In Praise of the Printed Page, Books

Books, famously, furnish a room.  Especially a library.  Despite the rise and rise of the eReader, the tablet and the audiobook, hardback and paperback books continue to be popular, sold in bookshops, on the high street.  It’s like three endangered species banded together to buck the trend.

The conventional book is superior to its electronic bastard offspring in a number of ways.

Firstly, a book is in and of itself a precious object, especially if you are paying full whack for a hardback.  It’s something that makes you happy to buy it, happy to read it and then happy to own it.  Because books are decorative, as stated above.

It is well known that the right sort of vintage Penguin (book, not animal or biscuit) jutting jauntily from your pocket can attract the right sort of romantic partner, that is, the sort of romantic partner who knows that anyone with a Penguin edition of ‘The 39 Steps’ or ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles’ is exactly the sort of chap or chappess with whom a romantic fling would be just the thing.  It if further known that a small stack of the right sort of reading material by the bedside is an indicator of good character and conducive to frolics and a good night’s sleep in exactly the same way that a collection of soft toys in the bedroom is not.  We then progress to a decent bookshelf, bookcase and, finally if you are fortunate enough to have the space, the means and the tolerant partner, a room one can designate a ‘study’ or, if you are exceptionally fortunate, a ‘library’.

The difference between a study and a library is a narrow one.  Broadly, a study has books and a desk and a sensible chair with a stiff back.  Captain’s chairs are permitted, although the rule of ownership is not unlike the rules permitting one to play international rugby for a particular country, one must have a seafarer in the immediate family, or one must have been a seafarer for a number of years.  Whereas a library has a table, usually cluttered with books, and a comfortable chair near a good light source that can be used for reading, or dimmed for short or even extended periods of contemplation.  The other main difference is that a library will have 2/3 more decanters of booze available.

Studies are, increasingly, in the news.  Literally.  No news programme it would appear is complete without a video link interview with an expert in something, or at least with somebody who has a tweed jacket and some strong opinions.  In such cases, the person speaking from their home increasingly takes pains to ensure that the backdrop is not of a microwave and a fridge with a shopping list stuck to it, the contents of which would make one doubt the value of any opinion somebody who actively purchases ‘Nutella’ might espouse.  Instead, they ensure that their background is bookish.

If the interviewee is an academic, then they will ensure that the only book not conventionally shelved, but rather with the front cover prominently displayed, is their latest work.  If they are a writer then the shelves will display their collected works, including translations.  If they are a politician then political biographies are the thing, Churchill for tories, Bevan for Labour, Stalin for the Labour front bench.  Multiple biographies of Hitler are permitted for military historians only, anyone who owns more than three biographies of Hitler and does not teach history at a decent Polytechnic or educationally equivalent establishment should be placed on some sort of watch list.

Given the news is pretty ghastly, the only time one really needs to flip it to HD is to either try to work out if Fiona Bruce has had some more work done, or to decode the bookcase of an interviewee, and then judge them.

We have lost album artwork and sleeve notes to the digital download, thankfully we still have the art of the book cover, although famously that’s no way of judging a book.

Having the book’s title visible is, however, an excellent way of judging who, and who not, to sit next to on public transport.

I like the sound of that

Short version:  go here, it’s great!

http://www.ambient-mixer.com/

What environment do readers like to read in?  Well, apparently there are a few requirements.  Adequate lighting, obviously, because anyone who has a book that illuminates itself should properly be briefly illuminated themselves, during their incineration as a witch.  A comfy chair, and by this I mean chair in its wider sense, which is something roughly the size of a sofa, with a footstool for raising feet (essential to avoid DVT during prolonged reading bouts) and a couple of blankets.  That’s the basics and I think we can all agree that it’s a contravention of your human rights not to have at least that.  Further research though has revealed certain specific acoustic requirements which, perhaps surprisingly, are as far from ‘sussssshhhhhh’ and silence as can be.

