They Lived the War. We Inherited the History.

A recent conversation with my 90-year-old father-in-law took an unexpected turn. He mentioned that the SS Great Britain had had its name changed, because some people - certainly not me - had supposedly associated “SS” with “slave ship”.

That led to a separate discussion about the other meaning of SS. He then asked me what SS meant in Nazi terms.

I was taken aback. I would have assumed that anyone who had lived through the war, even as a child, would know that the SS was the Schutzstaffel, the organisation that became central to Nazi repression, racial policy, concentration camps and mass murder.

But why should he necessarily have known?

There is a curious paradox about the generation that lived through the Second World War. They experienced it directly, endured its restrictions and carried its memories for the rest of their lives, yet many of them knew far less about the war as a whole than their children later did.

My father’s generation knew their own war. They knew their regiment, their ship, their airfield, their convoy, their factory or their bomb-damaged street. As children, they knew rationing, air-raid warnings, blackouts, absent fathers and anxious adults. What they did not necessarily know was how their small piece fitted into the vast machinery of a global conflict.

That was not because they were ignorant. It was because they were inside it.

Operational secrecy meant that servicemen were told only what they needed to know. Censorship limited what could be written home. Newspapers and radio reported what the government judged safe, useful or good for morale. Propaganda was not merely something the enemy did. Britain used it too, often for entirely understandable reasons. A country fighting for survival could hardly issue a daily bulletin listing its mistakes, shortages and secret plans.

Children knew even less. They heard scraps of adult conversation, saw newsreels and absorbed the official version. They might know that Hitler was the enemy and that British forces were fighting overseas, but that did not amount to a detailed understanding of Nazi institutions, the Eastern Front, the machinery of occupation or the developing evidence of genocide.

A soldier in North Africa might know very little about the Battle of the Atlantic. A sailor escorting Arctic convoys might have only the vaguest understanding of events in Burma. A family sheltering from the Blitz would not know the scale of what was happening on the Eastern Front, nor the political bargains being struck between Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin.

The war was too large, too dispersed and too secret for any ordinary participant to comprehend in real time.

The generation born afterwards met it in a very different way. By the time the war reached the History curriculum, the pieces had begun to be assembled. Campaigns had been mapped. Axis records had been captured and studied. Commanders had published memoirs. Historians could compare Allied accounts with those of their enemies and examine decisions using documents that had been unavailable while the war was being fought.

We were not taught only about Dunkirk, the Blitz and D-Day. We learned how the theatres connected. We learned about the Eastern Front, North Africa, the Atlantic convoys, strategic bombing, resistance movements, intelligence, diplomacy, occupation and genocide. We learned what the SS was, how it developed and what it did.

We were shown the map rather than merely one muddy square of it.

That formal education mattered. It gave the post-war generation a structure into which individual stories could be placed. A veteran might remember a retreat, a bombardment or a sudden change of orders. The historian could later explain why it happened, what was occurring elsewhere and how it affected the wider campaign.

The classroom was only part of it. Boomers were also surrounded by war films. They appeared constantly on television, especially at weekends and during school holidays. However simplified, patriotic or occasionally myth-making they were, they supplied a rough chronology and a mental map.

Dunkirk, the Atlantic convoys, Colditz, the Dambusters raid, Arnhem and D-Day were already familiar before the teacher reached them. We knew what a Lancaster, a U-boat, a Spitfire and a Bailey bridge were before anyone thought to examine us on them.

School History therefore did not operate in isolation. It filled in, corrected and connected a story that films, family memories, comics, documentaries and remembrance ceremonies had already made part of everyday life.

Then television carried the assembled history into the living room.

Programmes such as All Our Yesterdays and, above all, The World at War did something extraordinary. They brought together archive film, official records, military analysis and testimony from people on every side. They allowed millions of viewers, including veterans themselves, to see the conflict in a form that had never been available while it was happening.

But many veterans did not watch them. Some had no wish to see again what they had spent years trying to forget. The war might have become history to their children, but to them it remained memory, and memory was not always something to be invited into the sitting room on a Sunday evening.

Trauma did not yet have its modern vocabulary. Men simply changed the channel, left the room or said they had seen enough of the war already.

Others did watch, and must have learned more about the overall course of the war from television in the 1960s and 1970s than they had known in uniform. For the first time, they could see how their own experience fitted into the larger conflict.

Later generations encountered something different again. There was simply more history to cover. The Cold War, decolonisation, civil rights, the Middle East, the fall of communism and the development of modern Britain all demanded space in a curriculum whose timetable had not obligingly expanded.

Teaching methods changed as well. Continuous political and military narrative increasingly gave way to selected depth studies, source analysis, social history and broader themes. None of that was inherently inferior, but it meant pupils could study important parts of the war without ever being given the complete sequence that joined them together.

The result was not necessarily a less accurate version of the war, but a more fragmented one. Pupils might study Nazi Germany, the Holocaust, the Home Front or a handful of turning points while lacking the wider framework: why the war began, how its theatres interacted, why Germany lost, how Soviet manpower and American industrial power altered the balance, and how the settlement shaped the world that followed.

