Book Review: Firmin: Adventures of a Metropolitan Lowlife

The book club choice for January. Usually a fairly relaxed read, because we don't have a book, or a meeting, in December. Unfortunately I ordered it, without paying much attention, from an Amazon marketplace dealer in New Jersey, so it took most of December to arrive.

After the first couple of chapters I began to think this would be one of those books that I'd abandon. Firmin -- you can read extensively about him online but briefly the runt of a litter of 13 rats who develops a taste for eating books and discovers that this leads to enlightenment through some weird process of absorption through digestion -- takes, I think it is fair to say, a while to get going.

Many of the online reviews revel in the slow pace of the start. The detailed description of life as a young rat living in a bookstore, the trials and tribulations of being the 13th rat born to a mother who, as nature dictates, only has 12 teats. His discovery of books and his long-distance, always doomed, relationship (or attempt at one) with the bookseller. I just found it hard going. By the time I'd read a third of the novel I was convinced I was going to give up, but I've abandoned so many book club books. I decided to press on and see what happened. So for me the story didn't really take off until the second half when Firmin meets, and eventually starts to lodge with, the writer Jerry. And unlike many of my book club contemporaries I found Firmin's sojourns to the cinema, and his surreal encounter with Ginger Rogers, added to the story. It ended up being, if not exactly a fulfilling read, then at least quirky, original, and reasonably entertaining.

While researching other readers' views on Firmin prior to writing this (more to see whether the idea another book club reader had -- that Firmin is, in fact, the alter ego of Jerry the writer -- was really as inventive and original as it sounded during the meeting), I came across an interview with the author, Sam Savage, from 2008. Savage wrote Firmin when he was 67, and this extract from the interview I found unexpectedly moving:

'He pauses, then says: "Of course, everyone asks me now why I waited so long to write. And I give different answers. I had always wanted to be a writer: I'd written a lot of poetry, which I didn't like then and don't like now. I used to publish it every now and then, but I found it very unsatisfactory.

"Anyway, when we moved up here, we had to clear everything out, all our books and papers and everything. And I found fragments of novels, whole chapters that I've written over the past 35 or 40 years, and I'd read them, and I'd think: this is not bad. I thought I'd abandoned these because they were terrible. But not only did I not remember writing them, I couldn't recognise the person who did write them.

"So I suppose that in one sense the person who wrote Firmin didn't come into existence till later, and I couldn't have written it at any other time. But also, Firmin's essential experience is of failure - failure to write, failure to complete - and I'd had that experience. You can't have that at 30, because you think it's going to happen: you have to reach a certain age before you realise that it isn't.

"I thought I'd give classes on writer's block," he continues, "because I know the solution: it is to give up. Not pretend to give up, but really give up. I'd stopped writing for several years, I had a sailboat and I was going to sail around the world, and I thought that that was what I'd do before I died. I'm not going to be a writer, I thought, I'm not going to write.

"Now there's something in Buddhism - called, I think, the great death - where people go to the master, and they struggle, and they memorise the texts and the sutras and so forth, and they meditate and they meditate, and they don't achieve it, and then they give up. Right? Ain't gonna come. And then you have all those Zen parables, where the old man goes off, and he's sweeping, and he knocks the pebble into the bamboo, and - there it is. Enlightenment.

"And you can't give up like that when you're young," he sums up.

"You can only give up like that when you realise your life is approaching its end. I did, and it just came. Like a miracle."'

(You can read the full review and interview here.)

For someone (clue: it's me) who's been struggling to find the impetus, the energy, the motivation to write another novel after having spent 7 years writing the first and not having any success with publishers in the three years since, Savage's words felt something like a blessing. The cynical side of me laughed a hollow laugh and thought "Christ! I can't even give up properly!" but the small boy who always wanted to be a writer? Well, his ears perked up (well, OK, I was reading rather than listening, but I don't like the image of eyes perking up. Even if they can) and he thought Yeah. This guy didn't make it until he was 67. I'm only 54. There's time.

A long, hard slog

Anyone who has been around the Internet for even a short while will be familiar with spam. Even after the well-publicised fall in spam in December of last year from its historic highs of around 80 billion emails daily, it still accounts for almost 80% of all email traffic, and signs are that it's on its way back up again, as new botnets compete to fill the gap opened up by those that have been shut down.

But this is all going on in your Inbox, right? And in the hidden wars over at your ISP, with ever more sophisticated spam filters that can get rid of 99% of the crap before you ever see anything?

