Tawdry Telly

It struck me the other day how little television my boys watch. Their TV time seems to be confined to meal times; times when, by necessity, their hands are too full of cutlery to be able to manipulate a joypad or a game controller. And even then, half the time, they’re not soaking up some faceless TV scheduler’s entertainment menu but are watching a DVD or something we’ve pre-recorded and stored on the set-top box.

How different things were when I was a kid.

There was no choice other than ITV and BBC. By the time I was on the scene the Beeb was for old traditionalists (my grandparents were big BBC-ers) and ITV was for young thrusting hip-young things (which enticed my parents into its viewing fold).

Hence I never watched Doctor Who as a child because it was on the BBC and we rarely watched the BBC. The BBC seemed glamorous to me, simply because it was forbidden fruit. Or seemed that way. I seem to remember watching Bod and the Mr Men as a child and they were definitely BBC. I suspect my parent’s ITV leanings were abandoned temporarily when the BBC’s kid’s hour was on as a tactic to keep me and my sisters quiet and malleable for a little while longer.

My overriding memory of my pre-teen telly though is that on the whole it felt rather tawdry. But maybe that was just the seventies? Sure, I have fond memories of Daktari, Tarzan and Robinson Crusoe on a Saturday morning and, of course, the magnificent Tiswas… but overshadowing all these is the over-arching memory of how utterly awful weekend telly was for kids in the seventies.

My trouble was I never really “played out” as a kid. I wasn’t a street kid. I didn’t learn to ride a bike until my twenties. I was stuck indoors. My window on the world, on reality, was via the TV. Via ITV.

And on a weekend ITV delivered The Grumbleweeds. It coughed up Russ Abbott’s Madhouse. It vomited out 3-2-1. Recalling Bullseye and Family Fortunes – the latter even fronted by the great Bob Monkhouse – make me depressed in equal measure. I sometimes think that no telly at all would have been better.

For some reason, when I think of all these shows they appear in my mind as if nicotine stained. As if dyed brown with tobacco juice. I think tank-tops and brown plaid. And orange shirts. And carbuncly men with faces like blighted potatoes and working men’s club accents holding microphones topped with full-sized afros. I recall the subconscious despair that I lived with before the obvious question finally formed itself in my burgeoning little brain: is this it? Is this all that life has to offer?

The answer, of course, was no. There was the BBC. And the multi-coloured Swapshop revolution of the eighties. And then Channel 4. And satellite television. And cable. And eventually digital. And HD. And iPlayer. And choice.

Glorious, glorious choice.

How far we have come since Ted Rogers and Dusty Bin. For me, the mid-eighties is when television began to come good. When the new TV choices that became available began to heal some of the deep-seated wounds of the drab seventies.

I’m not sure what TV memories my boys will have when they are older. I don’t think it is possible for computer games to impinge on the memory in quite the same the way that a TV show does (yeah, I remember pressing LEFT RIGHT RIGHT and the X button on that particular day doesn’t cut the same mustard as remembering when Stu-pot and his mates finally faced down Gripper Stebson in Grange Hill) and I sometimes worry that they’re missing out on the shared peer experience of watching a truly great TV show at the exact same time that your mates are in their own houses.

But on the whole, if they’re being spared 3-2-1 and The Grumbleweeds, I am reconciled that the good effects of progress outweigh the bad. And it does seem to be that, these days, what you play is far more important than what you watch.

As for me though, I think I’ll pass up on Halo and get Daktari on DVD. I’m sure old wine in a new wine skin will taste just as good. But if my boys would rather play outside than watch it with me, I’ll be inclined to let them.

The Scourge Of The Gaming Classes

Maybe there is something wrong with me? Lord knows I found it difficult to fit in at school. But me and computer / videos games have always suffered a rather ambivalent relationship.

Not even “love/hate”. Its more “occasional like/hate”.

I hate the way they suck you in. The addictive quality to them. The way they impose on you fake, spiritually unfulfilling goals and aspirations. The way they give you a false sense of achievement when all you have done is sit on your arse for hours on end while real life and real opportunity has passed you by.

Most of all I hate the fact that what they truly steal from you is not your energy, or your intellect but your time. Your precious here-for-one-time-only time. Little slices of your life stripped away and tossed down the drain. If Poe were alive now it wouldn’t be sleep he’d be railing against. It would be the high tech soporific of the computer game.

