What would David Attenborough do?

Diafani is technology-poor; you have to take your own. These are some of the things that will shortly go into the suitcase.

When I chose the flippers, snorkel and mask some years ago, like most men I opted for subfusc colours. But the diving shop man recommended day-glo. Just in case things fell into the sea unattached.

One thing is missing and is problematic: a weapon. My normal swim is about a mile down the coast to a lonely inlet. I am told a monk seal now occupies a cave along the route. There is, my informant says, no record of monk seals attacking humans but I am urged to check with Gorgos, fount of all marine knowledge. Given its name I conclude the animal is at least celibate. I would prefer to go unarmed if possible.

The inflatable ring is from the Chad Valley “Giggle and Grow” system for users aged 2 – 6 years and was reduced to £1 in Woolies. It will be attached to my waist with 12 m of light nylon rope and will remind boat users that their engine propellors are harder than my flesh.

Bonelli eagles operate over Diafani, hence the binocs. The Creative Zen MP3 player carries over a thousand tracks varying in length from “Big Yellow Taxi” to the fourth movement of Bruckner’s Romantic symphony (22 min 54 sec). For re-reading I am taking a novel by a Frenchman famous for his long sentences and whose name I am becoming less and less inclined to flaunt.

Rawlplugs and curried eggs

While waiting for my wife to retire I did freelance journalism and cooked five Monday - Friday evening meals a week. But not the cooking Plutarch and Lucy regale their readers with. No touch-of-oregano moments. This was deterministic, alles im Ordnung cuisine run on DIY rules.

I created a repertoire: fourteen dishes in sequence so we ate each twice a month. For two years! Rule two: no deviation from the recipe. My wife made a casual suggestion for soup (two leeks, two carrots, two sticks of celery, stock from two Maggi Pot au Feu cubes, heated, blended) and that became the immutable – and only – prescription. A dangerous tactic since those stock cubes were only available in France at the time.

I ran into trouble. In converting a roux into white sauce I risked a nervous breakdown – every time. The possibility of lumps was the spectral equivalent of Original Sin. As a result my first four lasagnes were short of the interstitial white stuff. “Make more than you could ever imagine using,” I told myself even though it deviated from what was written.

The corned-beef hash called for allspice, a name that worried me. Was “all” everything or just one? An honour system required me to eschew curry powder and mix turmeric with all the rest. With widely varying results.

Just before my wife resumed her rightful position I added undesignated shrimps to the mashed potato of the fish pie. My only bid for improvisation. I am now retired twice over.

Patrons late in life

If assuming a mortgage is an intimation of mortality (see "Welcome to the fall-off rule"), paying a mortgage off is uncharted territory. In our case, it meant having the resources to buy original art. Beyond that is the even more esoteric experience of commissioning original art.

This ciment fondue piece represents two of our grandchildren twelve years ago and I apologise for the ropy photo. I tried hard with the Aldi cheapo and all were duds. I should have dusted off the Pentax and fiddled with the aperture/depth-of-field ratios. But blogging discourages patience.

However it’s the technological procedures I’m interested in. The children ran riot in the sculptor’s garden and a huge number of 35 mm shots were taken. Despite the mound of prints the final choice – this sinuously interwoven pose – announced itself. We had only one request. My wife and I detest sentimentality and asked that the work should be non-representational.

Luckily the sculptor knew better. Some weeks later at her studio we were left alone to contemplate two 10 cm high maquettes. One was a précis of the linked shapes, the other was demonstrably the children. Not a hint of mawkishness; we chose the latter. Knowing the sculptor as we did (and do) perhaps it was wrong to make even that one request.

We had intended to install the work in our garden but our growing affection for it and the fact that our Kingston-on-Thames house (12 miles SW of London) had been burgled four times meant it has stayed indoors ever since.

One route to euphoria

Can’t pretend I know much about washing machines. The control on our Bosch offers odd options, at random and with inconsistent typography. For instance: Delicates, Wool and Cotton are self-explanatory but why is Easy Care labelled as if it were a further, related choice to these three? Jeans is listed in a different typeface but aren’t jeans made of cotton? And why is Intensive Stains related – typographically, at least – to Jeans?

I am not proud of this ignorance, the result of never having operated this device or its ancestors.

