Accrington Web - Wading through treacle

Well, here we are. The new millenium moves on apace and change of all kinds now comes upon us quicker than it ever did before.

When I was a lad a bite was something that an angry dog or an unruly child might give you and a bit was a peculiar little metal thing which people who are fond of riding horse would shove into the mouth of the poor beasts in an attempt to render them more pliable.

Now here I am, rapidly approaching my half-century, writing these words which exist merely as a record of states of "on" or "off", "one" or "zero", "true" or "not true". Each of these states is a "bit" and eight of them make up a "byte" and at the touch of a button they can be read on the other side of the world within minutes, if not seconds, depending on the baud rate of my connection to the internet. Fabulous isn't it?

But that is not all. Recently NASA sent a probe into space at an astonishing speed with the intention of intercepting, at a point some 98 million miles away from the earth, a comet which habitually hurtles around the sun at even more astonishing speed. The probe carried a lump of copper which was about the size of a domestic washing machine. the object of the exercise was to propell the washing machine into the comet. Not to destroy it, but in order to record the consequences of the impact. Much, we are told, may be learned about the origins of our planet by studying such things. On board the probe, as you might imagine, there was a bewildering array of sensors and cameras etc., which duly recorded the collision between the comet and the washing machine and transmitted the information back to receiving stations on the earth. With the same device that I use to compose this article I was able, mere minutes after the event itself, to see the images of the collision, live, as they were recieved by NASA in the United States.

Think of that; Video of an event happening further away than the Sun which cost hundreds of millions of dollars to stage was beamed into my sitting room here in Huncoat - for no other reasons than that it was possible to do so and a vague curiosity on my part.

Given the astonishing organisational and technoligical accomplishments which made the feats that I have just mentioned possible and which we are coming ever more used to taking for granted, not to mention the mind numbing amounts of money that has been expended and invested to enable such marvels to take place. Given all that and probably much else besides. Can anyone explain to me why HBC are incapable of remembering the simple fact that this address is not connected to the mains gas supply and has not been connected to the gas supply for the last six years? And why, in spite of giving them not only the length of my tongue but also the benefit of my opinion and several helpful suggestions on an annual basis, they still persist in sending out three postcards and one snottily officious letter to inform me that; so concerned are they that I might inadvertently gas myself they are shortly to arrive at my home to break down my door and force their way inside my home, without my permission if necessary, in order to service my non-existant gas appliances. For which privilege and kindly offices they will, regretfully, be pleased to charge me £90.00, plus VAT!

All of which would be bad enough and would make any normal person want to scream and tear their hair out, were it not also for the fact that it was the same dreary department of HBC, whose dismal boast is "30 years of service to the community", who advised and arranged the disconnection in the first place!

There are days, and they seem to be occuring with alarming frequency of late, when you can feel the will to live begin to drain away.