Mar 12 2013

What’s the time Mr Wolf?

Railroad watch

Railroad watch (Photo credit: mpclemens)

I could never spend a large amount of money on a watch. To me, they are utilitarian devices that I can consult during the day to see where I’m supposed to be. That doesn’t mean I attach no importance to my timepiece. If I manage to walk out of the house in the morning without putting it on, I know I’m doomed to a day of looking at my bare wrist in a reflex action that’s very hard to shake. Of course, now I also carry a mobile phone. This device can tell me the time perfectly adequately, so why haven’t I consigned my analog wrist mounted device to the scrap-heap?

There is a certain amount of sentimentality as my mum gave me my current timepiece, but if I’m honest with myself, that’s not the only reason. Firstly, I have to fish my phone out of whichever pocket its hiding in. When I look at the digital numbers on the face of my mobile phone, my brain has to mentally convert these glowing figures into the analog constructs I’m used to. I don’t know how many times I look at my watch in a day, but probably enough to consider it too much of a faff to replace with my phone.

My first ever watch was a wind up affair. It came with a dour warning about the dangers of overwinding the mechanism lest the delicate clockwork parts inside break. I remember going into school one January morning and being confronted with the first digital watches. No need to wind these up, they’re battery-powered. Look, my one’s got a light so you can tell the time in the dark. If you press this button, you can see the date. One of them even had a tiny calculator built into the face of the watch with a miniscule keypad containing the buttons.

As a sucker for anything new, I found myself drawn to the dark side. The promise of no winding. The snazzy features. Being able to tell the time in the dark. But after a few minutes of playing, I decided that the new devices had significant drawbacks. The displays, being dark grey on a grey background, were difficult to read. The minute buttons were so small and hard that keeping them depressed for any length of time hurt your finger. The absolute worst thing about them was their appearance. They lacked the simple elegance of the analog face. In its place was a cheap looking display with all the charm of a cold, wet fish.

If the rumours are to be believed, Apple are about to release a watch. I’m sure it will be amazing and packed with multimedia features. No doubt it will be very successful, just like all their other recent inventions. Just so long as they don’t forget the fundamental purpose of a timepiece. When I look at my wrist, before I want a multimedia extravaganza, I want to know the time.

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Mar 10 2013

Hands off, that’s mine!

A man protests Digital Rights Management in Bo...

A man protests Digital Rights Management in Boston, USA as part of the DefectiveByDesign.org campaign of the Free Software Foundation. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

There is a saying in England that possession is nine tenths of the law. Today where we live surrounded by consumerism, ownership has become a very important concept. Whether we like it or not, society almost defines us by what we own. Against this backdrop, it seems bizarre that these days, ownership of many things has become a good deal more ephemeral.

My first experience of gainful employment was a paper round. I worked 7 days a week lugging around a paper bag that, at the outset of my round at least, weighed almost as much as I did. The worst day was Sunday where newspapers ballooned to 6 or 7 times the size thanks to all the supplements that came for free. The first thing I did when I got paid was head down to town where I foolishly blew my first week’s wages on some records.

My mum was less than impressed with my new acquisitions. She wanted to know what I was going to do for the rest of the week with no money. To me, the answer was obvious, listen to Dire Straits and Bananarama. I had no money the week before when I didn’t have a paper round, so I didn’t appreciate why it was so bad to have no money this week.

I feel sorry for the poor sod who has inherited my paper round today. Not only are the newspapers twice as big as they were, but when he foolishly blows his wages on music, the chances are that he won’t even own the titles he chooses. He will hand over his hard earned wages to some dot com or another in exchange for a license. OK, so that license will allow him to listen to his music. It won’t, however, allow him to lend his music to his friends. He won’t be able to sell it on, nor will he be able to leave it to his kids. In short, he never owns anything.

I have a number of books, but I have even more in electronic format. Most of these titles are protected by digital rights management software. Because I am a big fan of one particular publisher, more of my titles come from that company than any other. A few years ago, that company decided to exit from the electronic publishing industry, taking all their titles with it.

Suddenly, all my eBooks disappeared. Without apology or refund, the company rescinded my access to those titles I know and love. I checked the license terms and they were quite within their rights to do so. If you are going to put a button labelled “buy now” next to some kind of electronic product or another, then give me what you are advertising. Otherwise, the wording should be changed to “license now temporarily with limited rights”.