I’ve had friends whose every waking thought, whose every financial expenditure and decision was influenced by the addict’s need to keep up with the latest computer games. Books and magazines were read for clues and cheats and “Easter eggs”. Online resources were tapped into with the dedication of an anti-government insurgent. Entire evenings and weekends were given over – not to interacting with friends or family; not to furthering the requirements of intellect or spirit; not to forwarding long-held dreams or life goals – but to trying to get their elf avatar to level up to High Elf Chieftain or slay a warrior class Orc.

And then they’d return to work on Monday bemoaning their lot in life and wondering why things – why their life in particular – never changed. Why they never seemed to actually do anything like other people seemed to.

And then they’d shrug their shoulders and spend the next few hours boring me with tales of how they’d escaped from some digital dungeon, slew a virtual dragon and earned so many electronic groats they were practically millionaires.

Gah!

Not that I’m completely without sympathy or understanding. I’ve been there; I’ve been sucked in. I’ve tasted the bittersweet sugar of game addiction. In my early thirties I got sucked into The Sims for a few months. I can recall the annoyance of having to obey the dictats of real life – go to work, see friends, eat meals – when all I wanted to do was play the game. All the time. It was like I was bewitched. Possessed.

But I cottoned on pretty quickly that the game had merely created a desire in me that was made of vapour and atoms so intangible Professor Brian Cox would cream his pants if ever he saw one.

Each time I gave up time to the game I was stabbing my dreams and ambitions in the back. Actually, worse than that. I was neglecting them; starving them. Letting them die through abandonment.

So I went cold turkey. I stopped playing.

More importantly I threw myself back into real life.

I took myself back to University. I started writing seriously again. I allowed real life ambitions to take me over.

I’ve never regretted it. I let my Sims friends die and found I did not mourn them.

And now, if I play any games at all, they tend to be cathartic shoot ‘em ups that can entertain me for no more than 20 minutes at a time before I get bored and switch them off. An instant hit. No commitment necessary.

I hurl any need for escapism into my writing.

But the hatred of full-on gaming stays with me. Which, in a family full of enthusiastic gamers, must make me a difficult beast to live with. I have no sympathy or truck with “but I just need to do this and then I promise I’ll finish...” or “I won’t be able to concentrate on anything else unless I get to this level...”

Responses like that make me want to smash the game consoles up; makes me want to shoot them chock full of holes with a plasma rifle or a photon cannon.

Now.

If they invented a game that allowed me to do that... then I would quite happily become addicted.

The Ayes Have It

We think we’re so great, us humans. So darn clever.

We measure our evolutionary advancement solely in terms of technological progress.

It began with machines that would do our work for us. Tools. Bows and arrows. Mills. Looms. Then progressed to huge engines and rudimentary robotics that could standardize the material produced which in turn led to even greater scope for the work we could get our machines to do. Wars and the need to kill more people than our enemies drove us even further forward. Computers came on the scene. Electronic beasts that could out-perform hundreds of men in a single second, with the flash of a single diode.

And then evolution took a new turn. We began to build machines that would take care of our leisure time too. Gaming, Streaming media. Music, film, art. Ironically we probably now employ more people in the leisure industry than we ever did in the industrial revolution. Leisure has become work. Has become an industry.

iPads. iPods. iDocks.

They are the status symbol of modern man. If NASA were to send a new Voyager probe off into the outer reaches of the solar system now it would feature a line drawing of a naked man, a naked woman and the latest incarnation of the iPad.

But in our arrogance we have forgotten that Nature got there first with this so called new-fangled iTechnology.

You only have to check out old naval films to realise that the iAye – a device for acknowledging (usually ridiculous) orders on naval galleons – has been around for hundreds of years. The iAye can usually be slotted into an Aaaar!Dock for those that prefer their pleasures to be pirated.

But even before this advance, millions of years ago in an example of true evolutionary development Nature came up with the iBall. Without this fascinating and incredible complex device mankind wouldn’t have invented the wheel let alone wafer thin electronic notepads. For the majority of us who are fortunate, the iBall comes fitted with iSight as standard. It is an app that most of us take for granted but were it at risk of being taken away would be the one we’d probably realize we valued the most.

And if I could be bothered to pursue this lame conceit any further I could happily hold court on the following examples of pre-Jobian iTechnology: the iLash, the iCandy, the iPatch, the iClaudius, the iCaramba, the iWitness and, finally, that curiously Welsh development, the iDai.

But to be honest, I’m beginning to feel that post is beginning to become something of an iSore and the mood of my dear readership is starting to turn iCy.

iApologize to those of you who thought that this was going to be a serious post... but you were plainly plugged into your iGnoramus app.

