The Salmon of Doubt

Having nowhere else to go, I am standing up, leaning against a mantelpiece. Well, a kind of mantelpiece.

I don’t know what it is, in fact. It’s made of brass and some kind of plastic and was probably drawn in by the architect after a nasty night on the town. That reminds me of another favourite piece of information: there is a large kink in the Trans-Siberian Railway because when the tsar (I don’t know which tsar it was because I am not in my study at home, I’m leaning against something shamefully ugly in Michigan and there are no books) decreed that the Trans-Siberian railway should be built, he drew a line on a map with a ruler. The ruler had a nick in it.

I’m writing this article leaning against some nameless architectural mistake, and I am not writing the article on a Mac. I would, but my PowerBook is fresh out of power (funny notion, to name the thing after its only major shortcoming; it’s rather like Greenland in that respect). I have the power cable with me but I can’t plug it in anywhere. Though the power cable very cleverly has a universal power supply, it doesn’t have a universal plug. It has a large, clunky, British-style three-pin plug built right into it, which means that if you forget to buy an adapter plug before you leave Heathrow, you are completely and utterly screwed.

You cannot buy an adapter for British plugs outside Britain. I know. I tried that when I ran into a similar problem with the old Mac Portable. (I am not going to make any Mac Portable jokes. Apple made quite enough of them to be getting on with. Damn. I said I wasn’t going to do that.) In the end I had to buy a U.S. power cable. Or rather, I had to try to buy one. Couldn’t be done. They only came with new Mac Portables. I heaved a dead Mac Portable around with me for ten days and occasionally ate my sandwiches off it because it was slightly lighter than carrying a table. (Damn, there goes another one.)

I don’t have the same problem with my PowerBook, though I am not totally stupid. I brought an adapter with me this time. However, I am slightly stupid because it’s in my suitcase, which I’ve just checked in with the bellman while I wait three hours for my room to be ready.

So what am I doing? Handwriting? You must be joking. After ten years of word processing, I can’t even do handwriting anymore. I know I ought to be able to: handwriting is supposed to be one of those things like using chopsticks: once you get the hang of it, it never really deserts you. The thing is that I’ve had much more practice with chopsticks than with pens, so no, I’m not handwriting. I’m not talking into one of those horrible little Dictaphones, either, that keep on recording relentlessly while you’re desperately trying to think of something to say. Pressing the off switch is the thing that turns your brain back on. No.

What I’m doing is sitting on a chair somewhere writing this on a new Psion Series 3a palmtop computer.

I got one at the duty-free shop at Heathrow, just for the sheer unadulterated hell of it, and I have to say it’s good. It works. May I just say one thing about duty-free shops before I go on to talk about the Psion? It’s not that things aren’t cheaper in the duty-free shops. They are. Infinitesimally. You do save a very small amount of money if you shop at them. Of course you can then lose a very hefty sum of money in fines if you fail to realise that you have to declare anything you’ve bought duty-free to customs when you come back into the country. The stuff is only really duty-free if you intend to spend the rest of your life on an aeroplane. So what happens when you buy stuff at the duty-free shop for very slightly less than you would in the high street? It means that most of the money saved on duty is going into the coffers of the duty-free shops rather than helping to pay for the National Health Service (and Trident nuclear submarines). So why did I buy my Psion at the duty-free shop? Because I’m a complete idiot, that’s why. Anyway. Status update. They’ve found me a room. I’ve unpacked my adapter plug. My PowerBook is charging, itself up. I’m still not using it, though, because I am now lying in the bath. So I’m still using the Psion. I have never ever written anything in the bath before. Paper gets damp and steamy, pens won’t write upside down, typewriters hurt your tummy, and if you are prepared to use a PowerBook in the bath, then I assume that it isn’t your own PowerBook. So the thing is, it can be done.