Technological Cats with e mail and Alan Brownjohn

A friend in Prague e mailed after reading my blog and suggested I try hoovering my camera and if that fails a hairdryer. The former may extract stray hairs, sand, grit or general detritus that make be causing the problem. The latter may dry any damp that has entered the camera and buggered it up; either way I had nothing to lose but alas no miraculous cure.

I recall a friend who, to start his car, had to strike it in a particular place on the steering column, a relative who for many years used a pair of pliers to turn the knobs on her cooker as they all gradually fell off and I am the maestro of the photocopier at work which has the temperament of a thoroughbred and whilst it can do all sorts of wonderful things just short of making you a cappuccino requires soothing kind words now and then to get the required result.

I have long believed that inanimate objects are affected by human pheromones; anger, rudeness etc can result in a machine remaining inoperable whilst a kind word, a firm but pleasant attitude can get you the required results. Machines may be state of the art electronics but they can sniff out a Luddite, which accounts for those machines that stubbornly plough their own furrow by way of response.

Someone at work is very techno-phobic and approaches all computer based activities as if being asked to control a vicious Rottweiller. I watched as she tentatively clicked on print and the printer proceeded to spew out the same document again and again although only one had been requested, in the end she had to yank out the plug as it wouldn’t even acknowledge its own off switch. It reminded me of the Sorceror's Apprentice in Fantasia as Mickey Mouse tries in vain to stop the broom fetching water. Given today’s news about additives effecting behaviour it may be likely that the printer was acting like a Rottweiller on a batch of E numbers.

This anthropomorphism of objects is of course ludicrous, illogical and downright stupid but yet I still talk to my car, computer and even microwave now and then. Years hence some scientist may discover that human pheromones do affect sophisticated electronics and I will lean back in my state of the art electric wheelchair and tell it I knew that all along.

Alan Brownjohn in his usual witty manner examines the strange and mysterious relationship between humans and technology in this poem.
As he points out some things can never be controlled by technology and cats will never have e mail…although I note they are some that have their own profile on Facebook which is rather spooky perhaps some cats have the right sort of pheromones.

Obsolescence. Arvon, magic knickers and Hugo Williams

I have engaged in some retail therapy with a good friend who has recently lost her mother. By lost I mean in the ‘died’ sense rather than the misplaced. I am the one who tended to err on the misplacement side in the past when my mother, who suffered from Alzheimer’s,shuffled off at a rate of knots in Motorway Services or Garden Centres. She was once brought back by a neighbour several doors away having nearly made it as far as the petrol station on the corner and I hadn’t even missed her. My friend would not mind me writing this, as humour, we have both long known, is our way to deal with some things. So retail therapy involved magic knickers for the funeral for her as the little black dress was a bit tight now. We laughed when we discussed that the feeling of being supported is quite important on such occasions.
My retail experience involved trying to get my digital camera fixed. Cambridge abounds with geeky camera shops, I’m not talking run of the mill Dixon’s here. I produced my digital camera, just over a year old so just out of warranty and they leapt back as if I had placed a large turd on their counter. No-one wanted to even pick it up, it was a rubble glove job to them…a Praktica..I could see that they couldn’t even bring themselves to mouth the word. Praktica, the scum camera manufacturer of the earth I tended to read on their horrified faces.
It’s not worth mending; no-one will do it for less than the money you paid for it. £90 I know is cheap but over this amount to have a power button work seems a bit steep. In built obsolescence murmured one shop assistant. It’s not designed to last much longer than the warranty. I presume there is some internal clock that ticks away the countdown to its own obsolescence. 364 days, 365, 366 bingo, I am out of here, dead, non-functional, an ex-camera much like the Python parrot.
I scooped my turdish camera gingerly back into my bag and tried the next camera shop, same story. They all said the same, some tried to disguise their sneer better than others, some tried to sell me a better camera, full marks to the young lad who told me that I’d done well to get a years worth of crap unfocused, pixel challenged photos out of it. One man seemed to need to inform me about the whole economics of the camera industry, Praktica don’t actually make cameras at all they hire factories in the third world and masquerade as camera manufacturers.
I had to resort to buying a packet of seven pants for a fiver in Marks and Sparks to cheer myself up. No doubt someone will tell me down the line that they have been made by non pukka pant manufacturers in a sweat shop in Cambodia and I will again sink under a wave of guilt at my incompetent politically incorrect shopping plus afore mentioned pants will probably disintegrate after the second wash, when their in-built obsolescence alarm clock starts to ring, I just hope I'm not wearing them when the bell goes.
I note they had a new reality type programme on Channel Four last night, this time a green reality…people who applied thought they were probably going to a rain forest to help out the stressed planet but no they have put them on a British landfill dump site for four weeks and told them to survive on what they can scavenge. The tattooed joiner who is part of the group thought building a shelter out of waste timber was a doddle, perhaps he could try building a small bijoux dump side apartment out of obsolete Praktica cameras?