The war films also faded from everyday television. The veterans disappeared from family gatherings, the old stories became second-hand, and the shared broadcasting culture that had repeatedly exposed almost everyone to the same films and documentaries broke apart. The war ceased to be the national backstory playing continuously in the background. It became another historical module.

The Boomers may therefore have occupied a brief historical sweet spot. We were far enough from the war for the evidence to have been assembled, but close enough for its people, stories and imagery still to surround us.

This is not to diminish what the wartime generation knew. They possessed a kind of knowledge that no classroom or documentary could reproduce. They knew the fear, boredom, noise, cold, exhaustion and grief. They knew what it was to wait, to obey, to lose friends and to carry on because there was no alternative.

But lived experience is not the same as historical understanding.

Memory is local. History is assembled.

My father-in-law had lived through the war as a child, but that did not mean he had been taught the structure and vocabulary of Nazism. I encountered it later through the History curriculum, books, war films and documentary television. His generation inherited the memory of wartime Britain. Mine inherited the assembled history. Those who followed us were often taught its most important parts, but not always the continuous story that joined them together.

The Bureaucratic Skull

Apparently, the human skull has a sophisticated understanding of vehicle classification.

At ordinary cycling speeds, a cycle helmet is regarded as appropriate. Travel more slowly on a small motorcycle, however, and the same helmet becomes legally inadequate. Not because the likely impact is necessarily greater, but because the machine beneath you has crossed an invisible bureaucratic frontier.

I have some personal experience here. I once came off what was, in essence, a bicycle with a 50cc engine attached, at well under 15 mph, and suffered a bilateral subdural haematoma.

So I am not arguing that low-speed motorcycling is harmless, nor that proper motorcycle helmets are unnecessary. Quite the reverse. Low speed is not the same thing as low consequence. The road, the kerb and the inside of the human skull are entirely indifferent to whether the machine has pedals, an engine or both.

A cycle helmet is accepted and recommended for a cyclist travelling at 15 or 20 mph, yet becomes legally inadequate when worn by a motorcyclist travelling more slowly. The road does not know which vehicle category you selected. Nor, as I discovered, does the brain.

The absurdity is not that the motorcyclist must wear a motorcycle helmet. It is that the law treats the adequacy of the helmet as depending more on the vehicle category than on the speed, the fall or the actual risk.

Naturally, there is a reason. The law likes simple categories. Bicycle: helmet optional. Motorcycle: approved helmet compulsory. It is tidy, enforceable and saves everyone the distress of having to consider circumstances.

But it does leave us with the curious conclusion that physics concerns itself with speed, force and impact, while British law concerns itself with which box the vehicle occupies on a form.

The skull, having once expressed a fairly robust opinion on the matter, remains unconvinced.

Two Carburettors, One Useful Question

Since tracing the Virago’s fuel leak to the rear carburettor breather, I contacted the FJ Owners Club workshop near Yate, less than 2 miles from home. The club takes its name from Yamaha’s FJ1100 and FJ1200, the large 4-cylinder sports-tourers around which it was formed.

Their first reply was reassuring, although the figure quoted was for a 4-cylinder machine rather than the Virago. A complete carburettor overhaul would be roughly £300, they said, with another £50 to collect the bike from Old Sodbury. The only difficulty was timing: they were busy and would need about 3 weeks before they could fit the job in.

Even £350 to collect a 27-year-old motorcycle and overhaul its carburettors was not going to turn a £1,750 purchase into a financial catastrophe.

There was, however, one small detail. The £300 figure was for a 4-cylinder motorcycle. The Virago has 2 carburettors.

This is why it pays to read what people have actually written rather than what you expected them to mean. Had I simply accepted the figure, nobody would necessarily have done anything dishonest. I would merely have failed to ask whether a price for rebuilding 4 carburettors also applied to rebuilding 2.

The answer came back at £250. With £50 for collection, the total is £300.

That is an entirely fair price, and the correction is almost more reassuring than the saving. They did not attempt to preserve the higher figure once the difference was pointed out. They adjusted the price to reflect the actual machine.

That matters.

We have become used to businesses where the person answering the telephone knows little about the work, the person preparing the estimate has never seen the machine, and the person carrying out the repair is expected to follow a screen rather than understand what is in front of him.

The FJ Owners Club appears to be something rather different: essentially one experienced man, perhaps 2, working from a workshop that is clean as a whistle and dealing with older motorcycles because he understands them rather than merely tolerates them.

I have been there before with my son’s Hero Bullet. It had a fault that needed diagnosing rather than a part randomly replaced in the hope that the problem would disappear. They found it and fixed it. I came away impressed then, and nothing about this exchange has changed that opinion.

A spotless workshop does not prove mechanical genius, but it is rarely a bad sign. Carburettors contain tiny jets, passages, needles, seals and diaphragms. They are not improved by being dismantled on a bench that resembles the aftermath of a jumble sale.

