Save us from the tyranny of click and pick

The stars are going out: Martina Hingis makes her exit from Friday’s contest
12 April 2012

Modern life is supposed to be simple. I'm ­absolutely sure that's what it said in the ­brochure.

The twin pillars upon which this simplicity is supported are the internet and electronic money. Before their invention, if you were looking for, say, a book called Fly Fishing by JR Hartley, you would have had to run your arthritic finger slowly down the Yellow Pages, tediously and painfully dialling secondhand bookshops until you found a copy. Then you would have had to persuade the home help to fetch it for you while you kept an eye on the soup.

It's a different story now. The information revolution means that we can search everywhere at once. We are like some kind of god, albeit one sitting at a desk in only his pants. This is progress, right? This gets us what we want more quickly, yes? A thousand times no, that's what I've learned this week. It is a curse: the tyranny of choice.

Say you need to book a hotel room in, for example, Birmingham. I don't know why you want to go to Birmingham; perhaps you have a mistress there, or the desire to see what happens to ­concrete when it's been left to degrade for 40 years. It really is none of my business and I don't want to pry.

Anyway, you Google "hotels birmingham uk" and 308 hotels pop up. That's a lot of hotels. Who knew that many people had mistresses in Birmingham?

Whereas 10 years ago you would have phoned the first two in the Yellow Pages and picked the cheapest (which is why, to ensure prominence, hotels used to have names like Aardvark's Rest and Aaaaa Really Nice Hotel) now you feel obliged to spend the morning trawling through the lot, comparing rates, noting them down on paper and generally wasting time that you should be spending hiding credit card bills from your wife so she doesn't wonder why you've been buying things at Agent Provocateur in the Bullring.

But wait. Aren't I being disingenuous here? Surely there are price comparison sites which do the legwork for us? There certainly are. Hundreds of the things (all making money by the morally questionable means of aiding people who have mistresses in Birmingham but that's not really my business either).

So now we have to search all of the different hotels on all of the different price comparison websites in case one of them has managed to negotiate ­better rates, thus multiplying the amount of work, time and effort many times over. The same is true of flights and car hire (and also sex toys and the "office football team kit" that forms an integral part of your cover story for your wife).

I can't help feeling that the internet is bowing under its own weight, or at least we're bowing under it. Here's a radical suggestion: wouldn't it be easier if you could just go to a shop on your high street where an "agent" would sort out all your travel for you?

Nah, that's just pie in the sky really, isn't it?

Strictly anonymous dancing

Much has been said in print, in what people insist on calling "the blogosphere" and in homes around the country, about the relative anonymity of this year's crop of Strictly Come Dancers.

This, as Mrs A pointed out to me when I was complaining that Martina Hingis's exit only
makes matters worse, is irrelevant as she had no idea who Tom Chambers was until he proved he could move his feet last year.

Of far more pressing concern is how well they might be able to dance. At one point novelty flamboyant gesturer Bruno Tonioli said of a contestant: "She has all the tools to make the perfect dancer: the legs, the arms " That's pretty basic stuff. Expectation among the judges clearly rather low this year, then.

Bring on the Putney baht

When I first heard that Brixton had introduced its own currency, I must confess I was a little sceptical. However, contrary to my suspicions, you don't get 200 Brixton pounds for passing Go.

Turns out it's an excellent idea which, its supporters are only too happy to explain to you, has already worked in places as diverse as Totnes and Stroud. They might also point out that it's also worked in much bigger places including America and Japan but right at this point in economic history that doesn't look so impressive.

I think the idea ought to be adopted across London. I for one would welcome the Acton yen, the Lewisham shekel and the Putney baht.

In fact, if it proves successful as a local initiative I might see if it would work on an even smaller scale by rolling it out to my own household. The Addison dubloon would ensure that my children would finally be allowed pocket money, a childhood staple so far denied them through their father's fear that if they are given standard British pounds they will spend them outside the local community (ie my house).

Now they will be able to spend, spend, spend on any of the many goods and services available locally — bed hire, toy storage, food availability, nappy-changing — without the risk that they'll crawl up to HMV on the high street and blow it all on In the Night Garden DVDs. Again.

Too many players in the affair with Diana saga

With Valéry Giscard D'Estaing's new novel assumed to be a roman à clef concerning an affair he had with the late Princess of Wales, we have yet another entrant in the now well-established sport of Claiming To Have Had An Affair With Diana.

There are now so many players that by the time London hosts the Games in 2012 it may well officially be an Olympic event.

I remain suspicious. Much as in the world of Catholic relics there are enough Pieces of the True Cross to construct a moderately sized frigate, there are gradually becoming enough Lovers of Diana to crew the thing when it's built.

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