Intro to modern life (2)

Car journey. Sbjcts gasp at speed. M asks us to do 100 mph; GB, at wheel, does, briefly. V. different from horse. Though traffic jams mean horse sometimes faster. We discuss transport. F ran away from first bicycle she saw (describes bicycle for M), but liked canals (ditto), though none ever built in G. F told canals still exist, but their role reduced. Superseded first by r-ways & train (long passenger-carrying vehicle), then cars, lorries, etc.

‘Even faster than the car,’ says HD, ‘is the aeroplane. This is like an artificial bird. It can carry hundreds of people in the air for thousands of miles and travel hundreds of miles in an hour.’ (Both sbjcts visibly shocked.) ‘But, oddly, one hardly feels one is moving. It is peculiar that, as one gets progressively faster from walking, through cycling, driving a car and riding on a train, to flying in an aeroplane, one’s sensation of motion diminishes.’

Sbjcts spellbound. F has seen a train, but never ridden in one.

P.m.: We take sbjcts into town. Fear losing them, so set up shadow system. BM looks after M; GB F. HD oversees pairs. Sbjcts, esp. F, astounded by range of shops’ products, & even more when told most affordable to ordinary people. We tell them about agricultural & industrial revolutions, some aspects of which vaguely familiar to F. IR gets bad press –dreadful factory conditions (& we can’t forget slaves’ contribution), pollution, etc.– but major reason such items so widely attainable. Mass production may = foregoing professional artisan’s individual touch, but also = affordability. ‘Given a choice between a world where the average family could afford furniture but there was no Chippendale (Thomas Chippendale was a famous furniture-maker of the eighteenth century), and one where hardly anyone but the likes of Mr Chippendale’s privileged clientele could, sorry to any art-lovers but I’d go for the former,’ BM concludes.

Panic as GB & F go missing; HD finds them in tea shop.