I have therefore asked another question: whether he would charge me more for allowing me to stand beside him while he dismantles and reassembles the carburettors.

Carburettors are something I really ought to know how to dismantle, inspect and rebuild myself. They are not sorcery, although the arrangement of springs, diaphragms, needles, floats and microscopic passages can make them appear designed to punish the merely curious.

Watching somebody competent do the job properly would be more useful than repeatedly studying exploded diagrams and then discovering, halfway through my own attempt, that I had misunderstood which way a tiny component was fitted.

Time spent explaining a job is still working time, so I would not expect the lesson for nothing. Nor would I expect him to tolerate a customer leaning over his shoulder, asking questions and slowing the job down without being compensated for it. But if he is willing, the additional charge would buy something more durable than the repair itself: the confidence to understand and perhaps deal with the system next time.

The 3-week wait is not a deterrent either. A busy specialist is generally preferable to an empty workshop advertising immediate availability. It suggests that other people have already discovered the value of somebody who knows what he is doing.

It also gives me time to attend to the other parts of returning to motorcycling: finding crash bars for the Virago and locating a decent pair of armoured motorcycle trousers that do not cost the equivalent of a small mortgage.

The crash bars are the easier part. They must fit the XV535, protect something useful rather than merely decorate the machine, and preferably provide somewhere sensible for my feet without turning the bike into a mobile scaffold tower.

The trousers have proved more difficult. I want something pale enough not to absorb every available ray of sunshine, roomy enough around the calves not to cut off the circulation, and fitted with proper armour. Apparently this is an exotic specification.

The market will happily provide endless varieties of black, charcoal and slightly different black, generally described as ideal summer wear by people who have never sat stationary on hot tarmac.

Add a 32-inch waist, a regular fit and Level 2 knee protection, and the prices begin to resemble the opening negotiations on a house extension.

Still, the delay means the search can continue without the temptation to buy the first unsuitable thing simply because the motorcycle is waiting outside. The trousers matter more than cosmetic accessories, and probably more than the crash bars. Chrome can be replaced. Knees are less readily available as pattern parts.

There is also a wider point here about old vehicles. The cheapest repair is not always the one with the lowest invoice. Paying less for somebody to guess, clean half the system, replace the wrong component and return the machine with the original fault still present is not economy. It is simply paying in instalments for the privilege of remaining stranded.

The Virago does not need somebody searching fruitlessly for a diagnostic socket. It needs somebody who understands floats, needles, seats, diaphragms, fuel levels and the consequences of petrol emerging from a breather above a hot cylinder head.

That expertise has a value.

At £250 for the carburettor overhaul and £50 to collect the bike, I am not merely buying a repair. I am buying the judgment of somebody experienced in diagnosing and repairing older carburetted motorcycles, and who knows the difference between a symptom, a cause and an expensive guess.

Should he agree to let me watch, I shall also be buying a little of that knowledge. Not enough to become an expert in an afternoon, but perhaps enough to stop the inside of a carburettor being treated as forbidden territory.

It also makes joining the club seem less like paying for a badge and more like supporting the survival of a useful institution. Owners of old machinery often complain that nobody knows how to repair it any more. Then, when they find somebody who does, they haggle over every pound and wonder why specialists disappear. There is a limit to what expertise can be expected to survive on goodwill.

The plan is for the Virago to be collected in about 3 weeks and for the carburettors to be dismantled, cleaned, inspected and rebuilt. The float system and diaphragms can be checked rather than guessed at, and any contamination can be dealt with before the bike is asked to cover serious mileage again.

Meanwhile, I shall continue searching for crash bars and protective trousers while trying to establish why motorcycle clothing manufacturers believe every rider wants to dress as a member of a heavily armed burglary team.

The original £300 estimate turned out not to be the price of my job. It was the price of a larger one.

One question saved £50.

Another may teach me how the carburettors actually work.

And the 3-week wait may yet prevent me from spending £200 on a pair of black trousers that do not fit.

The First Tank Tells the Truth

I had only just bought the 1999 Yamaha Virago XV535 when it began introducing itself properly. It had passed its MOT, looked sound and had covered only about 80 miles during the previous year. At the time, I regarded that low mileage as reassuring.

The first warning came at Bromyard, where I filled the tank for the first time after buying it.

There was no petrol leak that I could see. Instead, almost immediately after filling, the bike began popping, misfiring and operating at roughly half power. It felt as though one cylinder had decided to become an occasional contributor rather than a full member of the team.

Because the trouble began immediately after filling the tank, the filling itself became the obvious suspect. Perhaps I had brimmed it too enthusiastically. Perhaps excess petrol had found its way somewhere it should not. Perhaps filling the tank had disturbed some contamination lying quietly at the bottom. At that stage, all I knew was that the bike had been running properly, I had filled it with petrol, and it had immediately begun behaving like an asthmatic lawnmower.

