TECHNO-ART Easily my favourite TV viewing in the sixties was a fictional series called "The Plane Makers". Just that, a British company engaged in manufacturing passenger - later military - planes and a perfect vehicle for the chunky, pugnacious actor, Patrick Wymark, who played the MD. I left Britain for the USA in 1965 and the series continued for a year or two after. When I returned I paid a tourist visit to Highgate Cemetery and came upon Patrick Wymark's grave. I was sorry he had died but pleased he had passed into this particular version of Valhalla.

On reflection, "The Plane Makers" was less about manufacturing and more about the business of manufacturing. But that doesn't really matter. It's closer to real life. A plane that is manufactured but not sold can hardly be said to have existed.

No longer the victim of second thoughts

Newspaper journalists in my youth wrote straight to the typewriter. A rate of 1000 words/hr was considered the norm, which meant that in later years - when style also became important - I had to learn how to slow down.

If you type at 1000 words/hr the most frequently used letter is x. That's how you delete. More than three major deletions in the opening paragraph (known then as the "intro") and you tore the paper from the roller and threw it crumpled on the floor. Restarting was tedious because of the need to include two sheets of normal paper and a sheet of carbon paper. Occasionally you inserted the carbon in wrong way up. Bad news. The photocopier had yet to be invented.

Can you imagine the impact the word processor had on the way I wrote? I could test a sentence. Test combinations of sentences. Delete the lot and adopt a completely different approach. Words became like putty rather than accusatory wrong things staring up from wasted paper. The word processor had been created for writers who believe that revision demands as much time as the original draft. Except that there was no original draft.

Some writers still write with pens and/or typewriters. No doubt they're better at it than me. Better able to get their thoughts into gear beforehand. Good luck to them. Me? I thank the engineers who devised the perfect writing tool - the computer.

A garden is a toilsome thing

I'm a lousy gardener because I lack faith in what I do around the garden. This moral crisis hardly fits in with the aims of my own blog so I made a full confession on that of a friend who pursues horticulture and other ennobling matters. One of his commentators provided me with a partial absolution and I'm now doing as well as can be expected.

I also hate gardening toil and with good reason. Our present plot has a sub-stratum of builder's rubble which makes planting even a single petunia a Herculean proposition. Removing the rubble would mean first killing off all the plants and bushes already installed and I don't have that kind of vision.

It's taken me a decade but I have finally eased the digging problem somewhat. A spade with a narrower blade is much more useful for getting rid of buried half-bricks. I suspect this is first and last gardening tip to appear on Works Well. For a more uplifting point-of-view on the world of flowers try my friend's blog http://bestofnow.blogspot.com/

A sewage works can seem beautiful

DERBLUH-VAY-SAY. Part two. Why did my wife recommend I pay any price to have our French house connected to the main drains? (see Where there's muck there's mind expansion, May 12). In retrospect, the alternative hardly bears thinking about.

Access to the septic tank was via a trapdoor in the bathroom floor. The moment when the concreted cavity reached capacity was unmistakable. Time to contact the emptyist.

He arrived by tractor towing a large barrel on wheels. In turning into the adjacent alley the trailer brushed against the corner of our house causing a vent at the end of the barrel to open. Unspeakably.

A hose had to be passed through the bathroom window but was too wide for the protective bars. Why not, I suggested, widen the bars with the thingummyjig for raising a car? The emptyist's eyes widened. "Ah, un clic!" Which was a first for me.

The bars were bent slightly and the hose lowered into the unspeakability. A pump started up on the tractor. In the bathroom the emptyist's father, staring avidly, watched the level drop, reciting "Impeccable. Impeccable." - each syllable separated as if it were part of a liturgy. My wife was at this time wandering through fields probably a kilometre away.

The connection fee to the sewers was the predicted £2000. Neither of us complained.

The cost of instant pictures

No such thing as a free lunch, no such thing as an unpaid-for leap forward in technology. A digital camera removes that delay between "Click." and "Ahhh." but the price is a niggling awareness of battery inadequacy. I mentioned this to a photographer working for the local newspaper and he pointed to a lumpish box attached in some way or other to his Nikon. Even this awkward device supplied juice for no more than a day.

