I wonder what's behind this door?

Does this label mean anything to you: “Track changes”? Or this one: “Online collaboration. (Meet Now. Web discussions)” ?*

If so you’ve delved more deeply than I have into Microsoft Word’s “functionality” (I love the IT business. Never use one syllable when you can use five). But which of us belongs to the majority?

I think there’s an unwritten rule about software development. As version follows version more features are added and they’re used by fewer and fewer people. The aim must surely be to add a feature which no one uses. But it mustn’t be useless. The rule is it must be (a) unexpected, and (b) almost impossible to define under Help. The equivalent of the programmer shouting down a well and hearing echoes of applause from other programmers in recognition of the purity of his achievement.

Not that I’m complaining about Word. I wouldn’t be without it. In fact I have a sneaking suspicion I couldn’t be without it. What I don’t need is its next – and here’s another one of those written blurs – iteration.

* If you’re curious, they’re under Tools.

Blazing inferno a source of joy

The electric stove in our rented house in Pittsburgh was quite old. One day ceramic insulation broke away from a hob coil, exposing the bare wire. A multi-amp arc leaped from the wire and punched a hole in the base of the frying pan. Oil in the pan ignited and set alight the wooden kitchen cabinets.

My wife told our two daughters to leave the house, closed the door on the inferno, retrieved the cat who - awkward as ever – was basking somewhere unexpected and left the house to await eventualities.

I was elsewhere at the time and had chance to reflect. Yes, I’d have attended to our daughters, yes I’d have closed the kitchen door… but the cat? Upstairs I had a half-written novel in MS. Happily we’ll never know.

The fire was confined to the kitchen and the landlord had us cooking again within twenty-four hours. When he installed new cabinets he paid for us to eat out. US landlords were like that.

The wrecked pyromaniacal stove was put at the end of the driveway and my older daughter had the inexpressible delight of seeing it slung into the back of the garbage truck and crushed as flat as a pizza by the truck’s powerful jaws. She told me this with shining eyes that evening. I was glad. The tiny publishing company I was working for was “going down the toobs” and we were short of money for things like family entertainment. Ah the benefits of technology!

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.