Peter Rhodes on firework victims and a double-barrelled disaster
“WE’VE seen nothing in our lifetime that can compare with the motoring revolution that’s just around the corner.” So says Transport Secretary Chris Grayling on the advent of driverless cars. And yet there’s one massive transport revolution happening that no-one in Whitehall seems to want to see. It is a train in a tube called Hyperloop which its Los Angeles makers claim will cruise at 600mph. Meanwhile Britain is plodding ahead with HS2 , an unaffordable £100 billion exercise in using 20th century technology to update a 19th century concept to serve 21st century customers who don’t even want it.
A COLUMNIST this week referred to Michael Parkinson, 82, as ‘one of the blessed postwar generation’. So which war would that be, the Boer War?
WHEN this interwebbythingy began we used it simply as an extension of the high street. Gradually it has become an operation for gathering personal information. You can’t buy the tiniest widget without some firms wanting your name, address, mother’s maiden name and blood group. I wonder how many e-sales every year are abandoned when customers discover they created an account with the retailer ten years ago and are now expected to remember a password from 2007. I have just encountered a new twist. Unless I create an online account, the firm will not tell me when the goods are to be delivered. Does the word ‘goodwill’ mean anything in cyberspace?
A READER in her 80s who suffers from an irregular heartbeat describes her local bonfire night as ‘every bit as frightening as the bombings over my home town in the 1940s . . .screaming rockets soaring noisily above my garden and then exploding with such force the front window shook. . . little dogs screaming in terror, my heart fast and painful.’
NOW, you may think comparing Bonfire Night with the Blitz is over the top. But I remember interviewing an old chap in Birmingham whose nightly ritual at this time of year was to build his own little air-raid shelter under the kitchen table where he cocooned himself and his dog against the detonations of other folks’ fun. He, too, compared Bonfire night to the war. Simple question: in the name of having a good time, how much of a thoroughly bad time are we prepared to inflict on others?
PEDANT corner. A couple of days ago I referred to the Monty Python’s Four Yorkshiremen sketch. In fact, the sketch predates Python. It was written by Tim Brooke-Taylor, John Cleese, Graham Chapman and Marty Feldman and first performed in the TV series At Last the 1948 Show which, with a Pythonesque twist, was broadcast in 1967.
THERE’S a modern trend for couples to combine their surnames when marrying, sometimes to preserve the bride’s maiden name and sometimes just to look posh. But There are risks. A Daily Telegraph reader recalls a couple who, despite the urgings of their friends, declined to become double-barrelled. Which is perhaps as well. She is Carr and he is Parkin.
