Open Writing

Since coming ‘back to life’ after my long bout with Valley Fever, I have been extremely industrious. The study has had its furniture shifted, shelving installed, the big bookcase moved, Gay’s desk relocated under the window, and pictures hung on its walls. These are all really useful things.

The computer has had an extra hard drive and a CD-RW drive installed, each of which is a really useful thing. Somewhere in the process, the floppy drive – also a really useful thing - has been lost, and that is not really useful. The system thingy, which is also really useful when it is working properly, tells me that the floppy is installed and is ‘working properly,’ the little liar, but that challenge can wait.

The garage, which has superb and really useful storage cupboards and shelves, has been totally re-organised. Our food storage is now where we can see what we have so we don’t go and buy more cake mixes, for example, when we have four or five on the shelf. Tools have been ‘found’ and lodged in their appointed places. Really useful racks for frequently used tools grace the walls, in between serried ranks of paraffin lamps, gin traps, two rat traps and a mouse trap, all of which are really useful things if you have need of their services.

The glut of cardboard cartons we had collected in our movings has been sliced up and re-cycled, along with several years worth of empty jam jars: what on earth were we going to do with them? Now they are gone, along with so many other things that I have been hoarding "Just in case!" The relief of no longer having them is therapeutic.

The upright freezer, which was a really useful thing has been moved outside to defrost, and the space has been filled with a really useful kitchen cart that was assembled this morning using nothing but a screwdriver and two really useful dogs.

Long overdue pictures have been cut to size, inserted into the frames we bought years ago and hung on the walls of our home. And that brings me to an important point. Putting the fasteners into the wall is quick and easy, as is hanging the pictures on them. What takes the time are the frequent walks across the room to check them for perpendicularity as individual items and as a corporate whole when they are thematically agglomerated. (My nephrologist’s waiting room has a magazine rack that runs out about two inches from top to bottom. It has been fixed like that and shoving does not budge it. Grrrr!)

What struck me as I wrestled with an eight-set of clustered photograph and certificate frames was that picture frame manufacturers could make them with built-in spirit levels for perpendicular and horizontal. That would not only be a really useful thing, but it would take out the guesswork and stifle rumpi between spouses who are unable to wear each others prescription glasses without initiating severe visual impediment.

With the freezer gone, I moved the refrigerator into its space and rolled the kitchen cart into the gap between the worktop and the fridge. A perfect fit. Refrigerators are really useful but funny things. If you tilt them or have them sitting without being level, they can get the collywobbles and stop working out of sheer spite. As I struggled with Behemoth, aware that too much of this or that could give it the gripes, it struck me that it would be a very useful thing if fridge makers also built spirit levels into their products.

The first really useful thing I can remember toying with was a speed restrictor for children’s tricycles. That was in the days when tricycles were serious works of engineering and tricycled children who dwelt on hilly streets, a common situation in Huddersfield and environs, could reach fatal speeds on their steel and chrome steeds. An encased wind-fan governor attached to the driven axle would prevent the machine from being driven at speeds greater than ten miles per hour, or whatever restriction the individual child’s domestic gradient dictated to wise parents. That would be a really useful thing, especially if it prevented injury to a child.

Driving the twisty road and lanes of England as a dangerous young soldier caused me to ponder the benefit of having headlamps turn in the direction the steering wheel was turned to illuminate more of the roadway into which the vehicle was steering. That would be really useful, and I see that someone has done it on a newer model car.

However, all these things pale in comparison to that which my mind is presently focused on. Internet usage increases exponentially hour upon hour. Therefore, it can only be a matter of time before the Internet is full. My estimate is that it is now 97% used up, and that it might only be a matter of weeks before requests to access it are denied with a Code 100PCJPF message, which indicates that the World Wide Web is 100% Jam-Packed-Full!

Only those who are actually online when the last tittle completes the mathematical completeness of filling infinity will be allowed to use it. Even they will have to remain online, because if they log off their place will be lost as the Internet ‘breathes’ and waves of contraction and expansion adjust the whole space-time matrix over great periods of time.

So I am working on an "Internet Extension" that can be added to the Internet’s present capacity so that it remains available to as many as want to use it. The first module will be ready in a few months if I can get the wood cut to the right size, and extra modules will be made ready to be added as demand for access increases. Don’t you think that will be a really useful thing?

Copyright © Ronnie Bray

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Read more stories by Ronnie at:

http://www.2theheart.com/author_ronnie_bray
http://www.meridianmagazine.com/voices/011024summer.html