I offer this defence. When we were very poor a pool of water developed under our inexpensive Indesit. I disconnected the power, took the back off, discovered a burst pipe and replaced it. A year later it was evident water wasn’t making it into the drum. The pump was easily identifiable. I removed the front cover, found that one of the three rubber impeller blades had sheared off (someone – let’s not say who – had left a UScent1 piece in their jeans pocket), bought a new impeller, and installed it.

These days I get a man to do this sort of work. Which is a shame. These were very simple tasks, but never mind. Successful DIY repairs create a sense of euphoria, of being ahead of the game and of outwitting large interests. The experience is worth more than rubies. Material comfort is no substitute.

TECHNO-WONDER. Yesterday was my birthday (thanks for your good wishes Marja-Leena). This morning I checked my profile and Blogger has added another year to my listed age. Clever!

Time off to unwrap prezzies

Recent holes in the blog are attributable to my birthday, prematurely celebrated over the past bank-holiday weekend. Today being the real thing I sit at the keyboard and wonder whether Blogger has automatically ratcheted up my age in the profile.

So, the technology of birthdays. One key item is of course the corkscrew. I once bought a £75 corkscrew that had been generously reduced to a mere £50. The design converted a simple act of leverage into a screwing action. Ingenious but not thought through. The forces were enormous and both the screw and the helical slot it engaged with quickly wore out. Strength is what’s needed, especially with non-cork corks.

Birthdays involve the accommodation of grandson Zach whose cot is erected in my atelier, denying me my computer. He, however, is well supplied with advanced technology. His mic/speaker not only communicates with the saloon bar downstairs but also plays Wiegenlied. Another device projects a rotating pattern of stars on the ceiling. He rarely troubles us as the corks pop.

The evening after, with Zach at his other grandparents, we left in a seven-seater cab for one of the county’s many gastropubs. Most Herefordshire taxi-drivers have satnavs but ours claimed not to need one and proved his point by approaching the pub by an unknown narrow road with grass growing in the middle and solid hedges that provided a tunnel-like effect through the windscreen. Hedges are sacred in this part of England and one is taken to the pillory for damaging them

Welcome to the fall-off rule

Remember the demo in physics? Bunsen burner standing on its base (stable equilibrium), on its nozzle (unstable equilibrium), on its side (neutral equilibrium). With a motorbike only the latter state is available without assistance and a bike on its side is no use to anyone.

Working for a weekly newspaper I used to call on the town's men of the cloth. Father Michael O’Sullivan noticed my parked bike. “I see yiz ride a bike. I did win I was a young priest. Niver had a cold. But yiz'll fall off once ivery year and a haf.” The transition from a temporary form of (often very) unstable equilibrium into neutral.

Fr. O’Sullivan was right about the fall-off rate. Once my friend and I were riding Indian file on our bikes and a dog darted out. My friend swerved and I did too, but a microsecond too late. My clutch lever (on the left-hand side of the handlebar) caught his raincoat, swung the forks round on full lock and I was tossed on to the tarmac. People at a bus-stop nearby watched with interest but none moved to my aid. They would have lost their place in the queue. The adamantine West Riding.

A subsequent event contributing to my fall-off quota occurred when a car pulled out into a steepish hill down which I was travelling. No escape. The bike hit the car amidships and I somersaulted over the car and landed some yards (we were still Imperial then) down the road. Tucked into my raincoat was a box containing my complete LP collection, perhaps 25 discs. None was harmed.

Young people believe they are immortal. The assumption of a mortgage tells them they are not.

Not magic, just hard work

In one Olympic sport competitors appeared to flout the laws of a branch of physics known as mechanics.

Remember I said “appeared”. But here’s how. Getting a stationary car to move off requires lots of power (called torque) from the engine. But the engine develops most torque when it’s revving. To ensure the car can move off even on a steep hill (highish engine speed) and subsequently run quickly but economically (lowish engine speed), a gearbox is inserted between the engine and the back wheels.

Same with a bike. Mine has fifteen speeds, giving me the technical wherewithal – if not, alas, the requisite leg power – to cycle away easily and deal with any gradient.

But the bikes of Chris Hoy, Bradley Wiggins, et al, at the vélodrome didn’t have gears. Since they often crossed the finishing line at 70 kph where did the compromise occur? If the rider can cycle away from a standing start why aren’t his legs an impossible blur at maximum speed?

