Edward Trencom’s Nose: A Novel of History, Dark Intrigue and Cheese

by Giles Milton

I found this book entertaining enough, albeit not as much as According to Arnold. The problem is, I couldn’t care less about its protagonist. In spite (or maybe because) of his obsession with his dead ancestors, he is just plain boring. I loved the language though.

I was not able to check whether all the cheeses mentioned in the book really exist. At least toulomotyri appears to be genuine. But I was sorely disappointed that neither majorero nor any Finnish cheese were in Edward Trencom’s cellar.

Elizabeth had an absolute abhorrence of impinging on other people’s territory. Indeed, there was a side to her that was peculiarly English — not in the patriotic sense of flag-waving and hymn-singing and cabbage that’s been boiled for so long that it’s no longer green. It was more the fact that she valued more than anything else in the world the much underrated virtue of respecting one another’s space. She fully understood why commuters on the train to London liked to hide behind the vast acreage of The Times. After all, she thought, didn’t everyone have the right to a few snatched moments on the way to work, simply enjoying the privacy of their own company?

Uniko

by Kimmo Pohjonen, Samuli Kosminen and Kronos Quartet

I borrowed this DVD from Porvoo City Library. While I am here, I have to use it — it’s not that you get to hear a lot of Finnish music outside of Finland.

Kimmo Pohjonen, however, by now is known worldwide. “Jimi Hendrix of the accordion”? What nonsense. There’s very little in common between Pohjonen and Hendrix — apart from their awesomeness, that is. If I had to make comparison to a rock guitarist, I’d rather go for a living one, namely, Robert Fripp. (And, by the way, KTU, the project of Pohjonen and two former King Crimson members, Pat Mastelotto and Trey Gunn, is alive and kicking and will give two concerts in Poland later this month.)

On Uniko (recorded live at the Helsinki Festival in 2004), Pohjonen and Samuli Kosminen collaborate with Kronos Quartet to create a fantastic soundscape. It is developing slowly but surely. The virtuosity is there all right but there is no display of virtuosity. Just organically-grown music that you want to taste forever.

TGI 90 Chromatic Tuner

by TGI

My chromatic tuner died this spring. At first I thought there was a problem with a battery, or the battery contact. I’ve changed the battery couple of times and added a bit of duct tape to keep it firmly in place. Still, it required me pressing on the battery compartment (squeezing the electrons out?) to make it go. And then, even that stopped working.

During my last visit to Cambridge I ventured to the very same music shop in a hope to buy a replacement. There are not selling Crafter tuners any longer. However, the shop assistant did show me a selection of gadgets and recommended this model as the one that works well both on string and brass instruments. (He said he himself plays trumpet and clips this tuner to the bell.) So I bought it.

It is a great little gizmo and so far it has been working just fine. The “pitch” button is used to calibrate the concert A between 430 and 450 Hz. The “item” button allows to switch between the instrument (guitar, bass, violin, ukulele) and chromatic (keys F, B♭, E♭ and, naturally, C) modes. Finally, the “flat” button makes the E♭ tuning and D tuning of guitar and bass a piece of cake. (It is not that difficult anyway.) The clip provides two rotational degrees of freedom and can be swapped between the left and the right side of the tuner. The LCD display looks as if taken from some vintage sci-fi movies. Last but not least: black is cool but metallic red is even cooler.

You can buy yourself one from Amazon for one-third of the price I paid in the shop.

The Martian Chronicles

by Ray Bradbury

This was the first book of Ray Bradbury I ever read, in summer of 1977. (I discovered many other things that summer: ABBA, Livin’ Blues, Alexander Galich and One Hundred Years of Solitude, to name a few.) A former student of my mum gave me Марсианские хроники to read. He suggested me to draw an illustration for each chapter. So I did. I don’t think any of these have survived. I remember that I gave the drawing for The Green Morning to the owner of the book. Doesn’t matter: I know that The Martian Chronicles are illustrated by me.

I just found out from Wikipedia that the 1997 edition of the book moved all the dates forward by 31 years. That doesn’t sound right. In the original Bradbury calendar, today is already The Off Season (Мёртвый сезон).

I came to identify Fuerteventura with Bradbury’s Mars. Especially when the calima was blowing. Now I am back to Earth. There are rivers and lakes and forests, with berries and mushrooms. It is raining every other day and I don’t have to sweep red sand from the patio. They say it can be a lot of snow in winter. It is all familiar but feels a bit weird.

“I made up my mind when I came here last year I wouldn’t expect nothing, nor ask nothing, nor be surprised at nothing. We’ve got to forget Earth and how things were. We’ve got to look at what we’re in here, and how different it is. I get a hell of a lot of fun out of just the weather here. It’s Martian weather. Hot as hell daytimes, cold as hell nights. I get a big kick out of the different flowers and different rain.” “I’m not surprised at anything any more,” said the old man. “I’m just looking. I’m just experiencing. If you can’t take Mars for what she is, you might as well go back to Earth. Everything’s crazy up here, the soil, the air, the canals, the natives (I never saw any yet, but I hear they’re around), the clocks. Even my clock acts funny. Even time is crazy up here. Sometimes I feel I’m here all by myself, no one else on the whole damn planet. I’d take bets on it.” August 2002: Night Meeting

The Ultimate Inferior Beings

by Mark Roman

About a year ago, we were visiting our friend, my former colleague and bandmate-turned-writer, Martina Munzittu. I’ve noticed the Pythonesque cover of the book laying on her table. The novel, it has to be added, is written by another former colleague of mine. I asked Martina if she read it and she said “not yet”. Yuri also got interested and while we were chatting and having lunch and chatting again, he read about a third of the book. Later that day, he asked me to order it from Amazon, which I did. I also got a Kindle version of it (for free, as it happens).

