was a lousy drill and through the louvres I could watch excessive arcing (the result of poor tolerance engineering) destroy the commutator ring.

Last week my brother had the almost unheard-of experience of having to replace his car battery. It was his own fault; his car had stood idle for 77 days while he walked from Land’s End to John O’Groats. Otherwise present-day batteries go on and on. Compare this with the 1960s when they needed intensive care if they were to start the car after a chilly weekend. Ominously, cars still came with a starter handle then.

Many talk mistily about corner-shop grocers. Forgetting that in those un-barcoded days, it took twenty minutes to buy some cheese and a few ounces of tea. And now my rant against a rosy-tinted past goes out into the world almost for free. Back then the prospect of a “long distance call” was terrifying.

Feeble steps towards third dimension

Following Marja-Leena's wonderful results in scanning three-dimensional objects here are two of my attempts. One was scanned at 400 dpi and one at 800 dpi. The latter resulted in a massive 17.2 MB file. Not that it makes much difference here. Both emerged as TIFs which are unacceptable to Blog. So both had to be enormously downsized and saved as JPEGs. The resultant degradation of quality is plain.

One thing seems clear. Both Lucy (who also tried this exercise and was disappointed by a very shallow depth of field) and I need better scanners. Marja-Leena's cost over $Can500 and allows her to scan to an incredible 1200 dpi. Also, Marja-Leena shows her pix on a website and is not restrained by the resolution limitations of Blog. But let's face it, I'm guessing.

VERIFICATION I'm sure I'm rediscovering the wheel here but Blog comments don't always go through the first time. Or even the fifth. I was horrified when this first happened to me, imagining duplicate after duplicate piling up at the addressee's blog. Now I've come to regard this as the norm. Just repeat the silly alphabet thing over and over (not forgetting to insert the password each time) until the comment is posted. I apologise for all this. I'm still only in my third month

Illness and disease - bad for health

Probability is a very hard branch of maths that exercises actuaries, the people who provide the glib yet unexpected reasons why you won’t get your insurance dosh. Here’s an example of actuarial small print.

I was invited to take out a policy to cover a very mean funeral. A meat-paste-sandwich funeral. But not even meat paste if my earlier-than-expected death were attributable to:

* Illness, disease or naturally occurring condition.
* Suicide, attempted suicide or intentional self-injury.
* Being under the influence of alcohol or of any drug except as prescribed by a registered medical practitioner.
* Being engaged in aviation except as a fare-paying passenger on a recognised airline.
* Being actively engaged in any riot, civil commotion or usurpation of power, or participating in any military, naval or air force action.

The questions rise like flies round a dust-bin. To die of illness? Would clipping my toe-nails constitute intentional self-injury? Am I covered if I dodge my plane fare? And thank goodness my power usurping tendencies are now over.

I’m tempted to go for it and sign up for bungee-jumping.

The front "garden" is even lower maintenance.

Let's hear it for trams (and 3D imaging)

I never understood why authorities in large UK cities (London and my home town, Bradford, to name but two) took against trams. True the routes were inflexible and the vehicles noisy. But compared with their “greenness”, durability, and high average speeds on dedicated – as opposed to shared – tracks these problems could have been resolved.

Re-introducing them now would be expensive. Yet their unhampered progress (on unshared track, that is) would be a genuine carrot to tempt drivers away from cars at rush-hours. Unlike buses which suffer the same traffic jams as cars.

Pittsburgh had a tram system when I lived there (1966 – 1972). It was ramshackle but did the job. It did share downtown roadspace with cars; however drivers were uneasy when a tram loomed up in the rear mirror and did their best to get out of the way.

Hanover, in northern Germany, has a permanent site for huge industrial exhibitions. The modern tram system there is ideal for coping with temporary population surges.

CHECK THIS OUT! Did you know your scanner can handle three-dimensional images in a way that improves on your camera? Click on Marja-Leena's site. For further proof click on Onion skin I'm proud I played a small part in encouraging Marja-Leena to publicise this technique.

Oh sole mio

Do cobblers still exist? Not that they’ve received much help from me over the past decade. My footware routine is unvarying: buy trainers from M&S, wear them until they start pumping in rain water (less than a year), buy another pair, drop used pair into garbage bin.

In my youth all shoes were repaired. Our cobbler was a caricature. Short, hunched, bright-eyed, Mediterranean complexion, loquacious to the point of being prepared to talk to a ten-year-old. What about? I have no idea. All I remember is the backdrop – a huge table piled high with scraps of leather. Plus two items of technology.