Of course, dear reader, observant as you are, you will have noticed I haven’t mentioned my Arvon Course. I will sum up; inspiring and challenging tutors,people in the group full of laughter and also interesting talented writers of all hues, ages and situations. Having received boundless encouragement and enthusiastic feedback from the tutors about the novel I have set to work on it yet again with re-newed vigour. The question came up on the course that often the first novel you write is your learning experience that you put away under the bed and move on from. Having now been told that this was not the case with mine and that it had very strong little legs indeed it behoves me to try and ensure the legs at least get a chance to totter down some public highway at some point.
The poetry, also much positive encouragement and feedback again but importantly I reminded myself how much real private joy writing and crafting a poem can give you.
Off to the Peterloo Festival down in Devon to read this week-end, will alas, be unable to bring back atmospheric photographs of Dartmoor and Hugo Williams but don’t get me stated on that again. I leave you with this poem by him, that always makes me think of my mother off down the road on her strange shuffling travels with her zimmer. One of her favourite phrases as the Alzheimer's began to take over was that she was 'past her sell by date' perhaps she instinctively knew about the bodies in-built odsolescence.

Ambleside visitors lament

Found this entry in visitors book in the cottage we stayed in the lakes couldn't resist splitting it up into lines..it is all there and absolutely true...trust me I'm a blogger.

Visitors Book Entry Cottage in Lakes

Danger.
When coming down stairs from the top floor,
careful of last step, it is a killer.
Husband’s leg in cast to prove it.
Also watch out for mat near toilet -
it has no grip,
likes to send you flying -
very dangerous, you need to get a grip.

Had problems parking,
too many cars,
not enough spaces.

By the way A&E in Kendal-
nurses and doctors great.
ASDA next door to hospital do family meal,
£10, very filling.

