BB's behaviourism lab

PORSCHE PREPARATIONS Once I’d driven it (see What’s a Good Present for a Hooligan?) I was regaled with stories about the difficulties of organising the project. Like the day Mrs BB inexplicably asked me to come out into the garden to see a withered dahlia while Younger Daughter rifled my wallet indoors, taking away my driving licence needed by the hiring company. And did I realise, I was asked, that my wallet lacked a driving licence for over a week? The two of them crowed about my inferior powers of observation.

Younger Daughter who was due to spend a couple of days with us, drove her Seat to the hirer to pick up the Porsche but was disinclined to take her cairn with her for reasons that can be imagined. Which meant that my first task was to drive YD to her home, 45 minutes away, in the Porsche to pick up the cairn. There must be something anti-canine about Porsches because the cairn appeared to suffer a nervous breakdown during the return.

CAKE QUESTION Elder Daughter and Peter stayed with us over my birthday celebrations and I was getting ready to take them to the bus station for their return to Luton when I was suddenly visited by a question I needed to put to Mrs BB.

How long does it take her to create those little cakes/buns that are done in paper cups?

Such questions arrive randomly but it’s no use telling Mrs BB that; she prefers to read between my non-existent lines and look for non-existent reasons. Thus I drove to the bus station (less than two miles), called in at Tesco’s filling station to pick up The Guardian, found they’d run out, drove back across the road to the main store, bought one there and then drove home. And you can guess what lay gently steaming in the kitchen when I opened the door. (Enhanced only with raisins I should add; the picture above came from Google).

“Have one while it’s hot,” said Mrs BB triumphantly. Delicious. But I must insist – however futile my insistence – that self-interest played no part in the question. Such questions crop up in my mind almost daily and the answers are filed away for random use (often in the novel) weeks or months into the future.

The answer is, by the way, twenty-five minutes

What's a good present for a hooligan?

In future I need to take more care about casual remarks. Twice while holidaying in France this year I mumbled to myself “I’d like to try out a Porsche some day.” unaware I’d been overheard. Yesterday I opened my front door to find a 22-year-old Porsche Carrera at my beck and call for the day. Thanks to Mrs BB, OS and PB. Yet my birthday is still two days away.

Thereby hangs a tale. Insurance companies take a dim view of old fools in Porsches and the cut-off age is 76; at present I’m 75. OS pointed out that the Carrera is as old as granddaughter Bella but certain cars do age graciously. Old men become incontinent, old Carreras become classics.

Parts of the Carrera are woefully antique. The dashboard is utterly non-ergonomic, starting the engine requires the brief but irritating insertion of a chip, the convertible body creaks and groans, at slow speeds the steering is as heavy as that of an oil tanker, and the unassisted brake pedal ideally requires both feet.

But the faster you go the more responsive things get. Not only does the car gobble up corners as if on rails, it invites you to accelerate round them. The lazy 217 bhp engine makes a noise like a washing machine (greatly disturbing OS’s cairn terrier) while you and Mr Toad struggle continuously for control of the steering wheel.

Took a little drive via Golden Valley to Hay-on-Wye, and the hills were alive with an engine beat that belonged to my youth. Speed, said Aldous Huxley, is the only new vice of our modern age. D’accord. Hay has the most beautifully located car-park in Britain: spot the Carrera.

Beating the system, parts 1 and 2

SOLAR PANELS cont. There are of course no guarantees that the surplus electricity generated will match the supplier’s (Three Energies) estimate. However, the database for this estimate relates to sunlight levels in Herefordshire over the last forty years. And the estimate is “worst case”.

The system takes two days to install and the panels (eight in my case) are guaranteed for 25 years. However the inverter, which converts the panels’ DC power into AC, is guaranteed only for five years. I can if I wish visit a satisfied panel user somewhere in the county but I have decided I don’t want to speak to a thinly disguised employee of Three Energies.

There are restrictions on the number of panels (and therefore the surplus energy potential) for domestic users. Business users were previously unrestricted but this apparently allowed a chicken farmer to turn a modest £50,000 turnover into £250,000 a year from electricity generation alone.

