Rawlplugs and curried eggs

While waiting for my wife to retire I did freelance journalism and cooked five Monday - Friday evening meals a week. But not the cooking Plutarch and Lucy regale their readers with. No touch-of-oregano moments. This was deterministic, alles im Ordnung cuisine run on DIY rules.

I created a repertoire: fourteen dishes in sequence so we ate each twice a month. For two years! Rule two: no deviation from the recipe. My wife made a casual suggestion for soup (two leeks, two carrots, two sticks of celery, stock from two Maggi Pot au Feu cubes, heated, blended) and that became the immutable – and only – prescription. A dangerous tactic since those stock cubes were only available in France at the time.

I ran into trouble. In converting a roux into white sauce I risked a nervous breakdown – every time. The possibility of lumps was the spectral equivalent of Original Sin. As a result my first four lasagnes were short of the interstitial white stuff. “Make more than you could ever imagine using,” I told myself even though it deviated from what was written.

The corned-beef hash called for allspice, a name that worried me. Was “all” everything or just one? An honour system required me to eschew curry powder and mix turmeric with all the rest. With widely varying results.

Just before my wife resumed her rightful position I added undesignated shrimps to the mashed potato of the fish pie. My only bid for improvisation. I am now retired twice over.

Patrons late in life

If assuming a mortgage is an intimation of mortality (see "Welcome to the fall-off rule"), paying a mortgage off is uncharted territory. In our case, it meant having the resources to buy original art. Beyond that is the even more esoteric experience of commissioning original art.

This ciment fondue piece represents two of our grandchildren twelve years ago and I apologise for the ropy photo. I tried hard with the Aldi cheapo and all were duds. I should have dusted off the Pentax and fiddled with the aperture/depth-of-field ratios. But blogging discourages patience.

However it’s the technological procedures I’m interested in. The children ran riot in the sculptor’s garden and a huge number of 35 mm shots were taken. Despite the mound of prints the final choice – this sinuously interwoven pose – announced itself. We had only one request. My wife and I detest sentimentality and asked that the work should be non-representational.

Luckily the sculptor knew better. Some weeks later at her studio we were left alone to contemplate two 10 cm high maquettes. One was a précis of the linked shapes, the other was demonstrably the children. Not a hint of mawkishness; we chose the latter. Knowing the sculptor as we did (and do) perhaps it was wrong to make even that one request.

We had intended to install the work in our garden but our growing affection for it and the fact that our Kingston-on-Thames house (12 miles SW of London) had been burgled four times meant it has stayed indoors ever since.

One route to euphoria

Can’t pretend I know much about washing machines. The control on our Bosch offers odd options, at random and with inconsistent typography. For instance: Delicates, Wool and Cotton are self-explanatory but why is Easy Care labelled as if it were a further, related choice to these three? Jeans is listed in a different typeface but aren’t jeans made of cotton? And why is Intensive Stains related – typographically, at least – to Jeans?

I am not proud of this ignorance, the result of never having operated this device or its ancestors.

I offer this defence. When we were very poor a pool of water developed under our inexpensive Indesit. I disconnected the power, took the back off, discovered a burst pipe and replaced it. A year later it was evident water wasn’t making it into the drum. The pump was easily identifiable. I removed the front cover, found that one of the three rubber impeller blades had sheared off (someone – let’s not say who – had left a UScent1 piece in their jeans pocket), bought a new impeller, and installed it.

These days I get a man to do this sort of work. Which is a shame. These were very simple tasks, but never mind. Successful DIY repairs create a sense of euphoria, of being ahead of the game and of outwitting large interests. The experience is worth more than rubies. Material comfort is no substitute.

TECHNO-WONDER. Yesterday was my birthday (thanks for your good wishes Marja-Leena). This morning I checked my profile and Blogger has added another year to my listed age. Clever!

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

Welcome to the fall-off rule

Remember the demo in physics? Bunsen burner standing on its base (stable equilibrium), on its nozzle (unstable equilibrium), on its side (neutral equilibrium). With a motorbike only the latter state is available without assistance and a bike on its side is no use to anyone.

Working for a weekly newspaper I used to call on the town's men of the cloth. Father Michael O’Sullivan noticed my parked bike. “I see yiz ride a bike. I did win I was a young priest. Niver had a cold. But yiz'll fall off once ivery year and a haf.” The transition from a temporary form of (often very) unstable equilibrium into neutral.

Fr. O’Sullivan was right about the fall-off rate. Once my friend and I were riding Indian file on our bikes and a dog darted out. My friend swerved and I did too, but a microsecond too late. My clutch lever (on the left-hand side of the handlebar) caught his raincoat, swung the forks round on full lock and I was tossed on to the tarmac. People at a bus-stop nearby watched with interest but none moved to my aid. They would have lost their place in the queue. The adamantine West Riding.