It was not until the last week of July though that I came to read it myself. We were busy packing and storing when Timur expressed a desire to take TUIB with us to Finland, because Yuri told him the book is very good. I told him it’s a bit of an overkill to carry a hardcopy in our luggage when we have it on Kindle. After that, I proceeded to read this very hardcopy while I could.

It turned out to be better than I expected. Actually, brilliant. If you like Douglas Adams, Monty Python and Red Dwarf, I am sure you will enjoy TUIB. Even if you hate all of those... you still should give TUIB a try. It is very user-friendly and even has a Glossary explaining, sometimes correctly, some of the scientific mumbo-jumbo.

anaX was hooking the extensible, spring-coil lead of the all-purpose, high internal impedance recharger to the brass-alloy nodal-anode batteries of emergency deep-space survival module No 3. And she was doing it a lot faster than it takes to say it. LEP was quietly singing “Daisy, Daisy” to himself. anaX took it to be a normal pastime for ship’s computers, as she had heard it somewhere before, but it wasn’t long before this pastime started to irritate her. She looked up from recharging the batteries and said, “LEP?” LEP stopped singing. “Yes?” “Tell me something about yourself,” she said. “Talk to me for a bit.” “There’s nothing to tell,” said LEP with uncharacteristic modesty. “I’m sure there is.” “Well, you’re quite right. There is. And every bit of it is phenomenally interesting.” “Go on, then.” She continued with her recharging. “I’m deeply flattered,” said LEP. “I hadn’t realized you were so interested in me.” “I’m not. But it’s got to be better than your singing.”

Cycling in Corralejo

A BBC report says that Cambridge is “Britain’s top cycling city”. If this is indeed so, I feel sorry for the rest of Britain. For Cambridge, the last time I was looking (last month), is still far from being truly cycle-friendly. Unfortunately, there are no shortage of cyclist haters in Britain. This hatred is often based on a belief that it’s them, motorists, who are paying the mythical “road tax” while the rest are (equally mythical) “road tax dodgers”. On the other hand, (some of) the cyclists in Cambridge are arrogant like nowhere else. When Douglas Adams wrote about “a cyclist, who cursed and swore ... from a moral high ground that cyclists alone seem able to inhabit”, I’m sure he meant Cambridge cyclists.

I bought my first bicycle in 1998, shortly after moving to Cambridgeshire, in a hope to use it for my work commute. Back then, I had this mental image of Cambridge as a safe cycling place, which I by some reason extended to the rest of the county. The reality was different. The semblance of the cycling path was disappearing half-way from the village, and I was never feeling suicidal enough to hit the motorway. And so, for the next 13 years, my Integra Phantom was resting. (Resting, not rusting. It started to rust only here.)

I resumed cycling two years ago, in Corralejo. My first week here, I bought a budget Berg. Both Yuri and Timur were learning cycling on it, and then Yuri was using it daily, so it suffered a lot. In two years, I changed the pedals, wheels, gears, brakes (twice), saddle (twice), tyres (twice), countless inner tubes... well more or less everything apart from the frame and the chain. I reckon I invested in it at least twice as much as it was worth new. Still, cycling is the way to go in Corralejo. From our house, it is a 15-minute ride to the school and the same to Flag Beach.

When my old bike has finally arrived from England, I took it for a check-up to the sports shop where I bought the rest of our bike fleet. That’s when and how I learned (from “my” mechanic) that the brake levers in left-side-driving countries are the other way round compared to the rest of the world.

Now Corralejo is reasonably crime-free but one day Timur phoned from the school and said that his bike has disappeared. By that time, it also was a well-battered contraption scarcely worth stealing. Still, I went to the police to report the incident, if only for the sake of the experience. Needless to say, I never heard back from them.

Cycling in Corralejo is a breeze. Not because of the infrastructure — the cycling paths can be good, bad or absent — but thanks to the attitude. ¡Tranquilo, hombre! It’s only guiris (foreigners) who wear cycling helmets. Nobody bothers with hand signals either. The motorists normally leave the cyclists in peace; the cyclists don’t seem to be excessively irritating either. For me, the major annoyance comes in form of obese pedestrians who insist on crawling three or four a-breast, taking all of the pavement and a cycling path.

Ironically, just as we are planning to move, they, at long last, finished the re-surfacing of the high street and even put the new bike parking racks. If you are visiting Corralejo, think seriously of renting a bike. If you are moving in... do you need a second-hand one?

More photos of Fuerteventura @ Shutterstock.

Ansel Adams at 100

by John Szarkowski

No, the book is definitely not dead. And I can’t think of a better example than this: a true objet d’art. Now that’s how to use it:

Take the linen slipcase off. Open the linen-bound book. Read the text. Admire the tritone photographs Ansel Adams himself would approve of. Hang a print on the wall.

Much has been said and written about Adams’ legendary technique — probably too much, for in fact it was no better than it needed to be to describe what he wanted to describe; often it was not good enough for that, as he repeatedly deplored. His technique had to be better than that of most photographers because his subjects required it. Photographing the air of Yosemite required a more sophisticated technique than was required to photograph its geology. Otherwise, Adams’ insistence on precision would have been just showing off — fancy dancing with no partner, and none in view.