Notes on Lakes, Poets and Constipation

Twenty-Five Things to do of interest and slight hazard in the Lake District

1. Arrive at your cottage and stall an over-laden Renault Clio as you climb a road towards it so steep you expect to have a nose bleed any minute. Do this whilst also being asphyxiated by the fumes emanating from the burning brake pads of descending cars.
2. On your second day take a local bus to enjoy the views and crash into a camper van on a road only wide enough for two fat sheep.
3. Sit on a small overcrowded ferry across Conistan to Ruskin’s House, note what you feel to be the lack of life rafts and the potential for hitting a troop of incompetent sea scouts in canoes. Ponder whether you could survive longer than Leonardo De Caprio in the freezing water, acknowledge that you would be no Kate Winslet and your heart will not go on.
4. Become trapped in Ruskin’s ice-house, admire the granite walls.
5. Walk along a narrow path (suitable for one skinny sheep) hacked into the side of a mountain. Note the absence of a handrail and the presence of severe vertigo. Turn back and beat yourself up over this weakness and add this to your list of many failures of courage.
6. Experience severe constipation due to the change in water and endless scones. Wonder whether the local hippy shop has a crystal suitable for constipation relief. Imagine the conversation with the shop owner about this.
7. Be trampled by Yorkshire day trippers in Bowness clutching tea-towels depicting a map of the lakes and fudge in boxes which have ‘Thank-you for looking after my cat’ written on the lid.
8. Climb onto a cottage roof to check the TV aerial connection as the screen shows only blizzards and you need to see the next episode of Waking the Dead.
9. Attempt the walk up the steep hill (known locally as ‘The Struggle’) to your rented cottage without the aid of oxygen and knowledge of the nearest defibrillator. Note the lack of ladies offering water at the half way point.
10. Overdose on sticky toffee pudding washed down with Pinot Grigio, beer and gin.
11. Cross the roads in Ambleside on a Sunday.
12. Risk being stoned to death by ardent ramblers for breaking the taboo of walking without clutching a little pole that you jab into the ground at intervals. We presume this is some mass attempt to aerate the grass on Lakeland fells and improve drainage.
13. Watch an American tourist, who whilst enthralled with the tour of Dove Cottage, inadvertently places her bag on a table.You’ve just put your bag down on Wordsworth’s card Table Madam, the guide comments in a very English understated manner. Her shame and mumbled apologies did not save her from being reduced to the size of a small amoeba in the eyes of her tour group and being sentenced to death by Preludes.
14. Sit for a quiet pint outside a pub and be initiated at length into the world of the Caravan Club by the alpha male from a family from Bolton. We are initiated into the dark secrets and rites of caravaning club such as the pulling weight of a Mondeo, touchable ceramic heaters and the precise configuration of his Elvis (or what sounded like Elvis). Wonder if after all their secrets have been divulged they are then forced to kill you. Being sandwiched between two caravans afterwards takes on a whole different paranoid experience.
15. Eat the melting hair gel of the cheerful good looking boy band type waiter which drops into the tapas in the bar full of trendy media type people. Trendy media type people on holiday manage to retain the look and aura of trendy media type people, even in the Lake District; they have a better class of poking pole, Gucci day rucksacks and talk about audience ratings and Baftas. They use Satellite navigation in their 4x4’s to find a tapas bar whilst we find it because we are not yet ready to attempt ‘The Struggle’ and need a sit down. We like poking down small dark alleys without the aid of a pole and thus locate the tapas experience without the aid of Sat Nav or even an OS map.
16. Go to the Pencil Museum in Keswick for the kitsch experience and actually find yourself fascinated by the whole graphite, pencil history business. Weigh yourself down with a variety of purchased pencils, charcoal, tinted charcoal, and every grade of H and B. Note that American astronauts were furnished with a biro that would write in zero gravity, the development of which took millions of dollars. Russian cosmonauts were given a pencil. (Note to self…there has to be a poem in that fact)
17. Sit and look at a mountain for hours as the light and cloud formation constantly alter how it seems but not what it is.
18. Understand why Wordsworth and Coleridge were always going out for walks given the tiny dark cottage they lived in and the stench of talo candles which must have pervaded it. Wonder if the long walks prevented constipation, the bowels of poets no doubt effect their output.
19. Look at Sara Wordsworth’s wedding ring and ponder why Dorothy Wordsworth wore her sister-in-law’s wedding ring that William had bought in France until the day of their marriage. She did not attend the wedding and took to her bed whilst the marriage was taking place. Does the comment by a friend ‘ She took to her bed’ = sulking.
20. Read an extract from a letter by Coleridge’s wife and think about the fact that despite being an undoubted genius of the romantic movement Coleridge refused to allow his depressed and sick wife a three year break from producing endless children, most of which died. She pleaded with him but obviously the plight of the oppressed and common man did not extend to women.
21. See Mervyn Peake’s original illustrations for Rime of the Ancient Mariner recently donated to the museum at Dove Cottage and be moved by their power and the overwhelming sense that both Coleridge and Peake understood the nature of madness and had looked it in the face.
22. Try and light a gas fire without significant blow back. Wonder if this could be a cure for constipation.
23. Hand feed heron’s at the wildlife’s centre ‘Happy Heron Hour’ without being impaled or carrying the marks of the stigmata on your palms for days.
24. Take a minibus tour with a lively lad called Tony over Hardknott Pass (the steepest road in England) whilst he is somewhat distracted by a dispute with the local council about his rates. Watch pale and frightened drivers stare wide-eyed as he hurtles towards them. A definite cure for their constipation no doubt.
25. Try to answer young Japanese girl’s question truthfully and in simple English whilst we examine Roman remains in driving rain and wind at the top of Hardknott Pass
.. and please to tell me is there summer in England, I bring only T- Shirts and I have to buy this in Kes Wick.’ She plucks at her baby pink
anorak with a rather disconsolate expression on her face.