Biking and a bust string

A gears tutorial. Avus is the progenitor of the blog Little Corner of the Earth which shares a number of interests with Works Well. Apart from a motorbike Avus has at least two pedal bikes which may be indicative of the extremes of his character. The first is a vintage Rudge, in beautiful condition, equipped not only with chain-guard but also with a chain-bath. It is intended for stately, if not majestic, progress and I can imagine it being used for the trip to Buckingham Palace, were Avus to be awarded an OBE.

The other is a drop-handlebar Dawes which he uses for serious outings such as a recent 51-mile tour of some of the loveliest parts of Kent, now photographed, described and posted. Since the Dawes is multi-chainwheel, multi-sprocket (like my bike) I asked him what was the lowest gear he would consider using, consistent with maintaining sufficient forward motion to prevent falling off.

His answer pre-empts a subject I may well have tackled myself. So in the interests of ecumenicism let me provide the link.

Techno-musical moment. At a concert last year in St David’s Hall, Cardiff (programme and orchestra name now forgotten) I noticed something irregular. A string on the leader’s violin had bust. Calmly the leader whispered to the deputy leader who slipped her something out of the pocket of his soup-and-fish. Within less than a minute she’d installed the new string, tuned it and was ready for work. Remarkable enough but it all happened during a period when the string section was inactive. That’s what I call professionalism.

The 21st century pen

It was like a secondary-school reunion, being surrounded by dimly remembered names. Except these were makes of pen. Parker, of course, I knew and Waterman had a classical ring. Shaeffer I associate with the USA but what about Platignum with its curiously intrusive g? Nor did I realise that the brashly pragmatic propelling pencil manufacturer, Yard-O-Led, did pens.

I was looking into the evolution of the fountain pen at the behest of my blog commentators. Surely things had moved on since the days when one lifted a small lever on the side, depressing a rubber bag and creating suction which drank ink. They have. Cartridges are less messy but there’s also a thing called a convertor which is unscrewed to reveal a plunger. With which one plunges.

Inks? Once there was simply blue, black and – for the ultra-fastidious – blue-black. Now you can get brown, green, purple, red and turquoise, the latter for anonymous sex scandal notes. The nanny state is at our elbow. You are warned that changes in cabin air pressure on planes may cause your fountain pen “to leak”, coded manufacturer talk for “explode”.

Roller balls seem to cost more than nibs. A cool £215 if you want to rotate with Shaeffer. Waterman’s Carene de luxe is nibbed and a snip at £146.50.

My research was entirely altruistic since I am not in the market for one of these devices. If I wrote with a fountain pen people might expect me to write better. I’d rather they offered up oblations (The first time I have used that word. Now there’s a thing.) celebrating the invention of the word processor.

Theoretically wonderful, actually banal

Here is my new rinky-dink mobile, bought last Saturday under close instruction from the experts – my daughter and granddaughter. Not a big deal in most people’s lives, but seismic in mine.

Its predecessor was eight years old and would still be in use if it hadn’t tumbled to the floor in Diafani. Twenty minutes after being switched on it flags up “Insert SIM card”, even though the SIM card remains in place.

As far I am concerned, advances in mobile phone technology could well have featured in the Rubaiyat:

Like snow upon the desert’s empty face,
Lighting its little while is gone.

I make twenty calls a year, half to logis in France. In a truly busy year I receive one or two. I am of course a pay-as-I-goer and, in one of my life’s little tragedies, I regret keenly that I topped up before Diafani (but failed to use the phone once while there) and the present £43 credit is beyond retrieval.

For me, mobile phones allow me to pass on terse announcements about my whereabouts and my ETA. A vital function yet somehow uninvolving. The seemingly obligatory camera on the replacement is likely to remain unused. Two pluses: the new phone is smaller and lighter and the address book design is greatly improved.

Mobiles should excite me but don’t. The stupendous technology is somehow blurred by users’ fascination with ringtones and overheard semi-dialogues at blare level.

Feels right, writes right

My Logitech wireless mouse, a gift about four years ago at an eye-watering £73, is showing signs of terminalism and I’m presently road-testing a replacement. The Logitech was rechargeable and had its own neat little charging bay; the newer one works on disposable batteries. “It is of course lighter,” said my excellent and local computer man. “If you can’t get on with it we’ll find you something heavier at half the price.”

After a week I hardly notice the difference in weight. Which is surprising since I’m very weight conscious when it comes to ball-points.

Yes I do still use a pen and I’m pretty choosy about the make. It’s got to be a Parker. The one on the left was bought decades ago and I have even bought refills for it. The one on the right was a freebie from an insurance company. Underneath – for the sharp-sighted – is a memo list of techno-blog subjects.

It’s not just the weight that matches the Parker so sweetly to my fingers. Length, thickness and the shape of the pointy end all play a part. Not that the Parker improves my writing. That remains terrible and I was punished repeatedly for it at school. It’s simply that I feel I can write better – in a literary sense – with the Parker. No doubt a delusion brought on by old age.

Fact is, the reverse is true. I feel mentally clumsy using one of those stalk-like give-aways. I wonder if Parker sponsors bloggers.

How I didn't fit the battle of Jericho

Trumpets work well even though this one is well past its sell-by date. The emotional content of the music is often directly related to the pressure on your diaphragm and this can compensate for a quarter-speed performance and increasingly shaky intonation as you climb the scale.

Note there are only three valves which might suggest that it is a good deal easier to play than the piano with its 80-odd keys or the violin which, theoretically, has an infinite number of stops. True in a sense. However, as things get higher the valves become less relevant as more and more notes are created by embouchure (lip tension) alone.

