Fear Of Falling Satellites
Hello, youA week from now and I go off air for as long as it takes me to walk to Nick's and use his computer. For I move house. Goodbye, broadband, until I sort it out in the new place, obviously. Like all of us here, I need my electronic drip. I generally say to myself, I'll spend an hour on myspace and then off to read challenging works of literature or watch high-brow French drama. So after four hours of googling anything that comes into my head, looking for free mp3 and sound recording software and listening to streaming BBC 7 I realise it's 1am and everyone has gone to bed. I won't be able to do that for a while.
And goodbye other things. Sky TV is one, although there is rarely anything to watch, and if there is it's generally stuffed to bursting wth adverts for car insurance or personal injury claims or cheap, affordable loans. If there's one thing the world needs more of, it's cheap personal loans. I also am looking forward to the cricket season, and that's all on Rupert-O-Vision as well. So I'll have to get hooked up, because everyone else I know with digital telly either loathes all sport or will be watching the World Cup. My minor cricketing pecadillo will be left behind, and good though The Guradian's over-by-over coverage is, it's not quite the same.
Goodbye to the cat and dog, and I will miss them. I normally have little time for animals. I don't dislike them, not at all, and I get quite exercised about needlessneglect, wanton cruelty or fox hunting. But I just don't feel the same fuzzy warmth and empathetic bond that some other people do. It used to make my last girlfriend very angry that I felt no need to feed the cute baby goats at petting zoos. She loved everything to do with them. I looked at the feed pellets, I looked at the goat, and felt precisely nothing. I know this makes me the baddie in any number of childrens films, and I am not proud of it at all. It's just the way I am, just like some people are gay or eat their earwax or vote Conservative. But I do like cats, as they are proof of re-incarnation. Well, who gets a cushier number than the domestic cat? Do fuck all but sleep and eat and get stroked for the best part of twenty years. These are clearly karmic remards, bestowed on those who dedicated their lives to the poor and disadvantaged, and as a reward from the Almighty, they get to be cats. QED. My cat used to be Ghandi.
Goodbye to the careless purchase of consumer goods. I have far more CDs than I need, more DVDs than I have time to watch, but still I buy them. I am a sucker for the "5 for 30" sales you get. I buy all five and then put them on a shelf to gather dust. I love music but I own several albums I have never listened to a note of. I will even load them onto my iPod and then skip the tracks when they come up. I may as well be smashing Faberge eggs in the faces of the poor. Well, no more. I will have to pay for council tax and rent and water instead. Goodbye excess income.
But it's not all bad. It's goodbye to having to drive 15 miles to see my friends. Now I know to all my American readers (hello, you two) that's franky no distance at all, and I have absoultely nothing to be complaining about. Very true. And 30 minutes in the car is hardly the very worst thing that can happen to a man. But I am sick of it. I generally ply the way between Market Harborough and Leicester six times a week, quite often seven. I do not drive to work but refuse to use the train for travel on my own time. It's my time, and I don't want to do what I do every working day again at the weekends. So I get into my hateful, whinnet-ridden car and creak along up the wanker-infested and ever clogged A6 to see where my life is kept. As of Frday, no more, and I will catch the train again with a light heart, knowing I am doing it for nothing but leisure.
And so it follows that it is goodbye to giving 110 of my pounds to Midland Mainline every month for the privilege of a bit of floor to sit on on their crappy trains in the morning. The very thing I want after getting up and all that bollocks is to have to sit on the floor in the wheelchair alcove. But then, they must need the four coaches of first class with no-one in them for some reason. Bah, I say. They tempt us on with offers of free tea and comfy seats, promises of convenience and endless ease, but it's all smoke and mirrors. They can't even provide enough seats and room for more than one bike. I would give them 1320 a year, and there are about forty people at my station alone in the morning. Midland Mainline is owned by the National Express group, who last year made 215,000,000 profit.
Lastly, it's goodbye to Mum and Dad, who have taken me back in for the last six months after my life so spectacularly fell apart over one week in September last year. They have let me come and go as I please and not tell them anything, but still left me dinner in the oven. They have listened to me moan, whinge, shout and cry. I have, in short, been a nightmare. And they have asked nothing in return except some money for board and that I occasionally walk the dog. I hope one day to be properly able to tell them quite how much it has meant to me.
Just another week...
Good night, and good luck
Doug
No comments:
Post a Comment