Losing Our Memories

Imagine if there was no internet. Not that the internet had never existed, but imagine that it was suddenly turned off, never to return. We have become so reliant on it that the consequences would be almost catastrophic. Working from home would become impractical, shopping from home would have to be done by phone or by post, and social media would disappear. On the plus side, there would be no more tweets from Donald Trump, no more invitations on Facebook to play Candy Crush, and no more dubious emails from strangely benevolent Nigerians offering riches beyond compare in exchange for your bank details. But, while the internet has brought us untold benefits, and has enriched our lives in many ways, our increasing reliance on it comes at a cost, a cost to our memories and our cognitive powers.

Imagine if this was all there ever was, for all eternity, when you tried to connect?

I have always enjoyed quizzes; I think it stems back to my days at junior school, where we had a teacher - Mr Harris (he drove a green Rover car and had a finger missing; those two facts are not connected, he lost his finger during the war) - who would set us questions to go home and find the answers for. Armed with nothing more than a basic encyclopaedia, I would seek the answers to puzzles such as, Who designed the Suez Canal?[1] Or, the dates of the First World War, the sort of things that were rarely taught, but which are useful to know. In later years I regularly competed in quizzes, playing for a team that took part in a league (the questions were exclusively about football), and then a monthly quiz in which about twenty teams took part, and in which my team had its fair share of success. And that enjoyment of quizzes has been in part responsible for, and a result of the pleasure I get from gaining and retaining information, facts and trivia, purely for its own sake. Having a retentive memory was something that I found useful and important at work, and both at work and at home, I've frequently had people ask, "How did you know that?" when I wheel out some useful (or sometimes not very useful) information. And the answer is that it is simply ingrained in me to learn and retain stuff, as well as being something that I get pleasure from. It might be more pertinent for me to ask people who don't retain information in a similar manner, "Why don't you know that?"

The man responsible for the Suez Canal.

These days, the answer to that question would increasingly be along the lines of what's the point, that's what Google is for. And that worries me, as it seems to me that we are creating a culture in which knowing things is becoming less important and that we are increasingly relying on technology to do the work our brains should be doing. I am not alone in thinking this; more eminent minds than mine have concluded the same thing. Professor Frank Gunn-Moore, director of research for the School of Biology at the University of St Andrews, is quoted as saying that people 'outsource [their] brain to the internet' rather than using their memory to recall facts. The professor - who is an Executive Member of the Scottish Dementia Research Consortium - considers our use of the internet  as "an experiment the human race is running and we will have to wait and see if this outsourcing affects dementia prevalence."

Professor Frank Gunn-Moore

There has been a lot of focus in the medical profession about obesity in recent years. According to a study in The Lancet, as many as 2.1 billion people - that's almost 30% of the global population - is obese or overweight[2] and we are urged by governments - local and national - and by our doctors to eat more healthily and exercise more, yet while we understand that our bodies need exercise, we seem progressively more likely to neglect exercising our brains. Back in my primary school days, when Mr Harris asked us to find out the longest river in the world[3], we would scurry home to our reference books and look up the answer, and then we would retain it and retrieve it when relevant, such as while playing Trivial Pursuit, or watching some TV quiz show when the question came up. Nowadays a classroom of children asked that question would whip out their smartphones and Google it. It does seem that the internet has changed school lessons - and especially homework - out of all recognition. When my younger daughter was still at school - she left a couple of years back - it seemed that no piece of homework could be completed without reference to the internet, and while in my day, I struggled back and forth from home to school laden down with textbooks, they seemed to be conspicuous by their absence during my daughter's education.

In hardback, this textbook was the heaviest known to man when I was at school.

Google Maps means never having to leave the house with an A-Z in your pocket when visiting somewhere new, nor having a road atlas in the glove box of your car. Technology means not having to remember phone numbers anymore as they are all on your smartphone. Google means never having to retain anything; look that fact up, use it and forget it - until the next time you need it when you have to look it up again.

In millions, the number of internet users globally - it comes to about 40% of the world's population.

There will be people who will pour scorn on this; there will be people who think that because it is easier to Google something than use an encyclopaedia - or heaven forbid - our brains, it must be better, or that using Google stimulates the brain rather than weakening it (sounds counter-intuitive to me, but some people believe it). Those ideas are way off the mark in my view, and smack of denial. I know that as I get older, my memory is slowly deteriorating. Facts slip away (especially names; for some reason TV and radio presenter Clive Anderson's name seems particularly difficult for me to recall), and my recollection of events from yesteryear get jumbled or lost completely, so I know that if I exercised my brain less, it would atrophy at a rate of knots.

Who's this again?

