The BBC is doing an Alan Bennett fest just now, showing many of his TV appearances and other stuff. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed The History Boys at last and in full–it has always been interrupted for me until now. I like Talking Heads, and much of the Bennett on Bennett material is good, too. A few minutes ago, towards the end of my daily pre-writing procrastination period, I watched him talking on Writing. He says that a writer is a writer only at the moment of actually physically writing. He’s right, of course. Doesn’t stop him being a pompous little git, but he’s right.
So, here I am, clattering away on the keys, caught in the actual moment of Writing. Well, foopey whucking doo. Doesn’t feel all that different from the times when I’m not Writing. I suspect it’s all in my imagination.
I’m still sailing along very happily with the new super-broadband service, smiling quietly at each turn. Not too sure that it’s all that good a move for poor Graham, though. Just serves to shorten the times between bouts of computer frustration for him, and does nothing to shorten or lessen the duration and intensity of his public lessons in creative cussing.
I’ve wondered about my placid approach to computers. Almost all the time I’m content with what I get and I certainly don’t swear too long or loud when I don’t get it.
It’s all a matter of expectations when it comes to computers, I’m sure of it. I never expected a 17-column sort of 35 trays of punched cards to work right first time, so I was neither surprised nor disappointed when it didn’t. I got to be jolly good at correcting the problem without having to re-do the whole operation and I suspect that my placid approach was at least partly the reason for it.
I do hope that technical progress has saved the workers in ‘EDP’ from having to do a 17-column sort these days. It would probably be illegal or, at the least, against the Geneva Convention.
But then, I’m probably the only man left in the western world who can knock up a deck of punched cards. I wonder if a card sort operative is only a card sort operative when he’s actually sorting cards?