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Mar 5 2013

A state of war now exists between our two countries

Falkland Islands

Falkland Islands (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Camping in the Forest of Dean during a chilly April in 1982 was not my idea of fun. Some people like to be at one with nature. I’m not one of them. I like my accommodation to have stars (the more the merrier), central heating and a bed. Preferably with some soft down pillows that you can just sink into.

When we arrived, there was a list of jobs waiting for us. The first thing to do was to put up the tent. It was massive. We were not. It was a struggle. Then we had to make a drying rack out of whatever we could find. If you know we’re going to need a drying rack, why not pack one.

Then one night, everything changed. The word went out. Something big was about to happen. We crowded into the only tent with a radio. The Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, made a live broadcast. Her tone was sombre. Her words were deadly serious. The Argentinians had invaded the Falkland Islands. Britain would put together a task force to retake them. “Where are the Falkland Islands?” someone asked. “Just off Scotland.” someone replied sagely. It felt like the most momentous event ever.

After the radio broadcast, some gurus came on and discussed what that meant. We then learned that the Falkland Islands were not just off Scotland. They were a very long way away indeed. Our task force had a very long journey ahead. It would be weeks before they arrived. America tried to broker a peaceful deal between the two countries in the intervening time, but to no avail.

War should always be a last resort, but there was a certain purity of purpose about the conflict that has sometimes been missing from later engagements. Argentina invaded because they though they owned the islands. We retook the islands because we disagreed. You could argue about who’s right and who’s wrong, but there is no doubt about why each country behaved the way it did.

Apart from the abortive diplomacy efforts by the Americans, there were only two parties involved. There was a definite trigger and the conflict came to a definitive end with nearly a thousand people dying in the process. The argument still rumbles on because both sides feel they are right. Funnily enough, a state of war was never officially declared.

A small garrison remains there to this day. The cost of this presence equates to over $30K per year per islander. If we spent as much for everyone in the UK, our defence budget would rocket by nearly $2 trillion!

I wonder if we had this clarity of purpose about the Iraq and the Afghanistan conflicts, would they have taken so long and cost so much? Would they have achieved more?

Would they have even started?

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Mar 3 2013

Four eyes, four eyes!

English: Eye with a contact lens (myopia).

English: Eye with a contact lens (myopia). (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Schoolchildren can sniff out weakness at 20 paces. It doesn’t matter whether you have crooked teeth, ginger hair or a slightly rotund midriff. Once they smell blood, they go in for the kill. Call it taking the Michael or extracting the urine, such teasing to a small child can be mortally wounding. Of course, once you’re older, such behaviour doesn’t tend to wound so much.

I wore spectacles from an early age. Because my prescription changed every 6 months, it made no sense to spend a huge amount on any eye correction I wore, so I suffered the ignominy of National Health glasses. These were spectacles provided by the state for those who couldn’t afford to pay for fashionable eye correction.

By necessity, they were cheap. There was only one design which came in chunky plastic. You could choose between brown, black and a kind of tortoiseshell colour. In the rough and tumble of childhood play, broken glasses became a fact of life. Mum or Dad would carry out makeshift repairs using sellotape or superglue. When I started wearing them, the lenses were like milk bottles, fashioned from thick, heavy glass.

Thank goodness, over time the manufacturers turned to plastic which cut down the weight significantly. In addition, they worked out how to make the lenses much thinner. The bridge of my nose was grateful for both developments.

Several people (including Da Vinci and Descartes) dreamed up concepts for contact lenses, but it was 1949 before someone came up with a design that was bearable for any period of time. The original lenses did not allow oxygen through to the eye which led to all sorts of nasty side effects. Over the coming decades, more sophisticated, comfortable and safer designs were developed.

As soon as I started work, I sought freedom from the spectacles I’d been shackled to. I happily wore contact lenses for a number of years, before my laziness overcame my vanity. I don’t miss all the faffing around. I do miss the ability to see in the rain or to have a clear view when coming in from the cold.

So every 2-3 years, I spend the equivalent to a top of the range iPad on new spectacles. If only on economic grounds, if I was brave enough, I should invest in laser eye surgery. Developed in the 80’s from IBM technology, it was Dr Stephen Trokel who pioneered and applied the excimer laser in a ground-breaking procedure. The idea of burning away bits of my eye to sculpt the perfect lens sounds like it would be difficult to fix if they got it wrong.

One day, a quick injection of stem cells or the insertion of some nano-technology that adapts to your exact correction requirements will be safe, pain and error free. Call me a coward, but I think I’ll wait.