The bike would still run, so I carried on to home, following Hay who was driving the motorhome..

After about 15 miles, the popping and misfiring disappeared and the bike appeared to be running normally again on both cylinders. By the time I reached the M5, it had recovered its full power. I could still hear what sounded like backfiring, which was not encouraging. Then I moved my head down and the noise disappeared.

The position of my head could not possibly affect a backfire, so I began moving it around deliberately. Head up: popping. Head down: silence. The engine had not developed a posture-sensitive ignition fault. The loose strap from my helmet was flapping against the skid lid.

That was reassuring, but also slightly misleading. The motorcycle genuinely had recovered its full power, and the remaining apparent symptom had turned out not to be mechanical at all. It therefore seemed perfectly reasonable to conclude that whatever had happened after filling the tank in Bromyard had worked its way through and cleared itself.

That was the comforting interpretation.

45 miles further on and back home, No. 2 Son took it out for a ride. When he returned, he said it had been cutting out. I immediately noticed petrol leaking from the right-hand side of the bike, but only while the engine was running.

That changed the nature of the problem.

The fact that it appeared only while the engine was running suggested that the active fuel supply was involved, rather than petrol simply draining continuously under gravity.

At first, the source was not obvious. Petrol was appearing around the decorative air-filter housing on the right-hand side, but on an old motorcycle the place where liquid becomes visible is not necessarily where the fault began. Petrol runs along pipes, castings and brackets before eventually dripping from whichever point happens to be lowest.

The answer came from following the hose rather than continuing to theorise about it. The hose ran across the bike to the rear carburettor. It was not a conventional overflow pipe hanging safely beneath the machine. It was the carburettor breather routed into the right-hand dummy air-filter housing, directly above a hot cylinder head.

A breather is supposed to carry air. It is not supposed to pour petrol onto one of the hottest parts of the engine.

That meant the fuel level inside the rear carburettor was rising far above where it should have been and entering the vent passage. The likely cause was a sticking float, dirt beneath the float needle, wear in the needle or seat, or some combination of old petrol deposits and contamination from the tank.

Suddenly, the trouble at Bromyard made rather more sense. The popping, misfiring and half power may not have been an unrelated episode caused by overfilling. It may have been the first indication that the rear carburettor was flooding and overfuelling one cylinder. After 20 miles, the fault may have temporarily cleared, allowing the engine to run normally again.

It had not repaired itself. It had merely become intermittent.

This is one of the traps with old machinery. When a symptom disappears, we are inclined to treat the problem as solved. The engine stops misfiring, the warning light goes out or the strange noise vanishes, and we decide the machine has recovered.

Machines do not recover. They either continue to malfunction or wait until a less convenient moment to demonstrate that the fault is still present.

I tried the simple remedy first. Tapping the carburettor bowl did not free the suspected float valve. One float-bowl drain also appeared blocked, strengthening the suspicion that old fuel deposits, or possibly rust from the tank, had contaminated the carburettor.

None of this should have been entirely unexpected. For a 27-year-old motorcycle that had covered only about 80 miles in the previous year, it was a problem waiting to happen. That is not really use. It is occasional proof of life.

The MOT showed that the bike met the test requirements on the day, but an MOT is not a mechanical health certificate and never has been. It cannot establish how an ageing fuel system will respond when the tank is filled and the motorcycle is suddenly asked to cover real mileage again.

Like many people, I instinctively equated low mileage with good condition. What this episode reminded me is that machines do not simply wear out through use. They also deteriorate through inactivity.

A motorcycle ridden every weekend may be healthier than one that has spent years sitting quietly in a garage. Regular use keeps fuel moving, valves operating, seals wetted and passages clear. Standing preserves the odometer. It does not necessarily preserve the machine.

In hindsight, the bike was not failing. It was introducing itself. The important point is that the fault has appeared now. Thank God it happened at home rather than on another long journey. A leaking carburettor on the drive is an inconvenience. The same fault miles from home, with petrol escaping above a hot cylinder head, becomes a recovery problem at best and a fire risk at worst.

Fortunately, the remedy is neither mysterious nor ruinous.

There is a workshop experienced with older carburetted Yamahas only a couple of miles away. A mechanic accustomed to rebuilding banks of 4 Mikuni carburettors on Yamaha FJs is unlikely to be frightened by the Virago’s pair. The sensible course is a proper carburettor rebuild, inspection of the tank and fuel supply, replacement of any worn needles or seals, and possibly a tank flush before the carburettors are balanced and the bike returned to service.

The anticipated cost is somewhere around £250 to £400, depending on what parts are required and whether the tank needs attention. For a motorcycle bought for £1,750, that is entirely acceptable. It is not a catastrophe that suddenly makes the purchase uneconomic. It is a reasonable recommissioning cost on a 27-year-old machine that has spent too long doing almost nothing.

Nor is there any value in disguising the fault. Extending the breather hose would merely arrange for the petrol to leak somewhere less visible. That is the mechanical equivalent of moving the bucket rather than repairing the roof.