In the corner a powerful mangle or wringer. Except that the rollers, instead of having parallel sides, mated convex with concave. Before attachment to the shoe the rough-cut flat sole was passed through the mangle giving it the contours of a shallow dish. I cannot imagine why this was necessary. Nor do I intend to embarrass my correspondents by asking them. Knowing why would require familiarity with those dark, cold, hungry years of Britain’s immediate post-war.

The other item (in fact there were several) was the sharpest knife in Christendom. The blade was hook-shaped and one tour of the newly attached sole was enough to remove all the overlap. As if the leather were a damp Digestive.

And then there was the smell. Ah…

I can’t match the lovely horticultural close-ups of my correspondents so here’s a long shot of part of our garden. It’s low maintenance.

A moment in the world of logistics

In cramped countries like Switzerland and Japan ground space is money. So companies put up high warehouses. But there are limits. A warehouse a mile high would cost a fortune. Putting goods into it – and getting them out – would take time and time is money.

Also, the higher you go the more expensive the equipment. At lower levels a forklift truck will do, beyond that hardware evolves until the system is completely automated. Big money.

A forklift benefits over automation in that it can “free range” – carrying goods at ground level, sometimes taking them out of the racking and loading directly on to a lorry. Most warehouses use forklifts.

When I wrote professionally about logistics, I visited a supermarket warehouse where it was conceded the height limit for a free-ranging forklift system had been reached. The vehicles were reach trucks, more stable variants of the counterbalanced forklifts most people know.

These trucks could lift to just over 11 m. Viewed from beneath this is some distance but I was on a walkway near the roof looking down. The truck cab looked microscopic; the mast uprights throbbed, twitched even groaned with the effort of holding the load that high. Journalists should avoid going anthropomorphic but in this case it was inescapable. In any case, it worked.

There's more to music than just notes

Concert organisers truckle to soloists. Their piece always precedes the interval so that they can be off the premises before I’ve reached the end of the ice-cream queue. You’d expect a concerto to provide the climax.

At least there’s an entr’acte with a piano concerto. Sometimes it’s more fun than the music. Three men, not wearing tuxedos (Why do I detest that unsuitable musicianly garb so much?) march on to the stage, clothe the Steinway in a duvet, turn it on its side, remove the legs, add more duvets, manhandle the rather sad looking parcel on to a trolley and then wheel the whole thing away very, very carefully. The audience at Birmingham last month granted a polite round of applause to the spectacle.

There’s more technology before the concert when the Steinway expert tweaks the machine according to the pianist’s preference but mere punters don’t get to see that. In compensation there was quite a lot of fiddling with the twin harps that feature in Shostakovich Five.

A concert grand must represent the ultimate in objects that can’t be mass-produced. I wondered how much they cost and was surprised to find that £50,000 is absolute tops and you can pick one up for £25,000. Apparently they don’t improve with age as a Guarnerius does.

Does clever quickly; simple takes time

In recommending Picasa as a neat way of cropping images Lucy was disdainful of Photoshop, describing it as “over-engineered”. I completely agree. Although my version is only Photoshop Elements (presumably for those who are technically challenged) nothing comes easily and I’ve never dared crack “layers” at all.

Just recently I wanted to join two photos side by side and turn them into a single file. I felt sure Photoshop would allow this simple task, yet the hours slid by. As is often the case with software the solution arrived by accident though I’ve now forgotten the exact Damascene moment. In case you’re wondering, go File > New > Photomerge Panorama, which is not exactly intuitive. The Help was no help at all if you weren’t aware of that key word photomerge.

And yet… I needed a photo of a F4U Corsair, a WW2 carrier-based fighter. I found a good one but (see top pic) it had all that garbage in the foreground. Could Photoshop do the job? It could, the tool and its usage were self-explanatory, and in an hour – voila! My first attempt at such an elaborate touch-up. But I still haven’t forgiven PE for the photomerge obscurity.

Those that can, do; those that can't, blog

One of the themes running through Patrick O’Brien’s Aubrey/Maturin novels of the Napoleonic era is competence. Jack Aubrey is a supremely competent ship’s commander who justifiably gets to fly “blue at the mizzen” (ie, is promoted admiral) by the end of the twenty-book series. His surgeon Stephen Maturin competently opens up an injured seaman’s skull, “rouses up his brains” in the words of the crew, and covers his work with a carapace made from a silver coin hammmered and shaped by the ship’s blacksmith.

More competent than either is Aubrey’s bosun, Barrett Bonden. When a line needs throwing with great accuracy, or the jolly boat needs taking in through surf, or a hostile vessel needs boarding, Bonden’s your man.

