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Title: Editorial: Fiction
Author: Bob Schmidt
Date: 11 November 2017 17:27:49 +00:00 or Sat, 11 November 2017 17:27:49 +00:00
Summary:
Body:
How long do you think it would take to drive from London, capital city of the UK, to Florence, centre of culture and fine art in Italy? Piece of string calculation with an Atlas (old school!) says it’s around 750 miles. Average speed on the good roads of France and Italy should be about 50mph, so that’s 15 hours. Add a couple for good measure, we could still do it in one day, right? We both know how to drive a car, so we can share the driving.
The GPS reports that we’ve underestimated the distance by well over 200 miles. That’ll add maybe 5 hours to the journey, but we can manage 11 hours each in stints of 5 hours or so, and we should be able to make up some time on the motorways. The first real hitch is in leaving the UK – without a booking we need to wait for a free slot on a boat. 2 hours wasted, and most of 2 hours on a boat – that’s almost 20% of our time budget on about 10% of the distance!
France is a breeze and we swap places near the Swiss border. We’ve made up some time, but it’s getting dark. The Swiss border guard politely checks our driving licences, and yours has expired. He hands them back, and just as politely makes it clear that I must do the driving. After another hour we have to stop for strong coffee. And a quick nap.
It is starting to become clear to me that my initial estimate of 1 day is looking increasingly ambitious, and there are still so many things that can happen: breakdown, accident, diversion – we’re not over the Alps yet – and with another 6 hours (at least!) of driving, I’m going to need a good rest before attempting it.
Which means we’ll be getting to Milan in the rush-hour...
Knowing how to drive a car might be a little bit like knowing how to write code in a given programming language, and marking way-points on a map (or GPS) like sketching a project plan. Predicting future events is a whole different thing. And as for predicting when they will happen, that’s just for fiction.
Notes:
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