When it's best to leave things alone

Occasionally we all tweak stuff to make them seem better. Car enthusiasts tinker under the bonnet until they get the fuel and air mixture just right in the carburettor, football managers shuffle the team around by way of rotation and I try to improve this blog site so that it is not only aesthetically pleasing to the eye (I hope!) but also so that it is easily navigable for visitors to view the pages and posts.

But there comes a time when a little too much tinkering can be the wrong approach. I remember just a couple of years ago, I was in discussion with Jerry Dowlen about book writing and how authors and writers tend to tinker with what they have written, yet still not be happy with the final, final, final version of their manuscript. Both Jerry and I admitted that we, too, tinker in that way when writing a book.

Not only that but, when I was a lot younger and I bought cars for £15 or £25 a pop, I always tinkered under the bonnet. It was a case of having to, because old cars then that are nowadays seen as valuable classics tended to break down often, especially if you bought them for peanuts. Of course, everything was relative back then, financially speaking. A quid went a long way in my youth — I remember when we could buy a round of 5 pints in a pub and still get 10p change from a pound note... yep, 18p a pint! — but what can you buy for that nowadays? Even a three pack of Turkish Delight now costs nearer to two quid than the £1 it cost this time last year.

A couple of days ago, I found out that the menu on the mobile phone version of this blog site was messing about. In fact, it was totally 'FUBB', as we used to say (I can't write out fully what that means as it could easily offend those of a tender disposition). So, yesterday (as I type this), I set about trying to restore normality to the moby version of this site. It appeared that the desktop and tablet versions were unaffected. It took me, on and off, most of the day and into the evening before I got it right.

Then this morning I went to try and improve on it... and nearly wrecked everything. Luckily, I had copied all of the coding that I was about to mess with and saved it. Not only did I mess up the mobile version again for a short while but I also managed to screw up the desktop and tablet versions too. Fortunately, it was a case of overwriting the new code with the old code, which restored what I had corrected yesterday. 

Yes, I should have left well alone while I was ahead but, how many of us actually do settle for what we've already got?

Trevor Mulligan