Plutarch and Hells Angels

MOTORBIKES. Part one, probably of many. Blame Plutarch for tempting me. Even after my first car, motorcycles remained dear. I belong to a generation when poverty meant a bike was the first form of personal transport - nowadays most people start with a secondhand car. Later, working on a magazine called Motorcycling, I learned a painful professional lesson; you don't necessarily develop as a journalist by immersing yourself in an enthusiasm.

But an end to being maudlin, in this blog it's techno that counts. Plutarch records seeing a Harley Davidson and fearfully imagines "driving" it. Bikers talk about "riding" bikes but I can see why a non-biker might prefer an alternative verb. "Riding" sounds passive, "driving" suggests being in control.

Ironically the one make of motorcycle you might "drive" is a Harley Davidson (see pic). This weighty US bike has an enormous engine (1200 cc*, larger than several small cars), you sit low - almost amidst the works - and seemingly reach up to the handlebars. Most characteristic is the exhaust note of the low-revving vee-twin engine: a lazy, lumpy growl that rises to a "blat" as speed increases. Progress is majestic. I can just about accept the sentence: "Taking the Harley out for a drive".

However, when Plutarch dreams of sensuous if terrifying speed, he's imagining something other than a Harley. More on this, when I'm back from France.

* Update June 22, 2008. Seems I'm out of date on the Harley's engine capacity. In France I encountered one with a 1500 cc engine

Hey-ho for a life under the ocean wave

Our Languedoc holiday will begin shortly with a technological moment I never tire of: sitting in the car, eyes closed, trying to detect the exact moment when the Eurotunnel train pulls away from Cheriton.

Because our French house was near the west coast we were tied to the Portsmouth - Caen ferry. It had its good points. Booking an overnight cabin removed some of the stress. And Brittany Ferries played Mozart's Flute and Harp Concerto as an elegant wake-up call. But it cost £450 and - because I don't enjoy going to sea as part of a crowd - I felt compelled to return via the Cherbourg - Portsmouth catamaran to halve the travel time.

The great thing about the train is it's so boring! Some ferry crossings were far too memorable. Watching the boat's storm-driven stern bang repeatedly against the pier at Folkestone until the captain gave up and headed for Dover. Chatting to grevistes manning the barriers at Cherbourg, insincerely wishing them good luck with their industrial strife then driving off to a car-park and dozing away the rest of the night. Good to dine out on, hell on earth to experience.

The Chunnel is a marvel. The day it opened should be a bank holiday.

Work designed for idle hands

New technology encourages new vices. When someone keeps me dangling, incommunicate, at the end of a phone-line I use my (newish) technology to play Windows Solitaire. To the point where I often find myself reluctant to respond when a human voice is finally made available.

Solitaire, which we Brits call Patience, adapted for the computer screen has one enormous attraction. Finish a game and the computer re-deals the cards. No shuffling, no problems with jammy fingers. But therein lies the puzzle.

Dealing is the result of random selection. Yet the computer is a machine ("A system that moves/In predestinate grooves/In fact not a bus but a tram.") How does it do randomness?

Anyone able to answer this one is entitled to kick off their comment with a sequence of five stars.

BB tries to defend his shortcomings

Lucy’s comprehensive comment on garlic crushers raised a point about received wisdom. It’s often assumed (Plutarch excepted) women do the cooking and men the DIY. But surely this is a false distinction.

Those who regularly engage in either evolve techniques which improve efficiency, adapt to varying end-products and produce better results. An escalope de veau à la Zagreb (one of my very rare culinary successes) may differ from a well-installed bookshelf but the self-teaching process they both require doesn’t.

There’s a jot of self-interest in this. I feel inadequate in the company of those who are able to use kitchen grammar fluently. So while Lucy and Plutarch were discovering new uses for their Sabatiers I offer in my own defense the decades spent getting the best out of Rawlplugs during which I probably rose to the equivalent of a sous-chef.

All of which became out-of-date when we moved from a 1930s semi (walls predominantly of brick and breeze block) to a modern detached villa where plaster boards complicate attaching things to the walls. My brother (a DIY perfectionist and a cook) recommends locating the wooden mounting frames and screwing into them. But I’ve lacked the requisite confidence. What I do know is: (a) forget the butterfly screws which start sagging under their own weight, (b) in some instances the coarse self-tapper combined with the finer concentric screw (see photo) can work.

Not the Which Report on kitchen equipment

How gratifying to receive a commission. Commenting on my post about pencil sharpeners, Lucy asked if my research team could investigate garlic crushers. I was delighted to comply but hadn't realised what an emotive subject this is. There was a hint that it might be in Plutarch's comment nominally also about pencil sharpeners.

My senior consultant (Guess who?) reacted noisily and definitively. "They're all rubbish. We've had several and none of them worked." By which she meant that anything calling itself a garlic crusher was to be avoided. However garlic can be crushed - by lateral thinking.

The perfect tool (on the right) is the Krups Type 203B which, oddly enough, is made in France. Garlic crushed in this very serious chopping mill stays crushed. But there are two disadvantages. Cleaning after use means sticking your finger into a cavity dominated by a sharp, twin-edged blade. Given its size it was also hideously expensive and was to some extent superseded by the food processor. My wife passed it on to me when I was going through my coffee-bean-grinding phase. I avoided damaging my finger-tips by cleaning it with a redundant pastry brush. Eventually I tired of its high-frequency shriek and I now use pre-ground coffee which I keep in the freezer.

Now, chez nous, garlic is crushed with the marble mortar and pestle. This is not only efficient but resonates with my wife's atavism and her aesthetics.

If it's a button - whatever turns you on

When married couples split up and divide the household spoils, the husband tends to take the hi-fi. Which explains why a hi-fi looks the way it does. Rather than disguise the knobs, switches and buttons, the designer turns them into a virtue - emphasising their technicity - supporting the belief that men revel in an amplifier's appearance while women simply use it to play the CD.

I must confess I did the choosing and the buying when we acquired the twin-drive CD player and the tuner/amp (left). And I love them both. The 700 - 800 CDs are another matter. Dividing them would be impossible. They could be part of the glue that holds us together.

Confirmation of the men/hi-fi link occurred on a ski-ing holiday when I shared a chalet populated by solicitors and doctors. I mentioned the above thesis and one male doctor became thoughtful. Then he looked at his wife, another doctor. "Tell you what darling, if we split up you can have the hi-fi," he said. Obviously he saw a split-up as an opportunity to buy a new hi-fi - with even more switches and buttons!

In any case I used a PC

Guess which is the better pencil-sharpener. That's right, the one on the right. It either came in a Christmas cracker or cost tuppence-ha'penny at Woolworths.

The other has settings for four different points (stubby to stiletto), a clamp to hold the pencil secure, a sliding tray to catch the shavings and a glass porthole on top so you can watch the grinding bits at work. But you could tell from Day One it would disappoint. Underneath the base is a rubber sucker which is supposed to attach it temporarily to a table-top. It never did.

I can't imagine what it cost because I was given it as a douceur when I was still a working journalist. Luckily I approved of the source beforehand and so my copy was published uncorrupted.

There's a moral here somewhere.

Test your intellect and endurance

Previous gap in transmission due to our - by now - mandatory attendance at the twenty-first Hay-on-Wye Festival, described by an earlier speaker, Bill Clinton, as "the Woodstock of the Mind". No technology but plenty of adult grist. Professor Steve Jones on how the theory of evolution will apply in the future, Gore Vidal being silkily provocative (Q: Mr Vidal, what message have you for today's youth? A: Grow up! (long pause) It's inevitable), Christopher Hitchens continuing his jousts with God, and Professor Richard Holmes showing how history should be taught with a masterly address on Marlborough.

I'd urge everyone to attend Hay at least once but, alas, this recommendation comes with a monstrous caveat. Hay, just over the border in Wales, is in the lee of the Black Mountains and enjoys its own micro-climate. Perhaps "enjoys" is not the right word. Last year's Hay was run at the same time as a Test Match (that's cricket for our foreign readers) which experienced the dubious distinction of the coldest day in the history of Test Matches. This year I have only seen rain heavier at RAF Changi on the island of Singapore. Also, Hay is a tented festival and when you're not being frozen and/or drowned you're straining to hear what's being said against the uproar from hurricane-blasted canvas. It can also be warm.

But as Michelin says: Il vaut le voyage.