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Feb 28 2013

Tap, tap, tap. It looks like you’re writing a blog post…

Clippit asking if the user needs help

Clippit asking if the user needs help (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I can’t stand technology that thinks it’s smarter than me especially when some bright spark thinks it makes my life easier. There can’t be too many fans of IVR systems where you phone up and get told to press 1 for this and 2 for that. But I prefer them to the automated systems that say something like “Tell me what you want to do today” and wait for a response. I usually reply “To speak to a human being”.

There is a lot of complexity in the modern world and it’s very difficult to cater for every kind of user. People don’t read manuals any more. In fact, many products ship with little or no documentation whatsoever. How then do they help people to climb the learning curve? The best way is to make things intuitive in the first place. In software, consistency with convention goes a long way. If that fails, there’s always the online help.

I don’t know about you, but the help is that last resort. Unless it’s really well written, the chances are that after bumbling around for a while, the answer to whatever question you have will prove elusive. The basic design of help systems hasn’t fundamentally changed over time, but one day, a company called Microsoft dared to innovate.

I was at a conference. There was a buzz in the air. Everyone could sense that some big announcement was on the way. As the speaker took the stand, a hush descended over the crowd. Without saying a word, he fired up his machine, launched a program and started typing. An animated paper clip in the corner of the screen bounced around with eyes following the cursor. After a moment or so, the animated paper clip tapped on the screen before sticking up a speech bubble “It looks like you’re typing a letter. Would you like some help?”

There was a nervous ripple of applause. The speaker announced that the paper clip’s name was Clippy, the office assistant and it represented a revolution in online help. He went on to show us the different faces that Clippy could take. Apparently, we could add Clippy to our own applications as there was a rich API. We could even create our own avatars. The man predicted that one day, all software would have a Clippy to proactively help to educate users in how to use the program.

You could have knocked me over with a feather. I had to check the date to see if it was April the 1st. But it obviously wasn’t a joke. You could see that they had invested a significant number of man years. The avatars were nicely drawn and animated. Proactivity takes some engineering, so someone, somewhere really believed  that this was the future.

I couldn’t see it. It was too intrusive, too twee, far too annoying. It seems the general public agreed as after universal derision, the Office Assistant was quietly dropped. It’s a shame, because there was a germ of a good idea in there somewhere.

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Feb 24 2013

Lean on me

English: An APT at The Railway Age in Crewe. P...

English: An APT at The Railway Age in Crewe. Photo by G-Man * Oct 2006 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

As any pinball player knows, a bit of tilt can be a very good thing. Too much, and it’s game over. When it comes to Technology, getting that tilt right is even harder.

My mother suffers from terrible seasickness. When we used to get the ferry over to Ireland, she would start being sick as soon as we left the harbour wall and she wouldn’t stop again until we were firmly docked at the other end.

Sir Henry Bessemer was a man after her own heart. He recognised the problem of seasickness and tried to devise an ingenious solution. He understood that the cause of seasickness was all the rocking and rolling of the cabin. If one could eliminate that, the passengers could enjoy a smooth ride. His solution was to mount the saloon independently of the ship, the SS Bessemer, on gimbals. Whilst the ship sailed along, a man watched a spirit level and pulled a lever to keep the saloon level.

Swinging Saloon Steamer Bessemer, 1875 (1)

Swinging Saloon Steamer Bessemer, 1875 (1) (Photo credit: Marcel Douwe Dekker)

Unfortunately for Sir Henry, it’s not a great idea to have something rolling around in the middle of a ship as it makes it very unstable and difficult to steer. That’s why oil tankers have baffles to stop the oil sloshing around. The maiden voyage was a disaster. The ship crashed into Calais pier not once but twice because of the instability of the ship.

On land, at least you don’t have the vagaries sea level to worry about which ought to make tilting things easier. In the 1970s, British Rail set about devising a tilting train to increase the speed of the rail network. France and Japan had leapfrogged Britain with the TGV and the bullet train.

If the tracks were completely straight, going fast would not be a problem. Unfortunately, they have a habit of bending to avoid things like hills, lakes and the sea. As any motorcyclist knows, if you want to go round a corner fast, the best thing to do is lean over. British Rail’s answer to this was the Advanced Passenger Train (the APT).

The train Used a series of sensors to measure the telemetry of the train and a set of hydraulic rams to lean into the corner. Also debuting on the Advanced Passenger Train was an incredibly sophisticated braking system which allowed the train to brake within the existing signal network. Unfortunately, all this sophistication was the APT’s downfall. They were incredibly unreliable in service and there were complaints from some about motion sickness.