Once the carburettors have been properly cleaned, rebuilt and set up, and any contamination in the tank has been dealt with, there is every reason to expect years of happy riding.

Buying a classic or modern classic motorcycle is not like buying a new appliance. You do not simply acquire an object; you begin a relationship with a machine that has accumulated its own history, habits and weaknesses.

The purchase price buys the motorcycle. The first proper journey starts the conversation. The Virago had passed its MOT. What it had not yet passed was its first full tank, its first proper run and its first opportunity to reveal what 27 years of age and 80 miles a year had been quietly storing up.

I should be back on the road within a week.

Marrakech and the Death of Greige

I was watching one of those Sunday afternoon television programmes the other day. You know the sort. Somebody wanders slowly around a foreign city while soft jazz plays underneath and a presenter in expensive linen says things like:

“Marrakech assaults the senses.” Which is television shorthand for: “There are lamps.”

It was on PBS, which, as a pensioner, I am increasingly drawn towards, along with Sky Arts. Between them they appear to contain the only two vaguely worthwhile things left on Freesat that do not involve either house auctions, serial killers or a celebrity learning pottery while crying.

Normally these programmes are little more than visual chewing gum for the overfed and mildly sleepy. Half travel documentary, half DFS advert. But this one drifted into the world of designers who became obsessed with Marrakech, and suddenly it all became rather interesting.

Because Marrakech appears to have a very particular effect on wealthy Europeans. They arrive as sensible minimalists and leave wanting seventeen courtyards, three fountains, carved cedar doors and somebody quietly hammering brass in the background at all times.

At first it is innocent enough. A tile pattern. A courtyard. Some lanterns.

A few days later they are discussing “texture” with alarming seriousness and wondering whether the downstairs loo in Swindon might benefit from artisanal plasterwork.

Six months on, they are trying to persuade a man called Tariq to hand-finish seventeen thousand zellige tiles while a Labrador named Basil lies exhausted beside an olive tree in Surrey wondering where everything went wrong.

What fascinates western designers about Marrakech is not really Morocco itself. It is the discovery that decoration can be unapologetic. Britain, especially modern Britain, became terrified of visual confidence somewhere around 1997. Since then our interiors have largely consisted of fifty shades of greige interrupted occasionally by Farrow & Ball knock-offs and a sign saying LIVE LAUGH LOVE.

Then people arrive in Marrakech and discover rooms where somebody has clearly said: “No, keep going. More pattern. More colour. More carved wood. Hang another lantern there. Put a fountain in the middle. Yes, under the banana tree.”

And somehow it works.

The extraordinary thing is that Moroccan design manages to feel both disciplined and sensual at the same time. Beneath all the colour and ornament there is structure, geometry and craftsmanship. Repetition. Precision. Balance. Nothing is accidental. It is rather like looking at a beautifully engineered classic car underneath all the polished walnut and leather.

Designers like Yves Saint Laurent and Jean Paul Gaultier did not merely visit Marrakech. They inhaled it. Suddenly fashion collections became drenched in jewel colours, embroidery, strong lines and theatrical silhouettes. European minimalism briefly got shoved aside by people returning from Morocco muttering: “We need more texture.” Which, translated into English, usually means: “I would like the sitting room to resemble an extremely expensive spice market.”

Even Pierre Balmain succumbed. His Marrakech pool, tiled in the style of a Persian carpet, looked less like somewhere to swim and more like somewhere an exceptionally wealthy sultan might quietly discuss silk exports while being handed a fig on a silver tray. It was gloriously over the top and, annoyingly, utterly elegant at the same time. That is the Marrakech trick. It marches right up to the brink of absurdity, peers over the edge, then somehow lands gracefully on its feet.

The amusing part is that Britain cannot quite carry this off because our climate fundamentally disagrees with the concept. Moroccan interiors are designed around blazing sun, cool courtyards and shadow. British houses are designed around horizontal rain and asking whether the radiator is on.

A real Marrakech house belongs in Marrakech. It belongs behind heavy walls keeping out heat and dust, with shadow falling across a courtyard while water quietly trickles somewhere unseen. Transporting the entire thing to a new-build in Swindon feels faintly like wearing a dinner jacket to clean the wheelie bins. Unless, of course, you are actually Berber, in which case you can probably do what you like.

So what happens instead is that people attempt a sort of Marrakech-inspired compromise. One brass lantern, two cushions and a vaguely distressed side table from Homesense, then they stand back believing they now live in a riad. Meanwhile outside it is 7C and Dave from next door is pressure-washing algae off his wheelie bins.

Still, I rather admire the ambition. Modern Britain desperately needs reminding that decoration is not a moral failing. Somewhere along the line we confused minimalism with sophistication.

Marrakech never made that mistake.

Marrakech looks at your beige open-plan kitchen, quietly orders another mosaic fountain, then watches while somebody in Wiltshire tries to recreate the effect with a £14 brass lantern from Dunelm and a reed diffuser called Arabian Nights.