PARKING PERSIFLAGE Leaving my Skoda in a Ledbury car park recently I was accosted by another driver who handed over her parking ticket with lots of free time left on it. People do that here in the sticks. When I got back I had incurred a parking fine. I had been so grateful that I had carelessly left the ticket upside down on the dashboard. Elsewhere I used a system which specifically prevents this good-neighbour activity; one is required to type in part of the car’s registration number which is then printed on the ticket, making it unique to that car. Since the ticket machines are, as a result, now much more complex (and therefore expensive) one can’t help seeing this as slightly mean-minded.

A car, a knife and a vet

And why, you may ask, is Works Well sporting a photo of a BMW Isetta bubblecar? Because an Isetta played a mildly memorable role in our family history and younger daughter (Occasional Speeder) bought me the model as a souvenir.

I was working on MotorCycling in 1962 and our first daughter (Professional Bleeder) had just been born in Charing Cross Hospital in London. Despite its name the magazine also road-tested bubblecars and I was able to borrow an Isetta to pick up Mrs BB and the infant PB and take them home. The vehicle had a front opening door. Child-in-arms my wife sat on the bench seat – but on the wrong side! I closed the door to check she was comfortable and the steering wheel (attached to the inside of the door) began gently crushing the baby. But not fatally. As I say, a memorable moment and one regularly referred to on bibulous evenings.

GRANDSON Ian is staying with us. He does a lot of cooking for his mother PB (see above) and partner and has just broken his favourite kitchen knife. This 12.5 cm Taiku is the replacement which he chose and I paid for. He proved to be incredibly picky. Could have had a Sabatier but rejected it because the tip of the handle curls inward slightly and this he found unsuitable for his sensitive hand. Never mind. He cooks well.

THE LOVE PROBLEM 54,441 words. What is the most lovable male profession? As previously recounted I opted for veterinarian hoping this would take me halfway there since I find it difficult doing lovable men. Even so it’s hard work. Certainly I don’t love him yet.

And there the snake throws her enamell'd skin

The day of the new car.

First the old car must be purged. No problem remembering the satnav or the bags of dried apricots in my door pocket. But how about sunglasses hidden in a trapdoor in the roof or the £1 and €1 coins kept for trolley hire at Sainsbury and Super U respectively. Plus those spare bulbs the French government insists I carry. What I almost missed were seat-belt pads to protect the breasts and shoulders of women using the back seats.

It’s a nice trip. The Ross-on-Wye road for eight miles, then a detour stopping short of Symonds Yat where the Wye wends past a heart-stopping cliff overlooked by a pair of nesting peregrines. To Monmouth with its statue of Henry V, across the Wye, swing left from the Chepstow road (possibly the most beautiful in Britain, hugging the Wye and skirting Wordsworth’s Tintern Abbey) and on through the Forest of Dean where yellow tape round tree trunks signals protest against the Tories’ plan to sell off the woodlands.

To Cinderford which matches its name but is redeemed by the brisk good humour of the woman receptionist at Winner Garages. Our new car, the same make and model as its predecessor, stands out on the forecourt, not being caked with frost. In four years minor design faults (especially the computer display) have been tweaked and the new bolide feels taut and eager.

NEW NOVEL Should I record the miniscule progress? Yesterday, weaving in recent research meant a para and a half (say about 150 words) took nearly two hours. Why? Research should look casual, throwaway, unsweated.

A cold-weather pot-pourri

PROFESSIONALISM Members of Mrs BB’s painting group are concerned about her eye op. One is visiting us this morning “elevenish” and as I left to pick up the paper Mrs BB had started making little cakes. Such casualness

CLICHÉ STUFF The forecasts were gloomy last night: hard frost. It was mild and sunny when I set off for the paper, cold and windy when I returned. The walk lasts six minutes.

BABBLE Deafness. The problem is distinguishing what people are saying against a noisy background. The supermarket check-out for instance.

VALUE Currently the best quality bargains in French wine (ie, in the £8 - £12 bracket) are Coteaux du Languedoc AC. Of those look for villages with their own AC, especially Montpeyroux. Also Faugères and Picpoul de Pinet.

HORRIBLE The first motorbike I owned was a 125 cc BSA Bantam (see pic). Wretched. Note lack of rear suspension and pillion seat - but then it further lacked the power to tote two people.