Crap Dad Or Great Dad?

I totally get that life doesn't have cheat codes. Totally. There are no shortcuts. No booster-packs. No level-ups. No invincibility toggle. (Of course, if you're a multi-billionaire you can ignore all that.) You makes the bed you've been given and you learns to lie in it.

You do the best you can with what you've got and try to learn the skills you need but don't currently have.

That's life. I get that.

It's a parent's job to encourage their kids to accept this and grapple with it from as early an age as possible so that they engage and stand a better chance of getting where they want to get quicker.

But Goddammit, 2 days of playing The Incredibles on PS2, trying to get to the robot battle level on behalf of my 4 year old (who only ever really wanted to play the robot level) was driving me frigging insane.

It's a brilliant game. Beautiful graphics. Superb playability.

But it's as hard as hell if you're not a full-time gamer. And the worst thing is, you fail and it sends you right back to the beginning of the level. I'd lost hours of my Christmas just getting to the halfway mark in level 3. The robot level was level 7. My 4 year old would be an old man before I got there and technology would have moved so far ahead that the PS2 would have become a museum piece.

I had 2 choices. Sit back and wait for natural obsolesence to claim me and the PS2 or do what normal, intelligent people the world over do.

Search Google for cheat codes.

I hit Google with gusto.

My 4 year old son is now happily pummelling the robot on level 7.

Life might not have cheat codes but sometimes, just sometimes, it's a parents job to cheat to make their kids happy.

And if that makes me a bad dad you can come and lock me up.

Homing From Work

A lot of employers these days are saving money by encouraging (or ‘supporting’ as it is known in business parlance) employees to work from home. Some IT bod leaves his subterranean life denial system (otherwise known as the IT Services Office), goes round to the employee’s gaff and installs some software onto their home PC or laptop which enables them to dial into their work PC almost as if they were actually at work doing it in person. I guess a simple telephone monitoring system then enables the employer to sift official work calls from spurious demands to sex line numbers in order that they pay for bona fide work calls only.

Hey presto, your earnest young employee is now being paid to work from home but without consuming the employer’s electricity, gas, water, lighting, air, toilet facilities, canteen services or any of the other perks that an employer is wont to provide. The work gets done; the employee gets paid as usual but the employer saves a pretty bundle in consumables and fuel bills.

‘Working from home’. It’s a great lark and a wonder of the modern age.

But I feel the envelope has not been pushed out far enough.

I want to work for an employer who not only allows me to ‘work from home’ but also – more importantly – allows me to ‘home from work’.

I want to be able to sit at my workstation dressed in jimjams and even possibly wrapped up in an old blanket with a steaming mug of hot chocolate in my hand. I want to be able to spend 3 hours on internet prevarication before I actually commit myself to the task that I originally sat down in front of the computer to perform. Once this task has been completed (i.e. answering a few emails) I want to waste another few hours on Facebook and Twitter giving the entire world a blow by blow account of all the amazing things I am not actually doing.

Sat at my desk drinking cocoa. Where does the time go? Lol.

I demand daytime telly, lunchtime telly, afternoon telly and then one of those mid afternoon drama serials – Mid Somer Murders or some shit like that – something I can snooze off too. I’ll also need a steady supply of bread to make toast, accompany tinned soup and comprise the odd sandwich that I will need to nurture my delicate constitution towards the safe haven of the evening meal when I can at last relax and bask in the glory of another hard day at the office completed. Then, of course, I will want to snookem’s up in bed with a nice hot water botty placed lovingly upon my tendermost regions.

Bliss.

You may be wondering what benefit this set up will have for society? Well, the more of us that home from work the less social housing we will need. This will free up housing for those people who are unable to home from work because they don’t have a job and therefore have nowhere to live. I must point out that people who take busman’s holidays don’t really feature in my Utopia. The more of us who home from work in communal offices will use less fossil fuels en masse than we would if we were all living in separate domiciles – thus the ecology of the planet receives a much needed boost. We could also share TVs, fridges, ovens, PlayStations – again, reducing consumption of fossil fuels and the creation of CFCs. There would also be no need to drive to and from work – so further reductions in oil consumption and pollution are produced.

For the planet this entire set-up would be nothing but an out-and-out winner.

The only downside would be having no downtime at all from your employer.

*Sigh*

Bugger.

Back to the drawing board...

