Living in our brave new high-tech age

ISN’T TECHNOLOGY wonderful – especially when it works!

Unfortunately, I think I’m a little jinxed when it comes to the high tech stuff.

For example, on our recent holiday, our Kindle packed up after just one hour’s use. (I’m sure I fully recharged it.)  It would have left me stranded, literature-less, had I not been at the airport where I hastily picked up a much more reliable paperback at the bookshop to keep me amused.

Again, we purchased a Sat Nav device a couple of weeks ago, intending to use it to find our way to the hotel near Liverpool Airport – always a little confusing.

The first device was a Garmin and it refused all attempts to find a satellite. I returned it to the dealer and it was exchanged, this time for a TomTom device of similar specs. On our drive down to the airport the thing kept conking out on us with a message to say that the battery was not charged. Things got stranger when we neared Liverpool and the device started giving us directions for the streets of Buxton! On the way home we resorted to using a good, old-fashioned paper atlas.

I’ve contacted TomTom and they have advised me on a course of action – it seems another battery defect of some sort – but, so far, without result.

It’s not a dissimilar story with our PC and our laptop which occasionally seize up – always without warning and usually at the most inconvenient moment imaginable. Sometimes they refuse to start up, sometimes to shut down; sometimes they go into a “sleep” mode so deep that they refuse to wake up again. And sometimes it’s the software that flatly refuses to work the way it should.

And all this worries me when I think of our new car, and amount of technological wizardry it has as standard. Surely, the more complicated they make it the more there is to go agley.

And of course, now, we have “smart” phones and “smart” TVs and the like.

I shudder at the prospect of all this “smart” stuff going wrong. What will our brave new world be like then?

A Paris awakening

I’M ASHAMED to see that my last posting was back on April 3^rd. I can only put down my lack of activity as a combination of energy-less-ness and indolence. I think of it as the watching-the-grass-grow syndrome – and it can be quite an addictive pastime.

Still, conscience doth quicken and all that… My Good Lady has kept a fair summary of our doings over the summer in her blog, and I don’t feel inclined to repeat it all again here.

What’s fired me into hitting the old keyboard again is our latest holiday – and especially our visit to Paris for the first time in over forty years.

Oh, it’s changed beyond belief of course. It’s dirtier, busier, nosier, all that… But somehow, still quite fascinating. And it had one totally unexpected side-effect on me – it started me writing again.

I used to do a fair bit of scribbling – stories, articles, radio pieces, you name it – and all with a modest amount of success.

But for about ten years now the fire has gone out of me, the hunger, the need – the compulsion to write, the sense of somehow not being quite complete as a human being unless I can put into words what life around me is all about.

In Paris I find myself observing again – the prerequisite of all writing – and somehow needing to jot down what I’m seeing. Sitting at a pavement brasserie I find myself reaching for my pocket notebook to dash out this observation or that…

“…Three fat ladies sit on a low wall, eating ice creams…”

“…An old, lambretta scooter leans against the kerb, a relic of a bygone age…”

“…Two Japanese girls snapping each other against the background of Notre Dame Cathedral with dinky little cameras, both very young, in pastel-coloured coats, short skirts and tights…”

…Little notes like these. I don’t know why, I don’t know what it means. It’s just an itch I feel the need to scratch. Maybe the sheer human chaos of Paris has triggered a semi-defunct impulse into stirring again.

Anyhow, just thought I’d share this before I go back to watching the grass grow.

Dominion

I’VE JUST finished reading a marvellous novel called Dominion, by an author I shall be looking out for, C. J. Sansom.

It’s a thriller-cum-alternative history type story, along the lines of Robert Harris’ Fatherland.

Dominion is set in an England which made peace with Nazi Germany in 1940 – as indeed, could easily have happened had the pacifists in the then Conservative government had their way.

The vision of our country, as imagined by Sansom, would be a nightmare of oppression, unmitigated greyness and barely suppressed rebellion and violence.

Why I find the story so chilling to me personally was because it’s set in 1952 – within my own lifetime. I remember vividly going to school in the smogs that polluted the towns and cities in the winters of those years, and of the grim austerity of those still-rationing bound days after the war.

If anybody still believes it would have been better to make peace with Germany, that indeed, we had any choice at all but to fight, I would recommend this book as a salutary corrective.

Cooking again

I’M COOKING again.

Actually, I’ve been doing a fair bit of cooking lately. Last week, for example, I made us an amusing prawn and egg flan (My Good Lady did the pastry for me for this, she’s got the touch for pastry much more than I have), a rather disappointing and pointless attempt at making my own baked beans, and one of my much-praised kipper and egg kedgerees.

This evening I’ve got out our slow cooker and set it to plopping on a chicken in white wine with mushrooms.

Discussing our culinary activities amongst friends and acquaintances, I’m surprised by how many of the menfolk we know are taking to the pinny and the pan – and especially to the slow cooker. It’s maybe because precision timing on the slow cooker isn’t crucial as it is in the normal way (although it’s true that you do have to be a little bit careful when doing fish).

This evening’s dish is a case in point. I’ve just lined the bottom of the pan with new potatoes, literally thrown in the chopped up veg, laid the chicken thighs on the top, poured over the stock and the wine, and blast off!

The recipe suggests a cooking time on LOW for between 6 and 8 hours – I shall try to keep an eye on it, and when the chicken seems about done I’ll just switch off.

Voila! Tomorrow’s dinner is ready for warming up in the evening along with a few fresh vegetables.

I just hope it tastes better than those wretched baked beans!