HouseholdJobs

I spent yesterday cleaning the doorbell.

Schrodiger's Spreadsheet

A quick update on yesterday's post - the Yamaha Virago passed its MoT. That's a 100% pass record over 26 years.

On to today's observation.

I made a small mistake in my solar power spreadsheet the other day, which briefly suggested that my fairly modest domestic solar installation had generated enough electricity to make Gloucestershire glow gently in the dark.

This was not, strictly speaking, true. My roof had not become a small nuclear fusion facility. The National Grid had not rung up to ask if I could take the edge off peak demand. I had merely entered something catastrophically stupid into Excel, which is not really physics, but does have a tendency to create strange effects in the observable universe.

The interesting bit was not the mistake itself. I can make mistakes perfectly well without troubling the Nobel committee. The interesting bit was that the wrong figure fed a chart on another worksheet.

So the question wafted through my mind: did the chart change the moment I entered the wrong figure, or only when I opened the chart worksheet and observed it?

This is where Excel became unexpectedly philosophical, which is not something one wants from a piece of software that still thinks 1-2 is a date. The underlying data had changed. The workbook had accepted the madness. Somewhere inside the file, the future graph had already become ridiculous. But the chart itself, sitting on another worksheet, had not visibly changed, because I was not looking at it.

Then came the more awkward question: did the chart still exist?

This is not the sort of question one expects to ask about a spreadsheet. Normally the difficult questions are things like why has column G turned into dates, why is this formula referring to a workbook I deleted in 2018, and why has Excel decided that 1-2 means the second of January rather than, say, a subtraction sum, which would seem a reasonable enough guess.

But there we were, asking whether an unobserved chart actually existed.

The answer, rather annoyingly, is yes. It existed. But not as a fully alive, continuously updated visual thing sitting there nobly redrawing itself in the dark while nobody was watching.

The chart existed as an object in the workbook. Excel knew where it was, what it was linked to, and broadly how it was supposed to look. It had not lost the chart behind the sofa.

The last rendered version also existed. That was the old visual state: the chart as last painted, calm and respectable, still pretending my solar panels had behaved themselves. In that sense, the visible chart existed in the old state.

But the new visual chart did not yet exist on screen. The underlying data had changed, and the next rendering was already doomed, but Excel had not yet painted the new evidence.

So it was not, strictly speaking, a quantum superposition. The chart was not both old and new at the same time, like a cat in a box with an attitude problem. It was more prosaic than that, which is usually where Excel lives. It was an old rendered picture attached to a changed underlying reality.

Then I opened the chart worksheet.

At which point the graph suddenly leapt into its new and absurd position, like a startled cat finding out it had been assigned to PivotTable maintenance. The old visible chart vanished, the new ridiculous chart appeared, and for one brief moment my solar panels appeared to have outperformed the Severn Barrage, had anyone actually got round to building it.

Observation had not collapsed a probability curve. It had merely forced Excel to redraw the stale evidence from the changed data.

But that is enough for me.

This is not proper quantum mechanics. No serious physicist is going to win a Nobel Prize by staring at a line chart and asking whether June’s solar yield is both 243 kWh and the annual output of Dinorwig. Excel is not Copenhagen. It is more Swindon with formulae.

Still, it has the important ingredients. There is a hidden state, an observer, and a sudden change when the observer looks. There is also, regrettably, Microsoft Excel, which does rather lower the intellectual tone.

So no, the chart was not both old and new. It was old on screen, wrong underneath, and waiting to embarrass me the moment I clicked on it.

Schrodinger’s Spreadsheet: the data is wrong, the display is stale, and the observer is standing there with a cup of tea wondering why June has produced 14 gigawatt-hours.

Two Wheels, One Last Sensible Decision

Readers may recall that the proposed balcony extension to the house briefly developed into a glass-fronted Art Space containing a Triumph Rocket 3, a motorcycle with the dimensions, mass and turning circle of a harbour tug. That was architecture. This is transport, although the distinction has become less secure than it once was.

The Rocket 3 was never a serious proposition. It was too large, too heavy, too expensive and altogether too likely to require a small crane if it leaned beyond the point at which optimism ceased to be useful. It would have looked magnificent behind glass, but rather less amusing when attempting to reverse it out of a gravel lay-by.

What I actually wanted was something much more modest: low enough to manage comfortably, light enough not to require dockyard equipment, capable of 70 mph without every internal component submitting a grievance, and cheap enough not to become a major financial event. It also had to be comfortable enough for A-roads, occasional motorway use and the sort of summer riding that does not involve proving anything to anybody.

This narrowed the field considerably. Elderly British classics offered charm, history and the prospect of spending Sunday mornings adjusting parts which had moved despite having no obvious reason to do so. Sports bikes were designed around the assumption that the rider still had knees capable of folding neatly beneath his ears. Enormous touring machines weighed much the same as a small family car, while scooters that would fit neatly with the motorhome often appeared to rely on wind direction, gradient and prayer to maintain motorway speed.

