There are some very embarrassing photos of me on Facebook... Well OK, perhaps not that embarrassing. My grandson and I were watering the garden just before I got ready for a night shift. I was unshaven and unflatteringly attired in my bright pink T shirt and blue shorts. Photos were taken and uploaded onto Facebook almost instantaneously. The first I heard of it was when I was told that my sister-in-law had commented on my legs. I playfully objected at this public display of my sartorial inelegance but I didn't really mind.
I used to be on Farcebook but I suspended my account because I became fed up reading, in elaborate detail, what my work colleague's children had eaten for breakfast and similar banalities. The only drawback with this is that you can't see what other people are putting on Farcebook about you. I am probably on it hundreds of time via people I know and as a background person in a stranger's videos or photos. In the old days when you took a photo with friends or family and there was a random, unknown person lurking in the background it used to stay in a drawer. Now, if you are that random person, you are likely to be plastered on somebodies social networking account which could be awkward if you had blagged a sickie from work that day and it gets discovered. It's a small world after all.
To take this a step further, imagine a situation where I am the object of desire for a teenage nymphomaniac stalker. It's difficult to believe I know but stick with it. She follows me round taking hundreds of compromising photos which she uploads to her website to show the world how buff I am. She could break into my house and secrete a camera into the potpourri holder in the bathroom to film me in my most private moments. Then she could put it into the public domain without me being any the wiser.
You can't delete a Farcebook account, you can only suspend it in cryogenic sleep waiting for it to be reactivated sometime in the future. Everything that goes on the Internet is there forever, just like the space junk orbiting the planet in endless cycles waiting for someone with the will and technological know-how to recover it. I once had an incident where a girlfriend discovered some letters I had exchanged with a previous girlfriend which I had kept for old time's sake. My new girlfriend completely over-reacted and a horrendous row followed but we managed to sort it out. At least I had control over those letters and what happened to them.
Perhaps there will come a time in the future when I am called to account for the fact that I was at a party twenty years previously with someone who became a radicalised suicide bomber. Alternatively, an employee may find their promotion blocked or even be sacked because of something said fifteen years ago at a student union rally. Maybe in the future people will be sued for postings they did years ago because they didn't ask the subjects permission and the subject has subsequently suffered because of it. Imagine a contemporary Ronnie Biggs character suing for loss of freedom because the authorities believe he is in Argentina but somebody's Farcebook clearly shows him partying in Rio leading to his arrest. Permission given? Not likely.
There has been much talk by the civil liberties campaigners about CCTV in our towns' high streets. No one is interested in the thousands of faces passing the cameras everyday unless you are actually doing something wrong such as stealing a bike. It seems to me that the civil liberties brigade are barking up the wrong tree, or possibly post.
I have a nephew named Jamie. He lives in Great Yarmouth with some other members of our numerous family who moved to the coast some years ago and have settled in comfortably. Great Yarmouth is not the town it once was and is no longer great. It's very difficult to find employment so Jamie works all the hours he can in a bowling alley, and therein lies the story.
My wife and I went to Yarmouth to see the family over the New Year but Jamie was working so we went to see him at the bowling alley. The seafront at Yarmouth has recently benefited from an extensive and expensive refurbishment however, some of the older attractions date back to the 1950's and the bowling alley is one of these. Jamie wasn't busy and asked if I wanted to have a look behind the scenes. I have always been interested to see how things work so jumped at the chance. My wife declined the invite and couldn't see why I was so interested, she just didn't get it.
Jamie explained that the alley was built in the 1950's and it was still the original machinery. It was fascinating to watch this old machinery gathering the fallen pins via a simple mechanism and smoothly putting them back in place time and time again. I could imagine the youth of the 1950's with slick brylcreamed hair pretending to be Elvis and the girls in their bobby sox and flouncy dresses on Saturday night. The town would have been thriving, there would be money in their pockets and the bowling alley would be the place to be seen. As Jamie finished his impromptu lecture-cum-tour he presented me and my father in law with an old, damaged skittle each. The plastic was torn on the outside but the internal wood seemed to be intact. I am not usually sentimental and I am not materialistic but I was quite touched that Jamie gave me this skittle. It has no monetary value and is hardly ornamental but I felt I needed to do something worthy with it. I decided to strip the plastic off then stain and varnish it. 'What for' my wife said, she just didn't get it.
