Dr Kenneth Mole
 |
|
Dr Kenneth Mole is not your average pensioner. As he sits reading in his comfortable chair at his beautiful Dorset home, this retired GP seems like any other mature gentleman of Middle England. However, behind this tranquil scene of an intellectual man in the autumn of his years lies the story of a brave man of war . . . "I was born in China a long, long time ago. With the normal genius of childhood, I spoke fluent Chinese there. After school in England I went to Oxford as a classical scholar at New College and delved into philosophy until rudely interrupted by World War II. So I added grown-up words to my buried Chinese vocabulary and worked for MI6 in Japanese-occupied China. My half-Chinese spy-boss and I had some incredible luck which helped the US navy to sink most of the Japanese fleet at the Battle of Leyte Gulf, said to have been the greatest sea battle in history. "After outwitting the Japs in the Pacific, the return to Philosophy at Oxford did seem just a bit tame. I moved to St Mary's Hospital in London, where I had more incredible luck: I persuaded the loveliest nurse there to marry me. As a medical student, baffled by the arcane subject electrocardiography, I published a Child's Guide to it. It was gratifying to see eminent specialists on Grand Ward Rounds taking sneaking peeks at it when they thought no-one was looking. "To qualify for the degree in Midwifery, I worked in the slums of Dublin, where I saw enough to know that 'Angela's Ashes' must be a pale understatement of what went on in Limerick. I then became a GP in London, where I had NHS patients such as a plumber in Buckingham Palace who had lurid tales of royal noises he heard in royal lavatories, and private patients such as Terry-Thomas whose throat I could examine just by looking through the gap in his front teeth. "After retirement to Dorset, life as a village organist was insufficiently demanding, so I acquired a computer. No longer an adolescent, I had difficulties, and my efforts to solve them, as with my Child's Guide to Electrocardiography, resulted in a guide for others." Despite his intelligence and diligence, as demonstrated during the War, Dr Mole found his new Windows PC most baffling. How could something which most children find simple and "obvious" be so complex to such a seasoned mind? The various (expensive) 'beginners' guides were of little or no use to Dr Mole - they all presume that one knows the basics, such as how to turn the machine on in the first place and how to use a mouse, so he decided to write one of his own. Easy PC is possibly the only book available which explains everything a complete beginner needs to get started on his first computer and bridges the gap between computer-literate children and their technophobic parents, or even grandparents. Dr Kenneth Mole is the author of: |