That's what I thought, until I received a letter recently offering me longer harder erections. Yep - POSTAL spam. Incredible.

Temporarily floored and carpeted

One of the unfortunate side-effects of the construction work we endured in the second half of last year was that the landing floor, already in a pretty poor state, became even more chewed-up than before.

Over the years - both before we moved in and since - alterations have shortened what was once the corridor leading to the small back bedroom to probably less than half its former length. The original door at the end was removed and boarded up when the two back bedrooms were knocked into one (before our time). Our bathroom conversion removed another door and the subsequent installation of a linen cupboard at the end of that corridor-to-nowhere has left us with a landing that is little more than the confluence of doors to remaining rooms.

As you might expect in a house of this age (100+ years) this landing has been used over and over again as the conduit space for each installed service. Central heating, electrics, phone, alarm, central heating extensions, additional wiring circuits - all pass along and across the landing, and all have involved lifting and replacing the floor.

Which brings us to today, the most recent set of work, and the parlous landing we've endured for the last three months or so. A floor board outside the study which is not so much floor board as floor shredded wheat. A board between bedrooms and bathrooms which has been left loose, and knocks against the heating pipes with a resounding BONGGGGG every time it's stepped on. And several other boards which no longer fit properly, or whose ends have been sawn off adjacent to a beam so that they dip and bend and creak when anyone walks past.

Long overdue for some DIY magic.

Which is how I spent (the working part of) yesterday and today. Sorting out something that's not as straightforward as it sounds, once you realise that 21st century floorboards from B&Q are (a) narrower and (b) thinner than their early 20th century counterparts, hewn (as they undoubtedly were) from the living tree by swarthy journeyman joiners who cared not one jot (nor, I'll warrant, a tittle) for cost, but only for quality. Or at least, width.

Anyway, this disparity, along with the fact that the modern materials are tongued and grooved, meant I had to assemble a kind of jigsaw piece of flooring, roughly 2 metres long and three-and-three-quarter boards wide, with edges that resemble a refugee from Tetris. That was yesterday. Today involved the complex assembly of four pieces off carpeting off-cut (one from the spare bedroom and three from the lounge) into something vaguely reminiscent of a Tangram.

Although it has a small hole in one edge, and falls short at the top of the stairs, it's decidedly more comfy than bare boards, and it no longer goes BONGGGGG. It'll do for now.

Continuous Improvement

While we're on the subject of shelving from the Underworld IKEA, I thought I'd share with you my appreciation of a couple of little innovations I discovered while I was assembling it. Here they are:

I suppose I should have added something to the photo to give an idea of scale, but as one of them is an Allen key that should help.

Tightening Allen bolts to their right tightness (which, as any Yorkshireman will be able to tell you, is called being "right tight") was always a bit tricky, and I'm guessing that for many of IKEA's customers, the tool itself was a little uncomfortable for their soft, pampered, 21st-century hands. So they've included a holder! This unassuming length of strong black polypropylene takes a standard IKEA Allen key, and provides (a) a comfy grip and (b) exactly the right length for delivering the correct torque to the business end, ensuring a perfect assemblage of your bits.

It gets better.

The plastic is stamped with a bold "5" on one end and a "4" on the other, suggesting that it is in fact an Allen torque wrench with two settings. The instructions accompanying the Hemnes called for the key to be inserted in the 5 end, which is where it remains (although I've pulled it out a bit to make it more obvious. When fully inserted it doesn't look all that much like an Allen key). How cool is that?

So what - I *know* you're wondering - is the other little guy?

If you've ever struggled to hold those fiddly little panel pins that are supplied with many of IKEA's shelving units to hold the back panels in place, you'll be more than impressed with this. It's a nifty little panel pin holder. The sharp end is ribbed to provide extra grip, the round end has a little hole in the middle to take a panel pin, and the whole thing is split down the middle, so once you've knocked your panel pin into the wood a few millimetres you just give it a tug and it comes away, leaving the pin standing proud, ready to be knocked in the rest of the way. Flippin' brilliant.

This is what I like about IKEA. Already market leaders in affordable flat-pack furniture for the masses, they could easily sit around and bask in their greatness. But no. They continue to add cool innovations like this to make their customers' lives that bit easier. Thanks IKEA! 