I was always drawn to the trumpet. Since I couldn’t read music I laboriously transcribed the fingering for simple tunes on to paper and then went down to practise in my long-suffering mother’s gloriously resonant cellar. I was even disciplined enough to play a whole octave of scales beginning with what I fondly imagined to be middle C (Open, 1&3, 1&2, 2, open, etc). Alas, when I tried my first (and last) duet with a piano and provided my middle C the pianist bluntly pointed out that it was in fact B flat. One of us had to adjust and it wasn’t going to be him.

I quickly reached the limits of my competence. I never mastered double tonguing (tacka-tacka) never mind triple tonguing. And I always had rhythm problems which manifested themselves elsewhere in my ability to dance a foxtrot to quickstep music. On the whole I was reduced to playing hymns which, given my attitude towards religion, led to a good deal of misunderstanding, especially in the USA.

My lip went years ago and this battered bit of tubing is retained out of pure sentimentality. I am quite prepared to join anyone who feels the need to create a Failed Trumpeters Club.

CODA (Two days later). In dwelling on my inadequacies I see I have failed to convey the sheer pleasure for me, a non-musician, derived from creating - however badly (though I always looked for improvement) - any sort of music. Lady is a tramp with its trickiness still unresolved after the fiftieth attempt was always worth the effort.

Falstaff nudges my elbow

A great bargain: 37 BBC DVDs covering the complete Shakespeare for about £120. I mean, how otherwise will you ever see Timon of Athens? We watched the plays on telly in the seventies and are now re-viewing them. Two surprising enlightenments: The Comedy of Errors and Henry Vl, pts 1 – 3.

Plus a salutary reminder from Falstaff: “Lord, Lord, how subject we old men are to this vice of lying.” It’s not that I overtly fibbed but I may have left the wrong impression and I feel I must do a little repolishing.

The subject was motorbikes – what else? The hero was the Honda Fireblade and for starters I must confess to a conflict of interest. In asking Honda if I could use an official photo of this mighty beast I was mildly interrogated about my motives. As a result I was given the key to the Honda Virtual Press Office! This may have affected my disinterestedness.

More important, did I leave anyone believing I had ridden a Fireblade? If so I apologise. I haven’t. I’d like to but things are stacked against me. The insurance companies have identified a new category of risk with its own amusing acronym which, alas, I forget. Basically it concerns men d’un certain age who now have the wherewithal to indulge activities they could only dream of in their youth. They buy a two-wheeled monster and then do fatal damage to themselves, the bike and a tree. It’s usually a tree.

Restrained by the work of actuaries I can only stand by the roadside and yearn. There, am I shriven?

A plumbing cri de coeur

Diafani diary 5. I’ve never made much of a fist of plumbing, possibly because I’ve only dabbled. Faced with repairs or small projects the temptation has been to renounce solder and opt for compression joints called olives, often with disappointing results.

Meditating in our Diafani bathroom I noticed a variant to what I regard – though I may just have been horribly unobservant – as traditional plumbing. Copper piping had been replaced by flexible tubes sheathed in wire mesh and equipped at each end with fittings resembling those used in high-pressure hydraulics and pneumatics.

One advantage is obvious: no need shape the piping. Attaching the fittings is another matter. I assume special equipment is needed – OK if you’re putting in a whole new bathroom, less so when attaching an outdoor tap for the garden hose.

I could Google this. And, if I were prepared to expose myself to public humiliation, I could ask for clarification on a DIY chat service I’ve used for slightly more technical matters. But there is another option.

It’s clear several respondents to Works Well are better qualified than me to run this blog. Also they dispense their wisdom more gently than web-bound DIY maintenance experts. So here I am again, cap in hand. What is the status of this plumbing development?

Mystery solved. A hundred metres out from Venanda beach (qv) there is a clear sandy area of sea bottom about 3 m below the surface. On it, spelt out in stones that must each have weighed 2 kg, is the word ALPNOE. The O has a stone in the middle. Locals were mystified. Googled it is something to do with free diving in Austria. Gotcha!

Atomic clocks not much use here

The ferry arrived at 7.10 pm.

BB leaves Venanda beach apparently towed by his visibility float. Note orange tee-shirt

Diafani diary 4. Diafani’s only public clockface is on the church tower. Two sides were visible from our hotel window, both told different times and both had been stopped for three years to my knowledge. But then who goes to a Greek island to clockwatch?

Yes, but… You leave Diafani by ferry which arrives at 5.35 on a Saturday evening. That’s what the ferry company’s website says and that’s what the printed schedule – which I picked up on the incoming ferry – says. Except that it doesn’t. Diafanians shrug and say “about seven”. Demanding greater certainty, I am recommended by Tony of La Gorgona restaurant, to keep an eye on the southern headland. “When the ferry shows there you’ll know it’s coming.”

Greek time. Nikos’s boat leaves for a trip to the island of Saria at 10 am. “Is that 10 am Greek time Nikos?” I ask. And Nikos roars with laughter but fails to confirm or deny.

Dr Blagojević’s husband, Dr Miodrag Vujošević (Misa for short), is an economist and spatial/environmental planner, and we chat as we pass on the street. In response to my “Greek time” he cites “Greek calendar” which, alas, I am never able to follow up with him. But it makes sense. Change of seasons means more on Diafani than the flow of hours. Many people leave the village during its unrewarding winter for work on Rhodes or in Baltimore, Md.

That's why when I tell someone I’ve knocked a couple of minutes off my best swim time down to Venanda beach they’re much more interested that I did it wearing an orange tee-shirt (“He swims in his clothes”). To protect my shoulders from sunburn, if you must know.