This is attempt number two of my blog today. It was already filled with some amazing insights, the sorts of theories and philosophies that many of you would have printed off, or to save trees, emailed round, with the headline 'IMPORTANT' knowing it would change the face of the planet. Within minutes, people of all religious denominations would be denouncing their gods in place of my stratagem, world leaders would be calling me for advice, global warming would just quit it and give us all lovely sunshine, and sharks would stop eating people and eat hobnobs instead. But then my computer crashed and I don't remember what any of it said. Sorry. Really sorry about that. My computer shouldn't have crashed either. Its a Macbook. I remember being told 'oh Mac's don't crash', 'oh Macs are so wonderful, they don't get viruses or nothing', 'Macs are better than my partner, I wish I could marry one' etc etc. For a while I was totally Captain Apple Lover on board the good ship Jobs. But recently my Mac's got all wheezy and tired and has decided it no longer wants to live the dream. So it has teamed up with my gmail account, who after 5 years of storing various inane messages and boring streams of gchat has now told me my inbox is full and stuff must be deleted. Fuck you machines. Fuck you all.
So here is attempt at blog number two, deciding not to let the future letting me down get in the way. I was going to wittle on about how I had a pivotal moment last night that made me realise I have definitely become more of an adult than I used to be. This moment was in front of the TV at 1am in the morning, and the program in question was called, of all things, 'Sun, Sex and Suspicious Parents.' Now before you judge me in anyway, and most of you already will have done, I was very much braindead from an overly long day at work. Four hours of doing telly warm up for kids, despite being incredible fun, is destructive. Constantly having to have a response about every odd question about dogs, people, what's going on, why do I look like James Corden (god that made me angry) and so on and so on, as well as finding new ways to keep them entertained while sets are changed is a huge strain on the brain. Luckily for me, Dick (of Dick and Dom fame)'s dad was in the audience and Alan Anddom was a lovely man who let me field some questions his way. The sheer concept that Dick and Dom even have parents blew many of the kids minds and I was given two minutes of respite as they asked him what Dick's favourite colour was, when his birthday is, was he good at spelling at school and just how many tins of baked beans he could eat in one go. This whirlwind of children's entertainment was followed swiftly by jumping in a car straight to Fat Tuesday and hosting a very nice gig for two hours. By 11pm I was a shell of a man. You could have put me to your ear and heard the sea. Maybe.
So when home, all I could do was persuade Tom to stop listening to Jurassic Park at 8x times slower speed on his laptop (no I don't know why either. He was lying prone with his head to the speakers listening to dinosaurs growl very slowly), and flick through the late night TV atrocities. Finally we settled on the aforementioned horror show. It's premise is to follow young women on holiday, while their parents, unbeknownst to the girls, follow them and watch what they get up to. Its horribly voyeuristic, a huge infringement on privacy and also, I believe, a cheap way to film a lot of boobs (both literally, and metaphorically). Myself and Tom sat there with usual comments on how on earth such a pile of shit could ever be allowed to be made and, far more importantly, how Russell Bovey, who was doing the voiceover, is on everything on BBC3 ever. But slowly, through watching for a while, something happened. We started to become quite engaged in the show. Not because, as you might think, being young males there were lots of bikini'd bods on the screen, no, not at all. Instead we were enthralled with how the parents were with their kids. One set was incredibly controlling, demanding they have influence over what their daughter wore, how she behaved and where she went, while the others were lovely liberal people just happy seeing their daughter have a good time, but with some reasonable moral standing points when they saw her being sick on her own shoes. Tom and I found ourselves sitting their discussing nature and nurture, the dangers of mollycoddling children and cheering everytime Chelsea's dad said something nice.
When did this happen? Suddenly I'm watching the trash end of TV, the sort of programming that proves humanity is devolving in many ways, and yet I'm needing to watch the end to ensure Laura's dad doesn't get too angry with her for wearing a short skirt as she's 18 and really should be able to do what she likes. Sigh. If I ever find myself sitting here telling you how 'Hotter Than My Daughter' is a modern day Aesop's Fables or how 'Snog, Marry, Avoid' is a parable for the foibles of human interaction, then I've definitely lost it and I hope you all stop reading for your own sake.
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