There’s a happy middle ground somewhere in between believing nothing and everything you read.  There’s also the happy ground I inhabit, where I conveniently believe the things I choose to believe if they happen to reinforce my existing beliefs and opinions.

If I read something derogatory or defamatory about someone I don’t like, I’ll probably believe it.  The opposite is equally true of someone I very much like.  For example, did you know that Brian Clough ordered his players to have a drink on the bus journey to Anfield immediately before a crucial European Cup game in 1978? You see, I want to believe that, because it’s a brilliant story about a brilliant man.  And if you say it isn’t true then I’ll stick my fingers in my ears and go LALALALALA I’M NOT LISTENING LALALALALA.

Also, did you know that X Factor’s Katie Waissel is a “ruthlessly ambitious schemer” and a “fame-obsessed sex maniac who’s tried to bed her way to the top”?  Well, so says self-confessed “celebrity” Michael Sophocles.  (You know, he made a real twat of himself on the Apprentice.  Actually I’m not sure that narrows it down.)

Michael Sophocles and an unusually feminine-looking Katie Waissel

I’m not sure whether to laugh in confused exasperation at the irony of Michael Sophocles trying to cash in on Katie Waissel’s five minutes of fame by claiming she tried to cash in on his five minutes of fame before dumping him to try and cash in on James Blunt’s five minutes of fame, or to weep cold, agonising tears at the mention of three of the biggest bell-ends of the twenty-first century in the same sentence.  And no, it isn’t too soon to consider Katie Waissel one of the biggest bell-ends of this century.

It saddens and sickens me to think that anybody anywhere thinks they can (and are prepared to try to) become famous by fucking James Blunt and Michael Sophocles, and it’s just as — if not more — saddening and sickening to think that someone can try to eek out a little more limelight from claiming someone tried to become famous by fucking them and so on and on and on ad infinitum.  It’s just a big fucking mess of annoying fucking nobodies trying to become somebodies by fucking or claiming to have fucked or claiming not to have fucked somebody slightly more famous or apparently more cultural relevant.  Except James Blunt, who would come out of this reasonably well were it not for the fact that he might have fucked Katie Waissel.  (If it weren’t for her big square manly jaw it might make me think he wasn’t gay.)

But I digress.  You see, the thing that really annoys me about Katie Waissel is that she doesn’t want to be a singer; she wants to be a star.  And the X Factor is the vehicle towards her becoming a star.  And the sad thing is that this is the case for most of the sub-karaoke singers on that God-forsaken show that for some inexplicable reason infiltrates my every waking thought.

No-one seems to say they want to be a singer or a performer anymore.  They don’t want to write songs, or be on stage, or even be acknowledged for being talented.  They just want to be famous and rich.  “I just want to be a legend,” Katie Waissel said to the camera during the audition stage.  Let’s break down the semantics of that statement.

I just (adverb (jəst, jĭst; jŭst when stressed): merely, only) want to be a legend (noun (lej′ənd): 1) a story handed down for generations among a people and popularly believed to have a historical basis, although not verifiable, 2) a notable person whose deeds or exploits are much talked about in his or her own time)

She just wants to be a legend.  That’s all!  A LEGEND.  A fucking legend, like Robin Hood or King Arthur or Elvis or Brian Clough.  She just wants to be a legend.

And this, I think is why people hate Katie Waissel.  It’s why I hate almost everyone who’s ever been on X Factor.  They want to click their fingers and be famous.  And for some of them — annoyingly — that’s what will happen.  It might be fleeting (Storm), it might be ironic (Wagner), it might (hopefully) bite them on the arse and make them regret it for the rest  of their days (Katie, please), but some of these cunts will become moderately famous.  And for what?  Being half-decent singers.  Half-decent singers with no creative control whatsoever, who have whored themselves and their talent out to the producers of a TV show in the hope of achieving fame.  If they had any real fucking talent — if they had any real fucking drive or motivation or fucking gumption — they’d have found a way to become famous.  They’d have fucking EARNED it.  No-one on the X Factor deserves to be rich and famous because none of them will fucking earn it.

People think that being famous is some kind of achievement.  Well it isn’t.  Paris Hilton became famous for being “a socialite” (FFS) who made a sex tape with her boyfriend.  Abi Titmuss became famous for doing the same with John Leslie.  Amanda Holden.  Kelly Osbourne.  Jack Tweed.  All of questionable talent, all rode someone else’s coattails to fame.  Fame is not an achievement.  Not anymore.

This isn’t a rant about Katie Waissel, specifically.  Yes, she’s annoying.  Yes, she looks about as feminine as Desperate Dan.  Yes, there’s something very strange and elfish and pointy going on with her right ear, and yes, her face swells up like Mr Potato Head when she strains for that big note, but it’s important to remember that almost everything we’ve seen and heard from Katie Waissel has been edited.  The X Factor producers try to shape our perceptions of all the X Factor characters.  If, for ratings or publicity or through sheer malevolence they want us to hate Katie Waissel, they will (and have, to be fair) make sure we do.  She may have given the producers hours and hours of pleasant footage, where she discusses her tireless charity work and displays her affable, selfless nature, but they choose to show the clip where she says: “I just want to be a legend,” and it gets self-righteous grumpy old farts like me LIVID with rage to the point where they write a blog or comment on facebook twenty or thirty times during the course of an evening, all simply serving to spread the word, letting the X Factor brand permeate through the public conscience a little more.  I don’t hate Katie Waissel.  Well, maybe I do, a bit, but that’s because X Factor made me.  I believed what I saw.

Katie Waissel, looking both less attractive and less feminine than both members of Jedward

In the wake of the government’s spending review and the various controversial spending cuts, will people think twice this weekend before voting for their favourite X Factor character?  I highly doubt it.  I wonder if the people belly-aching about ‘unfair’ government cuts are the ones phoning up ten times to keep Wagner — a man with a similar amount of talent for singing as my talent for unaided flight — in the competition.  And for why?  For an entertainment show that’s as good as rigged.  They show us who to like, they show us who to hate, and above all else they make sure we keeping watching and talking about it.

I’ve always argued X Factor is not a singing contest but an entertainment show.  I don’t even think it’s that anymore — it’s anti-entertainment, it’s reverse-entertainment.  I watch it to get angry.  I don’t think I’ve derived any pleasure from spending three and of half hours of each of my last two weekends watching the X Factor, but it’s got me angry, it’s got me indignant, and it’s got me talking about it.  And I wonder if that’s the point.  Cowell is a salesman of the most despicable kind; he doesn’t care if we like what he’s selling, as long as we keep coming back for more.  It’s not entertainment, it’s untertaiment (a word, incidentally, I will be seeking to copyright).  (Edit — SHIT I’ve just looked online and I’m NOT the first person to use that word.  Bugger.)