The answer lies in the riders' thighs – Hoy’s are like tree trunks. The bike’s single gear is unbelievably high and most of us would be incapable of getting going, let alone riding up the banked track. Not our goldmeisters though. The high gear serves them well during sprints when the legs move up and down quickly but controllably.

All you need to create the illusion of defying physics are huge thigh muscles. Or, funnily enough, a steam engine which develops torque at very low revs and can thus dispense with a gearbox.

Beautiful game? How about this?

Now it can be told. When I wrote job application letters in the sixties to forty US magazine editors I lied about why I wanted to work in the USA. Fact is I wanted to watch live baseball. Not that I even knew the rules.

I arrived in Pittsburgh in winter and couldn’t wait until the season started. I dragged a friend to the freezingly cold Pirates’ opener in Forbes Field and had him explain the game. Thereafter I watched a huge amount of telly.

What’s this got to do with technology? Well, that’s my baseball glove in the inset. Because I’m right-handed I wear it on my left hand and, with luck, it helps me gobble up grounders and snag fly hits (even fungos!). After which I use my right hand to hurl the ball wherever it should go.

What a glove does for a baseball pro is something else again. Batting and pitching are easy to understand. What makes baseball special is that gloves transform fielders into figures of grace and efficiency. They reach balls that would elude even the most determined cricketer. What’s more they’re often expected to do this. If they don’t an error is charged against them.

Grace and efficiency – what do I mean? The shortstop is an infield player, lurking somewhere between second and third base. The batter, 40 m away, cracks a hard low drive to the shortstop’s right. But he doesn’t try to catch it with his right hand (“the meat hand”). He swings his gloved left hand down across his body turning the palm towards the ball. With practised elegance he makes the catch and tosses the ball insouciantly to the second-baseman. It’s quite routine but it makes me swoon.

A ton up - but not on a motorbike

My hundredth post so let’s celebrate the metric system. Inevitably the French were the first to adopt it (as an exercise of pure reason) though I thought they’d designated the metre as something like one ten-millionth of the distance of the equator. Not so. A French abbot and scientist proposed the milliare as a minute of arc along the meridian. Which conceivably might be the same thing.

Benefit 1. Arithmetic. Remember the longwindedness of performing calculations in fractions (eg, 7/16 x 14/57). The decimal point blew all that into the weeds.

Benefit 2. Technology. Nuts and bolts in the GB were designated like this: 3/8 in. BSW (standing for British Standard Whitworth) and there were other systems. Now – as far as I know – they’re all metric and it’s so much simpler. “Give me a 5 mm bolt, 2 cm long please.”

Benefit 3. Science. To the unitiated it may not seem simpler but expressing 0.000,000,0008 mm as 8x10-9 mm (Sorry. Need to work out HTML superscript here) obviously does save paper.

Benefit 4. Peace of mind. Got a long journey ahead of you on the Continong? Change the settings on the satnav from miles to kilometres and be encouraged (Yes, I know it’s illusory, but illusions have their uses) as they whistle away behind you.

Disadvantages. The USA remains agnostic. Metrics does away with a useful height benchmark for homo sapiens and, at 6 ft 1½ in. (“just a little over 6 ft”) I find myself lacking a familiar definition.

Marja-Leena plays a straight bat

Denied any ability in the graphic arts, I am forced to look at the subject technologically. A wide viewpoint. Take the media: there are oils, acrylics, watercolours, ink, crayons, frottage (I love that one), bits of glued newspaper and no doubt much more. Surfaces embrace canvas, paper, board, wood and the sides of buildings. In the service of which are tools which range from sable hair brushes to small – perhaps big – trowels. Where do you start?

Having encouraged Marja-Leena to write the definitive post on 3D scanning I emailed her a deceptively simple question: A subject for a painting occurs to you. How do you go about deciding on the appropriate technology for rendering that subject?

Needless to say M-L was far too fly to fall for that one. A Canadian might have, but not a Finnish-Canadian. For one thing she regards herself as a printmaker. She used to paint “years ago” (visit her blog archives) but these days she finds painting “comparatively boring”.

However, in the best tradition of people born in a cold country who go to live in another cold country she offers:

“One starts with some kind of an image then chooses the best way to present it, to fit it to one’s own sensibility" she says adding, as if she'd never heard of Jane Austen, " if that's the correct word."