DQ I’m 48 pages from finishing the 760-page Don Quixote. Would I recommend it? Yes, and for the same reasons I would recommend that every male youth in the UK does military National Service. Now I’ve done mine.

BROS K Plutarch suggested I read The Brothers Karamazov so I’ve bought a second-hand copy via ABE Books. It’s 985 pages. In the past I’ve made three attempts, the most recent failing at page 150.

LONG WAIT I am replacing my car with another of the same make and model. The waiting list was initially three months. Now it’s twenty-two weeks. Various reasons for the delay are offered: rarity of DSG automatic gearboxes and (the much more likely) rarity of RHD.

Can cars be pretty?

Marja-Leena responded spiritedly to an act of casual cruelty I committed on her blog by accusing me of an obsession with cars. Heh-heh; my Blog Labels list “car” 28 times and “art” 88 (88 – count them!) times. Not solid evidence, however, since I devise and fill in the labels myself. OK, M-L I accept the charge: I’m a spanner-twirling oaf with sump oil under my finger nails and I fall asleep going broom-broom.
But why not a post combining both cars and art? That’s if aesthetics is acceptable as a $5 synonym for art. In my opinion the prettiest car ever made was a Ford. And it emerged when good old Henry J. Jr was in charge. True you won’t see many of them around Detroit these days but once, if you had deep pockets, you could buy the road version. I’m talking about the GT40, of course, built to win at Le Mans, which it duly did. Isn’t this seductive?
Back in the seventies I got fed up of utilitarian cars and decided to buy one I liked to the look of. The GT40 was beyond me so I made do with the Volkswagen Scirocco Mk 1, designed by the Italian stylist Giorgetto Giugiario; subsequent models, alas, took on a bloated Teutonic look. Here is mine parked in Dompierre-le-Bouton (in France but, of course, you guessed) and I’ve chosen the angle deliberately. Many designs fail in their treatment of the rear end, but not this one.
Finally, the handsomest car I’ve owned – an early Audi Coupé, on the Col de l’Iseran, overlooking the French ski resort Val d’Isère. Where’s the snow? It’s summer.

This one didn't work well

After taking advantage of a legal loophole in the British motorcycle licence (with a three-wheel Bond minicar – an aluminium shoe-box with a 200 cc engine - followed by a Heinkel bubblecar, also a three-wheeler) it was time for a proper car with four wheels. The Austin Cambridge I bought in 1962 was not proper in any sense and that wretched vehicle enrages me every time I recall it.

Today’s drivers are happily unaware of their synchromesh gearboxes which ensure noiseless gear changes. Technically the Cambridge had synchromesh but it was accepted that this simply disappeared from first gear within a year: “They all do that,” was the supine excuse. To avoid crunching the cogs one learnt a macho procedure called double-declutching afterwards boasting about it in pubs.

But that wasn’t the only fault. The car was four or five years old which meant its crude pushrod engine was probably a prewar design. Certainly the lubrication system was close to total loss. Something weird happened to the cream paint-job which turned a dull matt, traced with ineradicable crazing. The squab broke away from the driver’s seat and the strut linking the top of a rear shock-absorber detached itself on a holiday in Scotland.

In an era of rotten UK cars this was as bad as any, typical of the hopelessness of British Motor Corporation which became British Leyland which became Rover which disappeared like first-gear synchromesh. Only the Mini, now made by BMW, survives. I am not a nationalist nor, lord love us, a patriot but I am susceptible to the country’s failings. The Austin Cambridge depressed me then as it depresses me now. In the above picture someone is happily driving a restored Cambridge. I hope he doesn’t see it as a “classic”.

Windows dumbs down

Changing from Windows 98 to XP was like sliding back a couple of years at primary school. Words reverted to pictures. The trend continues with Windows 7.

Start (bottom left), which misleadingly hid Stop, has been scrubbed and literalists may now click on a globe icon and delight in an unequivocal Switch Off.

Right-clicking Create Shortcut is not always available. Instead it’s Send To > Desktop, More logical, of course, once you know.

The former Control Panel option of Add/Remove Software, which I always thought required an initial act of faith, is to be found under the blandly titled Programs and Features. Right-clicking on the listed program gives Uninstall.

Sentimentalists will mourn the passing of the egg-timer as they wait for things to happen; a rotating silver ring doesn’t have the same charm.