A major reason why I started writing this blog back in 2012 was to exercise my mind, so it is ironic that having railed against our over-reliance on the internet, I am using the internet in order to get that mental exercise. But then, the internet is not an entirely bad thing; just as the consumption of salt, sugars and fats is important to our diet, so too can the internet be important to us. As with many things, moderation is the key.

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[1] It was Ferdinand de Lesseps.

[2]http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(14)60460-8/abstract

[3] The Nile, although there are claims that the Amazon is longer.

Lest We Forget

Every year, for as long as I can remember, I have bought a poppy. Most years I buy a second one as the first gets dishevelled and crumpled, or simply lost. I have never considered it as a political gesture, nor a controversial one, simply as a mark of respect for the members of the armed forces who have died in the line of duty. Increasingly however, it seems that what began as a simple gesture after the Great War has become contentious, either because of matters of etiquette, or the increasing politicisation of wearing - or not wearing - a poppy.

As a matter of etiquette, there has frequently been debate as to when the poppy should be worn. Some say it ought not to be worn until 1st November, and there have in the past been complaints that TV presenters were wearing them in October. Personally, I don't wear a poppy before 1st November, and normally stop doing so after Remembrance Sunday, but that's my choice: if you want to wear yours from the day The Royal British Legion launch their appeal (this year it was 26th October) until some indeterminate day in the future, then I for one have no problem. Then there is the matter of whether one should wear one at all. Channel 4 News presenter Jon Snow once decided not to wear a poppy on air, saying demands for him to wear one were "poppy fascism". A few years ago, ITV News presenter Charlene White decided not to wear a poppy on screen and received abuse and criticism on social media. Like Jon Snow, she said that she happily wore one on Armistice Day, but would not wear one on air, and her choice ought to be respected, this is after all, still a free country.

The problem has become that wearing a poppy or not wearing one has become politicised. Wear one and some people will claim that you are glorifying war. In my view that is akin to saying that those who lay floral tributes at the sites of people killed on the road are glorifying road traffic accidents, but - and this is key to where I am coming from - if your view is different, then, by all means, you are welcome to it. Just do not force it on others. There are zealots who believe that not wearing a poppy is unpatriotic, an act of sedition, of treason perhaps, and they are entitled to that belief. So long as they do not force it on others. Wear a poppy if you want; don't wear one if you don't, but whichever way you jump, respect the right of others to do the opposite. Some people have become uncomfortable wearing the poppy as there is a growing belief that it has been 'hijacked' by right-wing groups in much the same way as the Cross of St George has supposedly become a symbol of fascism the implication being that anyone wearing or displaying either is beyond the pale. While I can understand that, symbols like the poppy or the Cross of St George only get hijacked because people allow them to, because they become submissive in the face of an opinion that says that if you continue to do something you have done for over thirty years, like wearing a poppy, you have suddenly become an intolerant, anti-democratic, totalitarian, xenophobic racist - which you probably haven't.

Writing in The Independent recently, Otto English opined that it is time to ditch the poppy as its original meaning has been lost, that it is no longer relevant. I don't agree, but he is of course entitled to his opinion, one which he is free to hold and publish thanks in no small part to the men whose sacrifices the poppy represents. Anyway, his opinion is based largely on the basis that poppies commemorate only those who served in the Great War of 1914-18 and the Second World War (1939-1945) and that the last of the Great War veterans have died and those from the second conflict are now so few in number. However, Remembrance Sunday is a tribute to the "contribution of British and Commonwealth military and civilian servicemen and women in the two World Wars and later conflicts (my italics)."  So while he is entitled to his view, it is based on a false premise.

While we are on the subject of ditching things that are no longer relevant, may I suggest we do away with Bank Holidays, which made sense in the days when workers did not automatically receive holiday entitlements from their employers? Or perhaps we could do away with Christmas and Easter on the grounds that the majority of UK citizens do not identify with any religion.[1] There is a whole raft of things we do that are no longer relevant, that have lost their meaning - or perhaps I should say there are things that in some people's opinion are no longer relevant - but that does not automatically mean we need to stop doing them.

Were I serious about doing away with Bank Holidays, I've no doubt that many of you would be up in arms, but why, if it were simply my opinion? It is not as though it would actually happen, any more than the poppy and Remembrance Sunday are going to get dumped simply because a journalist his written a think piece deeming them no longer relevant. Half the problem today is that everyone has an opinion about everything, and thanks to social media, has the opportunity to inform the rest of the world of it. Equally, they have the opportunity to try to shoot down in flames anyone who has an opinion that does not conform to their own - on any subject and at any time. A civilised society has room for many different opinions, but sadly we are becoming increasingly intolerant of opinions which differ from our own. I am saddened by the number of posts that I read on social media which descend into slanging matches because one person holds a view that others disagree with, but which they find it impossible to argue with cogently, being able only to hurl invective at the poor unfortunate who dared express an unpopular opinion.