I adopted this name when commenting on a piece about horticulture on Plutarch’s blog. When I started my own blog I thoughtlessly used the same name. And now it has come home to haunt me. The fact is I am not competent! My recent pieces on converting LPs to CDs and using an angle grinder attest to this. I feel I am dishonouring the good bosun’s name.

I did ask Plutarch whether a more appropriate name would be Joe Plaice – the subject of Maturin’s daring surgery (see above). But Plutarch said time had debased that name which now sounds like a smartyboots West End fish and chippery. So BB stays but the act of contrition was necessary. I have only hi-jacked Bonden’s name, not his abilities.

A sort of spot-the-ball competition

Delays in the focussing/light assessing abilities of a cheap digital camera made it difficult to capture this particular moment during our Languedoc holiday. However, after a few boss shots I finally snatched proof that grandson Zach and son-in-law Darren appreciated the pool at our rented villa and we've booked the place for the same two weeks next year.

Studying the photo more closely I began to wonder just what the picture represents. Is Zach rising, has he reached the apogee, or is he falling? The angle of the strap on his life-jacket is no doubt significant to a trained aerodynamicist but that is just one more field where my knowledge could "crawl under a snake's belly wearing a top hat" (a phrase used by a RAF instructor teaching me - futilely - how to aim a rifle during national service).

However virtually everyone who supplies comments to this blog is better educated than me et j'attends avec impatience.

Diamonds not a timekeeper's best friend

Apart from a £5 digital Casio which I use to time my swimming (also while ski-ing, until old age took away my lift-pass), I have only owned two wrist-watches. Both Longines, both the subject of some sentiment.

The one on the left was a gift from my mother for my twenty-first which, incidentally, I spent at a military hospital in the Cameron Highlands in Malaya, suffering from terminal athlete’s foot. The one on the right was a thirtieth-wedding anniversary present from my wife. Both keep excellent time given their technology. Which means that the older watch, being mechanical, cannot match the younger, electrical one.

I am told that the older watch qualifies as an antique and would make squillions on eBay. I’d rather open my veins.

I mention this because I recently attended an auction where many watches were sold (Only of passing interest; I was there for wine and spent a fortune.). Some were encrusted with diamonds, some had three mini-dials within the main one, some had built-in magnifying glasses. None had faces to equal the clarity of either of mine. In both cases the Longines minute hand is so delicate and the minute divisions so precise you can tell time to 10 seconds – with analogue watches!

As Basil Fawlty said in another context – it’s so basic.

The slob's guide to LP - CD transfer

Sentiment pulled one way and the enormity of the task pulled another. Our disc turntable was a space-encroaching anachronism yet we still had 220 LPs. Convert the LPs into CDs then? But a pickup arm only functions in realtime. A complete transfer would take about 92 hours solid.

The decision was precipitated when we opted for a custom-made unit to hold the TV, the amp/tuner, the player, the VCR (now, of course, a DVD unit) and the CDs. One or two observations:

How likely are you to want to hear one of the Diabelli variations separate from the others. Not very, eh? Good, then simply record each side of the LP as two continuous chunks. However, with Schubert songs each will need its own track. Fiddly but necessary.

Clean and re-clean the LPs before playing them with a Dust Bug. You won’t eliminate the scratches and the needle will occasionally catch – usually when you’re buttering a slice of toast – causing you to rush in and clumsily give it a nudge. You could re-record but that’s not me. It probably won’t be you after 15 – 20 hr of this nit-picking work. Don’t despair. On the CD the repeated groove will be agony but with an underlay of comfort. It will right itself!

With 220 or more LPs there’ll be those you haven’t played for ages. Epiphanies await. In my case Schoeck’s “Notturno”.

Finally, after it was all done I swapped the turntable for a mobile phone.

Why I get sentimental about France

The original loo at our French house had a lever that looked like a bus gearchange. It operated a trapdoor… Inevitably the chromed fittings leaked.

At the mairie I asked the welcoming middle-aged woman if she could recommend a plumber. She did better than that. She made the phone call, explaining “there is this gentlemen who is suffering ennuis with his toilet”. I liked that. Ennui is both a problem and boredom. Yes, I was suffering boredoms with my toilet.

Monsieur (always Monsieur) Chauvel arrived promptly in his bleu de travail and his Pierre Laval moustache. He not only inspired confidence, he was essentially likeable.

The leak was immediately traced to a washer long since unavailable. M. Chauvel improvised and the loo remained leakless until it was replaced years later. I then drew his attention to the water-heating system: a tiny fifty-year-old geyzer over the sink linked via 20 m of copper tube to the shower and handbowl in the bathroom. M. Chauvel nodded. It needed a thingy which didn’t exist. But he could make one.

