Notes From the Hard Shoulder (5 page)

I'm always slightly surprised that my cat,
Fusker, can't speak. I spend many hours talking to him, but it's always a totally one-sided conversation and the chances are that the only word he vaguely understands is 'Fusker'. And he can't even say that.

My other dependant, Woman, reckons he can't talk because he's only a cat, and that the evolution of cat technology is such that he just isn't capable of speech and for complex zoological reasons. But I'm not so sure.

In terms of the mechanics of speaking, the cat is as well equipped as I am. He has a voice box of sorts: a mouth, a tongue, teeth. These are what we use to form words. And yet still nothing of any consequence comes out of his witless furry face. Why?

I have been forced to conclude that Fusker remains speechless not because he is incapable of it, but because he has nothing to say. He has nothing to say because he hasn't done anything worth talking about. All he aspires to is another bowl of Munchies or the chance to go outside and look for a lady cat (even though he has no nuts, although he's too thick to realise this). He can communicate either of these desires with a simple bleat.

I suppose it's possible that some distant ancestor of Fusker, while chomping away at his cat food, came up with the design for a separate-condenser steam engine long before
James Watt did. However, he could do nothing about it, so the idea went unrecorded. He could do nothing about it because he didn't have opposed thumbs, the very attribute that allowed humankind to fashion a pointy piece of flint into a farming tool and shake off the shackle of being a hunter/gatherer. It was a relatively small step from there to variable valve timing.

Since we're on the subject of tools I'd now like to talk about Mr Stanley and his famous knife. Any man who has owned a
Stanley knife – and any man who hasn't is unworthy of his sex – will, at some point during the trimming of some linoleum or the assembly of a l/72nd-scale Messerschmitt 109, have stuck the eponymous craft instrument into his body somewhere. This week, I drove mine into the fleshy end of the thumb of my left hand.

To all intents and purposes, I now have only one arm.

If you'd like to go and stick your own Stanley knife into your own thumb, you will discover how difficult
many straightforward life skills can become. Grating cheese, for example, or playing Scott Joplin's 'Maple Leaf Rag' upon the piano. This is what separates us from the beasts of the field and hearth.

Consider driving. I hadn't realised, until it was clad in a
Beano-style
comedy bandage, just how crucial a role my left thumb plays in this everyday activity. Denied the use of this vital receptor, driving becomes notably more difficult. Even in my old
Bentley, which, as a slovenly automatic, does more than pretty much any other car to relieve its owner of the tiresome duty of operating it, I find my finer points of car control slightly compromised.

All of which brings me, eventually, to modern car technology and driver aids, most of which have their basis in micro-electronics. They are amazing things. The injection system of a modern diesel
engine can provide five separate squirts of fuel, each minutely timed and of minutely different volume, in the space of one ignition stroke – an event which, at 4,000rpm, occupies just under 0.004 seconds by my calculations. I couldn't do that.

A drive-by-wire throttle, when you depress it in anger at the exit of a corner, will garner information from sensors monitoring, among other things, air density and temperature, limits of traction and perhaps even the steering angle. At the same time, a disposable plug-in module will be deciphering the ignition requirements in three dimensions. I couldn't begin to sort this lot out even given three hours in a silent examination room with a calculator and my lucky pencil sharpener.

In fact, whatever computerised systems are responsible for these things are much, much better than me at punctuality, long division, data management and spatial logic. But I bet they couldn't catch a tennis ball.

I can. I can also ride a bicycle, swim, shoot clay pigeons and pat my head while rubbing my stomach. Bosch Motronic can't do any of these things. I could even, theoretically at least, compete in the triple-jump, and I bet I'd beat that robot
Honda keeps banging on about.

So when people tell me that electronic controls are coming between the driver and the modern car, I say cobblers. Yes, the right-hand pedal in the new Golf
GTi may seem a bit vicious at times, and perhaps the
traction control in this or that supercar is too intrusive. I've no doubt that some electric
power-steering systems are placing a barrier between the steering wheel and what the driving wheels are ultimately doing, and brake assist sometimes seems to make a mockery of the relationship between what we do with the middle pedal and what actually happens to the car. But to suggest that these things are usurping the driver is absolute nonsense.

Electronics are merely cussed and logical, as your desktop computer will ultimately prove to be. Meanwhile, the human computer is supreme, the most remarkable electro-mechanical device ever conceived and one as yet barely understood. I now realise that when I drive my old 911 down a winding country road, pretty much every last bit of my body save perhaps my hair is toiling away at the man/machine interface, deciphering the incomprehensible mass of
information coming at it and translating it through the brain into a multitude of decisions and inputs. If you don't believe me, try it for yourself without one thumb, a big toe, an eye or a buttock. We are no closer to finding a substitute for the driver than we are to finding an alternative to sperm in the reproductive process.

