One reason, at least, for crossing la Manche

I say I’m a Francophile but I’m not really. I couldn’t take Pelléas et Mélisande seriously. Or French pop. Or Loire red wines. Or Georges Perec. Or Président Elevator Heels. Or French cars (Buy one in the UK; turn the ignition key; see the value depreciate 20%). Or accept that the Paris périphérique is suitable for vehicles. Or agree that autoroute lasagne is edible. Or manage the opening hours. Or not shudder in the gendarmerie seeing the Wanted poster with faces obliterated by diagonal red crosses.

Which still leaves much to enjoy. Before the Brittany flight Mrs BB and I drove to Trégastel, on the north coast where the BBs and the Plutarchs spent a mid-seventies holiday. Where the torrent roar'd, and we did buffet it with lusty sinews, throwing it aside, and stemming it with hearts of controversy. Where, having pigged out on mixed metaphors, we climbed a rock face at the eastern arm of the bay.

This year, using the table d’orientation I discovered the rock was called Pointe du Valet. Puckishly I turned to an adjacent Frenchman: Did “valet” have another meaning in French, I asked. Not as far as he knew. Then why identify a geographical feature as a domestic servant? Wasn’t that bizarre? “Why, monsieur, should it not have a bizarre name?” he said. One reason straight off for being francophile.

MEMENTO MORI A family visit on Saturday. Granddaughter Ysabelle (21) had thought a lot about death recently. Good – it’s more interesting than soccer. Y’s mum, Occasional Speeder, said she too had pondered death. Suppose I (ie, BB) died; would readers worry if Works Well didn’t appear? Not as long as Plutarch didn’t die simultaneously, I said

No pictures, but you'll understand why

Two strange occurrences.

WE LIVE in a suburb with two community halls. One has seen much administrative turmoil which led to angry emails on the local website I used to run. Very angry indeed. Latterly things have been quieter.

Mrs BB. “I met X (Chair of the committee running the disturbed hall) today. I’m told the hall is to be exorcised.”

BB (Recently started writing a psychologically adventurous novel). “What was X’s demeanour when telling you this?”

Mrs BB “Confidential.”

BB (Ponders if there’s a place for this in the new novel. Decides not.). “Does exorcism cost a lot?”

Mrs BB “It’s free. But clerics don’t like getting drawn in.”

BB (Interior dialogue: Novel? Nah! Works Well? Perhaps)

RETURNING from Brittany we stayed the night in a town in Northern France which accommodates the French outlet of The Wine Society, a British organisation which absorbs much of my disposable income. I intended to buy good expensive wine duty-free.

The hotel was chosen via a guide I have used for decades and which is ultra-reliable. But there is always an exception. The hotel was scruffy, the patronne abrupt, the bedroom tiny. Also The Wine Society had moved to another town.

I was lying on my bed reading and rolled over on to my side. A heavyish “thing” slid under my shirt, down from my chest to my waist. I stood up, shook out my shirt, then looked on the floor. Nothing. Later, with the light on, I discovered a recently dead mouse. It looked incredibly poignant. I laid it on the outside window sill.

A better window on the world

Because cataract operations are performed under local anaesthetic in Asian railway waiting rooms they are sometimes pooh-poohed as minor surgery. But it only requires a 20-word description of the procedure (which I am choosing to omit here) to emphasise how audacious – and thereby horrific – they truly are.

As a follow-up to earlier eye surgery, already mentioned, Mrs BB submitted to cataract removal from her left eye yesterday. Her experiences as a state registered nurse in the fifties and sixties increased rather than reduced her apprehensions about surgery and I was impressed by her stoicism, given her fearfulness towards dentistry.

The passage of time favoured her. During training she worked in an eye unit and then the operation (on both eyes) took an hour followed by ten days of immobility. On Monday she had a choice of music (refused) and was back with me in the waiting room in fifteen minutes. A face mask prevented her better right eye from following what was going on inches away – for which much thanks. One of Mrs BB’s jobs during training was to hold the patient’s hand in the theatre; this time someone held hers.

