Wednesday 24 April 2013

This Is What Happens When You Forget To Charge Your Kindle

It's been on my mind that I haven't written for a while. In fact, my lack of input recently undoubtedly contributes to my general lack of self worth. I just had to go back and delete an extra 'l' from the word 'general'. It's been a long time.

March 15, in fact, when last I soiled these pages with tales of how Emma and I managed to leave my wheels at home after driving to work one day. That's far too long but what do you do? Write something for the sake of writing it? In which case it is likely to be a stream-of-consciousness, formless lot of bollocks which it is so far, or do you wait for something significant or interesting to happen? It could be a while if you do that. I have just spent the morning inserting data on a spreadsheet. Significance and interest seem a world away. In fact, they have fucked off on holiday with joy and hope.

It's lunchtime. I have just been downstairs where I intended to read my book. Nothing life-changing, just a bog-standard Grisham novel about two half-arsed lawyers (very much after my own heart, then) who try to litigate against a massive drug manufacturer. So anyway I switched on the kindle and basically it said no. I had forgotten to charge it. Again. Even had I remembered I would have been out of luck, because I have had my phone on charge all morning. It's limited battery-life has buckled under the strain of my endless Facebook rambles in leiu of anything substantial enough to transfer on to these pages. In leiu of any real writing talent, then.

There's nothing worse than switching on your kindle at lunchtime and realising it has no battery and you have forgotten to charge it. Well there probably is but right now it doesn't seem like there is. Not when I have another afternoon of data entry to look forward to, beginning in approximately 27 minutes time. The race is on for this piece to make any sort of sense before then. If you thought I rambled on Facebook, you have entered a whole new world of rambling by visiting me here. But I thank you for it anyway. It makes it all worthwhile. And anyway, I promised myself that I would get something down on these pages today. Or if not today then certainly this week. The lack of a kindle gave me a window, and has very probably given all of us a headache. I'm trying to work out what to write and you're trying to work out what the fuck I am on about.

I was going to write a piece about Thatcher. For those of you who don't know or who have been living under a rock for the last two weeks the old hag bought it a couple of weeks ago. Now this is undoubtedly sad for somebody somewhere, but it does not justify spending £10million of tax-payers money to send her off in the manner of a war-hero. Personally I'd have paid someone ten bob to drop her down a secret chute into the Mersey (what? you didn't know about the secret chute into the Mersey? Well, it is a secret) but I'm sure the appropriate arrangements were somewhere in between these two extremes. Anyway it all got me very mad, as regular readers of my Facebook 'wisdom' will already know. But in the end I did't write about it here because I had already said it all there. And far more people are likely to read a status on Facebook than a blog like this. That's life. That's 'microblogging', if that word isn't too pretentious and hurl-inducing.

What else could I write about? Luis Suarez is in trouble again. He bit someone. Again. The club have stuck by him. Again. Reputations no longer matter in Premier League football. It's all about business and flipping great sacks of cash and Suarez, his flesh-chomping tomfoolery notwithstanding, is Liverpool's most valuable asset. The club's owners are Americans, making it even less likely that they will take any action which could weaken their overall position. All of which is immoral and makes you feel a bit queasy. But there is not another club in the Premier League who would do anything different to what Liverpool have done. Furthermore, Fergie would probably have Bratislav Ivanovic up on an FA charge for putting his arm in Suarez's mouth if he were the manager of Liverpool. Suarez may choose to leave anyway given the lack of European football on offer at Anfield next season. Ignoring the moral debate, they're taking an awfully big gamble if they are relying on Suarez to repay the faith they have shown in him by sticking around and, perish the thought, behaving himself for five minutes.

Now that I have used the phrase 'perish the thought' in one of my pieces it occurs to me just how rusty I am at all this. I suppose the only answer to that it is to try and do it more often but with all the work I am doing for Redvee, and with spending my days looking at spreadsheets and engaging in some of the most puerile banter since Ziggy Greaves' heyday, I just haven't had the time or, if I'm honest, the dedication. But most of all, what has been lacking, is the inspiration. As crap as it has been over this past month, life has been pretty much devoid of any comedy cock-ups, blatant episodes of discrimination or sickening patronisation to rattle on about with smug, pompous abandon. I'm not in a good literary place at the moment.

But what do you expect? I've just written this piece in 20 minutes in my lunch break. If only that fucking kindle had been charged we could have all saved some valuable time. See you on Facebook.

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