The Greatest Invention of The 20th Century Was The Washing Machine

And I have proof. Incontestable, empirical proof. You cannot argue with Spongebob Squarepants.

My youngest son has a Spongebob soft toy. Spongebob lives in my son’s bedroom on my son’s bed. Or at least he does during the times when he isn’t being used as a makeshift ballista projectile or an odd shaped rocket whose sole mission in life is to take out the lampshade that surrounds the ceiling light.

Most of the time Spongebob enjoys a quiet, dry, calm existence. Occasionally he is airborne against his will but most of the time he is stationary.

One day this week, however, Spongebob encountered a new experience. A wet experience – which is rather ironic considering Spongebob is supposed to live at the bottom of the sea.

During one of his impromptu boy-assisted flights Spongebob made touch-down in my son’s potty. The potty was full. Spongebob came down into an ocean unlike any ocean that Spongebob was ever made to inhabit.

Spongebob was not happy. My son was cautiously amused.

Spongebob’s label said nothing about him being machine washable. Clearly though we could not allow the status quo to remain as it was. Spongebob needed to wash or go.

We threw him into the washing machine and gave him the works.

Cue both sons – the youngest and the oldest – sitting in front of the washing machine, watching obsessively absorbed as Spongebob was sloshed round and round the drum for the entire duration of the wash cycle. Pure, unadulterated entertainment.

God knows how many hundreds of pounds spent on PlayStation games, God knows how much spent on widescreen TV and digibox, even more spent on DVD players and handheld games consoles...

All wasted.

Want to know what my kids are getting for Christmas?

Laundry.

They’ll love it.

School Trip

Our eldest boy has gone on his first ever school trip away from home. I’m not talking about a day terrifying museum staff or a day leaving chewing gum under the pews of a big city cathedral. I’m talking proper sleeping-away-from-home-for-several-nights and eating-food-that-has-not-been-specifically-catered-to-his-extremely-discerning-palate.

It is a momentous occasion in the life of a child. And a parent. It feels like that first big developmental step towards full independence and eventual adulthood.

He’s ten. In some ways he’s older than his years. In some ways younger. Like all ten year olds I suppose.

He’s bright. He’s developing a nice line in cheek that will stand him in good stead in later years.

But nevertheless you worry.

A week away from home is a long time. What if his DS batteries run out? What if he loses his asthma inhaler? What if he doesn’t like any of the 16 choices of sandwich fillings that the adventure centre offers him?

He’s a fussy eater, Goddamit. Maybe we should have snuck a few tins of tuna into his backpack along with all the “emergency crisps” and the “fail-safe chocolate bars”?

He was braver than I was at his age, I’ll give him that. My first trip away from home was a hike to farmhouse a mere 2 miles away where we stayed for a paltry 3 nights. I cried like a baby on the first morning, didn’t like the food when we got there and was convinced my room was haunted simply because the branches of a tree were hanging down right outside my window.

My boy however demanded the coach driver keep his two bags together like a seasoned traveller, settled into a double seat on the coach like a pro and immediately plugged himself into his DS like he was still on our living room couch.

I’ve a feeling he’s going to go far. Literally. Probably backpacking around the globe and making himself head honcho of the global village.

Meanwhile, the wife and I are looking around us, unsettled by the slightly emptier nest that he has left in his wake. The house seems quieter. The biscuit tin looks depressed at the reduced opportunity for human interaction. The PlayStation is sobbing like a betrayed lover.

We are seriously considering hauling a stray kid in off the street and paying him to talk over all the TV programmes we’re trying to watch and complain about the amount of vegetables on his dinner plate. If he can throw in a few pre-teen tantrums and refuse to honour the bedtime curfew even better.

Our boy has left home for the first time.

It’s only been one day and his mum and dad are already homesick.

William Wallace Has Stolen Our Presents

I have in the past gloated about the ease by which one can perform online shopping, the effortlessness of one-click ordering which at this seasonal time of the year means one doesn’t have to wade through the insulated body fat and BO of thousands of fellow Christmas shoppers as they fight to grab the last Toy Story 3 DVD from off the shelves.

But it has its drawbacks. Particularly in a wussy country like the UK which describes moderate snow fall as “unprecedented” and “unexpected” despite there having being snow in some form or other for every one of my 41 years in this country and the weather forecasters actually getting their predictions uncannily accurate for this year (anyone would think there is some kind of science behind this meteorology shit).

A whole heap of presents that Karen and I have ordered through Amazon and other online shopping companies are currently stuck in a post office distribution warehouse in Fife. This despite them being ordered in the last week of November so they’d be dispatched – ha ha ha – in plenty of time for Christmas.

