OAP taster kit.

Now I’m no spring chicken but I’m not quite ready to book my place at the Sunny Days retirement home, either. Following Sunday’s epic battle, which, to someone whose exercise regime generally comprises lifting a coffee cup and moving a mouse and little else, the continuous getting up, crouching down, pushing wire, squeezing pipe antics took their toll and I’ve since been walking like an arthritic octogenarian who has recently discovered mountaineering. Throw in RSI of the thumbs and blurred vision due to the medicine for the eye problem and you have your very own OAP taster kit.

Administering a string enema to a large Python

Today was a productive but ultimately painful day. Following a nice family pub lunch with Jules’s mum, brother and his girlfriend, Jules and Little Blubs headed off to a bridesmaids’ tea-party to meet the others and for a final dress fitting. While they were out I set about running electricity between Jules’s sheds. This is a real Heath Robinson job involving an extension lead, a length of garden hose and some jubilee clips. The reason? Simple: we discovered the cable was not recommended for outdoor use; so the idea was to thread it through the hose, which by design is waterproof, of course.

It all started off well enough but as it reached the three-quarter mark it started putting up a fight. Although there was plenty of clearance, the cable kept kinking and jamming; effectively making the task akin to administering a string enema to a large Python. I was still struggling with it when Jules returned and despite our joint efforts, it refused to budge at the final foot or so. Fortunately, the length was sufficient to bridge the gap; although it left it more exposed than I would have liked. My patience and tenacity paid off, however, and now Jules can get to work on her jewellery making.

The rest of the evening was spent installing, uninstalling and reinstalling my Adobe applications after discovering In Design and the latest Photoshop beta don’t play nicely together. All good fun though,

Bowled over

Today was bowling day, bowling day. B-b-b-b-b-b-b-bowling day. Yes, we all piled down to Brighton marina to wear silly shoes and attempt to sprain our wrists.

Our reputation preceded us, of course, as the staff sent us off to the furthest lane in the building; not wanting us to show the other patrons up with our professional prowess, naturally. To further handicap us, they made sure the lane malfunctioned from the outset: firstly, the kiddy-rails wouldn’t retract; still, the ever-attentive staff were on hand to fix the problem. Sadly, this created another in the process, as the lane didn’t reset and we were left hanging; Little Blubs having already taken her first shot. Again, this was dealt with in what seemed like the blink of an eye, once we’d used the handy Service Call button; 15 times, in fact, before resorting to going back to reception where a varying sequence of gesticulations and noises finally explained the problem to the blank-eyed bowl-monkeys.

All this had the desired effect on our game: meaning we couldn’t have hit a day-glo elephant silhouetted by a brightly lit barn-door. Only Mr. Cheese seemed to have not been at all phased by the whole affair and went on to win by a fairly sizeable margin.

A little fresh air was needed after this so we wandered around the marina complex for a while.

Word of the day: Blepharitis

Blepharitis [blef-uh-rahy-tis]:An inflammation of the eyelids, specifically the margins. Early symptoms include: having to be at the eye hospital almost an hour earlier than you would normally be at work; sitting around for large periods of time doing nothing in particular.

Initial diagnosis: sitting in a dark room having bright lights shone into your eyes and sneak-attack eye-drops deployed. Followed by more of the same from a comedy bow-tie (Union flag) wearing consultant.

Treatment: One month of self-inflicted torture in the form of two different types of eye-drops and ointment resembling weak glue.

Side effects: Watering; stinging; headache; one of your oldest friends, an administrator at the hospital, belittling your condition and questioning the validity of your middle name.

Hollow plastic dominoes

In the far-distant olden days (pre-1982), buying music was an altogether more rewarding experience: there was no Amazon, no iTunes, no, you had to get off your backside and shuffle down to the shops where you would find row upon row of cardboard-sleeved (or if you were lucky, a picture-disc) vinyl goodness. There was the gentle thwup as you slowly flipped your way through the latest and greatest, stopping occasionally to pull out the album to admire the artwork, the gate-fold and the generally readable text listing lyrics or artist information on the inner sleeve. With a record album, you had something to prop up and admire whilst it played.

Aside from the rapidly dwindling specialist dealers, this nostalgic vision has all but faded away; replaced of course by the clinically perfect Compact Disc. Browsing is now a machine-gun like cacophony of hollow plastic dominoes cracking against one another as people feverishly thumb through them at the sale racks, barely seeing the artist, let alone the artwork. It hardly seems worth bothering anyway, as closer examination only presents you with a track list which would be no more legible had it been written on a grain of rice and placed in a novelty pendant. There is no feeling of substance.

Now you might be thinking that I’m one of these stuck-in-the-dark-ages advocates of vinyl, not so: my LP collection has been stashed away in the loft for several years now; I don’t even own a turntable and I rarely play CDs. My music is purely digital, much of it stored on the computer and the iPod. There no need to scan up and down the miniscule spines of the cases, my head pitched awkwardly at 45˚ looking for That’s What Someone Might Have Called Music 20 Years Ago Volume 24. No, I can flick through my entire collection, sort it by almost any means, search it and get it to pick me a random selection with the mere click of my mouse. There’s no need for the 5×5 insert, however comprehensive. Track lists, lyrics and even what the producer had for breakfast the day he put it all together can all be gleaned from the ‘net. Well, perhaps not all.

So, as I sat transferring the discs of my music collection from their jewel cases to an DJ case to become vaulted master copies, I found myself wondering if the age of the packaged insert has started its slow decent to oblivion. The artwork has simply become a quick way of knowing which of the five-thousand plus songs is currently pounding in my ears, should I not instantly recognise it; as is so often the case.