Speed tends to be regarded as anti-social. The knee-jerk image is of a nineteen-year-old son of a property developer driving a Porsche Carrera to the detriment of pushchairs, unattached dogs, zimmer-supported oldsters and wimpled nuns on zebra crossings. But speed comes in different forms.
My new computer has a 3.1 GHz processor and is blindingly fast. Yet “fast” in this context is relative. Booting up takes just over a minute compared with about three minutes for its predecessor which worked on a damaged version of Windows XP. Re-loading Photoshop Elements (more than half a gig of software) was done and dusted in less than fifteen minutes. So what? Why not instantaneously? What did I do with the saved minutes?
To tell the truth the minutes don’t matter. The improvement is rated in units of sensuality (mink-strokes – which I’ve just invented). And like most forms of pleasure it will die away with familiarity. But just for the moment… ahhhh!
WIN SOME, LOSE SOME This year Mrs BB’s birthday was marked by the viewing of three consecutive rugby games on TV and some compensation was in order. Hence the reservation of the De Pamier Suite at a swanky hotel in the Alkham Valley between Folkestone and Dover. But how much benefit can one extract from a hotel suite? Both bed-chamber and lounge were furnished with televisions but lack of any physical barrier between the two meant that simultaneous usage seemed unlikely. What did divide the rooms, however, was a small step on which I stubbed my gouty big toe. There were fewer complaints about the bottle of champagne which came the package.
My new computer has a 3.1 GHz processor and is blindingly fast. Yet “fast” in this context is relative. Booting up takes just over a minute compared with about three minutes for its predecessor which worked on a damaged version of Windows XP. Re-loading Photoshop Elements (more than half a gig of software) was done and dusted in less than fifteen minutes. So what? Why not instantaneously? What did I do with the saved minutes?
To tell the truth the minutes don’t matter. The improvement is rated in units of sensuality (mink-strokes – which I’ve just invented). And like most forms of pleasure it will die away with familiarity. But just for the moment… ahhhh!
WIN SOME, LOSE SOME This year Mrs BB’s birthday was marked by the viewing of three consecutive rugby games on TV and some compensation was in order. Hence the reservation of the De Pamier Suite at a swanky hotel in the Alkham Valley between Folkestone and Dover. But how much benefit can one extract from a hotel suite? Both bed-chamber and lounge were furnished with televisions but lack of any physical barrier between the two meant that simultaneous usage seemed unlikely. What did divide the rooms, however, was a small step on which I stubbed my gouty big toe. There were fewer complaints about the bottle of champagne which came the package.