Big Ben

Big Ben (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Sometimes when you are making advances in rail technology, the last thing you want is any tilting. When engineers undertook the Jubilee line extension in 1994, they were painfully aware of some of the challenges that faced them.

One of their biggest headaches was the station opposite Big Ben. Everyone knew that Big Ben had been built on perilously shallow foundations. Indeed, on its completion, it started to lean to the North. If the Jubilee Line engineers came along digging a big hole next door, there was every chance the tower could topple into the Thames, which would not make great PR for the project.

In order to prevent any further tilting, they injected tubes of concrete in a star shape around the base of the tower. They injected concrete through holes in these tubes to stabilise the soft earth. During the project, they measured the exact angle of Big Ben regularly and if there was the slightest hint of a tilt, they injected more concrete. The Jubilee Line extension had its problems during construction, but a leaning Big Ben was not one of them.

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Feb 21 2013

Kiosks – haven’t they got them just right?

barcode

barcode (Photo credit: Status Frustration)

I’m in a bit of a hurry. I only have a few items to buy, but when I round the corner, my heart sinks. There’s a big queue for the only cashier in the shop. I look over in the corner at the dreaded self-service machines. They all stand empty and there’s a member of staff standing near them. Oh no! She’s seen me. She’s going to come over and ask me to use the kiosks. I can’t refuse. I don’t want to look cowardly in front of this shop full of complete strangers. I grudgingly follow her over to the kiosk. A big green button flashes in front of me. Press here to start. I take a deep breath and hit it.

It takes a while to find the first barcode, during which time, the machine insists on blaring out to tell me to scan the barcode, so people start looking over. Eventually I find it and to my amazement, it scans first time. “Place the item in the bagging area“. I press the button to indicate that I don’t want to bag the item. “Place the item in the bagging area.” I hit it again, and once again, the voice repeats the instruction. With a sigh, I give up and reluctantly place the item in the bagging area. Thank God, the machine shuts up.

I scan the next item. It goes through first time and I place the item in the bagging area. Fantastic – I’m getting the hang of this now. I scan the third item. It won’t scan. I try again. Nothing. Third time lucky… no. The machine advises me to seek assistance. I look around for the lady who’s supposed to be supervising these damned kiosks – she’s not there! So I stand there, helpless, like a lemon waiting for her to return. I look forlornly at the checkout queue. I work out that I probably would have been served by now if I’d stuck to my guns and remained in the queue.

What is the point of a technical advance if it doesn’t make people’s lives better? This device makes the whole shopping experience worse, not better. But there again, I suppose that’s not the point. It’s there so that the miserly shop can get rid of some staff and save some money. But it deprives me of swift and courteous service. No smile or greeting. The efficiency of my entire shopping experience goes up in smoke, all to do someone out of a job.

If you’re going to put in kiosks, they should give you a better customer experience. ATM machines are not perfect, but they mean that I don’t have to queue up in a bank and I can get my money when the bank is closed. Check-in kiosks at the airport mean that I don’t have to queue up to get my boarding pass. Self service checkout kiosks just make me mad.

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Feb 20 2013

Being left in the dark

Swiss A330-200 HB-IQH in Geneva International ...

Swiss A330-200 HB-IQH in Geneva International Airport. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

No-one likes being left in the dark, particularly when they’re travelling. I’ve been there and it was no fun. I was due to fly out of Geneva airport on the 9:15 Swiss Air flight to London Heathrow. When I arrived at the airport, the information board had an entry against my flight saying “More information 9PM”. Plainly, my flight was delayed, because at 9PM, I would have expected to be on the aircraft rather than waiting for information. There was a large booth in Geneva airport proudly displaying a sign saying “Information”, so I thought I would ask about my flight. The polite lady behind the desk could not give me any information, but she gave me a drinks voucher and said that an announcement would be made at 9PM.

At the designated hour, an announcement duly came telling us that the aeroplane that we were going to fly with had developed a fuel leak. Another aircraft was flying in to take us to London Heathrow and our new flight time was 11:05PM. At almost exactly the same time, every bar, restaurant, café, shop, kiosk in Geneva airport closed for the night, their work seemingly done. I sat down and started reading my book. There is a certain irony in reading “Around the World in 80 days” whilst stuck in Geneva airport.