There were cheap Japanese machines, expensive British machines, obscure Soviet machines and several motorcycles described as easy projects by owners who clearly had a highly developed sense of humour. Some were advertised with the reassuring phrase, It ran last year, which in motorcycle sales language generally means that it does not run now and the intervening deterioration has been transferred to the next owner. The budget was never going to exceed £2,000 and, ideally, would be nearer £1,000. That alone ruled out much of the market, particularly those sellers who had confused owning an old motorcycle with holding a rapidly appreciating asset.

The style gradually became clear. I wanted a cruiser, but not a vast chrome barge covered in tassels, skulls and equipment borrowed from a Wild West saloon. I wanted something low, relaxed and capable of travelling at ordinary road speeds without turning the rider into a windsock.

The Yamaha Virago 535 began to make increasing sense. This required a small adjustment in attitude because I grew up in a world where proper motorcycles were Triumphs, BSAs and Ariels, while Japanese motorcycles were regarded with the suspicion normally reserved for powdered coffee. Unfortunately, the Japanese then spent several decades making motorcycles which started, stopped and retained their oil. It was unsporting of them.

The Virago is low, manageable, shaft-driven and powerful enough for real roads. Its low centre of gravity matters as much as the headline weight. If it falls over, it should be easier to lift than a taller motorcycle of similar mass, because less of that weight is perched high above the ground conspiring against you. It is not a performance machine and does not demand leather racing overalls, a chiropractor or an urgent discussion with the magistrates. It simply goes.

The first one I found was £895. It looked attractive in the advert, although further photographs revealed that a previous owner had bobbered it, removed the pillion seat and decorated it with a level of skull-based enthusiasm usually associated with teenage bedrooms. At that price, it was tempting. The frame appeared intact, it had a long MOT and the basic bike looked sound, but converting it back to carry a passenger properly would have cost several hundred pounds, the exhausts were wrapped, and the modifications introduced the sort of uncertainty best examined before money changes hands.

Somebody else paid a deposit before I could see it. This was irritating, particularly because when we sell anything on Facebook Marketplace, we allow the first serious enquirer the chance to view it before entertaining others. Facebook Marketplace, however, operates under a simpler legal code in which money talks and courtesy may submit written representations.

In retrospect, it may have been fortunate. The £895 bargain might easily have become a £1,500 motorcycle after undoing the improvements and reconstructing the parts Yamaha had fitted before somebody decided they knew better.

The next Virago was a 1999 model with about 18,000 miles, standard seats, a screen, backrest and luggage rack. The price was £1,750. It was not cheap, but neither was it absurd. It was complete, looked presentable and had the sort of minor corrosion one expects on a 26-year-old motorcycle rather than the sort that suggests archaeology. It was also half the mileage of the one I'd missed.

The lower engine casing had been painted silver. Not disastrously, but with enough overspray on the gasket edges to show that masking had been regarded as a philosophical rather than practical requirement. The front header pipes were wrapped close to the exhaust ports, which may be cosmetic or may be concealing corrosion. Exhaust wrap is the motorcycle equivalent of wallpaper over damp. Sometimes it is harmless and sometimes it is evidence.

The electrical reserve switch also does not work. On the Virago, the reserve is electrically operated rather than controlled by a conventional tap. The fault may be trivial, perhaps a dirty switch or a poor connection, but it needs sorting. Running out of petrol is inconvenient enough without discovering that the emergency supply has gone on strike.

One big advantage - it's shaft driven.

The MOT was due the following month. The seller initially offered to arrange one at my expense, but I proposed a slightly different arrangement. I would pay the full £1,750, provided it came with a fresh MOT. The risk to him is £30 or £40. The risk to me, without the test, could be several hundred pounds in tyres, brakes, bearings or exhaust work. At this end of the market, a full year’s MOT also provides a useful minimum return: even if the whole enterprise subsequently goes tits up, I should at least have had 12 months of motorcycling for comparatively little money.

He suggested that I pay the MOT fee as a deposit, refundable if it failed, and I agreed. It protects him from spending money on a test only for me to vanish, and protects me from buying a 26-year-old motorcycle on optimism alone. It is booked for its MOT at 2 pm today.

With the deal agreed, subject to the MOT, I went into the workshop and tried on my old helmet. At some point it dislodged one of my hearing aids, although I did not notice until I went back into the house and wondered why the television had suddenly developed an audio fault. A search of the workshop followed. Thank God for Bluetooth-enabled hearing aids: my phone managed to locate it among the tools, dust and assorted fragments of Triumph. The motorcycle had not yet arrived, and age had already introduced a complication Yamaha omitted from the handbook.

Assuming it passes without anything serious, I will collect it on Friday or Saturday. We can take the motorhome, stay locally and visit friends in Stourport-on-Severn, so the motorcycle has already generated a small touring expedition before I have even ridden it home.