A gentle background murmur appears to be desirable, composed of three elements and muted by very particular acoustic countermeasures.

Firstly, rain pattering against the window. Not necessarily full on ‘oh my Christ is the lighthouse going over I’ve not seen a storm like this since 1806?’ rain, just enough rain to make you glad that you are a) inside and b) not required to water the garden tonight, freeing up essential reading time.

Secondly, a crackling fire.  That means a log fire.  Log fires crackle in a pleasing way.  Ever had a log fire?  Wonderful, log fires are more Bloke than punching a bull to death to save a baby from being gored.  You build the log fire, you light the log fire, you blow on the log fire, you poke the log fire, a lot, and you feed it logs.  You end the evening smelling pleasingly of wood smoke, like an upmarket ham.  Log fires are also excellent for developing and passing on Bloke Lore. Here’s a tip, always dry out the wood.  You may think ‘G&P, you massive arsehole, the wood will dry out on the fire, that’s one of the things fire is really good for’.  And you are right, but it will also mean you don’t get so much a pleasing crackle, more a succession of loud cracks that sound like the conclusion of a drug deal gone bad.  Not relaxing.

Thirdly, murmur.  Want total silence when you’re reading?  You do?  OK.  Go away, read ‘Salem’s Lot and come back and tell me you like to read in total silence.

(Waits).

You fouled yourself at the first unexpected noise, didn’t you?  No disgrace, but a gentle background hum of voices will assure you that you are not going to be devoured by vampires.

So, why is this not distracting?  Because it’s muted by the acoustic baffles that are thick curtains over the windows and, oh I don’t know, some sort of primitive arrangement of sound dampening produced by softening the lines of the walls by installing paper along them.  Bookshelves?  Well I guess that would work.

So, a desirable acoustic environment would appear to be a Common Room at Hogwarts, rather than the bus, train (sleeper trains excepted) or even the loo (say it ain’t so!).

So how can you take all this with you?  The answer to this, like so many questions about reading, cooking and porn, is found on the internet.  It would appear that people mix their own ambient environments to listen to whist reading.  And having dipped into a few, I have to confess to finding the entire thing wholly enchanting.

Upon initial listen, there are three favourites.  The ‘Gryffindor Common Room’, because why the hell not, ‘Storm on the Hogwarts Express’ because steam train, rain and well, steam train, and finally ‘Sherlock’s apartment’.  Point of order on the last one, Chandler, Monica et al lived in an ‘apartment’, Sherlock and John live in a flat, Holmes and Watson lived in Rooms.  But it’s so good, who cares.

Ambient soundscapes, they’re a thing. They were what made ‘Marathon’ such an immersive game and now they are like a 700 foot tall ice wall against the Shite Talkers and others who would pollute the audible environment when decent people just want to crack on with their reading on the train, bus or at the dinner table with their family.

Boxes of Delight

Red telephone boxes are as much a part of the national landscape, mental and physical, as power pylons or steeples, or at least they used to be.  They used to be a ubiquitous and pleasing feature of cities, towns, villages, hamlets, crossroads and random stretches of ‘road’ in places so rural you’d wonder that Christianity had reached that far, never mind telephony.

Originating in an age when it was far from the norm to have a telephone in the home unless your surname was ‘Bell’, or you were a character in a costume drama, the original function of these architectural and technological delights was to allow people to telephone other people.  But barely had the bright red paint dried before the role of these local landmarks evolved.

The first step in the evolution of the telephone box was its emergence as a dramatic character.  A person goes into a telephone box and rings another person.  So far, so normal.  But an empty telephone box with a ringing ‘phone?  That’s the start of the sort of plot only rivalled by somebody stepping off on to a deserted railway platform to be informed by a ‘suitably’ ‘characterful’ ‘station master’ that no train has stopped here for twenty years.