A subsequent event contributing to my fall-off quota occurred when a car pulled out into a steepish hill down which I was travelling. No escape. The bike hit the car amidships and I somersaulted over the car and landed some yards (we were still Imperial then) down the road. Tucked into my raincoat was a box containing my complete LP collection, perhaps 25 discs. None was harmed.

Young people believe they are immortal. The assumption of a mortgage tells them they are not.

Not magic, just hard work

In one Olympic sport competitors appeared to flout the laws of a branch of physics known as mechanics.

Remember I said “appeared”. But here’s how. Getting a stationary car to move off requires lots of power (called torque) from the engine. But the engine develops most torque when it’s revving. To ensure the car can move off even on a steep hill (highish engine speed) and subsequently run quickly but economically (lowish engine speed), a gearbox is inserted between the engine and the back wheels.

Same with a bike. Mine has fifteen speeds, giving me the technical wherewithal – if not, alas, the requisite leg power – to cycle away easily and deal with any gradient.

But the bikes of Chris Hoy, Bradley Wiggins, et al, at the vélodrome didn’t have gears. Since they often crossed the finishing line at 70 kph where did the compromise occur? If the rider can cycle away from a standing start why aren’t his legs an impossible blur at maximum speed?

The answer lies in the riders' thighs – Hoy’s are like tree trunks. The bike’s single gear is unbelievably high and most of us would be incapable of getting going, let alone riding up the banked track. Not our goldmeisters though. The high gear serves them well during sprints when the legs move up and down quickly but controllably.

All you need to create the illusion of defying physics are huge thigh muscles. Or, funnily enough, a steam engine which develops torque at very low revs and can thus dispense with a gearbox.

Beautiful game? How about this?

Now it can be told. When I wrote job application letters in the sixties to forty US magazine editors I lied about why I wanted to work in the USA. Fact is I wanted to watch live baseball. Not that I even knew the rules.

I arrived in Pittsburgh in winter and couldn’t wait until the season started. I dragged a friend to the freezingly cold Pirates’ opener in Forbes Field and had him explain the game. Thereafter I watched a huge amount of telly.

What’s this got to do with technology? Well, that’s my baseball glove in the inset. Because I’m right-handed I wear it on my left hand and, with luck, it helps me gobble up grounders and snag fly hits (even fungos!). After which I use my right hand to hurl the ball wherever it should go.

What a glove does for a baseball pro is something else again. Batting and pitching are easy to understand. What makes baseball special is that gloves transform fielders into figures of grace and efficiency. They reach balls that would elude even the most determined cricketer. What’s more they’re often expected to do this. If they don’t an error is charged against them.

Grace and efficiency – what do I mean? The shortstop is an infield player, lurking somewhere between second and third base. The batter, 40 m away, cracks a hard low drive to the shortstop’s right. But he doesn’t try to catch it with his right hand (“the meat hand”). He swings his gloved left hand down across his body turning the palm towards the ball. With practised elegance he makes the catch and tosses the ball insouciantly to the second-baseman. It’s quite routine but it makes me swoon.

A ton up - but not on a motorbike

My hundredth post so let’s celebrate the metric system. Inevitably the French were the first to adopt it (as an exercise of pure reason) though I thought they’d designated the metre as something like one ten-millionth of the distance of the equator. Not so. A French abbot and scientist proposed the milliare as a minute of arc along the meridian. Which conceivably might be the same thing.

Benefit 1. Arithmetic. Remember the longwindedness of performing calculations in fractions (eg, 7/16 x 14/57). The decimal point blew all that into the weeds.

Benefit 2. Technology. Nuts and bolts in the GB were designated like this: 3/8 in. BSW (standing for British Standard Whitworth) and there were other systems. Now – as far as I know – they’re all metric and it’s so much simpler. “Give me a 5 mm bolt, 2 cm long please.”

Benefit 3. Science. To the unitiated it may not seem simpler but expressing 0.000,000,0008 mm as 8x10-9 mm (Sorry. Need to work out HTML superscript here) obviously does save paper.

Benefit 4. Peace of mind. Got a long journey ahead of you on the Continong? Change the settings on the satnav from miles to kilometres and be encouraged (Yes, I know it’s illusory, but illusions have their uses) as they whistle away behind you.

Disadvantages. The USA remains agnostic. Metrics does away with a useful height benchmark for homo sapiens and, at 6 ft 1½ in. (“just a little over 6 ft”) I find myself lacking a familiar definition.