A sorry Kindle story. And a joke to sharpen the irony

There are times when going on holiday isn’t a luxury, but a vital necessity.

Getting back to work, after an involuntary nearly eight-month break last year, is a bit of a shock to the system. Especially as it involves commuting into London, a joy I’d been deprived of for the previous four years. Especially as that involves frequent 5:15 a.m. starts to the day.

The worst effect of tiredness, I find, is to undermine judgement. I make mistakes, try to fix them and end up compounding them with worse errors still.

The other day I left for work a little later than I usually do. The trouble is that while it’s a luxury to be a little more leisurely about getting ready to go, and the dog gets a slightly longer walk, there’s a price to pay which rather kills the pleasure: I don’t get a seat on the later trains.

That was my first misjudgement.

I’m an enthusiastic convert to the Kindle. Never, since I’ve had a Kindle, have I had a suitcase that’s overweight for air travel. And yet now I travel with dozens, potentially hundreds, of books where in the past I would take just a handful – but that would be enough to tip the scales into eye-watering excess baggage charges.

Great device, great book. A source of pride and joy
And just now a little embarrassment

The Kindle has become my newspaper too. So I was reading the Guardian on the way into work until the sheer discomfort of trying to keep my balance in a crowded aisle became unbearable, and I put my Kindle down on a table in front of me.

That was my second misjudgement.

Because when more people joined the train, I had to move further down the aisle and away from my Kindle. Out of sight, out of mind. A porous mind, at least. As a result, I left the train without the Kindle and didn’t even notice until I decided to read a little more of The Big Short at lunchtime. 

You don’t know The Big Short? It’s a must read. Watch this space for more about this brilliant insight into the sheer stupidity of the people who make the most money, but only for themselves, and lose the most money for the rest of us.

But, of course, I couldn’t read The Big Short that lunchtime. I’d lost my Kindle. Oh, the despair!

The depression over my stupidity was immense. Made worse by the tiredness. I felt driven to do something immediately, to try to remedy the loss. So I bit the bullet and ordered another one. It was a bitter bullet (a bit of a bitter bullet bitten?) as Amazon no longer had a special offer on and I had to pay full price.

That was my third misjudgement, the final error that compounded the others. Because the inevitable happened. The train company got in touch. Instead of being stolen, my Kindle had fallen into the hands of someone honest enough to hand it in, and I could go and collect it. Just, as it happens, as I received the new one.

So I now own two Kindles. Both capable of holding a regular library of books, far more than I could ever read or wish to read. An endless supply, for all practical purposes, which I can never exhaust. And each identical to the other.

That made me think. Firstly, that it was definitely time for a holiday, to get grounded again and have my judgement functioning once more. And secondly of an old Irish joke I’ve always enjoyed.

Seamus is offered three wishes by his fairy godmother. For the first, he asks for a bottle of Guinness that never runs out. She flicks her wand and there, in front of him, is the bottle. He pours out a glass and drinks it, and the bottle is full again.

“Why, that’s magical," he says.

“And what about your other two wishes?” she asks.

“Well, I liked that one so much, I think I’ll have two more of the same.”

At least I now know what it feels like to be Seamus.

Books that Kindle disloyalty

I’m a great fan of reading books electronically. 

Not that I thought I ever would be. I remember long arguments with one of my sons, in which I maintained that nothing would ever replace the facility a physical book, with real paper pages, gives you to flick through it looking for a passage that struck you or which you just want to re-read. 

Well, I was wrong. 

Noble. Majestic. But the user interface leaves a little to desire

It’s just amazing to be able to go on holiday with dozens of books, but without a case that wrenches your arm from your shoulder or makes you liable for excess baggage charges. Indeed, you can stick the whole collection in your hand baggage. You can even carry it in a (reasonably capacious) coat pocket. 

Nor is the experience anything like reading on a computer. On the contrary, today’s electronic book screens manage to create an experience not just spookily similar to that of a printed page, but rather superior to it, at least in clarity of typeface and ease of reading.

Still, there are drawbacks. There are areas where the printed page retains its advantage. One of them, as it happens, comes when travelling. The airlines still don’t let you use your electronic equipment during take-off and landing in. 

Amazing. Are they really saying that we still use navigation systems so vulnerable that a £130 Kindle can flummox them? Are they telling me that terrorists could bring down planes by just having a bunch of them simultaneously phone home from on board?