My last words on the subject of poppies:

If you want to wear one, that's great.

If you don't want to wear one, that's fine too.

If you wear one and see someone who isn't, accept it.

If you don't wear one and see someone who is, accept it.

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[1] Source: British Social Attitudes Survey and the European Social Survey.

Is That A Wind Up?

There is a post doing the rounds on social media that asks people to name something from their childhood that younger people would not understand, and I thought of that post while wandering round the house on Sunday morning, looking for clocks to put back from British Summer Time to GMT. It isn't so much the changing of the clocks, but the fact that these days many of them do it themselves that is different today,  so it is just the devices not connected to the internet, like the central heating and the microwave and an actual stand-alone clock on the mantelpiece that need manual attention. Even the thing on my wrist that tells me the time - it's a Fitbit, rather than just a watch - updates the time automatically.

What really struck me was that everything that has a clock in it in our house runs off the mains or batteries; younger people will rarely - if ever - have encountered, the clock or watch that needs winding up. I have worn a watch of one kind or another since I was quite young, but it seems that these days the younger generation are more likely to rely on their phones for telling the time, albeit that wearable technology like the Apple Watch and Fitbits may reverse that trend.

I remember my first watch - a wind-up job, of course - as it was a Christmas present. Sadly, it didn't last very long as my Dad managed to drop it and break it (well, that's what he told me), but it got replaced with a new Timex, which was then really the brand to have. I had that watch for some years, although now sadly I cannot remember what it was like. At some point during the 1970's the digital watch appeared, with Sinclair (of ZX-Spectrum computer fame) producing one that had to be assembled at home, by "anybody who can use a soldering iron," another thing that is very much a thing of the past, except for devoted hobbyists. Unable to tell one end of a soldering iron from the other, I refrained from buying such a watch, virtues of which were its proclaimed accuracy and not needing to be wound up.

Accuracy: that is probably the feature that I for one value most in a watch, and one which led me to bin the self-winding one I bought. Freed from the need to wind the thing up every day, the self-winding watch required just a couple of minutes of swishing about in a figure-of-eight pattern to get it started, whereafter the natural movement of one's wrist would keep it going. That element was fine, but the fact that it kept such poor time - usually gaining a minute or two every day - meant that I went back to my old wind up model. One would think that these days clocks and watches would keep nearly perfect time, and in fact of all the devices in our house that display the time, there is little more than a minute's discrepancy between any of them, except the one on the microwave which, left to its own devices, will be fifteen minutes ahead of every other clock in the house within a month of being reset. Why I wonder, does that happen?

Aside from winding up clocks and watches, I imagine that there are many of the younger generation who would find cassette tapes a bit of a mystery, and especially the associated repair kit. Those of you of a certain age will, I'm sure, remember - and none too fondly - listening to a music cassette, only for the song to suddenly distort and the tape abruptly stop. Having pressed the Stop button, one gingerly ejects the tape. 

The best case scenario is then that the tape has merely tangled slightly in the recording heads and that after extricating it, increasing the tension on the tape with a pencil through the sprocket hole would do the trick, although that section of the tape would now, forever more, sound slightly garbled. The worst case however would be a broken tape - or a tape so badly mangled that it had to be broken - and requiring splicing. Out would come the splicing kit, the tape would be repaired and playable, but at the cost of a second or two of song, such that when playing it back in future there would be a sudden jump, rather like with a scratched vinyl record. I was going to say that vinyl records are something that current and future generations might scratch their heads over, but vinyl seems to be making something of a comeback, although the prices are a bit eye-watering, if you ask me.

If you are under  50, you probably have no idea what this is.

 

One thing that the younger generation is only too aware of, however, and which they usually greet with eye-rolling dismay, is when someone - usually a parent - starts up a monologue that begins with, "Back in my day." Admit it, we've all done it, and such diatribes risk entering Monty Python's Four Yorkshiremen territory, frequently referring back to the days when TV came in two channels (in black and white), there was nothing on the box during weekday afternoons except the test card, and Sunday afternoon viewing was a choice between a couple of ropey old films (usually some Second World War picture, or a Western), followed by Songs of Praise. Plaintive cries of "I'm bored" were the soundtrack to such afternoons: any teenager claiming to be bored nowadays will risk hearing such stories repeated.

Floppy discs, video cameras, fax machines, rolls of camera film, having to stay in to watch a particular TV show because VCRs hadn't been invented, the Christmas blockbuster TV premiere of a film that had been in cinemas five years ago, dial-up internet, or the Encarta CD-ROM because you didn't have the internet yet, or if you did someone wanted to use the landline to make a telephone call at the same time...the list could go on. The pace of change -particularly in technology - is such that what to me are recent developments, like MySpace, Friends Reunited, and MSN Messenger are now just memories. It is impossible to conceive what future generations will make of the things today's youngsters wistfully recall. Like watches without batteries, they will probably think it's a wind-up.

