Home life
Man and machine
Alice Thomas Ellis
The other day I was shown a word processor in operation. The eldest son put some words of mine on it and I was astonished to see how authoritative they looked on the little screen. He put it through some of its tricks and I almost immediately became rather fond of it. It was so eager and obedient. 'Look,' said the son, 'I will tell it to find "Mary".' He twid- dled something while I gazed enthralled, and a little arrow whizzed around like a terrier after a rat until it found Mary, whereupon it stood pointing and quivering with what looked like delighted triumph at its ability to please its master. How unlike people, I thought. How unlike children. How unlike the cats really, who live largely for themselves and are indifferent to the whereabouts of Mary. I could imagine a bond springing up between machine and operator, similar to that between master and hound: the only drawback being that the word processor doesn't bark. The other night when I was away the son was engrossed with his pet when Someone returned home to find the house locked and no lights on in the front. His knocking was not sufficient to distract the son, so he set about breaking in — not wishing to spend the night curled up in the geraniums. At the sound of breaking glass the son was alerted, and promptly rang for the police who arrived with unusual alacrity and proposed to arrest the householder. Ex- planations followed with the householder apologising for the misunderstanding and being assured by an indulgent policeman that he could do what he liked in his own house. Besides, the officer was pleased to have solved a crime.
This gave rise to interesting speculation. Say everyone in the Crescent was simul- taneously struck by some virus and we all started breaking our windows. Would we be permitted to carry on without let or hindrance? This is rather reassuring if it is so. Now that we are barely permitted to smoke anywhere except on top of Snow- don I had thought all our liberties were being eroded and the heavy hand of the law would fall on the shoulder even of a chap smashing his own windows. Although it is, admittedly, still permissible to bash up your spouse — within limits — you have to be nearly (or completely) killed before you can turn in your loved one. I know a man who lives on an island whose wife went off to the mainland and returned with a brand-new hair-do. He didn't like it so he put the spaghetti bolognaise on it, and if I'd been her I'd have sent for the para- troopers. It is horrible to imagine combing, strands of spaghetti out of your newly set hair: mince and tomato sauce and greasy bits of herb trickling into your eyes. It must have taken days of shampoo and rinsing before she stopped smelling like a trat- toria.
My friend Zelide knew a girl who was quietly sweeping up leaves, humming to herself and listening to the neighbours quarrelling when suddenly there came a silence. She carried on humming and sweeping for a while until the unaccus- tomed absence of yelling struck her as a bit sinister so she peeped through the window. Picture the scene — the wife lying with the meat cleaver in her parting and the hus- band transfixed by the breadknife. Horror. They both spent some time in hospital and prison and then they decided to forgive and forget and move back in together: she says ?Aide — wearing a little woolly hat to hide the join and he in a cummerbund to keep him together. Now if we all eschewed the company of our fellows and got shaked up with a word processor none of this would ever happen. Would it?
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