Cabin crew persist in rigidly enforcing the prohibition of electronic devices. I don’t mind not reading if I’m leaving, or arriving at, a place I don’t know well. In all other circumstances, familiarity has bred contempt, and I want distraction from the instant I’ve sat down to the moment I stand up again. That means I need at least one physical book.

The other advantage of print is that there are simply certain books that have never made it to Kindle or its competitors. And some of those books, whatever the radical modernists may think, are rather good. You want to read them? You have to settle for paper, whose day, it seems, is not quite gone after all.

But sadly I’m beginning to feel disappointed with its limitations. I who was always such a strenuous champion of the joys of riffling through its pages, now frequently catch myself looking for the search function in a printed book, when I want to find a particular passage. It leaves me deflated when I remember there isn’t one. Flicking through the pages is fine, unless you actually have no idea where the passage was.

The sad thing is that I’m finding myself increasingly prone to this kind of electronically-distorted thinking. The other day, studying a map in a London Underground train, I realised I was looking for the cursor that would show me just where on the line I was. And once more had a sensation of disappointment that there wasn’t one.

London Tube Ads: on the way to extinction?

It may be that I was thrown by the fact that even the adverts that line the walls alongside Tube escalators are turning digital now. My grandfather used to print the paper version in years gone by, and he did his work with loving, artistic care, let me tell you. 

These days we increasingly get movies instead of posters, the displays carefully timed so that you don’t miss any of the unfolding action as you move past successive screens. It's like TV adverts even when you're away from your TV. 

The effect is to leave me wondering why, if they can do that, we can’t have a “you are here now” on the Tube maps in the cars.

Frightening. I who strove so long for tradition have been infected by the digital fixation of our time.

It leaves me guiltily uneasy at my own disloyalty.

Kindling my enthusiasm

Years ago, my son David told me that a day would come when people would read books on electronic screens and rather than on paper.

‘Oh, no,’ I assured him, ‘that’s not going to happen. The books is such an attractive object. Look what you can do with it,’ I said riffling through one until I found my page, ‘that’s never going to be possible with some kind of electronic reader.’

Well, I’ve said before that it’s salutary to have your prejudices overthrown, especially when you overthrow them yourself.

My other sons, Michael and Nicky, gave Danielle and me a joint Christmas present this year, of a Kindle. I dug in my heels and resisted the temptation to succumb to this device. Several seconds went by before I gave in to its seduction. 

Of course, I’ve taken it over. Poor Danielle doesn’t get a look in. I’ve even had to buy her one of her own. I’m not going to be separated from mine.

Glory of a bygone age?

It’s brilliant! Why, I even have a subscription to The Guardian on it. I get up in the morning, and there’s the new edition. I don't have to wait for a paper boy or struggle through the cold to the newsagent’s. Why, even when I was getting up in California, there was the new edition without the difficulty of trying to track down the only good newspaper there is, in a nation benighted by its unavailability. 

In fact, because of the bizarre phenomenon I’ve commented on before, whereby it isn’t the same time, at the same time, everywhere in the world, I even got the next day’s edition in California at 4:00 the previous afternoon. 

I still haven’t worked out how they managed to get it to me so early.

What’s more, I couldn't believe how light my suitcase was. I'm never quite sure which books I’m going to want to read when I set off on a trip, or how many I can get through, so I always take too many and exceed my baggage allowance or have to leave my boots behind. 

But this time I travelled with 25 books and I could carry them in the inside pocket of my jacket. And then I added two weeks worth of a heavyweight daily newspaper but the Kindle stayed as light as ever.

It even makes me feel virtuous. I mean, in the only comprehensible book I’ve read on economics — The Undercover Economist — Tim Harford argues that as societies become richer, their luxuries tend to get bigger and more resource consuming, until a tipping point is reached, when suddenly people realise that there is kudos in having commodities that actually damage the environment less. It’s happened with cars, except among Americans or Jeremy Clarkson: most people now pursue fuel efficiency at least as much as size and speed.

That’s how it is with the Kindle. I can read my paper without using up any paper. That means fewer trees chopped down, less fuel consumed in highly expensive shipping. Apart from the initial outlay, the Kindle is green. A luxury that makes me full good about myself. What more could I want?

Well, actually, I could want one thing. I wish I could ring the Kindle, like I ring my phone, when I don’t know where I’ve left it. Apart from that, the Kindle leaves nothing to be desired.

So, David: you were perfectly right. I’ve had to overthrow yet another of my prejudices. And the process has given me a lot of enjoyment.