Everything’s gone a little bit whack lately over at Bang2write Towers (even by our usual whack standards), so it’s no surprise a week in which I have gone to London two separate days already (and it’s only Wednesday) means I now have an even more melting brain than I did on Monday.
Get this, for instance: eldest kid is sitting in front of the laptop when I get home from the train last night. “Hi son,” I say, “What are you doing?”
“Well,” he muses, “I’m going for a promotion at work and I have a big presentation tomorrow, but I don’t think I’ll get it.”
Though I’ve never played a computer game in my life, I’m cool enough to know he’s playing some kind of game in which he runs his own virtual house, family, career and pets, so I say knowingly: “Ah, but you can do anything you put your virtual mind to.”
“Except my virtual mind’s not on the job,” My son confesses, “You see, my wife just turned into a lesbian and left me, plus our kid’s been taken into care.”
WTF??
Yesterday I went to Camden and had lunch with the marvellous Julian Friedmann. We went to a Japanese restaurant where he proved himself charming company and I proved to be the biggest klutz in the history of the world with a pair of chopsticks. How I didn’t take his eye out I don’t know. Julian very nicely pretended not to notice this, yet I still felt the desperate urge to sabotage myself further so found myself telling him about Facebook, Lolcats and the Oxford Comma. I can see him going back to Twelve Point HQ and circulating my picture amongst all the staff there, telling them to avoid me – he only just got out alive!!!
Finally, BeeBee the most senior cat of the household, has led me a merry dance the last few days. She buggered off before breakfast on Monday and wasn’t seen until approximately twenty minutes ago. Lilirose and I have been combing the streets by our house – and finally discovered BeeBee stuck in a cupboard in the fridge-rebuilding place round the corner. The Polish owner doesn’t speak much English, so I was communicating with him with my EFL-inspired hand signals (“Cat? Miaow? In your house??”) and he goes “Ahhh, noise – here! Yours, yes?” and opens one of the workshop cupboards – and out trots BeeBee as if she’s in there every day. I did try asking the chap if it was normal to keep cats in cupboards where he comes from, but he just smiled and said “Excellent day, yes? Good luck.”
What have you been up to?
Weird stuff. You think some genius kid is playing a game somewhere and you’re one of the characters in his game? If so, you think he was trying to train you to be a Ninja warrior to poke JF in the eye, or that the programmers built in human frailty (i.e. clumsiness with chopsticks) to make the characters more loveable?
What kind of game are you letting your son play and where can I get it?
I want a lesbian wife too!
“liomwds”
That is the word verification I had to type in too leave this comment. Am I the only one hoping that I get a randomly generated swear word one day.
“Shitwds”
“vrttittybangs”
“mlscrap”
I live in hope.
:o)
Arf! My friend’s nine-year-old daughter plays Sims with the express intention of informing Social Services ALL THE TIME! What IS all that about?
Brain, where’ve you BEEN? These virtual life games are everywhere – don’t think it’s Sims Elinor but something very similar that Alf plays on the ‘net. This morning he got into a virtual brawl in a virtual pub when someone started on him for playing virtual darts. The police were called and Alf was virtually cautioned.
Helen – of COURSE I’m in a game, that’s the only explanation for yesterday.
I have been eating my dinner and watching TV…nosey cow!
:o)
Julian Friedmann????
A writer actually meeting an agent who wants to spend more than five minutes with them???
Ooh, he’ll be in trouble with his coworkers when he gets back to the office.