Cher Lloyd doing a very passable impression of a blow-up sex doll

So, like me, watch the X Factor.  Get angry, get upset, feel alive.  Maybe that’s the point.  Even the banality of the judges comments make me angry now.  I used to love their barbed remarks and uncalled-for put-downs, but now they’ve all turned nice, like they constantly have to validate the ‘talent contest’ aspect of the show by saying how good everyone is all the time and how they deserve to be in the show.  Where once the judges were the ones dishing out the hateful comments and taking the flak, they’ve stepped back, and they’re letting the press make the hateful comments for them while they sit in righteous indignation saying, “Katie, a lot of the media attention you’ve been getting has been very unfair and you deserve a break…”

No, she deserves what she’ll inevitably get; and that’s being chewed up and spat out and washed away by the X Factor machine in time for next year’s show when another bunch of fame-hungry fame-whores come along for more of the same.

And I’ll be sat on my sofa watching.

You see, the problem with cars is that there are always problems.  If your hobby happens to be tinkering around underneath cars fixing things then owning a car is the greatest thing in the world, as there will always, always be something wrong with it.  There will always be something to fix or tinker with, and if not there will be things to clean, make louder or ‘soup-up.’

If you want something reliable to get you to work and back every day and not cost too much, then you’re screwed, because owning and running a car is a never-ending outflow of cash.  Even if you’re fortunate enough to opt into a company car scheme, you still end up paying income tax on the ‘benefit in kind’ (that is, a non-cash form of remuneration that should be subject to tax as if it had been earned as cash).

And they’re all in on the deal, car people.  Aren’t they?  You spent a shitload of money buying a lovely new car, and you never stop paying for it until the day you get rid of it, at which point you buy a new car and start the whole process again.  If there’s something wrong with it you take it into the garage and — at Ford, at least — they charge you an EIGHTY-FIVE pound “inspection fee.”  EIGHTY-FIVE POUNDS just to LOOK AT THE FUCKING THING.

Then they tell you it needs a pissy little pump, or a filter, or a dust cap, which isn’t that expensive, you’re assured, but it’ll cost two hundred quid in labour because it takes them fifteen seconds to fit the cunting thing.  And then a week later you realise they didn’t fit the cunting thing correctly anyway, as your car splutters and dies on the M6 on your way to the Lake District for a relaxing break.

Then you take it back to Ford and have the temerity to suggest that they may not have done their job properly only to be told it’ll be ANOTHER EIGHTY-FIVE QUID for them to lift the bonnet and check their own shoddy fucking workmanship.  The only saving grace is the barely-apologetic phone call later to say that “the pump hadn’t attached itself” (note the brazen implication that it was the pump’s fault — an inanimate object, I feel obliged to point out — not the fuckwit who charged me six million pounds an hour to fuck it up), and, the man says with a weary, defeated sigh, “there will of course be no charge.”

“I SHOULD THINK FUCKING NOT, YOU INCOMPETENT ROBBING BASTARDS” you want to scream but don’t, instead bumbling an overly-eager “Thanks very much, that’s great, I’ll pick it up later — when’s best for you?”

So, I’m getting rid.  That’s right, I’m selling my car.  It was pride and joy when I bought it brand spanking new six years ago.  I remember the proud but unnerving moment I handed over my £3,000 deposit, and I remember feeling cool choosing ‘Panther Black’ metallic paint, although I still to this day regret thinking £500 was far too much to spend on extravagances like Air Conditioning and a heated front windscreen.

When I think back on all the great times I’ve had in it, all the great albums I listened to for the first time in it, all the cans of Red Bull I’ve drunk in it (one of the favourable by-products of driving long distances and/or late at night is that it’s pretty much the only time I feel justified in drinking Red Bull), all the Ginster’s Peppered Steak Slices I’ve eaten, all the shards of pastry from all the Ginster’s Peppered Steak Slices I’d eaten that I had to sweep from between my legs onto the floor, my bogey collection (front under-side of the seat, if you’re interested), the time I hit that motorcyclist…  All happy times.

But regardless, I’m selling it.  And what’s more, I’m going to try and survive without a car.  For a while at least.  I’m getting the bus to work in the mornings and we’re going to try and be a one-car couple for a few months at least.  Not for any ‘green’ reasons, I must point out — primarily for economical reasons.  And only time will tell if this is a monufuckingmentally disastrous decision.

Pros of ditching my car and getting the bus:

• £cash from selling it
• Works out £1,000 cheaper per year to get the bus to work every day (before considering any inevitable repairs)
• I’ve already read Catch 22 (brilliant!) and am part way through Martin Amis’ Money (okay)
• Bit of exercise walking from the bus stop to work and back every day

Cons of ditching my car:

• I love my car.

*Gulp*

As I think I may have mentioned a few months back, I finally clambered on the bandwagon and got myself one of these iPhone jobbies you may have heard of.  And, in fairness, my period of iPhone ownership to date has been largely enjoyable and trouble-free.  It has not, however, been quite as spectacular as I’d been led to believe.

Tap fish – one of the many pointless time-killing apps I have on my iPhone

See, it’s always been quite slow when not connected to Wi-Fi.  I’d always assumed any of a variety of mitigating factors:

• I was in a near-permanent weak-signal area,
• iPhones just aren’t as good as everyone else says they are (in an Emperor’s New Clothes sort of way),
• being the eternal pessimist I often can be, the resignation that whenever I get something I’ve wanted for ages there’s always something wrong with it that’s too minor to completely ruin the experience and too trifling to actually bother sorting out.

I’d always wondered how one particular friend was able to watch Youtube (or more specifically Porn Hub) videos on his phone while they downloaded.  Youtube just didn’t agree with my phone when I wasn’t connected to Wi-Fi, but I assumed that as his wasn’t an iPhone, it was just maybe a better phone than mine, or he was on a better network.

Then, last weekend, came a watershed moment of sorts, sitting in a pub with someone with the same iPhone as me, on the same network as me, he bored me with Youtube clips while my iPhone flashed up “unable to connect” style messages.  Something didn’t add up, so I turned to the only reliable source of information I could think of: the internet.

