Express & Star

Peter Rhodes on an ear-grip challenge, smart windows and why growth can be gross

Not that Noggin

Published
Not that Noggin

I HAVE been sawing noggings, an activity which probably sounds best read out loud by Oliver Postgate. A nogging, as any builder will tell you, is not a fictional Norseman but the horizontal bit of timber which fits between the vertical beams in a stud wall, in this case the one at the far end of the Great Hall at Chateau Rhodes. You measure the length required, mark timber with soft pencil, saw to fit. In the process I repeated a failing I first experienced more than 60 years ago, watching the grocer in Kington. He would take my mother's order and then expertly slip the pencil behind his ear. At four, this was the coolest thing I had seen.

I PRACTISED at home but, being cursed with sticky-out ears, I could not keep that pencil in place. Still can't. Come to think of it, I can't recall when I last saw a tradesperson slip a pencil behind the ear. These days it's all computers and you can't ear-grip a smartphone. Another working-class skill is lost forever.

IF you have a spare 28 minutes, go to the BBC iPlayer and catch the first episode in the series Economics With Subtitles (Radio 4). Ayeisha Thomas-Smith and Steve Bugeja do a masterly demolition of GDP (gross domestic product), the almost-sacred measure of how the nation's economy is performing. We are conditioned to regard growth as great, yet all sorts of bad stuff, including the massive illegal drugs trade, is included in our GDP. If crime soars and we need more prisons, that's regarded as growth. What is missing is a measure of well-being, some indication of how content and affluent Britons feel as individuals.

BY chance, a couple of days after Economics With Subtitles was aired, the Confederation of British Industry called for immigration targets to be scrapped after Brexit in order to "support continued investment and growth." But growth of what? The profits of a few already-booming companies? The dividends paid to a clique of wealthy shareholders? Who is going to make the case for a little less growth and a better quality of life for all? In a single lifetime the UK population has risen from 50 million to nearly 70 million. The disciples of endless growth offer no vision for the future except an island packed with millions more consumers, all buying things. A future built on the worship of gross domestic product will be utterly gross.

OH, brave new world. My eye was caught by a feature about a new "switching glass" window which can be installed in your bathroom. Flick a switch and it turns from clear to opaque, so you cannot be seen, even if passers-by or your neighbours are just a few feet away. As long as the power is on, your privacy is guaranteed. What could possibly go wrong? You switch on the light, the window goes blank. You disrobe and relax in the bath. You fall asleep. There is a power cut . . .