An ageist bike and a new mag

I drive an old man’s car – ie, with an automatic gearbox. However it is a car for old men who appreciate technology. The auto-box is light-years away from the power-hungry “slush pumps” of yesteryear and incorporates two conventional clutches which ensure very speedy changes up and down the six gears. If I flick the lever sideways I can change (and hold) gears manually, useful when travelling down steep winding roads.

Amazingly Honda now offer such a box for their heavier touring bikes. I admire Honda but this may be a step too far. An important feature of bike-riding, apart from a willingness to fall off every now and then, is the speed and ease with which one can change gear. A veritably sensual experience which even old men should not be denied. I foresee a mouth-foaming reaction from one biker who isn’t even old – Avus, are you there?

NEW TITLE Wired is a successful American magazine devoted to technology (plus Ideas, Culture, Business, according to the strapline). Now there’s a UK edition which, most recently, tests slim laptops, the ultimate chair, and “lawn mowers vs. sheep”. Major features include the search for dark matter, the physics of skateboarding, trials riding and free running, and an explanation of synthetic biology. Another major feature – which I avoided – explored Richard Branson’s greenness.

I like it because it slots in underneath pure science for which I lack the education. But I worry about its sustainability. The emphasis is cutting edge and I’m not sure there’s enough of that to go around. I hope it doesn’t lurch into history or repetition. A Christmas present?

Meet my superior alter ego

Without a computer I would be an aspostrophe-ridden bucolic in Adam Bede. I use it to buy books from 13,000 secondhand bookshops round the world (ABE), to buy books in French from French sources (cheaper even with the postage), to write verse aided by a free rhyming dictionary open in an adjacent window, to send cash to grandchildren, to phone US friends for free (Skype), to check equity investments and to update them on a spreadsheet, to produce a quarterly newsheet, to run a local website, to spec a digital camera unavailable locally, to view my house from the air, to download books for my ebook reader, to download my CDs on to my MP3 player, to check routes and driving times to distant parts, to ask tricky questions about website design and DIY of experts, to appear competent in foreign languages, to call up pictures of virtually anything, to store digi-photos and to scan and store optical photos. To blog.

It is vital my computer works well. It must be repaired when bust and incorporate worthwhile computeresque developments. When I arrived in Hereford I had a modified Dell. Over the years parts were replaced until the only originals were the power supply and the case. A new processor and motherboard caused even these items to be ditched and I am now left with the old keyboard. – sweat-stained and definitely unhygienic.

Barrie and Jim, who operate from a converted house on the estate, do my bidding and I have spent several thousand pounds with them. I do not resent this. A slow computer is a contradiction – like a well-equipped car that only travels in reverse. I could buy things cheaper online but with them I discuss what I need before writing the cheque. A vital asset.

A debt remembered

Pittsburgh, Christmas 1971
I waited, knowing the festivities
Would choke the flow of transatlantic calls,
Delays which brought their own blank auguries,
A prelude to the saddest of farewells.
“Ah… yes…”, my brother said, quite languidly,
Languor that looked for comfort in delay.
But what he added lacked necessity,
The link was cut and youth had gone astray.
She died within a distant older place
I’d left behind with callow eagerness,
Yet unrestrained by any false embrace,
Encouraged, taught, with chances of success.
She wrote, I write, but here’s the difference
No letters, now, to foil my ignorance.

Does this convey his bigness?

When old dormice like us need to buy each other presents it’s a long-term, covert operation. Neither is inclined to wait months for something we want and bang goes another choice. The trick is to listen carefully to murmured exchanges during that somnolent Sunday-newpaper part of the week and then spirit away what’s been learned. That’s why I’m now reading “American Prometheus” a biography of Robert Oppenheimer, who masterminded Los Alamos then fell foul of the anti-Red witch hunts in the fifties. (Note: The protruding bookmark was a gift from Plutarch.)

Oppenheimer was a clever man – marvellous on intuitive leaps into obscure regions of physics. His cleverness is measured by those he worked with and who thought well of him. Since his golden period was when physics was turned on its head by quantum mechanics, his address book contained all the big names: Niels Bohr, Heisenberg, Dirac, Rutherford, Pauli, usw.

I’m well aware not everyone out there is turned on by physics so I need an analogy. Say you’re a committed Christian; imagine a time-warped contact with someone who had rubbed shoulders with the twelve disciples. Something on that scale. That’s all on Oppie, for the moment anyway.

MUG SHOT Lucy has just celebrated her acquisition of a new tea mug from a craft shop in Josselin, a Breton town I dimly recall – but for what? Beautifully photographed, checked out for lip contact, tis a thing to be desired. My mug, another gift from Mrs BB, may be my most treasured possession. Acquired over a decade ago from John Lewis, it is bone china, has a William Morris pattern and is of austerely correct design. Fits my lip perfectly.

