Dogtrack Disaster!

In 1936 my wife’s great-grandfather’s dog won the Coronation Cup.

Sounds like an urban legend, right?

But it ain’t.

True story.

My mum-in-law’s even got the news clipping in the attic somewhere.

It was a greyhound called ‘Our Nellie’ and it ran so fast it caught the rabbit. Of course, it wasn’t a real rabbit but rather a fluffy, rabbit-shaped ball… or something.

Once it had caught this thing it couldn’t race again. After Nellie knew it wasn’t a real rabbit he just thought, “Fuck that shit! I’d rather sniff arseholes.”

Sad story.

 

Or ironic.

 

Or a cautionary tale about never doing your best?

 

Hmm, not sure.

PPIss Off!

With a metaphorical machete I hack my way through the jungle of 1’s and 3’s. The vines of poisonous ivy are cleverly disguised as a polite voice saying something like, “If you’re calling about your Super Saver ISA account: press 42 now!”

 

I chop and chop, sweating in the imaginary heat, only to find myself back where I started. I’ve pressed so many buttons that a callous is forming on my index finger, and somehow I’ve gone full circle. I swear the computer voice sounds different. It’s saying the same thing, but I can hear a smirk on those electronic lips.

 

If I could just get through to a real live person my problem could be sorted out in a minute or two. There must be someone sitting at a desk, hand resting on the receiver in anticipation of my call.

 

I’m like a Christian waiting till death in the hope that God will be on the other side. But then the Buddhists are proved right, and I end up at the beginning having to do it all over again.

 

What’s more annoying is now the computers aren’t even waiting for you to call anymore. Now they’re calling you themselves saying, “This is an important message! You might be owed money for PPI.”

 

What is PPI, anyway? I've seen the ads but I don't know.

 

Science fiction writers imagine a future war between man and machine, but it’s started already. Right now it’s a cold war. By the time it hots up we’ll be so used to ignoring them we won’t even notice they’re breaking down the door and stealing our children to use as batteries.

 

Usually it’s a woman’s voice. I’m not sure what it’s selling because I slam down the phone after the first few words. I wonder if the woman who records these messages will ever be able to use the phone again. Surely when she phones up a friend or the local Chinese take-away they hang up a second into her greeting.

 

“You’ve reached ‘The Hungry Dragon’. How can I help?”

 

“Hello. I…”

 

Slam! No chop suey for you!

 

Often it’s a man’s voice. Not a real man, because it sounds way too manly to be an actual man. He’s got one of those old American movie voices. Like a posh, British John Wayne. He always says, “This is an important message…” and I hang up.

 

He might have to tell me that ninja assassins are on their way right now.

 

He might be kindly warning me of an imminent alien mothership with its lasers aimed at my groin.

 

I’ll never know.

 

Soon the companies behind all this will realise their trick has failed. We’ve wised up to it and no one listens anymore. My advice to them is a slight change in tactics – instead of the formal greeting the computer should just have a chat, “Hey how are you? That’s great. I just wanted to tell you that Jesus saves at Santander Bank… and you should too.”

 

When the machines attack, when they bust through the roof with their metal claws and microwave eyes, we'll be lying in bed screaming, “Why?”

 

And they’ll tell us, “We warned you! We even got British John Wayne to call… but you never listened!”

 

 

Old School News

Buying a newspaper these days seems like a waste of money.

 

Whoa, hold on now! Suck back that groan. I’m not about to go on about the media being ‘all lies’ or ‘controlled by evil old white people’. Even if it is, it doesn’t bother me all that much.

 

What I mean is, why spend £2 on a dirty-finger-making paper tablecloth that you’ve then got to lug around until you find a bin large enough to stuff it in? You can get all your news online now, and to be well-informed one just has to visit different sites.

 

That was the plan, anyway.

 

But what I find myself doing more and more these days is spend five minutes on the actual article and then an hour reading all the comments and arguments below it.