The greatest driving aid in the history of motoring was fitted to the Benz Motorwagen when it was rolled out of its shed for the very first time, and it has been included in the design of every single car built since. It was you.

And it's still you.

The late and still sadly missed
LJK Setright had a rather pessimistic view of bike
shows. He once described them as being 'full of people on crutches looking to buy their next accident'.

Personally, I rather like a good bike show. For a start, experience in my own garage proves that you can fit three or four bikes into the space occupied by one car, which means you don't have to walk as far as you do at the motor show. The fact that the biggest physical workout the average motoring journalist ever takes is three laps of the NEC while looking at cars strikes me as strangely ironic.

Secondly, the atmosphere is better at a bike show. Motorcycling is still largely a hobby, and has yet to be infected with much of the glitz and fatuous marketing cant that accompany the latest launch of a sporty lifestyle vehicle for the active-minded urban sophisticate. There's rather less carpet on the stands, rather more tepid lager in cracked plastic glasses.

And then there are the bikes. I admit that often, when I'm at home alone, I think I should give up motorcycling. I'm getting too old, too cautious, and I'm just not very good at it. I believe that 'waterproof motorcycle clothing' remains an oxymoron, and often, in the middle of a tight, greasy bend, I worry that Newton may have made a mistake, and there's some dark corner of physics where there is no equal and opposite reaction, and I'll fall off. But then I go to a bike show.

Nothing, and I mean nothing, tugs at the strings of my Neanderthal man-being quite like an array of new
bikes, and especially the type of big-bore naked motorcycles that I like. It's something to do with the way engineering, styling and the dynamic considerations are required to collaborate in the design; their utter interdependence. A motorcycle really is an extension of your being on the road, and your own mass and dimensions are a critical aspect of the way the whole thing works. There is little room for conceit on the part of its maker, and it shows.

Because, on a naked bike especially, you can see it all. You can see the way the stylist and the mechanic have been forced to collude, to give and take, to work constructively together. Engineering considerations temper the excesses of artistry, artistry dignifies the metalworking. And it all chimes instantly with some need to climb aboard and imagine how the thing might feel, which is why bike shows are full of people sitting astride new machines and gazing blankly into the distance.

Take
Yamaha's MT01 muscle bike. One side of the engine looks like the work of dour technologists with Rotring propelling pencils wedged into spring clips in their breast pockets; the other like the fantasies of some blokes in polo-necks who would be as happy doing fashionable kitchen appliances. It appears to have a fish poacher on that side; actually, I believe it's the cover for a filter. Marvellous.

This is why motorbikes make a better static statement than cars.
Aston Martin boasts of 'power, beauty, soul', and the new V8 has it all. The power is in the superb engine, the beauty is in the sculpture of its bodywork, and the soul comes from the physical
properties – the suspension set-up, the distribution of weight, all that impenetrable stuff – that make it drive the way it does. But on a motorshow stand we sense only the beauty, and feel only a distant longing inspired by some faint carnal promise. Meanwhile, the
Ducati Monster is flashing its knickers at you like some metal harlot.

It was Dr Johnson, I believe, who said something to the effect that all men feel slightly inadequate who have not at some time been a soldier. Today, he might say that all men feel cheated who have not at some time owned a motorcycle. They have somehow resisted the silent siren cry it emits even when stationary; they have not succumbed to that visceral urge to crack open the throttle and feel the beast tremble, to quest alone and armoured like some latter-day knight of Arthur's circle.

It's there in all of us, which probably explains why bike-show exhibitors never really bother with the tiresome live-band and rollerblading displays that dog the car show. They know that there's still only one tune that really works for motorcycling, and that it will, whether we like it or not, be playing on a loop in the back of our minds, from the moment we arrive to the moment we leave with a bulging bag of brochures.

Stop fighting it. And get your motor running.

We've had the Kyoto Summit, we've had the Good Friday Agreement, and we've had a United Nations resolution. And now I'd like all car manufacturers to sign an international gentlemen's agreement promising to leave my bottom alone.

I'm as liberal as the next man etc. etc. but this has now gone too far. What consenting individuals get up to in the privacy of their own homes is one thing; the dead hand of a multinational directed at my buttocks is something else altogether and, to my mind, wholly unacceptable. Is nothing sacred any more?