That isn’t the end of the matter, alas, since a further operation will be necessary on the right eye, again followed by cataract removal. But she is reasonably sanguine about this and it was cheering last night to see her reading the Kindle, albeit with the type size wound up.

As we got the paper this morning we reflected on this twentieth century marvel: a procedure so quick and so simple (in surgical terms, anyway) that thousands, if not millions, of poor folk who would previously have had to accept blindness, now see. No miracle needed.

This is about rhyming, not warfare

Time for a feuilleton (writing genre that allows for much journalistic freedom as far as content, composition and style are concerned – Wikipedia.) on my verruca.

Verrucas, like backside boils, hernias, kidney stones and ingrowing toe-nails carry no social cachet and very little literary potential. They lurk, infect other feet and are hard to get rid of. The word sounds faintly risible (perhaps because it rhymes with bazooka) but it is Latin and preferable to its English translation – wart. There is one bonus; in making this admission there is no way anyone can accuse me of advancing myself aesthetically, intellectually or socially. A man with a verruca is without doubt diminished, commonplace and unlikely to be asked to parties.

During and after the Brittany flight (qv) I talked freely but there was one subject I held back on. You may be able to guess what this was.

Treating a verruca is a right royal pain, especially if you’re fat. When Rupert Murdoch appeared before the select committee to utter monosyllables about phone hacking he said it was the humblest day of his life. Me, I just thought about my verruca.

Apart from filing the surrounding skin and immersion in boiling water one covers the verruca with a transparent paste which smells (entrancingly I must admit) like the glue for model aeroplanes. After a month I am told it will drop out of my foot like an upside-down mushroom. Can’t wait.

Why all this? Having regularly majored in self-aggrandisement I thought I’d try out humility but that got lost in the wash. Verruca is hard to spell and that displaced being humble. Cromwell, sitting for his portrait, told the painter to do it “warts and all”. Like The Great Commoner I do have other defects.

Beware the acne'd Northerner

Apropos nothing Rouchswalwe disapproves of computer dating. And I have a little story.

My adolescence was a mess and I howled at the moon a lot. My worried mother – off her own bat – enrolled me in an international male/female pen-pals scheme, a written precursor to RW’s antipathy. Surely, my mother thought, there was one young woman in the world who could convince me that being male was bearable.

It sort of worked. A trainee teacher from Essex sent a photo with a gentle note (“I should add I normally wear glasses.”), we corresponded and I met her on a couple of visits to London. The second time I was so horribly rude I cringe at the memory. If in the afterlife forgiveness is possible, she will be my first supplicatee. I devoutly hope she married a millionaire and now owns Madagascar.

Typical male crassness, but Jahway was lurking. I tried another pen-pal and received a photo of a handsomely brutal woman in Johannesburg. I sent off a photo, discreetly chosen to hide my acne, and she immediately broke off the correspondence.

Johannesburg was merely a deep wound. Essex was different. I wasn’t then ashamed of my behaviour - that feeling grew with time. Rather I regarded myself a poltroon trawling such a system. I became adult (I hope) by moving from Bradford to London and quickly meeting Miss T who became Mrs BB.

What is inexplicable is that while still yearning, futilely, for a woman’s company I was able to act so badly when temporarily granted this blessing. Does this deserve discussion?

CHEERIER NOTE I’m told I won an unofficial award for responding to others’ blogs. Does anyone know from whom? Or is Jahway at work again?

I pay Denplan so should I suffer?

Yesterday I reflected on the nature of pain. Rachel’s a hygienist and, no doubt at all, her grinding, poking and scratching hurts. But how much? The worst pain I ever felt was a bout of sciatica, closely followed by the aftermath of dislocating my shoulder and cracking the scapula while ski-ing. Being de-plaqued wasn’t in that league and, in any case, the pain was different. Having to remain passive (Bad form, old man, to wriggle.) was one difference. Another was the inescapable belief that the pain could get worse at any moment. That Rachel’s wretched ironmongery would break through the tooth, mince up the nerve and send me into outer space.

