Dealing with modern life

A gentleman of leisure, a boulevardier, has to add a new member of staff  to his retinue. As invaluable as his driver, ghillie, caddy, valet, butler, personal secretary, wine merchant and groom is someone versed in the new technology of modern life.

I found this only too well in the last 24 hours when I was stuck in my lift, my menu page on sky morphed into a vivid green abstract, my iPod did not work in my audio system and a new bulb did not lighten my bedroom.  All of these were sorted by my man Mustafa, a most brilliant and indispensable techno wallah. I  was afraid that I  might be incarcerated in the lift all weekend.  He diagnosed the problem as ” tripping on the breakers”, whatever that might be. I was merely relieved to clamber out of the chamber to  terra firma on  the ground floor of my residence. I adhere to that school of  “switch off and re-activation” to  sort all electronic faults . ” Sahib” implored Mustapha  ” please leave these  technical matters to me. “

As for my skybox , the difficulty deactivating here that there were enough cables in it to  run a pipeline in a moderately-sized Gulf state. Which one to choose? No worries.  It only took Mustapha 30 seconds to restore my menu.

A few years ago my whole central heating system went down. I knew British Gas would take several years to come round. I hit upon the ingenious stratagem of  calling them and gasping “I smell gas”. An engineer was round within half an hour to explain that if I actually inserted the boiler plug into the socket the whole system would function. I slipped a  tenner into the pocket of his blue overalls and expressed my eternal gratitude.