There are no shortcuts in Finland or Canada. "That comes with some years of practice with different materials. I've been a printmaker for over 25 years, and I'm always learning new ways of image-making, which keeps me on my toes and interested.”

Memo: Must find out more about printmaking.

Deficient ears can save you money

As I loll on my couch I am grateful I am off the hi-fi treadmill.

Thirty years ago, for a modest expenditure, you could verifiably improve the performance of your LP-playing equipment (pick-up, amplifier, twin speakers). You then stepped on to a ladder whose length was dictated only by the depth of your pocket.

Then CDs replaced LPs. I for one was unable to detect improvements from more expensive CD players and it was only when I needed twin-drives that I bought a new unit. By then, an amplifier upgrade appeared futile and the reviews proved it. Performance graphs for quite inexpensive amps showed virtually flat curves. Distortion was only detectable by bats.

That left loudspeakers. My friend owned Quad electrostatics which were easily the best. But they resembled central heating radiators and cost £1000 a pair. I made do with rather less. Later in life and comfortably off I decided to relegate my speakers to the kitchen (Cooks find Mozart encouraging - see pic) and buy something better for the salon. I spent an embarrassing hour at a specialist hi-fi shop. The owner patiently switched between speaker pairs widely differing in price. To no audible avail.

I had of course reached a defining hi-fi moment: ears inadequate through age. Comparatively cheap speakers would do. Sad, but at least I’m off the treadmill.

This was how I saw it

WORLD WAR TWO: A child’s view of
technology

Metal shortage. To build more battleships the railings round the school were removed with oxy-acetylene torches. Sparks and glare for fascinated (totally unprotected) kids. Afterwards the remaining stumps of metal were removed from wall tops, allowing us to walk along them unhindered. Rumour had it the collected metal was never used.

In the sky. This was the West Riding so no baddies during the day. From time to time the big names (Spitfire, Lancaster) appeared, but mostly it was the twin-engine Avro Anson (presumably a bomber trainer) and the single droning-engine Harvard.

Camouflage. Close to the present Leeds/Bradford airport was an operative factory making goodness knows what. Earthworks were built round the single-storey structure and the top was then disguised with fake trees and a simulated duck pond. Even at ground level this was quite effective.

Health scare. Housewives were urged to hand in their aluminium pans to make more planes. Few did. Then came a story – almost certainly promulgated by The Daily Mail – that cooking vegetables in aluminium pans caused cancer. Could these two themes have been related?

Re-editing the editor

Strolling round my blog, making sure all was made fast and battened down, I came unexpectedly upon my profile hit-counter. At 167 the total was modest enough for this 3½-month enterprise, but nevertheless salutary.

The profile was rushed off heedless of the fact that people might eventually pick among its entrails for clues about my qualifications (minimal), my age (advanced) and my sanity (the jury is out). Assuming the mantle of a new reader I re-examined it and found myself increasingly at odds with the pompous individual gradually revealed.

Prétentieux? Moi? Well, actually, yes. Oh sure, Proust gets a mention but not Ed McBain many of whose 87th Precinct quickies I must confess to re-reading. And those French films unleavened by any reference to gangster movies starring Charles McGraw and Adele Jergens.

Here’s a test. Imagine compiling a profile to be carved on one’s tombstone so that future generations might deconstruct it for signs of lily-gilding. Would that stay one’s hand?

Trouble is I’m committed to comparative brevity. Given my chosen subject I limit my posts to less than 300 words in order not to bore. Same with the profile. I have tinkered with the latter and will do more as I’m visited with bursts of honesty. Let’s call it work in progress, a phrase which can be applied to all our lives I suppose.

Browsing lifted to a new level

Given the high standards of literacy and articulacy commentators to this blog have shown, a post about ABE Books is probably unnecessary. But just in case…

ABE is an example of where the web has not just altered the scope of an activity, it has changed its nature. What’s more it helps a deserving and generally under-funded stratum of the retail world.

ABE is an umbrella under which shelter 13,000 second-hand-book shops (Gosh, that’s hard to hyphenate.) round the world, providing them with exposure and a reference service way beyond individual resources. And using ABE has unexpected charms.

