101 Things #20 - The Road Trip

Here is a quite popular item on the bucket list of many and perfect for inclusion in my own anti-list, 101 Things I Refuse To Do Before I Die. For example, we find on Lifehack the suggestion that you should

Go on a road trip

and I have no hesitation in affirming that I have not the slightest intention of doing so. Here's why.

The Myth
Scene: Somewhere in the western United States
The long straight open road, with a vast landscape rolling away in all directions. It's hot.The occasional truck thunders by in the opposite direction. You and your half-dozing companion pass through townships where the old folk sit on rockers and the gas is still delivered by an attendant. Radio stations flicker in and out of range. With a roar, a dozen gleaming motorcyclists pass you. The county sheriff hides behind a huge billboard hunting speeders but you're wise to his tricks. As dusk falls, you pull into a friendly motel, head on down to the nearby bar for a cool one and then on for a steak dinner at the diner.

Thelma and Louise plan their escape at the next table. Philip Marlowe is making discreet enquiries from the taciturn barman and a folded $20 bill changes hands. Jack Kerouac sits on a bar stool nursing a bourbon. William Burroughs and his attorney can be heard stumbling around outside looking for their stash. The door slams open and Clint Eastwood is framed against the last of the sunset, giving a little nod as he scans the room, chewing an unlit cheroot.

You turn to your companion
"Shall we stick around for a while?"
"That's cool, dude. And then we'll push on"
"Anywhere in particular?"
"Nope. We'll just hit the road and see..."

The Reality
Scene: A busy 'A' road somewhere in Britain
"Darling, did you pack the raincoats, it's getting very dark and the weather forecast says floods are expected"
"I thought you did! I was trying to make you some sandwiches, you know the motorway services are closed"
"Damn. Oh, those bloody lorries overtaking, this road is becoming a nightmare, why didn't you find me a better route?"
"I used the satnav, didn't I? It's your fault for buying a cheap one. You should never have thrown out that atlas"
"Was that the sign for the turnoff? Can hardly see now through the rain. Oh, you sod, see that darling? That bloody van cut right in front. And he gave me two fingers."
"Well, don't drive so slowly then. When are we going to get there, my back's getting sore"
"Umm, maybe another couple of hours. There might be road works on the B348"
"And you're sure they got our reservation?"
"Well, I think so, only their website crashed on the last bit while I was giving them our credit card details"
"Oh, marvellous! When we finally get there, if we do get there, we'll be standing around while they say they've never heard of you but there's a nice little B & B ten miles down the road but we better hurry because they lock and bolt the doors at 8pm. Honestly, who in their right minds does a motoring holiday in England these days?"


Need I say more?

Back to the Hustings

Governments floundering without majority support, febrile calls for elections; major policy decisions stymied by many conflicting views; the hope that an election will sort it out - are we in Belgium,  Italy or Israel? No. We are in Britain and the days of looking wonderingly at chaos in other countries are well and truly over.

The Conservatives have cast off many supporters in the hope of retaining the rest; the Brexit party snaps at their heels. Labour still seems unclear whether to stick to its principles or chase the votes of its traditional supporters. Support for other parties is growing but they will still be minorities in what could well be another hung parliament.

Today we are likely to see agreement on holding a General Election (Under the Fixed Term Parliaments Act this is required whereas in the old days all that was needed was for the Prime Minister to take the short drive to advise the Queen that he could no longer lead an administration). Opposition parties always claim to be longing for an election but until recently Labour has been rather coy and without its consent Parliament could not be dissolved. That consent is, it seems, about to be given.

As has become traditional this column will endeavour to convey a sense of how it all feels to the ordinary commuter (or ex-commuter) in the street. We begin being fairly confused about the way ahead and it is entirely credible that in some six weeks time we will be even more so.

