STAYING IN

I mentioned recently about how I had been running the risk of emerging from my chrysalis and threatening to go out rather than remaining in my safe little cocoon. Well, that may very well be the case and I’m sure that I’ll be reporting the horrors involved in that anxious little exercise on some other day once I’ve managed to process them.

Or not, obviously…

But, for the most part, “not going out” remains the default setting, even though the whole raft of thoughts that spring to mind when I’m merely sitting inside my little house and sensing the forces of entropy slowly ripping both it and myself to fragments probably mean that I really should NEVER be allowed to stay in at all.

However, because the written words are still trickling rather than flooding out of me, my mind has to go somewhere to get its fun and to keep its little grey cells from setting into stone, and so it tends to need to ever-so briefly spark off on all manner of topics in some kind of vague attempt at keeping me sane.

Sometimes it is so very pleased by the thoughts that it has triggered that it spends a good solid ten minutes persuading me back into the shady and sordid world of “microblogging” so that I can store the thought there being happily ignored for later use, which is why sometimes “random-seeming” and “seemingly pointless” thoughts suddenly pop up for no very good reason in my TwitWorld stream.

Just the same as everyone else, then…

Either that or I’ll end up “favourite-ing” something interesting sounding just so I can easily find it again later on when I don’t actually get around to reading it or when I mention to someone that I saw something “interesting” earlier but then struggle to find it when I need to and the moment gets lost.

I am actually naturally averse to “favourite-ing” (not least because of the ghastly word composite it creates) because it really only encourages them…

But random weekend thoughts (“I wonder whether Freddie Jones was ever tempted to utter the old actor’s joke “Toby or not Toby...?” when his son was born...?”) …or bizarre fragments of conversations about books that amuse me enough to want to write them down (“There can’t be a hand gesture for “smut” because it would be far too rude...”) …or couch-based responses to TV ads (“Is the answer to the SubWay question “By exploi...?” [PHONE RINGS] Sorry, that’s just my lawyer saving me from myself…” – Yep, I bottled out there, didn’t I…?) or even the programmes themselves (“Not convinced Geoff Boycott didn’t “play for the team”. I just don’t think that the team realised that his stickability was what was needed.”) sometimes get immortalised for no very good reason that I can think of afterwards.

That last remark reminds me at least that the cricket has returned to keep me distracted, even though my hopes of “my” team’s success on that score are unlikely to be satisfied after the drubbing that they received from South Africa at the Oval. Perhaps that’s where my admiration for “stickability” like Geoffrey’s came from…? Who knows? I am aware however that this generally soggy summer has not meant that I’ve been quite as “involved” with the cricket as I usually am. Some days it’s been a struggle to remember that there’s actually been a game scheduled which is, to say the least, unusual for me…

Perhaps it’s just been the proliferation of “other sports” this year that have pushed the game of cricket even further down the list of things that the nation shows any interest in.

This, of course, has led to a proliferation of reasons that I shouldn’t be allowed to stay at home with my mind unfettered by the babble of anything other than those fabled “media sources” because it just makes me ranty when I hear obvious madness like that spouted on Radio 4 by Kris Akabusi as he burbled on about the “Olympian Gods” for no very good reason or when the BBC News spouts some drivvle like a description of a family travelling “All the way from St Helens” to be “part of the National conversation”

“Eh…?” says my brain. “Did I hear that properly…?”

Meanwhile I did crack at the weekend and finally found myself  watching some rowing as I channel surfed looking for “5Live Sports Extra” on my television. I have been known to quite enjoy watching a bit of rowing and there seemed to be a race on so I saw the last minute or so of it and “Team GB” won a gold medal. A few minutes I was channel hopping again and did the same thing and got the same result.

“This getting gold medals lark seems easy” I thought, “I don’t know what everyone was complaining about. They’ve just got two of the things and I’ve only been watching for less than six minutes…”

I decided to quit whilst I was ahead and went back to Headingley for the rest of the day.

Other matters have come along to test my ire, however. Like the person on TwitWorld complaining that he’d witnessed two different parents on quite separate situations on the same day describing Northern Ireland as being part of Great Britain (Tssk! The things that rile people, eh…?) but then I did notice later on that the BBC website did change it to “Great Britain and Northern Ireland” on their “medals table” thing. Ah yes, the “medals table…” finally there’s something to get my statistician’s heart thumping. It’s all about the numbers, you know…

But then TwitWorld is a peculiar place. Something only has to be briefly “trending” for someone to go and snaffle a few thoughts and turn it into a news item. Similarly, there only has to be the slightest whiff of “outrage” (even misguided outrage) for a mighty organ like The Guardian to back down over its perfectly legitimate use of the word “niggardly…”

Back in the so-called “real world” even staying at home can cause me to risk first of apoplexy when it becomes readily apparent that I’m going to need a PhD in “Recycling” to successfully sort out our rubbish in future... but that kind of thing, I fear, is the kind of thing I should only really rant about in another place…

I really should try to get out more.