Our flight was called and we boarded. The Captain came over the tannoy and assured us that all was well and we were just waiting for the last of our paperwork and we would be on our way. Time ticked by and more time ticked by. I was in danger of finishing my book. The Captain came back on to the tannoy and told us that there was a problem with the door and an engineer was on the way. Alas, the engineer tried, and failed to fix the broken door. The captain addressed us again, only this time he had come out of the cabin to do so in person – never a good sign.

Geneva

Geneva (Photo credit: Alan M Hughes)

“Ladies and Gentlemen, I have a very strange announcement to make, and a very strange request. The strange announcement is that there is still a problem with this aircraft door and it must be considered out of service. We have consulted the legal articles and we are still allowed to fly, but with a reduced number of passengers. Therefore, could I have 47 volunteers to disembark the aircraft and spend the night in Geneva so that the remaining 90 people can fly to London Heathrow this evening.”

The effect of this announcement was a stunned silence while the message sank in, and then a crowd of people surged up to the front all with questions for the captain.

Would we get a hotel room? Would we get a flight tomorrow? Would we get any compensation? How long did we have to get 47 people off the aircraft? All fairly obvious questions that could have easily been anticipated and answered up front, had anyone thought about it. The chaos continued with some people getting off, some people standing up to stretch their legs, some standing up to complain, some standing up to move their hand luggage to somewhere more convenient. The stewardesses were in among the throng trying to count and recount the passengers to see whether enough have disembarked. Meanwhile you could hear people in the hold crashing around trying to find bags that had to be unloaded.

Eventually, the Captain came back on to say that the airport was shutting and our flight was now cancelled. Amidst a lot of moaning and groaning, everyone got their bags and filed off the plane.

There was no-one to direct us or tell us where to go, so where do you go? There was a big queue of people at the gate where we boarded, so I headed for there, assuming that was where I needed to go. It became clear after a while that the big queue of people was queuing up to be told that we were in the wrong place and we should go to the information desk in the main terminal. They had a tannoy at the gate, why didn’t someone at the gate have the presence of mind to use it and tell everyone at once where to go?

When we got to the information desk, it was another queue. When you got to the front of this queue, you were given a voucher for a hotel room. Everyone had the same questions; How do I get to the hotel? How do I get back again, Which flight will I get in the morning? Is there any food anywhere? Everyone queued up to ask these questions. Why didn’t someone have the gumption to announce to the crowd what was going to happen? The queue would have been more orderly, would have moved quicker and everyone would have got to bed a little earlier.

The thread that runs through this story is a lack of information. If you look at what people do when they need information but are not getting it – they panic, they get upset, confused, rumours start. In the absence of anything concrete, rumours get believed and twisted and built upon. Kill off the panic and rumourmongering. Tell people what they need to know.

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Feb 20 2013

The numbers don’t lie

English: Captain Smith of the Titanic. This ph...

English: Captain Smith of the Titanic. This photo appeard in the New York Times some days after his death in the sinking of the Titanic. Français : La capitaine Edward John Smith, mort à bord du Titanic. La photo a été publiée dans le New York Times peu après le naufrage. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Commander Edward John Smith had a reputation as a safe pair of hands. He had been a sailor for over 30 years and had been a captain for nearly a quarter of a century. He was decorated and saw service briefly in the Boer War. Whenever his company had a new high-profile assignment, he was the natural choice. He ran his vessels like clockwork. Every man was left in no doubt as to where he should be and what he should be doing. He established a routine, such that anything out of the ordinary would stick out like a sore thumb.

The chief stoker below decks carefully monitored the instruments showing the head of steam and made sure that the stokers shoveled just the right amount of coal into the fireboxes. The men on the bridge knew how many knots the ship should be making and which heading they should be on. They were trained to tap their instruments occasionally to make sure that the sensitive needles, being mechanical in nature, did not get stuck in any one position.

All this so that Commander Edward John Smith could spend time with his passengers, making sure that their voyage was the best it could be. One particularly cold and foggy night, a night that has become an immutable historic event, Commander Edward John Smith’s vessel struck an iceberg and sank. Right up until the moment of collision, the readings on all the instruments were perfectly OK.

English: Space Shuttle Columbia memorial in Ar...

English: Space Shuttle Columbia memorial in Arlington National Cemetery (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

NASA is an incredible organization, started over 50 years ago by the US Government in order to pioneer the future in space exploration, scientific discovery and aeronautics research. In that time they have spent nearly a trillion dollars in today’s money exploring the near and far reaches of outer space. Space exploration is a risky business, so they have had their fair share of mishaps and in this kind of endeavour, they are usually fatal. One such accident was the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster, in which a number of astronauts lost their life when their craft exploded and broke up on re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere.

