The Book Tower

You may be familiar with my recent frustration on discovering that Microsoft Vista is incompatible with my beloved home wireless network. This is at least what it says on the tin of my new computer, and on various pieces of paper inside the packaging that fluttered out when I opened it. But I decided to open up the tin and have a go anyway.

And this is what’s so crazy about the whole thing.

People spend hundreds of pounds on a brand new computer and are then expected to wrench it open and stick a card inside if they want to use a wireless network. It’s like selling somebody a SatNav and expecting them to open up the bonnet of their car and weld it on somewhere. And it’s a card so delicate looking that you’re frightened to breath near it through fear of damaging it.

People have a tendency to walk into the room when I’m doing things like this, and I guess that sight of me pulling a computer to pieces is pretty scary. Especially when I’m swearing loudly when the wireless desktop card won’t easily fit in where it’s supposed to. Ever looked inside a computer recently? It’s exactly the same as inside a stereo circa 1979 – a home made feel to it with cardboard and elastic bands and things stapled together that possibly couldn’t work if an electric current were to pass through them. No wonder it was so light.

I’ve progressed in leaps and bounds with Microsoft Vista. The wireless desktop card fitted after I’d removed part of it, something I had to do to get the lid back onto the tin. And it still worked. Even without first installing the software supplied on the CD and ignoring the warnings that failing to do so would destroy two thirds of the universe. It still goddamm worked.

I’m a Vista expert now. So much so that I’ve moved on to fancy peripherals, like a round leather mouse mat and a hat three sizes too big because “I’m getting better with computers”. I’m getting a wireless mouse next. I’m left handed, which causes terrible trouble with our wires.

Is that how you spell “goddamm”?

Comment

‘I’ve lost all sense of proportion regarding alcohol. You know how they say time slows down as you get older – or is it speeds up? One or the other. Days whizz by so that it’s Christmas every other week (God, what a prospect). Well, a similar thing happens with alcohol. Alcohol slows down as you get older as well, so that it takes more and more to get you pissed. Whereas when you’re young it flashes through your body like lightning, doesn’t it? You can feel it going into your blood, you can feel all the little blood cells getting drunk … and then you can feel it here – ‘ he touched the front of his head – ‘it gets you right in the frontal lobes. I remember in the army – that was the first time I ever drank much. And then you think, “What’s the point, how much time have we got left on this earth, do we really want to spend it feeling dizzy?” On the other hand, do we really want to spend it sober? You know there’s a theory that senility is nature’s way of stopping you from worrying about death? Alcohol does the same thing. What’s the difference between senility and drunkenness? Drunkennes is artificial senility.’

In A Curious Earth, Gerard Woodward follows the progress of Aldous Jones, first encountered in his previous two novels August and I’ll Go To Bed At Noon. I must confess that the premise of Aldous as a central character in a novel was somewhat unpromising. Anyone who has been reading this series may agree; previously Aldous stood on the sidelines of the action, an easy going and dreamy head of the mad Jones household of sixties and seventies English suburbia. With the more interesting characters gone, mostly due to the devastating effect of the demon called alcohol that haunts these novels, how could the gentle retired art teacher possibly hold his own? Thanks to Woodward’s skill as a writer, he does us proud.

We first met the Jones family in August, where Aldous takes his family to the same spot in Wales for the annual camping holiday. Innocent times, although we slowly begin to follow his wife’s Colette’s drift into addiction – firstly glue (sniffing something quite new and perfectly legal in the 60s) and then alcohol. I’ll Go To Bed At Noon follows a darker path, with Colette and other members of the Jones family in the clutches of the bottle, most disturbingly their son Janus – who is gripped by alcoholism and madness with tragic consequences. But although these novels deal with much sadness they are also terribly funny and I’ll Go To Bed At Noon is one of the most entertaining books I’ve read in the last few years.

At first I wasn’t sure if Woodward could go any further with the Jones family but proceedings quickly fall into the familiarly entertaining style. It starts with Aldous, now widowed and living apart from his surviving grown up children, slowly taking comfort in the bottle himself. He slips into apathy and increasingly eccentric behaviour; one amusing scene has him proudly displaying the mouldy potatoes growing into a huge plant in the cupboard to his perplexed daughter. Following a health scare he attempts to get his act together and visits his son in Ostend, where Woodward can really let rip with his trademark humour – Aldous losing his false teeth on a cross channel ferry, his general confusion at being abroad for the first time since the War, the many characters he meets who far more eccentric than himself (these include an insane author of several volumes on sexual perversion, and the young and attractive love interest for Aldous and the sudden appearance of her irritating and bullying husband).

Best of all is Woodward’s prose. He is a writer who can work wonders with the everyday, and with ordinary thoughts, hopes and regrets. Aldous falls in love again, rediscovers life and has some very high hopes for the old Jones family home. A Curous Earth is a wonderful celebration of the ordinary, with Aldous Jones enjoying a late flowering before our very eyes.

Comment

Computers computers computers. Who could be doing with them?

My mother recently decided that she really didn’t want to join the silver surfer brigade and asked me if I’d like to have her recently acquired computer. I was sad she hasn’t embraced technology, especially the web. But I was also, perhaps selfishly, excited at the prospect of inheriting a decent set of hardware. For the record, we have a rather eccentric set up at home. Two laptops, one of which is officially my wife’s work computer, both connected – after much huffing and puffing – to a wireless router. Along comes my Mum’s computer and along comes problems.

Two words. Windows Vista. Or, more fittingly, fucking Microsoft. After hauling boxes and monitors down the stairs and hurriedly connecting it all together in a scene that resembled Doctor Who at his most manic on a day when the Tardis isn’t working too well, I was suddenly faced with my horrible problem. One that even a Sonic Screwdriver might not fix. My beloved wireless router does not work with Windows Vista. Fucking Microsoft.

Further problems when the wireless router, perhaps feeling a bit miffed at the new imposter, decides to go bang. Well, pop really. I spend a frantic evening visting PC World, Comet, John Lewis and others only to be laughed out of every store because only a fool would expect to find a fifteen volt adapter in an electrical shop. Okay I can put this on hold, but I can’t get away from the fact that even when I do get to plug my router in again it will not work with Windows Vista. Visits to forums give me dark and dangerous alternatives:

1. Install Windows XP on the new computer to replace Vista or, more chillingly, install XP alongside Vista
2. Find a new router which will work with Vista
3. Hang around for a bit until a solution reveals itself. After all, this problem must be affecting other people

To these I say:

1. This is the route to madness, and I may end up with -as they say in forums – a paperweight
2. Impossible
3. I want my new computer now

Solutions always come with time. Want to know what I’ve done? Well, our home networking has just got that little bit more eccentric. Think of Doctor Who on a really bad day when the Tardis has been in pieces and reassembled several times and both the Time Lord, his current assistant and Captain Jack Harkness have all had their heads in their hands. Thanks to the wonderful Maplin I found a replacement adapter and brought the wireless router back to life. With several extra cables and USB extensions I have connected the new computer and monitor to the laptop. What’s amazing is that it works – and you can guess which frantic scene from which popular family sci-fi show our kitchen resembles. I’ve saved the universe again.

Fucking Microsoft. And I bet Vista won’t let you download iTunes.

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