As more and more homes got more and more ‘phones, the telephone box moved from being the place you went to to make a telephone call to being the place that you went to to make a private telephone call (you could tell an adulterer in times past because they always had lots of loose change), ironic considering that they were constructed out of steel…and glass, and illuminated. 

As technology advanced, telephone boxes took on roles unconnected with calls, booty or otherwise.  The normal place for displaying business cards is, of course, the newsagents’ window, but thanks to the advancement in printing technology and in particular to business card printing machines being made available in service stations and other haunts of lorry drivers and travelling salesmen, and hence by extension to their service sector, prozzers were able to create professional looking business cards cheaply and in volume, and distribute them around telephone boxes.  Telephone boxes took on something of a festive atmosphere, if your idea of festive is a business-card blizzard of smutty invitations, as the interiors of telephone boxes began to look a little like top shelves, festooned with graphic graphics.  Accordingly, a trip to a red call box could resemble a visit to a red light district.

These temples of communication also provided other sorts of relief in times of extremis.  Many a chap, decent chaps, honest chaps, the sort of chap who would shudder to relieve themselves against a tree, well, an oak, well, a listed oak, would of an evening be profoundly glad to happen across a telephone box to answer not a ringing handset but the call of nature.

There was, of course, a protocol to be observed in such cases.  Firstly, one always avoided any tramp that might have taken up residence overnight in a traditional telephone box.  (BT (Bastard Telecom) modified the design of telephone boxes in the 80s, changing them into telephone ‘kiosks’ in a move which perfectly encapsulated a shift from a public service GPO monument to humanity that would serve not only as a tool of communication but shelter from the storm, to a profit-driven monster, putting into service a plexiglazz monstrosity that had a gap all the way around the bottom, presumably to allow the elements to penetrate and so discourage overnight guests.  Or possibly to provide adequate drainage.)  The protocols, famously illustrated by a small sign illustrated by none other than Quinten Blake that used to delight, inform and repulse in equal measure, were that if one was relieving oneself in a telephone box, one always faced away from any observer(s), and always held the handset firmly and confidently gripped in the unemployed hand.  Just a chap, making a call, and if you happen to notice that a chap has his chap (or indeed his penis) in his other hand, then any shocked observer could take comfort in the certainty that urinating is just about the least offensive thing that the occupant of the telephone box can be doing in such a pose.

The telephone box has so often doubled up as a crisis WC that rumour has it that in the days when telephone boxes had telephone directories in them (a forerunner of today’s telephone box libraries, though exclusively stocked with books with lots of characters and not much plot), serious thought was given to printing the directories on soft paper, possible perforated.

The rise in the increase of mobile ‘phone ownership coincided with a decline in courtesy to others and of inhibitions about sharing private details with total strangers.  People making a telephone call no longer sought a soundproof booth but instead favoured busy public transport or hitherto quiet and peaceful spots to make their telephone calls.

So it was that the telephone box fell into disuse.

As a telephone box.

They ceased making money because even though nobody was using them, they still had to be cleaned and occasionally de-tramped.  Slowly telephone boxes started to disappear, airbrushed out of the landscape.  (Sadly, not everyone thought to check to see if mobile ‘phone coverage extended to all the sites now marked not with a proud, glittering. Illuminated, slightly pee-smelling red box, but with a square of concrete.)

Of course, if there were any justice in the world, a succession of small plaques would be sunk into the otherwise anonymous concrete squares that, like the footsteps of telephony prehysteria, now dot the land.  A small plaque to commemorate a huge event, for instance that such-and-such a person ‘phoned their mother and father to inform them they had become grandparents from this site in 1965; that Debbi Broke Up With Darren using this ‘phone box in 1984, that in the same year, Darren confirmed to Debbi’s best friend Mandy that Debbi was a right slag anyway, and did Mandy want to go to out with him? And that in 1993, a profoundly relieved Jeff profoundly relieved himself on this very site.

