Beating the system, parts 1 and 2

SOLAR PANELS cont. There are of course no guarantees that the surplus electricity generated will match the supplier’s (Three Energies) estimate. However, the database for this estimate relates to sunlight levels in Herefordshire over the last forty years. And the estimate is “worst case”.

The system takes two days to install and the panels (eight in my case) are guaranteed for 25 years. However the inverter, which converts the panels’ DC power into AC, is guaranteed only for five years. I can if I wish visit a satisfied panel user somewhere in the county but I have decided I don’t want to speak to a thinly disguised employee of Three Energies.

There are restrictions on the number of panels (and therefore the surplus energy potential) for domestic users. Business users were previously unrestricted but this apparently allowed a chicken farmer to turn a modest £50,000 turnover into £250,000 a year from electricity generation alone.

PARKING PERSIFLAGE Leaving my Skoda in a Ledbury car park recently I was accosted by another driver who handed over her parking ticket with lots of free time left on it. People do that here in the sticks. When I got back I had incurred a parking fine. I had been so grateful that I had carelessly left the ticket upside down on the dashboard. Elsewhere I used a system which specifically prevents this good-neighbour activity; one is required to type in part of the car’s registration number which is then printed on the ticket, making it unique to that car. Since the ticket machines are, as a result, now much more complex (and therefore expensive) one can’t help seeing this as slightly mean-minded.

Cost versus old age

I now have a financial incentive to live until I am eighty-three and a half. That’s the time it will take for the cost of the solar panel system I am contemplating to be amortised through my injections of surplus power back into the National Grid. The scheme has the government’s blessing though there are no grants. There is no salesmanship since the price is fixed (£6750) and it takes two hours to explain even though, in the end, it is relatively simple to understand. One misconception needs to be cleared up: the panels convert sunlight not heat into power

Switzerland and Germany have used such systems for decades. Inevitably the UK is behindhand in meeting its target of 15% of energy consumption from renewable sources by 2020 and is now looking for a take-up rate of 700,000 houses a year. Which seems mighty optimistic.

You ask the obvious question: suppose a rapidly ageing scribbler, on the verge of his seventy-sixth, snuffs it in the interim, goes into a home or is locked up for sedition? Well, the house is likely to sell for a price over the odds since the buyer inherits reduced electricity costs without the capital expenditure. More on this if there is a scintilla of interest.

OH JOY! In the last post I included a list of what Lucy elegantly described as my anathemata. To them I could have added caravans. My neighbour has one and he’s a techno-freak. Not for him the back-breaking task of manoeuvring the thing into his driveway. He uses a remotely controlled tug. This may be the only true pleasure to be derived from his box on wheels

The agony (of being moved by Wagner)

I loathe fairy tales, myths, out-of-mind experiences, the supernatural, voodoo, animalisations, horror movies, most science fiction, miracles, received religions, undefined enthusiasm, and a sense of déja vu.

Yet I’ve dabbled in Wagner. Why? Because the music’s good.

Last night, watching a live HD presentation of Die Walküre by the New York Met I rose up a notch. I was moved.

I need to tell you part of the plot. This is a big turn-off even for people who love things in my black list above. I've kept it brief.

For irresistible political and domestic reasons Wotan, king of the gods, agrees – very, very reluctantly – to arrange that his bastard son dies in a forthcoming battle. His well-beloved daughter Brȕnnhilde is despatched to ensure this. For humanitarian reasons she tries to save the son, Wotan is forced to intervene and his son dies. For disobeying a god’s wishes Brȕnnhilde is punished, horribly.

During the last act Brȕnnhilde pleads against her punishment and has a lot going for her. She has always loved and obeyed her father to the point where she gained “favoured” status. She disobeyed him on this occasion because she knows he loves the bastard son. She is telling the truth and Wotan knows it. He is in agony. But the punishment stands.

The singers – Bryn Terfel and Deborah Voigt – are world-class and the music works relentlessly backwards and forwards to re-create the emotions and regrets both are experiencing. This is believable stuff aimed at proving that power is never infinite, that even gods – never mind humans – are never free. I was moved last night and I am moved again, writing this. I can say no more.

... and start all over again

THE BLOGGER’S RETREAT “I really like this pub,” said Plutarch and it was that kind of day. Elegiac, talk of families at the end. The pub has a name which Plutarch uses; for me it’s The Pub in Roupell Street. These days we repair there after the BR curry but decades ago we used to drop in on our way back to Waterloo station and thus it became a source of minor marital strife. It’s real-ale, plain, clean, has no music and the all-male clientele resembles us in the seventies: noisy, released from work.

We also talked of writing. Plutarch flattered me by recording an utterance so it was salutary to return home and find a letter from my agent turning down Gorgon Times (“original theme… has something to say… current climate for fiction is so dire… sorry for such a cheerless response.”) Mrs BB was sympathetic but, to tell the truth, my mind was and is on The Love Problem (77,232 words).

EVERYDAY MAGIC It’s obligatory to slag people using mobile phones. But consider this. To attend Diane’s funeral in Folkestone we picked up Younger Daughter who lives en route. Elder Daughter took a bus from Luton to Heathrow and walked to Terminal One. I mis-steered at Heathrow and ended in the cab rank. To which Elder Daughter was guided via mobiles. Impossible any other way.

