Christmas story

A story set in the future:

The Difference Between a Kiss and a Cannon

A Christmas story/play

By Thom Punton

It’s winter now but inside it’s warm. A couple in advancing years sit in their living room on a December evening. Dinner has been eaten and now, with the television and heating on, they sit, one on the sofa, one on the old padded chair, resting their fattening work-tired bodies like most days. The routine quietens any stirrings of panic in their souls. It’s a comfortable situation.

The television displays the technicolor balls and baize of the UK snooker championship, now entering the quarter-final stage. The lady half of the couple has learnt to endure the televisual presence of this colourful 'sport' when it comes around. At first it seemed to her the most boring thing imaginable but now she appreciates its calming influence - an island in a sea of loud, insistent broadcasting.

Enhancing the post-prandial contentment is a faint feeling of specialness and expected excitement. It is Christmas. And it changes the despair of Winter into something hopeful for a while.

There is a Christmas tree over there by the window adornèd with homemade stuffed monsters and foil stars, wrapped with light bulbs, messy and blinking in forced good spirit. There is an old-school New Testament chocolateless advent calendar on the mantelpiece. The man half of the couple likes the story revealed piecemeal throughout the month. He doubts its divine origin, but there is always space for a little magic, especially at this time of the year.

The two snooker players on the television are struggling to settle in the first frame of their quarterfinal. Both are missing easy pots. Neither will settle until they have their first frame on the board.

The husband is happy to watch patiently as the balls interact with their human agents. The wife knits scarves for new nephews, glancing between stitches and snooker. The commentators are describing the action in a language developed for this unique environment. One of them, Dennis Taylor, says: ‘that was a superb cannon he played there.’

The woman asks her husband, ‘what’s the difference between a kiss and a cannon?’

He considers.

‘You know, I’m not really sure. I’ve never been able to work it out. It might be that a cannon is er more of a direct hit than a kiss. A kiss is just a glancing blow, a cannon is more direct. Or maybe a kiss is unintentional.’

He had always thought it would be amusing to say ‘that’s a lovely kiss,’ like the snooker commentators do, after his wife has kissed him, but it would probably spoil the moment.

‘But that cannon wasn’t very direct.’

‘Yeah I don’t know. Maybe they both mean the same thing. Or it might be that a cannon is when the cue ball hits another ball after the object ball. They always say ‘he’ll be cannoning into the pack of reds here.’ Yeah I think that’s probably it.’

‘Oh OK.’

There is a knock at the door.

‘Who could that be?’ she asks, ‘at this time?’

‘I don’t bloody know. I’ll go and find out, shall I?’

He says this in jest, not irritation, as he rises from the chair with a groan of effort, so ensconced in the chair was he, so advanced in age are his rusty joints.

At the door is a man. He is wearing a big long tweedy coat somewhere between an expensive businessman’s coat and a tramp’s. On his head is a hat with furry flaps like the kids wear, and though they are as yet unnoticed, there are Nike trainers on his feet.

‘Hello,’ the visitor says, ‘are you Mr. Benjamin Alstow?’

‘Yes I am.’

‘Hello, sorry to bother you at this time in the evening. My name’s Joe. I am here on behalf of an experimental council tax initiative. May I come in and discuss it with you?’

Mr. Alstow is immediately suspicious.

He has heard of conmen who smooth talk their way into people’s homes and then refuse to leave until they have swindled some money out of them with passive threats like ‘your home will fall down unless you buy my insurance’.

‘Can I see some ID?’

‘Oh yes, of course.’

The taxman gladly digs into his bag and produces a leather ID holster showing a believable council representative card. His name is Joe Barrett. There’s his picture all smily and trustworthy. Seems like it isn’t a fake.

‘Are we in trouble?’

‘Oh no. No. Well. It’s rather complicated. It might be best if I come in out of the cold and discuss it with you and your wife. Is your wife in?’

‘Well, yes, yes she is. OK, come in. Sorry.’

‘Thank you.’

Ben leads the council representative into his home, down the wallpapered hallway and through the door on the right.

‘Estella, there’s a man here from the council to speak with us.’

She is slightly surprised by this intrusion and quickly tries to switch from the comfort of privacy to a more public behavioural subset.

Ben offers Joe a cup of tea but he declines with thanks. He takes a seat on the sofa next to Estella who shuffles up to make room. Ben sits back in his armchair.

‘Who’s winning?’ Joe asks, referring to the snooker. It’s unclear whether he’s genuinely interested or not.

Ben answers: ‘It’s only just started.’

‘OK, well, I’m sorry to disturb you both. Hello Mrs. Alstow, I’m Joe and as I told your husband, I’m here on behalf of a, shall-we-say, ‘experimental’ tax-assessment initiative. This is the first town we have tried it in.'

Mrs. Alstow: Do we have to pay more tax?

Joe: Well, it’s complicated. Let me explain.

Mrs. Alstow: Cos we already pay enough tax without another expensive bureaucratic thing. What is it? A QUANGO?

