I confess to a fondness for gadgets (From This Is Local London)

I confess to a fondness for gadgets

7:11pm Thursday 25th August 2011 in Colin Baker By Colin Baker

Are lie detectors available commercially, I wonder? I confess to a fondness for gadgets. Fashionable clothes, cars, even holidays leave me largely unmoved, but tell me that there is a new 3 or 4D television around and my mind immediately computes the current demands on the domestic budget to see if it might be within my grasp.

Show me the latest state of the art mobile phone with the processing power of dwarf star and I covet it uncontrollably. Yes, I know it’s odd that cars don’t figure on my list, but basically they are just an essential (at least where I live) that is embellished with a whole host of non-essentials that are really the gadgets – the sat-nav, the CD player/radio, the rear facing camera that stops you from demolishing the back wall of the garage.

And no, I don’t have one of those, at least partly because we do not have a garage, although there are some public car parks where such a gadget would obviate the necessity to get out and check where my invisible boot really does end. A neighbour showed me some pictures on his iPad recently and all I saw was not the photographs but the sleek means by which he was showing them to me. But, struggle as I may, I cannot justify acquiring one when there are so many other more mundane artefacts that would enhance the life of the population of Baker Towers.

I did succumb to a small wireless CCTV system a couple of years ago, principally so that we could keep on eye on the assorted quadrupeds housed in the outbuildings around our house. That one got approval from my wife, as she was able to reassure herself that Holly the mare, Perky and Tigger, the Shetland ponies and our three goats were still alive/asleep, lying down/standing up or eating/not eating – as appropriate.

And lie detectors? Recently, I was discussing an incident from our shared theatrical past with a good friend and colleague. My recollection differed substantially from his. One of us is clearly misremembering and I wondered if a lie detector could resolve the conflict. Possibly not perhaps, as we both think we are telling the truth. So what chance do historians have when all they have to rely on are contemporary sources? What credence can we then attach to what they write? And are autobio-graphies likely to be any more accurate?