Once I have it, the first task will not be polishing. It will be finding out what I have actually bought. The reserve system needs fixing, the wrapped exhaust sections need inspecting, the tyres need checking for age as well as tread, and the charging voltage needs confirming. Unless there is persuasive evidence of a recent service, it will get oil, filters, plugs and fluids. Consumables are cheaper than mysteries.

After that comes the cosmetic work. The painted lower casing could be flatted and repainted properly, or the removable covers could be replaced with polished alloy ones. I can have the tank colour matched by spectrometer, although a colour-matched engine risks looking less like engineering and more like knitwear. The sensible solution will probably be polished covers, a neatly refinished central casing and no attempt to turn every inaccessible crevice into a mirror.

I also want proper heat protection from the exhaust. Not a perforated universal shield fastened with exposed Jubilee clips, which would make the motorcycle look as though it had been repaired by a plumber during his lunch break, but something discreet, polished and professionally mounted. The windscreen can stay. It may cost a few miles per hour at the very top end, but the purpose is to travel comfortably at 60 or 70, not establish a land-speed record on a 535 cc cruiser.

The whole process has clarified something fairly obvious. The cheapest motorcycle is not necessarily the cheapest way to own one. A modified Virago at £895 could easily have become a more expensive bike after repairs, reversals and reconstruction, while a standard one at £1,750 may prove better value because it already possesses seats, mudguards, lights and the other tedious items manufacturers generally include before owners start improving them.

So, after considering classics, cruisers, scooters, sports bikes and motorcycles of sufficient mass to affect local tides, I appear to have settled on a modest Japanese V-twin. It is low, comfortable, mechanically straightforward and fast enough. In other words, the sensible choice was there all along. It merely required the elimination of almost everything else before I was prepared to admit it.

Year 1 Wasn't Humanity's Year 1

The phrase "the 21st century" is one of those expressions we use without thinking. It sounds weighty, as though the universe itself paused, drew breath and ushered in a new age.

It didn't.

At one second before midnight on 31 December 2000, humanity was exactly the same species as it was one second after. No law of physics changed. No new scientific principle emerged. No civilisation crossed a threshold. The only thing that happened was that a calendar ticked over.

Even that calendar is arbitrary. The Gregorian calendar counts years from the supposed birth of Jesus, a date calculated centuries later and almost certainly inaccurate by several years. It's an entirely reasonable system for organising diaries, birthdays and tax returns, but an oddly parochial way of measuring the history of our species.

After all, modern humans have been around for roughly 300,000 years. Agriculture began about 12,000 years ago. The first cities emerged around 5,000 years ago, followed by writing. Everything we call recorded history fits into a tiny sliver of human existence, and the Common Era occupies an even smaller slice. Most of humanity's story happened before Year 1.

If we were inventing a calendar today, would we really choose the same starting point?

Perhaps we'd begin with agriculture, when humans stopped wandering and started building permanent settlements. Perhaps with writing, when knowledge could survive its author. Or perhaps with the first civilisation.

My choice would be different. I'd start the clock when humanity first harnessed atomic energy.

That wasn't merely another invention. It was a fundamental change in our relationship with nature. Until then, every civilisation had lived by burning what the sun had recently grown, or by exploiting energy stored over millions of years in coal, oil and gas. Then, in a laboratory in Chicago, we unlocked the energy inside the atom itself.

For the first time in Earth's history, one species possessed the knowledge to release the forces that power the stars.

That achievement gave us extraordinary possibilities. Tiny amounts of fuel could power cities. Medical science gained new tools. Space exploration became more plausible. At the same time, humanity acquired the ability to destroy itself in a single afternoon. That seems a rather more significant milestone than a monk getting a date slightly wrong fifteen centuries earlier.

Perhaps future historians, assuming we leave any behind, won't think in terms of the 20th and 21st centuries at all. They may see everything before 1945 as pre-atomic history, and everything afterwards as the Atomic Era. Just as we talk about the Bronze Age or the Industrial Revolution, they may regard the unlocking of the nucleus as the moment humanity genuinely entered a new age.

The deeper point is that calendars don't reveal history. They reveal priorities. Every civilisation chooses an event and quietly declares, "This is where our story begins."

The interesting question isn't why we count from the birth of Jesus. It's whether, in another thousand years, anyone else still will.

The Cartwheel Divide

I've noticed something curious.

When children are showing off in a park, a playground or a beach, it's almost always the girls doing handstands, cartwheels and walkovers.

The boys are usually trying to kick something, climb something, break something, or convert a stick into a weapon.

It's an odd little window into how early we steer children. Nobody gathers them together and announces that cartwheels are for girls and football is for boys. It just seeps into the culture until it feels normal.

The irony is that a cartwheel requires strength, balance, courage and coordination. Qualities we supposedly admire in everyone, yet somehow the public display of them has been quietly sorted into the wrong mental drawer.

Children are not just expressing themselves naturally. Quite often, they're expressing the expectations adults have wrapped round them before they're old enough to notice.

The girls invert themselves gracefully.

The boys prepare for siege warfare with a twig.