Thou living Aton, the beginning of life!

“Never speak ill of gadgets, Algernon: only the lesser breeds without the law who read the instructions do that!” How true Lady Bracknell’s words ring in today’s society. One can only sympathize with her denuded state as she struggled for so many years without a capacious handbag in which to keep her various pieces of electronic hardware. How is civilized life possible without the vast spaciousness of various storage areas about one’s person to accommodate the essential sinuous impedimenta of normal electronic living?

Consider the normal holiday maker or traveller; what would, say a retired teacher think of taking on holiday for a week? The following is a list of only the most essential, basic electronic products that any self respecting modern traveller would take.

1. A laptop
2. A hand held computer
3. A digital camera
4. A video ipod
5. A set of mini speakers for the ipod
6. A Nintendo Lite
7. A mobile phone
8. A portable DAB radio
[Note: the DAB radio is aspirational rather than an actual possession – but time will tell!]

There was a time, of course, when all that electronic equipment would have needed its own articulated lorry to transport it about the place but now, thanks to the miracles of micro technology the individual elements in the list above are all reasonably portable; apart from the laptop, the rest of the products would barely fill a side pocket on a back pack.

Size of product is no problem for the traveller. But we have a question that in its complexity mirrors the query that perplexed so many medieval theologians. They may have asked, “How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?” The modern question which taxes so many technophiles is, of course, “How do you power all your gadgets?”

The last time I went on holiday half my case was taken up with a writhing mass of power leads and various inert black masses of solid transformers. Then, whenever a gadget ran down I had to search through the knotted skeins of leads and try and solve the Gordian problem and extricate the appropriate lead before finding out that I didn’t have the correct plug.

Electronic companies, as everyone knows, meet in secret conclave to agree a unified approach to ensure that all companies have mutually exclusive adaptors to maximise the inconvenience that miniaturizing gadgets seeks to eliminate.

I have however, confused “their knavish tricks” and managed to decrease my carbon footprint (see earlier blog entry) at the same time. I have purchased another gadget. This might seem to be a paradoxical position to be taking up, but what I have purchased is a portable solar energy charger with, amazingly enough adaptors to power up all my little gadgets: I feel very virtuous! Time, of course, will tell whether the little device (not much bigger than a fat calculator) will be able to charge fully all the devices mentioned above.

Wales has beaten England! Hoorah hooray O frabjous day! We turned over to see Barca play before it became clear whether or not Wales had been awarded the wooden spoon. I suppose that the newspapers tomorrow are going to be full of the “if they had played like this earlier in the season, etc” way of reporting. It was a truly exciting match with an explosive opening when all Welsh expectations must have received a boost with the early score. There was also a horrible sense of déjà vu as the seemingly healthy lead was whittled away! But we confounded sceptics, pundits and expectations and won!

I was particularly impressed by the tribute to Shirley Bassey which characterised the shirts of the Welsh team. The chest area of the Welsh shirts seemed to be gleaming with a tasteful arrangement of what looked like well spaced sequins. How encouraging to note that our national team can draw inspiration for the archetypal old trooper from Monte Carlo and they, of course, “did it their way, and they were what they were!”

Should that have been in quotation marks?

Probably not.