It is now 10 days to go until the big day and things are getting down to the wire. The parcels show no sign of moving. I hear rumours of the postal service being so inundated it’ll take them weeks to work through the backlog (‘cos this level of post during the Christmas period is undoubtedly unprecedented too, right?) plus as most Post Office’s these days are down to one delivery per day anything that doesn’t get delivered for that day gets taken back to the PO and left for the next day where the same thing happens over and over again... or so I’ve been told.

Now, short of invading Scotland and grabbing our parcels ourselves there is little we can do. Karen has emailed Amazon but, to be honest, once the parcels have left their distribution centre they are in the hands of the Post Office gods who in turn are at the mercy of the weather.

And there’s more snow on the way apparently – end of this week and all through Christmas.

The kids have been primed that they might not get all their presents on the day this year. They seem fine with it but, let’s be honest, getting an IOU instead of a brand spanking new PlayStation game just isn’t the same thing.

And I daresay this scenario will be a very common one up and down the country this year. We won’t be alone in our present want.

It’s saddening. Very saddening.

But mostly it’s annoying. Annoying that it takes so little for the various services of this country to breakdown and grind to a complete and utter halt.

But I guess I should be used to it by now because, let’s face it, such breakdowns in service in themselves are hardly what anyone could describe as unprecedented. The wind blows from an unexpected direction in the UK and everyone wails and takes to their beds to recover from the immense shock.

I strongly suspect that lying at the bottom of all these abandoned parcels is a very special package indeed. Something this country has long mislaid and long forgotten is missing. It’s backbone.

If William Wallace wanted to invade now he could just wait for a light drizzle of snow and walk it.

And if he can bring my presents with him when he comes he’ll be sure to receive a right royal welcome at my house.

Cleansing

Karen and I are off for the week enjoying another money saving Staycation holiday. Rather than just laze about (which, let’s face it, is what any normal person would do) we’ve elected to give the house something of a cleaning blitz.

Shampoo the carpets. De-web and de-mould the windowsills. That kind of thing.

It’s a big job and trying to do it with 2 very active children makes it harder still. After all a 2 year old does not appreciate the dictat of not walking on a freshly shampood carpet for a couple of hours until it is dry. And the 8 year old doesn’t give a damn; making a rendezvous with his PlayStation is of a much higher priority.

It is stressful, all this “deep pore” cleaning. And I can now appreciate why my mother used to get so irrate with me and my two sisters on “hoover days” during the summer holidays.

My mother would, without fail, hoover the house twice a week. Mondays would be a “light” day – sitting room and hall only. But Fridays would be the big “all over” day. Upstairs and downstairs. The whole Shebang.

There is something about adults performing cleaning chores that, I swear, just makes kids behaviourally uncooperative. We’d inevitably play up and earn the short, quick arm of my mother’s temper. If we were particularly bad a phone call to my Nan would be in order and she’d speak to us on the phone. Never to tell us off. I don’t think I ever saw or heard my Nan angry but the shame of knowing my Nan felt the slightest disappointment in us was usually enough to bring us all back into line.

God, but I wish she was still alive and on the other end of the phone today.

With the carpets shampood yesterday we all elected to go outside for the afternoon. For the little one this is actually a bonus. He loves being outside in the garden. Rain or snow he loves it. The 8 year old, however, has more of an ambivalent attitude. The garden is great in theory but he’d much rather be inside plugged into his PlayStation or his Nintendo DS.

Except he managed to break the latter in a horrendous fit of temper on Sunday evening.

Every Sunday he has but one chore to perform:

Clean his room.

And, my God, is it a performance. A 2 hour job (at the most) usually ends up taking over the whole day and the whole house. Karen and I have to put more energy into getting him to do it than the job itself would actually take if we were to do it ourselves. But there is a principal at stake here so we persist.

There will be tantrums. There will be wailing. There will be gnashing of teeth. There will be shouting. There will be playing with his toys rather than just tidying them away. There will be miniscule attempts at cleaning and then a million “tea breaks” to recover. And then there will be naggings to get on with the job and get it finished and then the whole cycle will start all over again.

Usually the threat of “no gaming” until the room is tidy ensures the job is eventually completed. With the absence of my Nan on the end of the phone it is the only and best alternative.

This Sunday, however, was different. This Sunday he was told he’d be banned from the DS unless he tidied his room. He said he’d done it and promptly started playing. When we checked we found that the sneaky little so-and-so had merely covered the mess up with his duvet. So gaming was duly banned.

