The magic of e-reading

Do you remember that there was once a time when you didn't have a mobile phone, and no one else you knew did?

So if you wanted to get in touch, you'd have to (i) remember their phone number and (ii) call their house to see if they were in? Or alternatively – and even more outlandishly – you'd have to (i) remember where they live and (ii) drop by to see if they were in.

How on earth did we get by wasting so much time? Walk round to someone's house! The very idea of it.

It's very odd how mobile phones, laptops, social media, iPods etc etc have all insinuated their way into our lives subtly and irreplaceably, to the point where we take them completely for granted.

They start appearing and you think: "That's ridiculous – I never needed [whatever the gadget does] before. Why would I need that now?" Before you know it, you get panicky if you can't check Facebook while you're on the toilet. The medium is the message, innit?

So I must report unto you – my readers – then, that I am now the owner of an Amazon Kindle (thanks to all the Sicilies for my Father's Day present!) And having been sceptical about them before, experience suggests that I should approach this new bit of technology in my life with the innocent openness to having one's mind changed of a new boy turning up for his first day at Pyongyang Central Penitentiary College of FE.

Having lugged a hardback copy of "Against the Day" (1,085 pages) around with me for the months it took me to read (TWICE), I am already feeling the benefit in terms of improved posture.

However, the Kindle is affecting my habits in other ways. It is changing what I read – for the simple reason that there are hundreds of great books out there (many of them here) that are FREE.

Now, I don't know about you, but I wouldn't pick up a second-hand copy of Herodotus' "The Histories" for any price. On the one hand, it would take up too many of the sparse cubic feet in my tiny house. On the other, if it was shit, I would feel obliged to read it to the end because I'd paid for it.

I know what you're thinking. No, not "oh god, he's talking about Greeks again – I thought this was going to a funny one or an angry one". What you are thinking is Herodotus' work would probably not have survived the last 2,600 years and become a central part of the Western literary canon if it had been shit.

Well, believe me – despite the lure of "The Histories" being effectively the novelisation of 300, I would not have stuck with old Herodotus past that endless description of "how big various things in Egypt are" in the second book if it hadn't been free. And I am probably a more enlightened person for doing so. My bag is certainly enlightened. BOOM BOOM.

It still hurts me mentally to think that I gave up reading "On the Road" TWICE because it was so awful after paying full price for a brand new copy. And that was about 17 years ago.

But now, I can pick up books by a whole host of authors and give up on them if they're a load of old crap like Kerouac, because they didn't cost me a penny! In your face, economics of publishing! And in your face, self-imposed obsessive-compulsive rules of behaviour!

So, if you like sci-fi and you haven't read HG Wells or Jules Verne – stop paying money for new books and read the foundations of the freaking genre for nothing. If you like horror, Arthur Machen and HP Lovecraft. If you like crime, Conan Doyle. And you needn't spend a penny. Well, if you already have an e-reader that is.

Plus, it's better than the library, because (i) you don't have to remember to take anything back, (ii) it's likely to exist for more than a couple of years to come, and (iii) best of all - it's not full of smelly vagrants and weirdos!

A constructive use of time – learning German, pt 3

I am still trying to learn German, by way of the Michel Thomas method.

Long-term readers may recall part 2 and even part 1 of this series, way back in 2010 when the world was young and the idea of "a new politics" under the Coalition evoked images of hope rather than of a pile of dog sick laughing and pointing at you for being so bloody gullible.

Progress since then has been – let's say – erratic. I'm sure that every time I listen to one of the lessons, a little more rubs off.

For example, yesterday I actually managed to listen and take in the difference between "ich kann es tun", "ich konnte es tun" and "ich könnte es tun" and see a pattern that seemed to work when applied to other verbs as well. I can still almost remember it now.

However, I fear that, confronted with a living, speaking German person, I would resort to pointing, waggling my eyebrows meaningfully and ultimately speaking English to make myself understood. Although, on reflection, that is my preferred order of techniques when communicating with English speakers too.

Michel Thomas' asserts (from beyond the grave) that once you master verbs, everything else is just vocabulary. This is starting to ring a little hollow as I come to realise just how many other words there are in German, even after I master the 700 different forms of every single "doing word".

Can any of my dear readers suggest what I should do to reinvigorate this learning process?

Otherwise this series is going to go the way of the Fantasy League of Nations...

So WHY didn't you know about it?

When did pleading ignorance become the most sure-fire way of getting yourself out of any sort of trouble that happens on your watch?

Every week at work, I hear people attempting to exculpate themselves from their cock-ups with the lines "I didn't know" and "nobody told me".

And my response is pretty much always along the lines of "that you didn't know doesn't get you off the hook because it's your job to know – so you not knowing is negligent."

I am a hard boss like that.

The former US president Harry Truman famously had a sign on his desk saying "the buck stops here" – the great and good of our time do not appear to subscribe to that principle.

Rupert Murdoch, David Cameron and various chiefs of the Metropolitan Police have all, one way or another, insisted that the buck does not stop with them in relation to the phone hacking scandal (and of course the associated but separate "corruption of public institutions" scandal), because they did not know what was going on.