In my naivety I thought to myself no problem, strip the plastic off, a quick sand down and stain, hey presto. I didn't take into account the plastic would be glued to the wood itself. It took hours to prise the plastic away causing painful hands and a lot of splinters whilst trying not to damage the wood. I also stupidly thought the wood be one piece of beautifully lathed timber with a glorious grain running through it. It is no such thing. It's made of odd blocks of timber a bit like one of those 3D puzzles you can assemble but all glued together. Where I had taken the plastic off the wood had split and fractured. It was like trying to sand a hedgehog. I managed to impale myself several times on the treacherous barbs, but I persevered. 'Why,' asked the wife, she just didn't get it.
After several hours of preparing and sanding I managed to get it in reasonable shape to be able to stain it but, I must confess, I haven't got round to it yet. What I have now is a lump of wood with a bit of history. The only conceivable use for it is as a door stop or perhaps to knock an intruder over the head. However, I am strangely proud of it. My wife still doesn't get it. I am not sure I get it myself; it must be a bloke thing.
Can you see the band in the photo... no? neither can I. Hidden in the distance, behind all the lights, are those modern purveyors of popular music known as The Kings of Leon. We went to see them last week and this is the photo from the back of the LG Arena in Birmingham. They had a mightily impressive light show with different colour schemes for virtually every song and the strobes were an epileptic's nightmare. The Band themselves must all be shy retiring types because they were in silhouette for most of the gig and didn't really engage with the audience much at all. Even when Caleb did speak I couldn't make out what he said, he just mumbled. I must admit though, it made a refreshing change from singers bellowing ' I can't hear you' at the audience which is really annoying.
I had not been to the LG arena before, it's quite a nice venue with food outlets, bars and even acoustic live music laid on before the main event. Nice except for the toilets that is which seemed to have been designed with mind-bending incompetence. There are no urinals, they are all cubicles which were full so the men had to queue which caused much confusion and head scratching, we men are not used to the relevant protocols. Each cubicle contained one of those thin boxes used for disposing of used 'Women's things' which were clearly pointless. The cubicles were so small that there wasn't room to stand up and open the door; I had to squeeze myself in next to the pan to be able to open the door enough to get out. This caused much cursing and bemusement by my fellow users attempting the same manoeuvre. On the way out I checked I hadn't wandered into the Ladies by mistake, I hadn't. It's possible some wag had switched the signs on the door. I should have made more enquires about the ladies facilities.
They had people selling bottles of beer out of those wheeled trolleys that old ladies use to do their shopping. One of these venders managed to knock his trolley over and all his bottles rolled across the floor to our feet, we assisted him in picking them up and putting them back in the bag. I don't expect he told his customers to open them carefully or they could be sitting through the gig soaked in beer. It was nice to see the venue had complied with their responsibilities with regards to disabled access but this didn't actually extend to letting the disabled patrons see the band. The disabled section was in the standing area at right angles to the stage. All they could have seen was the people standing in front of them. Let's hope they went for the atmosphere.
Anyone who has been to gigs such as these will be aware of their uniformity, it generally starts with he touts outside attempting to sell or buy tickets. It always seems strange to me that, if you have tickets to sell, why would you buy more? If you don't resell them you make a loss. I expect they know what they are doing. A large number of people who attend gigs are numerically challenged. The marshals had to shift people round us on two occasions because they were in the wrong seats. It's not difficult, the number is printed on the ticket, you are guided by a marshal and the numbers are on the seats. At every gig people sit in the wrong seats and then take umbrage about being moved. The seat ballet is hotly followed by where's Wally. This involves someone on the phone behind you trying to locate someone he knows somewhere in the audience and generally follow the lines of, 'what.... the left of the stage... by the stairs...which stairs, are you near a blonde girl in a white shirt?... I can't see a blue shirt... now, now walking past now...wave now... yes wave.....you said left of the stage do you mean right' so on and so forth. The trouble is you can't help but look for their friend as well. About this time you get the Mexican wave which seems to go round and round for ever. Fortunately we were spared this particular annoyance this time. There is generally someone on your row that continually gets up to go the bar and toilet you have to keep getting up to let them through.
