Notes From the Hard Shoulder Read online

  Here's the problem: it doesn't work. So I took it to the local computer shop, slapped it on the counter and explained as much to a man who should have been born with just two fingers. 'Ha ha ha,' he exclaimed, knowingly. 'How long have we had this, then?'

  I have had it for five years.

  'Well, that's pretty old tech now,' he explained patiently. 'You really need to upgrade.' Now, at this point a lesser man than me might have forked out for the new Epson Stylus Multijet 4.0 Megapixies and gone home happy. But not me. I wanted it mended. 'It's not economical,' he declared.

  I appreciate, as everyone keeps telling me, that printers are remarkably cheap these days, but we're still talking about over £100 and that buys a lot of American Hard Gums. Furthermore, how much would my life be advanced by a new printer? Not a jot. I'd be back where I started, trying to print out a simple letter in response to an enquiry from a Mr Graham about music and motoring.

  And it gets worse. Because I've had the computer for eight years it seems there is no longer a printer compatible with its old operating system. That means that in order to run the new printer, I'd have to buy a new computer as well, and learn how to use it. That would probably also mean buying a new 'docking station' for my infernal digital diary thing and probably some new upgraded miniature speakers for the CD player as well.

  That would be a bit like going to Kwik-Fit for some new tyres and being browbeaten into buying a whole new car. Before you know it I'd have spent something like £1,500 on computer kit, and where would I be? Still sitting in front of an over-specified typewriter, still trying to send a letter to Mr Graham.

  Things wear out, but it's not as if the old printer has had a hard life. It's probably produced a dozen pages a week since I've had it. 'Think how many pages that is,' said the computer man, triumphantly. Clearly, neither of us could in the heat of the moment but I've since worked it out and it's around 3,200, or perhaps 48,000 lines of type. Now think how many times the engine in my 106,000-mile 911 has rotated. I've worked that out as well and I think it's something like 6 x 109. One revolution of the flat six is one cycle of operation, like one complete sweep of the printer head, and yet the Porsche STILL WORKS PERFECTLY.

  People bemoan the supposed built-in obsolescence of the car, but a better exemplar can be found in the world of digital tech. Those who promised that this stuff would be 'future safe' were simply driving us further into the hideous clutches of PC World and cluttering our lives with redundant plug-in transformers. In fact, the car always was future safe. You could pick any one from the collection in the Beaulieu museum and use it today on today's roads. Even the Stanley Steamer is yours for the driving, so long as you can find a Welshman to dig up a bit more coal for you.

  It's undoubtedly true that before the war the motor industry sold you a car, then after the war it started selling you fashion. The difference, though, is that we had a choice. You could embrace the new-fangled Ford Cortina, with its exotic foreign name and faux American styling, or you could do what my dad did and stick with the Morris Eight. The car has been good to us. The computer industry has simply filled my attic with old boxes.

  You may be pleased to know that I eventually prised the lid from the bubblejet device and set to it with the little screwdriver from my Hornby train set. A few hours later and – hey printo! It whirred back into life and now sits on the desk in open defiance of Bill Gates and his evil henchmen.

  I was very pleased with myself. But I couldn't help thinking that none of this would have been necessary if it had been made by someone like Vauxhall.

  (Mr Graham has since received one side of A4 with about a dozen lines on it.)

  MEN, RISE UP AND EMBRACE THE WHEELBRACE

  As I've said before, there are no real gender issues in motoring. I don't doubt that the tastes of men and women differ slightly, but in an age when women run merchant banks and more and more men have handbags, their requirements are pretty much the same.

  I do not believe, for example, that there is a specifically woman's view on motoring. I know some women who are as enthusiastic about motors as I am, and for the same reasons. I also know men who don't have a car at all because they think them the work of Beelzebub. Obviously these so-called 'men' are traitors to their sex, but that's the way it is.