But perhaps the best change is the execution of the obscurely titled Outlook Express (which I always renamed Email) and its re-emergence as Windows Live Mail. What took them so long?

There’s a brutalist intervention in Solitaire. When no further moves are possible Windows tells you so.

CHICKEN MECHANIC I wrote the above while waiting for a repair to my car at Winner Garages at the aptly named Forest of Dean town, Cinderford. An interesting fault. At precisely 81 mph a high-speed flapping, almost a chatter, announced itself. How did law-abiding BB become aware of this? In France, of course, where 81 mph is more or less the autoroute maximum of 130 kph. The receptionist told me quite sturdily that the mechanic was not prepared to road-test the noise. However, he did find a loose undertray at the rear and it remains for me to find a bit of motorway and check the repair.

Still trying to keep the faith

Julia suggests a bloggish tug-of-war in my noggin: one side says “technology”, the other says “rhyme”. Very perceptive if not quite true. For even posts about camshafts and food processors require some imagination and my limited supply is being siphoned off into more effete or society-climbing projects. But I do still like things that do things.
SHOULD YOU GILD THE, ER, DANDELION? A moral question for Avus. Walking to the supermarket I was overtaken by that curious contradiction, a Volvo sports car. Uninventively called the P1800 it had mild exposure in a TV series called The Saint and was long ago dropped by the Swedish company which went on to concentrate on labrador carriers. This one had been, as they say, “lovingly restored”. Ah, but had it? It rode on wheels much wider than usual (to take modern tyres) and the tight smooth engine note suggested serious transplant surgery. Is this a pragmatic attitude towards boneshakers or a betrayal of Volvo’s admittedly etiolated design principles?

BETTER THAN SEX? A neighbour has decided to remove a hedge - Mrs BB thinks it’s laurel and I have to accept this - on a strip of land adjacent to the pavement. As I passed a man was manipulating a Manitou Telehandler (substitute a chain and a hook for the forks on the inset pic). Surely a steam-hammer to crack a walnut? The guy at the controls laughed. The Manitou happened to be available in his equipment yard. Most of the work consisted of chopping off branches. But then came that blissful moment when he wrenched out the roots with a device many times superior to the task it faced. Engineer’s porn.

Improvements need to be bought

Dateline: 28/4/10. Cinderford, Gloucs. Freed from pounding out the novel I return to my roots. The comments will fall away but I took up blogging to fill in a techno-void. Rhyming couplets are OK but nuts and bolts hold things together.

My four-year-old car is here at Winner’s Garage for only its second scheduled service which will cost at least £800 (actually £768.83). There’s nothing wrong but they’ll be replacing the cam-belt (the cogged strip that snakes round the gears in the pic) which means pulling the front of the engine to bits.

The belt drives the camshaft which opens and closes the valves to admit fuel and allow exhaust fumes to escape. In olden times (still the case with some large US engines) the shaft was buried in the engine and valve contact was by rackety push-rods. Now the shaft sits on top of the cylinder and is rotated via a plastic belt. Much more precise, greater engine efficiency, but at a price. Over time the belt stretches and the tensioners no longer tension. Left to its own devices the belt may slip a cog or break, a valve no longer synchronised touches the piston and excessive derangement ensues. A replacement engine for my car costs over £2000.

Nothing comes for nothing. An overhead cam engine is a great improvement on a push-rod engine but plastic belts don’t last for ever; similarly with chain drives. Sounds like a conspiracy, doesn’t it? Meanwhile the world waits for an eternal belt.

Stop being cruel to cars

At 11 pm the car in the centre of the car park was a wedding cake decoration. I scritched the windscreen, the driver and passenger windows, the wing mirrors. The rear window was hard iced and beyond me. The engine had been running and I got inside to fiddle with the heater knobs. But the inter-reacting system had a mind of its own and, without any direct instruction, blew the whole of the warm air output against the windscreen. After a few minutes I drove away safely.

During cold spells some do this every morning. It wastes time, the starter works harder against the thickened engine oil and the battery loses efficiency in sub-zero weather. Some people have no garage. But most on our estate do have garages which they fill with cardboard boxes, mowers, superfluous furniture, ladders and detritus. A car costing £20,000 sits outside and junk worth less than £1000 is sheltered. Cold bums too.

MAESTRO Last night he got a standing ovation and Brummies are stingy with those. He’d just played the Emperor, and made me think I was hearing it for the first time. The Berlin Staatskapelle was as much a virtuoso instrument as his piano. But half an hour beforehand he’d conducted Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht. Now he was at the keyboard.

It’s one thing to do this with Mozart. Beethoven demands large and varying forces and from the piano the gestures must be unequivocal. He plunged into that initial chord as if entering a swimming pool, later he was a passenger in a motorcycle-sidecar race. He flicked his tails back and, as part of the same curving move, descended delicately on to the keys. The slow movement, always the test, was pure soul. He encored a Chopin Nocturne and the orchestra, now at rest, listened with self-evident and rapt pleasure. Daniel Barenboim’s day at the office.

Novel progress 1/2/10. Ch. 13: 4370 words. Chs. 1 - 12: 52,579 words. Comments: Clare rampant.

And now for something unseasonal

Betrayal is a handy domestic concept and I delight in its nuances.

CAR MANUFACTURER I favoured German cars: several VWs, an Audi coupé, a BMW 3-series. When I retired I bought a VW Passat diesel station wagon, believing it would be economical and would last for ever. A rust bubble developed on the A-pillar within the warranty and I took it in. Had I replaced the windscreen (US: windshield)? I was asked. Yes. Then that invalidated the bodywork warranty. Even though VW do not install windscreens and might well have used the same specialist I did. My next four cars were Japanese. Finally I returned to VW but not those arrogant swine in Wolfsburg, rather to a foreign subsidiary.

JOURNALISTIC ACQUAINTANCE Invited to dinner he arrived saying he hadn’t brought wine because he hadn’t passed an off-licence. He’d passed three. The excuse entered the family pantheon of character-defining phrases. He invited us to a vegetarian dinner and gave us sprout somosas, suggesting Mrs BB cook her famous Beef Wellington for his return. But the camel’s back-breaker occurred after a few moments’ reflection: he never initiated conversation, only reacted tiredly. I made it known, through a third-party, I’d had enough of him. He pleaded to be rehabilitated for several years. In vain.

MY DAUGHTERS A judgement both were capable of: “Dad I saw a super film/heard a pop tune/etc, last night. It was really good.” BB: “How good was it?” Daughter: “Really good.” BB (with increasing sternness): “How good?” To describe an enjoyable experience casually is to betray its value. Both daughters still use “really” but preceded with the faintest of pauses.

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Note for Plutarch. I was given Carol Duffy's poems, Rapture, for Christmas, the first time I have ever warranted poetry as a gift. How can this be?

Novel progress 2/1/10. Ch. 10: 1285 words. Chs. 1 - 9: 41,171 words. Comments: Hatch now more fun again.

Are we all born to lead?

Industrial efficiency reaches its zenith on a car production line. Robots move heavy objects, spot-weld body parts and spray-paint the body, pneumatic wrenches are set to to tighten nuts and bolts exactly, components come in small batches (“just-in-time”) to eliminate inventory problems, the car body is raised and lowered automatically to prevent line workers suffering back strain. But there’s a price: mind-numbing repetitive work for the humans. Can the price be reduced?

Volvo has a small plant where teams of four assemble wheels and tyres in the correct sequence of sizes and colours for four daily deliveries to the main production line. The tasks involved in this work are rotated to create interest and the position of Team Leader is also rotated after a set period. Trust the Swedes. Except that some people don’t want to be Team Leader. What’s the solution? Better education, or may some people be hard-wired to reject that form of responsibility?

Prezzies from Prague. Because of restrictions about fluids at the airport check-in the beer had to be bought in the duty-free. It’s a dark and I’m hoping the super-beer-knowledgeable RW (zS) will be able to tell me whether I’m in for an enjoyable experience or not. The Salami Minis (now a distant memory) were real hotsy-totsies and thereby delicious. And label on the peanuts – Clever – made them irresistible.

Novel progress 22-23/12/09. Ch. 8: 4094 words (finished but not edited). Chs. 1 - 7: 33,000 words. Comments: Over past three days suffered a small attack of writer's block, the most boring malady known to man. Discovered a cure, wrote through afternoon then returned to the keyboard at 1 am and worked until 2.45.