Joe: Well in fact Mrs. Alstow you might be entitled to a rebate. Let me explain. A new independent branch of the council has been created. It’s called S.A.M.T.A, the Seasonal Association for Morality-based Tax Assessment. The idea is that every year, around Christmas, the time of the year when we all need that little bit of extra cash, every family will have the chance to recoup some of their tax payments and as the name suggests,

(He is talking here as if he is saying lines, as if he has said all this many times before.)

SAMTA takes personal morality into account, things like your contribution to the local community, criminal records, how quickly you pay your bills or rent, and so on and also, to give us an even clearer picture of a person’s relative morality, we use data from the internet, social media for instance. We have access to all the information you have made public, and with this we can often discover if you have made any immoral decisions over the last year. The evidence obtained from this information is obviously mostly irrelevant. It would make it a lot easier if we could just read your emails! But sometimes we CAN piece together whether anything immoral has been done, just like detectives. Now, I realise you might think of this as an invasion of your privacy but we only have access to what you have voluntarily made public. And we use this information to assess where you are on the morality scale of your area. If you are above average you will be granted a tax rebate and if you are below average you will be charged a supplementary fee.

Mrs. Alstow: Is this legal?

Joe: Oh yes of course. And I must emphasise that this is only a trial. It hasn’t been decided if it’s going to be tried on a national scale yet. We’re just going to see how this goes and if it works, there will probably be a national vote. But this is just the trial.

Mr. Alstow: Doesn’t seem right to me.

Mrs. Alstow: I think it sounds good. If you don’t do anything wrong, you’ll be rewarded for it. And we’re good people, I think we’re above average morality, don’t you think?

Mr. Alstow: Oh yes, of course. It’s just intrusive. It’s too controlling if you ask me.

Joe: Well, here’s the thing, Mr. Alstow, as this is just a trial, you can decide whether or not you want to know the results of your assessment. If you’re above average morality, you’ll receive a rebate and if you’re below, you’ll have to pay the charge I’m afraid, but it’s completely up to you.

Mrs. Alstow: Well, let’s do it, we haven’t got anything to hide.

Mr. Alstow: I’m not so sure.

Mrs. Alstow: You don’t have anything to hide, do you, Ben?

Mr. Alstow: No, of course not, Stella, of course not.

He realises his reluctance to take part might reflect badly on him.

Mr. Alstow (to Joe): Can we have some time to think about this?

Joe: I’m afraid I have to have an answer now, or I’ll just put you down as a no. If you like I can come back in five minutes, give you a bit of time to talk it over?

Mr. Alstow: Yes please, that would be good.

The taxman gets up, says ‘I’ll see you in a bit,’ and goes outside to smoke a cigarette.

Mr. Alstow has a look of fear in his eyes.

‘Stella, this man is a fraud. He’s just after our money, even if he makes it seem like we’re gonna get a tax rebate, he’ll make us sign something, take our bank details and. Rob. Us. Blind. I’ve seen these things on the TV. Just because he makes it all seem believable, with his ID card, and long words, that doesn’t mean it’s not fake, it just means he’s put a lot of effort into fooling people. Did you see his shoes? Christ, did you see his eyes?! He’s an addict, I’m sure of it.

Mrs. Alstow (placatorily): Ben, you’re not making sense. You’re being paranoid. You even saw his ID! It’s obviously just his job. I don’t think we’ve got anything to lose.

Mr. Alstow (desperate squeak): Nothing to lose!? He’ll take our money! I’m going to call the police. Why didn’t we get a letter? Why didn’t we get a phone call? Does this not all seem very strange to you?

Mrs. Alstow (with great dreaming hope): I just, don’t you think it would be so nice if people like us, people who never break the law, never do anything wrong, could get something as a reward for our efforts? And a little extra cash would be so nice for Christmas, we could have the heating on for as long as we want, we could buy luxury mince pies.

Mr. Alstow: He’s a fraud, I’m sure of it. I’m calling the police.

Mrs. Alstow: No! Don’t be so paranoid.

(There is a knock at the door.)

Mrs. Alstow: He’s back. Look let’s just see how it goes. If it looks dodgy, then we’ll back out.

Mr. Alstow: I don’t like this.

Mrs. Alstow is taking control of the situation. She leaves the living room, hardly listening to her husband’s answer and she goes to let Joe, the man from SAMTA back in the house.

Joe: So, have you made your decision?

Mrs. Alstow: Yes, we’d like to see the results of our assessment.

Joe: Wonderful, let’s have a look then.

He puts his bag on the coffee table and slides out a folder and rummages around in it. Mr Alstow gets up, ‘are you sure you don’t want anything to drink, Joe? How about a brandy?’

Joe: Oh, that would be nice, thank you.