On the final day of our holiday he removed the geyzer from the wall and took it home with him. When we returned a month or two later it was back on the wall, repaired. M. Chauvel had picked up the key left with the menuisier and done the work in our absence.

At this time, artisans in Kingston-upon-Thames were charging £65 just to look at a sick washing machine. With no guarantees.

More on techno-hero Chauvel soon.

The seductions of speed

Blog-visitors to Works Well who aren’t turned on by motorbikes are having a thin time just now I’m afraid. But Plutarch asked me to explain the visual appeal of the Honda Fireblade (see July 5 post).

Honda admit this Fireblade has very strong links with the bikes they race in MotoGP – the two-wheel equivalent of Formula One. The phrase “street-legal racer” is legitimate. So what are the clues?

First, this is clearly not a two-seater. The distance between the wheel centres (the wheelbase) is too short; this makes the bike more agile round corners. Secondly, note the exaggerated distance between the rear mudguard and the rear wheel to accommodate the springing action of the (horizontal) rear fork. Very much a racing bike feature.

Speed through corners is dictated by the angle to which the bike can be heeled over as the picture on the right shows. Because of this components must be drawn as close to the engine as possible. Especially true of the exhaust pipe which is routed almost entirely under the engine.

High speeds require powerful brakes with most braking effort coming from the front wheel. Note the huge front brake disc. And the grippy fat rear tyre.

Yet despite the tight purposeful contours of the Fireblade’s engine it is liquid-cooled. Oh, and it revs to 12,000 rpm.

Again, thanks to Honda for the pix.

Old bones need warm radiators

After six years in the USA, returning in 1972, we were ill-prepared for a Britain which still lacked central heating. Desperately poor we somehow scraped up the money to have it installed in our tiny house (“suitable for an urban peasant”).

Heating technology had progressed which was just as well. The heater in Pittsburgh resembled a phone box whereas the Kingston-upon-Thames unit was the size of two large suitcases. In Pittburgh the furnace roared on through the night and, given those winter temperatures, we wouldn’t have had it any other way. In Kingston a timer switched things off at 10.30 pm, encouraging an interest in thermal blankets.

The new furnace (actually now 10 years old) here in Hereford is smaller still and is tucked away in the garage. It heats the detached four-bedroom house with ease and has only put up one black so far when the feeder to the pilot light became blocked. It took the plumber some time to remedy this as I furiously enquired how much an electronically fired furnace would cost. Pilot lights seemed so passé. When all was well the plumber cautioned patience and the furnace has worked perfectly for the ensuing four years.

Distrust giant steps for mankind

Great leaps forward in the kitchen end up, as the Americans elegantly put it, getting filed under Drop Dead. Think electric carving knifes and chicken rotissomats. The best developments are incremental. This pan of ours, fairly recently acquired, qualifies I think. The holes in the curtain below the lid "stop the lid diddling" (in the judgement of my technical adviser) and, since the holes align with pouring lips on the pan itself, they allow sieved water to be got rid of. Also the pan looks good.

No one who has commented on my posts will need telling that the vegetable is rainbow chard which I was about to sub-title the poor man's asparagus. I now withdraw this casual definition. Chard has a flavour and - especially - a consistency all its own.

Further note on pans. Speaking as the house washer-up I regard non-stick surfaces as terrific. But in the end they get scratched and the pan should then be thrown away. Not used to mix paint or to create a bird-bath - thrown away!

Did I mention I was a bike nut?

In a May blog my friend Plutarch wrote: “A shining, red, brand new Harley Davidson…catches my attention. I stop and stare… I have never driven a motor bike and have reached the age when, if I tried, I would certainly fall off. But this is a thing of beauty.” With it came a partly veiled invitation for me to respond.

I did so in two posts. More will follow since motorcycles shaped my youth and their memories warm my advanced years. (The hell with euphemism. Shouldn’t this be “old age”? – Ed.)

Plutarch finds motorcycles alien but can see their attractions. So, let’s pretend he was unaware of the graphic arts (he isn’t) and had just seen his first oil by some competent Englishman – Joshua Reynolds, perhaps. That’s the Harley. What follows takes him up to Rembrandt.

Here's a Honda Fireblade. At our age, it’s a bike Plutarch and I would be advised to stay clear of. It weighs 171 kg, has a top speed of 180 mph and takes 10 sec to cover quarter of a mile. Of more relevance to this blog the Fireblade develops 175 bhp. By comparison my car weighs 1500 kg and develops 140 bhp.

Plutarch may still find the Harley more beautiful but that’s because he hasn’t undergone the two-wheel equivalent of visits to the National Gallery, the Louvre and MoMA. I’ve done my time and find the Fireblade stunning. It’s made to go fast and that’s self-evident. I’ll try and explain why later after a session with drawn curtains and a wet towel.

