Spend a lot, receive a little

Got my first cheque from Southern Electric following installation of solar panels on the roof earlier this year. The £139 total (I’m ignoring an extra 4 p) covers 310 kilowatt hours fed back into the National Grid between July 12 and September 30.

The amount of juice I generate varies with the light (not heat) put out by the sun but, just for fun, here’s some back-of-envelope calculations. On the basis of this payment my average expectation is £1.74 per day. Thus in a year I can expect £635.

All in, the system cost £8000. Amortising this figure at this rate would take 12.6 years and I would be nearly 89. None of you, but none of you, will be reading Works Well in 2023 although we’ll draw a discreet veil over the most likely reason.

However… fuel prices are going up. The wretched Huw Edwards (qv) says so, so it must be true. Stick with me until my early eighties and I’ll let you know.

The lower photograph shows the inverter, installed in the loft.

A MAN OF METHOD Faced with a meat-and-two-veg dinner I eat the greens first (spinach before green beans), then the potatoes, then the meat. The meat is a final treat, like reaching the top of Kanchenjunga. I am not interested in rickety forkfuls containing all four constituents.

I check incoming comments to Works Well via LiveMail but never read them there. Immediately I whiz over to Blogger and read them in sequence with the relevant post. Doing it this way makes me feel I’m doing the right thing by my correspondents.

When I go to the toilet… But perhaps that’s enough in the way of nervous tics.

Non-flying fragments from Brittany

TOO MANY cheap French restaurants have become pizzerias and no longer offer family food (daubes, blanquette de veau, rillettes) as Dish of the Day. So when I saw a chalkboard in Paimpol announcing choux farci (stuffed cabbage) I dived in and started stuffing. “What is the cabbage stuffed with?” asked an Englishman longingly at a nearside table who thought he’d ordered it but got something else. Visited by those twin eroders of the intellect – nostalgia and a full belly – I handed over a €10 tip on a €29 bill and addressed the muted staff of three: “You run an efficient restaurant. You have an extraordinary menu. And I am happy to be in France.” Methinks they talk of Justice Shallow yet.

THIRTY years ago, on another holiday in Brittany, I bought myself one of those indigenous white and blue striped shirts called marinières. It hung loosely and I imagined it made me look dashing. When it mysteriously became tight I discarded it. This time in boutiquey Paimpol I decided to buy another and Mrs BB did the honours. However, she also bought one for Zach and he definitely looks dashing.

I AM grateful to Lucy for several reasons. With Plutarch she encouraged me, by example, to start blogging, she reacted constructively (again with Plutarch) to my stillborn verse-writing, and when an intellectually posh website rejected my Shakespeare-into-French article she recommended another site where it was accepted. But it was a different matter when she spotted the device I lashed together for mounting satnav on my car dashboard. “Hmmm,” she said as she ran a finger along its rough-hewn edges.

Galsworthy could also have stood cutting

The occasional table, just visible, was made by my great grandfather. The baby chaffinch (extreme right) was touring significant British literary artefacts and paying homage to the Barrett Bonden portable typewriter, source of millions of words for publications as diverse as Keighley News and Cycling & Mopeds before being retired in favour of word processing.

Had the chaffinch flown upstairs at Ch. Bonden it might well have inspected my latest literary tool. On holiday I used my Kindle to switch between two works. The first was Galsworthy’s The Forsyte Saga (Why was that man found worthy of a Nobel Prize?) the second was the MS of my own novel, Gorgon Times.

This was more than self-massage. Kindle allows potential changes to be underlined while reading the MS in a format resembling a published book. At home I used the 477 underlinings to modify the master MS on the PC. And rewrote five longer passages including a half chapter. Some 1500 words bit the dust. Tedious, non-creative work will ensue.

MATTER OF ETIQUETTE For months, perhaps years, Mrs BB has complained I often rise from the dining table, face besmeared with gravy, custard, strawberry juice or, sometimes, all three. It has to do with getting old and caring less and less about how I look. Since this impromptu maquillage is invisible to me I am undisturbed but I do resent hopping out to the kitchen to clean greasy hands after nibbling a chop bone. Recently I suggested we invest in a table-napkin container to sit adjacent to the S&P. Mrs BB instantly agreed. I am left reflecting on the length of time this decision has taken. And the fact that such containers may be middle-class naff.