Mr. Alstow goes to the table behind the sofa, which has a big brandy bottle on it and some small crystal tumblers. Joe is still sorting through papers. Mr. Alstow weighs the brandy bottle in his hands. It is still almost full. Its wide rounded bottom is smooth heavy glass. He knows what he must do and he knows it must be done now without delay, and so like a stealth ninja, he manoeuvres the bottle upended and swings it back, his teeth digging into his bottom lip in determination and then, BÜH!, hits the fraudster in the side of the head.

It’s difficult to hit someone hard enough to knock them out, but not so hard that it kills them. Mr. Alstow had a little experience in knocking people out and was confident he could get it just right. As his victim slumps towards Mrs. Alstow on the sofa, it’s clear he had at least knocked him out. Hopefully he isn’t dead.

Mrs. Alstow is shocked into silence as she avoids the body slumping her way.

‘What the HECK are you doing!?’, she finally shouts, ‘you better bloody well hope you haven’t killed him. I can’t believe you did that. You might have given him brain damage. At least. Oh God.’

(Snooker continues unempathetic in the background.)

Mr. Alstow is calmly phoning the police as she rants, telling them he has apprehended an intruder in his house. He has regrettably knocked him unconscious with a brandy bottle. Could they please hurry round before he wakes up?

And then he tries to calm his wife down:

‘Stella calm down. I’m sorry I had to do this, but I just didn’t trust him. He’s a no-good fraudster, he needs to be caught and put in jail.’

They both go over to the unconscious body. Mr. Alstow lifts an eyelid. The eye is rolled up as far as it will go.

Mrs. Alstow: Oh God, what if he wakes up? What’re we going to do then?

Mr. Alstow: I’ll tie his hands up. Have we got rope or wire or anything? I know…

He’s goes out of the room and gets some old broken guitar leads and ties the hands and feet of the hostage together as tight as he can.

Mrs. Alstow: You better not have killed him, Ben.

Mr. Alstow: I haven’t killed him. Look, he’s hardly bleeding.

Mrs. Alstow: Yes he is, look, it’s all on the sofa. Bloody hell. This is a bloody awful mess.

Mr. Alstow goes to console his wife.

‘Look, it’s all going to be fine. The police will sort it out. Even if he is who he says he is, they won’t arrest me, it was just self-defence. Maybe he is who he says he is, but that wasn’t a risk I was prepared to take. I had to ensure our safety.’

Mrs. Alstow (looking sorrowfully at the unconscious man): I just don’t think he seemed like the kind of man who would rob us.

Mr. Alstow: That’s what he wants you to think.

PAUSE

Mrs. Alstow: When are the police going to get here? Did you call them?

Mr. Alstow: Yes, they’ll be here any minute.

PAUSE

Mrs. Alstow: Do you think if he is really part of that tax assessment thing, we’ll still get our money?

Mr. Alstow: Stella, I think we should forget about that.

Mrs. Alstow (going to the papers on the coffee table): I wonder how much we would’ve got.

Mr. Alstow: I don’t think we should look at that.

Mrs. Alstow: Why not? What have you done? Have you got something to hide? Is that why you clonked him with the brandy bottle? Is that why you’re so scared? What have you done?

Mr. Alstow: Nothing! I haven’t done anything! Have a look if you must.

She goes to have a look, riffles through until she finds the right page.

Mrs. Alstow: Here we are. It says we have to pay 50 quid. We’re not getting anything. We’ve got to pay 50 quid extra! But we haven’t done anything wrong! Well, I haven’t anyway. It must be you.

Mr. Alstow: No, look, Stella, I promise I haven’t done anything wrong, that’s just their scam, isn’t it, no one gets any money because it’s all a fraud.

Mrs. Alstow is silent and angry.

Mr. Alstow: Besides how do I know you haven’t done something?

Mrs. Alstow (crescendoing with rage): How dare you!

Mr. Alstow: Well you’re accusing me!

Mrs. Alstow: Yeah, that’s because I know I haven’t done anything wrong.

Mr. Alstow: Look, you have to trust me. This thing is a fraud and when the police come and we sort this all out, then you’ll see.

She is angry. She doesn’t trust him.

Mrs. Alstow: I’m going upstairs. You can sort this mess out. I’ve had enough.

She does as she has threatened and goes upstairs. Mr Alstow is left with his hostage tied up on the floor. He looks down at him and notices his eyes are open. Joe, the hostage is awake. There is fear in those open eyes.

Mr. Alstow: Oh good. You’ve woken up.

Paper books I have bought this last month or so

'Gold' by Dan Rhodes and 'This is Life' by Dan Rhodes.

These are particularly noteworthy. I bought these in a charity shop in the New Forest somewhere and seeing as we we had planned to do a lot of walking, I didn't want to be carrying the weight of these books around with me, so I sent them to myself in the post and they were waiting for me when I got back from holiday. I also sent a Mystery Jets CD that I had bought in the same charity shop. I thought this was all a great success for the fun of obsolescent media. ?.

On the various online shops they have tried to replicate the browsing experience of going into an actual shop. Ebay/Amazon = online non-charity version of charity shops. They have similar items, items previous people have bought when they bought your chosen item. They show the most popular item in that category, but they can never replicate the efficiency of the information exchange in a real shop. 