PS: Thanks to Honda for permission to use the pic.

With a car, you can always park

Driving a car is mundane - a two-dimensional experience. Planes are three- if not four-dimensional since time also enters the frame. Flight is transient, limited by the fuel carried. Running out of fuel means running out of time.

I've always over-admired people who could fly planes. The technical requirements (especially navigation) fascinated me but I never took it further. Successful flying, like the price of freedom, depends on eternal vigilance. I imagined my mind wandering; buying the farm while pondering Thomas Pynchon.

I bought Microsoft Flight Simulator and sought mightily to land the Cessna at Meigs Field in Chicago. No go. In tutorial mode I found myself sweating at the injunctions of the instructor even though I was only facing a computer regurgitating advice pre-written years before by someone in Washington state.

Later, on a journalistic trip, I sat by the pilot of a light plane as he made his approach to - I think - Darlington airport. I could see the airfield straight ahead. What shocked me was our heading, way to the left of the runway centreline. Yet, as we got nearer, our heading and the centreline converged. Crosswinds, of course. Confirmation that I don't have the temperament for those extra dimensions.

DUKWs OK; Canuck French "difficult"

Perhaps not all Canadians would agree but one of the country's major attractions is the way it distinguishes itself from Big Brother south of the border - by ensuring French is omni-present. Though it didn't exactly work out the way I expected.

In the seventies, with time to kill in Montreal, I took a city tour in a DUKW (called "duck" in Britain) an amphibious military vehicle used in WWII.

Being a smarty-boots I didn't let on about my nationality, thinking I could busk the commentary. That was a mistake. From the moment the guide pronounced the city's name - Mawn-ray-orl - I knew I was in trouble. If I understood five per cent that would be over-stating it. My French has improved but I still think I would struggle if I went back.

The reason for the DUKW became apparent when it suddenly plunged down a ramp and continued the tour afloat in the harbour. A nice touch that. Though whether I'd have felt like that arriving at Omaha Beach in the same vehicle is another matter.

Note: The pic isn't a DUKW (the door opening beneath what would be the waterline blows the gaffe straight away) but partially resembles one. Will do better next time.

It's got cars - and much more

TECHNO-ART A famous French author writes, “… the vehicle starting off, covered in one bound, twenty paces of an excellent horse. Distances are only the relation of space to time and vary with it. We express the difficulty we have in getting to a place in a system of miles or kilometres which becomes false as soon as that difficulty decreases.”

That’s Proust getting to the technical heart of the difference between cars and horse-drawn carriages. Seventeen pages into Chapter Three of “Cities of the Plain” the fourth book constituting “A la recherche…”

And there’s more. “Coming to the foot of the cliff road, the car climbed effortlessly, with a continuous sound like that of a knife being ground…”

I’ve never urged anyone to read Proust because the objective difficulties – sentences lasting a page and a half, for instance – are formidable. But the subjective benefits arrive page after page. All I ask is that received wisdom is put to one side. Yes, Proust concerns himself with snobby aristocrats but one of his greatest creations is the cook/servant Francoise. Outside the salons he ponders the nature of place names, politics, houses of assignation, railways stations and alcoholic euphoria. He’s interested in everything. Even cars!

My thanks to Plutarch for tracking down the above quotes and for alerting me to the plot summaries that bring to a close the three volumes of the Scott Moncrieff/Kilmartin translation by Penguin. I’d completely forgotten that very useful feature.

Monoglot Rosbifs are twice blessed

If you’re reading this you’re anglophone. So consider yourself lucky.

On a France Inter radio chat-show the head of Microsoft in France had to field repeated whinges about the plethora of manuals, help sources, etc, all in English. In response this pragmatic Frenchman uttered the following Académie Francaise heresy: if you want to understand computers you have to speak English.

And this is why. In protecting their language (with which I sympathise) the French authorities have translated all those terse computeresque terms into pure French. So, don’t send an email, rather envoyer un courrier électronique.

My computer has an OS (operating system) called Windows XP. My friend in Milly-la-Foret also has XP but it's his système d’exploitation. And perhaps the French for word processing (traitement de texte) would be otherwise unexceptional if it weren’t for those Berlingo vans making deliveries from the local traiteur. But then a hard disk may look like a slice of charcuterie.

Whatever one’s feelings about computers they’re not quaint which is the quality these translations confer. Finally here’s a lulu. Where we refer to a Heath Robinson contraption the Americans say Rube Goldberg device. And the French say: un engin bricolé avec les moyens du bord - a thingy put together with what’s to hand.