Hard stuff precedes indulgence

It’s that time of year. Last weekend the Hay Festival (sponsored now by The Telegraph instead of The Guardian – what an intellectual, moral and political crisis that wrought), this coming weekend the start of the St Jean de la Blaquière quinzaine.

Hay provided an agonising dilemma for those who espouse literature at the expense of science. In “Darwin and Milton – Two Views of Creation” by the British Nobel-Prize-winning biologist, Paul Nurse compared “the vision of two of the Greatest Britons of all time.” Could anyone who honours me by reading Works Well have turned away from that?

Our fifth consecutive holiday at SJDLB will focus, as usual, on grandson Zach (seen here unseasonably opening a Christmas present). His first year at primary school ends and his reading is now good enough to absorb The Guardian sports section and to dispute critical opinion on various soccer teams. In my own mind I am preparing him for our visit to the bakery (which he calls The Windmill Shop). There he will discard simple felicitation and utter: Bonjour M. le Boulanger. Je suis en vacances.

SJDLB comes at a price: I am separated from you all. Such sweet sorrow.


IDEAL FOR BURGLARS Last week the house was surveyed for the PV cell installation on the roof. Kevin the surveyor brought his own collapsible ladder – compact enough to go on the back seat of a car, extendable to reach the roof comfortably. Made of aluminium but reassuringly heavy. A compass app on his smart phone told him which way my roof faces.

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.

... and start all over again

THE BLOGGER’S RETREAT “I really like this pub,” said Plutarch and it was that kind of day. Elegiac, talk of families at the end. The pub has a name which Plutarch uses; for me it’s The Pub in Roupell Street. These days we repair there after the BR curry but decades ago we used to drop in on our way back to Waterloo station and thus it became a source of minor marital strife. It’s real-ale, plain, clean, has no music and the all-male clientele resembles us in the seventies: noisy, released from work.

We also talked of writing. Plutarch flattered me by recording an utterance so it was salutary to return home and find a letter from my agent turning down Gorgon Times (“original theme… has something to say… current climate for fiction is so dire… sorry for such a cheerless response.”) Mrs BB was sympathetic but, to tell the truth, my mind was and is on The Love Problem (77,232 words).

EVERYDAY MAGIC It’s obligatory to slag people using mobile phones. But consider this. To attend Diane’s funeral in Folkestone we picked up Younger Daughter who lives en route. Elder Daughter took a bus from Luton to Heathrow and walked to Terminal One. I mis-steered at Heathrow and ended in the cab rank. To which Elder Daughter was guided via mobiles. Impossible any other way.

THANKS Reading about Diane’s death HHB recommended Diana Athill’s Somewhere Towards the End, a brisk look at life (ie, gardening, sex, family relationships, appreciating painting) from old age. Excellent. On her late talent for writing: “I never knew (and this is literally true) what the next paragraph I was going to write would be.” Me too. It’s the act of faith that something will occur that keeps you alive.

Dumbness: a lifestyle choice

Ignorance comes in different forms. As a child I was unaware of how the gyroscopic top (see inset) or the radio worked. Magic, I said. But fate in the form of RAF national service forced me to recognise that the radio is not magic. By arranging electronic components - resistors, capacitors, coils and (in those days) thermionic valves - in a certain manner you can create a superhetereodyne, a name more exotic than the circuit’s comparatively mundane function.

An aerial responds to electro-magnetic waves sent from afar. The aerial is linked to the superhet which is adjusted to pick out a selected frequency from these waves. This tiny signal is made more powerful and its variations are duplicated in the coil of a loudspeaker. The coil vibrates the speaker cone, duplicating sounds imposed on the EM wave. Thus Desert Island Discs.

Since no one forced me I never bothered to explain the top although I think I could. Left to myself I might have investigated the radio. One was a visible mystery, the other invisible. Watching and touching the spinning top taught you things. The radio remains inert and getting to know it involves maths which usually blunts casual curiosity.

Understanding electronics is chic and I’m vain enough to want this. The forces at work in the top are strange but not, it seems, strange enough. I’m at ease with my ignorance.

GORGON COVER The pro tem design for my novel Gorgon Times cost £100. I challenged commenters to better it for the same sum. FigMince responded and here is his idea. He says he doesn’t want the money, but we’ll see about that. Anyone else?

And you say you read all the time

Peter: Feet on ground, head in literary clouds

Elder Daughter (Professional Bleeder), a former NHS phlebotomist, is not to be confused with Younger Daughter (Occasional Speeder), whose blogonym is easier to decode. PB, an omnivorous reader who has clearly inherited her mother’s genes, phones in another compelling story about Kindle.