This was when the temper kicked in. And I mean Temper. We’re talking Zeus hurling flaming thunderbolts. We’re talking The Incredible Hulk throwing Chieftain tanks into massive military fuel dumps. Two large tubs of Lego got overturned – 1000+ pieces all over the floor. And then the DS got thrown across the room. £120 quid’s worth of kit broken in a fit of pique.

Karen and I were not impressed. My Nan would have been speechless.

We cannot afford to replace such equipment willy-nilly. So the boy is now Nintendo-less.

The boy of course was distraught. And showed it by having an even bigger tantrum. And then realizing he’d be spending the next 24 hours picking up ALL the Lego from his room before he’d be allowed the ameliorative powers of the PlayStation had another even bigger tantrum.

This was Sunday. And Monday. And part of Tuesday.

The Lego wasn’t completely tidied away until yesterday afternoon after 2 days of sheer hell. Tantrums, complaints, shouts and more attempts at merely concealing the mess rather than actually cleaning it properly.

Karen and I are both exhausted.

Apparently the 8 year old is only possibly on the “borderline of the Aspergers spectrum” according to our local GP.

Christ. I pity those parents with kids who have the full blown version.

The carpet of my mind now needs a deep clean. My mind needs a shampoo.

A good scrub all over please someone.

Wii Wars

I have a love-hate relationship with computer games / games consoles which roughly translates as 20% love and 80% hate.

I’m not sure why I should feel so ambivalent about them as in every other respect I am a tech-head and dedicated gadget nerd.

And it’s not like I never play computer games.

I have a version of Unreal Tournament 2003 on my PC which I quite happily fire up for a quick session most weekends. Only for 20 minutes mind you. A quick fix and I’m done. The best thing about this particular game is that it allows me to rename all the “bots”. This means I am able to shoot, hack, blow up and disintegrate anyone who has annoyed me during the previous week.

At any one time I can gorily fight my way through an army that comprises work colleagues, Russell Brand, assorted d-list celebrities and the ex-president of the USA.

It’s very cathartic and allows me to maintain my Buddha-like equilibrium for the rest of the week.

But most other games irritate me. Games consoles irritate me.

I see them advertised on TV – Wii, Xbox, PlayStation – and I can feel my face start to twitch like Clint Eastwood in City Heat. When I see the fake advert families bouncing around on their plush leather sofas screeching with joy as they wave their Wii consoles around like they’re tossing off the invisible man I just want to get my plasma rifle from Unreal Tournament and blast them all into little heaps of marrowbone and jelly.

This attitude, I admit, makes life difficult for my eldest boy who is a PlayStation addict. He has rationed access to the console anyway – too much makes him hysterical – but even short bursts of it turn me into Mr Hyde.

Why do these games annoy me so much?

I think a lot of it stems from countless Saturday nights at my best mate Dave’s house – back in the days before I was married (i.e. when I was a sad and lonely git)...

Dave was a true tech-head. The kind of guy who upgraded his computer every month (by hand). The kind of guy who bought every single games console the moment it came out – and as a consequence couldn’t get within 7ft of his TV because of the swamp of joy pads and tangled console cables that were a death trap for any creature unable to fly over them.

Now, when Dave generously allowed me to have a go on these games myself it was, I admit, highly addictive. I can see where my boy is coming from. But most of the time the evening was spent watching Dave play the games. Playing the kinds of games where you have to explore a fathomless computer generated world that has no cyber end. Playing the same bit over and over and over again until it was done properly.

There is nothing more tiresome, more mundane, more teeth shatteringly infuriating than watching someone else play a computer game.

The fact you’re watching it means you are unwittingly involved. Ooh. I wonder what’s in that room? I wonder what that device does? Would a 3 combi double-punch kick move work at this juncture? But you are unable to do a damned thing about it. You can’t make any decisions or moves yourself. Just watch someone else play the game possibly better, possibly worse than you.

It’s like being a disembodied spirit. Or Arnold Judas Rimmer from Red Dwarf. Or Gordon Brown when Tony Blair was still in power.

It winds me up just thinking about it. Gah!

Maybe the answer is just to grab the spare joy pad without permission and pitch in with my plasma rifle? Get involved? Give myself over to the addiction? Surrender to the dark side?

*Sigh*

But I can’t help feeling it would just be far more enjoyable to stamp on the bloody thing until it’s dead dead dead...