Horrible to die in Indiana

Recently I mentioned my four near-death experiences but forgot the fifth. I was en route from Pittsburgh to Wheaton, Illinois, (25 miles west of Chicago) accompanied by a Pittsburgh colleague who had, in retrospect, a terrifying theory. Expressways, thru-ways, and interstates are less crowded in the early hours so why not drive then? By 3 am we were reduced to 30-minute stints to ensure one of us didn't just give up the ghost and fall asleep at the wheel.

What did wake us up was a loud bang at about 80 mph. I knew enough not to jump on the brakes and it seemed to take quarter-of-a-mile to come to a halt. Distant inspection revealed flames licking a burst rear tyre above which was the fuel tank.

The sequel to this is dull I'm afraid but relates to something many ignore. Given I was lucky it was a rear and not a front tyre I take tyre checks quite seriously. Especially on our long journey through France to the Languedoc villa. Because the load changes from our normal two persons to five the recommended tyre pressure rises significantly from 33 psi to 42 psi. And because garage gauges are often defective I have become a connoisseur of the portable variety.

The traditional silver one pushes a piston and needs to be positioned carefully; it's also worth having several goes. The one with a digital read-out is difficult to mate with the valve but is more accurate. The tubey-dialish one has yet to be used but I have great hopes. Dull, I know, but then it's so yesterday to cartwheel over the Armco.

Novel progress 27/11/09. Ch. 5: 6932 words (Read. Satisfied.) Chs. 1 - 4: 15,288 words. Comment: A grand improbable love story (not Hatch for now) rises and topples over.

Why was he born at all?

I’ve had four near-death experiences. Technology was significant in three; absence of technology caused the fourth.
CLOSE KISS ONE Aged six or seven, I caught meningitis. Previously it would have been the Kiss of Death or being left as a vegetable, preferably not an aubergine. Luckily M&B sulfanilamide had just been invented and I lived on, my mental capacities only slightly diminished. Before, I was on course to be a genius.
CLOSE KISS TWO Unable to cure my athlete’s foot, the RAF flew me back from Singapore to Blighty as a CASEVAC (casualty evacuation). We took off in heavy rain from Negombo in what was then Ceylon. At a point close to no-return the pilot knew we weren’t going to make it and slammed on the brakes. The jungle loomed. This was 1957 when planes crashed a lot.
CLOSE KISS THREE Riding my motorbike down a steep hill, with the whole of my LP collection stuffed in the front of my raincoat, I met a car (the make of which I shamefully cannot recall) across the road, hit it amidships, somersaulted over the top, and not an LP was scratched.
CLOSE KISS FOUR I embarked on a solo ascent of a route called Fairy Steps (rated Very Difficult) which I had climbed before. A flake of rock weighing perhaps a ton and which had supported many other climbers over decades, broke off, broke in two and fell with my unroped body into a narrow gulley to form a Bonden sandwich.

OBSERVATIONS (1) No previous-life flashes. (2) No curses. (3) No Arghhhh. (4) I was being saved to write this blog.

PS: My brother, having read this post, sent me a photo of the Fairy Steps climb before the I unwittingly modified the route.

An ageist bike and a new mag

I drive an old man’s car – ie, with an automatic gearbox. However it is a car for old men who appreciate technology. The auto-box is light-years away from the power-hungry “slush pumps” of yesteryear and incorporates two conventional clutches which ensure very speedy changes up and down the six gears. If I flick the lever sideways I can change (and hold) gears manually, useful when travelling down steep winding roads.

Amazingly Honda now offer such a box for their heavier touring bikes. I admire Honda but this may be a step too far. An important feature of bike-riding, apart from a willingness to fall off every now and then, is the speed and ease with which one can change gear. A veritably sensual experience which even old men should not be denied. I foresee a mouth-foaming reaction from one biker who isn’t even old – Avus, are you there?

NEW TITLE Wired is a successful American magazine devoted to technology (plus Ideas, Culture, Business, according to the strapline). Now there’s a UK edition which, most recently, tests slim laptops, the ultimate chair, and “lawn mowers vs. sheep”. Major features include the search for dark matter, the physics of skateboarding, trials riding and free running, and an explanation of synthetic biology. Another major feature – which I avoided – explored Richard Branson’s greenness.