 

The comments are rarely interesting or informative. They seldom make me look at the issue from a different perspective. They annoy me. I follow a thread of arguments and trollish digs at a commenter’s intelligence, roll my eyes whenever someone calls someone else “racist”, and generally ignore the voice in my head asking: Why the fuck don’t you just stop reading and move on?

 

But I don’t.

 

I understand the reasons for the ‘comments box’ or whatever they call it. If you bought a paper and read it and wanted to discuss a particular article you would have to walk up to someone and say, “Hey, did you see that thing in the paper?”

 

And what a let-down if they then turn and say, “No.”

 

But the current situation just seems like a lot of people yelling their opinions at each other with their fingers stuck in their ears.

 

With all this access to news I find myself reading less actual news. I have never been as ill-informed about global events as I am right this moment.

 

So tomorrow it all ends!

 

Tomorrow I’ll pick up a Guardian, a Daily Mail, and a Plymouth Herald. Please don’t judge me for my choices, I am an immigrant and don’t know which paper makes me look like which class member.

 

I’ll sit down with a cup of coffee and read them without a bunch of shouty people shouting about it all.

 

And if I’ve got something I really need to say about it I’ll put pen to paper and send in a letter.

Quick! To the Mid-Life Crisis Mobile!

The irony is that the only fear I have about getting older is the thought of going through a mid-life crisis… which is kind of a mid-life crisis in itself.

It shouldn’t worry me, as I’ve not really grown up all that much. I’ve done grown up things like get married, invested on the stock exchange and even set up a pension scheme. But there are parts of me that belong to my thirteen-year-old self. I’m partial to a Batman graphic novel now and again, I bought Ed Sheeran’s album, and at the moment I’m reading ‘Magician’ by Raymond Feist which is kind of a kid’s book.

The type of crisis I’m talking about (and it only seems to happen to men) is the one where you buy a sports car and start wearing your trousers two metres below your arse.

Not that I could afford a sports car.

And I’m probably too frightened that my belt buckle could catch my knob excruciatingly.

The mid-life crisis is a protean beast. Like the Christian Devil it can take myriad forms. Sometimes it is obvious, but more often it is subtle.

The obvious signs are trading in the silver Lexus for a red Mazda convertible, and trading in the greying missus for twenty-two-year-old golden-haired digger.

The subtle signs are, well, a bit more subtle. I know a guy who one day woke up and started wearing a funky hat. I know another guy who bought a skateboard at 32. My wife’s dad went through a stage of attending raves. You remember raves, right? Dance move classics like ‘TheSprinkler’, annoying whistles, glow sticks, future embarrassment.

The crisis creeps in when you least expect it. Just before it sloths up behind you and attaches itself to your brain you might be confident and secure. You might think you’ve got the world and your place in it sussed.

The MLC is a banana peel lying innocently on the pavement until you step into it.

It starts when you’re in the company of guys younger than yourself and you quickly realise they don’t get any of your pop culture references. It’s not so bad if the age gap is under a decade because some stuff you say might be ‘old school’ and kinda cool.

But it really makes you feel like a geriatric when they don’t know who Quentin Tarantino is, have never seen the Matrix, and tell you their dad sometimes listens to AC/DC.

If you’re likely to see them again you might try to bone up on some new stuff. You’ll catch an episode of TOWIE and buy a Jessie J cd. But the MLC sets in even more when you realise reality tv is shite and Jessie J just meaningless noise.

You know that if you tell them this they’ll just roll their eyes and think “okay, grandpa” so you either pretend to like it or try and convince them A-ha is real music and Bill Murray a comic genius.

Both approaches will get you nowhere.

The only way to combat MLC is through awareness. You must know that it is looming. You must be wary of the signs.

You must accept that one day you will die, but before that happens you will be shown just how disposable and irrelevant your life is.

But like Tyler Durden says, “It could be worse. A woman could cut off your penis and throw it out the window of a moving car.”

I suppose there is that.