A Midland Odyssey Part Eleven - You Must Be Barking!

I was saddened to hear recently of the death, in February this year, of John Groom, who was one of my managers during my years working at Midland Bank in Barking; he was 83.

John Groom - or Jack as he was usually known - was what we might now describe as a bank manager of the old school, wise and knowledgeable, he acted in his customers best interests - his loyalties were as much with them and his staff as they were with his employers. He was a man of generous spirit who, in those days when customers would shower bank managers with Christmas gifts (chiefly wine and spirits), would make sure that every member of his staff went home at Christmas with something, even if it meant dipping into his own pocket to do so. He once bravely threw his home open for the staff Christmas party when there was no other venue to be had. In addition to his work with Midland Bank, Jack Groom was heavily involved with his local church, Holy Trinity in South Woodford, and was a magistrate, sitting regularly at Highbury Corner Magistrates Court.

Jack Groom (centre in dark jacket and tie), watches as Eddie Moody tops up my glass of champagne on the occasion of my leaving Barking branch in 1986. Sitting next to Jack is his secretary, Lesley Clarke.

Jack Groom was not the manager at Midland Bank's Barking branch when I first walked through its doors, that was his predecessor, Peter Cross, who was quite different from the man who replaced him. Peter Cross was a more outgoing, ebullient man who delighted in lunching with customers. I went from Romford branch to Barking at a time when it had something of a reputation. I am not sure why it had developed the reputation that it had, but it was - in football terms, perhaps - regarded by some people (almost exclusively people who had never worked there, it seemed) as the equivalent of Millwall FC, and certainly there was a sort of "No one likes us, we don't care," attitude among the staff when I was there, an attitude driven largely by the unfairness of the reputation the place seemed to have.  

I was unable to find a picture of Barking branch in its Midland Bank days,
so here's a picture of it taken a few years back and branded HSBC

The reputation that Barking had was grossly unfair and the five or so years I had there were among my happiest and the most enjoyable I had working for Midland Bank, and it was during that time that I met people whom I remain good friends with to this day. It's true that when I first went there it was difficult; I was sent there as Foreign Clerk and the limited amount of foreign work I had done at Romford was not the best preparation for what was a busy foreign desk at Barking, and at times it was probably the busiest desk I have worked on. I cannot say I left Barking as an expert in all aspects of foreign work, but the variety of tasks that I did there -inward and outward payments, bills for collection, foreign currency and travellers cheques, drafts and foreign exchange, among other things - gave me a very broad range of knowledge that was invaluable as I went on to specialise in other aspects of the job at other offices later in my career.

"The Vic"

If there was one thing that the people at Barking branch at that time did, it was embody that old saying, "Work hard, play hard." Perhaps it was because I was young, free, and single - as were many of my colleagues at the time - that the social life I enjoyed at Barking was probably the best that I experienced during my working life. On many a Friday evening I would repair to our favoured pub - The Victoria - with colleagues, Paul Calvert, Gerry Baker, and Keith Markham among them, I still meet those three regularly. And when we do meet, we generally pick up pretty much where we left off the last time, and frequently our conversations turn to the old days at Barking, much to my wife's frustration, since when I return home after an evening with my old friends and she asks after their respective wives and children, I have to admit that barring the fact that they are well, I know nothing as we had spent most of the evening wallowing in 1980's nostalgia! Some of that nostalgia will relate to the boating holidays we had on the Norfolk Broads and the Staffordshire & Worcestershire Canal, Then in 1987 and 1988 we went on what was for me, a first foreign holiday - we went to Majorca both times - after which Paul and I found ourselves in relationships (not with each other, I hasten to add!) which brought our holiday making to an end.

The top picture shows (from left to right) Keith Markham, me, Gerry Baker and Paul Calvert on our boating holiday on the Norfolk Broads in 1985. The picture below shows us a good few years later at Keith's wedding. Only Gerry has been able to keep a full head of hair!

At the risk of simply compiling a list of members of staff at Barking branch in the 1980's, I cannot omit from this piece the names of some other stalwarts of the place who were good friends of mine. Norman Evans the chief Securities Clerk, who features briefly in one of my early blogs, The Obedience Of Fools (http://rulesfoolsandwisemen.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/the-obedience-of-fools.html) was something of a legend at the place, as was Eddie Moody, the Accountant. Eddie was not one to suffer fools in silence, and was frequently scathing and inquisitorial when anyone phoned in sick: he would scoff at anyone who said they had the flu but would be in the next day, telling them that would be off for at least a fortnight if they actually did have flu. There was young Robbie Smith, who had come over from Northern Ireland and who it has to be said was not everyone's cup of tea, but who I really got on well with. He was frequently strapped for cash, and would be lured out by us some Friday nights "Just for one," and would usually still be there at last orders. Tragically he was killed in a hit-and-run accident near his home in Barking some years after I had left the branch.