The resolution of the pixels is much higher in real life and much more visual information can be displayed.

I read 'Gold' by Dan Rhodes yesterday. I spent most of it thinking it was not a good book. Only at the end could I see what a pleasing whole it actually was.

'The Book of Dave' by Will Self.

I had read in the newspaper that Will Self's next book was probably going to be longlisted for the Booker Prize. I went into City Books and asked them if they had it. It wasn't out yet but I bought another one, 'The Book of Dave', as recommended by the lady in the shop.

I've started reading it. It's bold and experimental and challenging, and a bit like a sci-fi London Ulysses. In some ways. In an interview, Will Self said he was always frustrated with how unchallenging post-modern literature can be. I would tend to agree with him, especially judging by the last few Booker Prize shortlists. He might be my new favourite contemporary author.

'Swamplandia' by Karen Russell.

This was also bought at City Books on the same occasion at the above book. I think it's important to support independent book shops (especially seeing as Amazon cheat their taxes) and this must be the best one in Brighton. They always have signings and talks, (last year I got a book signed by Harry Hill there as a Christmas present for my dad) and the people in there are always helpful and interested in talking about books.

I mainly bought this book because of the name. I do like exclamation marks. And made up words. It was a good book, certainly imaginative, certainly a new kind of world, but it wasn't as unconventional as I would have liked and I didn't like the ending.

'Food in England' by Dorothy Hartley.

Also built in City Books. I decided to treat myself after Ed had enthusiastically recommended it to me. It's a big comprehensive bible of England's pre-fifties food history, with lots of tender illustrations by the author. There's so much detail in it, I think after reading it you'd be able to imagine exactly what it would be like to eat in the past. Maybe you could write a novel about it, or a play, or a film.

'Collins Nature Guide to Trees of Britain & Europe' and 'Collins Nature Guide to Wild Flowers of Britain & Europe'.

Both bought in the New Forest Wildlife Centre. Half price. They are have  efficient categorisations.

If anyone wants to borrow 'Gold' or 'Swamplandia' let me know.

The total weight of all these books is 2.368kg.

Echoes of Tolkein in the opening ceremony of the Olympics

The Opening Ceremony of the Olympics on Friday night was spectacular and exciting, dark and bemusing. The story of Britain's history that made up most of the first part of the ceremony was particularly interesting and dark.

It seemed as if Danny Boyle had borrowed the overarching narrative of J.R.R. Tolkein's Lord of the Rings: the immense stage in the centre of the stadium began as an idyllic grassy countryside landscape with country folk dancing around maypoles and playing cricket. It had the peaceful hilly greenery of the Shire in Tolkein's Middle Earth. Even the people looked like hobbits from our zoomed out perspective.

As described in the words of the hymn, 'Jerusalem', which was played numerous times and in various forms during the ceremony, this 'green and pleasant land' was overtaken by the 'dark satanic mills' of the Industrial Revolution. It looked just like Mordor.

It was a horrible transformation, from the peace of the countryside to the pollution of industry. Was Danny Boyle expressing a Neo-Luddite, pixelled-wheels-type statement here, just like Tolkein was in the Lord of the Rings? In the Lord of the Rings, however, the evil of dark industry is destroyed and the countryside restored, whereas in the Olympic opening ceremony, the industry, though it is portrayed at first as having negative connotations, is a necessary evil, and leads to all the marvellous technologies of the 21st century. 

After the belching factories had destroyed the countryside greenery, Boyle focussed on the small stories of people who now live in the world produced by this industry; the mother driving her children home to their modern house; the teenagers in the discos, their texting. The polluting greed of the industrial revolution was worth it for our modern world and all its technological complexities. The dark mills were not satanic after all. Or Satan wasn't so bad after all.

The massive fiery Olympic rings looked like the One Ring of Tolkein mythology that, instead of being destroyed in Mount Doom, has been multiplied into five and has become even more powerful, and perhaps isn't as evil as we thought it was. 

Tom Gauld illustration

This cartoon was in the Guardian book review yesterday.

One cherry change

I didn’t have time to have breakfast comfortably before I went to work so I decided to pick up some on the way.

At the station I went into Marks and Spencers and bought a smoothie. The boy who served me said whatever he said to me in a kooky and informal, mock-American kind of way. I hardly responded, hardly looked in his eyes. I said I didn’t want a receipt.

Next I went to get some blood oranges from the fruit stall. I hadn't been served by this man before, even though I frequent this blood orange vendor. I have spoken to whom I think owns the stall before, a husky bearded cockney; he foists free samples of his wares upon all the passers-by. I always decline the offer because I have usually just cleaned my teeth after the breakfast I usually have before I leave for work. 