THANKS Reading about Diane’s death HHB recommended Diana Athill’s Somewhere Towards the End, a brisk look at life (ie, gardening, sex, family relationships, appreciating painting) from old age. Excellent. On her late talent for writing: “I never knew (and this is literally true) what the next paragraph I was going to write would be.” Me too. It’s the act of faith that something will occur that keeps you alive.

The private place

Diane: in hospital and later
I would not have you prone, my dear, but up
And wiping plates, sharp-tongued, close at my side,
A kitchen critic, keen to laugh and slap
My washing-up techniques with woe betide.

Up from that narrow bed, to join lobelias
And ericas that may, we’re told, replace
Expensive box; then facing irises -
An auburn glow in cultivated space.

Dear, prone in bed is really not your bit,
For when you said “Well X is just a prat.”
Your head and shoulders helped augment the wit.
Down there they’re mute and now the wit is flat.

That was then. I wash dishes on my own
Untouched by auburn glow, the light quite flown.

The view from my chaise longue

Today’s an anniversary: my first post, three years ago. That initial headline was remarkably po-faced (Car door needs protecting from physics) and the single comment, from Plutarch, is so enigmatic I cannot decode it. The next twenty-four posts drew a total of seven comments: three from Plutarch, one from Lucy, one from a guy who wanted to sell something and two from me.

Works Well was hard core then, no faffing with weddings. My eighth post (Marvellous mathematical moment) was my most ambitious, demanded exhausting powers of explanation and is the best I have ever written. Only Plutarch responded. In arriving at the present total of 480 posts I moved away from stern prescription and was eventually lucky to find a select group prepared to indulge me. To them I am eternally grateful and virtually all are to be found on the links list.

Latterly my blog has competed with novel writing and there were times when I considered pulling the plug on Works Well – then drew back in horror. Doing so would be like walking out into the desert alone. I enjoy writing and I enjoy other voices. Novels usually don’t get published and their achievement runs perilously close to self-abuse. And blogging can be a rehearsal for what goes into the novel.

It’s insufficient to say blogging is dialogue – it’s civilised dialogue. It encourages a desire to respond and even re-respond. But it’s not without risks. Recently, through not concentrating enough, I’ve buggered up several posts and even more comments. In effect I’ve betrayed that word “civilised” and the penalties can be severe. People just stop reading. My namesake, a practical man, would say it’s my own fault. And he’s right. Blogging is also meritocracy.

Why my father is honoured in Folkestone

WEDDING, second tranche. The photographer was terrible; Mrs BB rose over this but I resemble a beached dugong, even here. Sparing use of the eraser reveals my awful haircut.

Recognising, no doubt, we were unbelievers the cleric concentrated on the mystical aspects of marriage and neglected procedure. Thus we knelt when we should have risen, triggering his angrily impatient hand-wagging. I failed to look Mrs BB in the face until told – too late – this was desirable. The cleric started to bind our wrists with his stole: this so alarmed me I lurched backwards.

In the vestry I signed the wrong box on the marriage certificate, then signed the wrong form of my name, then crossed out a correct signature. The cleric (Canon Hough – his name suggesting his favourite conveyance) became testy. My father, observing this, placed a large denomination note in the donations box.

I had prepared no speech for the reception despite speaking in public for the first time. My father, an accomplished public speaker, appalled by my increasingly desperate babble, decided to redress the balance. To wit: “At dinner (a month previously) I could tell she was the right woman for BB because she chose an excellent Bordeaux from the list.” Horror among the in-laws.

The Bondens’ many failings did not include snobbism. Nevertheless my mother-in-law banned all but the closest of her family from the post-wedding booze-up. This gave my father full rein with the conversation and the whisky bottle. During one peroration he fell asleep. As he woke, his hand descended unerringly to the spot on the floor where he’d left his glass. In-law horror turned to awe.

Oh, and by the way, it rained

Britain is presently in a wedding frenzy as Folkestone was fifty-one years ago - but for different reasons. After disasters, arguments and supreme errors of aesthetic judgement there was only one way the BB marriage could go and that was up. Which, I'm happy to say, it has.

Mrs BB, then Miss T, had wanted a registry office wedding with, say, a dozen closest. "Don't be silly," her mother (an atheist in everything other than formal CofE observances) said, "people will think you're pregnant." Miss T said she would look forward to proving such doubters wrong. But, as you can see, a church it was.

LtoR: BB's youngest brother (dreaming of becoming a magnate, which he did), BB's mother (Pleased to be separated spatially from ex-husband; rode from Bradford to Folkestone on scooter; writing a short story in her head), BB's younger brother and best man (Born to pit himself against the wild - a cliché he'll enjoy), BB (In £21 Burton's suit, garnished with worst haircut ever), Mrs BB's father (who inserted himself into all the photos in this manner), Mrs BB (smiling despite having her dress stood on during the ceremony), BB's grannie (92 and much happier than she looks), dear, dear Diane (married a year before, five months' pregnant and a wonderful advertisement for pregnancy), BB's dad (who insisted BB couldn't wear a red tie and, when BB returned with a green tie, said grumpily "From Communism to Fenianism.")

The groom went on to learn a valuable lesson in public speaking that day (I cringe at the memory) and the groom’s father became a Folkestone myth in the matter of toping. A sequel will depend on how many comments this attracts.