There’s a British author called John Lodwick, killed in a car crash in the sixties, whom I read with enthusiasm. His books are long out of print but I decided to push out the ABE boat. My trawl brought in seven or eight titles. But the charm came from where the Jiffy-bags were filled. One was in Tennessee, another in Pennsylvania. Hard to see how those shops would otherwise have got my custom.

There is a tiny catch. Some of the books cost a mere 50 cents but, not surprisingly, packing and postage is several multiples of that. I for one don’t object.

The Lady Vanishes

Imbued with foolish pride, I devoted my August 11 post to a photograph of a bookshelf I made for the French house. I apologised for not having a usable photograph of the adjacent spiral staircase which I admitted to be the main reason why we bought the house in the first place. Unimpressed by my DIY carpentry Plutarch offered this stern comment: “With hindsight perhaps you would have applied the Pentax to the handrail. We are the poorer for the omission.”

I did have a photograph of the staircase taken when we first inspected the house. Unfortunately my wife, in the last stages of hypothermia, stood in the foreground and wouldn’t have thanked me for publicising her in this state.

Whether she will thank me for the solution of this problem is another matter. But here is the staircase without my wife, thanks to Adobe Photoshop Elements – the software that rolls back time. It isn’t the best of photographs but it wasn’t the best of March days.

Plutarch, will this do?

How do you get two from one?

Unlike Duke Senior in As you like it who talked about “sermons in stones” (I confess; I had to look up his name) my horizons are set on much lower, far less spiritual horizons. Take this banal piece of kitchen equipment. According to our resident Director of Culinary (and other) Affairs this is a beater – perhaps a hand beater even though it is powered – used for cake mixes, egg whites and batters, frequently pre-empting the food processor because it’s easier to clean. It cost £8 back in the early eighties.

No sermons here but there is room for techno-speculation. Basically it’s a 100 watt electric motor shrouded in plastic. The more interesting part is how the rotation provided by the motor armature is taken through 90 deg (making the beater easier to use) and then split in order to drive the two beater blades.

The first part is easier to understand and is probably based on a much, much simpler variant of the crown wheels found in a car differential. In effect two open-faced gears engaging at right-angles.

Splitting the drive is more mysterious since the most obvious solutions are mildly complex and potentially expensive. Given the price and the fact that the beater was made in China these seem unlikely. I can’t wait until the thing fails and I can pull it apart and find out. Alternatively, if there’s anyone out there….

Occasionally I'm constructive

Here’s proof that – thanks to M. Chauvel’s sauteuse (see Aug 10) – I was able to fashion the mortice-and-tenon joints necessary for the freestanding bookshelf. And no, the thing isn’t falling apart. The photo was taken through a wide-angle lens on my well-loved Pentax. Hence the curvaceous verticals.

Above the bookshelf is the underside of the wooden spiral staircase that persuaded us – more than anything else – to buy the house in France. Alas I don’t have a usable picture of the operative side of the staircase. A shame. No step structure was duplicated and the glossy black wooden handrail was polished by the passage of hands over at least 130 years.

The house walls were nearly a metre thick and resembled the masonry equivalent of Peanut Brittle. Piercing the wall to create another window was a hazardous business; small holes tended quite rapidly to become big holes. That was the job of the maçon who also provided a sort of sous-titre service when the dialect of the artisans proved hard to decode.

These boots were made for...me!

Looking at these boots is like seeing my face in the mirror when I shave of a morning. A page – nah! a dozen chapters - from my personal history.

They were bought in 1952 or 1953 and cost, I think, £5. Their only defect was the laces which quickly gave up the ghost and were replaced by what you see – strangely waxed nylon. A year later they accompanied me on a month’s course at the Outward Bound Mountain School at Eskdale in the Lake District.

Their function would have been more apparent in their original form. I was besotted with rock climbing and these were – are – climbing boots. But in those days the soles were covered in nails. Hard metal tricounis round the toes, softer hobs over the rest. Nails were going out of fashion since they wore away the holds on established routes. At a later stage the nails were replaced with moulded rubber soles.

I was never a good rock climber but I loved the mountains. In any case I’d moved to London and it was harder to get to the places that matter. For various reasons ski-ing became the easier option and the boots went into the attic. We moved house several times, each time posing the question about what could be discarded. Not surprisingly the boots survived. Junking them would have been like throwing away my face.

M. Chauvel's finest hour

Another story about our techno-hero plumber.

