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.