At the end of the gig there is the rule of the encore. Every band does it from the humblest pub rockers to the mighty giants. The set finishes, they say good bye the band leave the stage while the lights go down, the audience cheer and stamp their feet for five minutes and the band come back on and do another couple of numbers, usually their most famous ones which they have been saving. I have even seen bands come back on when the audience weren't interested. What a farce. There is no point to it, it's just what's expected. As the stream of drunk, tired and happy fans stream out the venue's exit door there are the dodgy men selling knock off T shirts all laid out on the pavements outside. They are probably the ticket touts from earlier, I guess every business needs a bit of diversity. The next part of the proceedings is the half hour wait to get out of the car park with nothing to alleviate the boredom except laughing at people who have clearly forgotten where they parked the car. Sometimes they even start arguing with each other round an empty parking space.
There was a slight difference this time though at the encore. The band had launched into their last song 'Sex on Fire' they were rocking for all they were worth and the audience was right behind them. The camera picked up a stark naked man dancing and singing like a crazed loon which was flashed up on to the screens. The atmosphere changed to one of hilarity in a heartbeat as thousands of people stopped concentrating on the band and tried to find the dancing loon in the audience. You had to feel for poor Caleb and the boys.
What kind of dog are you? It occurred to me some time ago that, if I had been a dog, I would probably have been a labrador. I share certain characteristics with the animal in that I have a generally placid nature, we are both prone to be a little overweight with a tendency towards laziness and, dare I say it, we are quite pleasant to look at. My wife on the other hand displays the cool elegance, fine looks and reserved nature of an afghan hound. The image of Winston Churchill depicted as a Bulldog has become iconic and embodies the pride of the British fighting spirit. Who could deny that Graham Norton displays all the charm of a yorkshire terrier in being small, yappy and over excitable. In the recent crop of useless celebrities there is Rylan Clarke who bears a startling resemblance to a poodle in that he is high maintenance, odd to look at and completely pointless. The list goes on.
Any cat or dog owner would tell you that their pet has a personality. I am no zoologist but I would suspect that this is true of all the more intelligent mammals. No doubt sea-lion and dolphin trainers all over the world would claim the same. That's why we humans are so fond of animals, we can see ourselves in them. It's no surprise that the ancients believed in re-incarnation when they could see their loved ones spirits in the animals around them.
I have heard it suggested that there is more evidence for re-incarnation than for a heaven. No one has ever come back from heaven to state the case, even the TV spiritualists admit it's all a fraud. However, there are plenty of documented accounts of memories of past lives and people speaking in languages they couldn't possibly have known. The most famous case is of the current Dalai Lama. When the previous incumbent died, the other lamas consulted their oracles and went to Lake Ihamo La-tso to wait for a sign from the lake spirit of where the old leader had been re-born. They were shown an image of a little house at the bottom hill in a distinctive village; it took them four years to find it. So the story goes, the four year old child immediately recognised his former colleague dressed as a slave and started talking in a dialect not native to that particular region. It doesn't say why the lama felt it necessary to disguise himself, perhaps it was to prevent over eager mothers forcing their children on him in the manner of the ugly sisters and the glass slipper. After many tests perfected over centuries including picking out items belong to the previous Dalai Lama from a jumble of artefacts, it was deemed that the young lad was indeed the reincarnation and he was whisked off
to begin his religious training.
For me, the jury is still out on this reincarnation business because people see what they want to see. Animals do seem to have personalities though and many are a lot more pleasant than some humans. If I ever find out the answer I will let you know, assuming I still have hands and not paws.
You can't delete a Farcebook account, you can only suspend it in cryogenic sleep waiting for it to be reactivated sometime in the future. Everything that goes on the Internet is there forever, just like the space junk orbiting the planet in endless cycles waiting for someone with the will and technological know-how to recover it. I once had an incident where a girlfriend discovered some letters I had exchanged with a previous girlfriend which I had kept for old time's sake. My new girlfriend completely over-reacted and a horrendous row followed but we managed to sort it out. At least I had control over those letters and what happened to them.