PB’s partner, Peter, didn’t read much before they met but soon succumbed to the Bonden virus. And not just easy books; he’s read Cloud Atlas which is more than I have. Once when I visited them Peter was in the bath reading and he took a long time getting out. I approve of this. People who have baths to get clean are missing the point.

In fact Peter has taken reading further than any of us - literally. He walks to his workplace reading all the way, avoiding loose paving stones and casually driven cars in his absorption. Inevitably PB bought him a Kindle for Christmas and he asked her to download titles out of copyright she thinks he “should have read” given his present age. Within days he found Brave New World “terrific”.

I’ve heard several people express their doubts about ebook readers but I’m cheered that these devices, with their modest screens, compete directly with that larger, omni-present screen which threatens to gobble us all up at times.

NEW NOVEL Provisional title: The Love Problem, 4579 words, Jan 18, 2010. Much research on aviation in USA and in France. American central character (Yana – a Rouchswalwe suggestion) has to talk to American friend in plausible US idiom without lapses into honey, figure (for think), and gee. Then there’s French conversation between Yana and French woman: is it OK to give a French twist to the English I write? More on this latter – much more.

With this I brook no argument

My perfect cup of coffee (black, always black) has its roots in the USA and has nothing in common with the doll’s-house cupful which accompanies a digestif. It is comparatively weak and I drink two mugs (ie, a surprisingly large total of 700 ml) with my brunch. Arriving at perfection has taken an adult lifetime and cost several hundred pounds. These are the essential constituents:

MUG Bone china, William Morris pattern, large handle, parallel sides. There should be no compromises – aesthetic or material – with such an item in daily use. Were it to be broken I would need a week in a residential care home.

COFFEE Three moderately heaped teaspoonfuls of Fairtrade Colombian ground, bag secured by a crocodile clip (forget rubber bands, lengths of string, and especially “hopeful” folding), kept in the freezer. This coffee is in fact Guatemalan but I received it as a Christmas table present and the quality is very close.

PERCOLATOR A dozen others, all in working order, were discarded before I acquired this Krups costing £75, about three times the previous average. The most common failing was the manufacturer’s inability to design a valve between the percolator chassis and the jug that allowed the jug to be removed or installed without irritation. The Krups jug, possibly made from an aluminium alloy, is vacuum-insulated and may be set down without harming polished surfaces. A plastic filter is included but I augment this with a paper filter.
NOTE: Those who have read my novel, Gorgon Times, will already have met the Krups which plays an important role in defining the character of Jerry, Clare’s husband. I should add I am not Jerry.

Cakewalk to freedom

Freed in 1959 from weekly newspapers (and destined ecstatically for a magazine in London) I swore I would never again attend entertainment put on by amateurs. Call me elitist, an intellectual snob and I say phooie. But recently the threat loomed. I was asked to publicise a Christmas Concert on the website I run (Fine.) To ask “my lady wife” if she would bake a cake for the event (That quote brought powdered teeth to my mouth corners.) To attend in person (I sought the seppuku sword.)

Mrs BB dislikes the quote too and was minded to refuse. But the proceeds were for the local hospice and both us can be guided by self-interest. So the cake equipment was mobilised reluctantly (see pic) and suddenly I saw clear skies. I delivered the cake an hour ago and when asked about my evening plans I was no longer shackled, the price had been paid. I said, simply, no, without any awkwardness. As I drove away I reflected on an unexpected benefit of being married. To a cake-maker, for one thing.

ANYONE HOME? Once you brayed (a good Yorkshire word) on the door with your fist. Later there were knockers. Then bells which you wound up like clockwork toys. Followed by electric bells which depended on cumbersome batteries. And now the above. What you see is a radio-frequency push-button transmitter with its exposed circuitry and a tiny battery sufficient to release an equally tiny signal, insufficient in itself to activate the ding-dong. Power for the ding-dong is derived from the wall sockets into which receivers are plugged and which respond to that infinitesimally small pulse of electro-magnetism. You might well ask whether this is progress.

Novel writing - the electronic approach

LANGUEDOC LEISURE
I took tons of improving books to the villa and didn’t read any. Instead I occupied myself (French equivalent: s’amuser) with two well-thumbed Michael Connellys whose work I liken elsewhere to junk constructed in Meccano. However, I did examine my own novel on a Sony ebook reader, trying to see it as another person might.