101 Things #19 - Piercings

Loads of the items on the bucket lists that people aspire to do before they die are unexceptional - travelling to exotic places or eating great food, for example. Today, unfortunately, I need to deal with a fashion trend that, let us not mince our words here, I find revolting. I am therefore very happy to add to my list of 101 Things I Refuse To Do Before I Die the idea suggested by a correspondent on Bucketlist that I should

Get a piercing

 

Of course, you might say, this is a fashion trend for the young. If they wish to permanently disfigure themselves, run the risk of infection and damage to their ears, noses, cheeks or whatever, that is their privilege. And so it is. But one sees metal and plastic stuck into the features of people of all ages. We'll have no reverse discrimination here - if piercings are a bucket list item then I am going to defy the fashionistas.

Ears have been pierced for earrings for centuries but this practice, restricted to a very small hole in the redundant flap of skin that is the lobe, is not what is meant by "piercing". Rings in noses; pins the size of nails impaled through cheeks; staples surrounding the eyes; bolts through the tongue - this is what your aspiring piercee¹ wants. The more shocking the better. The idea is that heads should turn. If stomachs turn as well then that is a bonus.

Like tattoos, a practice I am ambivalent about, the process seems for many to be addictive. You put a huge hole in your earlobes to have a small drainpipe inserted and people notice you, but then others have it done so you don't stand out any more. So you ram a ring big enough to tie a small dog to through your nose and that attracts attention, but it starts to fade so it's down to Screwfix for a gross of nails, a couple of awls and a bolt-gun - nothing else will do but that you carry enough metal stuffed into your nut to make it feasible to offer it to mobile phone operators as a radio mast.

You may be disbelieving. Have a gander at these fine fellows and remember, each of them started out saying "I'll just have a teeny little stud where nobody will ever see"

All pictures found on Pinterest and assumed public domain

I must admit that if the fellow at the top left were in the vicinity I would find it hard to restrain myself from rapping his ring sharply against his chin and shouting "Hello, is anyone in?". The one at the top right looks like he would be happiest tied up in a corner of the back yard. As to number three, what one earth does he do if he gets an itch near his top lip? He'd break his nails trying to scratch it.

I am afraid that when I look at piercings my thoughts turn to the practical questions. How do you blow your nose and what happens when you get a heavy cold? How long does it take to be cleared by security when you go through an airport scanner and all the alarms go off at once? How much does it hurt if you pull a jumper over your head and one of the pins catches in it? Do you find yourself irresistibly drawn to large magnets?

I don't claim to have an especially beautiful face [Fair enough: Ed] and it certainly would not be improved by sticking anything into it.

Footnote:
1. This must be a word, surely? [No, sorry: Ed]

101 Things #18 - Laughfest

Sorry for the strange title but this item in my continuing series 101 Things I Refuse To Do Before I Die, is based on something spotted on the Spaghetti Traveler website. It was too long easily to truncate. Here it is in full:

Laugh the whole day at the Edinburgh Festival

 
First a declaration of interest. I have been to Edinburgh at Festival time more than once. So it is not the idea of going to join the milling throngs on Princes Street that I am rejecting. I may well revisit one day. What I am refusing to try to do, point-blank, is to spend a whole day laughing there.

 I assume that by "Festival" Mr Spaghetti Traveller (or whatever their real name is) means the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, the anarchic and grossly swollen offshoot of the original (and still going strong) Festival proper. There is precious little comedy in the main Festival and plenty of time during the day when there is nothing taking place, so too much laughing as you hang around the Queen's Hall waiting for Brunnhilde to burn to death in Gotterdamerung will probably see you discreetly whisked away by the men in white coats. But is it really possible to spend an entire day laughing as you make your way wearily from one Fringe venue to another, jostling past the fire-eaters and the jugglers and the mime artists and the desperate performers handing round flyers for shows nobody will attend? Will you really laugh as you watch two men and a glove puppet portray the Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire in forty eight minutes? A snigger as the East Solihull Players do Hamlet in Welsh? A few hearty chortles as a nervous stand-up fluffs a couple of gags about Brexit and how his flat-sharing mate is on drugs?

