stopping and mowing . ( instructions that should have come with my motor mower ) . we welcome you to the ranks of satisfied owners of motor mowers . well , ranks is hardly the word , you think you &apos;re an officer now you &apos;ve got one of these , do n&apos;t you , ha ha ! just because your lawn is a bit bigger than the average suburban size , you see yourself gently ambling behind this thing , painting a swathe of perfect greensward as you go &amp;hellip; . who do you think you are ? this is the cheapest model we make , all gaudily painted to attract people like you . you must know that proper lawns , belonging to stately homes or golf clubs , are made with proper , dark green mowers , that the man sits on in a shiny steel saddle ; old mowers , that we made fifty years ago , efficient , heavy , inherited by their owners , long before these modern notions of egalitarianism and an expanding economy compelled us to turn out these fiddling little things for people like you , to keep our factory going in off periods , when we are not servicing these proper , old mowers for our titled clients . however , since you &apos;ve bought it , and much good may it do you , here are a few hints . starting ( a ) from cold : 1 . take the plug out . watch that little tin thing sticking up ; it catches your knuckles when the spanner suddenly gives . we &apos;ve given you a set of spanners , made of lead . 2 . clean the plug , if possible . it will be smothered in oil , because you have to put the oil in the petrol ; there is no separate lubrication system . you probably think the oil is ignited with the petrol vapour in the cylinder , so how can you lubricate an engine with smoke ? well , as you can see , it is n&apos;t ignited . it just wets the plug . 3 . undo the nut at the bottom of the cylinder , and a lot more oil will dribble out - well , you should n&apos;t have it on the grass yet . put the nut back - steady , not too tight , the bottom of the cylinder is made of lead , too . well , now you &apos;ve broken the thread , just make it as tight as you can . 3a . you &apos;ve left the washer off that nut . that &apos;s why you broke the thread . no garage will have a washer that size , you &apos;d better start looking for it in the grass . 4 . put plug back , and watch out for your other knuckles . aah , sorry ! the same knuckles . not too tight , you will n&apos;t get away with doing this just once , you &apos;ll only make it hard to undo again . 5 . kick starter ( or pull rope , if it &apos;s one of those ) . again . full choke . again , again , again . full throttle . again twenty-seven times , with every possible combination of throttle and choke . again , with half thrott - 6 . switch the petrol on , you fool . 7 . repeat ( 5 ) . then repeat ( 1-4 ) , plug will be wetter than when you started by now . 8 . repeat ( 5 ) again . go and lie down for a bit . 9 . run like hell with it in gear . starting ( b ) from hot : it is impossible to start this engine from hot . it is something to do with that oil vapour . once you let it stop , you &apos;ve had it , you &apos;ll have to wait for it to get stone-cold and start from the beginning . just do n&apos;t leave it for a second , and keep it roaring . adjustment of blades : there is a hairbreadth adjustment on this machine , between the position where it just brushes the top of the grass and the one where it digs great gashes in the earth . practice with a new electric light switch . if you can find a position where the light just flickers between on and off you &apos;ll be able to wangle these blades . remember that they are finely , not to say neurotically adjusted . quite a small pebble will wrench the blades out of shape . you will know when this has happened when they either make a frightful clanging noise or will n&apos;t go round at all . the people for whom we make our proper mowers do not have pebbles on their lawns , let alone the small metal fire engines , dolls &apos; boots , plastic alphabets , nails and spoons that litter yours . operation : it is only possible to operate this machine at a steady trot . at ordinary walking pace it will stall . and remember , the clutch is not a gradual affair like the one on a car . the instant you engage it the machine will rush away , with or without you . so it &apos;s no good trying to cut round those silly little circular rosebeds you have . this machine only mows in a dead straight line , any curves and you &apos;ll dig into the earth . what do you expect for the price you paid , a differential axle ? maintenance : you will find a number of little contraptions with spring caps , for putting the oil in . they will n&apos;t leave room for the spout of any oilcan , however thin ; you &apos;ll just have to squirt away , making an oozy mess , and hope some of it &apos;s getting in . soon the spring caps will come off , anyway ; then there &apos;ll just be these little holes blocked with oily grass . finally , three golden rules : 1 . keep a magnet for finding washers , spring caps , nuts , etc . 2 . never let it stop . 