Gieshübler!

He's a character, the best we have here, and something of an original, but above all he's all heart, and that's always the main thing.

Now pay attention and I shall explain. Back in the day (well, 1999) I was a fresh-faced first-year maths student in Cambridge, and for most of that year a couple of my best friends always called me Gieshübler. (Edinburgh people still call me Ginge, and I'm not sure I prefer it.) I only ever knew half the reason for this: Gieshübler is a character in the German novel Effi Briest, which one of the friends was reading for his course, and apparently there were some similarities between the character and myself. However, I never knew exactly what these similarities were; Gieshübler could have been a lovely man, or maybe a bit of a chancer, or perhaps a cast-iron shit.

The other day something reminded me of the Gieshübler business so I decided to buy the book and read all about it. Even if Gieshübler does turn out to be a degenerate kitten-eating serial murderer, this all happened so long ago that I won't take it to heart -- I hope. The quote at the top is the first mention of Gieshübler in the book, but that's only a couple of chapters in so there's plenty of room left for him to become a baby-stealing stalker.

The astute among you will have noticed that this means I've finally finished Middlesex. I've also read a few other things in the meantime, including books on atheism, string theory, and the Trojan war. You'll also have noticed a striking and well-established pattern: that my nicknames (the ones that people call me directly; god knows what they say when I'm not around) all seem to begin with G. This gives me hope that my next nickname will be Gangsta or The G-Man or something equally tough-sounding. Presumably this will never happen.