A quick search revealed other people with similar slow connection problems posting their concerns on forums for other people who used to have similar problems but have now sorted the problems out themselves, to post replies on how they sorted their problems out.

It may be, an internet poster posted, that you have an old SIM card.  You need a 3G SIM card.

Now, call me retarded, but I just sort of assumed that when I bought my iPhone I’d have the appropriate SIM card.  Assumption, as they say, is the mother of all fuck-ups.  I’ve had SIM card, I reckon, for a good seven or eight years, from the early days of my current relationship when we decided we wanted to be on the same network as each other so we could get free mobile-to-mobile calls in the evenings when we, you know, still wanted to talk to each other all the time.

As it turned out, it was a simple thing to sort out.  I went on o2.co.uk and ‘chatted’ with an on-line advisor called James.  I explained my predicament in marginally more succinct terms that I’ve done here, and he checked, said there was no problem with my network connection and yes, it was probably my SIM card that needed replacing.  So, as easy as that, they sent me a new one.

And oh my word is it better.  Well, I haven’t really done much with it to be honest, but, you know, it’s quicker.  And it got me wondering just how many other people out there are paying £35 a month (minimum) for an iPhone but who are missing out on a hell of a lot because they’ve got an old SIM card.

And it got me wondering whether it’s just me.

The most frustrating thing is that it’s a mistake I make at least once a year, and every time I tell myself not to make the same mistake again.

Fortunately I won’t be making the exact same mistake again, at least not until Channel 4 realise they have nothing to fill the gaping Big Brother-shaped hole in their summer programming schedule and decide to resurrect the show to hysterical fanfare and moronic public acclaim.

But despite my condemnation I again find the programme irritatingly intoxicating.  The ‘civilian’ version no longer holds my interest, but ‘Ultimate Big Brother’ with its eclectic mix of former housemates like John McCririck, Coolio and Ulrika Jonsson, is a wholly different and in my eyes somehow more acceptable guilty pleasure.

Instead of watching nobodies who want to be celebrities but have nothing to offer the world other than a desperate desire to be a celebrity, I’m watching people who used to want to be celebrities that have nothing to offer the world but now actually are celebrities famous for nothing other than a desperate desire to be a celebrity.

I actually fell into the trap the other day of thinking that now Josie (BB11 winner) had left the house there were only actual celebrities left and no-one from the civilian version of the show.  Then I remembered that Nadia, Brian, Nikki, Makosi etc etc etc were all ‘normal’ housemates that have since been catapulted, in my stupid brain at least, to celebrity status.  This saddens me.

What saddens me more is that I’ve started to grow inexplicably fond of Chantelle Houghton, and I’ve started to consider the merest hint of a possibility that Nikki Grahame might not be the most irritating person in the entire history of the world and that my previous belief that I’d very much enjoy throttling her until dead was a massive exaggeration and she’s actually a reasonably nice person with an unfortunate and unhappy-sounding history of eating disorders and psychiatric issues.

Nikki Grahame (isn't that an irritating way of spelling "Nicky Graham"?)

Maybe I’m mellowing in my old age.  Maybe it’s that now that these people have had their fifteen minutes of fame they’re not as irritatingly desperate to be the loudest and most outrageous person and they’re just, at the risk of sounding incredibly naïve, acting quite normally.  A point perhaps validated by Victor Ebuwa, one of the few housemates I haven’t heard a peep from since he left BB the first time around, who’s still a complete and utter look-at-me-I’m-on-Big-Brother dickhead, desperate for any kind of magazine interview, topless Heat Magazine shoot or fast food restaurant employment.

I actually signed up to follow the Big Brother Twitter account today as well.  What a fucking vapid waste of internet that is.  Some highlights:

13:44 Ulrika is singing Endless Love, practising for her task. Victor says she has a nice voice.

12:06 Ulrika, Chantelle and Brian are talking dresses

10:15 Nadia and Makosi are saying how they miss their cars and shopping

06:17 Preston just had a little scratch downstairs.

04:30 Nikki has her hand on her neck.

03:07 Chantelle is sleeping on her back.

All genuine BB tweets.  I contemplated ending with a made up ‘funny’ but decided, as so often in life, that reality is funnier than fiction.

Some people asleep

But anyway, I hope ‘Nasty’ Nick Bateman wins it.  This is despite the fact that he’s clearly not the most interesting housemate, doesn’t actually seem all that nice, and has formed some sort of desperate clique with the aforementioned twat of twats Victor.

The simple fact is that if it weren’t for Nasty Nick, we wouldn’t still be watching BB.  Now, admittedly, this might not be cause for massive celebration (quite the opposite, arguably) but I think there’d be some justice if he won it, even if Brian Dowling is by far the most entertaining housemate and the only one I can think of to have made an honest living outside BB (SMTV Live, anyone?).

I’d wager I’m one of a tiny minority hoping Nick wins, and in fairness my reasons hold little water, but he should get some credit for helping catapult Big Brother to the bloated twat hatchery it’s become.  Or maybe he should be shot into space for propelling the likes of Charley, Alexandra (“‘member I told you!”), Grace, Sezer (evicted from BB7 in the first week with a record 91.6% of votes) and on and on and on ad infinitum.  But then you think of all those genuinely great BB contestants and iconic TV moments like, erm…

In my last blog post I was told I had high blood pressure and advised I should go and see my GP. Firstly, thank you all for your texts, letters, e-mails etc asking about my well-being.

I am of course being sarcastic, you uncaring set of bastards.

But I digress. I went to see my GP — an elongated version of a Middle Eastern Rick Moranis — the following week. He took my blood pressure, shrugged, and said “No problem” with all the concern and compassion of an elongated Middle Eastern Rick Moranis just about to finish a ten hour shift that’s largely consisted of the old, infirm or obese complaining about their minor gripes and petty concerns.

He didn’t even tell me I could do with losing any weight. I liked him.

Rick Moranis

I was, however, a little disappointed. Like anyone, I’d had a look on-line and self-diagnosed myself, deciding I had an under-active thyroid. This was brilliant. My overweightness could, I convinced myself, be directly attributable to a lazy thyroid and not fifteen years of indolence, gluttony and binge drinking.

I could get some pills and slip back to those halcyon teenage days of eating what the hell I wanted and not having to worry about putting weight on and ignoring all those bitter claims that it would all inevitably and painfully catch up with me.

So EMERM’s lack of concern was bad news in one sense, but my “quite normal” blood pressure reading was good news in another, far more realistic, sense.

