On Friday I was taken by a generous friend to the Goodwood festival of speed. Despite its name it's got nothing to do with horseracing or amphetamines, it's all about fast cars. We didn't have tickets to the grandstand and Lord March hadn't invited us to use his balcony so the racing was actually quite hard to see. I was most taken with all the things that were for sale and how badly they had estimated my disposable income. The first thing I saw was an aeroplane with room for 8 of my friends and my crew that has a cruising speed of 320mph. I was also sorely tempted by a pair of handmade Japanese driving shoes with such restrained styling that they would have suited Jeremy Corbin.
If you believe Adam Smith, then the reason we're all so well fed, leisured and rich compared with our ancestors is the division and specialisation of labour. My favourite economist was in raptures about the progress we've made when he found out that "Pasty Crimper" was a real full time job. I was on a brewery tour on Saturday and the story of the brewery involved ringing up a hop-genealogist and finding the most direct descendants of the extinct Farnham White Bine.
A hop-genealogist note, not
the hop-genealogist. How many of these people are there? Are there half a dozen in the back of every yellow pages?
Richard "let your finger do the walking" B
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