Because the house in France had no damp-proof course crystals formed on the inside walls up to a metre from the floor. I was told they were saltpetre, one of the constituents of gunpowder. Painting over them only delayed their reappearance. So what was the cure? Put furniture in front of the visible areas, advised one French pragmatist.

I decided to make a freestanding book-shelf unit for that very purpose. I also decided to secure shelves and uprights with mortice-and-tenon joints (see drawing). Monsieur Chauvel, plombier extraordinaire, found me fashioning one of the slots with a power drill and a chisel. “A sauteuse would be better,” he said.

I didn’t know exactly what a sauteuse was although I had an inkling. I shrugged my shoulders (the sort of thing I found myself doing in M. Chauvel’s company). He disappeared briefly, returning with a jigsaw – the power tool, not the time-waster. “Drop it in when you’ve finished,” he said. I completed the unit three times quicker than I’d expected.

Let’s just reflect on the enormity of that gesture: a busy artisan lending one of the tools of his trade to, arguably, the most eccentric of his customers. Twelve years on I still can’t get over it.

Soldering can make you happier

If a little learning is dangerous, so’s a lot. Especially with electricity. Electrical hyper-sensitivity leads me to worry about the three-pin plug that’s warm when it shouldn’t be and about a woman I know with a physics degree who yanks on the flex of her electric kettle to pull out the plug.

And about my dear late father-in-law who I found poking into the central heating timer with a screwdriver. “It’s all right,” he said, “it works on gas.”

Electricity’s ability to destroy is awesome. Unions between cables and terminals are potential weak points and in some cases the risk can be reduced by soldering rather than just wrapping.

Soldering is fun. Roughen the terminal and the cable end with emery paper, coat each separately with molten solder, wind the cable round the terminal, and apply heat. Two becomes one almost immediately and conductivity is perfect. No worries about the union slackening through vibration. The RAF taught me to solder for free. I am at least grateful to them (it?) for that.

Two: not enough; three: too many

A mountie pursues a criminal through frozen wastes. Always the criminal is one jump ahead. The mountie has an idea. He sits in a clearing, takes out a bottle of gin, a bottle of vermouth and a jar of olives. As he opens the gin, the criminal rushes out from the trees. “No, no, no! The vermouth goes in first, stupid!”

I am able to invoke the mystique of the dry martini in Works Well because it is the product of liquid technology, better known as chemistry. When the tastes of gin and vermouth are mixed they create a third taste. There’s a technical chemistry name for this but I forget. Too old, too many martinis.

The Americans invented this pillar of civilised society but they continue to be in danger of corrupting it. All these jokes about wafting the cork of the vermouth bottle over the gin. Why not just drink straight gin? Also, a martini on the rocks (as opposed to the rockless martini straight up), much favoured in the Land of the Free, continuously dilutes the drink as the cubes melt.

Given that there are metaphorical criminals out there, hiding in the trees of blogland, I wouldn’t be fool enough to say which are my preferred martini proportions. However, the gin should be Tanqueray and the vermouth Noilly Prat. Also I must confess to my personal Albigensian heresy – I have been drawn to the Gibson, where two silverskins replace the olive.

Latest ping-pong score

Just back from a 48-hr tête à tête with my author (see July 23). Normally we exchange emails since he may be on a Greek island, down in London or even in Nepal. This time he was in his Welsh fastness not too far away.

The process is like an ancient game of ping-pong. I edit Chapter 22 for the eighth time, he looks at what I’ve done, reacts and bats it back. After eighteen months we’re into the law of diminishing returns but there’s still work to do. What makes a difference is being able to pick verbally at the bones of language instead of having to write out all the steps. Completion is tentatively set for next month.

Such encounters are sheer luxury for technological reasons. Each of us has the MS on a laptop. We chat, we ponder, we change things – independently yet linked. No peering over each other’ shoulder, no swapping bits of paper. As I’ve said, I admire those who write stuff with their grandfather’s Parker fountain pen but I sure as hell don’t want to join them. Long live the CPU or whatever succeeds it.

The skill is in the packaging

Bought this in Mauritius. Remembering my RAF experiences in Singapore I made a discounted offer but it seems haggling is no longer traditional when buying things in the Orient. The young lad looked worried and had to telephone his boss before my offer was accepted.

