O well, I tried, but its back to the usual, standard, boring titles again I’m afraid; But at least I’m still blogging from the exciting locations, as I write once again from the x9 bus. I’D like to make a personal plea to Father Christmas: Can you please, next year, deliver pairs of ear phones to all the kids in the northeast of England? Please! there’s a whole orchestra of kids with mobile phones blurring out generic dance music. The vehicle is awash with hi hat and bass drum – without the bass element because the phone speakers don’t actually bother with bass. What’s going on? I assume that what’s going on is quite simply that a load of ignorant teenage tossers (Nice bit of alliteration there, I hope you appreciate the poetry) think it more than appropriate to play their music to the rest of the bus. But perhaps I’m doing these people a huge disservice. There could be a more enlightening explanation. FOR all I know, the experimental composer
John Cage
might have got on the bus a couple of stops earlier than me and initiated a group of teenagers to take part in one of his new masterpieces. Perhaps I am the odd one out here. Being blind, I could be totally oblivious to the scene around me:
john Cage, stood purposefully at the front of the bus, waving his arms, conducting his teenage entourage to choose a generic pop song stored on their phones, then start, stop, change tracks, turn volume up and down in accordance with Cage’s arm movements. There could be a whole film crew recording the event for BBC 4, and in the background there’ll see me – the odd one out – sitting there looking annoyed about it all, ruining the subtle nuances of Cage’s experimental musical epic with my typing noises as I write this post. Then, after the piece has ended, John will walk up and down the bus, signing autographs for excited teenage fans who babble enthusiastically to John about the dubstep remix of
4’33” …
But I doubt it.
So, There’s a group of kids at the back of the bus, all with phones. One of them is playing some hip hop loudly, another one is joining in, trying to get some MCing he recorded himself doing earlier to fit to the beat of the other kid’s music. Then there’s another kid, using his phone to provide visuals. He’s showing a video of him and his mates doing “wicked, ollies” and various other stunts on their skateboards.
My annoyance is heightened by the fact that I’m running late today, thanks to radio 4. My dad listens to The Today Program on Radio 4 in the mornings. I personally wouldn’t choose to do this; I find it upsetting enough to have to get out of a nice warm bed each morning, without having to listen to half an hour of doom, death and destruction while I’m getting ready to leave the house to go to my job that The Today Program informs me I’m unlikely to have for much longer. But, Radio 4 is what’s on around the house and so that’s what I hear when I potter around. The redeeming feature of The Today Program however is that it does give frequent time checks. My particular favourite is “quarter past seven” as said by Sarah Montague: very arousing! I know I’ve gone on about how I hate radio that comprises mainly of time checks, weather and travel, but I was referring then to the commercial radio format. Radio 4 is different; their time checks are highbrow.
Normally, the time checks are a useful aid to me leaving the house on time – what an ingenious strategy: using the time checks to keep me running on time. Actually, its not really the time checks, its more the various items like the sport, Thought For the Day or a trail that helps me orientate how long I’ve got before I leave the house. Unfortunately, Radio 4 failed me today, as the Today Program seemed to be running behind schedule. The sport and the trail must have happened at a later time and I was probably pottering too loudly to hear the time checks. So I missed the bus, and now I’m late. I have no idea why Radio 4 was running behind schedule; I only switched on at 7. Anything could have happened. Perhaps Thought for the Day was hosted by a rabbi with a severe stutter problem, and the presenter – afraid to offend – didn’t have the heart to cut across him.
I thought that seeing as I’m sitting here on the bus, just twiddling my thumbs – I better stop doing that actually because it’s making it a great deal more difficult to type- – I’d write a post about a strange, coincidental scenario that happened to me a couple of nights ago. Its only a very short story, so I’m quite glad that I am running late and that the teenagers on the bus are so annoying because it’s given me something extra to write about.
When your a high flying, high-profile role model like myself, it’s important to maintain one’s physical prowess, so I make sure I regularly exercise. On this night, I started off my exercise with some star jumps. My dad came into the room while I was star jumping and switched on the TV. He then made a sound of exclamation – I’ll leave you to imagine what kind of sound that might be: a gasp, a shout, a sharp inhalation … I don’t have a specific memory about it; I hope that doesn’t ruin your enjoyment of the story. The reason for this non-specific sound of exclamation was to do with the highly unlikely correlation between
me and the TV. Apparently, the picture that came on the television at that moment was of a man in y Fronts doing star jumps. I wasn’t wearing y-fronts but I was doing star jumps. “What a coincidence”, I’m sure that’s what your all thinking. I’m not an expert in the field of probability and even if I was I doubt a credible answer could be given to indicate the probability of this situation happening. If there are any maths geniuses reading – perhaps taking a light, refreshing break from a calculus conundrum – maybe they’d like to investigate this question. I suppose you’d have to work out (on average) how many TV programs at that given time of day are likely to be showing men in y-fronts doing star jumps. Then you’d have to calculate the likelihood of people, oblivious to what is about to greet them on their televisions, while they partake in a spot of star jumping. in front of their televisions. Is there a famous film that has a man star jumping in y-fronts? Maybe I’m missing something obvious. There’s all sorts of random TV channels on cable and sky nowadays, there’s probably a station dedicated to men star jumping in y-fronts. Don’t worry feminists, I’m sure they’ll commission a similar service with star jumping women soon; its only a matter of time, surely. If any maths geniuses do get in touch, I’ll be sure to upload their thesis on the subject to the blog, so watch this space.
Well, there you go. End of story. I’m not sure what the moral is. I’ll leave you to decide that. Perhaps it’s: “I should really stop wasting my time reading this blog”.
Anyway, I’ll be back very soon with the first episode in a new audio series: David Eagle’s Pick and Mix! All will be revealed in my next blog post, coming soon!
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