The many uses of technology
So I put one friend on the bus to Heathrow this morning, galloped home, galloped hellhounds, galloped into going-out-to-fancy-restaurant clothes, galloped to Mauncester to catch a train to London . . . first piece of major luck was an actual real-live parking space within galloping distance of the Mauncester train station, which even in a country full of tiny cranky medieval towns that have expanded into large sprawling modern cities with tiny cranky centres, stands out as an unusually appalling outletless maze of death and madness.*
I was meeting Cathy and Merrilee for lunch. Cathy, our own Black Bear, and Merrilee—well, you know Merrilee, literary agent of coruscating splendour. She’s in London for forty eight hours or something, in the dashing way of literary agents of coruscating splendour, and had mentioned offhandly that we could meet for lunch if I could get myself to London. Yes! Yes! And in one of those concatenations of events generally only seen in Diana Wynne Jones novels, Cathy was coming over this week too, and so one of my American mods and my American agent were going to meet me for lunch . . . in London. Excellent.**
Cathy and I got to the restaurant and commenced to wait. Merrilee’s plane was due in at 9:25 this morning, plenty of time to get to her downtown hotel, unload the suitcase and find the restaurant. Except, of course, that the plane arrived at 11. We didn’t know that however. Technology only works if you know . . . how to make it work. I can just about answering a ringing RaspBerry*** but . . . I was in the process of failing to figure out how to ring the hotel when Merrilee appeared at the restaurant door, tooling her suitcase behind her. That’s when we found out her plane had arrived at 11.† Well, I emailed you, she said to me. And I left you voicemail. And I texted†† you. She looked at me sternly.
Er um, I said. Er. I don’t actually know how to do all that stuff on the RaspBerry.
Merrilee, on no sleep, and with 857 meetings that afternoon†††, nearly lost her temper. That’s ridiculous, she said. You must learn to use your phone.
I will, I said feebly. As soon as the new 4 thingy is available, I’m going to buy an iPhone. ‡ And I’ll learn to use it. ‡‡ I promise.
* * *
* All plans for taking the train to London begin with, oh, gods, how many hours do I need to allow for finding a parking space?
** Pity about the food though. Although the tea was, well, excellent. As were the tiny chocolates that came with the bill. I am peculiar enough that I think I may find this an acceptable, even a worthwhile, trade off. It does mean however that I was getting pretty strange on no genuine calories and too much caffeine by the time we got back to New Arcadia this evening and some hellhounds who tried to convince me that they had been left alone all day and that there hadn’t been any dogminder and they were poor sad put-upon lonely forlorn creatures.
*** Although when Cathy rang me on it yesterday to make sure all plans were good, I freaked out and managed to hit the ‘ignore’ button instead of the ‘answer’ button and then had no idea what to do.
† Which meant she had got through Customs at much better than galloping speed. Whirlwind speed. Hellhound after a rabbit speed.
††I don’t care what anyone says. ‘Text’ is not a verb.
††† While Cathy and I were going to go play at the V&A.
^The Victoria and Albert Museum, which is too amazingly wonderful in too many ways and is always in the top running for My Absolute Favourite Museum Anywhere. And maybe I’ll load some photos tomorrow.
‡ Oh gods. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/apple/7800676/10-reasons-not-to-buy-Apples-new-iPhone-4G.html
‡‡ Sort of.
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