Interesting, that. Apprehension and pain are, in effect, the same sensation.

Afterwards I was slapped on the wrist for not using an electric toothbrush. It’s the rotary motion that counts. Mrs BB has one so I bought my own brush-head at Tesco. The brush motor has a two-minute timer to keep you at it and I have to say two minutes is close to eternity.

Before she went electrical Mrs BB – whose views on dentistry constitute the most private and irrational aspect of her life I’m aware of – used to sing a song in her head which lasted exactly two minutes. A mantra to keep Rachel at bay. Emerging this morning from my little Calvary in the en suite I asked Mrs BB what the song was. She refused to say. I wasn’t entirely surprised.

Yesterday included a check-up by the real dentist, a willowy blonde whose friendliness is a bit too synthetic. She felt my lymph glands and asked me to do suggestive things with my tongue. But there is no eroticism in the dentist’s chair.

Sad when you think of his wasted life

HOW I BECAME A HACK Part two. After two years as tea boy (Part one) I became a junior reporter at a district office serving morning, evening and (mostly) weekly papers. Picking up:

Shorthand. (Above) Chrysanthemum and herbaceous border in Pitman. A 1000-word article based on a chrysanthemum society techno-talk demands shorthand. Memory alone is inadequate and dangerous. I had 100 wpm certificate, could write 120 wpm but bad handwriting meant bad shorthand. Later, shorthand hindered my writing ability. Shorthand recorded what was said not what was done; this inhibited comment and imagination.

Interviewing. Haphazard, self-taught: uneducated youth struggling in adult-dominated society. Teaching oneself to ask: Your husband was killed today in car crash, what school did he go to?

Understanding institutions. Meetings of special-interest groups, local councils, governing bodies of churches, etc, follow patterns. Certain events within a pattern are newsworthy, others not. Vital to understand patterns of procedure at courts-at-law. Contempt of Court provisions permit unlimited punishment for unwary.

Typing. Self-taught with high level of motivation. Guideline: ability to write 1000-word article in one hour on to typewriter from scratch.

Writing style. Theoretically unimportant since articles were formulaic. However, a better style might catch the eye of someone important. Other reasons: pride and cuttings book.

What is news? Overrated judgment picked up by almost everyone after two weeks in journalism. Definition: a tiny exception in a dross pile of the expected. Sometimes a fact; more often something said. Recognition tip: newsworthy stuff comes with its own implicit headline.

Endurance. Sixty-hour weeks common. Social life so fragmented I drank during brief interstices as my only hobby. Avoiding clichés, I became one.

Part three. Learning to write

Colours and smells from my hinterland

Washing-up liquid has to be green. Not blue nor – worst of all – orange. I confess I’m clay in the hands of the advertisers: green is whispering pine trees and not industrial chemicals. But there’s another, virtually primordial, influence. At age six, when these things mattered, green became my favourite colour. A lightly taken decision I have never escaped.

Twenty years ago we bought cocoanut-scented soap in Haut. Lompnes, a French mountain town, a cité sanitaire peopled entirely by invalids. The delicate and subtle scent proved an aid to washing my face which I’m otherwise not disposed to do. The subtlety has never been duplicated. Today I used cocoanut soap from The Body Shop. Not the same.

Maclean toothpaste once had a tingly taste hinting at the stuff women use to remove nail varnish. Probably toxic. My preferred poison. Then Maclean entered the Bland Corral and teeth-cleaning became a burden. Sensodyne is the dentist’s recommendation. Blah!

Swarfega is flurorescent green, seductively slimy, has the sharp manly smell of a refinery’s backside and cleans engine oil from your hands. Unaffected by fashion but I don’t get my hands oily these days.

Pungent and earthy Vim was a grey powder which came in a cardboard tube. Add water and you could grind lacquered stains off aluminium pans. Perfect for my Gran who loved elbow-grease jobs. Mrs BB thinks Vim gave way to Ajax. This evokes a couplet from She’s Only a Bird in a Gilded Cage modified by Elder Daughter:

It’s sad when you think of her wasted life,
For youth doesn’t mix with Ajax.