Me, looking slightly trepidatious (front right) before a sponsored swim in 1985 with colleagues from Barking: Back Keith Knight and Andrew Graves, and front, Claire Bennett.

We had three typists at Barking - Lesley Clarke (who was the Manager's secretary), Janice Blackwell and Wendy Gudgion. In addition to those three battering the keyboards, there were at least four others of us whose jobs required a significant amount of typing as well, namely the Securities Clerks, the Control Clerk, and me on Foreign. In particular, I suffered the Foreign Bills for Collection forms, seven-part documents that required six pieces of carbon paper to complete and quite a heavy hand when typing to ensure that the bottom copy - the one that was retained in the branch - was legible. Carbon paper, Tippex and typewriter ribbons were a major part of every stationery order in the 1980's, items which one imagines are as rare as hen's teeth in most offices today.

No mention of Barking branch during the 1980's would be complete without mention of the 'arrest' of a student customer from North East London Polytechnic (where the bank had a sub-branch) who had defaulted on her borrowing. When called into the branch to discuss the matter, the student in question was asked to remain in an interview room, and while she was left alone in there, the police were called. This all happened before I transferred to Barking and the first I knew of it was when I saw it in the papers - it even warranted a cartoon by the Daily Mail's Mac - and pretty soon, the branch was besieged by journalists. The Manager's Assistant - who was the poor guy who had interviewed the student and (on instructions from Head Office) called the police - had to be smuggled out of the fire exit and driven away undercover at the end of the day.

I wouldn't swap my experiences working at Barking for anything, and this blog has merely scratched the surface of my memories of the place; perhaps before too long, I'll come back for another trip down Memory Lane.

I Know What I Like

Opinions are like noses; everyone has one - and they all smell.[1] The problem with opinions are twofold. Firstly there are the opinions that morph into facts. These are normally simple prejudices that have been bought some fancy clothes and sent out into the world with the intention of seducing others into their way of thinking. Secondly, there are opinions that don't pretend to be anything else, but which are so persuasive and so sincerely held, and often by people that we admire and respect, that we may feel inclined, or even obliged to agree with them.

Canute was an early victim of fake news.

I have no intention of entering into some sort of diatribe about the sort of opinion that gets presented as fact - goodness knows there enough of them out there - be it on social media, in the more extreme elements of the mainstream media, and from those politicians whose outpourings consist largely of bigotry presented as fact. And I have no intention of doing so because it would be rather like Canute trying to hold back the tide, although interestingly, Canute was actually supposed to have done so to demonstrate to his courtiers that he had no such power over the elements, not as a vain attempt to hold back the waves. Canute is perhaps, himself a victim of fake news. But I digress.

Opinions masquerading as facts are usually easy to spot and to dismiss - assuming we don't hold a similar opinion ourselves. The internet and social media have made it more important than at any other time in history that we exercise our critical faculties any time we read something online. You only have to look at all the spoofs and scams that circulate around Facebook to appreciate that, and while there are some stories that are clearly satire - just look at Southend News Network's output, or that of the Rochdale Herald, or The Onion - there is much out there that it is far harder to determine as untrue. Mind you, there are plenty of people gullible enough to believe Southend News Network stories, with the English Defence League, The Sun, and Katie Hopkins all falling for their spoofs. The problem can be that with insufficient fact checking, spoof stories - which I would add, are a completely different kettle of fish from fake news - can end up being repeated by fairly respectable news outlets, which makes them more likely to gain credence. As ever, the old maxim "If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck then it probably is a duck," holds true.

Gotcha! The Sun fell for Southend News Network's story of a child
banned from a vegan birthday party for wearing a cow onesie.

But enough of facts versus opinions, what about opinions pure and simple? The problem with some opinions is that they can be difficult to measure, and nowhere is that truer than in reviews, which are by their very nature, opinions, subjective, and often driven by prejudice. And whether it is a review of a book, a film, a TV programme or a piece of music, the reviewer's opinion is - until or unless we sample the thing ourselves - all we have to go on. Sometimes that works out fine, and the reviewer's opinion is pretty similar to our own; sometimes it isn't. Often if I read a review of something, then watch it, read it or listen to it, and do not enjoy it, I shrug my shoulders and write it off to experience. A recent decluttering of my CD collection revealed a number of albums by artists such as Karnivool, Dream Theater, King Bathmat, and British Sea Power that I bought on the back of decent reviews or recommendations, but which turned out not to be to my taste, but no harm done.

Occasionally, however I come across something that I have bought on the strength of decent reviews but have found to be so poor or objectionable that it is difficult to understand how the reviewers, indeed any reviewer, could possibly have reached the conclusions they did. Take The Mars Volta, for instance. I read a decent review of one of their albums, bought it, listened to it and decided that the disc would be best employed hanging from a tree as a bird scarer - I simply could not listen to it. But perhaps that was just me, but it was my opinion, no matter that it was as far from that expressed in the reviews as it was possible to get.

The Mars Volta album Frances The Mute is simply impossible to listen to.

It happened again recently after I saw an advert for a book of science fiction short stories that intrigued me. Eating Robots: And Other Stories (Nudge the Future Book 1) by Stephen Oram struck a chord with me; a collection of science fiction short stories that verged on the weird, described on Amazon as " the collision of utopian dreams and twisted realities in a world where humanity and technology are becoming ever more intertwined," and " funny, often unsettling, and always with a word of warning." And then there were the readers' reviews which extolled its virtues and made me keen to read what I hoped would be an insightful, entertaining and thought provoking collection. So I bought it and read it, and was immediately put in mind of the story of The Emperor's New Clothes, with me in the role of the child who witnesses the emperor's procession.

As far as I can see, the book has two virtues: It's relatively cheap (£1.99 for the Kindle version), and at 135 pages, reading it doesn't waste too much of your precious time. They say that life is too short to drink bad wine, and if this book were a burgundy I would have poured it down the sink, but I ploughed on with it from a sense of morbid fascination. It began promisingly; Disjointed, and Little Modern Miracles - the first two stories - were decent: nothing earth-shattering, but good enough. Then it started to go downhill. The third story, The Downward Spiral of The Disenfranchised Consumer, started well and had an intriguing premise, but whereas in my view, the best short stories of this type end with either an unexpected twist - like the best jokes, a sudden change of emphasis that takes the audience by surprise creates the best effect -or a promise of what would come should the story unfold further. Sadly, The Downward Spiral spiralled downward and dwindled to a limp conclusion, a conclusion I only realised had been reached because I turned the page and the next story began. The same was true of a great many of these stories. On one hand that could be said to simply be thought provoking, to leave the reader with an idea that they can extrapolate from - on the other hand, it could simply be that the petered out because they had nowhere to go.

The whole book struck me as a collection of stories gathered from a creative writing course where a writer had been tasked with constructing a story in half-an-hour from some premise they had been given, and having done so not gone anywhere near it again.

I don't usually get so exercised about a book, or a film, or anything that I don't like, regardless of how my view of it differs from other peoples, but on this occasion my opinion was so out of kilter with the others I read that I had to comment on it. Perhaps I missed something about this book, but even if I did, I know what I like, and I didn't like Eating Robots.

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[1] There are variations on this; most are less wholesome.

Chasing Paper

I once read a report of a chap who planned to go to a football match, but when he arrived at the ground, discovered that the programmes had all been sold, so instead of watching the game, he turned on his heel and went home. That tale may be apocryphal,  but on balance, I rather suspect that it is true: in fact, I would go as far as to say that it has possibly happened more than once.

Upon reaching the turnstile and finding that there were no programmes, our man went home - apparently.

The more sceptical among you may doubt that anyone would plan to go to an event - be it a football match, a play, or a concert - and not actually watch it because of the absence of a programme, brochure, or similar publication, but there are some football-goers for whom the 90 minutes of action on the pitch is but one part of the experience of going to a game. And I say football-goers rather than supporters because these are the chaps (and I would guess that most, if not all of them are men) who do not follow a particular team, but rather troll around the country (and overseas too, on occasion) taking in games and ticking off grounds. Frequently they visit and 'tick off' other places too, like pubs in The Good Beer Guide, or railway stations.

A selection of non-League programmes from eBay.

It has always been my belief that while women love to make lists (usually To Do lists, often with plenty of things for their men folk to do), men love to tick things off lists, and football provides ample opportunity for that. Apart from the Premier League and Football League clubs (ninety-two in total), there are almost 900 clubs playing non-League football down to Step 6 (that's six promotions below the Football League) at what one might call 'proper' football grounds (i.e. terracing, some cover, floodlights, bar and catering) who will normally also issue programmes. The 92 Club accepts as a member, anyone " who has already attended a first-team competitive fixture played at the current ground of each of the ninety-two clubs of the Premier League, Championship, League 1 and League 2 during those clubs' current period of membership of the League." There is no formal club for the other 891 clubs outside the top 92, but that does not mean that there are not people trying as hard as they can to visit all of them. There is, however, a handy website (https://www.footballgroundmap.com/) that allows you to log the grounds you have visited. According to that, I've been to 190 grounds, but given that the site lists 2,163 in England. Clearly, I have a long way to go. Thankfully I have little intention of even trying to get anywhere near all them  (or even a quarter of them), but I have no doubt that there are people desperate to work out how they can visit them all (before starting on another country).

