Special K

I was quite excited driving The Skip this week. I had done 49,999 miles. I was on the M40 and had to keep staring at the digital read out to watch the mileometre change. I glanced up to wonder if I needed anything from the M&S outlet in the MOTO services, looked back and, blast, 50,000 was showing.

When I thought about it, I hadn't actually missed anything. It's not like it used to be, when whichever old banger we were driving hit 100,000 and you actually had the deep joy of watching the wheels with the numbers on roll round in unison. The last nought was always a bit slow, you wanted them to clunk down together, like a fruit machine hitting the jackpot, but that last one was always tricky. There was nothing remotely interesting about my digital read out changing, no lovely little wheely things whirring around. Why, when someone has kindly left the speedometre as a proper dial, can't we keep real numbers stamped on little wheels. Just think of the sense of acceleration you get with the speedometer needle swirling round. Think about the hint of blackberry and apple and faint expectation of custard you get looking at the pie chart quality of a real clock. (When anyone in my family ask for a portion of pie or tart, we always ask for '10 minutes', or 'quarter of an hour' on an especially hungry day). It just doesn't work in digital. Where is the food analogy with a digital clock? There is just the hint of GCSE maths with take-awaysies to base sixty. It's not the same.

Bring back dials, bring back real clocks that have a tick from a pendulum, bring back phones that jangle when they ring because they have a bell inside! Digital is dingy!