It's good to live in a golden era

Last night the landing light popped, cutting off all the other upstairs lights on that circuit. OK, it was a pain going down into the garage and pushing past my cold, cold car in my jim-jams to flip the switch, but not too big a pain. Because I can remember what the job entailed in Neanderthal times.

In those days fuses really blew. And since there were fewer of them much of the house would be in darkness. First you had to find the torch and the fuse wire. Then (holding the torch in your mouth) pull out the ceramic holder, slacken off two screws, attach a new length of wire and re-insert the holder.

As a result I am in love with my consumer unit (stupid phrase; fuse box was better). First, it’s so damn sensitive, able to throw the switch when a mere bulb filament parts. Second, rectification couldn’t be easier.

If my consumer unit were a poem it would be written by Ogden Nash:

Candy
Is dandy,
But liquor
Is quicker.

If it were prose it would be an extract from Thurber’s Agony Aunt column for animal problems:

Question: We have cats like most people have mice.
Answer: So I see from the photo but I can’t tell whether you need help or are just boasting.

Why sailors prefer "instant"

Takista moored at a marina east of Bilbao whose name escapes me (all those Basque Xs and Zs). Brothers Bonden Minor and Bonden Minimus, Takista’s owner, are fiddling with a recalcitrant jib.

COOKING AT SEA The phrase is euphemistic. When you’re really at sea – and especially in the Bay of Biscay – culinary aspirations don’t really extend beyond applying heat.

After we left this forgotten marina for Hendaye I helmed for the first time. As a treat Minimus went below and did mugs of instant coffee all round. Later, after my iron-set knuckles had been pried from the wheel with a crowbar, I decided to return the favour. I knew that the hob was on gimbals and that there were clamps for the kettle. What could go wrong?

Yachts at sea move. They move to extremes. Worst of all they move unpredictably. Never mind the clamped kettle. What about the unsecured mugs made, thank God, out of Melamine? The answer seemed to be to wedge them into the sink for the terrifying moment when the kettle made its journey across the galley. A journey which revealed that the cook (me) too was unsecured. My eventual position, with feet at least 2 m apart, recalled a technique called “chimneying” occasionally employed when I was still flexible enough to be rock-climber.

On a later leg of our holiday, a long overnight hop from Cap Breton to Arcachon, I’d graduated to tinned stew and making toast. A giant step.

Clumsy language, vital accents

The headline to the October 18 post is a Shakespearean quote which I wanted to break at the point where the poetic line ends. Pressing Enter didn’t work so I reverted to HTML, opening and closing with “div”.

As a professional user of Quark Xpress I found HTML shockingly clumsy when I created a community website. The difference between engraving and shaping sandstone with a broom handle. Blogger’s HTML is of course much simpler than nightmarish Dreamweaver (the preferred sofware for websites) but removes many options and – to some extent – discourages people from learning the code for HTML tags. Such as “div”.

Despite this responders to blogs are invited to write in such tags. Many don’t bother. Alas, I am the victim of my intellectual pretensions. I use French phrases quite a lot and believe they deserve itals (ie, the “em” tag, although I believe there is an alternative). Since I prefer to write in Word then cut and paste, I find it good practise to put in the code at this stage.

French also demands accents. Missing one out causes me pain and my readers confusion. Without the final acute the past participle of donner looks like the carelessly transcribed name of a famous poet. Thus the icon for Windows’ character map is permanently installed top right on my desktop. I guess this makes me kinda anal.

"I drink the air before me and return,Or 'ere your heart twice beat."

My neighbour, two doors down, is a very, very enthusiastic gardener. Not content with his own plot, he mows the grass outside his house even though it’s “council land”. (Guess who’s the odd man out along our street when it comes to mowing the council’s grass.)

Some days ago Herefordshire Council told him to desist. He was “guilty of encroachment”. Turning the grass into a bowling green might discourage pedestrians from walking on it. The story leaked first to the local press, attracted regional attention on telly and then got huge national coverage in The Daily Mail and The Daily Telegraph.

But this is a techno story. Not a great fan of either of those two publications I was unaware of their lucubrations. But an ex-neighbour now living in Canada reads the DT online and emailed me the news. A four-thousand mile journey to tell me about something occurring 25 m away. The world is in your backyard.

DIY NOT GOOD FOR YOUR HEALTH My garage door is an up-and-over and had been getting stiffer. A few squirts of WD40 on the bearings and it rose up under finger pressure. But what goes up… My mind, attuned to the previous stiffness, was not in gear as I stepped into the garage and the free-as-air door crashed down on my head. I survived to blog but am wondering whether I should have delivered an extra squirt up my ear’ole.

Pull this and we start moving

(Left) My brother’s yacht Takista at Royan. (Right) His son-in-law’s Dipper (police launch to the rear) moored at Holyhead

With cars much of the technology is disguised and/or simplified before it comes to the driver’s attention. With a yacht technology is overt.