Yes, I scrupulously avoid long periods of screen viewing and always carry re-charged batteries. And always curse when the camera goes dead a nano-second after the Low Battery warning. Any tips?

And yet, and yet... What would a blog or a website be without pictures? In colour too!* My experience of publishing dates back to when including a colour pic on an editorial page demanded an appointment with the company accountant. Nowadays there are blogs where colour photographs outstrip the text. Which reminds me of a different way of interpreting the cliché "A picture is worth...": a picture can exclude a thousand words. Frequently, a good thing too.

* Though not here. The only colour images on my outdated clipart disc are only too obviously optical cameras.

DIY in France; science class in Luton

Following my younger daughter's recommendation that I celebrate the sheer painlessness of the DVLA's online tax disc sysem (See, Goodbye to the golden era of vehicle licensing, May 12) I have two suggestions from my older daughter.

Tell them about the set-square, she says. Another Anglo-French moment. Yet again I was engaged in DIY at the house in Loire Atlantique and needed a set-square. A translation exists (l'équerre à dessin) although it looks suspect - sounds more like a T-square. Anyway I didn't have the translation to hand. At the bricolage, I described a set-square's appearance and - rather more demandingly - its function. The assistant listened then said, charmingly,"It sounds like a good idea." But admitted he hadn't got one. There was one in a bubble-pack at the next bricolage.

My older daughter is a teacher's assistant on the science side and her second suggestion relates to my post on Ohm's Law (see Introducing two mega-stars, May 6). Teacher: "Resistance boys, what is resistance?" Class: Blank looks, silence. Teacher: "Imagine I'm outside Burger King and I want to get to Debenhams. At 7 am this would be easy. At 3 pm on a Saturday it would be much harder. Do you see what I mean?"

My daughter adds the coda: So when did resistance have a proportional relationship with time?

NOTE The set-square shown is not the jazzy yellow and chrome one I bought in France. This one belonged to my grandfather, possibly my great-grandfather.

If you open tins here's a must

So why is the Brabantia tin-opener so good? One reason is that significant forces are concentrated at the notched wheel (which drives the opener round the rim of the tin) and the disc blade (which is pressed into the tin end and does the cutting). On cheaper openers the spindles on which these two components rotate wear quickly and both wheel and blade become loose. When the play is so extensive it is almost impossible to squeeze the handles together sufficiently to drive the blade through the end of the tin.

The photo can't show how securely the notched wheel (on the right) is mounted but I can assure you the spindle diameter is twice that of cheaper openers. But the key to the design is the mounting of the blade (which has its own idling notched wheel to grip the other side of the rim of the tin). For one thing the spindle is mounted at an angle. Thus when the driven wheel and blade are squeezed together they operate optimally. Second, even when spindle and blade begin to wear, they are held in position by the curved spring which engages with the free end of the spindle.

I'm afraid it's all a bit wordy. The qualities are easier to understand when you see the Brabantia "in the metal". It only remains for me to add I am not in the pay of Brabantia. I simply like things that work, and this does.

Learn on the couch, not in the car

SATNAV - Part three No, I'm not in thrall to this technology and freely admit it has some way to go. But it's had an undeservedly bad press from people who've tried it for an afternoon, failed to realise its potential and - a particular bête noire - have written delightedly about their inability to penetrate its workings.

One accessory worth acquiring is the cable/transformer that allows you to plug the satnav in to your house supply and play around with it in the comfort of your own living room. You learn far more in this unstressed environment. When you try similar experimentation in the car it always seems too hot and your sweaty finger-tips skitter over the controls.

I think that's enough about satnav. To tell the truth I respond more viscerally to maps but satnav's proof I'm trying to be a child of our times.

TECHNO-ART Other than documentaries which are outside my scope I find TV rather barren of examples in which art fuses with technology. One exception was "Das Boot", the German multi-episode series about life in a WW2 submarine. Here men were surrounded by technology and threatened by it from above. Big batteries were big, too. But I'd appreciate an explanation about that greenish light emanating from small windows - apparently - on the side of the diesel engine cylinders.