Today as I approach the blood oranges I acknowledge to myself the possibility of accepting the free sample due to lack of dental mintation. It not being Samson this time, I supposed the chance of free sample was diminished. I helped myself to his blood oranges and said I didn’t need a bag and gave the new boy my money: £1.50 – a pound coin, 2 20p’s and 2 5p’s. He said to me, with a knowing air of faint humour, ‘here is your change’ and he gave me a cherry. I was naturally delighted, thanked him to his eyes and then I turned away and off to get some coffee.

The cherry was still in my mouth and I was extracting the stone with my indelicate fingers as the Australian coffee vendor, one of three, asked if he could be of my service. I said a flat white please. He passed the message down the line and I got a stamp on my card. 

The girl in front of me asked if she could have some sweeteners for her coffee, she was wearing a big white furry woollen hat and was wrapped up in black clothing. I noticed her glittering ear studs. Her face was mild and eastern European. The coffee vendor found the sweetener dispenser and asked her how many? One? She said four. He obliged and exchanged a perplexed look with my smile. But it wasn’t as simple as just perplexion, no, he seemed embarrassed, put out and his composure did not immediately return to him as you might have expected it to, no, it lingered, as if he didn’t know how to handle the awkwardness of someone wanting 4 sweeteners in her coffee. She was completely oblivious to this, involved in her coffee, in stirring it, perhaps moody in the morning, not willing to give anyone the chance of any kind of joke perplexion.

And then I walked away and the scene ended.

The future according to David Byrne in the eighties

These are the lyrics to David Byrne's song 'In the Future' from the album 'The Knee Plays' which was the soundtrack to an opera:

In the Future

In the future everyone will have the same haircut and the same clothes.
In the future everyone will be very fat from the starchy diet..
In the future everyone will be very thin from not having enough to eat..
In the future it will be next to impossible to tell girls from boys, even in bed.
In the future men will be "super-masculine" and women will be "ultra-feminine."
In the future half of us will be "mentally ill."
In the future there will be no religion or spiritualism of any sort.
In the future the "psychic arts" will be put to practical use.
In the future we will not think that "nature" is beautiful.
In the future the weather will always be the same.
In the future no one will fight with anyone else.
In the future there will be an atomic war.
In the future water will be expensive.
In the future all material items will be free.
In the future everyone's house will be like a little fortress.
In the future everyone's house will be a total entertainment center.
In the future everyone but the wealthy will be very happy.
In the future everyone but the wealthy will be very filthy.
In the future everyone but the wealthy will be very healthy.
In the future TV will be so good that the printed word will function as an art form only.
In the future people with boring jobs will take pills to relieve the boredom.
In the future no one will live in cities
In the future there will be mini-wars going on everywhere.
In the future everyone will think about love all the time.
In the future political and other decisions will be based completely on opinion polls.
In the future there will be machines which will produce a religious experience in the user.
In the future there will be groups of wild people, living in the wilderness.
In the future there will be only paper money, which will be personalized.
In the future there will be a classless society.
In the future everyone will only get to go home once a year.
In the future everyone will stay home all the time.
In the future we will not have time for leisure activities.
In the future we will only "work" one day a week.
In the future our bodies will be shriveled up but our brains will be bigger.
In the future there will be starving people everywhere.
In the future people will live in space.
In the future no one will be able to afford TV.
In the future the helpless will be killed.
In the future everyone will have their own style of way-out clothes.
In the future we will make love to anything anytime anywhere.
In the future there will be so much going on that no one will be able to keep track of it.

The power of books in Roald Dahl's 'Matilda'

We went to see Matilda the musical in London and it was an unexpectedly overwhelming experience. There's something about a musical, with all the group choruses and explicit emotion, that can be very moving, and for me the story of Matilda is especially powerful. Roald Dahl's characters are so polarised: either nasty, terrible people or magical, intelligent and generous. When the good people win, it's so universal, so resoundingly comforting.

Matilda is about books. She reads and reads as her parents watch TV and lie and insult her for her pursuits. Books give her the emotional and intellectual education her parents and television have failed to give her. Books give her imagination and a thirst for knowledge, but also a strong sense of morality. She is taught right and wrong by the narrative cadences of the stories she reads. (and if take a step back, we see that Roald Dahl is also performing the same role to children everywhere in the real world by writing this very story) Irrespective of her corrupting parents, Matilda grows into a generous girl with a fierce sense of morality and justice. She helps her teacher, Miss. Honey to reclaim the house the evil Trunchball stole from her (by murdering her father) and Matilda even learns Russian so she can read Dostoyevsky in the language it was intended to be read in, which ultimately helped her to stop the Russian mafia from killing her family.

The magic of books is made literal in Matilda, when she finds she can use her mind to move objects. The implication is that books can give you magical powers, or perhaps that when extreme intellect is nurtured by books, magical powers of imagination and telekinesis are produced. These powers are also probably a result of the psychological hardships Matilda has endured throughout her young life. A latent power builds in her, an extreme bottling up of emotional energy, until it bursts out supernaturally. Roald Dahl was such a great writer. There are so many levels to Matilda, and all good art should be both profound and simple at the same time.

