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