Cue for giggles.

How my hair finally caught up

A woman emerges from a hair salon having chosen her appearance from ten different variants; I go in unkempt and slink out as Magwitch. I could spend more money but being tended cosmetically resonates uncomfortably with my northern upbringing. Now I have no public life there are, I note, alternatives - states beyond unkempt: shaggy leading to wild leading to Dionysian.

Mrs BB you might have thought would resist visiting Tesco with a saluki. Interestingly, she’s ambivalent. Although hard on food-encrusted trousers and shirts worn longer than a week, I can’t recall her ever insisting I have my hair cut.

Once while I was still employed my lady hairdresser asked if I’d consider lending her my head as a model in a hair-stylist’s competition. The idea appalled me. I am self-regarding but not that way. Allowing nature to take its course is another matter.

For, resembling Cookie Monster, I must act the part. I stopped combing months ago since a cultivated head of hair misses the point. How then should I adjust my behaviour to match the burst cushion above. A louder voice? The Ancient Mariner’s eye? Active manipulation of a little learning?

Or none of these? Examining this rustic version in the shaving mirror I made a surprising discovery. My uncontrolled hair has merely caught up with the person I already am! It was those periods of short back and sides that were out-of-synch. What’s more my greatest roles – as Lear, as Blake’s Nebuchadnezzar, as Tolstoy (the sartorial exemplar) – are all tantalisingly imminent. I am hairier, therefore I am.

THE LOVE PROBLEM 56,434 words. It is shockingly difficult to capture the first fragile, virtually imperceptible, step towards loving someone. A thousand words at least will need to be rewritten.

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.

Differentiated

Another funeral. Dear Ivy, quick-witted wife of quick-witted Dennis, both born in London, in their eighties, running conversational rings round lumbering Herefordians. And for that matter West Riding Tykes.

As I remove my funeral shirt, a button pops off. Mrs BB offers to sew it on but I stay her hand. She uses single thread whereas I use double, a practice adopted in the RAF where security was the watchword. We differ in other ways.

SEQUENCE Since 1966 (ie, in the USA) Saturday dinner has nearly always consisted of a hamburger with a baked potato. An unspoken celebration of a different era though toast has now replaced the bun. Mrs BB eats the burger first then spoons out the spud’s guts. I knife-and-fork the potato, skin and all, then treatfully eat the burger.

THIRST A sandy “guzzard” (courtesy Elder Daughter) at 3 am? Mrs BB slakes it from a glass on the bedside table. I stumble downstairs and swig from chilled fizz in the fridge.

MUSSELS Done marinière Mrs BB could eat a stone (ie, 14 lb). I like them but six is enough. The ratio’s the same for rollmops.

RED/WHITE Unaccompanied, Mrs BB would default to red wine all the time. I’m more AC/DC. Stealthy opening of expensive white Burgundy by me is turning the tide.

IN FRANCE I rush into impromptu conversation with natives. Mrs BB would rather open her veins.

SOCIAL PESTS Mrs BB simply lies. I lurch into embarrassingly constructed half-truths and am punished afterwards by Mrs BB.

LIBRARY The fiction shelves are her oyster as, once, they were mine. Now it’s non-fiction if at all; I prefer to buy.

DENTIST Mrs BB’s ante-chamber to hell. I chat.

TRANSPORT Given her “druthers” (Courtesy Pittsburgh mates) she prefers the bus. The car for me.

Being a bus is better than being a tram

Plutarch raises a wonderful subject: changing one’s mind. We’re defined by this, defined too if it never happens. What was your most significant volte face and dare you admit it? First some ground rules.

Mind-changes must not be self-serving. Loving pop music for forty years and suddenly switching to Scarlatti won’t do. Though vice versa might. Being intransigent during youth and becoming tolerant in old age is just a way of saying: look how adult I am. Changeover should ideally involve a price paid, a hint of disadvantage.

