Updates
April 8th, 2004
It’s been almost a fortnight since my last post, and in that time I’ve been up to the following:
eBay. I’ve had about 40 auctions recently, roughly half of which are yet to complete. The hero item so far has been Banco de Gaia’s Last Train to Lhasa – a triple cd, which went for £35. The largest surprise for me is the rekindled passion some people clearly have for early 90’s indie music. I suppose that the Madchester generation is now squarely in the disposable income bracket, and can afford £15 for some ‘Real People’ nostalgia.
Football. It’s been a great week for fans-sans-Sky: Arsenal v Man U’s FA Cup clash last Saturday lunchtime was a great game, although I’m not sure whether the United fans’ chorus of “Reds, reds will tear you apart …again” was exactly the sentiment Ian Curtis had in mind when he wrote his classic for Joy Division.
Aresenal v Chelsea midweek in the Champions League quarter final was equally exciting. Ranieri’s open delight at the victory warms me even more to an already likable character. And the spot-on strapline of “Claud 9” which I saw on the back page of the Express, of all places (you see a lot of sports headlines when you travel by train) was only slightly diminished when I read The Sun’s less effective (in my opinion) “Claudio 9”. It must have been incredibly annoying for the hacks responsible to find that they’d mutually cancelled each other’s genius.
I had a similar experience myself yesterday when I picked up a copy of This is Brighton, the local free listings magazine. Stef (friend, DJ, and absentee robotperson wine correspondent) writes the Digital Culture column for This is Brighton. He asked me to write a review of Splinter Cell for X-box, an excellent game that I’ve now been playing for a week. While I was out yesterday I found myself imagining creeping along the scaffolding by the business centre; searching for the shadows on my way to the supermarket; and generally picking off pedestrians with my mental sniper scope.
It occurred to me that this hanging-over of the game into real life would be a great hook for the piece – a neatly droll way of showing the psychological hold that the game had successfully exerted over me. I wandered back home feeling smugly clever, a feeling which persisted exactly as far as the sofa, which is where I read Stef’s review of Battlefield Vietnam in the current issue. He had, of course, done exactly the same thing:
“I am still expecting an ambush around every corner (even when I’m in Hove)”
Arse.
Incredibly, I woke up this morning with another hook, freshly served up by my defragged subconscious. I’ll let you know what it was when the piece has been published.