___________________________________

Matilda the musical made me think about whether our relationship with books has changed since Roald Dahl wrote the original story, i.e. are books still such invaluable sources of knowledge and culture to those who are not granted proper upbringings? In a first world country, does the internet provide just as ably this knowledge, or is the internet becoming the equivalent of the television Matilda's parents so insistently praise in place of books? 'Why are you reading those awful books when we've got the internet?' I could easily imagine a lazy parent saying that to a child, 'I'm not buying you books, just go on the internet.' And perhaps it does become difficult to argue with that reasoning when money is tight.

The internet is a beast of varied goodness - though it holds vast information, vast educational potential, we spend most of our times idly on it. And this can of course be said for the television Matilda is so forcefully encouraged to consume: television is not all bad, it has great potential to educate. I suppose the point (one of the points) I'm making is: books are far less corrupting than other media because of the effort it takes to read them. Though they have the potential to corrupt, I think insidiousness thrives in ease of consumption. That books have great power for good is undeniable; whether or not that power is reliant on them being physical objects remains unproven.

Jay Rayner: Ebook adventurer

On June 1st Penguin Books released a book by Jay Rayner, Observer restaurant critic, called 'My Dining Hell: Twenty Ways To Have A Lousy Night Out'. It's a collection of some of his most virulent bad reviews of restaurants. This book will only be available as an ebook.

Speaking on Radio 4, Mr. Rayner said releasing it as an ebook only had various advantages: the whole publishing process was bypassed and what is a rather slight collection can be brought out quickly and also it means he can sell it for only £1.99, 'the price of an expensive bag of crisps'. 

This is the first mainstream instance I have encountered of an ebook only release. I should imagine this will become more common and who would argue with that kind of value: £1.99 for an entertaining little compendium?

Hooked on Books

'Hooked on Books' is a second hand bookshop in Dover. When I was a teenager I used to go there a lot on my aimless wanderings through the town, to buy the Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy books and Virginia Woolf novels. As well as the wall-to-wall shelves, subsidiary racks and tables in the centre, there are teetering piles of books on the floor and the counter waiting to be sorted, though the staff never seem too keen to order them. It's a dense concentration of books.

Today I went back to Dover for a few days, and on my way from the station to my childhood house, I thought I'd go to Hooked on Books and buy something. For a moment I had a fear that last time I was in Dover the shop hadn't been there, but I was relieved to find it still there, still facing the town hall across the pelican crossing. 

I bought two books: 'The World of Chess', a technicolour hardback exploring the many beguiling byways of the noble game 

and 'Epitaph for the Elm', a book written in the seventies about how Dutch Elm disease was killing all the elms. 

The owner of the shop commented that he hadn't seen me for a while. I was quite surprised that he recognised me. We talked about Dover and how it has got worse since I left.

Every time I go back to Dover there are more shops and houses boarded up. London Road is like the main street of a ghost town. There's nothing here anymore. Everyone goes through the port and on up the Jubilee Way to London or Canterbury. It makes me happy to see Hooked on Books still going after 15 years. Along with the snooker hall in the Working Men's Club and Best Deals, stolid purveyor of second hand CDs, DVDs and musical instruments,  it's one of the few champion cultural highlights of that ailing street.

Ventnor Rare Books

We recently went to Ventnor on the south coast of the Isle of Wight. It’s a small seaside town with one main street. We spent some time wandering down it and into the charity shops. I went to have a look in the old bookshop at the bottom of the street, but when I got there I discovered it had been shut down. There was a note on the door saying they couldn’t afford to keep it open anymore, thank you for all your support, and so on, we still collect old books and if you are interested in trading, phone us on this number. They said they had been open for fifty years or something.

Last summer we went to the Isle of Wight and I bought two books from that shop: a pocket guide to wildflowers and a worn copy of Alfred Lord Tennyson’s poems printed in the twenties or thirties, I think. (Tennyson lived on the Isle of Wight and hung out with the grieving Queen Victoria as her poet laureate). It was a singular outpost of history and information in that town, but nobody wanted it: Ventnor Rare Books.

Chess book

On the road from the station, just under the bridge, there’s a man who sells books. When I was at university he sold them there as well. I once bought a copy of Heironymus Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights triptych from him. And then more recently I bought ‘Wolf Solent’ by John Cowper Powys from him. I had been searching everywhere for books by John Cowper Powys quite unsuccessfully after visiting his native Dorset. I spoke to the bookseller about him. He said he knew of John Cowper Powys and that he was hard to find. The bookseller is from Dorset and at heart he is a Pagan, he sympathises with the Pagan aspect of John Cowper Powys’ writings.

On our most recent encounter I bought a chess book from him: ‘Batsford’s Chess openings’, a collaboration between Gary Kasparov and Raymond Keene, British GM, a combination described on the cover as ‘a real coup’. The page are full of chess notation. It’s like code. It’s like maths.