My early life was apolitical, then journalism took me leftwards, hating the right-wing ethos and its practitioners. Now I reluctantly identify a few admirable Tories, people of principle. Chris Patten for instance. But hardly a Damascene moment.

As a young journalist I accepted praise and criticism unthinkingly. Only in middle age did I recognise my careless and flashy writing and that I’d never tried to improve things. Twenty-odd years wasted. But, as a revelation, meaningless to an outsider.

Changing one’s mind can highlight regret. I never got on with my father, but came much closer to him during his final illness. This wasn’t theoretical, my new feelings for him were genuine emotions. Earlier I was ill-informed, callow.

During the last decade a hard-held opinion has gone into reverse. Ironically, this blog is the last place I can discuss it – too dangerous. Must ask Plutarch. Hope any commenters are less chicken-hearted.

THE NOVEL Ch. 1 5577 words, Ch. 2 (unfinished) 5104 words. February 8 2010. Last week I celebrated the exhilaration of motorbikes. Bikes, skis, rock-climbing, mid distance swimming are in the past. But an unexpected and lengthy twist in Ch. 2 left me with the same endorphin flow. Affirmation.

Oh oh, it's second childhood time again

Sensual or sensuous? My dictionary distinguishes. The more common sensual carries “overtones of sexual desire and pleasure”, the more neutral sensuous covers an appeal “to the senses but without the feeling of self-indulgence and sexiness”. My personal mnemonic will now be a Guardian reader and a Daily Mail reader.

So let’s have examples. Sensual taste (boiled bacon with parsley sauce), smell (Wright’s Coal Tar Soap), sound (Kirsty Young saying anything), touch (my fake silk – but uncrushable – shirt from Exact Tailoring Services), sight (Port Underwood, NZ South Island, at dawn).

We’re missing one sense: movement, not seen but experienced. Alas it’s not available to all, regarded as too terrifying, too vulgar, too laddish. But motorbike riding is right up there. For those who have only driven cars there is a comparative metaphor which, I fear, hinges on birth control methods.

Steering a car is banal: turn the wheel left and you go left, fumble that stick thing and the gearbox responds – in its own good time. With a bike, steering is closer to thinking: in both meanings of the word (ie, leaning and tending to) you incline yourself towards passage through a corner. The foot flicks, the gears change. More speed? You’ve got it. You’re part of cold, real nature. There’s risk and perhaps foolishness; but have you never willingly made a fool of yourself? Definitely sensual.

PUZZLE On November 5 I mentioned a TV programme in which a beautiful woman analysed self-portraits by famous artists. The woman’s beauty proved integral to the programme and I explored this, clumsily, badly. The title of the post was obscure and there were five comments, one of them mine. Stats reveal this has since attracted 43 pageviews. What’s going on out there?

Winter's little science lesson

This winter’s low temperatures allowed us to appreciate the Second Law of Thermodynamics (“That you can't pass heat from the cooler to the hotter”- Flanders and Swann). Chez Bonden is only twelve years old but the insulation codes were never framed for the minus teens.

Night after night the furnace’s thermostat overrode the timer to ensure we didn’t freeze our little asses off. Forcing me to turn off two major downstairs radiators at night since they were clearly wasting money. Alone, we closed all interior doors but visits from grandson Zach undermined this.

Two weak points. Heat poured out through the front door letter-slot despite the box which brother Sir Hugh created and installed. Far worse were the dining room French windows. Although double-glazed they offer token protection compared with the triple glazing I noticed on a visit to Sweden where the glass spacing was twice that of mine. The ad hoc solution was to keep the full-length curtains pulled to. Very effective although there was a sense of the Miss Havishams as we gloomily lunched.

I envisage a couple of small tasks in April. For the man I call in, of course.

BETTER IN 2011? The surgeon’s knife struck three times during 2010, annulling the family-wide dinner marking my seventy-fifth and, later, our golden wedding celebrations. After an early hiccup Mrs BB’s sight is back to where it was and a couple of days ago I got this email from Younger Daughter (Occasional Speeder): Went to see consultant yesterday. Had lovely internal examination and lots of prodding and poking. All worth it as absolutely nothing there “Consider yourself cured” he said and I banged my head against the x ray display machine in happiness

Change and decay - not all bad

The one form of headgear I can accept: Breton marine cap (or its sibling worn by Rhine barge captains). Gift from Mrs BB.Great source of quaint lapel pins once awarded to pliant proletariat, now keenly priced for tourists

AGEING Evidence may be sudden and poignant. As when I heard trebles singing a descant to Adeste Fideles, a skill I lost sixty-five years ago. But it is, in the end, a balancing act.

Indent left: Former German chancellor, Helmut Schmidt

CAN’T: ● Regularly swim a mile in the pool. ● Ski. ● Go rock-climbing. ● Drink to excess. ● Eat to excess. ● Interest myself in most UK TV sitcoms. ● Sleep more than five hours a night. ● Pick up conversation in noisy environments. ● Endure the middle-classes en masse. ● Remain calm during conversation about soccer, pop music. ● Behave civilly to suspected Tories. ● Restrain myself from asking questions. ● Show enthusiasm for the Iberian peninsula. ● Fly long distance. ● Tolerate evangelists. ● Willingly regard the faces of Huw Edwards, Kevin Geary, Alex Ferguson, Sue Barker, George Osborne, Arianna Huffington, John Pilger ● Empathise plausibly with youth.

CAN: ● Feel untouched by many of the above. ● Compensate for not drinking to excess by buying expensive wine. ● Revel in shabby clothing. ● Take pleasure in academic accounts of history. ● Luxuriate in near silence. ● Respond to the appearance and songs of birds. ● Spend more without caring. ● Consider death unselfconsciously. ● Find myself becoming more generous (with cash). ● Imagine I understand maths and physics - and the structure of music. ● Write better. ● Ignore changes in the weather. ● Benefit from advanced car technology. ● Exercise curiosity about the nature of womanhood without being thought a menace.

The mower as a time machine

The sixth age shifts into a lean and slippered pantaloon…
… a world too wide for his shrunk shank.

Ageing isn’t just a withering of the body but a contraction of hope. Mundane detail also tells the story.

● The first pusher is second-hand: the blades are blunt and one wheel jams randomly, tearing the grass.
● The cheap, new pusher sheds its grass-box.
● The hoverer runs over its own cable.
● Engines are harder and harder to start. Recite: Lord protect me from small capacity IC power units.
● And thus the ride-on.
BUT
● You pay next-door’s kid to do the riding.

Does anyone know anyone who has chosen and paid for their own burial plot? Surely the act of a Virgoan (I am a Virgoan) keen to tie off all the loose ends.

MORE, ALAS, ON CHARITY I can be tickled into spreading my bread on the waters. Years ago I handed over my credit card to my younger daughter as she watched the first Band Aid do, a gesture that cost me twice over as the pro-gay Terence Higgins Trust sought to get in touch with me later and rang off every time Mrs BB picked up the phone.

Today The Guardian had a much subtler temptation. Donate to their chosen appeal (to help disadvantaged youth) and the call would be answered by a member of their editorial staff. I got Katherine Viner, the deputy editor, and we had a brief but nostalgic chat (for me) as she helped pare down my Visa. These days I live more in the past than the present even though my pantaloons are merely corduroy.

Those slightly disabled Swedes

This view from my study window has been Photoshopped to remove the washing line across the garden and an ugly street lamp. Click pic for greater grandeur.

In yet another BBC4 programme devoted to popularising science, a frenetic Swede set out last night to make me love statistics.

Many believe statistics is simply columns of figures. That’s data*. Statistics is data put to use – averaged out, for instance. Statistics tells us on average Swedes have 1.99 legs – reconciling the fact that some unfortunates have only one leg, or perhaps no legs, whereas none have three legs. “Thus we can say,” said the Scandinavian prophet, “that most Swedes have slightly less than two legs.”

