From Colin Clarke.
THIS is the modern world and as far as I’m concerned, you can keep it. I recently had occasion to resort to the owner’s handbook of a recently manufactured motor vehicle.

On depressing the catch of the glove box, the weight of the lengthy tome contained therein nearly wrenched the lid off its hinges.

Finding out the settings for the tyre pressures took the diligence of an open heart surgeon and the patience of Job. Reams of advice on ‘How to alter your air conditioning in the event of a solar eclipse’, or ‘how to drive economically in Lithuania’ were the work of a moment to find, by comparison.

And it’s not just cars. All modern appliances come with an instruction booklet that you could quite comfortably use as an anvil. They are all written by a small man in Tokyo and then translated into English, via Hebrew, Sanskrit, and Esperanto.

In some cases, you also get a CD, assuming that you have some sort of device on which to view it.

I would be so bold as to state that the weight of these verbose tomes is going to eventually cause an alteration in the alignment of the earth’s axis, and cause us to career helplessly toward the sun, accompanied by the heartfelt wailing of a Polar bear. A small man in Tokyo will be heard laughing maniacally.