I decided against buying this book once. I thought ‘I don’t need this. I’ve got enough chess books already.’ But below that thought deeper, in my unconscience, was the thought: ‘you can never have enough chess books.’ And this thought asserted itself later on when I passed the street bookseller, one Saturday and all it needed was for him to offer me 50p off, for me to offer him the cash.

He’s getting old now. His curly hair is grey. His face is lined with wrinkles now. And he drinks. The sight of a can of special brew resting among the books, I realised was a familiar one, as is the sight of him in a nearby pub in the mid-afternoon. As I was buying the chess book he was talkative with the alcohol. He told me that when he was young he was bright and he played chess. He, and he told me this as if he was imparting a singularly interesting anecdote, magnified by drunken expansion and the soft tints of the past, he played someone five years older than him in a tournament and two of the games were stalemates – that’s how close it was. It’s like war, chess, he said, he always liked the bigger pieces, but he hasn’t played for years.

I told him how I always play chess on my phone – that way I can always be playing, wherever I am, and that’s how you get better – by practising. I play on the internet on my phone. I always have about six games going at once.

I buy the Batsford Chess Openings Encyclopaedia with columns and rows of notation. If I concentrate on one opening then I can learn all the variations and my opponent will be at my mercy.

Questions of purity

My generation and the previous generation have all necessarily built up collections of media objects: CDs, books, records, cassettes, videos, DVDs. They feature in almost every house in the world, certainly in the West: bookshelves full of books, piles of DVDs near the television, stacks of CDs near the stereo, all lovingly sorted into alphabetical order.

These media collections take up space. They are displays, exhibitions, large in size and content and colour, objects assembled together in one space for people to see and use.

Though these collections are treasured and often beautiful, it makes one think about how so much space is being taken up by these things, and then it makes one think that it’s actually rather strange how we collect physical manifestations of what are unphysical things to begin with.

A film, for example, though it must be recorded on something to be communicated, is not a piece of film, it is an experience, you watch it happen on a screen. The pictures you see are not physical, they are projections of events, pretend or otherwise, which have been captured and communicated via a medium. Let us remember that the obsolescent media we are investigating and writing about in this project are just that: media, mediums, through which messages, pictures, musics, travel to our sense receptors. There has to be a medium, but the medium is not de facto necessary and indeed with the new digital technology, the media through which art travels are thinning out and in the process it is a purer communication. The vinyl record or the CD was only necessary because there was no other more direct way of getting the recorded music to the listener. It is not the shiny disc that matters and it’s not the artwork in the plastic case that matters, this is just a by-product. Musicians are musicians. They have chosen their method of communicating their expression. They are not visual artists. The artwork in CDs or vinyl is a welcome addition, maybe, adds meaning maybe, but it’s someone else’s meaning, the visual artist’s meaning. Everything except the music is extraneous. An mp3 is the purest version of the recording of a musician’s expression because there is nothing else to distract from the listening and consumption of the music.

With books, it’s slightly different because to absorb the words you must physically interact with something. You are actively involved in the process of consuming the writing. It takes effort to read a book, you don’t just watch it or listen to it passively, and as such, the physical medium of the book is more important to preserve, but not essential, and could also be said to sully the author’s intentions with added meaning: cover art, blurbs, fonts, etc.

New dictionary, old dictionary

Hello. Today I bought a dictionary. It’s the 12^th edition Chambers Dictionary. It cost £40, probably the most expensive book I’ve ever bought. I bought it from an independent bookshop called ‘City Books’ in Brighton. Now I can look up all the obscure words in the Azed crossword in the Observer, and I don’t have to endure the sordid, ad-riddled experience of looking them up on the internet.

Here are some excerpts from the ‘word lover’s miscellany’ section in the middle of my new dictionary.

Wonk – a serious or studious person, especially one with an interest in a trivial or unfashionable subject.

Blatherskite – a garrulous talker of nonsense.

Izzard – the letter Z.

Othergates (this word is now extinct) – in another way.

Forswink (this word is almost extinct) – to exhaust by labour.

Anyway, now I have an obsolete Chambers Concise Dictionary, a few years old, and if anyone wants it, just ask. I’d like someone to have it. (shown below in its natural habitat)

Technophobia

‘How to be Really Interesting’ by Steve Davis MBE

This book belonged to my dad. He has doodled on the cover with a biro, shading in the letters and signing his name. When I was young, I saw this as permission for me to similarly deface it - if dad’s allowed to draw on it, then so am I, it’s only fair. I have written my name alongside the right forearm of Steve Davis the boxer and above his left shoulder I have written the word ‘time’. I had only just learnt how to spell this word. I must have been very young, but I remember enjoying the way the magic ‘e’ on the end changes the sound of the ‘i’. My brother Ben has signed his name on the back cover in imitation of my dad’s signature, and my brother Joe, the youngest, has written his name above the right shoulder of besuited Steve Davis. The 'J' is backwards.