But this was mere skittishness. Statistics is serious. It’s generally admitted that whatever suffering Florence Nightingale alleviated at Scutari wasn’t ultimately as important as the data she gathered and interpreted, proving that the so-called hospitals there were far more dangerous than the battle-field. Infection killed more than shells.

However it’s not history that’s astonishing, it’s the future. Google offers computerised translations of websites into seventy languages based on statistical analysis of language. Grammatical and syntactical rules aren’t good enough. Complex sentences in Swedish were uttered to Google’s research wonk who received them on his laptop which precisely and immediately translated them. The next step: mobile phones which allow users speaking in two different languages to hear the result in their native tongues.

Speaking as someone who has spent three decades wrestling with French I’m somewhat depressed.

* Yes, I know data is the plural of datum and I treated it accordingly while still working. But I now think it’s a lost cause.

The human equivalent of a farrier

ICY ENDURANCE EXPERIMENT (qv) This is now at an end. Mrs BB said she would refuse to speak to me if I continued.

SNIP, SCRAPE Chatting with dentists and doctors presents problems. But with chiropodists you’re paying, the prognosis is rarely fatal, and, hey, they’re down there and you’re up here. They’ve got to talk. And there’s that comical vocabulary: bunions, verruccas, corns - even seed corns.

My previous chiropodist did house calls but, slightly self-conscious, I entered the new one’s surgery (?) via the Beautonics façade. She used snips chunky enough to sever a power cable and didn’t care where the bits went. Chez Bonden that’s forbidden, Mrs BB insists each nail sliver must be accounted for. Putting down her snips the podiatrist (the words are interchangeable) picked up a scalpel; dimly I recalled the earlier foot-shaper using a modified potato peeler. I was told my memory was at fault.

Snips and scalpels are autoclaved after each session. Verruccas can be blasted cryogenically. I was told to anoint my feet with Vitamin E oil from Holland & Barrett. We talked about newspapers and I was asked to guess which she read. I got it wrong: not the Telegraph but the Saturday edition of The Times. I warned her about lining Murdoch’s pockets. Next time my questions will be more penetrating.

THE NEW NOVEL The central character, a woman, has a facial port-wine stain, naevus flammeus. Plot ideally emerges from factual detail. Perhaps while I lolled on the couch of chiropody a sub-plot-line occurred. Her boy-friend, a French aero-mechanic, is drawn to her by the disfigurement.

Whiling away the winter

Google-researching new novel. Progress so far:

TITLE (provisional) The Love Problem. TIME Now, especially re. Afghan war. HERO US-born woman with facial port-wine stain (PWS), commercial pilot in a small way, has left US (“No country for a woman with marred looks”) to live and work in SW France, near Biarritz. FIRST NAME She’s sexually straight but I need something slightly gender-ambiguous, hence (From Top Thousand US Women’s Names): Kristen, Karen, Robyn, Erin, Dana, Cass, Jodi, Jana, Reba. UPBRINGING Arizona, good flying state. Born/raised Flagstaff, town with decayed centre. Failed to make jet pilot with USAF; wonders about PWS. WILL MEET Divorced Brit, once making a living helping other Brits buy French homes, now on his beam ends. FIRST SCENE Driving US male pilot (who first suggested France to her) to airport as he flies back to work in US and leaves her alone.

AIMS: (1) Aspects of disfigurement, (2) … homesickness, (3) … US-France relations against Afghan war background - does French working-class favour what US is doing to Taliban.

MEANWHILE Break off to pick out Lady is a Tramp but can’t figure last eight notes of first eight bars. Email Julia who sends link to Sinatra plus note sequence:

That's -Why- the -La-dy - is - a tramp
D - D - Bflat-D-Bflat- D -Bflat

Doesn’t fit. But that’s because I’m in C-major and Old Blue-eyes is in Bflat. Start practising Bflat scale – hey, it’s nearly all black notes. Time to brave the snow; off to Birmingham for LVB pnop cto 4 and Mahler 4.

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.