iTouched by madness

I don't have an iPhone.  I'm tied into a seemingly endless contract for a Nokia that immediately developed a screen-obscuring layer of internal dust and collapses with exhaustion after anything more strenuous than a minimum-length text.

I'd like an iPhone, of course.  I'm sure there are superior handsets but I want the one everyone else looks cool stroking.  This unoriginal thought process led to me buying an iTouch, aka the red-headed illegitimate love child of the iPod and the iPhone.  It does everything an iPod does and looks a bit like an iPhone, except it doesn't make calls or, most importantly, connect to the internet.  It's supposed to but mine just doesn't.  I was on the brink of taking it back when I drunkenly spooned it onto the kitchen floor, smashing a spider's web of cracks into the screen and somewhat damaging my credibility as an aggrieved punter.

But one thing my little white e-elephant has done is reintroduce me to Tetris.  The working day has now become a very long prelude to getting to play it on the tube home.  I dabbled with it as an evening TV accompaniment until the missus forcefully suggested that a severe heroin habit would be more socially acceptable.  So the tube is my special shape-arranging time, with earphones firmly screwed in to make sure I am as unaware of the vile northern line as possible.

This hermetic exclusion field is broken at least twice a week by one of the hoard of stateless tourists who roam the London Bridge tube platforms, large of backpack and baffled of expression.  I'm happy to help people out - give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses waving a 2003-vintage underground map - but I do object to the ones who walk up to you while you are wearing bright white earphones and just start talking.  I more than object to - I loathe, in fact - people like the man who last week: jabbed me aggressively in the shoulder while I was dealing with a particularly tricky multiple-line pile-up; started gabbling while I came out of the game, paused my music and removed my earphones; looking irritated when I asked him start again; and processed my clear and precise instructions on how to get to Oxford Street with a blank expression before spinning on his heel and marching away without a word of thanks.

How to deal with a charmless time-waster like that?  A solution presents itself.  Bop him on the head, bend his legs to make an L-shape and drop him into a pit to align symmetrically with the Taiwanese map-in-face-thruster that was arranged into a sqaure and lobbed in the week before.  My only concern is that striking tube employees may make erratic point-counters.

Journo-no-no

Fascinating - if thoroughly depressing - insight into ethical journalism, Daily Mail-style:

http://nosleeptilbrooklands.blogspot.com/2011/01/true-story-of-daily-mail-lies-guest.html

It's a rotten tale: a life knackered for a tits-and-hay-bales space filler, precision engineered to give a cheap thrill over the breakfast kippers.  I assume it's also completely unremarkable to anyone with a working knowledge of newspapers.

Before I almost became a top advertising executive, I almost became a Pulitzer-winning journalist.  Well, I did two weeks work experience at the Leicester Mercury.  I thought by the third or fourth day I'd be wearing a mac, standing under a streetlight in the rain and sucking a pencil over a chalk outline.  In fact, I sat next to a fax machine which spooled out press releases about village fetes and rugby teams/firemen/accountants/coroners doing humorous naked calenders for charity.  I reduced them to 50 words and sent them to a sub editor, who then swearily complained about all the spelling mistakes and major factual errors.

It wasn't all that dull.  I went to the press conference where Martin O'Neill unveiled Tim Flowers, his new signing at Leicester City.  Tim was glad to be there, the lads had already been triffic, he really looked up to the gaffer and at the end of the day he just wanted to perform week in week out.  I also handled some pretty major features - when the Queen Mum turned 98, they came to their hotshot young trainee to find some heartwarming stories from Leicestershire oldies of the same vintage.  I called every nursing home in the phone book to find a sum total of no one of the right age and mental capacity, and we had to fill the space with an expanded nugget from the fax machine ("County magicians wave wands for AIDS calendar").

I subsequently rose to the heady heights of Sports Editor on York Vision at university, earning a nomination for Best Current Affairs Journalist at the York Media Awards along the way (I ran unopposed for Sports Editor, and nominated myself for the award).  This mainly comprised trying to get photos of streakers and thinking of puns for headlines ("Pool as a Cue-cumber" above a dreary article on a pool tournament still stands out as a prime example of 'hilarious at 4am, less so later').  The lowest point journalistically was undoubtedly inventing a story that the women's squash team were considering playing in sports thongs, solely as an excuse to feature the photo below of saucy g-string pioneer Vicky Botwright on the back page.

Imagine my excitement just moments ago when I noticed that Vision are still shoehorning Vicky in 10 years later (State of Squash).  I'm a pioneer.

I didn't become journo in the end, although several of my chums from Vision did and now spend their days shouting through Jordan's letterbox.  It might have been fun, but I've got no regrets.  After all, I've still got a box full of yellowing Leciester Mercury clippings to remind me of my days in the thick of it.