Putting aside the obvious "my arse, you didn't know" response, let's assume they really didn't know.

That's not a kind of "oops, what am I like?" oversight. For example, it's been made clear that unnamed people at Number 10 were actively discouraging anyone from letting Cameron know about the infilitration of the Met by former NoTW staff, to not tell Cameron about it so as to not "compromise" him.

Either that's a rather sinister conspiracy of silence or a rather touching example of unnamed sources laying down their lives for their master. I can't help but think that Cameron should have been told though, so that he could make the right decision, even if a prior decision made in the absence of certain information was, to a degree, compromising. It would certainly have been a forgivable sort of compromise.

However, all these people – and especially the Prime Minister and the police chiefs – whether they knew or not what was going on, should have known. And to say that they didn't is not an excuse. It's an admission of negligence, incompetence or plain stupidity.

So what they have all been saying is "I'm not responsible, because I am too lazy, corrupt or stupid do to the job I am paid to do to an acceptable standard".

And as my answer to that excuse typically is: if that's the case, you should seriously reconsider whether you should be in the job at all.

Don't let the door hit your arse on the way out, News of the World

I never thought that I'd get an opportunity to use this lovely photo of a slug crawling on a dog turd so soon – but it perfectly sums up how I feel about the News of the World.

A real "Oh Dear. How Sad. Never Mind." moment on Thursday when I heard that it was to be closed down.

I never really read it – just the occasional two-week old edition in a Chinese takeaway – but the paper was deservedly a byword for what everyone thinks is wrong with the British media, as evidenced by (i) a 168-year reputation (the NotW is even cited as a prime purveyor of sleaze in "Gravity's Rainbow" for god's sake – Slothrop was a faithful reader...); and (ii) the phone hacking (do we still need to call them "allegations"? I doubt it) exposed last week.

I genuinely struggled to think what could be more appalling than what the NotW did to the family of Milly Dowler. Celebrities and politicians, you can at least make an argument for tapping their phones – not necessarily a very good one, but it is possible to envisage a set of circumstances or even an alternate reality in which such an argument might not sound like a totally amoral pack of lies.

So I am glad it's closed down. And I wish no one had bought it yesterday – "good causes" notwithstanding (WHICH good causes, James Murdoch? Ones you pick? I'm not sure we can trust your interpretation of "good") – and instead that the public had collectively done a big poo on every pile of NotWs on every newsstand in the country.

I'm not saying it's the most disgusting newspaper in history, but at least Josef Goebbels didn't try to claw back some public sympathy with a charity edition of Der Angriff before he killed himself.

But let's not forget that politicians of every party – and even the bloody police – pussy-footed around the Murdoch press for decades. Their new-found bravery in denouncing it is a little too little, too late.

At the end of the day, News International is a business. As much as it often suits the media to pretend that it's serving a social function, it's in the business of making money. Politicians and the police are not. They have their functions bestowed on them by the public for the public and should exercise them without fear or favour – and yet Murdoch got both from everyone in public life.

But before we paint Rupert Murdoch up as the antichrist, just cast you mind back to who the last "press baron" we had in this country was... errr...It was Robert Maxwell, wasn't it? Stealing your own employees' pension fund is up there and getting close to deleting the phone messages of a murdered child in the disgusting stakes.

So, the new anti-Murdoch Milibandwagon should be careful how enthusiastic it gets. Show some contrition for your goddam complicity in the NotW's reign of terror, because if any of you had had the courage to challenge it sooner, we might not be here now.

That's why the idea of a government-regulated press is so completely ridiculous. The Press Complaints Commission might be a joke, but at least it's not a sick joke.

The political class is just as compromised as the leadership of News International – precisely because it has to be held accountable to a higher standard than a mere business.

Now, let's erase the News of the World from history. Let's start by lobbying the surviving members of Queen to change the name of their chart-topping 1977 album. The fact that they haven't done it yet is A SCANDALOUS INSULT.

Wasps of the road

When Piaggio named their new scooter model the "Vespa" back in 1946, they were definitely onto something.

Because scooters are indeed the wasps of the road. We're noisy, agile and very irritating.

Plus, if you hit us, we're almost certainly going to die instantly and leave a big sticky mess.

On my scooter, I like to imagine myself a graceful Mediterranean teenager zipping in and out of the traffic along the seafront in Cannes, even to the point of singing the "Papa/Nicole" Renault Clio music to myself.

It helps draw my attention away from the awful fact that I am an overweight man in his mid-30s, going to sit in an office all day, crawling up to some traffic lights on an industrial estate in Leeds.

That's not me on the right (no helmet), but it's slightly more suggestive of what you see out on the roads in the UK than the other picture.

Postscript:

"Vespa" is Italian for wasp - in case that was not clear at any point.

Hail to Alan Cartridge

This splendidly-named printer shop is right by Leeds-Bradford Airport. This kind of ingenuity in retail is highly worthy of laudation.

