Why is sex sex?

An infuriated email - Bloody French! - arrives from younger daughter, Occasional Speeder. The French Academy whose stern and ultimately futile task is to protect the French language from foreign influence has decreed this new word, Covid-19, will be feminine and take "la" as a definite article. How did they decide that? foams OS.

The answer is less interesting than the fury. Covid is an acronym derived from the first two letters of corona and virus and acronyms are feminine. Why? The Academy says so; you wouldn't want genderless nouns floating around without their... er, appendages. For what it's worth I looked up NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) which the French, in their perverse way, refer to as OTAN (surely a Nordic god) and that too is feminine.

Such matters probably depend on a word's roots and that's dreadfully boring. Only people at a loose end get excited about it.

Except when it isn't boring. Aeons ago I reflected that the French word for death (morte) is feminine. Forget roots because most people can't handle the phonetic alphabet. This is creepy, unchivalrous and irrational. More men than women have been responsible for deaths and men should take the blame. All agreed say Aye. Aye.

But don't blame just the French. The Germans find it necessary to have a third gender: not just der and die but also das. Covering those who are in between. So why is a young girl (ie, maiden) called das Mädchen? Because the -chen indicates a diminutive. Yeah. I wince because I can't be bothered to confirm this and Sabine delights in picking out my linguistic errors. Yet is haughtily silent when I return the favour.

Perhaps it is all boring anyway.

Corrective update pic. See re-comment to Natalie.

My past resurrected

Good logistics delivers the right item, in the right quantity, to the right place at the right time. It was once my professional concern, the subject of a magazine I edited. Amazingly I became an expert and experts as far away as Japan, though more often in Germany and Sweden, paid my air fare so I could chat with them.

Those with more uplifting professions - especially teachers - will no doubt think I led a blah life. Business, my dear! So corrupting, so crass! And we all know what Boris Johnson thinks - it begins with f.

But logistics can be fascinating.  It's nationally important, good logistics  measures a country's efficiency. Good or bad logistics will be at the heart of what Britain becomes post-Brexit. Logistics is anti-waste; mainly of time and time, as we all know, is money. Its principles are simple even though they may be fiendishly hard to apply. In retirement I became the official washer-up chez Robinson and am now the best washer-up I know. My system is based on what I learnt as an editor. Using a dish-washer? Not on your nellie!

My bike has languished somewhat of late, and I recently resurrected it in the service of small daily tasks. Compared with walking bikes offer higher speeds and improved carrying capacity; such efficiency turns me on. It's true, efficiency can be positively erotic. I don't expect, or intend to solicit, your agreement on this.

Securing my crash helmet proved fiddly. I examined the straps and noticed a flaw in the way they were routed. I can solve that, I thought. I wonder if that puts me ahead of the Swedes? Actually, the Swedes are the world’s best in logistics and I doubt it. My love for them pre-dates Scandi-noir.

Mightier than the sword?

The big one carries Barcelona FC's colours. Twas a gift

Great claims were made for the ball-point pen introduced soon after WW2. A triumph of technology, they said. There was even a suggestion that it would write for ever. Father Christmas put two of them - a red and a green - into my stocking in the late forties.

Enthusiasm for ball-points died away just as rapidly as it had grown. Some schools forbade their use, saying they would corrupt calligraphic skills. There was a legal interdiction against signing certain documents with a ball-point. As a journalist  using Pitman's shorthand I found it duff given it was incapable of producing thick and thin lines. After a month or so non-drying ball-point ink started to migrate into the surrounding paper, rendering what was written illegible.

My pal Joe suffered mightily. A ball-point, stowed away in the breast pocket of his newish jacket, exploded leaving an ineradicable large blue stain. Imagining this to be a purely cosmetic defect he kept on wearing the jacket for a while. But the stain assumed the power of  a stigmata and he was forced to discard this otherwise serviceable garment.

In parallel with the ball-point's decline arose a renewed - though minor - affectation for the fountain pen. This despite the fact that it was unwise to travel far without recourse to a bottle of Quink. Some deep-seated prejudice on my part associated fountain pens with people who voted Tory.

And then the word processor was invented, granting us all legibility and an infinite ability to make corrections. A style enhancer for those who cared to see it in this light. These days I use my ball-points to sign cheques. Hallelujah.

Porn - old and new

I don't watch much new telly these days but I except Wolf Hall, the BBC's plausible six-part adaptation of Hilary Mantel's meaty novels about Tudor schemer/fixer Thomas Cromwell  - not to be confused with Oliver of that ilk who later urged England to take stumbling steps towards parliamentary democracy, a process still woefully incomplete.

I worry that these reconstructions feed a taste for legitimised S-M porn with their detailed scenes of public executions, especially of women. No spoiler alert necessary for WH's final episode yesterday, given that it concerned Anne Boleyn's fall from grace, and for which something new in the beheading line was contrived.

Don't be put off by this but be warned: WH is a serious account of politics and the drama lies in networks of relationships which demand attention and a good memory. Meanwhile marvel at Mark Rylance's minimalist Cromwell (above), and the huge implications contingent upon the tightening of his lips. A role for which telly was invented.


