Columns
Epilog:
New file, enter. I've recently been trying the built-in voice recognition within Windows Vista, and have been very impressed with the capabilities, the accuracy and the speed at which one can get up and running. This is a technology that gets too little airtime, but it has improved in leaps and bounds over the past few years, no doubt due to the increasing power and capability of the average desktop computer. If only Vista had a creative writing plug-in to match.
Because writing this column, and indeed the other things I contribute to this august organ, isn't easy. I certainly don't think of myself as a professional scribbler. It's something I do almost despite myself in the three days a month or so when I'm not doing real things with real clients, machine rooms or "Kitchen Nightmare-style" shouting at corporate IT teams.
However, back when I was a teenager there was, for a short time, a cabal of writers whose prose went beyond the inspirational. It was pure magic.
At this point, I'm going to annoy my editor and publisher by mentioning a title belonging to a rival company, but the then-privately owned Car magazine in the 1970s and 1980s set standards for storytelling and evocative writing that no-one has matched since, in my experience. Only PC Pro's sister titles Evo and Octane come close. And let's not mention Mr Clarkson's amusing but
Bishop came together and created pure magic.
Those Who Know And Understand will be smiling and nodding at this point. Phrases such as Convoy and Sad Sweet Song of the Last Silhouette will bring back a cascade of memories to anyone who has read these essays. Or dare I say the word Hydraulic to a fan of LJK Setright, who was, without doubt, the Shakespeare of our time? Or mention Bishop's rating of cars in terms of Miles Per Restaurant?
LJKS' book Drive On!: A Social History of the Motor Car should be required reading for every 14 year old today. For those for whom all of this is an opaque fog, let me just say you have some catching up to do, and your education will be both exquisite and revelatory.
Why do I mention this, risking the ire of my publisher? Because when writing a column, either you are in the mood or you are not. And if you aren't, no amount of sitting in front of the computer will help.
I just have to wait until the story has crystallised in my head, and then the story tells me it is ready to be told, for better or worse. Sometimes this can stretch the deadline tolerance of my esteemed editor right to the limit - I have never missed a publication deadline, but I confess (with no pride whatsoever, I hasten to add) that I have, on occasion, pushed it to the last hour or so. He claims I love the whooshing noise an editorial deadline makes as it goes rushing past for the third time.
So why this ramble? Well, last Saturday I sat down to write this column. And it wasn't working at all. So I did what I do in such circumstances - I reached for my copies of Car from the 1970s and 1980s and read a few of the stories. Suddenly I was 14 again, and the world was a simpler place.
After this afternoon indulgence, I did something I never thought I would do - I emailed Mel Nichols, the editor at the time. I wrote a small, somewhat grovelling note saying how I still went back to his stories from my childhood and how I rued the fact that he didn't appear to write any more, because, dammit, his long-term readers deserved more.