3 . do n&apos;t give your hand-mower away . official deceiver . as any typist knows , the typewriter reveals the subconscious of the machine age mainly by three simple devices ( or decives ) ; the confusion of c with v , of k with l , and the interchange of vowels ( e.g paino for piano ) or vonsonants . much more linguistic research has been devoted to these three major substitutions than to the two minor ones - the appearance of the figure 8 in place of the apostrophe and of m for the comma . this last always seems to me like a self-deprecatory clearing of the throat , a rudimentary ahem , as if to suggest that all man 8s thought is improvisedm and should not be taken too seriously . of all the words thrown up by my typewriter I have yet to see one more real and significant than bunkrapt . everybody knows what ordinary bankruptcy is , and the gloomier vommentators often speak of the bankruptcy of our civilisation . now vivilization can never really be bankrupt ; the very word suggests that vivilized man is vivified , alive - and as long as he 8s alice there 8s hope . it is mere defeatism to say that our vicilization is bankrupt ; but once , by means of the typewriterm we have isolated this voncept of bunkraptcy , we are like Bright and Hodgkinm isolating and naming those diseases which bear their names . we are half-way , if not to curing , at least to vuring it . for what is bunkraptcy but the state of being rapt by bunk , entranced by rubbish , absorbed by frovilous unreality ? a bunkrapt is , surely , a man who sits for hours staring at TC , or reading newspapers filled with gissop volumns retailing the acticities ( too often extramartial ) of worthless nenontities such as acrots and catresses , film srats and coroners . there is an invurable fricolity about a bunkrapt , a refusal to face up to reality ; the full stature of man is diminished in him . after all it &apos;s no good pretending the world is n8t real . it &apos;s only too lear . but in our vicilization any man who faves up to the real world is pat to be dubbed square . there is real danger to the civilization of the wets here . it is no good simply sneering at the Russians for being puranitical when actually they are simply more teun with the lear facts of life than we are . unless we pukk up our socks the Russiansm the squares , will have the kast kaugh ; and very unpleasant it wikk sound . what is to be done , then ? I would suggest , now we have found the word for what is wrong with us , that there is a way out without being purinatical or quares . why do we not treat bunkraptcy precisely as we treat bankruptcy ? let us have a bunkraptcy Vourt , before which persons who had gone bunkrapt would have to appear . but the proceedings would be medical as well as legal . bunkraptcy is a disease as well as a crime , and would have to be treated partly as crime was terated in Samuel Butler &apos;s nowhere - i.e medivally . it should not be difficult to work out a set of standard tests for determining a man &apos;s reality quotient ( RQ ) , analogous to the IQ tests . after all , many psychoolgists spend their whole lives working out tests named after themselves . the tests should take into account a man 8s whole being , not just his tastes in entertainment . a baker , let us saym would score so many points for doing a real job that for him to read or view bunk would not be nearly so serious as for a stockbroker , engaged in a job that is fundamentally unlear , nothing to do with making or fashioning anything except money . a stockbroker would lose heavily for reading fricolous newspapers . anyone with children reasonably well brought up would have a head start . but a serious person who read no bunk at all would n8t come off too well ; the thing is not to be rapt by it . the legal side of the bunkraptcy Vourt would consist in the fact that a person with a RQ below the statuotry mimunim would be registered as an induscharged bunkrapt , not allowed to take any part in public life until , after attendance at a herabilitation Centre , he had upgraded his RQ . some may think that this would be starting from the wrong end , that personal bunkraptcy is an inevitable , unblameable response to living in an over-complex , fractured society in which even the creative ratists who set the tone of our cicikization are no longer all-round totally real men like Shakespeare ; they are men who exclusively , intensely mebody one snigle facet of life , such as dismebodied intellect ( Shaw ) , misonygy ( Stringberd ) , historical pattern ( Tonybee ) , sexaul feredom ( Lawrence . only a bunkrapt vicilization could have made such an extraordinary cause v&amp;egrave;lebre of Lady Chattelrey &apos;s lover ) . this may be so . but if writers hace changed the worldm may not typewriters change it also ? m ? the obliviscents . how curious England will be in fifty years &apos; time , when every fair-sized town has a university , doubtless interconnected by motorways , and everyone under twenty-five is a student , belonging to that union ( ideally the motorways would have a special lane for dons - a tutorway - so as to make these increasingly scarce men rapidly available to several universities ) . people like me , who spend their whole lives trying not merely to keep the facts within a subject separate ( answer quickly now , what are a full cadence , a half-cadence , a plagal cadence , a false cadence ? ) but to prevent the subjects themselves from merging into a comfortable academic dreamland , nothing to do with actual life , will be even worse off than we are now . how shall we possibly hold up our heads among all these students , on whom these universities will have acted like hypo , fixing for ever the clear photographic images , bright , separate , distinct , that we all had at the height of our powers , when we were sixteen ? ( hypo what ? hypochloride . hyposulphate ? hypocrite ? you see what I mean . ) there ought to be a word for us : obliviscents , people who forget . of course , everyone forgets ; but obliviscents are people who try not to , who worry about it . the other day the word Mardonius popped into my head from nowhere . I could n&apos;t for the life of me remember whether he was Greek or Persian , although I could remember writing an essay about him at school . but surely it is n&apos;t all or nothing , must we admit that all that effort is as if it had never been ? was it not something , at least , to know he was B.C , and not , for instance , a Roman ? so I clung to this shadowy Mardonius , simultaneously a hard , noble Greek soldier and a soft , curling-lipped Persian tyrant ; bearded and clean-shaven ; on both sides at once , a faint ghost-Mardonius in the sky ; a potentiality , only half-real . 