  And so to Drivesafe, a new initiative aimed at women motorists and accompanied by the inevitable 'handy pack' of helpful hints. Its authors point out that women do more town miles than men, and are therefore more at risk from threats such as road rage and car-jacking. Many of them, it is believed, lack the self-assurance needed to change a wheel. Drivesafe will show them how.

  And on the face of it, that's a good thing. Men go shopping for clothes in the modern world, so it follows that women should be able to change wheels. What bothers me, however, is the suggestion that there won't be men on hand to do it for them.

  If a woman suffers a puncture somewhere around town, then surely there will be a man somewhere – in another car, walking along the pavement, looking out of a window – who will put the spare on for her; a man who, denied by social development the opportunity to wear a lady's embroidered favour around his wrist as he rides into a jousting tournament against ye black knight on ye black horse, will relish the opportunity to wield the latter-day Excalibur that is the wheelbrace.

  It seems not.

  Cry sexist if you must, but this sort of thing really worries me. I'm not suggesting for a moment that a woman shouldn't be able to change a wheel, any more than I think some of my male friends should stop mincing around in the kitchen with tiger prawns and put some bloody shelves up. It's just that today's Guinevere of the road should be able to rely on Gawain in her moment of peril.

  In any case, my quarrel is actually with the chaps. In the past few weeks I've watched three men attempt to change a wheel, and they all made a complete Horlicks of it. Cars fell off jacks, nuts were cross-threaded, and everyone had a good laugh. This is deeply symptomatic of a hideous blight affecting the modern British male; namely, that being a bit useless is perceived as being somehow endearing and 'blokeish'. Nothing could be further from the truth.

  I keep meeting men who say things like 'Ha ha ha, I can't even wire a plug!' Why not? The instructions are usually moulded into the plug itself, or on a piece of paper pushed over the pins. If you can't wire a plug it's not because you are creative or because you have a left-hemisphere brain or because you're a bit of a bloke. It's because you are an imbecile.

  Another man I met recently had employed a builder to screw a wine rack to the wall. Why he wants a wine rack anyway is a bit of a mystery, since he lives only a few doors from a pub that sells proper beer. Even more unfathomable is how he could bear the shame of standing by while another man drilled four holes in some brickwork and inserted some rawlplugs. He can regard himself as little more than a receptacle for keeping sperm at the right temperature until it's needed.

  British men are facing a crisis. There are no world wars to fight, very little coal to be dug, no massive programme of railway expansion to feed. The forge is cold and the instruments of duelling are rusting above the fireplace in a country house experience somewhere. Poetry is unfashionable, as is serenading. Ballad-writers are noticeably thin on the ground. The attributes that once defined manliness are receding fast, already at such a low ebb that we can't even be relied upon to sort out a puncture for a distressed damsel. The roads are the last arena in which chivalry can be upheld.

  I therefore wholly commend the Drivesafe initiative and in particular the handy pack that comes with it. I haven't seen it yet, but it sounds as if it's full of really useful advice on, among other things, changing wheels on cars.

  I therefore think it should be distributed to all males over the age of 12.

  HOW THE PEACE AND QUIET OF ENGLAND WAS RUINED BY THE NOISE OF PEOPLE COMPLAINING

  As some of you may know, I've spent the last year learning to fly a light aircraft. Very satisfying it is too. It's something I dreamed about as a bo
y, ever since I picked up my first Air Ace Picture Library comic book and learned to draw something approximating to a Spitfire in the back of my maths exercise book.

  But small aeroplanes aren't to everyone's liking. Richard Hammond, for example, whose crashing impatience renders him unable to appreciate the value of pre-flight safety checks, and who is not man enough to thank me when the wings haven't fallen off at the end of a journey.

  And then there are the residents of the villages around my flying club's airfield, White Waltham in Berkshire. Some of them hate small aeroplanes because, apparently, they're noisy.