I'll hold my hands up now and admit that when I go to a football match, I do like to get a programme: I might even be a bit disappointed if there was one printed but I could not get hold of a copy, but if a club doesn't issue one, then it isn't the end of the world. Out in my garage I have a number of boxes containing the programmes I have collected over the years. Sadly, during one of my many house moves during the mid-1990's when my life was somewhat turbulent, one box has gone missing. All of those that remain (bar some Romford FC programmes that are from the period before I started watching them) are from games I have actually attended: at one time I had a large number of programmes I had bought from dealers or football club shops, these were discarded many years ago. An exception is a programme from the 1949 FA Amateur Cup Final, the first ever played at Wembley Stadium, between Bromley FC and Romford FC, which I bought on eBay a year or so ago. It remains the most expensive programme I have ever bought (it was about £15), but obviously nowhere near as expensive as some you will find online or at auction - the most expensive, for the 1882 FA Cup final between Old Etonians and Blackburn Rovers, sold at auction for a world record £35,250. That clearly is an antique and has rarity value, however even recent, more mundane - and one would think, more common -programmes sell for decent prices.

For the football goer who must have a programme, there is now another piece of paper to chase; the teamsheet. Once found only in the press-box, teamsheets are now produced by clubs at much lower levels of the game than in days gone by: the affordability of printers and other computer equipment has made sure of that. So now it is not unusual to see a club official distributing teamsheets prior to a game, which on occasion provokes a rush to grab one from the assembled groundhoppers[1]. 

From The Non-League Paper, Diary of a Groundhopper regularly
demonstrates the importance of the match programme to such visitors.

These days, as programmes rarely feature team line-ups that are even vaguely accurate. At all levels of the game - not just in the Premier League - many now just list each clubs' squads,  and the days of the stadium announcer declaring, "United's team is as per your programme" are long, long gone. As a result, the teamsheet has started to assume greater importance, hence the frequent scramble to obtain one when they appear.

But the humble football programme may, just may, be on its last legs. The internet has supplanted it as the football fan's major source of information about his club, teamsheets provide a more accurate guide as to who is playing, and in any case, print deadlines mean that programmes can never be as up to date as the websites that all leagues and clubs now have. When I write an article for my club's programme it is not unusual for me to find that between my emailing it to our programme editor and the date of publication, whatever  I have written has been overtaken by events. Many clubs now offer their match programmes in digital format and the Evo-Stik South League no longer makes it compulsory for clubs to produce a physical programme, a digital one is deemed adequate and Uxbridge FC recently announced that they will trial issuing only an online programme this season.

The online programme has plenty of advantages: it won't sell out, won't get wet or crumpled in the rain, and collecting them won't take up vast tracts of your living space. The groundhopper who went to the ground only to find that all of the programmes had been sold could have downloaded one on his phone. Unfortunately, however, he couldn't have written the team changes and the score on it.

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[1] Groundhopper: Someone who visits as many grounds as possible, although there is more, much more, to it than that. Groundhoppers frequently construct complex rules that determine the circumstances under which a ground, or club can be ticked. This blog, http://onion-bag.blogspot.co.uk/2010/06/definition-of-groundhopper.html goes some way toward explaining the phenomenon.

Any Colour You Like

Perhaps prompted by the reports that come 2040, Britain is to ban all new petrol and diesel cars, my daughter asked me last week if I would consider buying a hybrid, or an electric car in the near future. On balance, probably not, I replied, and the question may never need answering definitively since I will be into my eighties by the time the ban comes into force and for any number of reasons may no longer be driving anything.

The Toyota Prius, possibly the best-known hybrid on the market.

News of the UK's proposed ban comes hot on the heels of a similar announcement from the French government, and the decision by Volvo that all the cars they manufacture after 2019 will be entirely, or at least partially, battery-powered. The UK's move will also see the banning of hybrid vehicles, and so as with Henry Ford's remark in 1909 - that customers could have one of his Model-T's in any colour they liked, so long as it was black - come 2040, consumers will be able to buy any car they like, so long as it is electric, unless someone comes up with a viable alternative fuel source.[1]

Perhaps steampunk cars are the answer? Taken from repokar.com

The reasons for the proposed ban are clear and significant: air quality in UK cities, especially London, is so poor that it is thought to be responsible for at least 40,000 deaths every year.  Twelve-thousand people died in London in 1952 as a result of smog, resulting in the Clean Air Act of 1956, but whereas the so-called "Great Smog" was clear for all to see, the hazy conditions that are the only real outward sign of poor air quality today are easier to miss, but are having a marked and deleterious effect on our health. Obviously, something has to be done, and addressing pollution produced by cars with internal combustion engines is equally obviously a major part of the answer.