The ‘problem’ with traditional red telephone boxes is that they have more individual panes of glass in them than the average cathedral, and so are devilish hard to clean, even if not be-tramped.  Naturally, as soon as Bloody Terrible stopped cleansing telephone receivers and started cleansing the landscape of character, the nation revolted.  Anyone who produced rural postcards of a sheep standing by a dry stone wall next to a red telephone box realised that sheep and stone alone just don’t do it.  The middle class mobilised.  In 4x4s.

As a result, many villages have successfully held on to their red telephone boxes (usually the same places that have held on to village greens).  Of course, they may not have managed to hold on to their indigenous population or village youth that has been priced out of the place by second home buyers, but at least the centre of the village still has its crimson totem to modernity.

Now though, more than ever, we know that telephone boxes can fulfil duel functions.

Telephone boxes have, famously, become village libraries, a phenomenon that started in 1994 when a lady in Masham left three copies of Catherine Cookson on a shelf by mistake, started a national trend, and has been too embarrassed to ask for them back since.

And there are yet more modern social uses.  Because it’s not just the internet that’s slow in rural areas. Ambulance response times being what they are in the countryside, there’s been a couple of reactions.  The first is a very practical approach to dealing with any accident involving threshing machinery.  Following the screams and panicked shut down, people pack anything still twitching in frozen peas and then hey ho for the nearest hospital.  Everyone then gathers at the local pub to wait for an update on successful re-attachment.  The first time anyone mentions ‘micro-surgery’ it is the law that somebody must say ‘was it his cock that got cut off’?  Followed by ‘I don’t make the rules’.

The second reaction is the most modern incarnation.  Village defibrillator.

On the face of it, this is a great idea.  With more and more people having more and more unrealistic expectations of their ability to do stuff, like running marathons, staying upright on a bar stool or enduring another fucking day on public transport, it’s a wonder that everyone doesn’t carry around their own defibrillator, like an evacuee carrying around a box on a piece of string that he or she imagines contains a gas mask bust in fact only contains an apologetic note from their mum explaining that their mask has in fact been sold for gin.

Defibrillators are appearing in more and more places.  Like pubs.  And surely that can’t be healthy.  Naturally, if a beloved boozer keels over and pegs it half way down a pint of what the landlord laughingly refers to as his best, then this will lead not just to blokes reading about the demise thinking ‘that’s the way to go’, or indeed the regulars all doing the sort of mental calculation that would boggle Turing to determine when would be the decent time to take up residence on Fatty’s recently vacated bar stool.  It leads to a few charity nights and the proud purchase of a defibrillator for the pub.  Of course, it’s only a short jolt to think that once the locals work out that the thing is rechargeable, they can incorporate it into their evening with, in descending order of idiocy, options including: 1) answering pub quiz questions after having paddles applied to both temples and being ‘zapped’, 2) playing ‘how high can you go’ on the voltage charge, noting that some wag has written ‘Frankenstein’ on one of the settings; 3) playing ‘Jason Statham’ by trying to improvise an anti-bad guy weapon and propel other people across the room by paddling their nipples with electricity; 4) playing doctor by bellowing ‘clear’ and then zapping an unsuspecting drinker in the arse and, of course, the winner, 5) the ‘electric boogie’: suck a lime, tequila shot, lick salt off of a live paddle.

But the latest incarnation of the telephone box as a home for the village defibrillator is something else.  Especially when you consider that only people trained in the use of the defibrillator may use it.  That’s probably a good thing, the last thing you need to see is some idiot spitting on some paddles for improved connectivity and electrocuting himself.

However.  Village life is interesting.  It is easy to start an argument (I refuse to use the term feud, we’re not, as Ross Kemp remarked in ‘Ultimate Force’, Americans) in an English village.  Defibrillators are expensive kit, so presumably only accessed by trained community members, these are the people you do not want to piss off, especially if you are lardy.  So.  It’s important to keep those keymasters trained to use the defibrillator and trusted with a key to its cabinet, on side.  The last thing you need to do if you like your beer, fags and lining your arteries with cheese is to forget to return those pinking shears you borrowed off the stuck up bloke who lives in ‘the Old Rectory’ and which you secretly used to trim your toenails.

