A journey to the middle of the patient

These days hospitals explain but do not show. The Comfortingly Maternal nurse told me my throat would be anaesthetised "with a lemon-flavoured spray". The guy who was going to do the work, and who seemed younger than the average 125 cc racing motorcyclist, said the anaesthetic "would taste of lemons". When the spray nozzle was inches away the Comfortingly Maternal nurse reminded me to expect "lemons".

Informational overkill on the local which tasted like aloes. But not a sight of the endoscope. A shame. Hospital equipment is always superbly fit-for-purpose and comes in authoritative stainless steel. Also an endoscope has a neat little joystick so that the viewing head can be rotated... well, deep down.

I submitted to a procedure which could be likened to a course on sword-swallowing but without the theatricals. The joystick manipulator chatted to an aide, mercifully not about soccer, and I imagined myself stripped to the waist, wearing ballooning red silk trousers, standing on the stage and raising a World War One bayonet high above my head. Shaved armpits! Yes, they would be a must.

The endoscope appeared to print out results automatically. Mine said, in effect, that if terra australis incognita existed it remained incognita. I resented not seeing proof of the trip the endoscope had made. Hadn't I provided the venue? Pregnant women get to view their babies courtesy of ultrasound. Why not a DVD for endoscopees?

TECHNO-ART For a perfect example of technology metamorphosing into art, go to Marja-Leena's website (http://marja-leena-rathje.info/). Under Photoworks click on Found Objects. There, on a beach, is the remains of a car over which a thousand tides have washed. The photos give new meaning to the word bio-degradable. In another twenty years the car will be gone but in the interim there is a tug-of-war between the forces of corrosion and the engineered details of this most typical of man-made structures. Aesthetics is winning. The straight-line members of the chassis are softening into irregular shapes. The gearbox has become a blob, parts of which seem to be carved from soft stone. Only the steering mechanism still proclaims its earlier function but its defiance is clearly doomed. Compared with the slam-bang speed with which the car was put together its decay is much more long-term and therefore strangely poignant. The sea wins.

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.