An Irishman’s Diary on yardsticks, metrics and milestones at the start of a new year

A strip from the Beano's the Bash Street Kids has Smiffy, a classic idiot savant, in need of a short plank to fix his dog's kennel. He takes a wooden ruler and works out the dimensions of the slat required. A narrative bubble carries the words: "Suddenly, Smiffy has the brainwave of the century." His ruler is the precise size of the wood needed. And so Smiffy cunningly nails it to the kennel. The wretched tool of measurement is rendered useful in its primary form. To hell with calibration and its tyranny.

Zero kilometre conjures similar ideas. Be it in London, Paris or wherever, this is a geographical point which negates distance. Zero kilometre tells you “you are here” – the point from which other places are measured. But standing at the mere reference point, you are effectively nowhere. Metric distance is declared to be absolute zero. However, optimistically, from this point you can only be going places.

Take one small step and, while not quite there yet, you are certainly well on your way – an immeasurable feeling at the start of a new year.

Fold-up ruler

In recent days, measurement has foiled my purchase of January sale furniture. In the tone of preceding paragraphs, I went shopping with an extendible measuring tape. These things beat the fold-up ruler, with all their coiled width by height by depth, all their latent distance. I am especially impressed by the grappling hook at one end that enables estimation of what will and will not fit into gaping alcoves. In a furniture outlet, I eyed up the faux antique unit – a fake writing desk at which to pretend to write pastiches. To draw attention to my commercial prospect and lure a sales assistant, I toyed with the tape, letting it snap back into its shell. I enjoyed its flick-knife feeling as I realised the purchase would be neither right nor fitting.

Years ago, I wrote a dreadful sci-fi novella called “The Imperialistic Midgets” – the core idea was a world ruled by two near-identical races, both of reduced stature. War was brewing. The two sides differed on a fundamental point – one measured themselves in inches, the other in centimetres. I’d been reading pamphlets by satire giant Jonathan Swift and, looking back, realise I was trying to kick the legs out from under Gulliver. Too much Kurt Vonnegut had been ingested too. The puny prose skidded around opportunities to joke that giving one batch of midgets an inch would only mean the other would take a yard/metre. It stands as a ridiculous – and luckily – lost text, a milestone as it were of my own failed metrics. Metric versus Imperial – the two sides of a double-standard measuring tape.

That faded yarn and the eternal Bash Street Kids were in my mind as I measured shelves, tallboys and presses. And beds. It struck me a strange Venn diagram could be drawn – some single beds are alarmingly wide while, at the lower end of double beddery, some are rather narrow. In the consumer haze of post-Christmas stupor, the boundaries blur.

At what point is a large, single mattress bigger than a small, double one? It became a matter of unreliable perception and I let the tape snap back one last time into its shell.

A girl worked in a call centre as Y2K fears neared crescendo. As 1999 inched towards the moment of truth, she had her annual performance review. Fingers crossed. She was attentive to her work. She dealt charmingly with clients. She was liked by colleagues and had a generally positive attitude. However, her boss detected one dark corner in her professional profile. Over the entire year, she had been 45 seconds late. In total. It was put to her this simply could not go on.

Algorithms

When she told me of her fractional annual tardiness, I marvelled at the immoral computers and algorithms that could measure the accumulation of less than a second a week to produce such a stark yearly figure. “The tools have not been invented to measure with such precision,” I told her soothingly. “Obsession with lateness overlooks how all calibrations revolve around acceptable levels of error.” Then, drawing on my own gruelling experiences with the clock, I reminded her time was money: best she apologise and mend her sluggish ways. And now, as New Year’s Eve midnight bells fade out, we stand at zero kilometre. In a stretched zero hour. The point from which we go forward.