A MORE modern form of porn lies in the never-ending trawl of kit to sustain enthusiasts in their leisure pursuits. Blonde Two and Sir Hugh, both extreme walkers, have a taste for this. (Too cruel, too condensed; see: Where-er you ski)

I used to walk (the synonym, hike, causes me to throw up) and my first and only rucksack was bought as ex-WW2 stock, said to be used by Army toughies called Commandos. Painful to the hips, very character-forming.

To get to "walking" places I rode a motor bike and needed gloves. The first pair, quickly discarded, were also ex-WW2 and made of crackly slick canvas for troops under gas attack. No porn in either of these items, I fear.

Fast spin

 Most utility rooms are - ahem! - utilitarian. In ours (and from ours) the liberal arts briefly flourished last Monday. All it took was a coin.

A ducat, groat, mite, or a gilder? Whatever. Left in a trouser pocket it wrecked our comparatively new washing machine. Terry, the itinerant repairman, sighed that the nearest replacement was in Tewkesbury. Reminding me of Gloster (later Richard III), casually summarising Anne, whom he'd recently widowed and whom he intended to marry;

Edward, her lord, whom I, some three months since,
Stabb'd in my angry mood at Tewkesbury.

Switched on, the new washer tinkled an electronicky tune, conceivably a leitmotif. Terry initiated a test cycle and asked who had painted the two oils of Hadrian's Wall hanging in the kitchen.VR took responsibility but Terry's interest was comradely not critical; he too painted and may - I can't be sure - have carved wood. A cultural nexus was evolving.

VR took Terry on a ground-floor tour of other artworks: her water-colour of an Italian town at dawn, the commissioned simulated bronze statue of our grandchildren, another commissioned portrait - this time of Zach, our other grandson. Terry, nominally an electrician, bestrode the twin cultures with easy familiarity.

Then a bell (metaphorical, of course) sounded in my head. Washing machines! I showed Terry my copy of Gorgon Times, explained that the joint-hero, Hatch, had been production manager with a washing machine manufacturer before redundancy. That engineering was, to some extent, a further co-hero of the novel. That Terry was GT's ideal reader.

He nodded, photographed the book's front cover with his smartphone, said he'd order it.

So far the washing machine still works.

International conspiracy

Printers irritate the hell out of me. The economics are such they could be given away free since extortionate cartridge costs quickly match the printer’s purchase price. What my mother called "a ramp" and I, youthfully, "a swizz". A con.

I am publicising a show by VR's painting group. My Canon printer plays up; a repair would exceed the £80 cost price. Worse, a dozen unused cartridges will go to waste. The sense of being defrauded combined with an  attack of blepharitis, a corn that comes and goes on my left  foot, and the side-effects of bronchiectasis, now designated  as chronic, cause me to rail against dark forces. And, come to think of it, the forces of light.

The Hewlett-Packard replacement has touch-screen controls instead of buttons. Whoopee, oh whoopee! Said ironically. A warning on the box says it lacks a USB cable without which it won't work. The cable, a paltry thing. costs £13, causing me to rail some more. I feel like Monty Python's little man in the off-licence. The HP is, however, better designed; I no longer need pianist's fingers. Within minutes I'm trucking.

That was twenty-four hours ago. The HP crouches, 50 cm away, and my resentment is starting to fade. It's just a thing. I'll never love it but it does a job. I bought it with my credit card and that's good; it didn't cost me real money.

WIP Hand Signals
Francine went straight to Roger's most worryng patient, a splenectomy who might have picked up an infection. Temperature up slightly, passed a poor night, winced slightly  as she ran a gentle finger over his dressing.

“How're you feeling Mr Daley?” she asked.

“I'm scared,” he said. “Should I be?”

“There's nothing scary as such...”

“All surgery's a risk,” said Daley fatalistically.
 

For working in transit

We rarely buy a new computer and our knowledge and criteria waste away during the years in between. This Compaq Mini 110 notebook, aka a netbook computer, sometimes generically listed under tablets, was acquired three months ago for two jobs: (1) Composing sonnets, etc, en route by train to The Blogger’s Retreat and back (300 mins actual writing time), (2) Writing and editing novels while on holiday.

Pluses: Dimensions (Much smaller than laptop; some hardback novels are bigger), screen size (Fine for word processing), weight, built-in proper keyboard, email/internet capability.

Minuses: Battery life, lack of CD/DVD drive, no software other than XP, cursor pad.

Compromises/improvisations: Power lead essential (British trains now have power points), data transferred from main computer as email attachment, new programmes downloaded from internet, pad bypassed with dinky mini-mouse (shown). Word processing: I’m very pro MS Word but the WP part of freebie Open Office accepts Word documents hence saving of £100 for new MSW.

Numerics: Cost £240 but cheaper options available   Specs: 1.6 GHz, 1 GB RAM, HD 160 GB, up to 3 hr battery life, dims: 35 x 265 x 170 mm, weighs 1.1 kg.

PERSONAL NOTE: The need became apparent in France in June when I wrote a 4000-word short story WITH A PEN. Barbaric! Might as well have used a chisel on granite. Realised I could also keep novel on the boil via improvisation mentioned above. Must emphasise this is an in-between indulgence; desktop much more comfortable and comprehensive.