Take a yacht’s head, for example. Takista’s was fiendish. One lever opened and closed access to the hellhole below; the other provided water so that a third lever could be waggled to provide a flushing action. I think I’ve got this right. After a while I didn’t have the courage to ask further and tended to arrange my bodily functions around visits to the marina.

We mustn’t talk about engines. My brother was highly superstitious about them. Not only were jokes not allowed, he even discouraged casual conversation on the subject. In any case the whole point of a yacht is to derive forward progress from the sails. The foresail is sort of semi-automated and is stowed away by allowing it to roll up round the forestay. The mainsail on Takista was hoisted by hauling on a rope to the side of the mast. On Dipper this task could be achieved by ropes taken to cleats for’ard of the cockpit – less dangerous if the sea was skittish. My brother seemed to regard this as effete.

The yacht’s equivalent of a handbrake is the anchor. Occupying the forward berth on Takista my sleeping head rested uneasily on the anchor chain. The radio was not tuned to BBC3 for Mahler but to channel 16 the universal open frequency on which information about disasters initially unfolds. Depth measurement systems have no parallel on a car.

I came too late to yachts and my enthusiasm has the zealotry of a recent convert. Inevitably I will return to this fascination.

Towards the better burger

What constitutes a good frying pan? Given the obloquy the subject generates perhaps a different name would be a start. The Americans say skillet but I’ve never been sure the terms are synonymous. I’m astonished to find the French have a word for fry (frire); you’d hardly know it from restaurant menus where poelé is the preferred participle. A German frying pan is a Bratpfanne if you can manage those awkward internal consonants.

My director of culinary research tells me this is a good one. It cost nearly £45 and was bought at Hereford’s genuine hardware store, Philip Morris, where the choice is enormous. The pan was made in France and the brand is Anolon.

Contrary to expectations the metal handle does not get hot during frying. In fact it has an extra benefit – when finishing off a Spanish omelette you can stick the whole thing under the grill. However, the handle does get hot then. Note the massive rivets that attach the handle; no need to fiddle with the fat-covered cross-head screw holding on a plastic handle.

With cheap frying pans the bottom eventually bulges upwards resulting in unequal heat distribution. This one’s bottom must be nearly 3 mm thick so bulging is unlikely. The sides are nicely angled ensuring a smooth slide transfer.

Finally, it must be recognised that frying pans – especially non-stick ones like this – are eventually expendable and must be replaced. My DCR recognises this and is prepared to bite on the bullet when the time comes.

Oh, that feels a whole lot better

Today completely unfamiliar technology turned up on my own doorstep. A ready-made blog.

We’d had an outflow problem on Saturday, fanfared when my wife found two dead rats floating in the entrance to an outside drain. “Foul water or sewage?” asked the man from Drain Clear this morning, cheerily offering me the options. The blockage was quickly resolved. Roots from our neighbour’s front-garden conifer had entered the drainage system and dammed off our access to it.

Once the roots had been chopped away our tubes were given their own special enema with a high-pressure water hose. And I mean high-pressure. How about 2000 psi or, if you prefer it, 138 bar? As a comparison my car tyres are normally inflated to just over 35 psi.

The Drain Clear pump has the capacity to go up to 4000 psi. Used in conjunction with what is called a pencil jet this force would apparently cut through a brick wall. Enough to clear the most recalcitrant embouteillage.

Or inflict more personal damage. Operatives must use these things with care. A bit of carelessness and the jet “would go right through a man’s boot and take his toe off.” I’ll take Drain Clear’s word for it. However I must add that having a drain cleared is – almost literally – cathartic.

It's no fun at all

Just back from the garden after l½-hr work (my absolute limit) trimming the ivy and other ill-defined tasks. I need to work off my resentment, so here’s a list of horticultural ineluctables.

(1) Why is it that how ever many implements you take out of the shed, you always need another? And then another?

(2) Gardener’s World is like watching sado-masochistic porn when you get the heeby-jeebies over a pin-prick. There are people who seem to relish digging. Mind you, the earth they dig is remarkably free from rocks, roots and compressed density.

(3) Trimming ivy doesn’t sound much. What’s a pain is hooking out the cuttings without wrecking the contents of the flower bed.

(4) “But you enjoy the garden when it’s full of colour,” says my wife. Cruelly I point out that she enjoys using her well-honed teeth but finds it difficult to remain philosophical while the dental hygienist goes a’scritching.

(5) A garden creeps up on you like a mugger. Something that didn’t need doing this morning, suddenly requires attention now you’ve got a belly-full of lunch.

(6) Poets rhapsodise about gardens. But can you imagine Dylan Thomas doing topiary? One Plutarch doesn’t foretell a flock of horticultural rhymesters.

OK, I’m purged. Now for a chapter or two of Walter Pater.