There's just one thing though. Being just lowly items in the bag of bits that come with - for example - Hemnes, these little guys don't actually have IKEAse names of their own. I think we should invent some. Here's a starter for ten: the pin holder chap could be PLONKIT, and the Allen-key-holder TORK (see what I did there?). What do you think?

Shelving of the Underworld

Quite why the IKEA marketing department thought it was a good idea to name this after a Greek god escapes me for the moment. I mean, I could understand it if Hermes had been the God of Storage, but as it is, he's, according to Wikipedia, "... the great messenger of the gods [and] a guide to the Underworld."

He was, apparently, "... the patron of boundaries and of the travelers who cross them, of shepherds and cowherds, of the cunning of thieves, of orators and wit, of literature and poets, of athletics and sports, of weights and measures, of invention, and of commerce in general."

Hmm. Absolutely nothing there about storage. I guess if you chose to keep books in the unit there'd be a tenuous link to literature, but that's about it.

Wikipedia continues: "His symbols include the tortoise, the rooster, the winged sandals, the winged hat, and the caduceus." Not a cupboard then?

So I'd written the whole of this (extremely witty, I think you'll agree) post about our new shelving unit when my gaze alighted on the empty box propped up against the wall and I realised what a complete waste of wit it had been. The damn stuff isn't called Hermes at all. It's HEMNES.

Our new baby

If we'd waited a day, we could have picked her up on 11/1/11, which would have been even more memorable. As it is, we couldn't wait! The lifelong addiction to that new car smell proved too much, and we collected her from the dealer yesterday.

Truth be told we hadn't exactly planned to replace the old one, even though it was beginning to look a bit beaten up and had long since passed the 130,000 mile mark. That mileage, and seven-and-a-half years, still isn't exactly old for a modern car, but a combination of circumstances - the cancellation of the GM Card scheme and consequent time limit on "spending" the points; some good VAT-increase-beating deals; the sudden availability of some spare cash - all came together at once and nudged us over the edge. Only 50-odd miles in, and I'm already loving the ride, the handling and some of the whizzy new features, which I'm sure I'll be blogging about sooner or... well... sooner.

Something fishy going on

Why is it that it takes a "celebrity" to tell us something is bad before there's even the ghost of a chance that anything will be done about it?

The European Union regulations about catching and landing fish have been broken for years. In an effort to "protect" species whose populations are either on the verge of crashing, or have already, they limit fishermen to a given number of thousands of tons in a year, after which it is illegal to land any more fish of that kind.

Unfortunately, none of the massed intellect of the EU agricultural and fisheries policy units was capable of realising that there are no nets in existence that can differentiate what they are catching. The nets go down, the fish come up, spill out onto the deck, die, and then - if they are "over quota" - they're thrown back into the sea. Dead.

How is that protecting populations? It isn't. How long has it been going on? Years. What's been done about it? Nothing. Until along comes Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, kicking off a campaign very much in the vein of Jamie Oliver and his Turkey Twizzlers, designed to wake everyone up to the problem and do something about it.

Laudable, and I can hardly complain about him or his campaign since he has already - allegedly - secured Tesco's agreement to moving to 100% rod-and-line caught tuna (as opposed to trawled tuna) by the end of 2012. Now, if you were a cynic, you might think "well, yes, that's two years away. Who's going to be monitoring their progress? Who's going to be shouting the odds if they don't quite manage it?" But at least something is happening. Something more than could be achieved by consumers alone.

And that's my beef, really. How is it that something so patently ludicrous, that doesn't achieve the protection it was intended to and at the same time affects the livelihoods of every European fisherman for no benefit whatever, has been allowed to carry on for so long? And why does no-one pay any attention until a bloody TV chef steps in?

In among all the posturing and self-congratulation there are some interesting statistics. 50% of the fish we all eat comes from three species - salmon, tuna & cod. Add haddock and prawns and you're up to 80%. Is it any wonder the populations can't sustain themselves, faced with automated, computerised trawlers pulling hundreds of thousands of tons of them out of the sea every year, and then throwing half of them back dead?

Over a million tons of fish a year are thrown back. Caught, dead, and unable to be landed, sold or eaten. Meanwhile stocks of sardines, herring, and white fish like whiting, hake, coley - that you really would be hard pushed to tell from cod, especially in fish fingers - are plentiful and ignored.

Well, I guess any progress is better than no progress. If you want to sign up to help his campaign (I have), it's at Fish-Fight.net, and the TV programme begins for those in the UK (or those who can watch online) tomorrow night at 9pm on Channel 4.