The thing that shocked me most, however, was a harmless conversation with friends. Blatantly ignoring the first and only rule — Do not mention my blog in front of my girlfriend — the friend, who I won’t name, said:

“I read your blog about your high blood pressure. It’s not surprising, really, is it?”

I was, initially, horrified. Yes, I know I’m a little bit overweight (by the odd five stone or so) but there was no need to draw attention to the point so unequivocally. The friend did, in fairness, redeem themselves somewhat:

“…because you get pretty wound up about things, don’t you? You can tell from reading your blog that you’re a very angry person.”

Now this is and isn’t true. I’m an enigma of sorts, in that I have (or at least think Ihave), in the words of the narrator in Fight Club, “the ability to let that which does not matter truly side.” I consider myself, a lot of the time, quite a chilled-out person. But the more I go through life the more I start to realise that my chilled out-ness should perhaps be more accurately described as “not really giving a shit about anything that doesn’t directly affect or annoy me.”

On the other hand I can feel the rage build inside me over petty things like personalised car registration plates, general highway etiquette (aka ‘shit drivers’), and trolley manners. A soothing voice inside me says “It doesn’t matter… no good comes from getting angry,” but another, louder voice inside screams and swears in self-righteous indignation. Most mornings as I drive to work I do genuinely think that pretty much everyone else in the world is either an idiot or a twat. Or both.

Football also brings the worst out in me. Not long ago I chatted in great depth about my condemnation of all things football, particularly the small-minded people that invariably go to watch, shout abuse and talk bollocks. Then I found myself at a football match and realised I’m just the same, if not worse. Maybe I’m less of an enigma and more of an out-and-out hypocrite.

I’m not quite at the anger management sessions stage yet, but I do worry sometimes that I can get wound up over nothing, and I’m not sure what the solution is. Buy a punchbag? Do more exercise? Drink less coffee?

Actually, I’m not sure I give a shit. I might just let it slide.

My employers very kindly gave us all the opportunity to have a quick, free health check, the highlight of which was watching someone feint after having their finger pricked for a cholesterol test.  I went down for a few minutes away from my desk, and to pick up a goody bag containing a free Company-branded travel mug.

I waited in line for my turn, then sat down for my consultation.

“Height?”

“Six three, six four.”

“Right, six three, then.  Weight?”

“Ooh, about eighteen, maybe eighteen and a half stone.”

“About?”

“Yeah.”

“Right, on the scales.”

“No, really, it’s eighteen and a half.  Probably.”

“On the scales.”

I got on the scales.

“One hundred and twenty kilos.”  Nearly nineteen stone.

“Alright, keep your voice down.”

“Your BMI’s very high.”

“Yes, I know.”

“You could do with losing a bit of weight.”

“Yes, I know.  It’s an ongoing battle.”

“You see, you’re here,” (shows me chart, points at ‘Very Obese’) “and your ideal weight is about fourteen stone.”

“I think those days are long gone.”

“But you could still stand to lose, you know, a bit of weight.”

“A stone or two?”

Lady smiles uncomfortably, “Well, yes, that would be a start.”

In the queue I had regaled my colleagues with the tale of the last time I’d had a health check.  I had my blood pressure taken and (as I recalled) the lady said, “That’s unusual.  Your blood pressure is very low.”  “Is that bad?” I asked.  “Well, no, but we’d normally expect to see low blood pressure in people who are super-fit athletes.”  Awkward pause.  “Would you…  describe yourself as…  super… fit?”  Me, deadpan: “No.”

That was two years ago and, despite being overweight I’d always told myself at least I didn’t have high blood pressure.  So, I sat down to have my blood pressure measured again, and I told the lady the story, attempting to break the awkwardness still lingering after she’d told me I’m five stone overweight.  

“That doesn’t sound right,” she said, dismissively.  “Your pulse is low though.” 

“Oh, maybe it was my pulse then.”

“Yes, that’s more likely.  Your pulse is quite low, but your diastolic blood pressure is high.”

“What?”

“Your diastolic blood pressure.  The bottom number.  It should be between sixty and ninety.  You’re 140 over 102.  I suggest you go and see your GP.  You need to lose some weight.”

“Yes I know.”

“Would you describe yourself as active?”

Unconvincingly, “Well, yes.”

“Do you do exercise that leaves you breathless for half an hour, three times a week.”

“Yes, I play cricket on Saturdays.  And, erm, cricket training once or twice a week.”

“And cricket, that’s, well, it’s not exactly continuous exertion is it?”

“It’s a bit stop-start, but…”

“And is that for the whole year?”

“Well, no, obviously, erm…  I walk to Sainsbury’s for lunch most days…”

Looks at sheet with three categories: Active, Walking, Inactive.  “I’ll put you down as a walker.”

“Thanks.”

“Your cholesterol level is fine; you just need to lose a bit of weight.  But do go and see your GP as soon as you can.”

“Right.  Can I have my free travel mug now?”

So, to surmise, I am twenty-nine and a half, five stone overweight and have high blood pressure.

Ladies, form an orderly queue.

My World Cup was Italia 90.  I was nine, and remember watching every England game with my parents.  I remember going apeshit when David Platt scored against Belgium, being confused when Gazza started crying, and wondering why Peter Shilton couldn’t have stretched just a little bit more to stop Andreas Brehme’s cruelly deflected free kick.  I remember England scraping through against Egypt and Cameroon, but not fully understanding how poor we’d been until years later.  My abiding memory of Italia 90 is Sir Bobby Robson (God rest his soul) in an interview years later mournfully saying, “We should have won that World Cup.”  You just knew he was haunted by that regret until the day he died.

After England failed to qualify for the farce that was USA 94, my next World Cup memory is of France 98.  I remember this one much more clearly, watching all the England games in bars and pubs in Nottingham.  I remember the locals in The Pelican in Bilborough throwing bottles at us during the Tunisia game.  I remember eating an entire tube of someone else’s Pringles in the Hilton (bizarrely) during the defeat to Romania, whilst trying to get off with some girl called Gemma (which was going well until Dan Petrescu’s last minute winner, when I drifted into a bizarre mood of put-on-for-effect melancholy and she left).

I remember the Argentina game; RKO’s playing “It’s Raining Men” over the top of the Argentine national anthem to much merriment, Michael Owen’s goal, Michael Owen’s dive, David Beckham’s ‘kick’, Sol Campbell’s disallowed goal, the predictable agony of penalties.  After David Batty’s penalty was saved I stood up in silence and walked out, eventually sitting alone outside on a wall in a show of mock-grief.  You see, I didn’t really care that much.  It was annoying, yes, and I was pissed off that our World Cup was over, but I really didn’t get the whole grown men crying and/or fighting in the street and/or smashing up public property thing.  I felt I should care a bit more, so I pretended.

I put on my melancholy act again (I didn’t speak at all until a couple of hours later when I turned to the two girls me and my mate were with and suggested they come and stay at my house; a beyond-disastrous plan which resulted in a massive bollocking from my parents, who, embarrassingly, were sat up waiting — “worried” — when I strolled in at half past one on a school night with two girls).

The 2002 World Cup was great, mainly because the games were on between 7:30am and lunchtime, and I was in my student placement year.  As soon as the fixtures were announced I booked time off for every England game.  For the 7:30am kick-offs I remember picking my mates up and getting to the Rifleman’s Arms in Belper for 6am, when we immediately set about drinking the place dry.  The day we beat Argentina was a quite epic and very drunken day.

The Denmark (first knockout) game was on a Saturday, and those who’ve been paying attention will know that summer Saturdays = cricket.  We asked the league if we could move our cricket game forward so we could have a two hour break in between innings to watch the game.  The league declined our request.  We watched England romp to a 3-0 lead at half time, then went and bowled Selston out for 35 (Ben Tait took 8 wickets for 9 runs) before knocking them off and having beer with tea at about 4 o’clock.  A great day.

Then there was the limp defeat to Brazil, and the number-of-years-of-hurt-people-like-to-refer-to went up by four.

I don’t remember a great deal about the 2006 World Cup, which makes me think it wasn’t very good.  I remember England’s opening game being on a Saturday afternoon, and this time our cricket league allowing us to start early.  We started our game against Allestree at about 10:30.  I got 7 wickets, we watched a fairly poor England victory during an extended tea break and then went out and won the game.  I remember watching the Ecuador game in a pub in Headingley before going on to get hideously drunk watching The Who.  I remember the Portugal game being on a Saturday but for some reason we didn’t move our cricket game forward.  Still we managed to coincide a drinks break with the disappointment of another penalty shoot-out defeat. 

I remember coming over all Gallic when Zinedine Zidane went completely batshit fucking mental and headbutted Marco Materazzi.  I remember whatshername saying at the time, “Well that’s just ruined it for me.  I wanted France to win, but not anymore.  Not after that.”  (I was quite the opposite.)  I had France in the office sweepstake, and the next day I wrote a strongly worded e-mail to Zizou’s official website saying that his recklessness had cost me fifteen pounds of winnings and I’d be grateful if he could send me the equivalent amount in sterling or Euros.  Inexplicably I heard nothing back.

Quite literally the best thing I've ever seen a Frenchman do

Which brings us to 2010.  And, I hate to admit it, but I really hope England don’t lift The World Cup in three week’s time.  That’s the first time I’ve ever thought that, but my reasons are fairly sound.  I went to Edinburgh last week for a wedding, and in a vain attempt to ingratiate myself with the locals, I made a couple of gags about them hating the English and wanting anyone to win but us.  Almost without exception they corrected me: “We don’t hate the English,” they said, “we hate the English media.”  And you know, I think I do too.  I was bored of this World Cup before it even started, what with every newspaper ramming it down my throat since February, and the constant news coverage, and the predictable, “We’ll never get a better chance…” bullshit the idiot pundits spew out every four years.

A prime example: we’re constantly told that the English Premier League is “the best league in the world.”  Cesc Febregas and Fernando Torres are two of the very best players in “the best league in the world” (just try and tell me they wouldn’t be in your Premier League XI) and yet they were both sat on the bench for Spain last night.  You see, there’s saying you’re the best in the world and then there’s actually doing something to prove that you’re the best in the world.  The best don’t need to tell you they’re the best.  They just fucking are.

Just imagine, try hard to imagine, the God-awful hysteria this once-great country would descend into if England won the World Cup.  It would be unbearable.  It was bad enough when we won the Ashes, and hardly anyone really cared about that.  Just imagine the arrogance.  Imagine the St George’s flags on cars and hanging out of bedroom windows for another four years.  Imagine shirtless chavs showing off their ‘World Cup Winners 2010 England Til I Die’ tattoos.  But more than anything, imagine — just fucking imagine how fucking terrible this would be — go on and imagine Glen Johnson getting a fucking Knighthood.  Imagine that.  Do you want that?  DO YOU?  No you fucking don’t.

So I’ll cheer on England for however long it is before we crash out of the World Cup.  I want England to do well; I really, really do.  But the older I get the more I think that the England squad is the epitome of everything wrong with football, the “working man’s game” played by men trousering £150,000 a week.

I’m not looking to blame anyone or thing, but I did allow myself to be tempted into buying some Walkers Flavour Cup World Cup flavour crisps.  And by some I mean twenty-four bags.  I am, as you can probably imagine, very partial to a bag of crisps.

Walkers’ Flavour World Cup is neither a particularly clever idea nor an original one, as ASDA did something similar (and, arguably, better) for the 2006 World Cup.  I have a halcyon memory of finding 150g bags of crisps at 10p (ten pence!) each towards the end of the tournament; Argentinian Beef, Brazilian Salsa, English Vindaloo, French Frogs’ Legs and Garlic, German Sausage, and Italian Arrabiata flavours.  The French ones were particularly nice, I recall, but like actual frogs’ legs in garlic, they only really tasted of garlic.

I felt a mix of joy and despair when I found Walkers were doing something very similar for the 2010 World Cup; joy at some new flavours of crisps to try, despair at the fact that Walkers’ ‘creative’ department had basically just copied ASDA’s idea and added a couple more flavours.  And not even very good flavours at that.

Gary Lineker selling his soul

The list of Walkers flavours in full:

American Cheeseburger

Argentinean Flame Grilled Steak

Australian BBQ Kangaroo

Brazilian Salsa

Dutch Edam Cheese

English Roast Beef & Yorkshire Pudding

French Garlic Baguette

German Bratwurst Sausage

Irish Stew

Italian Spaghetti Bolognese

Japanese Teriyaki Chicken

Scottish Haggis

South African Sweet Chutney

Spanish Chicken Paella

Welsh Rarebit

The flavours are available in geographically-linked multipacks; Northern Europe (England, Holland, Germany), Southern Europe (Italy, Spain, France), ‘Americas United’ (USA, Brazil, Argentina), ‘Worldwide Wanderers’ (Australia, South Africa and Japan).  Per the Walkers website, the Scottish, Welsh and Irish flavours are only available in multipacks but are also notably absent from the list of available multipacks.  I suspect those flavours are probably a joke (much like those countries’ national football teams — chortle chortle).

To give some semblance of purpose to my eating a ridiculous amount of crisps I decided to hold my own World Cup to see which flavour was the best.  Taking each multipack as a qualifying group and of course ignoring the Scottish, Welsh and Irish flavours (although I would genuinely love to try the haggis flavour), the winning flavour from each group would compete in the semi-finals and final until one lucky flavour was crowned the best of a pretty ordinary bunch.

So without further ado:

Group 1: Northern Europe

England kick things off with Roast Beef & Yorshire Pudding flavour.  I taste beef and I taste Yorkshire pudding, but it’s unsatisfying.  It needs gravy.  It needs veg on the side.  It needs to be warm, damn it.  Something about the taste of a cold roast beef dinner makes me think of a sad lonely man eating a microwaved TV dinner, and that depresses me.  A roast beef Sunday lunch should be an occasion; a shamelessly gluttonous celebration followed by a sleep on the sofa and a John Wayne movie.  Fair play to Walkers for managing to fairly accurately reflect both beef and Yorkshire pudding flavours, but it just doesn’t work in crisp format.

John Wayne

Underestimate Germany at your peril, they say in football parlances.  Underestimate German Bratwurst flavour crisps all you like though.  The initial kick of Bratwurst is quite authentic and impressive, but by the end of the bag you realise these are just Smoky Bacon flavour.  (Note to Walkers for 2014 World Cup ideas: Smoky Beckham maybe?)

The clear winner in this group is Holland, with their Edam Cheese flavour effort.  Yes, it’s just cheese, but that’s the beauty of it.  The key to a successful crisp flavour is simplicity, and it’s no better typified than in this delightful cheese flavour.  Exschellent schtuff!

Group 2: Southern Europe

The group of death, this one, with France, Spain and Italy battling for a semi-final spot with their own classic national dishes.  The French offering is the disappointing Garlic Baguette flavour, which lacks the garlic kick of ASDA’s similar (and better) 2006 offering.  This is a boringly bland affair, which is doubly disappointing given that the French are only in the World Cup because Thierry Henry cheated.  It’s also worth noting that the baguette is a Belgian invention.  Wow your friends with that nugget of information, and remember to quote me as your source.

A once great man losing the respect of the world

If French Garlic Baguette flavour was boringly bland, then we need new superlatives of dullness (if that even makes sense) to describe Spanish Chicken Paella.  Roast Chicken crisps are shit anyway — FACT — but then combine that with rice flavouring (RICE!  CRISPS!) and the result is spectacularly bad.  Truly dreadful.  Whoever sanctioned this flavour should be sacked.  Spanish Chorizo flavour; now THAT would have been good.

With little competition the Italians romp to glory, winning the group by a country mile with their Spaghetti Bolognese flavour.  It even tastes like Bolognese; not a nice homemade Bolognese or one from a fancy restaurant, more the kind of Bolognese you’d expect in a school or hospital canteen.  But it’s streets ahead of the French and Spanish.  Molto buon!

Group 3: Americas United

Ignoring the ridiculous name, group 3 starts with Argentinean Flame-Grilled Steak, which tastes like every other steak flavoured crisps you’ve ever eaten; dull.  The joy of eating steak is the texture of the tender, juicy meat.  That joy is lost in the medium of the crisp.  It’s like ready salted crisps sprinkled with Bisto granules.

Brazilian Salsa flavour is very accurate in that, much like the current Brazilian football team, it promises pazzaz but delivers very little of anything memorable.  Another flavour that doesn’t really work in crisp format (the similar Spicy Tomato flavour Snaps excepted).  Maybe a Brazilian Salsa flavour actual Salsa dip would have been a better idea.  Could have also had Mexican Guacamole, and some sort of horrible Eastern European beetroot and potato coleslaw-type affair.  I might suggest that to Walkers actually.

Salsa. Sexy.

The best of an underwhelming bunch is the culinary powerhouse that is America, with their national dish: Cheeseburger.  It shouldn’t work and I hate myself for liking it, but the flavours are all bang on, and for that it scores points for authenticity.  It’s the taste of a Big Mac without the messy fingers, screaming kids and nagging deflated feeling that you could have done so much better with your life.  America romp into the semis.  Yeeeeeeee-hah!

Group 4: Worldwide Wanderers

At worst I expected Japanese Teriyaki Chicken to be a carbon copy of the Walkers Sensations’ Thai Sweet Chilli flavour.  As it turns out it’s a bit like that, but multiplied by a blandness factor of several million.  Terrible.  Wasabi (a popular crisp flavour in that part of the world, I’m told) would have been a much better bet, but Walkers would have had to have invented a new flavour, as opposed to taking an existing flavour and tweaking it very very very very very slightly as they seem to have done with all the others.  Walkers?  Wankers more like.

South African Sweet Chutney.  A huge, exasperated sigh at this point.  These are just Worcester Sauce flavour with a pinch of sugar added.  Quite pleasant actually and pretty authentic, but by this stage I’m starting to feel a bit cheated by the lazy fuckpig arseholes at Walkers trotting out the same tired flavours under different names.

Which brings me to Australian BBQ Kangaroo flavour.  Which contains no kangaroo.  So it’s essentially BBQ flavour.  Which already exists.  Christ by this point I don’t care who goes through from this group, but the South African flavour is the nicest, most authentic and the only one I’m likely to want to try again.  Ja!

An Australian BBQ kangaroo

Semi-finals

It’s a walk in the park for Holland, who hammer South Africa in our first semi-final.  The Dutch Edam flavour is so nice I may even go and buy some more.  Yes it’s just Cheese and Onion flavour without the Onion, but that’s a good thing!  And it does taste a bit like Edam in fairness.  Well, it doesn’t actually; it tastes much nicer.

The second semi-final pits an Italian classic dish against the hideous creation that is the American Cheeseburger.  It’s the type of mismatch that would have SKY Sports pundits falling over themselves to spew out clichéd hyperbolic rhetoric.  Spaghetti Bolognese has to win this one.  It just has to.  The Americans had no right to get this far in the competition, and the Italians march to the final with one of the all-time classic dishes in crisp form.  You can always get Bolognese flavour crisps abroad, don’t you?  WHY NOT HERE?

THE FINAL

It would be no bad thing if this turned out to be the actual World Cup final, but this isn’t about football (well, it kind of is).  If it was based purely on the food itself then spaghetti Bolognese would of course be preferable as a meal to a block of rubbery Edam, but this is about crisps.  It’s about how the flavour works in a powered format, dusted onto thin slices of fried potato and put into a foil bag.

And with such caveats in mind, it is my great privilege to announce Dutch Edam Cheese to be the winner of the 2010 Flavour World Cup.  The Italians fought hard and played well, but all things considered the Dutch take the spoils.  Cheese is the better flavour, and it’s less offensive on the fingers after eating.  Mixing the two flavours together gives you a sort of lasagne flavour.  Now THAT’s a good idea.

Lovely rubbery Edam

Apologies if you’re disappointed that the winning flavour is essentially just cheese, but that’s a sad indictment of the other World Cup flavours.  Plain and simple cheese flavour is the equivalent of the long-ball game; nothing fancy, but direct and effective.  Not likely to win over the purists but it’s lifted the silverware at the end of the day. 

I must stop now before I drown in my own clichéd hyperbolic rhetoric, and get on with writing a letter to Walkers about my brilliant ideas for the next World Flavour Cup.

A got a reply a while ago and, erm, forgot to mention it.

The cynics among you will say that I’m simply copying the formula used to fantastic effect in Robin Cooper’s The Timewaster’s Letters books, and this brilliant website which, I’ve just noticed, also spawned a book.

But in the words of David Brent, “a good idea is a good idea… forever.”

First I guess I should share with you the reply I got from Tesco:

Thank you for contacting us.

We’re always pleased to receive feedback from our customers as this can help us improve our service.

I’ve passed your comments to our Marketing department and I know they’ll bear these in mind at the next review meeting.

Thanks for taking time to contact us.

Yours sincerely

For and on behalf of Tesco Stores Ltd

Now, my reply.

Dear Tesco

Thank you for your letter dated 16 March 2010 in reply to my letter dated 25^th February (sorry for the delay!).

I am pleased you will/(have) pass/(ed) my comments on to your Marketing department.  Could you please let me know the outcome?

I also feel I need to clear a few things up regarding my original letter, as there were a few factual inaccuracies that it would be remiss of me to pretend to ignore:

1)      I stated that the magazine display was “clearly labelled” (oh, the irony) “WOMEN’S INTERESTS.”  Having checked this, the section is actually clearly labelled WOMEN’S LIFESTYLE.  My point about out-dated sexual stereotypes still stands though I’m sure you’ll agree.

2)      I also stated that the MEN’S INTEREST section contained “car, sport and music magazines,” which again was incorrect.  Sport and motoring each have their own sections, while the MEN’S INTERESTS section includes magazines on computing, photography, music, fitness (aimed specifically at men), and “lads’ mags” (both hetero- and homosexual). 

Apart from the two very different types of lads’ mags and the specifically male-oriented fitness magazines, these subjects could equally interest women as well as men.  I accept that men may be the magazines’ primary market focus, but I still don’t think it’s right.  That said my main bugbear is that you place the cooking magazines under WOMEN’S LIFESTYLE.

Many thanks for your time.  I look forward to hearing from you soon.

I hope I get some money off vouchers this time and not another letter.

It was 1999, and I was starting university.  I had terrible dress sense; a velour luminous orange v-neck Cotton Traders shirt was the worst offender, usually accompanied with black shiny plastic-effect trousers.  Inexplicably I was single.  I had no mobile phone, and no computer.  I had a scrap of paper in my wallet with the mobile phone numbers of a couple of my more fortunate friends, which I’d have to take to a nearby phone booth to call them.  Alternatively I would go and knock on their door.  I met a pencil-necked geek called Gareth Evans.  I thought he was a nerd.  I used to pass him offensive and sometimes threatening doodles in lectures.

In November ‘99 I got a red Ericsson T10 mobile phone.  It had a flip-down cover which I though was cool, and I could type in my own ringtones.  At the time this was just out of this world fucking amazing.  I’m not sure how people ever coped at university before mobile phones.  I mean, how the fuck did you know where everyone was all the time?

Ericsson T10

In my second year my sister loaned me the money to buy a computer.  I had no internet, but I didn’t need it.  I could type up my essays in my room, save them to a floppy disk and go to the uni’s IT Suite to print them off.  I was given a warning by the university’s Head of IT for printing out naked pictures of Shannon Elizabeth.  Big Steve and I would sit in my room playing Championship Manager 2 and Settlers III: Gold Edition, or we’d sit in his room and watch the wrestling videos his mum used to tape off SKY and mail to him.  Inexplicably, I was single.

Christmas 2000 Gareth Evans organised a social; a sit-down meal in as close as Loughborough got to a nice restaurant.  The dress code was shirt and tie.  My mate Andy and I turned up in Elvis costumes to try and piss Evans off.  By now Evans and I had a love:hate thing going on.  I loved trying to wind him up.

"Alvin Stardust" and "Fat Elvis," December 2000

In my final year I finally got the internet, which opened up a world of endless pornography and the opportunity to download thousands upon thousands of songs from Kazaa for free.  Communication was now primarily through a little thing called MSN Messenger.  I met whatshername (not via the internet, I must add).

Evans wouldn’t share a house with me in the final year, and whenever we did group coursework he stoutly refused to let me into his group.  He was still a nerd, which is why I always wanted to be in his group.  He however, knew I was lazy and disruptive.  To wind him up, during a Management Accounting group coursework presentation we made references to him being a sex offender and a homosexual.  He took it well in fairness (no gay pun intended).  As part of the same group coursework we also left our friend, dressed only in vest, pants and afro, in a field to the mercy of a farmer and his dog. 

Click on the picture to see this man, standing in a field in vest and pants

One day on MSN Messenger, Evans and I started discussing music.  And we bonded.  I recommended Gold by Ryan Adams (for which I must give credit to Big Steve for originally recommending to me).  Evans loved it.  We both, to a certain extent, became obsessed.  Me probably more so.  I bought everything Ryan Adams I could find and downloaded everything I couldn’t.  For our first Valentine’s Day, whatshername bought me the sheet music for Gold, and I learnt to play the whole album, especially loving ‘Firecracker,’ ‘New York, New York’ and ‘Wildflowers.’

A few years later Evans and I were still in touch on e-mail, still chatting about music, usually in work time.  However did people talk aimless rubbish with people hundreds of miles away during work hours before the advent of e-mail?  He bunked a day off work (the first time ever, he told me, although he did sort of get his boss’s permission first) and flew from Jersey to Nottingham to come with me, Andy and Big Steve to see Ryan Adams at Rock City.  It was fucking ace.  Afterwards we drank ridiculously large G&Ts and trashed my flat.  Whatshername hit the roof when she came home to find the place stinking of brandy and cigars and her computer fucked due to the large amount of porn we’d downloaded onto it.

A couple of months later Evans sent me a short e-mail saying: “Buy the album ‘I Sincerely Apologise for All the Trouble I’ve Caused’ by David Ford.”  Bizarrely I remember the first time I ever played it; in the car on the way to ASDA with whatshername.  “Is this a man or a woman?” she asked during the opening track.  “It’s a man, I think,” I replied, unsure.  It was the second track — ‘State Of The Union’ — that grabbed me by the balls.  And another obsession began.

The first time I saw David Ford was at the Sugarmill in Stoke.  Evans was supposed to come but had to pull out due to a strenuous-sounding work jolly in Barcelona.  I had liked Ford up to this point, but was captivated by his live performance.  I don’t care if that sounds gay; he was brilliant.

I went to see him a couple more times, once at the Rescue Rooms in Nottingham, and at Birmingham for his annual ‘Milk & Cookies’ charity gig, where he played a host of stuff including covers and requests.  He sat at the piano and played the full version of Bat Out Of Hell.  This elevated him to the status of God in my eyes.

When the following year’s Milk & Cookies gigs were announced, an auction started online for the opportunity to perform live on stage with Ford.  Long story short I ended up winning the auction to perform at the Eastbourne Hippodrome on my 28^th Birthday.  My song: ‘Firecracker’ by Ryan Adams.

December 13^th 2008 was the best day ever.  Whatshername and I went down with Andy and his wife Rachelle.  We went First Class on the train, had a Mexican and some beers.  Andy filmed a documentary in the style of X-Factor, which to this day I still can’t convert into a format Youtube likes.  Eastbourne was cold and as windy as any place I’ve ever been.  At five o’clock I went to meet Ford and rehearse the song.  I was shitting it.  The auction had been caveated with “Mr Ford reserves the right to change your song choice and your part in the performance if it’s likely to comprise the quality of the show” so I knew I had to be not terrible.  The guy who had won the auction the year before had played ‘All I Want For Christmas Is You’ on piano with Ford singing, and it sounded brilliant.  I was feeling the pressure of expectation.

In the Hippodrome I met Ford and watched him rehearse and soundcheck with his band.  When they called me up on stage Ford just handed me a guitar and said, “I’ll count you in and we’ll just see how it goes, OK?”  That was it; no pissing around.  We ran through the song about five times to iron out any creases.  The band were fantastic, and really put me at ease.

“OK,” Ford said, “the plan is that we’ll play the first half, have a break and then I’ll call you up at some point in the second half.  So you can enjoy the first half and the break but then shit yourself through the second half.”

Click on the picture for my M&C duet

Now, I know it isn’t perfect.  I started flat because I couldn’t hear my own voice over the instruments (I suspect they’d turned my microphone right down, perhaps rightly), but it was probably the best experience of my life, singing one of my favourite ever songs in front of about 700 people. 

And if you’re wondering about the hat: in the first half of the show Ford had worn a cowboy hat while playing Beck’s ‘Devil’s Haircut.’  I decided I wanted to wear it, so I picked it up on my way onto the stage.  It seemed appropriate for a Ryan Adams song.

After the show we wandered aimlessly around Eastbourne for a while, eventually ending up in Wetherspoons.  We ordered posh ladyboys: Leffe, Baileys and G&Ts.  Andy did his impression of Clyde from Any Which Way But Loose.  At one o’clock the pub called last orders and we got up to leave.  As we stepped outside Rachelle noticed someone knocking and waving through the window; it was Gary ‘G-Man’ Page — Ford’s drummer.  In quite the most surreal ending to the evening we stood outside chatting with Ford and his band for about half an hour about all kinds of nonsense. 

Evans — unable to make it due to a tricky commute from Dubai, and who’d still not seen Ford live at this point — had asked me to ask Ford where we should go for his upcoming stag do.  He suggested “something different… like a football tournament in Barcelona or coal mining in Wales.  And do it the night before the wedding.  Not enough people do that these days.”  We said our goodbyes and went back to our £35-a-night hotel on the seafront to drink Baileys, warm lager and red wine until the small hours.  It was — and without meaning to sound like an 8-year-old’s report on what I did for my holidays — the best birthday EVER.

Eight months later it was Evans’ wedding day.  I had made the transition from annoying cock at uni to best man.  I had got hideously drunk on Evans’ stag do and lost my glasses.  The wedding was great and my speech went down pretty well, but the best part was the surprise the bride — Erica — had organised for the groom.  After the speeches I told the guests that the bride and groom were going to make their way to the dance floor for their first dance, and they should follow.  I ran ahead to give the surprise his cue.

The bride and groom walked to the dance floor to the sound of David Ford at the piano playing their song, ‘Song For The Road’.  Evans looked over at the piano, back at Erica then back to the piano, proper double-take style.  “He looks like David Ford,” he whispered.  “It is David Ford,” she said back.  “Did you know about this?”  “Yes Dear, I organised it.”

At the end of the set Evans asked for an encore.  Later he would confide in me that he wished he’d thought of an obscure album track that he really wanted to hear, but all he could think of was to ask Ford to play Firecracker.  With me.  Feigning reluctance I got up there and played the song.  Again, I bloody loved it. 

Click on the picture

Afterwards Andy and I plucked up the courage to ask Ford if he wouldn’t mind just saying a few words into Andy’s video camera.  We’d made a kind of documentary in the style of X-Factor, we said, and we wondered if he’d like to do a Simon Cowell-y type critique of my performance.  He smiled, “I think I’d be good at that…”

Click the link to see 

I’ll never be a rock star but I’ll be able to tell my grandkids that I sang and played my guitar on stage a couple of times.  I’ll ask if they want to see the DVD.  They’ll scoff and ask me to explain what a DVD is.  I’ll explain it’s something we used to watch films on in the olden days before telepathic holograms and I’ll say, “You think that sounds shit, let me tell you about my red Ericsson T10…”