Bibliophile, 74-plus

My socks, like novels of the avant garde,
Weigh on me now: I lack the power to stretch
Beyond that hindering swag of lard
Towards the problematic briarpatch.
I opt for looseness so my corded neck
Is unrestrained, a turtle’s periscope
That scans the route on a familiar trek
Through re-read books down a declining slope.
I fear tight clothes and tighter argument,
Prefer to wallow in the warmer mud
And so avoid the future’s accident:
The ketchup rather than the oozing blood.

This year I measured time along Swann’s Way
But knew the end and occupied the day.

Engine room chez Bonden

Working kitchens can be a thumbprint – even an EKG – of their users. A recent pictorial post by Lucy got tantalisingly close to revealing hers. Urged to cast aside the seventh veil she excused herself for various reasons, including one concerning an excess of bottles which I am compelled to sympathise with.

Anyway, in re. motes and beams, I am stripping away the Bondens’ seventh veil. Our kitchen is L-shaped, hence the two halves. This is of course Mrs BB’s territory but I enter it regularly to wash up, to perform certain unsavoury tasks beneath her notice and to provide dialogue when change is mooted.

1. Neff glass hob. Powerful, quick to react, speedily cleaned. Very expensive boon and benison.
2. Extractor fan cover. Changing filter paper is an “unsavoury task”.
3. Food processor. In teacosy-like snood.
4. Knife holster. All wood; large enough to accommodate sharpening steel.
5. Window blind. Awkward to remove; permanently at this level; decoration only.
6. Basil plant in pot. Just to brush past it is a delight.
7. “Monsieur Ariston” dishwasher. Used only by guests after dinner parties.
8. Foil and film dispensers. Literally indispensable.
9. Krups coffee percolator. Latest in long trudge towards perfection.
10. Spice rack. Compact and practical; not bought at novelties shop.
11. Microwave. Aged Panasonic; given the marque it should last for ever.
12. Cupboard. Converted from piddling nine-slot wine rack.
13. Brabantia touch-top garbage bin. Once you’ve touched you’ll never pedal.
14. Neff twin oven. Hyper-expensive; does everything; superb engineering detail.

Keeping faith with screw-caps

I have a horror of deathbed conversions, of being bullied by pain, fear or fatigue into embracing a received religion. I hope when that particular needle’s eye arrives I shall remain faithful to St Pragmatus, patron saint of the believable world.

Given my age and the growing relevance of Shakespeare’s most seductive, most sibilant line (If it be now, ‘tis not to come…) such considerations are important. Romanticism and fantasy are always at my elbow and require constant suppression. Briefly they got the upper hand at my birthday dinner last Saturday. I’d ordered a sauvignon blanc for starters and since the best stuff is brewed in New Zealand it came with a screw-cap which the restaurant owner proceeded to unscrew at the table.

I mock-complained. I told him that screw-caps are OK at home but in public one yearns for corkscrew panache. Complete nonsense, of course. Over the last ten years I’ve probably opened a dozen bottles of wine that have been corked (ie, undrinkable). None had a screw-cap. Yet because this was a jolly, sweaty social occasion I found it necessary to hark back mendaciously to one of those imaginary golden eras.

Corks are harvested from tree bark by curly-haired Mediterranean types who I’ve always suspected beat their wives. Corks can communicate a fungus to the wine resulting in a mouldy smell and taste. Screw-caps prevent this but they’re technoid. I’m ashamed I betrayed my intellect and resorted to jokiness even though jokiness was in the air. But I also worry about finding myself in a poor way, looking up and hearing a dark-suited man reading selections from The Song of Solomon. Beautiful but irrelevant. Will my belief in particle physics and the cell hold out?

Technology the spur

Mrs BB’s birthday card to me had two people staring at the heavens and was captioned: “Do you think there’s somewhere up there where they don’t play football?” She knows my antipathies. Mind you I expect to be – and am - attacked for my sports interests, especially F1. The cars are noisy and just go round and round, I’m told. I say if the technology is of no interest forget it.

Raikkonen won the Belgian Grand Prix yesterday because of technology. Despite having a Ferrari that was only intermittently faster than Fisichella’s Force India he picked his moment, pressed the Kers button and went into the lead. Kers converts and stores waste energy produced by applying the brakes and is available for 6 – 7 seconds a lap.

Fisichella didn’t have Kers. Why not? Because of the laws of physics. Kers weighs about 30 kg, a huge addition to the overall weight of a racing car. Not everyone has been able to balance that equation. It’s far easier to watch a Guatamalan kick a ball about and, occasionally, kick a Ghanaian. No technology in that.

PROOF POSITIVE Lucy, faced with some fence painting, suggested I should do a comparison test on Cuprinol and its competitors. This photograph of our shed is one reason why I am the kettle and the pot.

MUM’S LIST Other phrases used by my mum keep on returning. “Giving backword” means reneging on something previously agreed. I use it without explanation; most people find it self-explanatory.