The initial paragraphs describe a modern, architect-designed office building on a French industrial estate. The Crow suggested these be deleted and the novel start with the first mention of Hatch, the co-central character. Stubbornly I refined my start, and refined it again, unwilling to kill off my literary conceit. And yet it read undigestedly. The ebook reader showed it in a new light and hinted at a solution which might satisfy both The Crow and myself. We’ll see. In the meantime ”Mme le Corbeau, je te félicite. assuming you accept the familiar form of the pronoun.” (Grammatical booboo now changed in last sentence.)

LANGUEDOC LIMITATIONS
Over the fortnight five Iphones were intermittently available at the villa but only one was used briefly to access the Internet. Money was the determinant. Linking up cost £5 but no one seemed sure whether this covered a 12 hr period or a single hit. We were hag-ridden by a report in which someone casually downloaded a couple of films while in France and faced a £6000 bill on returning home. However two Iphones carried Solitaire, the bargain of the century at 59 p for the app, and frequently I drifted off into Solitaire dreamland where the mind works but not a thought emerges.

The sedan chair moves on

Technology was never far away en route to the Languedoc:

CHANNEL TUNNEL Once you bought a ticket via an agent, though never at the site itself. Time moved on and you paid online, received a number, printed it out and presented it at check-in. Time moved on again and the online reservation was confirmed by simply pushing your credit card into a slot. This year – lo! When we arrived at the check-in a read-out said “Welcome, Barrett Bonden” presumably after scanning the car’s number plate.
APING PONTIUS PILATE Washed my hand at the Eurotunnel terminal and faced a hand-dryer made by Dyson of vacuum cleaner fame. Some giddy new principle or other. Unbearable roaring but it did the job. Apparently they’re far from rare. This unit was seen at a café in Millau, beneath the beautiful bridge.

YAH SUCKS BOO Roadwork on the autoroute. But the French soften the blow with an animated sign showing how to switch lanes. Sarkozy 1, Cameron 0.
SATNAV NOT FOR DUMMIES Left Hereford, picked up other half of the entourage and set the satnav for Eurotunnel. Not out of necessity (I’ve done the journey many times) but to give Jane, my preferred satnav voice, some practice. Twenty-five miles from the tunnel Jane was announcing an ETA an hour ahead. Why so slow? In fact one of satnav’s little trickeries. The night before I’d entered some French destinations and forgotten to switch back to the UK mode. As a result the screen was predicting our arrival at the Calais rather than the Folkestone end. Without explaining the bit in between.

Wasted lives

This was harder than expected. How many clocks do we own? The montage shows eight but I can count nineteen apart from my mechanical Longines which still works but is retired. Some are well hidden - on the two TVs, the desktop and the laptop. Not forgetting the car and the water heater/central heating timer.

When I egged Mrs BB into this audit we also forgot the coffee maker because it’s the silliest and I never bother to set it. And is there one on the printer/scanner/copier? – oh, I can’t be bothered to find out. Only three are real: our wristwatches and the carriage clock which belonged to Mrs BB’s mother (a gift from us) which we inherited.

All these devices relentlessly measuring time, some usefully, others pointlessly. There’s a metaphor here, something to do with not using time profitably. Because we don’t garden, don’t do the cleaning, frequently buy things online and are having the house painted we are seen as great time wasters, especially by those in North America. In the afternoon Mrs BB may be on the couch reading a book. Writing a novel might qualify as work but how about when I break off, stumped, and play solitaire? As gerontocrats we’ve got so little time left. Yet both of us can look at a weed or a spider’s web and not feel a trace of guilt.

THE SHRINKING NOVEL I haven’t completely edited Chapter Eleven (ie, halfway through the MS) yet 5000 words have disappeared. Will I end up with a novella? - defined as a short novel or a substantial short story. Malcom Bradbury cites Heart of Darkness, Metamorphosis, and Death in Venice as “striking modern examples”. I’ll accept the comparison.

More time wasting: a front cover mock-up which will never be used.

The life unswum

Finding an activity which replaces the two vital elements of length swimming – exercise, zen-like absorption – was never going to be easy. And while I appreciated the sympathy and the suggestions I received I was never in the market for a transformed way of life. Immersed in the late autumn, if not the mid-winter, of my expectations, I devote my day predominantly to writing.

