Urban Poetry

This one is called: Telephone Answering Machine

You've got 17 unplayed messages
and 14 played messages
I've been flashing these numbers since friday night
where have you been?
do I mean anything to you?
or am I just a status symbol
just another trophy to show your friends
would you even care if I wiped myself
I could pretend it was a power cut
night after night
alone in the dark
my little red light blinking
I hate you
I hate you so much
I wish you were dead.

JJ

The Shipping Forecast

It's incredible how many people have fond childhood memories of the shipping forecast. I remember listening to it while waiting for the game broadcast. They were broadcasting computer games, we would record them onto cassette tape and play them back into the computer. A hit and miss process to say the least, and not one that always worked.

So we'd stay up until 3.30am to record the game and then spend an hour trying to get it to load onto the computer and then finally go to bed, defeated. Things not working was a right of passage then, these days it's all too easy. I don't spend the weekend trying to adjust gaps with a feeler guage, or standing in shop doorways wondering how to get 25 quid for a battleship game.

Now I've got my own relatives sending email through some automated system asking to "join your professional network". There's a reason we only meet at funerals. We're already linked on Facebook, must we do this? Can't I keep my professional network for my professional contacts? No I can't, because if I refuse this unwelcome intrusion it'll start a family feud. In the end a cave-man with a Facebook page is still a cave-man. Actually I think cave-men had more confidence with women. That's the only constant thing over the last 40,000 years and we're worse at it now than we were then.

At times like this I can see why people take up gardening and join swingers clubs, I just pray I don't bump into my cousin in there too.

All this because of The Shipping Forecast. I don't know, really I don't.

JJ