Looking at the scrappy biroed cover of this book, I become a detective of the past. My dad’s distracted doodles tell a cryptic story. They were probably made in the evening after work with the television on in the background, my mum knitting in the armchair, in the garish early nineties living room amongst neon clothing, perms and bowl-cuts, red grouting between the tiles in the kitchen, brown furry sofa, pink roobled carpet, Ghostbusters lunch boxes.

It was the perfect size for leaning on when writing something – doing a crossword, demonstrating maths or perhaps drawing something for me. If I examine the cover closely I can see the imprints of numbers and letters and lines, and the surface is creased like the wrinkles on a hand. It’s not a bulky heavy hardback, it’s a flimsy in-between, but gives just enough resistance to support the concerted ballpoint pressure, and this proximity to unsheathed biro led to its defacement.

I wonder when the line was crossed, the taboo broken. Which was the first pen mark made on the shiny cover?

My guess is that this book was a present for my dad. It was published in 1988. It’s a first edition and could conceivably be worth a some money if it wasn’t for the widespread biro defacement, but without these details it would have much less cultural, personal value.

The Inevitable Digital Future

Let us consider for a moment the future. The tendency in the world of books seems to be towards complete digitalisation. One day, maybe a hundred years from now, the paper book will more than likely be obsolete. A hundred years is a long time. It’s practically impossible to imagine such a distant future, but let us try anyway. Let us make some estimations based on the cultural tendencies of the present. 

How many of the things that exist in our world can we replace by things that aren’t there, by computer data? There’s no stopping us, really. Experiences need not be actually experienced, they can be virtually experienced in a digital environment, just like music is listened to now in a digital environment, without the presence of a CD or a band. We know, of course, when we listen to a recording, that the band isn’t there in the room, it’s just a reproduction of the experience of listening to the band live. Perhaps in the future this principle will extend to other experiences like visiting a different country. And someone will say to you, ‘so you’ve been to Argentina? But have you been there live? You should go there live, it’s much better.’

Or you will meet someone on the internet and the bodysuit you wear that is covered with nanochip sensors will communicate to you direct reproductions of the feelings of touch you would experience if you were actually there shaking his hand or stroking her back. It will be essentially, sensibly identical. When the technology arrives, some will say, ‘it’s just not the same!’ but the younger generation will take to it like there is nothing at all strange about it and they will feed on the glorious ease of it all, the convenience. With each generation there are new technologies that we inure ourselves to, leaving the older generations confused and angry. This trend WILL continue.

In this context it’s not so hard to imagine a world without books. We can confidently say that within a century or so, books will be a rarity, reserved for specialist collectors, antique collectors. As they are outmoded, millions of books will be recycled. People will leave boxes and boxes of them outside in the streets by the bins, as the charity shops stop accepting them as donations. There will be desperate conservation projects that seek to save these books, place them in vast warehouses. Books, paper books that is, will be museum pieces. The libraries of Oxford and Cambridge will struggle to justify their existence, as the people who regularly use the bulky paper collections, die out.

There is no doubt that this is the beginning of the end.

The reflex reactions of a booklover

The idea of an electronic book was to me instantly unappealing. For a while it was possible to ignore it, but then there came the news that for the first time a book, who knows what is was, had sold more copies as an ebook than as a physical book. It was around Christmas. I remember sitting on the sofa discussing it with my Nan, and I remember feeling dread at the news. It was the omen of a trend destined to continue. It was the beginning of an end. I’m sure there are many people who have reacted in the same way. What are the reasons we can give for this feeling?

The book, that universal ubiquitous object, that symbol of so much, how could it be replaced by something as cold and sterile as pixels on a computer screen. How could anyone read a whole book on a computer screen? It just wouldn’t feel nice on the eyes. Is there a way of objectively measuring the stress on the eyes of reading a book on a computer screen as opposed to paper? Even if there is, the more general issue is probably not going to be objectively decided either way, and perhaps that wouldn’t be the most important thing anyway. More important is what people think, what this human race makes of it and how this human race deals with the new version of the book we are presented with.

When I try to find solid reasons why the paper book is better than the electronic version, I struggle. It’s difficult for any of these reasons to not be attributed to force of life-long habit. Here’s an attempt anyway:

Reading a real book is a more involved experience, it’s more of an experience, there are more sensations involved. And surely an experience that communicates more sensory information and thus opportunity for sensory pleasure, must be of more worth? Real books give you the satisfying touch of the paper as you turn another page, to mark each small achievement, and if indeed every page read is an achievement of sorts, then this achievement needs to be celebrated. The feeling of the rough page on your fingers has more saliency than the touch of a button.  Is this important? Or is this all merely sentiment? On the surface, yes it may seem like sentiment but these things matter. These things have latent effects. However, such effects may be overpowered by other influences, like for instance the immense convenience of having many books in one light, portable kindle-type thing. And only such a cursory concession to the electronic book reveals its immediate practical benefits and how easy it is to promote to a young, progressive, future-oriented global society. This worries me. How do I find a way to rationalise my aversion to the electronic book? And if I can’t find a way, then maybe I should think about revising that opinion.