The -painted- Alcove

Hard to believe it's two months to the day since I last posted about The Alcove. In that time there has been priming, there has been undercoating and there has been glossing. There has also been, as predicted back in November, a deal of colouring in with a tin of Redcurrant Glory, as well as the sourcing of some hard-wearing clear matt varnish ("Diamond Hard" as it's called on the tin) to protect the colour on the shelves from scuffs and scratches. There has also been the intervention of Christmas, which partially explains the extreme delay in what is essentially a simple job. Still, it's done, and I can finally reveal the result:

As predicted there's enough Redcurrant Glory left for the fireplace on my side, so we'll (sort of) match, eventually. Happily (I didn't check this before I fitted the lining) the top shelf is still large enough to accommodate our memory jar, while the larger bottom shelf will hold a stunning ornament of some sort, as soon as we can find one.

The best part, naturally, is that we can finally bin that awful Japanese parasol. Oh, and since I stuck to my plan to complete other priming/undercoating/glossing tasks at the same time, the linen cupboard is now painted out and in use too. You could be forgiven for thinking that things are coming together. Still a long way to go though.

4K2K

Over the past ten years we've built up a fairly large DVD collection. 443 titles at the last count, although to be accurate approaching 100 of those are in the "eBay" pile. We like movies, there have been some irresistible deals during that time, and we actively enjoy watching well-loved films over. Something, incidentally, that my mother could never understand. To me, a good film is like a good piece of music. If you can listen to the one over and over again and enjoy it every time, why not watch the same film more than once? Fair enough if it's something - like Unbreakable or Sixth Sense - that pretty much relies on the shock value of a single scene for its impact, then subsequent viewings will not have the same impact. But the story is still there. The cinematography, the dialogue, the plot, etc. And for many of our favourites the emotional journey remains unabated after several repeats.

We were late onto the High Def, BluRay bandwagon. Having lived through the VHS/Betamax wars of last century I didn't want to be bitten again by backing the wrong technology, and it was pretty clear from early on that one of them would win, eventually. In the end I think that win was brought forward by the manufacturers' realisation that the uncertainty was causing most consumers - like us - to avoid purchasing at all until there was some clarity in the market.

Once BluRay won, we did start to buy the odd High Def version. Not exclusively - the picture quality from an upscaled SD disc is still perfectly acceptable - but for blockbusters where HD really makes the action pop; and for well-loved movies that had not yet been added to the collection and were available on a deal, then we would opt for BluRay.

But wait! What's this? I hear we may as well all abandon any attempts to replace our DVD collections with BluRay no matter how relaxed an approach we were taking to it. They're already obsolete. Or, if not quite "already" then soon. For here comes "4K2K" - the adopted handle of the next level of definition, offering 4096 x 2160 pixels (so an alternative nomenclature comparable to the current 1080p would be 2160p) on screens of increasingly ridiculous size.

So as well as allowing, for instance, Panasonic to develop a mind-boggling 152-inch plasma screen to exploit the new definition, it will allow crisper images on more prosaically-sized sets, although there is some debate about whether the difference will be noticeable on home-sized screens. More philosophically, the availability of the next technology curve always implies a reduction in price for the "old" technologies, so those who've waited for their HD 1080p screens may soon get their chance to pick one up much cheaper.

At the moment, and predictably, the format is not compatible with BluRay, and for us, with probably another 10 years life left in our 50-inch plasma, it's a technology leap too far. We will be watching interestedly from the sidelines though :o)

Sorry?

I was due a broadband upgrade before Christmas, but at the eleventh hour the upgrade was postponed owing to some technical glitch or other.

The email informing me of the delay was very polite, until it came to the final sentence.

"Sorry for any incontinence," they wrote.

The green challenge

Some time before Christmas we were watching a programme about how easy it was to "green up" your life by taking small steps such as making sure you separate your trash (paper, card, cans, bottles, etc), compost your garden waste and - a first for programmes like this in my experience - take more care in the retail environment about how much "stuff" you buy, and where from.

The presenter, who was clearly well into the whole green agenda, announced "I challenged myself to go a whole year without buying any new clothes."

We looked at each other for a split second and then both fell about laughing. I must be about the greenest person on the planet in this respect as I seriously can hardly remember the last time I bought any new clothes. Had it not been for our recent trip to Toronto, it would certainly have been more than a year ago. Fashion victim I am not.