Pro. tem I am back on the exercise bike in the shed, surrounded – ironically – by garden tools. Pure drudgery but it’s over quickly. However, drudgery erodes the mind and some divertissement is necessary. In the past music from the MP3 player worked but now I’m not so sure. Perspiration interrupts continuity. HHB has suggested downloading Melvyn Bragg’s radio programme and I’ll look into that.

As an alternative I have acquired an unabridged audio of “Ulysses” (22 CDs, £85) and a portable player (£10.50) - glad to see the two items correctly valued. But there’s a snag. The tracks are 6 – 7 min. long and the player has no facility for resuming where I break off.

Trying to resolve this I downloaded all 22 CDs to the MP3 player only to discover it “shuffles” the tracks. Many would say how could I tell the difference with Joyce but I’ve read the book three times and I don’t approve of Molly turning up in the Castle of the Winds. The lost ripples of the South Wye Leisure Centre continue to plague me.

Novel progress 10/4/10. Ch. 19: 3016 words. Chs. 1 - 18: 82,369 words. Comments: Hatch and Clare - a conversation starts, continues, ends (for now).

Oh come all ye techies

Christmas is the season of unacknowledged technology – streams of binary code and £1 toys that would have cost thousands if they’d used yesterday’s electronics. BB puts on a silly Santa hat and rings a few chimes.
CONTROLLED FLASHING The lights on the outdoor Christmas tree flash alternate white, blue and red too quickly – I think – to be mastered by a thermocouple. So there must be some logic circuitry close to the step-down transformer. A multi-wire harness ensures reliability and neatness. Those that don’t know what I’m talking about (No more self-deprecation!) can go and eat a mince pie. Meanwhile I bend the knee before the ubiquity and cheapness (about £5) of electrical ingenuity.
SKILLED CHEMISTRY It will be Beef Wellington again because granddaughter Ysabelle insists on this thirty-year-old-plus tradition. Equally traditional is the accompanying Sauce au poivre to a recipe from the Mrs Beeton we received as a wdding present. This luxury liquid impressed me from the start because to make it you first have to make Sauce espagnole. A sort of culinary Ponzi scheme.
MORE DIGITAL WONDERS Events in the Bonden connubial bed have been timed for two decades by a simple plug-in digital clock which bust a week or so ago. I wanted a clock-only replacement, not a clock radio with its unnecessary extra buttons. In the end, grumbling, I made do with the latter but was more than mollified when I plugged it in and it immediately showed the correct time, date and year. Radio-controlled of course.
QUALIFIED APOLOGIES I have got up a number of people’s noses this year via comments rendered careless, contumacious and carping as a result of switching too abuptly from and to novel writing. Unfortunately there is no guarantee this won’t continue.

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.

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.

Mishaps add interest

Marja-Leena asked if I'd got any regional snaps from our holidays. Since our aim was to devote ourselves to sensual pleasure these are rather rare. In any case I'm aware of my shortcomings with a camera and only reluctantly unship l'appareil. Hope what follows gives some idea of what we were up to.

View from restaurant just below Mont Aigoual observatory (1567 m); for all I know Kanchenjunga was visible. BB's younger daughter provides frame

Zach the juvenile mariner; his ma on Li-Lo behind

St-Guilhem-le-Désert a touristy but well restored village

Mont Ventoux in Provence, a trial for TdF racers

View from the villa's balcony - good for getting loaded to

The narrow streets of Couvertoirade, a walled village

Zach unimpressed by Grandpa BB's progress through the billows

More from the Villa Bonden:

OH WHAT A FALL Shuffling past Lodève’s hotel de ville and more than a little conscious of the seventh phase of Jacques “Ages of man” I stumbled over a bollard and fell on to my nose, the basis of my only true claim to physical beauty. The tentative attention I received from French teenagers and octogenarian concierges confirmed I’d been right about Jacques. The nose survived but my left wrist was sprained and led to my forcing my way through the rapidly closing door of a pharmacie, the time being 11.59, a minute before France’s sacred lunch break. Normally I am able to turn my physical failings in France into rewarding conversational opportunities, but the grumbling stomach of the pharmacienne prevented this. The wrist-support cost a shocking €41. Un prix énorme, I said, demanding a receipt prior to a claim on my travel insurance I know I will never make. My hungry saviour nodded.
LE STYLE C’EST L’HOMME Lodève was also the scene of a lost purse which necessitated a visit to the police commissariat (in the vain hope that someone might turn it in) and to the gendarmerie (to obtain a temporary driving licence replacing the one that had disappeared). The police were mainly overweight, sweaty and worked in a paper-strewn cavity that looked a hundred years old. The female gendarme wore a blouse with creases so sharp they could have been used as weapons.
CHARTRES Quite a different experience from those which uplifted Lucy recently. The Hotel Marmotte is located on the rue Charles Coulombs, but Chartres has another similarly named street which only lacks the final s. Satnav obediently took us to the first in the town’s traffic-crowded centre before, contritely re-programmed, taking us to the correct address in the midst of an industrial estate. Cheap, though.