It’s right that what was once an electronically powered beating heart of the village should once again be an electronically powered beating heart restarter of the village.

As to what’s next for the village telephone box?  It’s either going to be the recharging point, take off and landing pad for the village delivery drone, or home to the village three dee printer that will print your grocery order for you using protein goo and dye.

And, of course, it’s the perfect shape to operate as the village teleport kiosk once that technology is perfected, it’s even got the dial mechanism to enter the co-ordinates.

Book Clubs

How ironic that what is for most a solitary occupation should give rise to social occasions in the form of the book club.

For most people, reading is a solitary occupation.  There are exceptions.  The bed time story between parent and child, the story time in school or library between CRB checked adult and children, or the public reading between author and crowd he wishes were younger, hipper and more attractive or she wishes were not so bloody condescending to women writers.

Of course there is always that moment when you see somebody else reading the same book as you on public transport and share either a nod, a knowing glance, or bodily fluids, depending on just how racy the book in question is., another delightful social convention the Kindle is killing off until they come up with one with a back screen that shows the cover of whatever you’re reading.

Certain books are exempt from the ‘Oh, you’re reading that too?’ moment.  These are Harry Potter books and anything by John Grisham.  The same goes for any book duplicated poolside or on the beach.  Any book from the Song of Ice and Fire cycle is actually fair game, especially if the other person is behind you in their reading, allowing you to sharply draw breath when they mention their favourite character.

There are, of course, certain books that essentially are a public service announcement.  Don’t strike up a conversation with any woman reading ’50 shades of grey’ unless you really enjoy hearing about unhappy relationships.  If you see anyone reading ‘Catcher in the Rye’ they may not be a psycho, but can you really take that chance?  Oddly, anyone reading ‘American Psycho’ is probably normal, but would rather read than talk to you so is best left alone.

Where we read is in our own space, in our own head.  If we want company, we do the voices of the characters in our head while we read.  Mostly, we don’t.

On the one hand then, the very existence of book clubs is surprising.  Everyone actually getting organised enough to read the same book at the same time?  Amazing.  What’s more, that this should happen in England?  A place where usually nobody ventures a critical opinion about anything, unless it’s a tut!  Newspaper review supplements should change their star ratings to a tut/star rating system.  If a book is OK, it gets a star, if it’s amazing, it gets five stars.  But if it’s awful, it gets a tut, and if it’s really awful, it gets five tuts.

On the other hand, anyone who finishes a book immediately wants to tell people about it.  It doesn’t matter if it’s a novel, a travelogue or ‘Amazing Buns In Just Five Weeks’, give somebody a glass of white wine and a voulevont and they will spit damp crumbs at you in their enthusiasm to communicate just how good the latest Patricia Cornwall is.

Haven’t read it?

Doesn’t matter, it’s like a fucking abridged audiobook, you’ll get the potted plot in three minutes, followed by thirty minutes of just how relevant the book was to the reader.  Bonus material can include, but is not limited to, who should play what roles in any movie adaptation.

The book club formalises this process.  If it’s a crap club, then everyone talks books for five minutes before talking about soft furnishings.  If it’s a good one, then everyone maintains a veneer of respectability for about five minutes before acrimony occurs.

Because the English, when forced to read the same book, can have wildly different opinions, and that’s what makes book club so much fun.  That and alcohol (my book club meets in a pub).

And it is a great social occasion.  You get to try out new skills, like back-pedalling from the brink of social mortification after you open with ‘it was shit and anyone who liked it is a peado’, only to find yourself in a minority and secretly starting to wonder if the rest of the group are just a little bit thick, or peados.

No book club in your area?  Start one.  You get to choose the first book!  I recommend ‘American Psycho’.