  A bit of explanation is required here. A typical small airfield will have several runways – White Waltham has three – pointing in different directions to allow for changes in the wind. Each runway forms one leg of an aerial rectangle, around which the aeroplanes fly while preparing to land. These are called 'circuits', and those of us new to aviation spend a lot of time flying around them practising landings and take-offs. Given that each runway can be used in two directions, there are six circuits in operation at my airfield.

  And the circuits are carefully designed to avoid overflying of the local villages, so that the residents won't be annoyed. However, there are a lot of villages and you don't have to stray very far outside the circuit before some old trout rings up the ops room with a complaint. This has happened to me.

  People have rung up and, in effect, said, 'James May is flying his noisy little aeroplane over my garden, when he should be to the west a bit.' Well, what did they expect with my sense of direction? They should be grateful I haven't flown straight through the sitting room window or into the local orphanage.

  But here's what really gets my goat. The airfield has been there since the '30s, when it was part of the vital Air Transport Auxiliary unit – the organisation that ferried newly built and repaired military aircraft to their operational bases. A lot of the ferry pilots were women, and you may have seen the famous picture, taken at the airfield, of a ripping brunette gal in flying kit standing under the nose of a gigantic Short Stirling. It's almost pornography.

  So anyone who can remember when it was all trees would be over 90 and therefore deaf anyway. I doubt there are many people in the surrounding villages who bought their houses before the airfield was built.

  In which case, people must have moved in knowing that there would be small aeroplanes flying around. But still they complain about it. This is like buying a house on a Barratt estate and complaining that there are people living next door. It's like me complaining about the sound of bells from the church down the end of my road. The church has been there for several hundred years, and it's not as if I wouldn't have noticed it when I viewed the house. There's a bloody great bell tower sticking out of it.

  But no matter – I could probably complain to the authorities and someone would be obliged to look into it, when really Britain would be better served by someone coming around to tell me to stop whining and be grateful that the bells are there, ready to be rung when the EU invades.

  Road noise? Well, everyone I know lives on a road of some sort, and they all either own a car or use taxis. A certain amount of noise is therefore to be expected. I would agree wholeheartedly that cars and bikes with wantonly loud exhaust pipes are an unnecessary evil, but that general thrum of traffic is just part of the sonic backdrop of modern life, like Radio 2.

  And so, finally, to the Top Gear studio, which is based – da daah! – on an old airfield. It's the one where they used to build and test the Hawker Harrier, which you may know as a particularly noisy aeroplane. Those days are gone, and you'd think the locals would be glad, but you'd think wrongly. Some of them are now complaining that Top Gear is making too much noise.

  Really? We're there, on average, about once a week. The airfield is very large, and we occupy the bit right in the middle with our test track. The nearest house is a long way away. I can accept that the steady drone of Clarkson shouting 'poweeeer!' would be quite irksome if you were relaxing in the garden of an afternoon, but the occasional and distant squeal of tyres around the Hammerhead is surely no more intrusive than the chirp of a randy blackbird.

  But we live in an era when a single complaint has the weight of a 20,000,000-signature petition delivered to Downing Street. Consider the programme itself. If one person rings or writes to complain that Jeremy has been rude about the Liberal Democrats or that I've said 'cock', the producer is obliged to investigate it and do something about it. Why? Important work is being done at Top Gear. It's thanks to Top Gear that the new Koenigsegg has a rear wing, and that the motor industry knows not to waste its time and money trying to develop a convertible people carrier. If people had complained about Barnes Wallis's bomb bouncing through their back yards, or the Flying Scotsman making an irritating whistling noise, nothing would ever have been achieved and Britain would be renowned the world over only for being very quiet.

  It's the same story with the flying club. The people who complain about the aeroplane noise forget that the person flying the airliner that takes them on holiday to Spain will most likely have started flying at a local airfield, often at great personal expense. If people like me weren't there supporting it by flying a wonky circuit over the village, everyone would have to go to Whitby on the train instead.

