Distrust giant steps for mankind

Great leaps forward in the kitchen end up, as the Americans elegantly put it, getting filed under Drop Dead. Think electric carving knifes and chicken rotissomats. The best developments are incremental. This pan of ours, fairly recently acquired, qualifies I think. The holes in the curtain below the lid "stop the lid diddling" (in the judgement of my technical adviser) and, since the holes align with pouring lips on the pan itself, they allow sieved water to be got rid of. Also the pan looks good.

No one who has commented on my posts will need telling that the vegetable is rainbow chard which I was about to sub-title the poor man's asparagus. I now withdraw this casual definition. Chard has a flavour and - especially - a consistency all its own.

Further note on pans. Speaking as the house washer-up I regard non-stick surfaces as terrific. But in the end they get scratched and the pan should then be thrown away. Not used to mix paint or to create a bird-bath - thrown away!

Did I mention I was a bike nut?

In a May blog my friend Plutarch wrote: “A shining, red, brand new Harley Davidson…catches my attention. I stop and stare… I have never driven a motor bike and have reached the age when, if I tried, I would certainly fall off. But this is a thing of beauty.” With it came a partly veiled invitation for me to respond.

I did so in two posts. More will follow since motorcycles shaped my youth and their memories warm my advanced years. (The hell with euphemism. Shouldn’t this be “old age”? – Ed.)

Plutarch finds motorcycles alien but can see their attractions. So, let’s pretend he was unaware of the graphic arts (he isn’t) and had just seen his first oil by some competent Englishman – Joshua Reynolds, perhaps. That’s the Harley. What follows takes him up to Rembrandt.

Here's a Honda Fireblade. At our age, it’s a bike Plutarch and I would be advised to stay clear of. It weighs 171 kg, has a top speed of 180 mph and takes 10 sec to cover quarter of a mile. Of more relevance to this blog the Fireblade develops 175 bhp. By comparison my car weighs 1500 kg and develops 140 bhp.

Plutarch may still find the Harley more beautiful but that’s because he hasn’t undergone the two-wheel equivalent of visits to the National Gallery, the Louvre and MoMA. I’ve done my time and find the Fireblade stunning. It’s made to go fast and that’s self-evident. I’ll try and explain why later after a session with drawn curtains and a wet towel.

PS: Thanks to Honda for permission to use the pic.

With a car, you can always park

Driving a car is mundane - a two-dimensional experience. Planes are three- if not four-dimensional since time also enters the frame. Flight is transient, limited by the fuel carried. Running out of fuel means running out of time.

I've always over-admired people who could fly planes. The technical requirements (especially navigation) fascinated me but I never took it further. Successful flying, like the price of freedom, depends on eternal vigilance. I imagined my mind wandering; buying the farm while pondering Thomas Pynchon.

I bought Microsoft Flight Simulator and sought mightily to land the Cessna at Meigs Field in Chicago. No go. In tutorial mode I found myself sweating at the injunctions of the instructor even though I was only facing a computer regurgitating advice pre-written years before by someone in Washington state.

Later, on a journalistic trip, I sat by the pilot of a light plane as he made his approach to - I think - Darlington airport. I could see the airfield straight ahead. What shocked me was our heading, way to the left of the runway centreline. Yet, as we got nearer, our heading and the centreline converged. Crosswinds, of course. Confirmation that I don't have the temperament for those extra dimensions.

DUKWs OK; Canuck French "difficult"

Perhaps not all Canadians would agree but one of the country's major attractions is the way it distinguishes itself from Big Brother south of the border - by ensuring French is omni-present. Though it didn't exactly work out the way I expected.

In the seventies, with time to kill in Montreal, I took a city tour in a DUKW (called "duck" in Britain) an amphibious military vehicle used in WWII.

Being a smarty-boots I didn't let on about my nationality, thinking I could busk the commentary. That was a mistake. From the moment the guide pronounced the city's name - Mawn-ray-orl - I knew I was in trouble. If I understood five per cent that would be over-stating it. My French has improved but I still think I would struggle if I went back.

The reason for the DUKW became apparent when it suddenly plunged down a ramp and continued the tour afloat in the harbour. A nice touch that. Though whether I'd have felt like that arriving at Omaha Beach in the same vehicle is another matter.