There's loads of good stuff at the Fringe, of course, but given that there can be 56,000 performances over 24 days - that's 2,300 odd each day, or up to 150 an hour, each lasting up to an hour, how on earth do you choose the most risible where hilarity will definitely prevail? No good waiting till the Fringe has begun and then reading the reviews because by then the really funny ones that everyone loves will be sold out. No, you have to take a chance well in advance on what you think will be the most amusing, or simply choose at random on the day from the many that will have seats available. I know. I've been there, done that; though obviously not with the aim of laughing non-stop from the moment the remains of breakfast are being wiped off my tie to that final stagger back through the dark streets to a cold apartment.

You can now understand why I can say that the idea of arranging matters to provide the continuous chuckling that underpins this bucket list is so ludicrous. It cannot be done. You have to find a bit of time for lunch and dinner. You have to find quite a lot of time to make your way around Edinburgh. You might wish to break up the jollity with time out for a tea-break or a pint. What you cannot do is go directly from one gig to the next laughing all the way (unless you do it in a one-horse open sleigh, obviously). In any case there is way more to the Fringe than comedy. What a shame to turn your back on the huge number of other events.

Utterly Pointless Scare of the Day

I like to keep up to date with computer related news, a hangover from the days when it was necessary as part of my job. Thus it was that a headline in the Daily Express (a newspaper I only take for its excellent Princess Diana coverage) caught my attention. The story was about problems with an update to Windows 10. This is itself of interest since I run that operating system. I skimmed down it and was then taken aback to read the following:

And if that wasn’t bad enough, the latest Windows 10 update is also breaking a bevy of 16-bit apps written in Visual Basic 3, which can be revived after the update is uninstalled. If you rely on applications powered by Visual Basic 3 for your day-to-day, it’s probably worth steering clear of the latest software for the time being.

I read this a couple of times, tried to get my mind out of boggling mode and looked again. The words were still there. The Express is concerned about people who use 16 bit applications (or programmes, as we would have called them) written in the Visual Basic 3 programming language and who are running them 'for day to day', whatever that means, on a computer which has Windows 10 as its operating system.

Visual Basic was introduced around 1991. At the time Windows 2, then Windows 3 were in common use. Many of us made serious use of  Windows 3.1 but with the introduction of Windows 95 all serious programmes were rewritten to take advantage of its 32 bit architecture. Windows 10, like its predecessors 8 and 7, is a 64 bit system. These numbers really matter. The step from 16 to 32 and then 64 bit computing enormously increases the speed and capability of software.

It is possible to run 16 bit programmes on a 64 bit computer (by running them in 'emulation' mode) but I defy the Express to find anyone, anyone at all, in the entire world, who does so for 'day to day'. Maybe for running stuff of historic interest perhaps or to amuse students of software architecture. Visual Basic apps tended to be databases, information systems or programmes used by business that anyone taking seriously would certainly update regularly. VB itself was regularly updated until version 6 in 1998; after that the software ceased to be backwardly compatible.

So now you can see why those amazing words 'And if that wasn't bad enough ....' are utterly ludicrous, as if people hit by other bugs in Windows 10 updates are also going to be hit by the breaking of software written 25 years ago, an huge amount of time in terms of the speed of computing development. I'm struggling to find an analogy. Maybe the Express could run the following scare stories:

• Starting handle owners hit as new models of cars 'just don't need them'
• Blank telegram form stockists 'may have to ditch the lot' say experts
• Red flag makers facing ruin following repeal of The Locomotive Act 1865
• Confectioners 'baffled and dismayed' at yet another change in the naming of Marathon/Snickers
• DVDs do not work on gramophones shock
• Pensioners bemoan loss of in-house gas lighting. "I always enjoyed going round with a taper and taking the risk of blowing myself up" claims granny of eight.

That's me done for the night, this story can go to press. I'm going to have one last go at trying to make my steam pump fit inside the Toyota.