The Great Smog of 1952

But there is a whole raft of reasons why addressing the problem by banning cars needs a great deal more thought and consideration than I am prepared to give our legislators credit for. It is one thing to bring in laws to ban the sale of petrol driven vehicles, another thing entirely to comprehensively introduce such legislation without creating complete anarchy. Firstly, since the ban would be on new petrol and diesel vehicles only, the implication is that existing cars and vans on the roads in 2040 would not suddenly become illegal, but - although not currently stated - one imagines that existing vehicles would be given a deadline for scrapping, or at least incur punitive charges in terms of road tax and congestion charging. If not - and with current vehicles easily lasting twenty years or more - the proposed legislation could have little or no effect until 2060, or 2070 perhaps, unless other manufacturers follow Volvo's lead.

Then there is Fuel Duty, which for petrol and diesel currently amounts to 57.95 pence per litre and earns government the best part of £28billion per annum. No petrol or diesel vehicles means no Fuel Duty and a large chunk of government revenue lost, which would have to be recouped somewhere. Another means of fleecing the motorist - sorry, paying for the upkeep of the nation's roads - will need to be found.

Over half the price you pay at the pump is duty - and that is without VAT on top.

Driving or walking around my local neighbourhood, I have seen a few electric cars, but never seen one charging outside someone's property. And as the map below shows, public charging points in the area are thin on the ground. That is going to have to change if electric cars are to be a viable replacement for conventionally powered vehicles. And in our area - which I have no doubt is fairly typical - a very significant proportion of motorists park their cars at the road side, not in garages or on drives, so I remain curious as to how many of these motorists, who may have to park fifty yards or more from their front door, are going to charge their cars at home. Unless of course, there are public charging points every ten yards or so along the pavement.

Then there is the question of exactly where all the electricity needed to charge these cars is coming from? The National Grid, which has more than once in the recent past warned of potential power blackouts as demand outstrips supply, said recently that peak demand would increase by 50% if the country switches to electric vehicles. How will sufficient electricity be generated? There are suggestions that to cope with the increased demand for electricity, we would need to build ten nuclear power stations or erect 10,000 wind turbines. Given the controversy over the proposed Hinkley Point C nuclear power station - not to mention the cost - I for one have absolutely no confidence that come 2040, the UK will be able to service all the electric vehicles that could be on our roads, either in terms of adequate supply or charging points. Unless we start now, building power stations at a rate hitherto unheard of, and covering the whole of the countryside with wind turbines and solar panels, in twenty-three years time there will be a whole load of cars that no one can drive because they cannot charge them up.

A designer's dream, never to be a reality?

Given that every new proposal, for every type of power station - be it nuclear, or coal fired, or wind farm - inevitably brings with it opposition from local residents and other pressure groups, and given that even once any objections have been overruled and planning approved, getting that installation contributing to the National Grid takes years, not weeks (Hinkley Point B came on stream in 1976, nine years after construction began), the announcement of the ban on new petrol and diesel vehicles ought really to have come after an agreement to build the requisite number of power stations, generating the necessary amount of power, had been reached.

Then there are the batteries that power electric cars. At present, the maximum range you will get out of an electric car is about 280 miles, but for that you need to buy the Tesla Model S, priced at a minimum of £57,000 - out of the question for the average motorist. For a reasonably priced car - let's say under £20,000 - the best you can get is the Renault ZOE (in fact it is just about the only one you can get) with a range of just about one-hundred miles, although if you can stretch to £30,000, one of their higher-spec models will run to 250 miles. If governments and car manufacturers are serious about converting us all to electric cars, then their maximum range - and battery charging times - are factors to which a whole lot of serious consideration must be given.

The Renault ZOE has a range that won't even get you from London to Bristol on a single charge.

The demise of the internal combustion engine and our conversion to electric cars is probably inevitable, but setting a date and sitting back and doing nothing else is not enough. Government -both national and local - legislators, energy suppliers, and car manufacturers need to get together now to start planning for 2040. If they don't then I shall not be sorry if by that time I have given up driving; possibly I would have no choice anyway.

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[1] Alternatives to petrol and diesel include steam and compressed air - I like the steampunk notion of a steam powered car. See https://www.rac.co.uk/drive/features/eight-alternative-vehicle-fuels-to-petrol-and-diesel-you-never-knew-about/