Where he did show confidence was in wrapping up the thing (surely a degree-level task) enabling me to bring the package home without damage.

The model is HMS Superb, a British 74-gun third rate, which played a significant role during the Napoleonic wars. At Trafalgar Superb was so damaged by storms cables were passed round the hull to keep the vessel together. Nelson paid tribute to the commander: "My dear Keats, be assured I know and feel that the Superb does all which is possible for a ship to accomplish".

Another example of degree-level wrapping and an excellent example of the Navy’s ability to improvise.

Time-wasting - but in a good cause

The technology of language is, I suppose, language itself. The method by which you drive a paragraph through the same hoops as a manufactured product: Concept, Design, Model, Test, Assess, Correct, Re-model, etc.

It’s more apparent if, like me, you’ve foolishly embarked on a poem. Concept: That’s the subject, I’ve got one of those. Design: Sixteen lines, four verses, iambic whatnot. Model: The first draft. Test: Read it through. Correct: Self-explanatory. Re-model: Second draft. But it’s at this point that a repetitive loop begins; a game of spillikins. Take one from the pile and the pile goes pear-shaped.

Maths would be better but I never learned the language, only bought the phrase-book. Here’s a good phrase:

Δi/Δt (A small change in current divided by a small change in time).

Concise, elegant (Greek letters will do that for you). No spillikins on the horizon. Now all I’ve got to do is match it to my subject. Hmmm. At least I’ve been able to spend ten minutes away from the burden of my poem.

The big sigma? It confers gravitas.

Suddenly, a new rich row to hoe

NOTE: North Americans please glance at my profile and check: I am the ancient of ancients. My US experiences date way back. Nixon was in the White House and the Pirates were winning the World Series.

So, the US and white goods. When we moved to Philadelphia my wife complained about the summer humidity. But I didn’t fancy paying a big electricity bill all the year round. Ha ha. During my holiday at home we bought an air conditioner. Pushed up the casement window, shoved the metal box half in, half out, and plugged it in.

Then we moved back to Pittburgh (journalism’s like that). I pointed out to my new landlord I had an air conditioner but his metal framed windows precluded its use. “Do what you need to do,” he said, “I want you to enjoy the house.” (These days I tell foreigners that English landlords, especially in London, are just as nice.) So I sawed away part of the frame and installed the box. I must add that when we moved out I re-glazed the gaping hole. A different world?

In those days Americans used to change their fridges to match the new kitchen décor. Avocado green was popular. The old fridge went down into the cellar where it was plugged in. Visitors to cook-outs traditionally brought a case of beer (that’s 24 cans) which they put in a downstairs fridge. Which filled up. I was born in the West Riding (“Lucky enough to have a pebble”) and occasionally I goggled.

It wasn't anything like the movies

If you see a good idea, plagiarise it! This is my version of Julia’s expatriate reflections game. To legitimise it I have added a techno-slant (well sort of).

As a Brit in the USA (me, 1965 - 1972) you know you’re in foreign parts when:

(1) An American says “Take my car”. (At a time when a male Brit would have preferred to say “Take my wife”.)
(2) You warm yourself at an open fire – in a centrally heated apartment.
(3) Services at the outdoor barbecue aren’t concluded until there are seven unordered burgers on the grill gently charring.
(4) You find you can phone anywhere for almost nothing.
(5) You are asked to contribute to the Democrats. You reply that as an alien you are unfranchised. The voice asks, “Is that like being a Republican?”
(6) You admit you are an alien to a neighbour who worriedly says, “Oh, you can’t be as bad as that”.
(7) You report a defect in your central heating to your landlord. He turns up within the hour, repairs it and gives you your Christmas present – a bottle of Scotch.
(8) You pull up for gas. The attendant sticks the hose in your filler then checks your oil while your tank fills.
(9) You attend your first baseball game and it’s 37 deg F in the bleachers. Your friend explains the rules to you and to the approval of those on adjacent seats. In the eighth innings there’s an intentional walk. Your friend groans: “I hoped they weren’t going to do that”. Laughter all round.
(10) Bad weather grounds the airlines. Car-less you take a Greyhound from Pittburgh to Buffalo for an exhibition. Your arrival is a surprise but the surprise grows tenfold when you explain how you travelled.

The USA. It changed my life. Thanks Julia.