Predictions of the non-cephalopod variety

Around this time of year it's traditional to publish predictions of various kinds. Although nowhere near as accurate as those of Paul the Predicting Octopus, most of them stretch beyond the limits of football match results, so I find them considerably more interesting.

Take, for example, these "20 predictions for the next 25 years" from yesterday's Observer. Lose yourself in the plethora of "experts" from twenty different industries, groups, or spheres of human endeavour. Erudite and influential though they no doubt are, commenters have already pointed out that few if any of them take account of the full impact of climate change over that period. At least one of them alludes briefly to the likely effect of oil shortages in terms of protectionism and conflict, but there's an even more precious liquid resource that we'll be fighting over sooner or later: water.

But my main issue with predictions like this is not that they go too far with their postulations, nor indeed that they don't go far enough. Extrapolating likely outcomes from current conditions takes a certain degree of understanding the subject in question, but beyond that there's no magic to it. The real question - and the most fascinating area of prediction - is not what will happen to the stuff we know about. It's what will be the next Facebook or Twitter? Or come to that, the next World Wide Web. Things which, before they were invented, no-one could have predicted. Things which, shortly after they were invented, no-one (or at least very few people) really understood how ubiquitous they would become. But things which, now they're established, large sections of the populace wouldn't know how to live without.

Another area I find fascinating might be called "Inventions whose time is past almost before it starts." When first developed, DAB radio (for instance) was widely predicted to replace traditional analogue broadcasting within a similar time frame to the 20 predictions above. Lack of available bandwidth, technical problems with mobile receivers (in-car DAB, etc), high price of early models and a general distrust of the product or a perception that it delivered limited benefit all contributed to appallingly low initial take-up. Now that many of the teething problems have been fixed, and the price has reached a sensible level, the need for DAB has evaporated. Replaced by Internet radio. Vastly more choice for anyone with a PC, equal or better quality, and with the increasing prevalence of home wireless networks, dedicated Internet radio devices are springing up to first supplement and soon no doubt supplant DAB in the home.

The same old new start

I have a friend who is relentlessly upbeat. Already, only a day in to 2011, everything is better, more wonderful, more inspiring and fulfilling than that tired old 2010 ever was, and it all looks set to get even better. I don't know how she does it, and to be honest I often find it exhausting simply to read her posts. Matching that level of energy is a distant dream. Or nightmare.

I have another friend who's approach to the New Year has been decidedly - I might even say determinedly - more downbeat. While she admits the possibility of good things to come, the admission is almost buried under the weight of expectation that, mostly, 2011 will be full of shit.

I mention these two friends only to illustrate the extremes of approach to the "new start" that the New Year represents. As with most extremes, the reality will be somewhere in between. Very few years are entirely bad or good. Yet another friend has recently written her(*) traditional year-end meme in which the questions "what was the high point of the year?" and "what was the low point of the year?" both appear, and both have an answer. Every year has its highs and lows. Some years the lows may be subterranean and most years the highs won't reach the cosmic levels we may dream of, but as an old manager of mine used to say: "aim for the stars and you might hit the trees." And I'd rather be sitting in a treetop than grubbing around in the roots.

Trouble is, new starts are never really new are they? We always bring with us the baggage of our previous experience. It colours everything we do. Both of those extremes I mentioned above are to some extent coping strategies for that. Believing in the power of positive thinking, maintaining expectations of the best outcomes, and preparing in minute detail for success are the habits of successful people, but are also powerful defences against the suppressed small voice of our baggage. That apprehensive and cynical voice which would counsel us to expect failure, and which talks loudest in those who can't maintain their Patronus against the Dementor's Kiss of past experience.

So as always I'll try to walk the middle path between bright shining (and some would say unrealistic) optimism and dragging soul-sapping (and others would say self-destructive) pessimism. I'll try to do more of the positive stuff - writing, thinking, reading, planning, plotting, querying, singing - and less of the distractive - playing cards, or Farkle, or otherwise spinning my wheels. I expect I'll succeed at this on some days and fail on others. But as Kipling pointed out success and failure are both impostors. I might be lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time, and end up in that treetop or on a journey to the stars, or I might have to scratch around for a slightly less impressive "high point" for the year-end meme. Either way it'll be fun. It always is.

(*) Incidentally, I *do* have male friends too. The fact that all three of the quoted friends are of the female persuasion is pure coincidence. Well, maybe not a coincidence exactly. More a natural consequence of there being only a handful of the blokes I know who write blogs.