A fortnight ago, there was an antique car gathering in the village. Most of the cars were from before 1940 so there were many interesting vehicles rollicking noisily around the place. Although fascinating, the antique vehicles do not have safety features, no air conditioning, require special blending of liquid lead into their fuels and they break down a lot (a few were already on recovery trailers). So they made me appre­ciate the security, comfort, efficien­cy and reliability of modern cars.

Another observation is my dog barks and attacks the television every time he sees another animal on it. While mildly irritating, it does reflect the quality of contemporary video devices – my dog simply cannot distinguish between real animals and images on the television.