What's even better is that their website makes no attempt to capitalise on the joke. Maybe it's not a joke. Maybe the owner is called Alan Cartridge. Who knows?

Anyway, it is infinitely superior to any use of the word "plaice" in the name of a chip shop, or any kind of punning hairdresser's title – and I include in that my own (imaginary) chain of Weimar cabaret-themed barbers, "Mein Herr".

Sadly I don't have a picture of my absolute favourite-named shop in my home town of Boston – "I Can't Believe it's Not Stolen".

I do however, have this one (above, if the reference to "this" is overly confusing), also from Boston. I pity the fool who buys cheap underlay!

By the way, I now have a Twitter account for this blog, under the handle @RogerofSicily if you're into that kind of thing. Become my follower and I will lead you to salvation! All I require is 10 per cent of your gross earnings, for life.

What I have learned about babies

Our youngest had his first bottle of ordinary cow milk today. OK, that was the product of a slight misunderstanding on my part, but oh well, it was bound to happen sooner or later.

Tancred – pictured here shortly after his emergence into the outside world - is now one year old and is on the brink of walking. He can do it pretty well when supported, but simply prefers to crawl around – it being generally quicker and less likely to end in falling on his face.

So, as I was leaving the house, Elvira and I agreed that Tancred is now not a baby, but a toddler – meaning that the baby-owner/operator stage of our lives is (god willing) over.

This is sad in some ways. Four years ago, I didn't like babies at all. Now I do. I even like babies that are not related to me. I particularly like babies that I have no responsibilities towards other than to briefly amuse before moving well away. And babies are a hell of a lot nicer than toddlers.

Anyway, I thought that at this time it would be appropriate for me to share with you all what I have learned about babies before it all leaks out of the rusty, corroded and poorly lagged pipework of my memory and all that's left is mouldy patches under the lino of history.

1. Baby poo is not frightening

The fear of poo is a big concern for non-parents and new parents. In fact, it is considerably less unpleasant than many day-to-day substances. Cat food, for example.

Newborn babies produce something called meconium, which is greeny-black and alarming to look at, but not generally a problem because it soaks straight into nappies.

Thereafter, what they produce while on a purely liquid diet is no problem either. It typically looks like bird seed in a korma sauce and doesn't smell of anything much. You have to change this kind of baby's nappy every hour or so – so you get plenty of exposure.

It's only when you start weaning them onto solid foods that babies start to produce the kind of noxious, sticky and highly mobile substances that you rightly fear. By then, you should be well prepared.

2. Newborn babies are not fun

Culture and social pressure all assure us that, as soon as you see your new baby for the first time, you are overwhelmed with love for it. Naturally, if this does not happen, you (i) feel immensely guilty and (ii) pretend that it did happen, because you would be publicly marked as a psychopath otherwise.

Well, I'm going to let you on in a little secret. This takes time. Newborn babies are no fun at all. They don't do anything other than flop about and react extremely badly to pretty much every stimulus. Or lack of stimulus.

Your newborn baby will not smile, laugh or even look straight at you with any kind of recognition. They don't do that. Until they are about three months old, babies are pure burden.

Plus, as a new parent, you will have to get used to the kind of self-effacement that does not come naturally to a generation that is used to putting itself first, second and third. You won't sleep, you won't be able to do anything you want to do and you'll be driven to distraction by perpetual crying for which you can find no reason whatsoever.

Sorry, but it's true. The first three months of a new parent's life is really hard because you have to dedicate yourself completely to this little lump that just takes, takes, takes and gives nothing back – and you have been led to believe (i) that it does and (ii) that you're entitled to "me time".

Of course, the love is building up unconsciously – and when they do finally smile, laugh or otherwise acknowledge your existence it bursts through and you realise "Aha! That's what they meant!" and it all falls into place. But unless you've been brought up around babies – which most people these days haven't – you'll be on the brink of collapse into full-blown insanity until that point.

3. Babies are philistines

No matter what your good intentions are in kitting out your baby with lovely old-fashioned wooden toys straight out of the imaginary Dickensian childhood that neither you nor anyone else you know ever had, it will always prefer a gaudy piece of non-sustainable plastic that makes a shrieking noise composed of pure migraine.

The only circumstances under which babies prefer wood to plastic is when they are chewing it.

4. "Baa Baa Black Sheep" is THE SAME as "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star"

Most of the horrible shrieking toy noises you will have to endure will be one of these tunes. And it will gradually dawn on you that they are THE SAME.

They differ slightly at the "one for the little boy who lives down the lane"/"like a diamond in the sky" parts – although you can still, a la I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue, easily sing one to the tune of the other – and "Twinkle Twinkle..." has an extra line at the end. But for all intents and purposes, they are the same.

You will come to hate them both.

And that, dear friends, is everything I have learned about babies. I hope it hasn't put you off – because much like learning to play the piano, it might be a real drag to begin with, but it definitely pays off if you stick with it.

If anyone else has learned anything about babies, please do share with the class below.