Note: The pic isn't a DUKW (the door opening beneath what would be the waterline blows the gaffe straight away) but partially resembles one. Will do better next time.

It's got cars - and much more

TECHNO-ART A famous French author writes, “… the vehicle starting off, covered in one bound, twenty paces of an excellent horse. Distances are only the relation of space to time and vary with it. We express the difficulty we have in getting to a place in a system of miles or kilometres which becomes false as soon as that difficulty decreases.”

That’s Proust getting to the technical heart of the difference between cars and horse-drawn carriages. Seventeen pages into Chapter Three of “Cities of the Plain” the fourth book constituting “A la recherche…”

And there’s more. “Coming to the foot of the cliff road, the car climbed effortlessly, with a continuous sound like that of a knife being ground…”

I’ve never urged anyone to read Proust because the objective difficulties – sentences lasting a page and a half, for instance – are formidable. But the subjective benefits arrive page after page. All I ask is that received wisdom is put to one side. Yes, Proust concerns himself with snobby aristocrats but one of his greatest creations is the cook/servant Francoise. Outside the salons he ponders the nature of place names, politics, houses of assignation, railways stations and alcoholic euphoria. He’s interested in everything. Even cars!

My thanks to Plutarch for tracking down the above quotes and for alerting me to the plot summaries that bring to a close the three volumes of the Scott Moncrieff/Kilmartin translation by Penguin. I’d completely forgotten that very useful feature.

Monoglot Rosbifs are twice blessed

If you’re reading this you’re anglophone. So consider yourself lucky.

On a France Inter radio chat-show the head of Microsoft in France had to field repeated whinges about the plethora of manuals, help sources, etc, all in English. In response this pragmatic Frenchman uttered the following Académie Francaise heresy: if you want to understand computers you have to speak English.

And this is why. In protecting their language (with which I sympathise) the French authorities have translated all those terse computeresque terms into pure French. So, don’t send an email, rather envoyer un courrier électronique.

My computer has an OS (operating system) called Windows XP. My friend in Milly-la-Foret also has XP but it's his système d’exploitation. And perhaps the French for word processing (traitement de texte) would be otherwise unexceptional if it weren’t for those Berlingo vans making deliveries from the local traiteur. But then a hard disk may look like a slice of charcuterie.

Whatever one’s feelings about computers they’re not quaint which is the quality these translations confer. Finally here’s a lulu. Where we refer to a Heath Robinson contraption the Americans say Rube Goldberg device. And the French say: un engin bricolé avec les moyens du bord - a thingy put together with what’s to hand.

Don't just pay the bill - check what it does

Electricity can seem contradictory. A light bulb is a smaller version of an immersion heater but in a different environment. It’s almost incidental that a bulb filament sheds light since its initial function is to resist the flow of electricity. In doing this it becomes hot. So hot that it glows.

A lit bulb is – not unnaturally – said to be working. The bulb’s work capacity and work rate (and that of many other things from humans to cars) are measured in Watts or Watt-hours. As explained earlier (“Why electricity and water don’t mix”, May 13) to understand this better requires some maths. Bad news!

However, despite electricity’s invisibility and its intellectual obscurity its ability to “work” can be physically sensed. A bike dynamo would do but would be clumsy. Rather better is the hand-generator found in school physics labs – probably not these days since such things were lethal in the hands of mischievous schoolboys.

Turn the generator and it rotates quite freely. Attach a resistance (it could be a light bulb) across the output and the handle is now harder to turn. Evidence of electrical work.

The power tool for extroverts

For decades I avoided buying (even investigating) an angle grinder because the name wasn't sufficiently explicit. When would I want to grind angles? I now assume the device was so christened because the cutting disc is mounted at right-angles to the handle.

My brother (DIY perfectionist and talented cook) has no use for one and believes it to be the crudest and least controllable power tool available outside the pneumatic drill, which North Americans refer to as a jackhammer. I agree. But occasionally one is faced with a crude job.

In my case I needed to reduce the capacity of my wine rack to accommodate a new sliding door. (And no, I hadn't taken the pledge. Simultaneously I increased the capacity of the rack under the stairs.) The angle grinder was perfect for cutting off two dozen short strips of flexible metal which would have been tedious work for a saw.

The angle grinder is spectacular. Sparks fly, metal melts and protective glasses are essential. The angle grinder automatically invokes the TV nannyism - "Don't try this at home".