Now I think about it, I realise that the world's car makers have been showing an unhealthy interest in my plum duff for quite a long time. It started well over a decade ago with the widespread introduction of the heated seat, which for years has been hailed as a great thing on a cold morning. Even my 13-year-old
Range Rover has seat heaters.

But here's a thing. It's been very cold for the few days prior to my writing this, and I've been doing quite a bit of driving. Yet at no point have I walked out of my front door into the frosts and hoars and thought, 'God in heaven, my arse is cold.' It never is. My buttocks are the second biggest muscles on my body and therefore retain a huge amount of warmth. I have cold toes, cold fingers, a cold nose, cold ears and cold hair, but none of these things are catered for in the cabin of the car. I suppose Mercedes has made some effort with that
Scarftronic neck-warmer fitted to the new SLK, but otherwise it's hot cross buns as usual.

It didn't stop with the seat heater, of course. Some time in the mid-'90s I drove the first BMW
7-series fitted with the 'active
seat'. The base of this 'stimulating innovation' could be set to gently rock your pelvis from side to side, supposedly in the interests of reducing backache and encouraging circulation. I tried it on a very long journey and it seemed to work, but I was very uncomfortable with the idea of a German technologist called something like Jurgen fondling my chuff at a distance.

Mercedes responded with that
massage seat thing, which incorporates some fans to extract the
wurst
effects of the corporate lunch. But again, I have the feeling that Herr Doktor is taking an unhealthy interest in my tradesman's.

So far this has been a distinctly German thing, and I suppose it could be worse. It could be the British. Then the new Aston V8 would be fitted with a couple of spring-loaded horsewhips and you'd be scouring the cabin for a suitable piece of leather to bite on. Instead, it's the French who are now at it.

I've been driving the new Citroen
C4 VTS, and I have to say there's quite a lot I like about it. It's a great-looking car, it has a sweet motor, it steers quickly and it's even reasonably quick. Obviously it's a bit sporty for my tastes but I imagine it would be ideal for the sort of people who regard trainers as shoes.

What I didn't like was the preponderance of buttons and knobs in the cabin. This sort of thing makes me nervous in a French car, since I've always believed the French to be poor at gadgetry and much better suited to pre-industrial activities such as cheese-making and erecting lavatories that don't flush.

You may remember, if you were watching
Top Gear,
that the C4 features a novel steering wheel on which the rim rotates but the middle remains stationary. As well it should, since I counted 17 buttons on it and even then I'm not sure I remembered to include the horn. If it went round and round as well you'd be in big trouble.

In fact I was so preoccupied with the steering wheel that I completely forgot about the C4's
vibrating seat. Then I joined a motorway and the French got to work on my jacquesie.

This car is fitted with a device that senses the white lines of your motorway lane, and if you stray beyond them the seat performs a brief drum-roll on your bum. Not only that, but it's buttock-specific. Stray right and your right cheek gets a drubbing, stray left and so on. Unless you indicate, in which case the system reasons that you meant to change lane and leaves your derriere mercifully alone.

It sounds like a good idea, and in many ways it is. If you'd nodded off it would wake you up, certainly. For the lady motorist it may be a safer and more comfortable alternative to the vibrations that are apparently to be enjoyed on the pillion seat of any V-twin Italian motorcycle. Trouble is, I'm a chap and there are times when I don't actually need to signal to change lanes on a motorway, such as when I enter an empty contraflow in the middle of the night. Then it's a right pain in the butt.

I can't keep indicating for no obvious reason, or I'll end up looking like my mate Paul, who indicates even when he's turning out of a supermarket car-parking
space. Or someone from the
Institute of Advanced Motorists. Maybe you can turn the thing off using one of the buttons on the steering wheel, but at this point I was still trying to retune the radio.

I have to say I'm disappointed. I saw the genesis of this technology years ago on something called the
Prometheus Project, a sort of non-competitive multi-manufacturer initiative to develop the driving aids of the future. This gave us
sat-nav, intelligent
cruise control,
head-up displays,
swivelling headlights and the
lane-sensing system at the core of the Citroen's vibra-seat.

By my reckoning, all these things could be combined to allow me to join the motorway in London and then climb into the back for a kip until I arrive in Scotland. Instead, I've been given something to keep me awake. The motor industry has, as usual, aimed low, and humankind has been reduced to fiddling with each other's bottoms like the apes of the trees from which we have supposedly descended.

I think these people should stop arsing around and do something useful.