This might be the last post for a while.
I have got to the end of my web hosting contract.
I have looked at others and squeaked in appalled horror at the cost.
The problem is, as you might have noticed, it is a very, very big website, and I am going to have to buy a very lot of cyber-space in which to store it.
Cyber space, it appears, is about as expensive to rent as penthouse apartments in Mayfair.
I am going to have to save the website first, which is my very next trick. I think I can do this because the very clever AI in my computer has explained it all to me, and I can probably follow the instructions even though I don’t have an actual clue what on earth it is talking about.
It is really very exciting, though. If anybody had told my ten-year-old self that I would be doing this when I got to my old age then I would have been utterly thrilled, although probably even more perplexed than I am now. It is a thrilling world that we are inhabiting, and it is getting more thrilling all the time. I watched the robots dancing for the Chinese New Year celebrations, and the golden horses rushing around the skies, and I turned back into my ten-year-old self for a few minutes whilst I gazed in enchanted wonder.
Oliver is much more cynical and unimpressed by such marvels. He just nods, explains to me how they do it, and says that the technology is still fairly primitive.
I don’t think it is primitive. Primitive technology is flashing with mirrors on hilltops or sending a telegram with Morse Code.
I recall in my very distant childhood, the same ten-year-old self was being taught Science at prep school. I remember being very excited at the prospect of this, because it seemed to be heralding a glimpse into the mysteries of the world, and I was longing for the lessons to start, the first term of which was to cover the topic Simple Machines.
I looked forward to this with my whole soul.
I was more disappointed than I can tell you when the very first lesson arrived, and the teacher, who was a prim, elderly soul who had also been responsible for supervising our manufacture of needle cases and covers for our Bibles in sewing lessons, wrote on the blackboard: Simple Machines. The Wheel.
We spent an hour contemplating the history and usefulness of the wheel. Tyres were not included. Then we wrote an essay about it.
I can trace the decline of my interest in science to that moment.
This lack of interest pretty much extended throughout my schooldays, rather regrettably. Of course I am interested in science now that I am grown up and do not have to remember rubbish like the chemical formula for glucose* or Boyles Law, or what you do when x is on both sides of the equation**, although I recall that one of my friends once wrote in the fourth year exam that Boyles Law was what happened to water when you heated it. Indeed, I am booked to attend an online lecture at Cambridge in March called Searching For The Nature Of Dark Matter, to which I am looking forward with all the enthusiasm I once hoped to feel for Simple Machines.
You get invited to all sorts of fascinating lectures if you have been a student there, it is a magnificent privilege. When I am old, I mean actually old, not just the palming free drugs from the Government sort of old, I will listen to all of them and will drift into an idle, but very well-informed, dotage. I shall look forward to this very much.
I am going to go and explore cyberspace and find a bigger cupboard.
* C6 H12 O6
**still no idea, I’m afraid.