NASA knew that the space shuttle was not perfect. They knew that the heat-resistant tiles had a habit of falling off under the stress of the mission and they had a system in place to deal with it. When the space shuttle reached its destination (usually the International Space Station), the number, position and types of tile that had come off were recorded in a spreadsheet and a model used to decide whether the damage was severe enough that it needed repairs or whether the mission could carry on regardless. On the mission in question, the missing tiles were recorded, the numbers crunched in Excel, and everyone breathed a sigh of relief. There was no need to undertake expensive and time-consuming repairs, the shuttle was safe to continue. Unfortunately, as we all know, it wasn’t.

There are many well documented cases where spreadsheet mistakes have had catastrophic results (http://www.eusprig.org/horror-stories.htm) and indeed, there are several scholarly articles which give sage advice about the risk of relying on spreadsheets and yet they are almost universally relied upon. They have a habit of multiplying because people take copies of spreadsheets and make their own changes to do their own analysis. They have a habit of networking with other spreadsheets and then feeding into spreadsheets into still more spreadsheets.

All of this means that a single mistake in a spreadsheet can have a wide-ranging effect. And because spreadsheets tend to be appended to, the effect of such a mistake can multiply over time. Given the potential for error – why do we do it ?

There is no arguing that a spreadsheet is a powerful tool, and it’s precisely that power that is so enticing. It draws us in with its ease of use. The way that seas of figures can be magically crunched in the blink of an eye means that they are tremendous labour-saving devices. Beautiful three-dimensional graphics turn the boring figures into extremely persuasive visual metaphors for the point that we are trying to argue. But you must always be on your guard, for they are constantly trying to lure you over to the dark side….

They want you to take their figures at face value. They want you to trust them. Once it is in a spreadsheet – then surely it must be the truth, and it is. The spreadsheet contains the exact results of all the numbers in the spreadsheet after the formulae have been applied (assuming your hardware is all in order http://www.willamette.edu/~mjaneba/pentprob.html). It only takes one number or one formula to be wrong and your numbers cease to be reliable.

Just remember, when all your numbers look OK – look up now and then to make sure you’re not heading for an iceberg…

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Feb 17 2013

New and improved!

One of the 1st washing machines of Constructa

One of the 1st washing machines of Constructa (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Whenever you go on a package holiday, there is always the meeting with the holiday rep’ to look forward to. Although it’s wrapped up as an informative session to tell you everything you need to know about your destination, once you peel off the paper-thin disguise, it’s a sales pitch. The rep’ will be looking to supplement their meagre income by selling excursions. They will usually cost far too much and will involve being herded around like cattle from one uninteresting place to the next. Some are better than others, but there are always one or two that seem to be scraping the bottom of the barrel.

Once, when we went to Malta, they took us to a traditional village in the back of beyond. They showed us an old house. After a short delay, an old lady came waddling out of the house carrying a basket of washing. She walked down to the river where she started to use two big stones to wash her clothes. It wasn’t very convincing. The rest of the coach party lapped it up, giving the old lady tips in appreciation for the show. She made a tidy packet, and I just knew that secreted away inside her humble abode was a state of the art washer stood next door to a tumble dryer.

There seems to be no end of labour saving devices for the kitchen. In order to carve your Sunday roast, you can use a mechanised carving knife. Don’t give yourself arm ache trying to stir a cake mixture, just throw it into the mixing machine. Do you want some bread? There’s a machine for that. When it comes to making coffee, the sheer range of devices on offer is giddying.

But when it comes to washing, we don’t seem to have advanced much further than the rocks in the river. Yes, we now have washing machines, but you still have to sort through your clothes to make sure your favourite red and white top doesn’t come out pink. We have tumble dryers, but you still have to scoop everything out of the washing machine and load it. If you get it wrong, you end up with a jumper that fits action man. We even have new, improved washing powder that still doesn’t manage to get everything clean.

White goods manufacturers haven’t advanced much since the old twin tub. To give them a helping hand, I’m going to invent the ultimate washing machine. I’m picturing a hopper at the top into which you place all your dirty clothing. Inside, there will be a sorting module which will work out what goes with what. Then there will be the washing machine itself. After the washing machine, there will be a scanner to find any clothing that needs another cycle. Anything that makes it through, will be dried, pressed and folded ready for collection at the bottom.

The little old lady in Malta would be proud.

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