notes: January 2009

An apology to John Lloyd; and notes about goosnarghs

New from me at The Morning News: The crippling fear of corriearklet.

It's been brought to my attention, now that the thing is published, that I neglected to credit John Lloyd as co-author of The Meaning of Liff. This is an omission I regret.

I first picked up Liff as a teenager. My brother got hold of a copy (I'm not sure how or why), so it was just floating around the house and I started flicking through. I was unfamiliar with satire and found it hard to grasp: just what exactly was this book? Were these place names real? Yes, said the road atlas. Blimey. Once I knew the places were real, the definitions seemed funnier.

One Liff word became commonplace in our family's daily life; "goosnargh".

GOOSNARGH (pro. gooz-nog) (n.): Something left over from preparing or eating a meal, which you store in the fridge despite the fact that you know full well you will never ever use it.

The word's meaning has changed a little over the years. We now store goosnarghs habitually, but with every intention of making use of them. I will periodically make a meal that uses up the goosnarghs. I will sometimes make a point of eating up goosnarghs as a snack or for my lunch. The goosnargh has become an essential part of our family diet.

We have other words (not from Liff) that we use within the family. Many of these are the result of having offspring. Other parents will, I'm sure, understand how words like this come about.

BEW: A feeling of unhappiness. "I'm bew."

BEWBODS: A feeling of unhappiness shared among many people. "We are bewbods."

BRETTUS: Breakfast.

CORKS: An expression of delight. "Corks! That's yaybods!"

FLICKER: A remote control for any device. "Where's the telly flicker?"

FOON: A cross between loony, fool and loon. An idiot.

FOONITY: The behaviour of foons.

MIMMOOM: The living room.

NIM: Like bew, but describing extreme unhappiness. "I was bew, but now I'm nim!" Note: the logical extension of this to "nimbods" when many people are extremely unhappy makes perfect sense, but has never been in use in our household.

NIP-NAP: Nappy.

NOO-NAH: Nonsense speech that comes from the mouths of the over-tired. "Noo-nah is coming out now. Time for bed."

PODGE: Porridge.

PUTER: Computer.

SPLEASE: The word "please", when added to the end of a sentence that it should have been in to start with. "Can I have a sweet? Splease?"

WOWZERS TROUSERS: An expression of delighted astonishment. "Cor! Really? Wowzers trousers!"

YAYBODS: The opposite of bewbods. "Hurrah! Yaybods!"

Thursday, January 22, 2009
0 comments

In my library

I've been thinking about libraries.

I love libraries. I grew up spending hours in our town library. I remember things from the time I spent there. Asterix, especially. I went through every single Asterix book, and then all the Tintin adventures. I read them again and again, read them in the library itself and then took them home to read once more. Asterix taught me what a square on the hypotenuse was. It taught me how to make puns. And Tintin? Tintin was my Famous Five, the mystery adventures I could bury myself in.

I remember other things: a cartoon documentary about the discovery of the atom, of atomic energy and atomic bombs. It was narrated by a friendly little atom character. I wish I could remember the book's title, I've been looking for it for years. It began with Fermi's atomic pile; see, I remember individual pages. I wonder how many times I read that book?

What do libraries do well?

(I've been asking.)

They act well as places. People go to the library, it's a destination. Not just a source of information, but a physical space within which to digest it. And more: a place for meeting people, chatting, taking the kids on a wet afternoon. A place for holding meetings and events, community discussions and lectures, workshops, exhibitions, coffee mornings. It's about a lot more than the books.
Libraries are pretty good at getting information to people. But they're too slow now. So much slower than searching online. So slow that kids today are encouraged to look online rather than find in the library. The internet is quicker and is likely to have exactly the data required.

What people said to me on Twitter

What are libraries not so good at?

(None of this is meant as unhelpful criticism for criticism's sake; and most of it is based on my personal experience.)

Attracting people. Many are souless places, frequented by the older members of the community and shunned by teenagers.
Doing the internet. In our local library there are a bunch of PCs attached to a broadband pipe, but the bandwidth is wasted. All you ever see there is people using Hotmail or Yahoo Mail accounts, or getting lost as they try to find stuff. They get lost and ask the library staff for help, but the library staff don't have the faintest clue about the internet or about computers, so they shrug their shoulders and say "I'm not much good at IT." No wonder the users stick to Hotmail.
Being comprehensive. They can't compete with Wikipedia, let alone the whole internet. They are large buildings housing a very small selection of books.
Keeping costs down. Libraries are very expensive to run. There's a large space to heat. Staff to pay. Pay extra if you want them to work weekends. And there's books to buy - vast numbers of books. Yes, libraries get them much cheaper than we do but even so, book budgets are an important item on the budget sheet.
Being open. Because they're expensive, they're an easy target for cost-cutting local authorities desperate to keep council tax bills down. Small local branches get closed completely. Larger ones reduce their opening hours, which means that working people struggle to get in them at all. No wonder they seem to be full of old people all the time.

What is a modern library's function?

The space/place element is an important one.

A venue. A place for advice. Sharing. Working alone and in teams.

And still books: bring your own. Share your old paperbacks. Even: store your books in the local library - others can borrow them in the meantime.

A print shop: the library has software, hardware and staff skill to grab stuff from the networks, assemble it into something interesting, and print off a copy of it. AND: a reference to this new, unique work is then uploaded to Google Base or somewhere, so that it becomes searchable, keepable, and re-printable by any other library/person anywhere in the world.

Questions

What does a library do with ebooks? How do you lend and ebook?

Can libraries work as publishers?

Thursday, January 15, 2009
0 comments

Why you should own The Morning News Annual 2008

The Morning News Annual 2008

Just before Christmas I received my copy of The Morning News Annual 2008, and what a fabulous Christmas present it was too.

Not because I'm in it, though.

My essay on the horror of writing the short bio, A Writer by Any Other Name, is one of the writings included. I was extremely pleased that the TMN team allowed me to have a bio at the back that simply reads "Giles Turnbull is a - well, you know all that now."

No, the reason it's such a fabulous present is all the other amazing stuff it contains, such as Paul Ford's epic, hilarious, Six Word Reviews of 763 SXSW MP3s and Todd Levin's Someday I Hope To Never Return Again - just two examples among many. Alongside the words are tiny illustrations that waltz with their articles and make you smile when you turn the page and discover one.

And the book itself is a gorgeous thing. You hold it in your mucky paws and feel a bit guilty, as if you might tarnish the finish. You feel as if you should go and wash before picking it up. Once you are holding it, you don't want to put it down again. The contents (my shabby effort aside) are all wonderful reads, and the thing itself sits comfortably in your hands like a gem, or a pretty stone found on the beach, or a cute cuddly pet.

The binding is traditional and strong. This is an object that will last, that you can put on your shelves and still expect to own when you are wrinkled, and at the age when grandchildren inspect your bookcases and ask idly: "What's this one about? Can I borrow it?"

Monday, January 05, 2009
0 comments