I like it because it slots in underneath pure science for which I lack the education. But I worry about its sustainability. The emphasis is cutting edge and I’m not sure there’s enough of that to go around. I hope it doesn’t lurch into history or repetition. A Christmas present?

Technology the spur

Mrs BB’s birthday card to me had two people staring at the heavens and was captioned: “Do you think there’s somewhere up there where they don’t play football?” She knows my antipathies. Mind you I expect to be – and am - attacked for my sports interests, especially F1. The cars are noisy and just go round and round, I’m told. I say if the technology is of no interest forget it.

Raikkonen won the Belgian Grand Prix yesterday because of technology. Despite having a Ferrari that was only intermittently faster than Fisichella’s Force India he picked his moment, pressed the Kers button and went into the lead. Kers converts and stores waste energy produced by applying the brakes and is available for 6 – 7 seconds a lap.

Fisichella didn’t have Kers. Why not? Because of the laws of physics. Kers weighs about 30 kg, a huge addition to the overall weight of a racing car. Not everyone has been able to balance that equation. It’s far easier to watch a Guatamalan kick a ball about and, occasionally, kick a Ghanaian. No technology in that.

PROOF POSITIVE Lucy, faced with some fence painting, suggested I should do a comparison test on Cuprinol and its competitors. This photograph of our shed is one reason why I am the kettle and the pot.

MUM’S LIST Other phrases used by my mum keep on returning. “Giving backword” means reneging on something previously agreed. I use it without explanation; most people find it self-explanatory.

It's not all lolling in the pool

Final despatches from Villa Bonden.

FLYPAPERS Deadly but disgusting. My daughter’s idea. Afterwards she mentioned she had taken photos of three papers full to capacity. Did I want to post them or would I run the risk of the blog attracting a warning as in the early days when I posted an ambiguous piece about handguns? So, no flies. Does the RSPCA have a policy on flypapers?
DSG GEARBOX One of the natural wonders of the area is the Circuit de Navacelles, a huge ragged cirque of rock with a terrifyingly winding and narrow road down to valley level. A perfect application for my car’s DSG gearbox – a six-speed auto with the option to switch to clutchless manual changes. The technique: hold third speed for the 75 m “straights” and flick into second for the hairpin bends. Needs practice, though.
NIGHT SKY At about 11 pm, during our evening ingestions of rosé, what we had previously thought to be a sun-reflecting satellite traversing the night sky was in fact a space station. A satellite would be too small to be seen, we were told by an expert.
BARBECUE My technique has always been to keep on spraying the charcoal with spirit-based fuel until the charcoal submits and agrees to light up. The preferred inflammable in France is a form of gel which works better. A first for me but no doubt it’s been around for decades.
SMOKE ALARM Started screeching and wouldn’t stop. Our son-in-law diagnosed the fault as a failing battery, something which doctors might have said to be “contra-indicated”. He was right though.

The US car - a key to culture

Recent transatlantic exchanges have induced an Americo-nostalgia for the car life we enjoyed there. Our VW station wagon was called a Variant in the UK and – possibly because Variant might be misread as Deviant - a Squareback in the US. It was used, among other things, for the 600-plus mile drive from Pittsburgh to stay with friends in Massachusetts.

Rather than take the narrow, dangerously curvaceous, elderly Pennsylvania Expressway we drove north to the Interstate which passed through comparatively wild scenery. Once Mrs BB spotted a bear; more gruesomely we came across a dead deer with a car, 150 yards away, in hardly any better condition than the deer.

The Squareback cost $5 to fill up which now seems unbelievable. We were guided by well-detailed state maps free from the oil companies. With its engine located virtually above the back wheels, the car was much steadier in snow than, say, a Chevy Impala.

The VW was a vital cultural tool. Some nights we drove perhaps 50 miles to a drive-in movie theatre where more than one feature was shown and I regret we never took advantage of The All-Night Spookathon - Free Doughnut at Dawn. Our two daughters would watch the first movie which had a general rating. Valiantly our elder daughter would try to remain awake for the more adult second movie (“Catch 22” comes to mind) but would flake out into a bed made up in the back with the rear seats folded away.

Sound from the movie came from a box wired to a post and hung on the inside of the car door. It was advisable to replace the box on its post before driving away.