Awake, for morning in the bowl of night

It’s just a digital clock and it cost £8 twelve? fifteen? years ago. It has an alarm system which is never used and a dot which appears for PM and disappears for AM. Years ago the snooze button became wonky and is now held down with Sellotape (US: Scotch Tape). It sits on a chest of drawers at Mrs B’s side of the bed and I view its display turned through ninety degrees since I tend to lie in bed rather than sit up. As a result at 1:08 I see a clown with a wide open mouth, wearing a bow tie.

It was bought when we were elderly. Now we are old it plays a more important role. Sleep is a more fugitive experience and for some reason I’ve never fathomed there’s something smugly satisfying about being able to tell myself it’s now 3.15 AM and I haven’t yet slept a wink.

In the guest bedroom there’s a much more advanced clock which keeps time by tuning to radio transmissions, thus allowing for the hour going backwards and forwards and for leap years.

A related device played a more significant part in our lives when we lived in the Philadelphia suburbs and I had an early train to catch. This time the alarm was operative and switched on a radio. But what music works best for an aubade? Not classical. A Gymnopédie is tolerable but Sibelius Four proved too much of a jolt. In the end I found an MOR station playing the blandest of the bland. I backed off the volume until my transition from Morpheus to Clifton Heights was jolt-free. I once switched on the radio during the daytime I found myself unable detect hardly any sound at all from the loudspeaker.

Electronics to tranquillise Zach

Now this does work and we the adults are very grateful.

For the third year running the five of us (the BBs, daughter, son-in-law and offsprig Zach) will holiday in the Languedoc. It’s a long two-day journey from Hereford and Zach’s behaviour during this ordeal has depended very much on the screen you see hanging behind the front passenger seat. As I’m sure you’ve guessed the screen is attached to a DVD player and for Zach, the unwinding autoroute is as nothing.

For me, one of two designated drivers, the tinkle of CBeebies discs endlessly recycling themelves was a small price to pay in Year One and Derek Jacobi’s soothing voice narrating In the night garden was a measure of normalcy. In Year Two I was less enamoured by The Wiggles and xenophobic tendencies had to be suppressed. This year Zach will be 3¼ and a cultural step-up is indicated. If not as far as Pulp Fiction surely he’s ripe for Citizen Kane? In the interim we shall test his ability to follow narrative.

The DVD player is plugged into an extension lead from the cigarette lighter. Another of the lead’s sockets accommodates the plug for the satnav. On the dashboard the computer calculates fuel consumption (trip and elapsed), reports the external temperature and tells us how much diesel we have left. An incredible amount of data processing whereas the only message from my Austin Cambridge in the early sixties was that I’d bought a rotten car.

A brief attack of the oldies

This one’s going to be tricky. I distrust Golden Eras (“Those Edwardian summers when the afternoons were long and sunny and the gels so pretty…”) but here I am, harking back.

Several blogs and/or comments I’ve read recently speak fondly about digital cameras. Blogging wouldn’t be the same without them. No delay waiting for prints. Lots of technology easily accessed. Zero overheads. Good quality for low outlay. All good stuff.

My 6 megapixel Traveller DC-6900 cost £69 at Aldi and its only fault (rechargeable batteries last about 20 shots) may not be attributable to the camera. Yet who could love this Christmas cracker toy? This deformed Easter Egg?

While still gainfully employed I used a Fuji battery-powered non-digital camera and clearly advancing the film threatened the battery’s capacity. The unease became reality at a T. J. Maxx warehouse in remotest Canada when I ceased to be a photo-journalist and was reduced to my notebook alone. The Pentax replaced the Fuji and my thumb now advanced the film. Speed had to be balanced with aperture. For two years after I retired I did freelance work which meant using a tripod and long long exposures in stygian industrial buildings. I could never have trusted the Traveller.

The Pentax doesn’t do “instant”. It’s heavy too. But it’s beautifully made, the lens is gin-clear and, I’m afraid, I love it. It deserves an ode, if not an eclogue. On verra.