  What else do these people complain about? Talking in restaurants? Babies crying at feeding time? Long grass rustling in the wind? Velcro? They could make a bigger contribution to the fight against noise pollution if they all simultaneously piped down.

  Everybody shut up. You're beginning to get on my nerves.

  IN CASE YOU'RE READING THIS ON THE BOG, HERE ARE SOME EQUATIONS OF MOTION

  Professor Stephen Hawking once averred that for every mathematical equation he included in his book A Brief History of Time, the readership would be halved. This gives us:

  (Where Ra is the actual readership, Rp is the potential readership, and N is the number of mathematical quotations. And if you think I'm making this up, it's all been checked by Yan-Chee Yu of the Oxford University Mathematical Institute. So there.)

  This leads every other one of us rather neatly to the work of the Swiss scientist Daniel Bernoulli (1700-82), whose work on fluid flow showed us, in simplified form at least, that:

  (Where P is the static pressure, p is the density, and V is the velocity.)

  What Bernoulli was saying, in essence, is that when the pressure in a fluid system is reduced (by a constriction, for example), the velocity must increase, and vice versa. The rate at which the fluid flows will remain the same. It's hugely useful stuff if you design the air intakes for racing cars.

  If, however, you are simply annoyed at being stuck in traffic jams at roadworks, you may prefer Bernoulli in its layman's form, which is known as May's Motorway and Dual Carriageway Jam Avoidance Velocity Modulation Principle. This states that when one or more lanes of a busy multi-lane road are closed, the speed limit in the remaining lanes must be increased if the traffic is to keep flowing smoothly.

  But here we arrive at a socio-political problem. For years it has been accepted that the most dangerous job in Britain is that of trawlerman. Recent research shows that a trawlerman is some 50 times more likely to be killed or injured at work than, say, me. If he is not despatched by the cold, the cruel sea or a rusty chain, he will be starved to death by the iniquities of EU fishing regulations.

  A few years back he was briefly usurped by elephant handlers, since they are few in number but two had been trampled in quick succession, making the profession statistically unsurvivable. Roofers and glaziers are at considerable risk and aircraft carrier flight-deck crew should ensure that their children are well provided for. And surely no working man is in greater peril than the fitted-kitchen salesman who arrived uninvited at my door a few weeks ago just as I had finished reassembling (following a thorough clean) my Beretta.

  But here are British road workers, suddenly at number 16 in the hit parade of hazardous jobs. In the last few years the num
ber of deaths and serious injuries sustained by these people has risen sharply, from only one fatality in 2004 to four in the first half of 2005 alone. The Highways Agency is pretty sore about it, which is why motorways and dual carriageways are now strangled by sudden 30mph limits and all that 'lane closed to protect workforce' malarkey.

  Quite right, too. No civilised society could possibly want to see its road workers in hospital. We'd quite like to see them mending the roads. By now you're thinking what workforce? and you may have a point. Over the last few weeks I have been monitoring these roadworks, and I have driven just over 26 miles at temporary speed limits past lanes closed supposedly to protect the workforce but without seeing so much as an endangered wheelbarrow. It would appear to be more a case of workforce staying at home to protect workforce. But I don't blame them. It's bloody dangerous.

  So here is the solution. Roadwork should only be practised at night, when the traffic flow is light. Slowing to a constant 30 or 40mph for a few miles is really neither here nor there as far as total journey times are concerned. You can even calculate the difference it makes yourself:

  (Where T is the extra time taken, D is the length of the roadworks in miles and S is the temporary speed limit.)

  During the day, when the traffic is very dense, the workforce should stay away, since the traffic has to keep moving fast to prevent a total jam. At the same time, we can't really expect them to put all those bollards away every morning and so, in accordance with May's principle, the cars should actually speed up through the roadworks. For example, if only one lane is still open on a busy three-lane motorway, the speed limit should be 210mph. Or: