Priorities

7 years ago, Mrs VeryVeryBored made it known that she considered the carpet provision in, what was then our new house, to be inadequate. She had a point - there was no underlay and we might as well have stripped floorboards for all the added comfort that the 'funishing green' carpet provided. To date, the carpet remains in situ and bears the scars of nearly a decade's worth of family use.

Last Saturday evening, Mrs VeryVeryBored made it known that she considered that our large, old fashioned widescreen telly maybe, just maybe, ought to be consigned to the British Museum of Redundant Brown Goods. This was based on the principle that a new flat-screen telly would look better in the corner of the room, and that the requisite replacement stand would cause less of a hazard to VeryVeryBored Jnr II since contemporary design has it that it would not have so many hard corners.

I saw to it that the new new 32" Sony KDL32W5500U Bravia 3 telly was researched, purchased and set up in the ensuing twelve hours.

The carpet has yet to be laid.

Don't Vote VeryVeryBored Jnr

It cannot have esaped the attention of anyone in the UK that politicians are now held in such low esteem that they are considered both beneath contempt, but also beneath bankers and estate agents in the popularity stakes. Hardly surprising given the embezzlement of public funds to shell out for duck houses and moats. I include my son in the category of "anyone in the UK" since he is often subjected to the Today Programme on his way to school, and god knows they covered the whole MP expense situation in full, excrutiating and anatomical detail.

Moreover, the general disdain with which politicians are greeted with when they crossover the threshold of the Humphreys, Naughtie, Davis, Montague, Stourton and Webb household cannot have been lost on him. Michael White has it right when he observes that the modus operandi is to tie string around the balls of their guests, pull at it and shout "liar, liar!". Well, he has it more of less right there - my highly biased assessment is that this is the procedure adopted whenever a government minister appears on the programme. The objective of the game is to goad said spokesperson into making a small error and shout "idiot, idiot!" at them until they either cry or resign, a game that appears to have now become more formalised. Whenever Call Me Dave or one of his lot pop in for breakfast,  their main responsibility appears to be to provide scant details of their own policies, but to take easy and unchallenged pot shots at the incumbent party.

Against this background then lets us consider the parental responsibility to ensure that offspring form their own opinions on things, and don't just follow the crowd. Encouraging then on the one hand, if not a little surprising, that my 6 year old son should come back enthusiastically from school to advise that he has decided that he would be dressing up as a politician on the impending mufti/dressing up day. Further to this, he has made it known that he has decided to become prime minister when he is older, his main platform being the introduction of some sort of annual national Easter egg hunt, the full details of which are yet to be fully fleshed out or at least understood.

The worrying aspect of this is that we are just on the cusp of a Conservative victory - great for some, but the start of a decade of shouting at the telly for Mr VeryVeryBored. Being 6, aside from wanting to be prime minister, my boy is to a large extent preoccupied with wanting to win things. This is exhibited whenever he sits still long enough to watch sport on the telly, where is team allegience will flip with every goal scored or 6 struck out of the cricket ground. The concern must be then that, during his formative years, his observation of  Call Me Dave delivering his St Francis of Assisi lite victory speech on the steps of Number 10 determines that this is the team for him. You only have to observe the number of people of my age (35) who support Liverpool Football Club, not because they live in or have a great affection for Liverpool and things Scouse, but because Liverpool FC were winning everything from the European Cup to Come Dancing when we were children.

I will have to invest, I fear, in either gaffer tape or a rod of iron come the day that he comes to announce his chosen vehicle for the premiership. Meanwhile I shall invoke the memory of his great grandfather and simply inform him that the Conservatives will, most likely, be sending children of his age to work up the chimneys of their grand houses, to clean their moats, and install their duck houses.

Or move to Glasgow North East.

Pointless Products: Carnage Drinking Spree

News reaches Mr VeryVeryBored of a service to be added to the dusty annals of one of my favourite sections of this site, that of Pointless Products. Alongside the 5 blade razor we must now add the organised student pub crawl.

Back in my student days, the principle of the pub crawl was thus:

(1) Opt to not go to a scheduled lecture on the basis that it is Friday/too boring/a lecture in American politics for no apparent reason

(2) loosely arrange a meeting at the student union with at least one other person, ensuring that both parties have either cash about their person, or the means of writing a bouncy cheque to a local shopkeeper in exchange for the necessary monies.

(3) Imbibe a number of subsidised union drinks as a stager, possibly whilst awaiting the arrival of a number of other friends and associates who may, or may not, have decided to honour their commitment to attending said American Politics lecture

(4) Float the idea of going to a number of other establishments to continue in similar vein, but with the added interest of slightly different surroundings

(5) Drink more subsidised drinks in the student union

(6) Adjourn and then immediately reconvene in nearby public house to continue the consumption of intoxicating liquor. It should be noted that these drinks are typically 'proper' drinks with generic names like "lager", "bitter, "stout", rather than luminous bottles of branded filth.

(7) Repeat item (6) several times until...

(8) Observe that funds have become distressingly depleted and resolve to reconvene at the subsidised student union, after sourcing an indian/chinese/pizza takeaway to be consumed in the lounge of one of the people here-present

(9) After inadvertently sitting in the carton of rice recently purchased from local take-away shop, consume nutritious and restorative meal and recommence drinking activities at subsidised, but irritatingly "busier than it was earlier and without the comfy seats" student union

(10) Embarrass oneself with a haphazard and ultimately unsuccessful attempt at securing a sexual partner for the evening

(11) Return home whilst avoiding non-student friendly locals.

(12) Repeat.


Now, with news from Glasgow Caledonian University that they have closed their student union bar, it could be argued that access to subsidised beer has become slightly more difficult, but I could not envisage a scenario whereby the following would happen:

(1) Withdraw money from cashpoint and hand it to a company that thinks that it can organise a pub crawl that better suits your needs.

(2) Get hauled around local pubs and clubs in a marauding crowd at a speed not of your choosing, with a red-coat shouting words to the effect of "you are contracturally obliged to enjoy yourselves so smile and look really really leathered. Well, on reflection, not so leathered that our company, which you will note is actually called 'Carnage', can be had up for encouraging irresponsible behaviour".

(3) Get really aggro and so utterly legless that urinating on war memorial poppies seems like a good idea

(4) Wake up the following day realising that you have become a national hate figure. Resolve to organise your own drinking binges in future which, at most, end up with you and your friends in hot water with the local publican for stealing pint glasses or pilfering drip trays from the bar.

I am reminded somewhat of the Shag Bus that me and the occupants of our Ford Falcon / Toyota Corolla would come across on our travels in Australia and New Zealand. The primary objective of this means of transport appeared to be to rock up to the next major destination en route, get very very drunk, sleep it off for a number of days and then repeat in the next obvious destination. It should be noted that I did not actually use the Oz Experience, or the Kiwi Experience buses so the only evidence that I have of this is the 18 year olds that we encountered who appeared to consistently be in the mould of a chemically enhanced rock star who shows up in London only to call out to the crowd "Good evening Paris".

Sometimes it is surely just better to let the chaos of our human relationships decide when the next pub crawl is going to occur rather than leaving it in the hands of an 'organiser'. The best drinking sessions that I have ever had are the ones that were simply spontaneous events that occured by accident rather than design.... as far as I can remember anyway.

Sir Jet Set Willy

Going on about Twitter got me wondering about whether it will become the next great 'has-been' must-have, or if there is a long-term future for it. It certainly is the media darling at the moment and, truth be told, I've just not really had the time to work out whether it is something that I can be bothered with or not.

BBC4 had a great show on recently called Micro Men which tracked the relative rise and fall of the companies Sinclair Research and Acorn Computers through a drama biopic on the leading protaganists Sir Clive Sinclair and Sir Chris Curry. They were the (er, sort of) Twitter of their day and I can remember as a lad being over the moon one Christmas Day (probably 1983) when the revolutionary Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48K was unveiled. So extraordinary was this device that it had to be a shared present between both myself and my elder brother. My sister was, at the time, barely three years old so our parents did at least have to extend to providing her with a Tiny Tears doll or somesuch.

There was a revolution in our household upon the unfurling of the new rubber keyed personal computer. Suddenly a whole new world of entertainment and computing applications were available to us - this really was the future today. A solid 48K's worth of memory was at our disposal and the approach taken to this by my brother and I tells us a lot about our disposition both then and now. Though we both shared an enduring love of the seminal game Jet Set Willy, the downtime between walking from the Banyan Tree to The Kitchen was spent in two distinct camps: I favoured the purchase of programming magazines such as "Input" and "Sinclair User" and the long hand entering of Sinclair BASIC text to bring games and other "useful" applications to life. My brother favoured, and frankly I can see the error of my ways now, going down to the local computer retailer and purchasing a game created by a professional for commercial distribution. Hungry Horace, Horace Goes Skiing and Arcadia are the ones that I particularly enjoyed, whereas my brother had a fondness for Football Manager and Test Match.

The latter two appeared to be real-time sport based games that were entirely text based. Football Manager was essentially an early version of the fantasy football genre whereby the manager, namely my brother to the exclusion of all others, would be responsible for the buying and selling of players throught the season on order that the team would achieve the not insignificant title of Division 1 champions. From where I stood, the game was almost exactly the same as watching the A-Team of a Saturday afternoon, only to have it switched over to Oracle or CEEFAX and being made to watch the text on screen change whenever there was a goal or a sending off. Test Match was not much better in that it was either text only or a very simple graphical representation of a 5 day cricket test match, that appeared to last at the very least 5 days at a time, and without the personality of Test Match Special.

From what I saw of Micro Men, I would have been better off with the Acorn computer company to satisfy my new found programming needs, although of course Jet Set Willy was not available for any of their machines, and to not have that available would indeed be a travesty. One passage in the programme saw the then Clive Sinclair stating, somewhat disparagingly, that he risked going down in history as the man that brought the world Jet Set Willy, as opposed to a revolution in home computing - no chance of a knighthood for that he thought. Personally, I am not so sure. If the gongs were down to me then his knighthood would specifically be based on that very fact alone.

I was recently inspired to crack open my Sinclair ZX Spectrum + (we upgraded after an orange juice related incident) for one last throw of the dice and was delighted to be able to find an audio recording of the Jet Set Willy data encoding. Played through an MP3 player, the recording loaded up first time (no R: Tape loading error 0:1, I am pleased to report) and I found myself glued to the rather odd widescreen presentation of the game for hours on end. My 6 year old was similarly impressed and I would strongly advise Nintendo to bring JSW out for the DS.

Quite why the Spectrum died out in our house is anyone's guess. We didn't get a family PC for many years so it is hardly as if we upgraded and migrated away from Sir Clive's magnificient invention. It was probably an interest in girls that did it. Girls and listening to The Cure.

Will Twitter be as fondly remembered. To be honest I'm not sure that the comparison even works, but it has been tremendously enjoyable listening to the 8 bit versions of "If I Were A Rich Man" that I have stumbled across during the writing of this piece.

What of Sir Clive now? He is still knocking out his inventions which, truth be told, have never really lived up to the ZX81 or ZX Spectrum - the QL, C5, Zike for example. His latest invention is the A-Bike which appears, on the surface, to be a pretty good stab at a portable bike. It seems that Sir Clive has always held something of an obession with transport - the C5 was the electric car that I can remember being derided on BBC Breakfast Time when it went on sale, the Zike was a sort of electric bike adaptation device that didn't seem to quite work. The A-Bike, whilst a neat little package, seems to lack the, well, electronics that we have come to associate with Sir Clive. I was more than a little surprised to note that he was nothing to do with the Sky Car, a flying car developed over the last 40 years by Paul Moller. It is true to say that Sinclair had, in their time, more than few production problems with up to 25% of their product being returned as faulty, but I am sure that Sir Clive could bring something to this project to help it get fully off the ground, as it were. Rubber keys on the dashboard, or a great lump of hardware to stick on the back to make it go faster, perhaps.

Twitter vs Test Match Cricket

It has been an unfeasibly long time since this blog was updated. From time to time I look back on those halcyon blogging days and consider that the soul would benefit from posting again every now and then.

Let's recap on the passage of time since the last set of posts and refamilarise ourselves with the domestic arrangements of Mr VeryVeryBored: married by default, rather than holy matrimony, to Miss VeryVeryBored, the extent of the progeny now extends to two boys - one aged six and the other aged 7 months. There is, as yet, no canine presence in the house. Mr VeryVeryBored continues to work in the telecommunications sector and is now plying his trade as a genuine project manager at a company that is less bankrupt than the one he worked in last, and one that does not see fit to prefix his job description with the word "Desktop" in a paper thin ruse to minimise salary.

The collective live in Eastbourne which, depending on your outlook and familarity with the town is either "The Sunshine Coast", or "Gods Waiting Room". The official line in the house is that if you go into Tesco in Eastbourne, the demographic is akin to pretty much any other town in the UK, though I fear Nick Griffin would be a little too pleased with the monochrome nature of the inhabitants. Unlike Worthing-By-Sea where the coffin dodgers are native, Eastbourne buses them in by the thousand during the summer months. Once they are in situ, the council then engages in a series of achingly dad-cool ad campaigns to convince the skateboard fraternity that they ought undertake some sort of 4 wheeled Stunt Hajj to the Sunshine Coast and hang out with the fresh faced windsurfer dudes and stunt kite kids.

Mr VeryVeryBored has considerably less time on his hands to read the paper, watch political talk shows, and to expound his views on what appears to now be termed "The Blogosphere". Back in the heyday of VeryVeryBored.Com (now renamed to the altogether less memorable veryverybored.blogspot.com), Mr VeryVeryBored could delight his 30 odd readers and spend 7 of the 7.5 working hours in the day piecing together posts with cut outs from Roget's Thesaurus. These days, with the dropping of the prefix "Desktop", the ratios will most likely be reversed. Now, some would suggest that the creation of a Twitter account named "BarelyAnyTimeOnMyHandsButIStillLikeToWasteMyTimeALittleBit" would be a better fit but, much as I enjoy reading the musings of Stephen Fry, the whole principle of fitting your thoughts into 144 characters reminds me somewhat of the early days of text messaging where you couldn't roll over onto a second text if you were in the middle of elucidating elaborately with full punctuation and sentence case at 159 characters. I dismissively regard Twitter therefore as a retrograde step and in the same league as Twenty-Twenty cricket - a silly sport that is better performed under the auspices of a test match.

Let's see if I can (a) think about something more interesting than what is for dinner/when Elijah's bum needs to be swapped out/the differences between Ben 10 Alien Force and Ben 10/whether the Cisco switches that I have ordered will arrive in time/why the lawn has been overrun with clover/have we ordered the right carpet or is the house going to look brown, brown, brown, whether it is appropriate to consider Gwen from Ben 10 Alien Force (not Ben 10 - that would clearly be wrong) quite attractive, and is that any different from thinking the same about Daphne off of Scooby Doo/why do the windows mist up in the winter and will anyone buying the house notice it if I just scrape them dry every morning... and (b) if I can get around to sharing those thoughts with the, ahem, "Blogosphere" with any sense of regularity at all...

A final thought, what is a blog without any readers - answer "an even bigger waste of time than it might be otherwise". Going on previous history, although the phrases "Sarah Beeny naked" and "Christine Bleakley naked" might not generate the right traffic, they might generate some traffic nevertheless. Richard Desmond would approve, though it is a little shallow and grubby to say the least.

New Job

It is with considerable pleasure that Mr Very Very Bored announces that he has secured himself a new job.

The year to date has been punctuated by the confirmed and absolute prospect of being made redundant from Bankrupt Telecom International. Though the news was initially greeted with a slightly unprofessional punching of the air and immediate mathematical equations to determine the precise payout, the encroaching prospect of joining the great unwaged has dominated proceedings to date.

As it is, the new job pays considerably more than the current shambles, and BTI are honour bound to pay me a lump sum for the pleasure.

Up yer bum BTI!

Joke de Jour

Today's light relief comes courtesy of VeryVeryBored Jnr's somewhat inadequate sense of humour:

Q: How did the chicken cross the road?
A: With his legs

Q: Why did the chicken cross the road?
A: To get to the other side

Q: How did the chicken cross the road?
A: On the zebra crossing

Q: How do French politicians cook their sausages?
A: On the Dominique de Grill Pan (or so my Dad says anyway. How's that funny anyway?)